Kerrie Murphy | November 11, 2008
WELL, there you have it. It turns out that the boys in Defrag's third-grade class at St Monica's were right.
There is such a thing as girl germs. A study at the university of Colorado has concluded there is more variety of bacteria on women's hands than there are on men's.Presumably research is ongoing to determine whether shouting "jeck" and crossing all your fingers, until such time that you touch someone else and therefore offload the germs on to them, inoculates you from contamination.
But just because some of the things you believed when you are nine turn out to be true, it doesn't mean all of them are. For instance, when Defrag was that age we firmly believed that not only would we be married to one of The Goodies by now (Graeme, if you must know) but we'd spend our life wearing rollerskates and attending elegant cocktail parties with the cast of Blankety Blanks.
How we thought we'd manoeuvre the skates over the inevitable shag pile carpet we'll never know.
We can't help but feel bitter. Not the Goodie-marrying side of things, obviously.
Mr Defrag might not do the funky gibbon, but he has many other fine qualities, and we did awesomely meet Stuart Wagstaff once.
But it's still disappointing that the entire dream remains unrealised.
Luckily, if the realities of life have taught us anything, it's that when something bad happens, it's somebody else's fault and therefore, you should sue.
We were particularly inspired to read about the case of Jonathan Lee Riches, a prison inmate serving time for wire fraud in South Carolina.
He is suing Blizzard Entertainment, maker of World of Warcraft, because, he argues, his current situation is their entire fault.
WOW "caused Riches' mind to live in a virtual universe, where Riches explored the landscape committing identity theft and fighting cyber-monster rival hacker gangs," a hand-written filing to a US district court said.
Yes, if there's one thing that WOW is famous for, it's the heavy reliance on wire fraud by its troll and wizard characters.
Defrag supposes we must count ourselves lucky that he wasn't addicted to Tetris, otherwise Riches might have gone on a wall-building spree instead.
We do find it a little suspicious that Riches filed a suit against the makers of Grand Theft Auto a little earlier this year for much the same reasons.
Especially since he has filed more than 1000 lawsuits, naming George W. Bush, Britney Spears, Steve Jobs, Martha Stewart, Plato and the Eiffel Tower as defendants. And yes, this may suggest the guy is a little bonkers, but it doesn't mean his idea is without merit.
Who hasn't wanted to sue Jobs at some time, be it because you've had to endure a "why Macs are superior" lecture or because the battery fell out of your iBook G4 when you were on deadline?
So if Riches can sue The Appalachian Trail for putting him in prison, Defrag is planning to sue god for creating a world that's not as awesome as the one in our nine-year-old head.
We'd probably settle quickly if offered a nice pair of rollerskates.
TOP 10
This week:
Mail Goggles, a Gmail feature, prevents sending of unwise emails by requiring the user to solve a maths problem before sending email late at night on weekends. Here are your suggestion for other ways Google could stop you making a fool of yourself.
10. Periodically, the computer freezes and can only be restarted by coherently answering a random existential question.
9. It stops people creating user ids such as: sexc4U@ etc.
8. Compose Mail items go straight into Trash.
7. Shut down YouTube.
6. A memory ray erases an urban legend email from your mind as well as your inbox.
5. It caps the number of exclamation marks per email.
4. Your computer shuts down if you use more than the force of one Newton on your keyboard.
3. Cancel your email account.
2. Did you really mean to search for "teenage amputee dwarf porn" from work?
1. Google Wife asks if it is a good idea to post those naked pictures of you and the boss at the office party on Facebook.
Contributors: Keith Cundale, Clifford Hughes, Tim Borten, Ian McColl, Don Knowles, Anthony Long, Anthony Lowe, Emma Crane, James Rhodes.
Next week: Facebook comments by British flight attendants confirms what we suspected all along: they despise passengers. Sends us the top 10 ways you can tell a hostie hates you.
Answers by Thursday please to OzDefrag@Gmail.com