Greetings to my reader/s on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. My latest web statistics say I've had 18 hits from there so far this month. Thanks, too, to the many Americans who drop by here, be they from commercial networks, government, educational institutions or the military, they are fighting the good fight for this site. I have also had very-welcome visitors from Australia (naturally), Germany (perhaps something to do with my original family name of Doeberitz), Britain, Canada, The Seychelles, Japan, Thailand, Portugal, Sweden, Brazil, Poland, The Netherlands, the Russian Federation, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Turkey and Taiwan. Salutations to you all, and please tell your friends how much fun we're having here! (ell, I'm having fun. If you're not, you must be a masochist (but welcome never

It's been a little while since my last encounter, so I was little surprised to be trapped behind a psychic pedestrian today. You know what I mean, the type of person you're following along a street who walks very slowly but has the uncanny knack of moving in exactly the right direction at the right time to stop you from passing them. They were very common when I live in Hong Kong - in fact, they used to work in packs, swaying across the pavement in formation to prevent anyone from getting anywhere they wanted to go in a reasonable period of time.

I've said it before; I'll say it again. We'd be in big trouble if those phishers and other internet scammers ever learnt proper English. I'm not sure what first alerted me to the fact that the latest email I got from the Commonwealth Bank was not on the up and up, but it's a toss up between:
1) The fact that I don't actually have a Commonwealth Bank Account;
2) The fact that the link they provided doesn't actually link where they says it does (a quick rollover proved that); and
3) The use of the non-word "Attintion!", when I think they meant Attention!

If you want to see the first four minutes of the Borat movie, click here. It's funny, but very crude ...

What have we done to deserve this? As I said on the ie blog:

There's nothing like a good turkey-slapping to renew interest in a flagging TV series. Network Ten and producers Endemol Southern Star have issued a media release today confirming that Big Brother will be back in 2007. Ominously, Southern Star Group chief executive officer Hugh Marks says: “Big Brother will continue to entertain audiences for many years to come.” Not this audience member, I'm afraid.

A Brisbane hardware chain has some back-bus ads declaring, "Can't stop graffiti, can help you cover it", with the implication that they'll sell you the paint to paint over somebody else's vandalism. But I wonder where the vandals get their paint from in the first place? I'm sure this chain has some procedures in place not to sell spraypaint to would-be graffitists, but somebody is cashing in from both sides here.

When I was living in Hong Kong, a young female friend of a friend had some local workmen around on a sweltering hot day. Trying out her Cantonese, she meant to say: "If you fix my airconditioning, I will be eternally grateful." However, what she really said was: "If you fix my airconditioning, I will give you my body." I tell this story because it's funny and it's instructive. I see so many badly composed signs and overhear so much inexact conversation, that I really wonder what it would be like to be a non-English-speaking tourist in this country.

During an outside broadcast by Brisbane radio station 4BC, announcer Peter Dick approached a woman who was collecting money for a breast cancer charity. When he discovered she was the mother of 612 ABC's Spencer Howson, Dick said: "You're the mum of a big radio star." Spencer's mother apparently replied: "Not as big, in kilos, as you!"

When I look back at my younger self, I still cringe at some of the ridiculous things I did to try to catch the attention of members of the opposite gender. The things I said and did, and the choices I made, in the pursuit of love still shape my character and my future. To argue, as some people have in relation to Jonestown, Chris Masters' biography of extremely influential broadcaster Alan Jones, that a person's sexuality is irrelevant is ridiculous.

I heard over the weekend that many Australian schools and childcare centres don't allow the celebration of Halloween. I know it's an American idea - but so was invading Iraq, and we went along with that one.

According to a report in today's paper, there are plans to produce a biofuel from bananas. All very well, except that bananas are currently more expensive than petrol. What next? The caviar-fuelled car?

Haven't heard what Brisbane's two new breakfast radio shows sound like? Well, there's audio over at the ie blog.

Fate works in strange ways. The two latest additions to my Celebrity Deaths Archive are Spoony Singh, who created the Hollywood Wax Museum, and Phyllis Kirk, who starred in The House of Wax. They died within a day of each other.

The recent changes at Brisbane's 97.3FM have left Marnie Titheradge without a job, although she has been offered some sort of position with the Australian Radio Network. She is not the first, nor will she be the last, person to be displaced in radio. It reminds of something Jamie Dunn told me years ago when I asked him why he worked so hard and why he was obsessed with money. He said: "I've always worked on the premise that one day I'll be told, 'Don't come Monday'." Dunn's 16-year run on B105 finally came to an end around this time last year.

One expects the commercial media to push its own barrow, but I'm a bit disappointed that this ABC story about the Australian Cinematographer Awards only mentions gongs won by the national broadcaster itself. Where might one go for a full list?

It might be one of those experiences we have to consign to the past: madly scrambling through the cutlery drawer trying in vain to find a corkscrew and ending up trying to invent some other way to open a bottle of wine. I actually used a corkscrew tonight for the first time in quite a while. A lot of the wine we drink - and not just the cheap stuff - is now in bottles with screw caps.

There was great excitement in my household yesterday when the new Ikea catalogue arrived. I'm not terribly into the products themselves but I do like the unique brand names on offer at the Swedish store. I'm really looking forward to asking for the latest self-assmebly goods from SKÄNKA, KONCIS,SVIT, MÅSNAN, PERSISK, EFFEKTIV, FNISS,NÖJE, DUKTIG, MINIFÅNGST, TJUSIG, BJÖRNA, TYLÖSAND, ÅNES, LIATORP and MONGSTAD (which sounds like somewhere you might find Kyle Sandilands).

Over at my other blog, there's some links to audio and video of the new 973FM breakfast show. It's interesting to hear Bob Gallagher, who has come over from sister station 4KQ, say he's "going to look forward to playing some music that's been released this side of the new millennium".

I was the cause of great hilarity at work yesterday, even though I wasn't even in the building. I had to talk to a colleague about a story for ie next week, but he was busy so I left a message with another co-worker. As soon as I got off the line, I realised I'd given an old home phone number not my current one. So I sent the person I wanted to talk to an email saying something like, "Apparently the phone number here is 1234 5678." When he rang me back he said everybody in the office was amused that I didn't know my own phone number. Why should I know it? I never have to ring me.

One of the side effects of being a journalist is that people send you unsolicited stuff. I've just rediscovered a T-shirt advertising a television program Click on Ten, which proclaims its airing details as "friday's at 7pm". The program, produced here in Brisbane, didn't last long but at the least the souvenir - including the grammatical error - lives on.