ragingyoghurt » adventures in good eating etc.

Alright. Let’s call it late September. Anyway what do I care – in a couple of days I’ll be on a plane, playing SuperMario, eating what is technically a microwave dinner, and resisting the charms of the chubby aeroplane-shaped table clock (with blinking lights in 2 colours! only $ 49.95!) in the duty free magazine in the seat pocket in front of me.

Those of you who encountered the previous incarnation of this website may remember that what greeted you on arrival was a diabolically slow-loading animation of a depraved (and happy – let’s not forget insanely happy) tub of yoghurt, rocking energetically back and forth, shaking its fists in the air. These days the spirit lives on, and hey! I could try and learn Flash, or even revisit the GifBuilder thing, but really… no.

And now, if you will, gaze upon the toothy maniacal grin of our new RagingYoghurt mascot. Salivate at the thought of the creamy pink spurting out its head. Hold the gaze of its wild googly eye. Study, in particular, the sturdy bones of its jolly roger pose.

Are they not strong limbs? Do you not quake in your boots at their solidness? Do they not remind you of the wisdom tooth that this very afternoon was wrenched from the tenacious grip of my upper jaw bone?

Surely there is no better way to start the week than showing up at your dentist for a quickie to make sure everything’s all right before heading off into the mild blue yonder, and then having the nice lady tell you that your right upper wisdom tooth is coming in too far down and aggravating the exposed fleshy gum of your lower jaw every time you bite, and your two options are having the cusps filed down (but they’ll just keep growing down anyway), or the whole tooth extracted. Oh and by the way, when you get back from overseas you’ll probably need surgery to remove that other wisdom tooth that’s just begun poking its head? side? root?? through your lower gum.

Oh the vigourous tugging that ensued. Slippery little sucker needed several attempts with two types of pincer-tweezer-plier implements before one of them finally grabbed hold. Oh the strange creaky noises that I heard from the inside of my head.

It was pretty cool.

And it’s gonna be wonderful.

– – –
before i had a “blog”, i used to write a sporadically updated letter on the front page of my website. this is one of them. i am consolidating it into these archives, because i can.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 25 September 2000 at 11:04 pm

permalink | filed under drawn, trip

So how’s this for serendipity?

I was just crawling about on the carpet, as you do, shifting piles of scrap paper around, when this face peered up at me. I believe at the time, I exhaled (or at least mentally generated) a noise that sounded much like “huh”. The typographocally savvy amongst you will see an asterisk and a randomly cropped serif. Those of youse who normally see things magnified 800% will recognise it as the leftover of a hole punched out of a piece of paper.

You know how resourceful donut chainstores save up all the doughy bits punched out the middle of the donuts, and then fry those up and sell ’em by the cupful as “donut holes”? This is one of them, except no donuts were involved.

sigh.

There was once a tv campaign to boost the consumption of a misunderstood food product… milk or something. So the camera pans down a chart with various edibles perched alongside their fat content. At 20% – the donut. Hence, if you sat down and ate 5 donuts, it would be as if one of them was made completely of fat.

[beat]

This editorial is going nowhere. You just came to look at funny pictures anyway. Entry is to your left. Please watch yer step, mind yer head, and take yer chocolate wrappers and empty paper cups with you when you leave.

It’s gonna be wonderful.

– – –
before i had a “blog”, i used to write a sporadically updated letter on the front page of my website. this is one of them. i am consolidating it into these archives, because i can.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 31 August 2000 at 4:26 pm

permalink | filed under misc

Welcome to the first ever Guest Scribble.

Nellie made this one while she was a-visiting, to describe her coffee machine without using a lot of funny arm movements. (Then I made a mockery of it by drawing the little burdie. The word “bird” will never be the same after that last eels album.)

Big American coffee franchises have been plundering the recreational coffee scene here. Having only recently become a coffee drinker, I suspect I may be unqualified to judge the basic product on offer, though I do appreciate the novelty fun variety: the ice-crushed, chocolate-addled, sprinkle-topped specimen. Only 18 more to go on my frequent drinkers card until I get a free one!

Is it unsophisticated to order a mocha? Is it utterly cosmopolitan to request a macchiato? These caffeine quandries can be avoided by seeking out the most ludicrous frozen coffee beverage. Oreo crumbs? Yes please. Fake cherry flavour? Sure! Aerosol whipped cream? Well, duh! It’s on the photo innit?

– – –
before i had a “blog”, i used to write a sporadically updated letter on the front page of my website. this is one of them. i am consolidating it into these archives, because i can.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 30 August 2000 at 5:53 pm

permalink | filed under drink, nellie

See, even when yer boyfriend, who you quite like, suddenly picks up and goes on a 6 month epic Indiana Jones journey to exciting bomb-riddled sub-emailable countries like India and Pakistan and Iran and beyond, there’s half a packet of fun, bite-sized reasons why you should be pleased:

1. Nellie’s coming!!  Finally.

2. The new Eels album.  It’s so pretty and lo-fi.

3. Pale green peppermint ice-cream studded through with mini m&ms.  Sure, it’s got that non-creamy, skim milk texture… but it shore is funny though.

4. Orange fur-covered bookshelf.  It’s orange. It’s furry. You don’t even need books.

5. That scab on your knee from when you fell over unassisted in the street has grown crusty and ripe for the picking.  Meanwhile the tiny cut you got while hoicking yourself out of the swimming pool, has become mildly infected – not helped at all by the fact that your big metal watch keeps chafing. You’d think it would have taken a far shorter time to arrive at the idea to switch wrists. But, no. Really.

And so on. And so forth.

– – –
before i had a “blog”, i used to write a sporadically updated letter on the front page of my website. this is one of them. i am consolidating it into these archives, because i can.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 30 April 2000 at 10:24 pm

permalink | filed under bookshelf, boy, drawn, ice cream, nellie, soundtrack

It took months of consideration and reflection, but finally the decision was made.

I’d been in the market for a jaffle maker from as far back as a year and a half ago, and then just as I was about to finally buy some silver space-age double-barrelled thing, they released a machine in the shape of a cow. White with black cow splodges, vacant bovine face, a pink udder underneath. And it really threw me.

Do you understand? That whole inner turmoil that designers sometimes experience (not to be confused with indigestion from eating a malcalculated combination of sugary snacks) over form versus function was achingly clear – the ache coming mainly, I suspect, from my stomach panging at the prospect of a further delay in the arrival of a crunchy golden jaffle.

Part of this debate (just between all my inner voices) was the “productivity/value for money question”: do you pay $40 for a machine that makes you 2 sandwiches at a time, or $50 that makes you one but looks like a cow?

And then just as I decided that it had to be the cow… it stopped being sold. Now everywhere I looked, there were jaffle makers in the shape of zany brown dogs. Feh. The jaffle dream ground to a halt, and I ate marinated artichokes on toast for a while.

But not two weeks ago, I stumbled upon a stack of the cow-shaped jaffle makers in one of those happy homemaker-type megastores. All the crunchy golden feelings were rekindled, and soon I was walking home with a box that said “Moo” under my arm.

This morning I made my inaugural jaffle. It was filled with creamed corn, which was damn tasty, but at that temperature, also damn lethal. Note to self: steaming creamed corn shooting out of a jaffle makes a brilliant projectile weapon. Just try to keep the pale yellow arc aiming *away* from your mouth.

I got the best fanmail ever the other day, from Sweden no less, and dammit, it makes my slack mutha lifestyle all worthwhile:

“hi nice stuff on your page there  i was looking for some porn (hehe)  but somehow i stumbled over your exelent page..  just wanned to say that..  id would had bought some of it, but im broke..  my spelling sucks mayor…”

It’s gonna be wonderful.

Yay.

– – –
before i had a “blog”, i used to write a sporadically updated letter on the front page of my website. this is one of them. i am consolidating it into these archives, because i can.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 30 April 2000 at 10:12 pm

permalink | filed under shoping, snacks

A vision of love…
boxing gloves…
hearts and flowers

Like, a month ago, that song, “Somewhere in my Heart”, popped into my head and kicked around in the vacant space there for a few days. Goddam, I thought, I miss that catchy old tune, and how I wish I could hear it again.

A week later, CD shoping with Jeremy, and look! It’s the Best of Aztec Camera. Well, you’d think it was a sign too, wouldn’t you? And you’d buy it. And so I did, and took it home, and played it. And really, apart from that “Somewhere in my Heart” song and a couple of other almost as catchy but not quite numbers, the disk was packed (to the gills… genetically modified CD) with those awful dreary George Michael type ballads.

So I listened to the entire disk over and over again, over the next three days, to see if I really wanted to exchange it for somefink else (toss up between REM “Out of Time” and Whitney Houston “Whitney!”… er, for old times’ sake), and after about the tenth listening it wasn’t really that objectionable anymore.

Which goes to show – and I’m sure this shows plenty, but this in particular was shown to me — that bad music can really wear you down, dull your standards, so that it appears to be merely mediocre music.

Thanks be to Allah I have found my Michael Penn tape.

– – –
before i had a “blog”, i used to write a sporadically updated letter on the front page of my website. this is one of them. i am consolidating it into these archives, because i can.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 1 February 2000 at 12:23 pm

permalink | filed under soundtrack

This bout of merriment is brought to you today by 2 chocolate chickens and a stock cube, packed to the gills (genetically modified chicken) with tasty msg goodness.

Well, yes. Easter is still months away, but already at the local Coles, there are aisles packed to the gills (genetically modified shelves) with a whole new range of egg-shaped, strawberry-crackle-filled, flour-thickened compound chocolate.

Anyway, with my impeccable track record of failing to consistantly maintain this, my pride and joy (and this, my irony)… I figure that this page, freshly laid now, will keep long past its Easter use-by date. (Much like the heavily discounted, limited edition numbered, collector’s editioned box of Twinkies 2000 that NellieSterrah mailed me. The useby on the box was January 07… so I couldn’t work out if that meant the 7th of January 2000, or January 2007, because you can really taste the humectant in those tasty little critters. Mmm… humect-tant)

And so the moral of the story is… actually, there is no moral. And if you really think about it, there isn’t much of a story either. Hopefully, little one, you have not read this far in the hope of discovering some blinding universal truth. For as I near the end of this missive, I see no moments of clarity to be had. By me.

You know they put flour in cheap chocolate right?

It’s gonna be wonderful.

Oh yeah. There’s some new drawings and stuff in here. Still sort of unemployed, but I believe the more acceptable term is “freelancing”. Alla youse who wanna throw jobs my way, I’m away all of February 2000, but I’ll be back, scrubbed fresh and shiny in March.
Seeya.

– – –
before i had a “blog”, i used to write a sporadically updated letter on the front page of my website. this is one of them. i am consolidating it into these archives, because i can.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 31 January 2000 at 9:38 pm

permalink | filed under cake, chocolate, nellie, werk

The other night I woke up screaming… well, whimpering, keening, with Evil Cramp From Hell in my left calve. Damn it hurt. After it tired of gnawing on my leg, it settled down into a low growl for the rest of the night. And way into the following day.

Such an odd juxtaposition of sensations as I sat on the northern end of Hype Park eating pineapple and rockmelon, warmed by the sun. If I had a job to go to, I wouldn’t be lying in the grass like this, all happy with fruit and wincing with residual cramp.

So it’s been a year since I partook of fulltime emplyment, and I’ve arrived at these conclusions:
1. Fulltime employment isn’t all it’s made out to be.  
2. I’m a really lazy person.  
Of course, I mean that in a good way.

Nonetheless [and bearing in mind a card I got last birthday which said “welcome to your late 20s”] time is running out, and soon one of them technology-savvy seventeen year olds who knows how to code Java will be on the speed dial of… someone who needs a boffin, and I’ll be… not. It doesn’t matter that even now I’m not a boffin, or on anyone’s speed dial – anyone who’ll pay me big money anyway, but dammit! it’s the sentiment that counts.

I haven’t isolated the sentiment yet either, but bear with me.

So over the next year I’m gonna draw lots more pictures. Drop by occasionally and see them. Also, I’ve just embarked on a Tuesday night foray into the world of website workshops, which means that I have to set the VCR for Heartbreak High and Party of Five. But maybe more importantly it means I’ll soon know how to use a HTML editor and won’t have to write this all on Simpletext.

One more step away from ludditedom.

It’s gonna be wonderful.

– – –
before i had a “blog”, i used to write a sporadically updated letter on the front page of my website. this is one of them. i am consolidating it into these archives, because i can.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 16 September 1999 at 9:26 pm

permalink | filed under around town, blog, werk

Home Improvement

All of a sudden it’s the other side of winter. 5.30 in the afternoon and the sun’s still up. On the downside, those same golden rays stream through my bedroom window by about 7am, illuminating the blood in my eyelids. Literally, I see red.

After putting it off fer months, I’m finally painting my walls. Over the weekend, the first one… grey. No, nowt an ode to winter – there’s a bigger plan afoot. If the weather stays clement over the next week, two more walls will succumb to my trusty (rusty) roller. This time… orange. Yes, the very colours of Future2000™ come to life. Incidentally the official names of these colours are “sardine” and “turmeric”. Tasty.

And so to celebrate, a free coffee table for all valued customers. Print! Cut! Fold! Fun fer everyone!

Incidentally, on the laminated plasticwood surface, a copy of the magazine “Speak”, my favourite magazine of the last many months. Bursting with vernacular fun, Chris Ware comics and everything and nothing in particular. And now it is n’more. One of the things that made reading (or perusing) “Speak” such an excellent experience was the absence of ads, or rather, the graceful ebb and flow from page to page uninterrupted by generic cosmetic or tryhard cigarette ads.

Tragically the latest issue contains a bitter bitter diatribe of an editorial (another reason I like “Speak” is that the editorial is never just three paragraphs summarising the contents page) heralding the impending demise of the magazine. Something about what happens to publishers when they are “not inclined to help merchandise product or design editorial to be more compatible with advertiser’s campaigns; or when he is not inclined to pay public relations companies… instead of writers.”

Sigh.

Just what we don’t need right now, especially when magazines with names like “Gear” and “Stuff” spring up, with no other purpose than to tell you what you can spend your money on. It sucks! It all sucks!

Anyway (and believe me – in the light of that last paragraph, the irony of this statement is so clear to me), go out and buy “Speak” because in a couple of issues it’ll be extinct, and then we’ll see who’s sorry.

Well, ok. Probably not you.

The speak website is nowt a patch on the real deal (web:0, print:1 – woohoo!), but drop by anyway eh?

– – –
before i had a “blog”, i used to write a sporadically updated letter on the front page of my website. this is one of them. i am consolidating it into these archives, because i can.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 2 August 1999 at 3:38 pm

permalink | filed under bookshelf, drawn

Oh hey! Howyagoin’?

Come on in. And excuse the mess. Yeah, it’s lookin’ pretty much the same – been kinda busy the last few weeks, getting back into work after that last vacation. Y’know…

Oh I went to Chicago to see my sister graduate. Yeah [haha] any excuse. Um and we found a cheap airfare on the ‘net so we made a little post-Grunge pilgrimage to Seattle. No, it was really good. All sunny and clean-smelling. But y’know what? That weekend Eddie Vedder was playing the Tibetan Freedom Concert in Chicago – actually, Wisconsin – so I kinda missed out on a random Vedder sighting.

Yeah, dem’s the breaks.

Um look, I’m still in the middle of tidying up a few bits of work, so d’ya just wanna hang out here for a while? I’ll have something to show you real soon. Oh and there’s some milk and chocolate cookies over there… yeah I made them. No, really! [haha] Just avoid the black ones ok?

– – –
before i had a “blog”, i used to write a sporadically updated letter on the front page of my website. this is one of them. i am consolidating it into these archives, because i can.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 2 August 1999 at 3:33 pm

permalink | filed under nellie, trip

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