Townsville Twist

Sunday 29 April 2007

Newspapers are the same as plankton, right?

So there our second year biostatistics class was, filing into an early morning exam after staying up all night completing an assignment for a related marine biology subject. Those of use who had completed the summary online quizzes for biostats were very pleased, as most of the questions from the test had been lifted straight from them. Except for one rather odd exception. See if you can spot the same typo that made a lot of people crack up mid-exam.

"A researcher kept track of the number of diatoms eaten by fish animal each week over a seven week period. The results are shown below.

95, 38, 221, 122, 258, 237, 233

Find the median number of diatoms eaten."

All fair and good so far... apart from the "fish animal" part anyway. But what were our possible answers to this particularly easy question, you may well ask. Well, take a look for yourself:

A whatty what what? Newspapers?

Every day here makes me wonder whether James Cook is really all it's supposed to be...

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Thursday 26 April 2007

Highlights of DC Semester 1 2007

Welcome DC nerds! Yes, I have run out material to write about to the extent that I will now cut and paste all the best quotes I have collected from DC this semester so far. Apologies for most of them involving me, but I'm too fucking funny and I had to be around to collect them anyway. Deal. I've submitted a few of these to Bash.org but alas, none were deemed good enough. I'm sure if we put our heads together we can do it eventually.

People, please keep in mind that these quotes are for the most part very very dirty, degrading and distasteful. Keep the kids locked up for this post.

bourkey: fuckers!!
blimpyboy: fuckee
bourkey: damn straight
bourkey: gettin pounded
Ebo: fuck u bourkey :P
Ebo: (tis TGG)
blimpyboy: zomg are you seckzing ebo?!
Ebo: lol
Wild-Cherokee: thats a yes
blimpyboy: no denial, it must be true :o
Ebo: that was yesterday silly
Ebo: i've moved on to her sister now
blimpyboy: :)
blimpyboy: hai five

Ebo: OMG HOT NAKED SHOWER TIME!!!
lws: ??
lws: most showers are hot and involve nakedness
Deadly_Dude: i touch myself
Deadly_Dude: lah lah
Deadly_Dude: :P
lws: though increasingly the trend is towards cold showers...
Ebo: yeah, well, I'm taking this one cold and clothed to be a rebel
lws: lolz
Ebo: or at least cold
lws: it reminds me of 'WARNING : DO NOT IRON CLOTHES WHILE ON BODY
Ebo: it's way too fucking hot
Ebo: ....I mean.... the weather, not ironing clothes while they're still on :S
Ebo: because I haven't done that, right?
Ebo: RIGHT?!

dutchezz: hmm i feel so much dirtier watching HD pron
dutchezz: too much detail
Deadly_Dude: yeah HD porn is shit
Deadly_Dude: get to see how dirty the sluts are more
Ebo: you can see the cocks better
Ebo: OMG SEXUAL CONFUSION :S
dutchezz: yeh.. cuz thats what porn movies are all about... cocks
Ebo: well, if I want to see the other stuff I can just look in the mirror
dutchezz: can i look in ur mirror too?
dutchezz: wait

Ebo: so like, Noni knocks on my door
Ebo: and asks for help with an assignment
Ebo: and I'm there, lip synching to need you tonight with a vegemite beard into a camera
Ebo: AWKWARD

corza: need to fill up my water bottle
Swf: i need to pee, kill 2 birds with one stone..?

Ebo: so....where are you my kittens?
GordoICEMAN: u were having sex with kittens?
GordoICEMAN: better not be ebo
Ebo: dude, don't knock it til you try it
GordoICEMAN: mitch will kill u
blimpyboy: yeah, those are HIS sex-kittens, you whore!
Zacmeister: well at least you weren't masturbating kittens Ebo
Ebo: but that would be awful
Ebo: remember, everytime a kitten masturbates, God kills a human
Zacmeister: and everytime God masturbates, Chuck Norris kills ten humans
Ebo: OMG
Ebo: what happens when Chuck Norris masturbates?
Ebo: ARMAGEDDON!!

nikki: did zacmiester and ebo just have sex?
Zacmeister: no
Ebo: yes
Ebo: I mean no

Swf: any1 wanna see wat trav touches himself over
Swf: april summers porno blooper!
Swf: well probably not, anyone who watches that goes limp str8 away
Ebo: "Whoops, I accidentally crapped all over you when you pulled out of my ass!!"
Ebo: My bad ^_^

Deadly_Dude: im eating chocolate
Ebo: whilst wanking?
Ebo: doesn't that get messy?
Deadly_Dude: a lil
Ebo: like you forget which hand and put your dick in your mouth instead?

Morbo : blimpyboy sets the topic to : Happy Zombie Jesus Day! --- Teegs though this one up ;)
Zacmeister: will Zombie Jesus eat our brains or our souls?
Ebo: Jesus has been stealing souls for the last 2000 years
Zacmeister: evil fucker

Bluck: i have an incredibily large penis
Scotty: that's funny
Scotty: bluck, you should do standup
Bluck: i do every thursday night
Ebo: yeah, he stands up and everyone just laughs
Scotty: lol
Bluck: wow nice come back ebo
Zacmeister: lmao
Bluck: ebo's mum made my penis stand up
Ebo: and she laughed, right?
Ebo: EB0WNED!!

Swf: get your medstudent friend to steal you a stillborn from the mortuary, put it in a paper bag, light it on fire, and watch them stomp it out, and the hilarity that entails...
npc: that wouldnt even work
Swf: what possible flaws do you see in my plan?
npc: if the bags already on fire, and their is no screaming from the apparently 'live' baby who is on fire, why would they be mortified for stepping on it
npc: instead they wouldn't even know what they had done
npc: just gone aww what did i step on
Swf: the baby was never mean to be alive, the mortification comes from the fact they have stomped on a dead baby, soupy pieces of which now cover their shoes and pants
Zacmeister: or alternativly, you get a puppy, put it in a bag, light it on fire, get a person to step on it, and then shout 'OH MY GOD, YOU KILLED A PUPPY YOU SICK FUCK!'
npc: put a mime in a paper bag, set it on fire and when they step on it shout out "YOU KILLED A MIME, GOOD FOR YOU!!"

Ebo: I saw a horse the other day with the grossest cock
Zacmeister: ......okay
Ebo: all the skin was caked and cracked and ewwies
npc: so you gave it head?
Ebo: of course

Deadly_Dude: me so horney
Deadly_Dude: me love u long time
Deadly_Dude: oh wrong window...
Ebo: that's right DD, fuck me hard... oh yeah... almost there... OH YES!!... Pull it out, cum all over my face... YES! YES!!! YESSS!!! CUM IN MY EYES!!!! YEEEEEEEAAAAH!!!!
Ebo: oops, wrong window
npc: ebo, you scare me

Ebo: damn, I can disassemble most things
Ebo: fucked if I can get into this vibrator
Ebo: 10 minutes to undo a half cm screw
Ebo: they're tighter than an 8 year old
tachyon: ur taking apart a vibrator...why?
Ebo: I broke it
Scotty: i'm confused as to whether i should be amazed or disgusted
npc: [20:43] Ebo: fucked if I can get into this vibrator ITS MEANT TO GET INTO YOU
tachyon: you need to go see that boy of urs ebo :P
Ebo: I just did
Ebo: but this is to procrastinate
tachyon: uhh, right. leave you to it
npc: how many vibrators have you taken apart?
Ebo: this is my first time
Ebo: I'm being gentle
Scotty: ...
lws-t: ebo just lost her vibrator-disassembly cherry
lws-t: don't worry, you have plenty of cherries left...
Ebo: SUCCESSS!!!!!!!
Ebo: I FIXED IT!!!!
Scotty: AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHA
Ebo: I have no idea what I did, but it works now
npc: ebo's happy again
npc: happier even more in a couple of mins
Ebo: seriously though, vibrators are kind of meh unless you're with someone else
Ebo: the most fun you can have with one alone is to put it on a table and have it vibrate all over the place while you try to set up dominoes
lws-t: ROFL
blimpyboy: ...
tachyon: lols

Ebo: I was mid-shag and a friend knocked on my door to get her ps2 back
Ebo: AWKWARD
blimpyboy: why would you answer the door?
Ebo: she was in a hurry
Ebo: I was like, come in and join the party
Ebo: she ran away crying
Ebo: it was awesome

And because Zac requested it especially even though it's meh, here's one more. I have to keep him happy, he's the only one of you bastards that plays Helbreath with me.

Zacmeister: *Silently puts Giant Clown Wig on Fergo's head*

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Wednesday 25 April 2007

Plankton take one for the team

A friend of mine recently got a brochure in the mail for a fantastic new nutrient drink. It's called FrequenSea and comes complete with marine phytoplankton!

I kid you not, it contains single-celled plants from the ocean. Delicious, especially considering some marine phytoplankton can produce toxins that lead to lovely things like diarrhetic shellfish and ciguatera poisoning, not to mention potent neurotoxins. But anyway, there's lots of them and they're plants right? Gotta be good for you.

Not only does FrequenSea have microscopic organisms, it also contains frankincense. No gold or myrrh unfortunately. I wondered what on earth frankincense could possibly contribute towards the drink's nutritional value, so I looked it up. Turns out it was used a lot back in the days of King Tut as makeup and dye, and in later times in aromatherapy. Oooh, makes perfect sense then. Frankincense away.


Another interesting addition is that of RNA. As any high school biologist would know, RNA is basically half a DNA strand, and there are trillions floating around in your body right now because they are found in cells and used for protein synthesis in EVERY LIVING THING. Sounds to me like somebody added it to the list to make it look like there was more useful stuff in it than there really is. Might as well add "Flagella" to the list, phytoplankton have those too!

Really though, I should give them credit for their advertising technique. They've used convincing and highly scientific statistics:

And here they state the long lives of planktivores:

AND YOU CAN TOO IF YOU JUST BUY THIS DRINK!!!!

But wait for it, then they tell you all about their plankton farming:

Sooo... basically they have no idea what they're actually culturing, they just breed 'em, toxic species and all! What's worrying is that they haven't provided a recommended daily intake of marine phytoplankton. What if I exceed it? Will I start photosynthesising? TELL ME!

I don't know if I want to buy this anymore... weeny toxic plants (some with protective plates made of glass), makeup, Noni juice (I have a friend called Noni, this ingredient is particularly disturbing to me)... It just doesn't sit right. What do you think?

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Tuesday 24 April 2007

Wiggly Worries

A couple of years ago a friend bought me a vibrator for a joke. It came from some weird online store and when it arrived looked equally weird. Honest to God, instead of throbbing veins and the usual designs, the shaft has the image of some zombie chick set in it. A blue zombie chick.

And of course, why stop there? Why not have a bear-shaped tickler dry humping the blue zombie chick?


Really, it's kinda too freaky to use. I usually whip it out at parties and we watch it flop all over the table. Good clean fun. Hilarious to watch. Until you leave some dodgey batteries in it for a while and it stops working.

In sooth, it's been broken for probably over a year now, stowed in the back of a cupboard somewhere. I had a lot of uni work to do after the lecture recess and needed to procrastinate so what better way to do it than to fix the vibrator?

Now, I can disassemble most things. VCR's, scuba regulators, study plans, but man oh man I have never had so much trouble as unscrewing the battery cap on this bastard. It took me almost 15 minutes to undo two half-centimetre screws. The entire time I was talking on our college hub, yielding fantastic lines like "fucked if I can get into this vibrator" to which someone very wittily replied "aren't they supposed to get into you?" and "that's tighter than an 8 year old". You know, standard sex-deprived computer geek conversation.


Under the battery plate thing I found a little circuit board which the buttons attached to. At this stage the only evidence for the device malfunctioning were the battery contacts which were corroded as hell, assuming hell is highly corroded.



NPC: how many vibrators have you taken apart?
Me: this is my first time
Me: I'm being gentle

Since everything else looked fine, I proceeded to scrape the blueish crud off the contacts with my trusty screwdriver. I put the batteries in. It didn't work. I took the batteries out. I looked at it for a while. I put the batteries back in. IT WORKED!!

So if you find yourself with a vibrator that has seen better days, give it a wash and bring it in to me. If I look puzzled at it for more than five minutes and it still doesn't work, you get your money back.



Me: seriously though, vibrators are kind of meh unless you're with someone else
Me: the most fun you can have with one alone is to put it on a table and have it vibrate all over the place while you try to set up dominoes

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