After doing a little very small quantity of furious research and wandering about aimlessly on the internet (as is usually the case for my days off), I finally found a place telling me how to achieve this (here will tell you how):

And then, with the best intentions at heart, I posted the exact same image onto Book With A Face, expecting to get hilarious answers to the question that I posed: “WHY DOESN’T TARZAN HAVE A BEARD?” But no, unfortunately, this is not how the nerdy brains of my fellow Facebookers work. The majority of replies were more predisposed to criticizing me for the horrifying state of my desktop – proclaiming that I failed “to love” my desktop enough. Like I was committing some sort of horrifying abuse by not clearing up my icons – that by leaving icons sitting about on my desktop was like requesting that an individual perform some sort of gratuitous sordid buggery on a chicken or that I had just said that genocide was “okay”.

So, bowing to peer pressure, I have cleaned up my desktop in the same way a teenager cleans up their room – by stuffing all the piles of smelly gym sock, books and stray pens into my hard-drives equivalent of My Closet. Yes, I’ve randomly stuffed everything into a spare section of my E:/ drive. Sue me, it was the only space I could find.

Now my desktop looks like this:

Also, if you wallpaper isn’t this image, you’re probably not cool enough.
FYI: Former wallpaper is from here, referenced here.

So, it’s Valentine’s Day in the great land of plenty (of Bogans) and like shops all around the world, massive displays have been set up, overflowing with puddles of plushie red hearts, corny hyper-coloured balloons with balloons insides of them, random bee toys emblazoned with slogans proclaiming hideous puns like “Will you Bee my Valentine?” and of course, the Chalice of Romance, piles upon piles of red long-stemmed roses being sold in a cloud of baby’s breath at an inflationary price that would make any normal grown man’s colon spontaneously burst into a pustule-crowned smear. Valentine’s Day, like any good old event for “celebrating” has been pumped up to a point to which one cannot simply walk down the street without seeing some poor sod with a bundle of roses, looking frantically (and undoubtedly overflowing with embarrassment) for his date.

I’m not saying roses are a horrible thing, I do enjoy roses in small, infrequent doses -  but when given on Valentine’s Day, the whole effort can seem falsified and actually, quite garish. But none of that is why I find them as unromantic as a highly invasive laparotomy proceedure. Here’s my unfiltered, and probably highly offensive, view of it: It requires no thought, no time, and no effort to send someone red roses. They are as ubiquitous as they are obvious. All that’s required is some method of payment, possible with some life-savings and slash or some sort of bodily sacrifice. Like an arm or a leg. My very cynical question is, how does a gift so entirely impersonal and commercialized add up to romance?

There’s a long-running joke in our culture about the ineptitude and the outright boring thoughtlessness of giving a bloke a tie on Father’s Day. But at least, in that case, you have to pick out the tie. And yes, the tie may still be hideous, but at least you thought about it.

Look, I get it. Love is hard. Expressing love, even through flowers, is a perilous and harrowing path. Especially for men, where on this day, you’re practically forced at gun-point to figure out something romantic to do/give even though your idea of a romantic night out is pizza, beers and a couple of video games (this is also my idea of a romantic night out, but that’s not the point). There’s the possibility of miscommunication with flowers: dislikes, life-threatening allergies, hidden insects, drippy packaging. There’s an entire industry built up around the idea that red roses signal love, with a capital L. And if red roses mean “I love you,” anything else must mean something less. Roses are not only simple and straightforward, they’re safe. The only real hazard is sending them too soon.

But to love someone, and to express that love, requires knowing them. If you want to send a gift that says you care, the first step is to show that you care. Show an interest in what she likes and longs for — in flowers and in life. Then, on any occasion when you want to do something nice for her, send her something that says you listened. If she (or he, for that matter) tells you she thinks red roses are the ultimate in romance then by all means, send them wantonly and with the sort of gleeful abandon that comes with knowing you’re Doing It Right. But take the time to know. That’s where REAL romance happens.

There are many things about my every day life that get me up in arms. Or legs. Or really, any sort of appendage. Yes, I get supremely peeved about many things in my life, so let’s get this straight: Yes, I will be ranting unreasonably in this post, so be prepared to either be offended or suffer from shot-term repetitive strain injury from concurrent agreement-nodding.

I HATE BEAUTY AND THE GEEK.

I hate it to the very core of me. A so-called “reality” show, Beauty and the Geek, has been labeled as the “ultimate social experiment”. It attempts to dramatize a supposed “collision of worlds” in which the ridiculously dense and lip-plumped “Beauties” encounter a batch of lonely and socially inept “Geeks”. Although the show is supposed to enable the two groups to bond together and to apparently “celebrate differences” (Think Beauty and the Beast, folks), the resultant show is a solid mockery of the intense difference between those labeled “intelligent” and “incredibly unintelligent”.

The “Beauties” in the show are ludicrously stupid – a blow to the female race as a whole. See all the advances we have made in equal pay? See all the changes in our rights to vote? Our opportunities in the workplace and at home benefits? Now see them blown out the window in the presence of these ditzes. One wonders what the selection process for these make-up infused, busomy ladies was – can’t tell the difference between toast and Tuesday? YOU’RE IN!

Selecting probably the dumbest of the dumb to compete in the programme, or maybe women with fantastic aptitude at acting incredibly unintelligent, uneducated, and out of touch with the world as a whole has caused the show to back-pedal. None have really shown any ability or interest in absorbing any information of importance – which ruins the concept of the Beauties converting into a more intelligent breed of women, and makes the show into a Reality Spectacle rather than any sort of Celebration of Differences palaver.

TAMIKA: Trying out her lawyering skills.

Some fantastic quotes thus far, from one of the Beauties, Tamika (The Anna Nicole Smith of the program): “Submerging out of something? Like submerging out of birthday cake?” and “Okay, $100! Does anyone want to double that to $105?”

The men, on the other hand, are fairly intelligent: maths champions and double degree holders and what not – there have been claims that the men are not geeky enough, which is a joke in itself – the idea that being geeky is derogatory is a playground insult. Being one of the “Geek” community, I find the whole concept incredibly shallow – the fact that any REAL GEEK would stoop so low as to appear on a television show to partake in such televised drivel is beyond inconceivable. No one with any splodge of self-respect would appear on a show such as this and let themselves be humiliated – let alone any one with an IQ of over 130. Yes, there is a prize of $100, 000 – but is there really a price-tag on self-respect?

FINALISTS: Line up for one of the last challenges.

The show preys on the assumption that Beautiful Women will always have the attention span of a gnat and the intelligence of a piece of dry toast and that Geeky Men will always be as strongly back-boned as dog’s piddle and look horrendous. Quite frankly, the show is a splodge on Australian television agenda – not that it needs to get any dirtier than it already is. But the question remains, why do I still have my eyes glued to the set when it comes on the tube? Much like greasy cold chips from the local grease-bucket corner shop, you know it’s bad for you, incredibly unhealthy, full of crap, but you still stuff your face with it.

And, just to make it interesting, here are some quotes from Forum go-ers on the Beauty and the Geek website concerning the “Beauty Make-Over” challenge that didn’t appear in this year’s programme:

Apart from the huge chests and big hair not many of them are actually very pretty. They made over the guys, so I was just wondering when they were going to do the same for the girls? Or should the show be called “Bimbo and the Geek” not “Beauty and the Geek”? By: amity0888
13/11/2010
4:17 pm

They did a really interesting challenge on the American version where the girls had to go to a party with no makeup and only clothes from op-shops. The challenge was to get guys to buy them as many drinks as possible, but it was a normal party so there were other girls all dressed up there too.

So many of the girls really struggled – many ended up in tears. It was the first time many had to rely on their personality to attract men, and many of them found out that without their hair and makeup they weren’t very interesting. By: belle7644@y7mail.com
18/11/2010
11:39 am

The truth hurts folks, so don’t discount your local “geek” as being unlovable; and girls don’t change yourself to appeal to a type of guy, personality will ALWAYS conquer over the seemingly gargantuan tower of appearance. The heart of the matter is, a truly quality guy will choose a truly quality girl. Looks and a metric ton of make-up will only get one so far in a lasting and honest relationship before reality sets in and you realize you’ve married an alcoholic, abusive, Hunchback from Notre Dame with a Hannibal Lecter complex.

Gather around people and come on down the front anyone who’s ever wondered how the hell you maintain a big, fat, healthy relationship. Is everybody in? Good, now throw all your self-help books, astrology charts, aromatherapy candles, emotion journals, lucky … Continue reading →