Thank you, thank you, thank you and thank...you.

I'm feeling a little bit happy with mt lot in life tonight. I'll tell you why in a minute, for now I'll just get on with what I was going to say and try to leave the new task bar alone.

• for instance,
• I'll try not to
• put in too many gimmicks,
• like bullet points or

1. numbered
2. lists.

Anyway, back to the point of it all:

I'd like to start by saying "Thanks" to all the ravening hordes who flock to this page daily to get their fix of sanity in an otherwise unfathomable world. Special thanks to those who have seen fit to link to this page from their (uniformly) brilliant homepages. What follows will be part critique of said homepages, part thanksgiving to the operators of same and part shameless sucking up to these people and to anybody else who feels like they deserve it. We all do, sometimes. It's good for the soul. The following is my personal opnion and does not necessarily reflect the policies and opnions of the management or staff of ATI.

Hang on, I'm the staff and management of ATI, so I guess it does reflect the... stuff.

• First, let me start by saying a heart felt "Thanks, mate" to http://jafablog.typepad.com/man_of_lettuce/, that was supposed to be a hyperlink with the word 'Adrian' in it. Oh well, I'll work it out later. I'm getting off track again. Adrian was the first person to link to this page and has since been a never-ending source of advice, encouragement and suggestions. I can find much to disagree with in his political opnions, but not in the methods he uses to arrive at them. For an excellent read, with a distinct 'slice of life' bent, you can't go past The Man Of Lettuce.
• If you want to know what the latest is on The Chucker, or where the best pub in Oz is, or hav a query regarding just about anything to do with contemporary music, real music, that is, then http://aftergrog.drivelwarehouse.com/ is just the ticket. Tony T. is erudite, informed and piss-funny.
• One for the younger set:http://85george.blogspot.com/, young Jonas is a very clever, funny and intelligent young man, probably movie-star handsome, too, in a tanned surfie sort of way. Dunno, never met him. Too late nayway ladies, Miss Green Dress already has that job. The Gold Coast may not be such a shit-hole after all.
• On the opposite side of the country, where Jonas was chased out of by irate fathers', is Yobbo.http://www.gravett.org/yobbo/ is the place to go for everything from political discourse and opinion pieces on economics to everybody's favourite, boobies. Extremely well written and researched, an accusation that you will never hear levelled against this page, by the way, Yobbo has an opinion on most everything. If you don't, then borrow one of his.
• This one is a bit special to me, for two reasons, firstly http://landownunder.blogspot.com/ is the first site to link to me before I had read it, let alone drawn Mr. Holden's attention by commenting on it. Which gives a hint of the second reason it is special to me; it is written by F.X. Holden , the (inaccurate) moniker by which the first Holden car is known. I suppose 48/215 Holden wouldn.t have the same ring to it. Once again, very well written and very diverse, knowledgable on topics from The MC5 to contemporary politics to Hank Williams, I have no idea what he see's in this drivel.
• Last, but not least, this link gave me a tiny little thrill. Seriously. I felt good after I got linked to http://spinstartshere.com/. Not only because it's a very popular ( and deservedly so) site, but because Caz and her henchpersons are fairly finicky about who goes on the blogroll at TSSH. Their hit-counter doohickemmy thingo is up over 208,000 hits and yet they have only 26 blogs up on their list. I have more than that, but then, I'm a bit of a slut. Go there, get involved, make a mark; but beware, the bitches bite. Idiots are treated like idiots. You have been warned.

That's about all for now. I'll be trying out a few things in the future to see how they work, I'm having nearly as much fun trying to work out how these things work and how to change them as I am trying to come up with something to write that I would bother reading which hasn't already been done to death elsewhere.  The ongoing saga of Austereo v. Frenzal Rhomb is a case in point. I was going to suggest an orchestrated campaign of Frenzal requests to 2DAY, accompanied by a "More OZmusic" campaign to the Austereo management, but the topic seems to be adequately covered elsewhere.

I have been thinking of adding a suggestion box/forum page to the site somewhere. Sort of a "Why don't you do a post on (topic you may feel that I have some sort of an insight into/interest in)" Or somewhere for people sans blog to have a rant, or to have a go about something that for whatever reason doesn't fit your usual ouvre.

Heh, ouvre, I didn't even know I new that word. Meanwhile, I don't know if I'll do it or not... it's sort of like a chatroom. But not. Not sure if there'd be a need for it, or a call for it, anyway. Most of it's functions are already in place I guess, but I think it'd be pretty neat though, which is always a good reason to do something. Knowing how to make it happen would be good, but I've got faith that I could work it out if I tried. Really hard.

We'll see.