SMELLY TONGUES

THE END OF TONGUES …

2009-07-11T10:09:00.001+10:00

… At Google Blogger.

Smelly Tongues will now be over at Wordpress.

There’s nothing wrong with Blogger (not that I’ve experienced, at least), it’s just that it’s more convenient to blog through Wordpress. For various reasons … um, er, yeah.

So, will the three of you who read this blog kindly change your bookmarks and links and stuff. Thanks.

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Flaps up and away!

(No offense, ladies).

DON’T SHIT IN THE HALLWAY, DARLIN’

2009-07-07T16:33:00.003+10:00

What is it with these idiots?

We need to get down to the business of calling a spade a spade for a change and stop farting and fucking about looking for some wider reason or societal cause in order to explain why so many footballers are so very bloody stupid.

I mean, let’s face it.

We’re just not dealing with very bright people here.

And they’re happy with being not very bright people, ‘cause they don’t know any different and they don’t want to know any different ‘cause to know different would mean learnin’ stuff and learnin’ stuff hurts. Help, mummy.

Now, God knows, there’ve certainly been times in my life when I’ve been drunk, staggeringly, stupidly drunk. But at no such time have I ever gone wandering through a hall or a corridor somewhere and thought, “I need to poop. This looks like a good spot.”

As far as my own toilet training goes, I can’t really remember as I was pretty young at the time but it seems to have stuck with me thus far, ‘cause at no time in my life have I needed a refresher course. It’s not like I was 13 or 14 years old and on my way out to a mate’s place my mother had to say, “Remember, Ross, don’t go pooping in other people’s rooms”, “Oh! Okay! Thanks for the tip, mum” …

No, I’ve been drunk, stoned, drunk and stoned, high, low, up, down, left, right, a kaleidoscopic mélange of whacked-out, wobbly-brained, insistently incoherent, wired-up weirdness to the nth degree of odd at times, but at no such time did I ever feel compelled to take a poo in some random hallway.

And certainly not a hotel.

I mean, you’re in a hotel, for Christ’s sake, it has rooms. Find yours, open a fucking door and go to the fucking toilet. They even give you paper for when you’re finished. So you don’t have to drag your arse up and down the carpet runner in the corridor. Some people leave their plates out there when they’re done eating, you know. It’s not sanitary.

So, let’s just call a spade a spade, shall we?

Footballers are just plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face staggeringly fucking stupid.

Most of them, that is.

Because I’d hate to be accused of making any broad generalisations here, y’know?

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Well, I wouldn’t hate it.

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I’d be a bit iffy.

Whatever.

But, look. It’s not as if your average idiot footballer goes on in later life to write critically acclaimed works of literature when their careers are done. Become incisive journalists of great merit and note. Carve out glittering careers for themselves in the arts and sciences. Reap glittering prizes as they go. A certificate or three, some honorary titles.

No.

Mostly, they’ll just open a car dealership somewhere.

A shop for vacuum cleaner accessories, maybe …

But, seeing as how they’re just stupid bloody footballers, their businesses go bust in twelve months and by then they’re too old to get another job so they just sit at home all day and drink beer and get fat and then they get into drugs and prescription painkillers and speed and the like and spend all their spare time in the company of shadowy underworld figures who coerce them into doing shadowy things for wads of shadowy money and then one night they try to hold up a chemist for a carton of Sudafed but they don’t know that the chemist has seen “Taxi Driver” 96 times and forges prescriptions for himself and has gone quite insane as a result and tonight he thinks he’s Travis Bickle and he pulls a shotgun out from under the counter and blows a hole in their heads and their brains go spurting like a half kilo of wet mince all over the Rexona deodorant poster and dribbles onto the shelf below where the eyecare products are kept.

Next to the display dump bin of Listerine, two for six bucks, on special.

That’s what happens to footballers.

Because they’re all so fucking stupidly fucking stupid, the stupid fucking … fucks.

There you go.

If you know any small children, you should tell them that. Teach them.

As a precautionary tale.

Like “Red Riding Hood” …

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Or “Last House on the Left”.

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Maybe leave out the curse words.

Being fucking kiddies and all.

NEW STUDIES REVEAL …

2009-06-20T09:19:00.000+10:00

A new study has found that the number of Australians currently engaged in conducting new studies and compiling statistics about meaningless aspects of human behaviour, both personally and professionally, has ballooned by approximately 36.79% over the last 15.61 years and may be a leading cause of productivity losses over that time and a contributing factor to the current economic downturn.

Research conducted by The Institute of Studies into Studies Of Irrelevantly Random Crap has revealed that compiling studies about things whose conclusions would be blindingly obvious to the thickest halfwit on the planet consumes almost 17.825 million days per year as a nation and the resources of close to 47.3% of the current population.

Ross Sharp, the Director of the Institute, announced today that "if one were to take all the metal used in these studies from paper clips, staples, foldback clips, ring binders and those sliding metal paper binders that slice half your finger off when you try to remove them from a document, you could probably build a bridge between Sydney and Perth with it."

He added, "We have individuals engaged in compiling studies about the economic cost to the nation of people taking two toilet breaks a day during work hours and statistics about the impact on the national state of mental health caused by recalcitrant shopping trolleys with dodgy wheel bearings, and we feel this type of thing has now reached epidemical proportions and something must be done, and done urgently, to address it.”

Mr. Sharp also stated that, "if we were to take all these people conducting studies into things nobody could give a flying proverbial about and place them into some sort of productive work like the construction of public housing, we could probably solve homelessness in 37 seconds, build a couple of hundred new hospitals, some spaceships, cure cancer, and bring dinosaurs back from the dead."

"Unfortunately," Mr. Sharp added, "a vast number of Australians, rather than engage in some substantial form of work, would rather sit on their ever-expanding backsides, chew the rubbers off their pencils, and make studies about the impact on global warming from farting parrots who've taken one too many nips of over-ripe fruit and have then gone muscling about a public square making a racket at 5.00am in the morning squawking for a kebab shop".

In response, a spokesperson for The Institute of Studies Into the Effects of Fermenting Fruits on Native Wildlife rejected Mr. Sharp's comments as little more than the rantings of an angry and disaffected middle-aged man, and insisted that their research was vital in these times of global crisis.

Mr. Sharp replied that he couldn’t give a stuff about any of these stupid studies anymore and that he was going up the pub for a few beers and a monster-burger with double cheese and a side order of chips with gravy.

ARSEWIPE? ...

2009-06-20T09:16:00.001+10:00

Use bumstick …

(Spotted on Slate.)

DEL TORO SAYS NO …

2009-06-20T09:14:00.001+10:00

To sappy wuss-bag vampires with big boofy hair ...

From 2009, Guillermo del Toro on Craig Ferguson's "Late Late Show"

It’s about time someone put the teeth back into bloodsuckers, and del Toro, director of “Hellboy” and “Pan’s Labyrinth”, is just the right guy to do it.

Tongue has a happy.

1-2-3 … I, CLAIRVOYANT

2009-06-13T11:24:00.002+10:00

Ahem …

What I said over here?

I hadn’t even seen the thing.

And what are others saying now? …

Marc Savlov from Austin Chronicle -

"Loud, abrasive, and featuring performances seemingly calibrated to be heard over the cacophonous roar of Travolta's mad, bad overacting, this unnecessary and ill-advised remake of Joseph Sargent's 1974 crime movie in which a group of ex-cons (led by Robert Shaw, playing off a Transit Authority cop essayed by the shaggily brilliant Walter Matthau) stage an elaborate cash-based caper in the subway tunnels beneath Manhattan."

John Swansburg from Slate –

"Here's my question: Why did Tony Scott make this movie? He isn't a straphanger. He isn't paying Tarantino-like homage to a film he grew up on. And any implication in Scott's film that New York in 2009 might be in danger of slipping into a 1970s-style malaise is purely incidental. So why did he bother?"

Rene Rodriguez from Miami Herald –

"Hiring Tony Scott to direct The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is like hiring Michael Bay to direct My Dinner With Andre: A colossal mismatch of director and material. Scott's (Top Gun, True Romance) directorial style has evolved -- or, depending on your taste, devolved -- into a frantic, hyperkinetic rush of images (Domino, Man on Fire) capable of inducing seizures."

Gary Thompson from Philadelphia Daily News –

"The only surprise in the new "Pelham" is that there's nothing to replace the narrative ingenuity of the original. In fact, there's almost no ending at all.

And not much going on in the beginning and middle, a fact that director Tony Scott disguises with his customary razzle-dazzle - splashy widescreen shots, a lot of movement, a million angles cut together with loud music that signals something significant is happening. (Something significant is happening: you're being relieved of $8 you could have spent on "The Hangover" or "Star Trek")."

Robert Ebert from Chicago Sun-Times -

"There’s not much wrong with Tony Scott’s “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3,” except that there’s not much really right about it.

Say what you will about the special effects of the 1970s, at least I was convinced I was looking at a real train. Think this through with me: Once you buy into the fact that the train is there, the train becomes a given. You’re thinking, ohmigod, what’s going to happen to the train? With modern CGI, there are scenes where a real train is obviously not on the screen, at least not in real time and space, and you’re thinking, ohmigod, real trains can’t go that fast.

And when cars crash, cars should crash. They shouldn’t behave like pinballs."

Sean Burns from Philadelphia Weekly –

"As expected, Tony Scott’s hyperkinetic, entirely unnecessary revamp attempts to update Pelham by cranking the volume and inflating the Noo Yawk attitude to a cartoonish level of macho posturing. The opening conversation, a slight bit of banter between Denzel Washington’s paunchy subway dispatcher Walter Garber and a co-worker, contains what must be at least 15 utterances of the word “fuck.” See, these guys are from the big, bad city, so they say the f-word a whole fuckin’ lot."

You see?

I told you I was clairvoyant.

WHEN ONLY THE RIGHT WILL DO

2009-06-13T11:09:00.004+10:00

This grubby little cunt's desperate effort to turn a racist, anti-semitic madman's violence into something symbolic of "leftist" hate is the latest example of the rising din of stupidity and hysteria from those who call themselves "conservative" and "right-wing" and labour under the delusion that violence is, and can only ever be, endemic to the "left".

There's certainly no hate here, is there? ...

No, no, no, there's no hate on this side of the political spectrum. Never has been. They're sweet and cuddly little sunbeams for Jesus.

These are the type of people who give rational-minded conservatives a bad name. Whether one is of the "right", or of the "left", neither side can claim for themselves a monopoly on sanity and common sense as there are fruitloops batting for both teams and it's the fruitloops who always holler the loudest and for the longest time, attracting attention simply by virtue of their ability to throw fistfuls of shit about on a regular basis like so many monkeys in a cage.

And their existence, their actions and their views soil the minds, the souls and spirits of those of us on each side of the spectrum who are not so arrogantly convinced of our righteous infallibility in all things that we may claim all evil and all that is and has been bad in the world is the fault of one side and one side only.

For to do so would be to reveal oneself as a vacuous, drooling, twitching and ignorant imbecile of the highest order.

As for Bolt, well, fuck him. A gutter-dwelling, dog-whistling grub of the lowest order, a talentless and spectacularly banal hack who is to journalism what Jacqueline Susann once was to literature.

Popular in their time, but barely relevant to anyone and anything after it.

It's not journalism. It's not reportage. It's not even analysis. It's the sound of a man way out of time and way out of place whistling vintage tunes out of his arse, expecting his acolytes to gather round for a sing-along while someone resembling Walter Brennan plays pianola in a bar.

It's crap.

And I can't read any more of it.

Therefore ...

Bookmark deleted.

Life's too short, and there are better things to do with it.

I CAN HAS SPAC ATTACK?

2009-06-13T11:04:00.001+10:00

So, I’m on the train to work yesterday morning. I only have two stops to go and I often walk. It was early. Cold, too. I took the train.

As it approaches my stop, a message comes over the intercom …

“Passengers should take care when detraining from the vehicle.”

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“Detraining”?

“DETRAINING”?!!!!!

“DE-FUCKING-TRAINING”!!!!!!!!!!!!??????

I would like to find the person who thought of that and smash their fucking stupid head into a toilet bowl until they become de-fucking-brained.

Fucking spacwad.

TONGUES ON FILM – MAY 2009

2009-06-06T11:27:00.003+10:00

“LET THE RIGHT ONE IN” (2008)

Everything you may have heard about this film is true.

SEE IT.

It is not a horror film. That is to say, it is not a catalogue of “kills” carried out by some lunatic fucker scuttling about in the dark with a knife or whatever. It is the anti-“Saw”, the anti-“Hostel”. And that is a good thing.

It has traditional horror elements in it, yes, but these are not the story. The story is the telling of the tenuous and tender relationship that begins to develop between bullied 12 year old Oskar and his mysterious neighbour, the “girl”, Eli, who is an “other”.

And that is all I will say, for others have said it far better than I. I blogged about the book a while back, over here. There’s a trailer there that you can watch. Off you go.

An American remake is in the offer. God help us. I think I shall smite them before they fuck it up.

“TWILIGHT” (2008)

Only joking.

I haven’t seen this film.

What, do you think I am insane?

I’d rather stick pins in my fucking eyes.

“MARLEY & ME” (2008)

The last 15 minutes of this movie made me a little puddle of wet.

Look, you make a movie where a central character is a dog (a real dog, that is, not one of those squeaky rat-like things), and you show the dog growing up from a puppy into old age and then dying, I’m gonna have a little eye dribble going on when that happens. Okay?

Deal with it.

And I like Owen Wilson. I like his funny-looking mashed up nose and his stoner drawl and I’ve liked him since I first saw him in “Bottle Rocket” years ago, “Bottle Rocket” being an excellent little movie. He strikes me as the type of guy you could have a quiet beer with and just generally chill out around. Unlike this wanker, for example.

And Jennifer Aniston actually looks like a real woman still, a 40 year old woman whose face can still move when she talks. Unlike, say, Meg Ryan, who looks like she’s taken the labia from a 400 lb female Sumo wrestler and had them stitched to her face where her lips once were.

And Alan Arkin’s in it. Briefly. So.

You’ve got a movie with a boofy dog in it and Alan Arkin.

What’s not to like?

“THE PROMOTION” 2008

John C. Reilly. And some other people. I like Reilly. He acts, he sings, he dances. I wish I had his life, the life of Reilly.

Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-rah, too-rah-loo-ra-laiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii …

… So I come back from the pub after 3 beers on a Sunday afternoon, and start working my way through a bottle of wine and then I decide to watch this.

Ten minutes later, I was fast asleep.

And I had to take the movie back, because it was a one night rental and I should have watched it the night before.

I hate it when that happens.

“THE LOST” (2006)

Portrait of a teenage narcissistic psychopath who kills two people just to see what it feels like. By the end of the film, he’s well over the edge, a full-fledged fruit loop on a rampage who wants to be Charles Manson. Thankfully, the film-makers resisted the urge to show his ultimate act of horror toward the end. That would’ve been well beyond the pale.

This is good. It’s not bad, that is. It’s okay. It has a few major flaws (it is, after all, a very low-budget independent U.S. production), and it’s taken its time getting a release here (straight to DVD), but you could do worse. I mean, you could rent “Twilight”, for example. But then you’d have to stab yourself in the head after.

The only actor I recognized here was Ed Lauter in a minor role as an old guy having a fling with a woman about a third his age. And I have no idea what that storyline was supposed to achieve as every time it popped up, I thought I was watching another movie. The whole silly subplot could easily have been left out and you’d have a much tighter film, as “The Lost” runs a little too long for what it is and what it deals with. Also, I didn’t really buy the idea that the central character would be so popular with girls and others of his own age. He’s quite the preening little fuckwit, a guy who shoves crushed beer cans in his boots to make himself taller. I mean, if you were a woman who knew a guy like this and you were in possession of half a brain, this is the type of guy you’d throw your used sanitary pads at.

What else?

The sound transfer sucks. It’s as if the boom operator thought shoving the microphone up the arse of an elephant might add some depth. It doesn’t. Try it and see.

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See? Told you.

You should move away from the elephant now. You’ve aggravated his anal warts.

You bastard.

“STUCK” (2007)

HALLELUJAH!!!

Now this, this is the type of movie that makes it all worthwhile …

Stephen Rea plays a character down, and almost out, out of work and out of welfare, with no hopes on his horizons, and about to find himself spending his first night on a park bench or in a hostel …

Mena Suvari plays a nursing home carer on the brink of a promotion who, after a night of booze and pills chooses to drive home, only to collide head on with Rea’s character who becomes firmly wedged in the windshield of her car.

And then drives all the way home with him still stuck there, doing nothing to help.

Inspired by an actual event, but not a replication of it, this is one right out of left field, but not in a “leftist” sense. (It could be out of the right field, but not in a “rightist” sense, though I guess it depends whereabouts in the paddock you’re standing and who’s throwing the balls. If you’re standing in a paddock and some bastard’s throwing balls at you, just shoot them in the fucking head, okay? You shouldn’t have to put up with that type of malarkey.)

A tight, taut (80 minutes), blackly comic, toe-curling little thriller that perfectly captures the blindly self-absorbed amoral cruelties, the (as Jules Feiffer put it) “little murders” of the soul that we and others casually commit every day in the name of our own self-preservation until all trace of our basic humanity is stripped back to the raw and chalky bone. The one-ply tissue veneer of so-called “civilised” behaviour flushed effortlessly away to sleep the sleep of the dead with the fishes.

You’ll feel every scrape, every cut, every puncture on Rea’s body ache and howl with pain as he desperately tries to extricate himself from his horrific situation, and, as Suvari’s character gradually reveals her true nature to be that of a shallow, unthinkingly vicious cunt of the first order, by the closing moments all you will want to do is grab her head by its expensively braided ‘do and slam it into a fucking anvil.

This is truly marvelous stuff, one of the best low budget indie films (Canadian) I’ve seen in quite some time, simply because it was so unexpected.

Also, there’s an instructive little sequence about the proper use of pens and pencils when you’re in a fix, and a heartwarming scene with an adorably fluffy little canine.*

… From Channel 4’s Anton Bitel, “Stuck is disturbing in all the right ways, turning an incredible real-life story of human callousness and suffering into a tawdry entertainment that makes guffawing, sociopathic rubbernecks of us all.” …

Directed by Stuart Gordon, scripted by John Styrsik, if your local store don’t have it for rent, go out and buy it. It is that good, and hats off to Suvari for choosing to play such an (ultimately) unsympathetic and irredeemable character.

Bloody brilliant.

* Warning – Irony.

“FEAST II: SLOPPY SECONDS” (2008)

Henry Rollins was in the first “Feast”, albeit briefly.

I think Rollins toured Brisbane earlier this year. Or maybe it was earlier last year. I forget. Once you get to a certain age, all the years look the bloody same. I’ll be dead before I know it. “Hey, Ross! You’re almost dead!” “I am? Shit, and I never got around to seeing Henry Rollins. Caaaaaark.”

I only found out he was touring at the last moment and it was a week before payday, so I was flat broke as per usual. Pfhhhhht.

And now I’m expected to work until I’m almost dead thanks to this shithead. Christ, I started working at the age of 17, back in 1976 and now I’m supposed to stick at it until 2026? Get fucked. I’d like a few years of comfy retirement just generally farting about and taking it easy before I’m shuffled off to some cockroach ridden rathole to be given methylated spirit baths by a bunch of Nurse Ratched types. Wipe my arse, will you? I shit in your hand.

This movie has lots of goo in it.

The acting is crap, but, aside from some lousy effects work, the film improves a little the last 15, 20 minutes. It would bloody well want to.

One thing I hope I won’t be doing in comfy retirement while I generally just fart about is wasting what’s left of my life watching shit like this.

Maybe I should’ve rented “Twilight”. I could’ve rented “Twilight”, but then I would’ve had to dip my face into an acid bath and hammer nails into my testicles with a hacksaw blade afterwards.

And I’d rather not, thank you very much.

“ACOLYTES” (2008)

Teenagers discover a body, identify and locate the serial killer responsible, and then attempt to blackmail him into killing a thug who abused them when they were children.

Elements of “Stand By Me” and “River’s Edge” with psychopaths added for that extra zing.

The only recognisably Australian elements are the accents and the suburban topography, those red tile roof, red brick houses. I wish there more Australian films like this and less of the, “This is an AUSTRALIAN film! We gotta have colloquialisms and flannelette and men in big hats and some fucking bush, NO, not that type of bush, you cock, I’m talking shrubbery out to fucking buggery out there!” variety. I know there are some dangerously deranged freaks wandering about the fucking desert, the so-called romantics of the land, salt of the earth blah, they’d hump your leg if it had a hole in it, but you ought to see some of the people up the local mall on a Saturday morning.

This is a very well made, very (unselfconsciously) stylish psychological thriller, eschewing most of the tired and tiring clichés that bore me to tears in so many films of its type, headache inducing rapid cut editing and zoom in, zoom out, bang crash cinematography and sound that makes you know what it might feel like to be in the advanced stages of Parkinson’s disease and have someone smashing cymbals over your head for ninety minutes.

There’s none of that here, the three teenage actors are excellent and completely believable as characters, and Joel Edgerton avoids stereotypes altogether in his chilly and nicely restrained portrayal of the serial killer as average suburban family man.

“Images are the essence of cinema and Hewitt's cinematographer Mark Pugh, delivers some exceptional material, which is sometimes manipulated for extra effect. The sound scape is well worked into the fibre of the film and the end result is a superior piece of genre filmmaking.” - Andrew Urban from Urbancinefile

There are two alternate endings provided on the DVD. I thought the first one of these was a better choice than the one they finally went with, though that one is perfectly fine, just that the other seemed more plausible given all that had gone before and what we had come to know along the way.

You could rent this and “Stuck”, buy some booze and get some cheap Thai or Indian takeaway, and you’d be sure to have yourself a fine ol’ time in, I reckon. Or you could watch “Twilight”, swallow some Drano and wash it down with paint stripper and watch your own stomach explode.

Spoilt for choice, really.

“THE LODGER” (2009)

Man (Simon Baker) rents a room in boarding house. Quiet type, likes his privacy, charming though.

Meanwhile, someone’s killing prostitutes in the exact same manner as Jack the Ripper.

Will Alfred Molina, our burnt out, troubled cop with the burnt out, troubled marriage stop the bloodthirsty fiend before he commits yet another in his gruesome series of dastardly deeds?

Meh.

Just ordinary and all over the place, it goes over here, then it goes somewhere else and forgets about where it’s been and why it was there in the first place, then it comes back and goes somewhere else and loses its keys and has to walk all the way home.

I’ve no idea what the thing with Molina’s wife was supposed to be there for, to make me understand what a complex set of situations his character has in life? His wife is troubled you see, she is in an institution being cared for because of her troubles. The fuck do I care? What does it add to the telling of the story? Why do I need to know this? What does it have to do with anything?

Anyway, “The Lodger” mostly limps along, finally coming to a “well gee what a big surprise I didn’t see that coming” cod Hitchcock conclusion, nod to “Psycho”, throw in a curly one the last few minutes, roll credits, end. Turn off player. Goodbye.

The soundtrack was good.

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Soundtracks have music on them.

“WETBRAIN JIM” Chapter 3

2009-06-06T11:24:00.001+10:00

3.

Chunk Smalls, his favourite phrase, “I don’t give a fuck”, was true in all senses.

Chunk wasn’t one to give much thought to the whys and wherefores of a thing, meanings and motivations and the like. If you’d said the word “subtext” to Chunk Smalls, he’d probably think you’d gone and hidden his sandwich under a newspaper. All Chunk needed to know about a thing was “who, where, what, how much?”. He’d get a mite confused if someone started in on the detail of a thing, his brain seemed to swell up and pound at his skull and everyone began to sound like they were talking from under a blanket.

So Chunk never had paid much attention to his mental development, only reason he learnt how to read was so he could follow the assembly instructions to his gym equipment and understand the labels on his “supplements”. At four years old, the other kids, they were watching cartoons and kids stuff, Chunk, he’d be glued to the Shopping Channel and bugging his mother to buy him an Abfabulator, only $69.95 in six easy instalments plus postage and handling and they’ll throw in this thing you use to scrape the dead skin off your elbows and a herb rack.

With herbs in it.

Over the course of his life, Chunk had built himself into such a tight ball of bulging, rock hard muscle that if you’d strapped him into a glider with a wing span the length of two Sydney Harbour Bridges and took it up twenty thousand feet and let it go, it’d simply plummet to the earth like a bloody great big boulder and leave a bloody great big hole when it hit.

But Chunk wasn’t about to go up in any glider any time soon. If man were meant to fly and all that, and man weren’t meant to fly, Chunk thought, a man were meant to be a man and do man stuff, not bird stuff. And Chunk was a man, he had the body of a man, and he’d made it all a man’s body could be so it could do all the things a man’s body should do and flying wasn’t one of those things.

But birds?

It’s different, that’s what they do, what they’re supposed to be doing, and it always scratched Chunk’s mind up something awful he saw a bird in a cage not going about its natural business like Chunk had always had the freedom to do.

So today, Chunk bought himself another canary to set free. Chunk would buy a canary once a month, then take it back to his place and throw it off the balcony. Sometimes, Chunk not being the gentlest of people, he’d reach into the cage, grab the bird and throw it out so hard that the bird went into shock and before it could peep whatever the canary equivalent of “what the fuck?” was, it had dropped to the ground twelve flights down and become a little puddle of feathered mash.

And once, years ago, Chunk’s mother had called him by his actual birth name ‘cause she was the only one who was still allowed to do that, but Chunk forgot himself momentarily and momentarily forgot that she was his mother, and he smashed her across the face so hard, the neck of the whiskey bottle she was sucking broke off and came out the other side of her cheek and her head slammed into an open kitchen cupboard and split open and stuff came out.

She’d needed 87 stitches and was in a coma for four months. When she finally woke up, she spoke with a Spanish accent and had a lisp. And she wasn’t Spanish.

That was a strange day.

Although Chunk didn’t think about it much. Weren’t his way to.

He put his bird on the kitchen table and it peeped at him. It made him feel good, doing this thing with the birds. There weren’t that many options open to you for feeling good if you were Chunk Smalls. He had all the flexibility of a telegraph pole so any form of sport was out, for a start. And sex was definitely out. He literally couldn’t give a fuck. Chunk had taken so many steroids in his life, his dick was now the size of a sucked out cashew nut and his testicles were no bigger than barley grains. Chunk’s thing wouldn’t fill a doll’s thimble, and no woman in her right mind would want to be poked at by something looked like an angry pimple. Chunk didn’t mind. He couldn’t even tell he had a hard-on anymore, couldn’t tell the difference one way or the other and couldn’t feel anything either, so it didn’t bother him.

Chunk just did what Chunk did, work out, eat six times a day, do Mr. Spivot’s weird errands and buy himself a canary once a month.

Next time Mr. Spivot had an errand, Chunk hoped it’d be a bit more than just rooting around some old bum’s bundle of scummy papers. That weren’t proper work for a man, and Chunk were a man and he wanted a real man’s work to do, damn it. Next time Mr. Spivot had an errand, he’d tell him that, Chunk would. He’d tell him straight.

With that, Chunk grabbed the birdcage, walked to the balcony, reached in and took hold of the canary and flung it out and over the balcony rail as if it were a shot-put and he were an Olympian.

The bird never had a chance.

To be continued …

“WETBRAIN JIM” Chapter 2

2009-06-06T11:17:00.002+10:00

2.

That night Harry was locking up the shop and getting ready to go home when he began to feel bad about giving Old Wetbrain Jim that broom-thumping earlier.

Harry knew Jim was harmless enough, he’d been a regular around these parts since Harry had first set up shop over a decade back. Mostly, all he’d do is wander up and down the strip all day, occasionally planting himself in a doorway to yabber a whole bunch of nonsense at no one in particular, wave his arms about and cackle a lot. Sometimes, if he was on a roll in the cackling department, he’d get so caught up in his own amusement that he’d forget himself and pee his pants, after which he’d look terribly surprised and then very embarrassed and he’d just slink away somewhere private to dry off.

So what in blazes got him in the mind all of a sudden to just wander in out of the blue for a wank by the deli cooler today? Where’d that urge come from? wondered Harry.

Maybe it was that Old Jim had just touched another milestone in his enthusiastic journey toward vegetablehood. Maybe he’d had a thought about something and seeing as how the blood couldn’t get much done by heading for his brain to help clarify things, it all just shot to his dick instead because it had nowhere else to go and this had become Old Jim’s way of working through his troubles.

Hell, I don’t know what the fuck’s going on, thought Harry, but I sure as hell don’t want it going on in my shop, some old biddy waves her bacon at me asks me what this crust on the packet is? I don’t care it’s in a packet, it’s not, you shouldn’t have to buy food people have spoofed over and then just shut up and pretend not to care if you’re a paying customer. It’s a fucking hygiene thing, isn’t it? Fuck, thought Harry, someone did that to me, I’d be on ‘em quick smart, bring the health down on them and sort the dirty fuckers out.

Regardless, Harry wasn’t much inclined right now to hold a grudge against Old Wetbrain Jim over this one little offence this one time. He felt quite sorry for Old Jim. Who knew what he’d been through in his life and what had gone wrong with it. There but for the grace, thought Harry, although he left off the “of God” bit as he didn’t believe in any of that bullshit anymore. He’d stopped believing it the day, back when he was twelve years old, Sister Apophanius got her six clit rings tangled up with the gas tap handles in the science room and he was the one had to untangle her as he was the only one around and he had small fingers. At least, that’s what she’d said. What the Sister was doing up on the desk waving her fanny over the gas taps in the science room in the first damn place was anyone’s wild guess, but for the next couple years Harry packed a pair of rubber gloves and a bottle of Dettol in his schoolbag just in case it ever happened again. Which, thankfully, it didn’t.

Jesus Christ, Harry shuddered, I haven’t thought about that for years, and he shuddered again and involuntarily began wiping his hands up and down his trouser leg. Merciful God, my arse, he thought, if the bugger exists, it’s surely a nasty old buzzard to do such a thing to a sweet and innocent child simply because he was doing a little overtime boning up on his element tables for the mid-year trials.

Harry began to think some gesture on Jim’s behalf might be nice. Something that said “no hard feelings” and sorry about the business with the broom.

Take it down and leave it by Old Jim’s place, the old discarded stormwater pipe under the overpass by the creek.

He could thaw out a number 7 chicken overnight.

Old Jim might enjoy that, his current state of mind considered.

Harry got to the door of his building, turned the key in the lock and hauled his self up the two flights of stairs to his flat, a one-time “bedsit with a two burner cook top in a nook next to the bathroom” which, over the many years Harry had lived there, had magically transformed itself into a “cosy studio apartment with an ensuite kitchenette in a desirable location and handy to everything” despite a thing having never been done to it.

Every time the agents changed or added something to the description, they’d put the rent up.

Harry was waiting for them to add “polished floorboards” to the list, despite the fact the only polish on the floorboards was the wear from where he walked, and six of the boards, you trod on them, you’d fall two storeys and straight into the fucking basement.

He went to the refrigerator, took a chicken out from the freezer, put it in the sink.

“I’m a nice guy”, said Harry to the chicken.

And he was, too.

For now.

To be continued …

“WETBRAIN JIM” Chapter 1

2009-05-27T08:11:00.002+10:00

1.

Harry Heiner had his back to the door of his shop, hunched over a bundle of that mornings newspapers when Old Wetbrain Jim staggered inside, opened his pants and began to masturbate over by the cooler where the deli meats were kept, next to the cheeses.

Harry didn’t even realise Old Wetbrain Jim was there until Jim had already worked himself up to a climax, shooting his load over a packet of mortadella and then screaming “EEEEEEEE-POCH!!” at the very top of his voice.

So Harry grabbed a broom from behind the counter and ran over to beat Wetbrain Jim about the head and shoulders with it a few times and shoo him out of the store, not the first time he’d had to do so, but he’d be damned if this old derelict was going to come into his shop now and start emptying his fucking tubes all over the fucking smallgoods.

Wetbrain Jim stumbled out of the shop, stood and swayed back and forth on the footpath for a bit, then opened his mouth in mock indignation, raised his hand in a mock salute, and blew a long, wet raspberry back at Harry. All this time his cock’s hanging out of his pants, lolling back and forth like a long-preserved and now reanimated shrunken lemming looking about blindly for its specimen jar.

“Nooooooooooo-booooooooooooo…..!”, yelled Jim at Harry, “Noooooooooooooo-boooooooooooo……!” just as Harry was about to walk back inside and get down to the business of cleaning Jim’s jism off the stock before a customer came in. That’s when Harry realised that Jim had probably left his notebooks, the bundle of fourteen A4 sized, ring bound notebooks he carried with him everywhere over by the cooler. Sure enough, he had, so Harry picked up the bundle, which was tied together with bits of old plastic bags, and threw them out the door at Jim, half-hoping he might knock the old masturbating bastard off his balance in the process.

But Old Wetbrain Jim artfully (albeit a little unsteadily) dodged Harry’s toss, picked up his bundle, and bowed deeply at Harry in a sarcastic gesture of thanks. Then he tucked his cock back in his pants and began to wobble off in the general direction of nowhere in particular, something he couldn’t quite figure out burning with some intent he didn’t quite recognise about something he couldn’t quite remember picking at what was left of his damp old mind.

Something about the notebooks.

He had started out, he couldn’t remember when, with one, and now he had fourteen. He was sure of that much. Fourteen notebooks. Fourteen.

Yesterday morning, he had twelve.

That was it.

The other two notebooks.

Someone had taken them. He had no idea who this could be, or why they would want them, but they were his, and he was going to get them back, goddammit.

With that sorted out and patted down in some (hopefully) not-so-foggy recess of his addled and oft-drowned brain, Jim walked over to a bench at a bus stop, sat down, pissed himself, and began to think. And think deeply. Or as deeply as someone like Jim could manage given his shaky predicaments.

Now, aside from getting thrown out of shops on the odd occasion for wanting to have his way with chilled packets of cured hams, Old Wetbrain Jim was not the type of man who normally attracted much in the way of trouble. But what Old Wetbrain Jim didn’t realise at that point in time was that a whole shitload of motherfucking trouble was about to find its way to him and find its way to him with a stone cold killer vengeance.

To be continued …

CREEPY CRAWLY

2009-05-16T10:39:00.002+10:00

When I first thought of the name for this blog, I realised it might, to some people, imply something weird, as in sexual weird. As in, some strange fetish or whatnot.

But it’s not that at all.

The name is the title of a song from the early 1970’s by San Francisco pop nutjobs The Residents and later covered by their frequent collaborator in crimes against music, Snakefinger (who is now dead, just in case you didn’t know).

It seemed like a good idea at the time, and I love The Residents to bits and have done for over 30 years now. And I realised that the name would allow me to do silly things with puns and plays on words and such, like Tongue-In-Chief and The Tongue Commandments.

Okay?

Fair enough.

But fuck me if some of the things people are looking for, some of the search terms people use that seem to bring them (very briefly) to this place are just plain creepy, in a chilly, shiver up the spine way. Variations on the two words in the title of this blog. That make me wonder, “These people should be in fucking jail”.

I’m not going to list the terms.

Use your imagination. Use your imagination in a way that you normally wouldn’t want to use it.

And then go a bit further.

Sometimes, it makes me want to give up the internet altogether, to shun it, and go back to entertaining myself by reading more books and seeing more movies and eating out more.

To stop writing this blog, and maybe try my hand at writing something real for a change. You know, writing something with an intent.

I thought all the stupid, creepy people were over here.

But no they’re not.

They’re every fucking where.

I suppose I could just not look at my blog statistics any more. I have no idea what half of them mean anyway (Bounce rate? Huh? Bouncing from, or bouncing to? Whyfore you bounce? Boing, boing. Honestly, the internet has some stupid bloody names for things).

Maybe I’ll just do that.

Or maybe I should just get a life.

SENDING A MESSAGE TO THE KIDDIES …

2009-05-15T17:09:00.003+10:00

You’re all a pack of raving fucking morons and retards.

Why?

Experts tell us so.

Your brains, resembling nothing so much as a sucked out sultana ricocheting wildly around the dark vacuum of your tiny skulls, are so underdeveloped, so meager, so inadequate, that you are completely incapable of making a rational decision about anything, or holding a point of view and arriving at that point of view through the application of logic or observation, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves to be so arrogant as to think anything you say, think or feel could possibly hold any water at all.

Idiots.

You’re all fat, you’re all stupid, you’re all illiterate, you’re all on drugs and you’re all drunk all of the time and you’re all having sex at the age of 12 and having babies at the age of 13, you read the wrong books, you wear the wrong clothes, you listen to the wrong music, you watch the wrong movies and the wrong television shows, you’re addicted to the internet and violent video games and you’d like to stab us all to death in our beds and run rampant through the streets every night to pee on our rose gardens and hump like rabbits behind the school toilet blocks while smoking ice through a home made bong, only then to stagger home and foolishly allow yourselves to be groomed by pedophiles in chat rooms because you’re so astoundingly dumb, it’s a wonder you can figure out what shoe to put on what foot on any given day.

In fact, you probably can’t even do that and, until you turn about 25, you will remain such a vacuous, drooling imbecile that your mother will have to lay out your clothes for you every morning and feed you baby mash with a plastic spoon from a big double handled Snoopy cup because if you tried to do it yourself you’d probably put your own eye out.

What a load of crap.

I swear, if I’m looking for examples of witless stupidity and crappy decision making in the world, I only have to bone up on the latest antics of the NSW State Labor government, none of whose members could run a lap around a wading pool without drowning a couple dozen people let alone run a fucking government. Or those Masters of the Universe, those infallibly gifted men and women who work the financial markets and have run it so far into the bloody ground that we’re all going to have to work until we drop dead at our desks or fall into the ditches we’re digging for council. And if I’m looking for examples of sexual infantilism and immaturity writ large, any press release or pronouncement from those mad old male virgins in dresses from the Vatican will do just nicely. For examples of the most extreme forms of base cretinism at large, popping over to Andrew Bolt’s blog of idiocracy and the pinheads that lurk there will suffice if one wishes to acquaint oneself with the unhinged, the deranged, and the dangerously underdeveloped mind.

And, I promise, if I keep hearing again and again and again, over and over and over, this bullshit, this utter, utter fucking bullshit about the inability of young adults to make their own decisions and to form their own opinions on things on an independent basis, I am going to seek out the offending party or parties and bash them over their withered, gray, balding fucking heads with a fucking big mallet until they promise to cease and desist, shut the fuck up, and go home and clean up their fucking rooms.

Honestly.

TONGUES ON FILM – APRIL 2009

2009-05-09T11:18:00.004+10:00

Depending upon I-don’t-really-know-what, I shall endeavour once a month to provide a brief wrap-up of all of the films I have watched during that time …

Isn’t that sweet of me? …

“DELIVER US FROM EVIL” (2006)

Academy Award nominated documentary concerning the exploits of one Father Oliver O’Grady, a Catholic priest who, over more than two decades during the 70’s and 80’s, abused dozens of the faithful, leaving nothing but shattered childhoods, abandoned trusts, and deep emotional trauma in his wake.

Then, of course, there is the hierarchy to whom O’Grady was, or should have been, accountable, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Despite knowledge of O’Grady’s behaviour, the extent of it, and how long it had been going on, next to nothing was done, next to nothing acknowledged. In more than a few cases, the only action taken was to move O’Grady to another parish and, on these occasions, this rarely amounted to more than a move some scant fifty miles away. They may as well just have spat in the eyes of the parents and raped their kids all over again for all the good that did.

More than once while watching this, I had to punch the pause button to spend some time muttering darkly at the walls, a fairly inefficient way of expending some of the rage I felt over the way these people had been, and were still being, treated by the church, that faith in which they had placed such significance, such meaning.

There is one couple who welcomed O’Grady into their home as a friend, had no doubts or qualms about his behaviour (had no reason for any such doubts), and entrusted their daughter to his care. This is a couple who have been together so long that they have grown into that quaint habit of being able to finish off each other’s sentences. As the father comes to recall the time, the number of times, the moment when O’Grady’s betrayal became fully known to him, his voice, choked with anguish, blurts out that he should have known, that he was the one who trusted this man, and how could “he have let it happen?”

Imagine … To be a father who thinks himself a “failure” at his responsibilities because a pedophile abused his daughter.

Thus does a parent’s prime, primeval, duty of care to their children, that is, to protect, come to be shabbily thrust aside and trampled upon as one selfish other chooses to indulge and inflict it’s penchant for furtive spurts of sexual subterfuge with no regard, no sliver, no glint of understanding as to the consequence to anybody of their actions. And then to scuttle behind a church pew and be assured protection simply because you are clothed in the dark rags of this absurdly popular cult.

O’Grady spent some time in prison for his crimes, but that is due in no part to any action from the church. Today, he is free and living in Ireland, the country of his birth. He willingly takes part in this documentary, where he speaks freely of his actions, his desires, his (so-called) motivations.

Remorse eludes him.

When one considers that many of the most devout proselytisers of this faith consider the “evils of homosexuality” to be the frontier most worth fighting on, and then one considers the subject matter of this superb film and the seeming insignificance of it to the architects and defenders of this belief system, one could be forgiven for thinking the whole Catholic Church is not just out-of-step with reality, but so far out of time they make the Amish look like The Jetsons.

“TOKYO GORE POLICE” (2008)

Utterly incoherent, yet oddly compelling. Makes no sense whatsoever. Blood gushes from severed limbs like water from a fire hydrant. There’s an English dub that sounds like it was performed by graduates of the Ed Wood school of vocal technique back in the ‘50’s. Some of the prosthetics are quite good.

You could try drugs. Some drugs and beer. That might work.

“QUARANTINE” (2008)

Jennifer Carpenter (from “Dexter”) is in it …

The next time I see a movie shot like this, I’m gonna go out and buy a fucking tripod and send it to the fucking director as an act of fucking charity. I’m fed up to the fucking back teeth with this fucking shaky-cam shit.

Just fuck off.

“FINDING AMANDA” (2008)

Dialogue, for example …

- “How you doing?”

- “I’ve got no legs, I’ve got no balls, and I piss through a tube, how the fuck do you think I’m doing?”

And …

- “She’s probably at the Thaiger Club. It’s not spelt “tiger” but. It’s Thai, like the food.”

- “Like the country?”

- “There’s a country too?”

Good, yes?

The eternally youthful Matthew Broderick plays a “reformed” alcoholic and gambling addict who finds out his niece (Bettany Snow) is a hooker in Las Vegas and, to prove to himself, if not least to his long-suffering wife, that he has the stamina to resist the temptation to drink and gamble there, he pops off to Vegas to find her and drag her to rehab.

Very funny, very sharp, no soap or sap. Think “After Hours” and “Something Wild” and ignore the horrid poster art and byline which seems to indicate some sort of sexual thing may arise from Broderick and Snow’s relationship. There’s no such theme, and nothing of the sort happens.

“DANCE OF THE DEAD” (2008)

Another bloody zombie movie. Is there anyone who isn’t making another bloody zombie movie? You probably shit another bloody zombie movie for breakfast. Even I had an idea for another bloody zombie movie. And someone actually expressed an interest in making the bloody thing.

I should probably get around to writing something resembling a bloody script. YA BLOODY RECKON????? Bloody oath.

Anyway, this one is set in a bloody high school.

And there’s a bunch of bloody zombies about.

What a bloody surprise.

Fuck off.

“END OF THE LINE” (2007)

Independent Canadian horror film.

The leader of a religious cult, a Rush Limbaugh lookalike, gives the word and his acolytes scoot about in a righteous frenzy attempting to “save” the souls of non-believers by stabbing the shit out of them. Takes place in a subway.

Very well done, no CGI (hooray!), good story, quite effective jolts. Ends well, too. Original. Good. Yes.

Yes, you may watch this. It has a brain and there was talent involved in its making.

“DYING BREED” (2008)

“Your testicles are tacos!”

That’s not a line from the movie, but I wished it had been.

Inbred cannibals in Tasmania.

Who’d have guessed?

“Deliverance” … meet “The Hills Have Eyes”.

Animal traps. Teeth. Retards.

Full of surprises, this one.

“THE WACKNESS” (2008)

“Quirky”.

In that “I’m so quirky!” way some independent films irritatingly insist on being at times ...

- “Hey, Brent! I took all these QUIRKY people and put them in a movie together!”

- “That’s brilliant, Gavin! We’ll call it “WHEN QUIRKS COLLIDE!”

Ben Kingsley plays a pot-smoking psychiatrist who offers counseling sessions as payment for dope to his emotionally constipated young dealer who then ends up falling in love with Kingsley’s daughter.

Life lessons are learned.

Gee, I didn’t see that coming.

Mary-Kate Olsen’s in it. I thought she was a “tween” phenomenon, not a legit actress.

So. You see? I have learnt something. She turns up here as a zonked out bar and party slut. She’s not too bad at it either.

Fancy that.

“DONKEY PUNCH” (2008)

There’s a cover blurb that quotes a review something like this, “The Most Sexy, Shocking Thriller of the Year!!”

No, it isn’t. There’s some sex scenes in it. Big fucking deal.

A bunch of girls join a bunch of guys on a boat and have a party. A girl dies. Everyone tries to extricate themselves from being implicated in her death and ends up turning on one another.

As you do.

Half way through watching this, I began to think, “I’d really like to see “Shallow Grave” again”.

So I did.

“THE WAVE” (2008)

German film. Based on a true story, or parts of one.

Firstly, you have to accept the premise that a group of well educated senior students would, in the space of only five days and as part of an experiment on autocratic society, enthusiastically transform themselves into a bunch of robo-fascists at the behest of a rather uncharismatic lecturer.

I didn’t.

Ay, there’s the rub.

‘Cause there ain’t no “secondly” if that don’t happen.

“DEATH PROOF” (2007)

Tarantino’s contribution to the “Grindhouse” experiment didn’t work for me the first time around but after reading this re-evaluation on Bright Lights recently I thought I’d take another look.

As the reviewer notes, the half-way point massacre, Stuntman Mike’s “vehicular homicide” takes out those protagonists in whom we’ve just invested time and attention and leaves us with no choice but to callously discard our empathies for these characters and start over again. It’s an alienating experience, or at least it was and may have been one of the reasons I found the film initially resistible. I didn’t want to start over again on account of I’m bone lazy and impatient and get cranky when I’m asked to make an effort. And, at the time I was far more impressed by Robert Rodriguez’s sublimely unhinged “Planet Terror” and it’s “why the fuck not”* attitude to story-telling.

Another thing, Tarantino’s habit of having his characters lapse into fanboy enthusiasms, such as the name-checking of “road” or, to be more precise in this case, “rod” movies which happens here is getting a little too self-consciously twee and I wish he’d knock it off. I get the point, get back to the movie please.

Second time around, however, it did work for me, there being subtleties and spaces throughout that become far more apparent when you pull it away from the immediacy of expectations that typically cluster around Tarantino’s work.

As a matter of fact, I think it’s a work of utter bloody genius.

The difference between the two groups of women became far more apparent to me the second time around. The first group, the victims, give the initial impression of independence, full of smart mouth sass and attitude. But no, they’re not that at all. They’re just in the process of becoming tomorrow’s housewives today, still looking to have their existence validated by some man, whether it’s the boyfriend who hasn’t turned up, or the film director who won’t remember a birthday, or some gormless sleazebags in a bar. Girlie girls all dressed up waiting to go somewhere with someone, to be courted and paid for.

Pfhht.

The second group, on the other hand, they’re the real deal. Beholden to no one, dependent on nothing, they live fast, for and in the moment. These women are cooler than fuck, as tough as nails and goddamn it if they’ll take any shit from anyone. But there’s no attitude here, no style that they’ve adopted to telegraph their individual philosophies, who they are.

Some guy tries some cheesy line on these women in a bar, they’d have his balls for breakfast. For tapas.

Kurt Russell, as Stuntman Mike, with the first group, he’s the bad guy, the mean, nasty murdering motherfucker. But against the second group? Nah, he’s just another lip-licking, toe-sniffing, garden variety crybaby creep. As are they all.

Fucking brilliant.

Where Rodriguez played his exploitation hand as fondly reverential spoof, Tarantino has played his by demanding the audience too fully immerse themselves in an “exploitation” attitude, dispensing with fashionably post-modern concerns about the fate and motivation of characters and asking only that everything put before them is fast, sexy, violent and fun. That there be no point, no lesson, no thing of learned value to be taken away from this experience other than, “Did you see how the car took the top of her head off?! Cool!” is all there should be.

And that was a fucking excellent scene.

* For example:

- Why don’t we throw this in?

- Why the fuck not!

“THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL” (2008)

I made myself a very nice bacon and egg sandwich halfway through this movie. With HP sauce. Four strips of bacon and two eggs.

I left the plate out overnight on the couch? And the next morning, there were ants crawling all over it ‘cause there were a couple of drops of sauce left on the plate.

It’s not the first time, either. They just come from nowhere and crawl over anything that may have a trace of food on it. It’s not like I leave stuff out all the time. There aren’t food scraps lying all over the fucking place. It’s respectably clean, my house.

It’s a weather thing with ants, isn’t it? Maybe they’ll piss off when the weather cools down.

Because it’s beginning to give me the shits.

THE SQUEALING OF THE SWINE

2009-05-08T07:41:00.003+10:00

We knew it would happen. Those of us who pay attention to such things. I knew it would happen. The only question was when.

And so we prepared. We were always prepared, and they, people like you perhaps, thought us all fools for our cautious ways. Paranoid, you said we were. Some of you called us psychotic and stupid, hicks, halfwits, and my, how you laughed.

Well, well.

Are you laughing now?

I doubt it.

Most of you are dead.

But I take no pleasure in your misfortunes or the misfortunes that may have befallen your loved ones. It gives me no comfort. Perhaps you will listen to us in future. Should this happen again. And it will happen again. Mark these words. Or something similar, some variation on another strain. The same strain? Yes.

I had spent thousands, tens of thousands over the years reinforcing the house, the stronghold as I began to call it during the onslaught, to ensure it was bugproof. And that it could not be breached by any poor, desperate soul who may have been infected. Or, more importantly and most probably, a mob of souls. Angry souls. I had built, as a necessary backup, a bunker in the yard. Beneath the earth. I had stocked it well. That, and the central stronghold, the house, contained all those things that one could consider essential to one’s survival. In the short term, and the long term. It was the long term that mattered most, though.

There were not many of us who did this. Who went to these lengths. We were not a “group” or a “force” or a “unit” of any kind. We were scattered throughout the country with little, if any, ability to communicate with each other. We were not going to stand as one, for to do so would be a fatal error. If one became infected, there would be nothing to stop the spread among the others.

And so, as individuals, did we take our stand and vow to resist, to fight to the bitter end if need be.

And we had no guns.

Goddammit.

Howard, that bastard. He took our guns away. 1996, 1997, I think it was. Cheap political ploy, a stunt that was. I never liked Howard. Pissweak, he was. To take a man’s gun. What type of “man” would do this to another? A coward, that’s what type. A girl.

And so, we stocked what we could in the way of knives, bats, power tools, whatever we thought may help us through the darkest days we knew were coming, whatever we could lay our hands on. Some improvised.

We didn’t really have much time.

And then, time ran out.

People dropped like flies. A cough, a sneeze, that was all it took. Within minutes, the disease would tear its way through the most able-bodied of men and women and reduce them to shuddering lumps of virus-ridden flesh and, in hours, death would take them. The children went the quickest, a small mercy, to be spared the prolonged agony afforded the strong and the capable.

In two weeks, eight million had died.

In three weeks, forty seven million.

In four weeks, two billion.

The world went to rubble.

Yet, through it all, I, and those like me, prevailed. We stood our ground, defended our territory, made ourselves deaf to the entreaties of those who tried to worm their way through our defences and take advantage of our stocks, our supplies, of food, of drugs, of anything that we had because we had had the intelligence, the foresight, to prepare for this exact moment in advance of the moment coming.

The fools. The poor, poor fools.

By the time it had become clear to those in charge, supposedly in charge I should say, that the human race were facing such an implacable, invisible foe the likes of which had never been encountered before, a confusion of so-called “advice” tumbled from their lips, “do this”, “do that”, “don’t do this”, and so on and so forth. None of it added up. One piece of advice contradicted another, one “expert” clashed with this other “expert”, one minute it was a call for calm, the next, some piece of information caused thousands to panic.

I ignored it all. I knew, people like me knew, what we needed to do to survive. We had our own code to follow and we weren’t going to throw that overboard on the say so of some fucking politician, some bureaucrat, some statistician.

They had never listened to us. Damned if we were going to listen to them now.

Ludicrous, yes? That one third of the world’s population would be decimated because a bunch of goddamned pigs got the fucking sniffles.

Well, no, not ludicrous. Not at all. Probable, that’s what it was. And it was probability that we, people like myself, concerned ourselves with.

Listen …

They told us to stock up on dry goods. Rice, pasta, beans and such. Stupid. You need water to cook these things, precious water, and you’d have to be a fool to waste such a resource on the preparation of a bowl of fucking pasta. I had 100 eight-gallon drums of water stocked. It was for drinking. Not cooking, that’s for sure. What was I, Jamie fucking Oliver? No.

I stocked tin foods, frozen, stuff you could microwave (we all had generators and we all made sure to have enough fuel to run them indefinitely) and if water were needed for its preparation, it would be only a minimal amount, a half cup perhaps.

I had 200 cans of goddamned baked beans. Among other things. Jesus, did I ever get sick of fucking beans.

But those damn things saved my life one night.

Listen …

When it seemed the worst of the plague had played itself out, as we knew it would eventually for that is the manner of such things, I went to the fortified observation deck of my stronghold. I could see, in the distance, smoke, small fires, nothing unusual in that. There were no emergency services anymore and so, when a fire started, it just burnt itself out. God only knows how many poor souls got caught in them. If it wasn’t the sickness that got you, it was a fire, or starvation, or, in the worst cases, some bastard stuck you in the ribs ‘cause you had what they wanted.

Law and order? Not anymore. Not in this gutted new world.

But that night, I heard a rising sound in the near distance. A sound I hadn’t heard before and it seemed, to my ears, like the sound of some strange new mob and not at all human.

I quieted my breathing, deep, slow breaths and focused my hearing, trying to identify this noise.

What fresh new hell was this?

I had a long, large carving knife at hand. I had a heavy, six-pronged fork, its tines fashioned (by myself) to the sharpest tips I could manage. I had a pocket knife.

Downstairs, power tools. If I needed them, I could have them to hand in 26 seconds flat from where I stood. I left nothing to chance.

The sound grew louder. It seemed to be coming straight for me. Still, I couldn’t quite make it out. What the fuck was that?

My stomach growled, my bowels seemed to shift. From fear? No. I’d been eating goddamned beans for the last two weeks now, twice a day. I hadn’t shit in a fortnight. I’d deal with it later. After this thing, whatever it was, was dealt with first.

And just then, I saw them. The things that had been making that sound. And yes, they were coming straight for me, straight for the stronghold. Hundreds of them.

PIGS!

Goddammit.

All of them gone feral and looking for a kill. This was no random mob of brainless animals. They knew what they wanted and they were working as a group, a gang, to get it.

And what they wanted was me.

I felt my stomach groan again, louder this time, longer, a massive shudder went through my bowels and then, that’s when it struck me.

What I had to do.

They got closer. Fast.

Not close enough, though. Not yet.

Hold.

Hold.

Hold.

Hold.

They were one metre from the front wall of the stronghold. And that was when I blew the whole lot of the oinking little fuckers to hell.

I turned my back on them.

Dropped my trousers.

Shifted my arse over the side of the deck.

Grabbed the cigarette lighter from my pocket. Flicked it to life. Held the flame to my anus.

And let nature take its course.

The methane that had built up in my body the last two weeks would’ve gassed a small country. My anus flapped like a bust balloon for what seemed like an hour, and the flames lit up the night sky and obscured the stars, the roar of the fire drowning out the squealing of the swine below me.

Nothing sweeter than the smell of crackling in the morning. The smell, that sweet pork smell. Smells like victory.

And that’s what it was. Victory.

When the plague was over, or rather, the worst of it was over, I told others of my tale of survival. They called me a hero.

And when the world was stable enough that some forms of manufacturing could resume, some forms of commerce, the people at Heinz, they called me, they said they were repackaging their most popular product, renaming it.

Victory Beans.

In ham sauce.

They put my picture on the label.

Goddamn, if that didn’t make me swell up with pride.

I wished the old folks could’ve been around to see it, but, fortunately, they had passed several years before the plague hit.

One thing for sure, they didn’t raise no nancy boy, no sir.

They raised a man.

Damn right they did.

Illustration courtesy of c N m © 2009 c N m. All rights reserved. Reproduced with kind permission. Ta very much.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE DISAPPEARED CAT

2009-05-08T07:37:00.002+10:00

The next door neighbour’s cat has disappeared.

Its fate concerns me.

You see, over the last 18 months or so, the next door neighbour’s cat and I have become … friends.

This, despite the fact that I’m not overly fond of cats, having always regarded them as rather dumb and stupid. Dumber than a box of rocks, in fact.

Yet, over time and beginning from kittenhood, this creature has wormed its way into my affections, paying regular visits (morning and night) to demand my attention, to eat bugs from the balcony, and to play with my shoes, the latter being an activity that appeared to amuse it no end.

I have never fed the animal. It has an owner whose responsibility that is, and the cat always appeared healthy and untroubled. To feed it again would be an act of cruelty and negligence on my part. I did, however, leave a bowl of water on the balcony for it should it happen to be over my way and fancy a drink after a bug-eating banquet.

Wouldn’t you?

Anyway.

Over the recent Easter long weekend, the next door neighbour and her son went away for the break. I expect they made arrangements with some friend or whatever to have the animal fed and watered during their absence. I would hope so.

Wouldn’t you?

But the cat, confined to a limited area in which to roam (the neighbours flat and balcony and my own), has become a socialised animal and it knows only the company of other humans.

Therefore, its own humans being absent for an extended period of time, it sought my company throughout that weekend and spent most of the four days sleeping on the various chairs on the balcony or, when it was raining, coming inside to sleep behind the couch.

Very obviously, this is a people cat. And, being a people myself, and a people who has no objection to its presence and wishes it no ill will, it seemed happy in my world during that time. And I was happy for its company.

It’s a nice cat.

And then, when the owners returned from wherever it was they had been, the adult owner went out to her balcony and called for it.

But it was at my place.

Inside. Asleep behind the couch. And it didn’t so much as lift its head in recognition at its owners voice.

And so, I picked it up and put it out on the balcony so that it could go home.

It didn’t seem particularly keen at first, but eventually, off it went.

And I’ve not seen hide nor hair of it since.

Which is strange, don’t you think?

What has happened?

I would inquire of my neighbour as to the animals wellbeing, but I’d rather not. You see, she has one of those voices, those voices that seem always to be teetering on the edge of hysteria, do you know? As if, were you to inquire perhaps, “How are you?”, you would receive a catalogue of petty concerns and worries and problems that she feels she is besieged by in response. And, having thusly exchanged words, she would consider you a “friend”, or at least an “acquaintance” from thereon. And you would be bugged endlessly by this, that or the other thing from thereon. Good grief, no.

I live in a block of flats, for God’s sake. I do not want to get to know the fucking neighbours. To do so is to invite oneself into a world full of pain.

If you are my neighbour, mind your own damn business and I’ll mind mine. “Fuck off” in other words, got it? I don’t want to be your fucking friend.

Nevertheless.

Would I be far off the mark to assume that the owner, disturbed by the fact that her cat has been in my company during her extended absence, is jealous of this? And has confined her animal to quarters, has somehow managed to restrict its movements outside so that it can no longer roam of its own free will? This strikes me as cruel.

Or, perhaps, has she surrendered the animal to some pound, some refuge and that she did so due to some perceived infidelity on the animals part?

That would be extreme, don’t you think?

And disturbing.

Very disturbing.

It disturbs me.

Would it disturb you?

Yes. Yes, it would. Of course it would. Unless you are mad.

For it would seem I have lost a friend. And to what and why it has been lost, I do not know. I don’t have that many friends left to lose (refer attitude to neighbours).

This saddens me.

I even looked on a number of animal pound and refuge websites this morning to see if a picture of the animal in question may have been there.

No.

Nothing.

Where is it?

I am worried and I keep asking myself this question. Again and again.

Wouldn’t you?

And I don’t even know the animals name.

I used to call it “Cat”, as in, “Hello, cat. How’s things?”

He’s a cat, for Christ’s sake, why would he need a name?

But where has cat gone?

Cat?

Cat?

Hello?

Cat?

Come back, cat.

Hello?
…

…

…

…

…

…

Ah, crap.

I’m definitely going soft in the head.

Definitely.

Goddammit.

Goddammit all to hell.

GOD TAKES A HOLIDAY

2009-05-08T07:32:00.002+10:00

Now that I’ve been a God for a bit now, I thought I’d take a break and go down to Sydney for a visit.

But then I realised that being a God means you’re everywhere all at once and all at the same time, so I must’ve already been there when I arrived.

I could have saved myself the fucking air fare.

I’m so dense at times.

Anyway.

…

…

…

Food tastes the same when you’re a God. You’d think it’d be spiffed up a bit, wouldn’t you?

…

…

…

I had a burger with cheese for lunch yesterday. And a Coke.

…

…

…

We have a vending machine upstairs. You can get Coke for a buck forty a can. At the shop it’s two bucks.

…

…

…

That’s sixty cents.

Difference.

…

…

…

If you had, let’s see, if you had a can of Coke every day of the year for lunch, and you bought it upstairs instead of the shop, that’d be, it’d be … about two hundred bucks a year.

Difference.

Saved.

…

…

…

I did that without a calculator.

…

…

…

We’re good at stuff like that. Gods.

…

…

…

I might have a pizza today.

…

…

…

Or a pie. And a sausage roll.

There’s a good pie shop the other side of the station.

…

…

…

It’s okay, I mean. It’s not fantastic. What I mean by “good”. You know?

…

…

…

I must be in a mood.

Do you think?

…

…

…

It’s not easy being a God. Lots of stuff to do. To think about.

…

…

…

Lots.

…

…

…

There’s a curry house up the road.

…

…

…

I like curry.

…

…

…

THE TONGUE COMMANDMENTS

2009-04-22T17:07:00.006+10:00

This morning I woke up and declared myself a God. Why not? It beats a cup of coffee.

Anyway, now that I’m a God, you have to follow all these rules …

1. Thou shalt not Twitter. Twittering art for tools. Twitter not.

2. Don’t forget to breathe.

3. Thou shalt not read Shakespeare, rather, thou shalt speak it, for that was the purpose for which it was wrote.

4. Do something else.

5. In matters of art, do not condemn thyself as a fool by claiming that thou “couldst have done that”. If thou couldst have done it, thou wouldst of done it. Thou did not. They did.

6. Thou shalt devote at least one day of rest in a year to the watching of Marx Brothers movies. Give sport a rest.

7. Melancholia is not an illness. Take brief occasions of time to be so afflicted and reflect upon regrets on the things that may have been but were not, or the things that were that went wobbly. It will pass.

8. Place thy words upon, and speak with and through thy breath and not through thy throat for thy breath is open and thy throat is closed.

9. Forsake all ideologies and indulge not in belief. Be lief what thou art and only what thou art and be no other.

10. Enough with the shoes or shirts already. Buy thyself a very nice hat and wear it often. Thou shalt feel splendid and rather spiffy.

These rules work better than all the other rules do, so obey these ones and not those other ones. Those other ones are shit.

I’m a God, so I should know.

You need to go and find me some girls now and send them to me so that I may bless them. I’d like to bless them somewhere private, so go and build me a big shed or a barn or whatever. With big heavy doors.

Yes. A dungeon would be nice. I’ll pick out some shackles.

A nook? I can’t bless girls in a nook. I’m a God. God’s don’t lurk about in fucking nooks … Oh, alright. If it’s only temporary. Leave some towels out. And a bowl?

Why are you eating fish? You should eat fish tomorrow.

…

…

…

That’s a nice lamp.

I’ll have that.

BY THE WAY, HAVE YOU HEARD? ...

2009-04-22T16:56:00.007+10:00

A song in 10 verses from today’s hymnbook …

1. (i) NATIONWIDE RECESSION.

1. (ii) GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS.

1. (iii) GLOBAL ECONOMIC DOWNTURN.

1. (iv) MASS UNEMPLOYMENT.

1. (v) MARKETS CRASH.

1. (vi) BILLIONS LOST.

1. (vii) TOTAL FINANCIAL COLLAPSE.

1. (viii) AND THE DEAD WILL RISE … and rip the flesh from our wombs and feed upon the organs of the unborn and the skies shall become black with demons whose wings shall rain poison upon the earth and scour it of skin. Women will tear the heads from their children and use the flayed and ragged face skins for boot-cloth, and the men shall use the excoriated skulls to adorn their weapons and boulders shall fall from the sky.

1. (ix) AND NOSFERATU’S MINIONS, … riding upon a litter of fire-licked hellhounds, will spread through the barren desanctified lands to do the bidding of the black agents of darkest night, to gather the living and render them dead, so that soul after soul after tortured soul can be tumbled unto the flaming red maw of Hades, whilst their mortal bodies are drained of each final drop of thickening blood which shall then plenish the thirsts of the damned.

1. (x) AND A FURIOUS DARKNESS SHALL BOIL … the very skies to dust which shall then cover the earth and blind a defeated God’s eye to all that once reigned upon it, and man and all his works shall be rendered unto oblivion and the ignorance of history, whereupon the planets shall align themselves to the triumphant orbit of an annihilating Anti-Christ and hurl themselves towards this desecrated rock so that it may be blasted beyond the dimensions of all known and unknown time.

After which, things get really bad.

VAMPIRE'S KISS

2009-04-18T10:26:00.004+10:00

Ah, bless the bluster of the blockbuster* and all those who act in them. Right down to their no doubt outrageously expensive little designer cotton socks.

Now …

Nicolas Cage has been doing bugger all of late but turn up in these horridly bloated crapfests and undoubtedly takes home an absolute shitload of cash for doing so. Good for him, I guess. I don't have to watch them and I don't. Unless they’re on free-to-air and I’ve got a six-pack in the refrigerator for company on a Saturday night.

And yet, and yet. It is the actor's prerogative to choose those roles he or she may wish to play, and choose them they do. And, if the actor in question decides to plump for a piece of shit for a shitload of cash over a "little" picture that will play nowhere and do nothing but earn a few worthy plaudits from some obsessive film-stock sniffers, who are we to say they should not?

As I have noted elsewhere (here and here), both Robert De Niro and Steve Martin now spend an enormous amount of their time and energies appearing in rubbish. And by doing so, I do not believe they are tarnishing the legacy of the good works they once saw fit to grace us with. For the dross will take care of itself and will soon be forgotten while the gems shall live on to inspire and astonish generations to come. Robert Duvall, for example, will be forever remembered for his sterling work in “Apocalypse Now”, “Tender Mercies”, “The Apostle”, “Lonesome Dove” and many, many others, and not for the likes of “Let’s Get Harry” or “Deep Impact”. Bet on it.

And Nicolas Cage will always have “Leaving Las Vegas”, “Birdy”, “Raising Arizona” and “Vampire’s Kiss”. For these and these alone (and a few others, “Matchstick Men” perhaps), should he be regarded and held in some large measure of respect and gratitude.

“Vampire’s Kiss” is not a horror film. There are no vampires in it. It is a “black” comedy, but not “black” in the sometimes nihilistic fashion of, say, a Todd Solondz film (I absolutely adore Solondz’s “Happiness” and highly commend it to your attention if you’ve not yet seen it). But it is certainly “black”. In a bleakly comic and ultimately quite disturbing way.

Cage plays a complete arsehole business executive whose grasp on reality is going seriously pear-shaped. Having met a woman at a discotheque (Jennifer Beals … drool), he takes her home, whereupon she bites him (perhaps), and he begins to believe that he is turning into a vampire.

One of the funniest scenes in the film, and one that reduces me to helpless fits of giggles just thinking about it, is when Cage’s character, in the full throes of his delusion, dons a black cape, shoves some novelty store vampire teeth in his mouth and goes chasing pigeons in the park for a quick snack. Yet, despite moments such as these, if the film could claim to be the antecedent of similar explorations of corporate psychopathy and its degenerative effects on our souls, Mary Harron’s astonishing adaptation of “American Psycho” would be its closest cousin.

And this sadly under-rated, neglected jewel of a film contains a performance by Cage that is so BIG, so HUGELY BIG that it essentially takes every rule from the various bibles of performance art, that is, the received wisdom that “less is more” in film acting, and turns it thoroughly arse over tit. It’s a major “fuck-you” to the dreary twaddle peddled to the eager and impressionable by so many drama teachers still stuck in their Actors Studio ruts of psycho-dramatic self-indulgence … “Mumble, mumble, mumble, scratch face, mumble, mumble, cry, scratch face, scream a bit, scratch face, mumble, mumble”.

“Over the top” can’t even begin to describe the type of thing Cage does here. For example, the scene with Cage and his therapist. B.I.G. HUMONGOUS. HUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGE, understand?

I recall, upon seeing the film on its initial release in the late 1980’s, a great deal of publicity attached to the truth that, in one scene, Cage ate a real live cockroach. I understand it required a number of takes, that scene.

Well, it would, wouldn’t it?

And why am I talking about this movie now? Because I hadn’t seen it in over 20 years, and it turned up in J&B the other day for 10 bucks.

So, go spend some pennies. Understand?

* Try saying that three times fast when you’re off your knob.

PONDSCUM

2009-04-18T10:15:00.005+10:00

Malcolm Turnbull. Sharman Stone. Kevin Andrews. Colin Barnett. Alexander Downer.

You are filth.

I pray you die. All of you. For yours is not the type of blood that should run in the veins of any other human being upon this earth.

And that, in what you may think are your final moments on this earth, you are confronted with visions of such torment, such pain, such interminable hell, that your internal organs burst from your pudgy, puffy little bodies in fear, that blood runs from your ears and your eyeballs, from every orifice and pore, and that the screams you make, the howls of anguish that escape from the scabby, wounded slits that are your reeking word-holes, rattle the very stars in their firmaments, shake planets from their orbits and extinguish the flames of suns, that the torture you feel in these moments will seem like an eternity, will be an eternity, will draaaaaaaag itself out to the bitterest end, an end that will never come, and, in flailing desperation, you reach for the nearest, the sharpest, the heaviest, the most damaging instrument you can lay your hands upon and plunge it deep, deep, deep into your eye sockets to puncture the withered, sucked-out spastic organs, those buckets of rancid sponge that are your gonorrheaic riddled brains and, as it goes further, harder, deeper, ever deeper, your pustule ridden flesh is rattled and wracked with involuntary bone-snapping spasms and you befoul yourselves, your moans and cries reaching such a fever pitch of wailing horror at the fate that has befallen you, that the sands on beaches and the sands of the deserts all turn to glass and shatter into a billion-billion shards, and that green rancid shit, bile, and clotted acid-pus dribbles and runs across and over your prone, shuddering, shattered bodies, burning gaping, festering black holes down to the marrow of your shattered, broken bones and that it goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on ...

AND THAT IT NEVER. EVER. EVER. ENDS.

You are filth.

God, that felt good.

And now that I've got that off my chest, I shall resume my normal, happy, well-adjusted widdle self ...

La de da …

Oh, look, butteryfly!

Is Puuuuuurty …

THE MEANING OF IT ALL or THE PIG. THE POKE. AND SO …

2009-04-17T07:16:00.003+10:00

So.

So I'm poking about this bookshop at lunch, do you see?

Just poking about. Nothing specific, do you understand?

This bookshop.

Something to do. There is always something to do. And so …

I pick up some books. To look at. To see. Are they worth the investment. Of time. Of money. Do you see?

So.

I look at this book by Alain de Botton, “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work”. It is $45.00. This is money in the bank. From my wallet to their bank.

For a book about the “pleasures and sorrows of work”. I could buy this book. Yes. I could buy it because it is $45.00 less 20%. For they, the sellers, are having a sale. 20% off.

That is good. Do you think? Yes.

No.

Another time. Perhaps. The “sorrows of work”. I am acquainted with these. The “pleasures”? No. The pain? Yes.

I need a dump.

Fuck.

So.

I pick up another book. It is called “Handling The Undead”. The author is John Ajvide Lindqvist. I have read his work. I have read his other book, “Let The Right One In”. It was fine. Very fine. It was a good book.

Good.

Do you understand?

And this other book. It is $32.95. Less 20%. Therefore, $26.36. I could buy this. This thing.

And, upon reading it, I would place it upon a shelf. Next to the other book. And, after a period of time, a brief passage of time, I would dust it.

For that is what one does with things.

We gather them. In the grand and oft onerous traditions, the customs of old, passed down to us (why down? Can things not be passed up?) from our fathers and to them from their teachers, their fathers (perhaps mothers, if, perchance, the fathers are conspicuous in absence, and thus by their absence do they bring shame upon their forebears and all those who follow in their wake) those in whom wisdom resides (or so we can but hope, the vanity of hope in which we persistently, foolishly, if not impotently indulge ourselves), who have been taught well in the ways of this world, the expectation of consistency in the maintenance of stuff, things have always been gathered. Ordered. And so, arranged.

And thusly, having been so gathered, must they be dusted.

Swish.

Do you see?

Swish.

And so. Here we have what demands be called a “progression”. A “progression”, from one state, one state of being, of order, to the next. Hence …

To sneeze.

And to sneeze again.

Do you see?

We are all naught but trains.

Choo.

DISCOMBLOGUMALATED

2009-04-15T08:59:00.002+10:00

It's not that I couldn't be arsed, it's just ...

Not having a computer at home, I write and blog during lunch or whenever I get the chance for a break. However, a whole bunch of things now appear to have been blocked for access and Blogspots are one of them, so I can't log in to Blogger from work or make comments on Google Blogspots anymore.

Which is fine, I guess. I don't mind. What am I going to do, complain? "Hey, let me log in to Blogger from work during lunchtime or whenever so I don't have to waste an hour reading the type of trivial drivel that passes for news these days".

I don't think so. I just couldn't be arsed.

Perhaps it's about time I did get a computer at home. Thing is, I can't see the point of paying close to a thousand bucks for a lump of machinery that becomes obsolete within a year of purchase. And then there's all the ancillary costs, such as broadband connections and software and shit.

I did have a computer at home when I first moved up to Brisbane, but it went belly up about 2 years ago. It was old. And I didn't really care when it went belly up. There was nothing on it of tangible worth. That's the thing with computers. We just fill them up with shit and think all the shit we've filled them up with means something.

It doesn't. It's just shit. Lots and lots of shit.

And I spend my entire working day staring at a fucking computer and I'm not sure I want the temptation of spending entire weeknights and weekends staring at a fucking computer when I could be reading a fucking book or watching a fucking movie instead. Or playing with the next door neighbours fucking cat. He can be quite the entertaining little feller, the next door neighbours fucking cat. He likes to eat bugs.

So.

I moved over here.

See? I can't decide on a template there, either. They have a limited number and they're all fairly static. Can't change colours and fonts and stuff.

And I sorta, kinda couldn't be arsed there. Not right now, anyway. Because I sorta, kinda grew comfy with the way things looked and felt here. You see? It's red and swollen here and if you stare at it long enough, it throbs. I like that.

So I'm blogging from the local internet cafe. Next to the train station.

Shit, eh?

I guess if I had a girlfriend, I'd be out doing useful things. Those useful things that couples do.

But I don't want a girlfriend. I'm old and tired and cranky and I have commitment issues.

George Clooney has commitment issues.

If I was George Clooney, I'd be fine with that. Who the fuck wouldn't want to be George Clooney? With commitment issues? So you're George Clooney and you have commitment issues? Such a life you have. I should have such a life, he writes with the slight, but distinct inflection of a Bronx mensch.

Did you know there’s a company in Michigan called “Mensch Manufacturing”. They make manure vacuums.

Shit, eh?

I understand women have problems with men who have problems with issues of commitment which must be a problem if you’re a woman looking for commitment. I guess if you’re a woman and you want kids with a man who has commitment issues, you’d have cause to have a bad case of the shplikes. Unless you’re a yutzi meeskite, in which case your lot in life is bupkis.

But I’m not a woman. So I don’t care. You think you have problems? Your problems I should have.

A klog is mir, you should try living with a shmeckle.

Feh.

VIRTUAL PANADOL FRIDAY

2009-03-20T12:24:00.004+10:00

Most of the obituaries for Natasha Richardson* have focused on her stage performance as Sally Bowles in "Cabaret" and her most recent appearances in blandly forgettable blerk like "The Parent Trap" and "Maid in Manhattan".

However, Richardson, in 1990, appeared in one of my favourite films from a favourite writer and director, "The Comfort of Strangers" from Paul Schrader, a very faithful, often word-for-word adaptation by Harold Pinter of Ian McEwan's short novel.

Someone I worked with back then who had always struck me as a bit precious had seen the film and announced that "it made him want to have a shower afterwards to take the grime off".

Which was all the encouragement I needed to rush out and see it and, lordy lordy me, I took me a right shine to that there fillum, yessiree.

I even went out and bought the book. And the soundtrack. And I haven't showered since.

Schrader's not exactly prolific, the last film I saw being his 2007 straight-to-dvd "The Walker", about which I remember absolutely nothing beyond being thoroughly confused as to what the fuck it was about. Woody Harrelson was in it. I do hope he had a nice time, and was paid properly and the catering was acceptable.

That was Schrader's first film since he was tossed off "The Exorcist: The Beginning" in 2004 and then tossed back when that film tanked and finally allowed to present his version of the story, "Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist".

I've seen neither, and have no desire to.

But I loved Schrader's film about Bob Crane, "Auto-Focus" and he also did a fine job with a little seen adaptation of a very uncharacteristic Elmore Leonard novel, "Touch" in the late '90's. Then there's his fine and justly praised work as screenwriter for Scorsese during the 70's and 80's.

However, "The Comfort of Strangers" is still my favourite film from Schrader and nothing he's done since has approached it's lushly indulgent wallow in the multitude of perversities that bedevil us odd mortals. Angelo Badalamenti wrote the excellent score ...

*A more comprehensive obituary of Richardson is here.

From 1990, Angelo Badalamenti "Theme from The Comfort of Strangers"

F*CK OFF, FIELDING

2009-03-19T12:07:00.005+10:00

I like the idea of a Senate where the balance of power is held by a mix of smaller parties and independents. I've liked the idea ever since the late Don Chipp formed the Democrats with the concept of "keeping the bastards honest" being high priority on their initial agenda. And so I’ve split my vote in the Senate on a regular basis, at least since the mid 1980’s, with only a couple of exceptions.

It used to be I’d split it to the Democrats but, since Meg Lees did the deal with John Howard over GST, I began to split it to the Greens. Fuck you, Meg.

And, for the most part, aside from a few crackpots and embarrassments over the years, having a Senate where no one major party holds an absolute majority seems to work okay most of the time. Regardless of the central ideologies and platforms of those who hold the deciding votes, most have managed to be adult enough in their dealings and negotiations to realise that their job is to review and revise, and advise and assist in the implementation of government legislation, the government having a popularly elected majority in the House of Representatives to implement legislation as was either flagged in an election campaign or as it is generally known as a matter of policy. Certainly, many of these minor party and independent senators will “earmark” certain pieces of legislation in such a way that furthers their own policy agendas to their favour, and we’d be fools to think they would not – if they didn't, they’d pretty much fully negate their reasons for being there in the first place.

But Steve Fielding really is a fool. He’s Forrest Gump gone full retard. A village full of idiots in one goofy little package.

If life’s a box of chocolates, he’s the Ram’s Bladder Cup with Lark’s Vomit.

This simpleton appears to be under the impression that he has been charged with some sort of sacred duty as Protector-General of the People and that, in this position, he and he alone will decide which legislation shall pass in the upper house and what form that legislation will take. This, despite the fact he represents 2/5ths of fuck-all of the population and has done little more than engage in witless stunts and babble incoherently on occasions in the manner of a Pentecostal preacher with Alzheimer’s on speed.

Bob Brown’s assessment of Fielding as “silly and immature” is just a trifle timid, I think …

… Out of his depth, naïve, ignorant, willful, childish, unintelligent, dimwitted, selfish, self-absorbed and awe-inspiringly, jaw-droppingly stupid, dense and thicker than a two-by-four decking plank are a few more suitable terms that come to mind. Among many others …

Regardless of what one may think of the Federal Government’s obsession over alcohol and the endless reams of studies, reports and findings on its allegedly horrid effects or the lurid headlines about drunk teenagers fucking and fwowing up, the tax hike on ready-mixed booze wasn’t exactly unpopular with some and seemed to be having the desired effect, according to some others.

Was it just a tax grab as Fielding claimed?

When is a new or increased tax not? Let’s not kid ourselves.

Do I care?

No, I don’t.

I don’t consume these drinks but I’m also not inclined to buy the breathless hysterics and increasingly dire warnings about this allegedly overwhelming crisis of teenage binge-drinking that’s supposedly sweeping the nation. As David Marr noted in his book about the Henson case, it’s the media’s business to maintain a constant sense of crisis about something, whatever that thing may be. If it has to do with “thinking about the children”, you’re assured a winning ticket that’ll run for months if you play your cards right. And it’s a governments business to maintain an illusion of crisis management by being seen to do something about it.

The current “crisis” fad just happens to be alcohol. It’ll be coffee and tea next. Or we’ll go back to pot and fat people again. Everything has its cycle and all these are proven hardy perennials, a hunnert-percent guaranteed to generate a comfy snuggle of horror-story headlines whenever we run out of “foreign threat” things to ‘lert and ‘larm ourselves about.

But what outs Fielding as an infantile loon of the first order in this business is his inability to grasp the concepts of “negotiation” and “bargaining”, to understand that in affairs of government, “all-or-nothing” holdouts of the type Fielding is indulging in are not the mark of men or women holding steadfast to a cause, but rather the mark of idiot children who, when asked why they won’t eat their vegetables, simply reply, “Don’ wanna!”, then pout like cane toads and kick their legs under the table.

Poor Steve wants to be consulted with and listened to. He wants to be seen as an important fellow, a man to know, and he wants to be taken seriously and he wants to be thought of and paid attention to. In a nice way, that is. He wants to be invited to a few Christmas parties and Easter egg hunts and get birthday cards from his classmates and have a jolly old time with everyone all together on excursions to the zoo.

It’s just that Steve hasn’t quite cottoned on yet that his classmates think he’s weird ‘cause he tucks his singlet into his underpants and keeps his snot in jars and he still has stuff stuck to his teeth from last Thursday’s play-lunch. And he smells like curdled milk and cat poo and makes weird noises in the toilet blocks on sports days.

As Bob Brown remarked on ABC, “He has to be much more communicative. You can't get a good outcome without the flow of information open. And, yes, it's very testing.”

Fielding can’t just issue ultimatums and expect the rest of the cast and crew to throw down their guns and toddle off to the county jail with nothing more than a shrug and a chorus of “aw-shucks”.

For the Senate is not about Steve Fielding. Government and governance is not about Steve Fielding. The country is not about Steve Fielding and what he may want.

Many people seem to be making that fact perfectly clear to him right now.

He should either grow up and learn to accept this and live in the world or simply shut up and fuck off and stop giving everyone else the shits.

THE REMAKING OF PELHAM ONCE-TWICE-THRICE

2009-03-17T12:11:00.008+10:00

Curse you, Richard Widmark! Curse you to hell!

The giggling psychopath, the smirking sniper, the chuckling chopper of children, all these and more have been trademarks of the various villainous characters of screen ever since a hugely amused Richard Widmark shoved a woman in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs in Henry Hathaway’s “Kiss of Death” way back in 1947.

“I am bad. I tee-hee at your torments. Let us banter to and fro’ a while as I red my herrings and lace my deadly threats with urbane witticisms and clever punning, the pith of which is sure to convince you I am no mere common criminal, but, rather, a mastermind, an evil genius to be seriously reckoned with in a seriously sweaty and urgent fashion. Bwah-ha. Ha-ha. Ho-ho.”

For God’s sake, give it up now. We’ve seen it. It's been done. Okay?

The latest actor to make this rather hackneyed and silly choice (judging by the trailer, below) would appear to be John Travolta, taking the Robert Shaw role in Tony Scott’s theatrical remake of Joseph Sargent’s 1974 “The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3” (there was a television remake in 1998, about which, the less said the better).

Either Travolta’s made one of the laziest choices an actor could ever make with such a character, or else he’s been directed up that weedy little dirt-trail of cackling cliché by Scott, which would come as no great surprise given Tony Scott has been making fucking awful films most of his life, the barf-worthy “Top Gun”, “Days of Thunder” and “Beverly Hills Cop II” three items among the many in his oeuvre that I can offer up as evidence to his spectacularly crappy (but, to be fair, successful) career in film to date.

And if there’s one surefire thing you can always count on in a Tony Scott movie, it’s GONNA BE VERY FUCKING LOUD, OKAY?!.

WITH LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS OF JUMP-CUTS AND EDITS, OKAY!? BUT MOSTLY, IT’S VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY FUCKING LOUD!!!

In the trailer below (which is VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY FUCKING LOUD, OKAY?!!!), you will notice Denzel Washington’s character, the good-guy, has been given a partner who asks him to bring home some milk at a somewhat inopportune moment of frantic activity, and, like a loving husband is wont to do, he agrees, but he’ll only bring home this much, not that much. And then, off he skedaddles to do some good.

Awwwwww.

What a good guy ...

From 2009, “The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3”, Directed by Tony Scott

... Well, of course he’s a Good Guy, he’s DENZEL FUCKING WASHINGTON AND HE’S PLAYING A FUCKING NEW YORK TRANSIT OFFICER TRYING TO STOP A BUNCH OF WHACKO’S FROM PLUGGING A BUNCH OF PEOPLE ON A FUCKING TRAIN!!!!!

I know it’s grossly unfair to critique a film based on nothing but a trailer, but for Christ’s sake. Enough with the padding. It’s just silly.

So what else may we expect to be thrown at us from the scummy slush bucket of colour-by-numbers Hollywood ooze-making that seems to be on display here? Some flashbacks perhaps? Something to help us understand the Travolta character’s icky badness and its genesis?

He accidentally sat on a kitten and killed it when he was 4 years old.

It was all downhill from there.

What’s the point of this movie? Why bother? It’s not as if great leaps and bounds in technology and effects work demanded an update of what is, essentially, a pretty basic and very efficient and economical heist film. The only thing you could conceivably do with it is make it longer by filling it with shit as per that stupid milk dialogue. And make it louder. MUCH, MUCH, MUCH FUCKING LOUDER, OKAY!?

No one could ever claim that Joseph Sargent, the director of the original 1974 version, was, or is now, a visionary or exceptionally original talent. He directed “Jaws: The Revenge” in 1987 and won a Razzie for worst director (the film was nominated for 7 altogether), and he’s done little else but television movies since. In the early 1960’s, Sargent cut his teeth on television shows like "Gunsmoke", "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." and, of all things, "Lassie". And an episode of “Star Trek”.

Yet perhaps it was this background in the economies of scale, the tight schedules and turnarounds of sixties television production that helped drive Sargent to direct what is arguably his best work. There’s not an ounce of fat on it. From start to finish, it bullets along, tight, taut, perfectly acted, a first class exercise in pulp at its prime. It has a 100% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes. How about that?

Remaking this movie is completely pointless. There’s nothing that can be added to it that would improve upon the original, nothing at all. You can bring a different technique, but big fucking deal. You can add gadgets. You can bring big name star actors. And you can make it VERY, VERY, VERY FUCKING LOUD, OKAY!?

But there’s nothing you can do to the story to make it better, unless you introduce a bunch of new twists and turns, throw in some additional characters and change the ending in some way, in which case, you’re making a whole different movie.

What’s next, a makeover of “Dirty Harry”? With Vin Diesel?

Sshhhhhhhhhhhh. Don’t let that get out.

Oh.

Fuck.

I’d almost bet money that, when this rehash of “Pelham” is released locally, David Stratton will begin his review something like this ... “This pointless and unnecessary remake …”

Go on, David. Make my day.

Make me a clairvoyant. I could do with some extra cash.

From 1974, “The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3” Directed by Joseph Sargent.

DANGER! WHITEGOODS!

2009-03-16T12:56:00.001+10:00

Noted in today’s New York Times ...

“The Last House on the Left” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Characters are raped, stabbed, shot, mangled and fed to labor-saving devices.

Sweet.

NORMAL SERVICES SHALL RESUME SHORTLY ...

2009-03-16T09:44:00.003+10:00

AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

GGGGGGGGGGGGAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!

PTOOPFHHTPTOOEY!!!

BLERK ...

Sorry about that.

I WISH I'D WRITTEN THAT ... PT.2*

2009-03-11T15:58:00.002+10:00

Never a truer word has been written …

From "The Onion"'s article of August 6, 2008 "Local Idiot To Post Comment On Internet" ...

HAZEL PARK, MI—In a statement made to reporters earlier this afternoon, local idiot Brandon Mylenek, 26, announced that at approximately 2:30 a.m. tonight, he plans to post an idiotic comment beneath a video on an Internet website ...

... Mylenek, who rarely in his life has been capable of formulating an idea or opinion worth the amount of oxygen required to express it, went on to guarantee that the text of his comment would be misspelled to the point of incomprehension, that it would defy the laws of both logic and grammar, and that it would allege that several elements of the video are homosexual in nature ...

... "We are blessed to be living in an age when we have a global communications network in which idiots, assholes, and total and complete wastes of fucking human life alike can come together to give instant feedback in an unfettered and unmonitored online environment," Mylenek said. "What better way to take advantage of this incredible technology than to log onto the Internet and insult a complete stranger?" ...

According to media critic Judy Turner, this type of behavior is not uncommon among idiots.

"Brandon's comments in particular contain a degree of unoriginality and stupidity that you only see in the most muttonheaded and imbecilic Internet commenters," Turner said. "In fact, I've seen him use at least a dozen variations of the word 'gay.' Suffice it to say, Brandon Mylenek is a truly stupid, stupid idiot."

Mylenek concluded his press conference with a solemn vow to uphold the awful, unintelligible, anger-inducing quality of his past Internet comments.

"I promise everyone that this post will be exactly what you have come to expect from an idiot like myself," he said, "and that I will check my comment regularly so that I can call everyone who says it's stupid a fag.

Sums up the so-called "blogosphere" quite nicely, don't it?

Interactive technology. Feedback. Your say. Your comment.

…

…

…

…

…

…

IT ALL SUKS G!R!E!E!N!I!E FAGGETS WHAYLE DIK!!!!!!!!.

LOLS!!!!!!!!!!!#!#!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)D

*Part 1 is here, if you could be arsed. I couldn’t. That’s why this is such a lazy bloody excuse for a blog post. Anyway, I’m very busy …

… Well, it’s my fuckin’ blog! Oh yeah? Fuck off. Go on!? Fuck off! You can’t answer me, can you? You’re a fucking liar! Come here and say that! Oh, yeah? YEAH?!!!

Cross this line. Come on, cross it …

_____________

You won’t, will ya?

Gutless cunt.

Huh? Who? Your mother?

Lol.

OUT OF OFFICE, OUT OF MIND

2009-03-10T12:40:00.004+10:00

"Office 2" from Catch The Fire Ministries writes ...

I know President Obama is not Muslim, but I am tempted nevertheless to think that he is, as are most Muslims I know.

Most of the Muslims you know are Muslim?

Well, bugger me. What a shock.

The things you learn from the interwebs.

IT’S ONLY A MOVIE, GERARD DEAR …

2009-03-06T12:25:00.008+10:00

Writes Gerard Henderson in the Sydney Morning Herald of February 3rd, 2009 …

Anthony Beevor is one of the leading historians in the English-speaking world ... Writing in the London Sunday Times on January 18, he complained that "over the past dozen or so years television and movie-makers have managed to blur the border between fact and fiction to an unprecedented degree" while pretending "increasingly that their film is based on a true story" ...

... Beevor argues that "it should be the duty of not just every scientist and historian, but also of every writer, publisher, movie-maker, TV producer and ordinary citizen to fight all attempts to exploit the ignorance and gullibility of audiences".

Well, it should be. But, clearly, it is not.

Bullshit.

Firstly, let's dispense with Beevor's arrogant and elitist assumption that cinema audiences are ignorant and gullible, that is, dumber than a box of hammers (unless of course you happen to think David Spade is the 21st century equivalent of Groucho Marx, in which case, you are dumber than a box of hammers).

"Based on" on a thing does not mean it is the thing.

I know that, have always known that, and do not believe I am unique in that respect.

People go to the cinema to be entertained, not educated. For an education on a topic, that's what books are for. And universities and schools. We go to cinema to sit in the dark with strangers and involve ourselves in the lives of characters, both fictional or drawn from and based on history, and the events and experiences those characters find themselves a part of. This is called “storytelling”.

As David Mamet writes in his book of essays about the movie business “Bambi vs. Godzilla” …

“The film’s precursor is the story around the campfire. In that story we hear and we imagine; in the film we see and we imagine. The structural nature of film allows the imagination to reign. When the film turns narrative rather than dramatic, when it stands in for the viewer’s imagination, the viewer’s interest is lost. The dramatic structure relies exclusively upon the progression of incident … The rule, then, in filmmaking, as in storytelling, as in writing, is “leave out the adjectives”.”

If films based on historical incident were made according to Henderson’s preference, they would come in two parts: Part 1 would last 600 days, and Part 2 would be a 600 day forum of debate about the accuracy, or inclusiveness, of Part 1, a back-and-forth wankfest comprising tediously elitist trainspotters such as Henderson and Beevors. And possibly Robert Manne.

And no one would bother to go for fear of dying of boredom.

A filmmaker has one primary responsibility to his or her audience, and that responsibility is to evoke the desire to know, to demand to know, as Mamet has written many times, “What happens next?”.

If a filmmaker is basing his or her work on historical incident and historical characters, he or she must leave out the adjectives if it is to succeed.

The filmmaker must distill and compress all that is known about the events and people portrayed in order to present us with the essence of the thing. I could not give a flying fuck at the moon if, as Henderson writes, Richard Nixon in “Frost/Nixon” “is presented as a binge drinker who consumed so much liquor during an evening that he had memory lapses about phone conversations the following day” and that the scene is a fiction.

As Anthony Summers revealed in his book “The Arrogance of Power”, Nixon was a drunk and an abuser of prescription drugs. Bringing this facet of his behaviour into play in the film and the scene in question goes to establishing “character” which leads us, the gullible and the ignorant, to an understanding of the man as a “character” and becoming interested in his actions.

And if we become sufficiently interested, we may find ourselves encouraged to learn more about the man himself by reading books about him that present us with facts that are history, and not based on history.

Mamet again:

“The garbage of exposition, backstory, narrative, and characterisation spot-welds the reader into interest in what is happening now. It literally stops the show.”

I suspect that Henderson, as well as lacking a sense of humour, also lacks the imagination necessary to suspend disbelief while watching a film and simply enjoy himself.

In which case, he should stick to running his ballroom dinners where toxic bores can deliver toxic lectures to a toxic and boring cluster of middle-aged stuffed shirts and leave the rest of us well enough alone.

Frankly, I’d rather go see a movie.

They’re fun.

From 1983, Steve Martin "The Man With Two Brains" (not based on fact)

DEPP DOES DILLINGER

2009-03-05T16:54:00.006+10:00

Do you ever find yourself randomly clicking about the intertubes and all of a sudden you wind up clicking something that leads you to a trailer for a movie you knew nothing about but when you see it the hairs on the back of your neck stand up in anticipation?

Fuck "The Watchmen".

I practically busted a zipper when I learnt this is gonna hit our screens in July ...

TENDER MEMORIES OF MERCIES SHOWN

2009-03-05T12:48:00.003+10:00

If I were to nominate my favourite film of all time, it would be Bruce Beresford's "Tender Mercies" from 1983, a film I must have seen now about 30 or 40 times since its initial release.

I would not argue it as the best film ever made, as such arguments are only for the stupid to puddle about in, but, for me, watching it is akin to slipping into a warm bath after a ragged day of listening to, and reading about, the bizarre obsessions of the multitude of imbeciles we seem forever besieged by.

Robert Duvall won an Academy Award as Best Actor for his portrayal of Mac Sledge. The rest of the cast are faultless, not a false note struck, no mawkish slips into cheap sentimentality, no displays of flappy histrionics, no "acting" in other words.

Horton Foote wrote the screenplay. He, too, won an Academy Award for his work.

Mr. Foote died on March 4, 2009 ...

Mr. Foote, in a 1986 interview in The New York Times Magazine, said: “I believe very deeply in the human spirit and I have a sense of awe about it because I don’t know how people carry on. What makes the difference in people? What is it? I’ve known people that the world has thrown everything at to discourage them, to kill them, to break their spirit. And yet something about them retains a dignity. They face life and don’t ask quarters.”

His inspiration came from the people he knew and the stories he heard growing up there. “I’ve spent my life listening,” Mr. Foote once said.

And my life has been made far better by listening to him. Thank you.

NETWORK NINE ... STILL THE SCUM PT.2

2009-03-05T09:21:00.005+10:00

So I'm flicking around the glass teat last night to see what variation on the usual themes of frauds, freaks and fatties our so-called "current affairs" programs are going to bang on about when Channel Nine's "A Current Affair" begins and host Tracy Grimshaw starts a story about the Lahore attacks with ...

"World cricket's underbelly ..."

Are there no depths these shitheads will not plumb to promote or link a story to their crappy fucking television series?

No. No, there aren't.

Honestly.

Belief beggared.

WE'RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER OCEAN

2009-03-02T12:48:00.005+10:00

Oceans are big.

…

And they're full of water.

…

Fish live there.

…

Sharks are very big fish.

…

Learn to fucking live with it, okay?

UPDATE: The above was published in the Sydney Morning Herald March 3rd (minus the dots and expletive.)

CORPORATE PSYCHOPATHY

2009-02-27T12:12:00.002+10:00

In view of news such as this, and this, what an apt time it is to revisit the excellent Canadian documentary from 2003, "The Corporation" ...

From 2003, "The Corporation" Part 1 of 23

WHEN BULLSH*T PRACTICALLY GALLOPS

2009-02-26T13:01:00.005+10:00

My emphasis added to this report from the SMH courtesy of the "American Journal of Preventive Medicine" (????!!!!!!) …

A new US study has found that kids who listen to music with raunchy lyrics are more likely to engage in sexual activity than kids who don't.

The study, to be published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, did not find a causal link between crude music and teen sex, but indicated that "people who are exposed to certain messages in music are more likely to copy or emulate what they hear", said study author Dr Brian Primack in a statement ...

... The research in 2006-07 asked 711 year nine students around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, about their sexual activity and the songs they liked to listen to ...

...The researchers found that youths who listened most to "degrading" songs were more than twice as likely to have had intercourse as other kids in the study ...

“Do you have sex Otis?”

“I rooted the teacher on the football field last week, Doc. So did Buster. And Randy too. Then we went and ate some Twinkies and watched “Iron Man” again.”

Former Fairfax writer and “Daily Truth” blogger Jack Marx had this to say on a similar topic in 2007, addressing Joan Sauers claims about teenage sexuality in her book “Sex Lives of Australian Teenagers” …

Testimony-based science is vexed at the best of times, human beings so prone to bullshit - both the agenda-driven variety and the seemingly pointless - as we all know they are. The risk is amplified when the theme is sex, a topic upon which everyone can be relied to either lie through embarrassment or embellish through boast. Add to that capricious brew the fact that your interview subjects are such notorious opponents of exactitude as teenagers, their respect for scientific endeavour so often overwhelmed by a lust for pranks and the crush of peer pressure, and you've got a pile of "data" that might easily be mistaken for a pile of something else …

… Allow me to provide some preliminary conclusions of my own: the data in Sex Lives of Australian Teenagers is, for all academic purposes, frivolous junk, which no serious "specialist" should regard as having any more academic credibility than the Logies.

Yep. Reckon so.

DEVINELY STUPID, PART 2

2009-02-26T09:49:00.001+10:00

Sent to the Sydeny Morning Herald this morning, prompted by this crap from Australia’s answer to Rush Limbaugh (minus the man-boobs and hard-on pills) …

"If you don't like the rules, start your own church" writes Miranda Devine (February 26, 2009). But they did, Miranda. They're called Mormons, Scientologists, Pentecostals, Exclusive Brethren, Moonies, Christian Scientists, Methodists and Jehovah's Witnesses among many, many others. There's also the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and The Invisible Glovebox Turkey. Confusing, isn't it?

KITTY LITTER

2009-02-25T13:11:00.001+10:00

Once upon a time and not so very long ago, the Saturday edition of The Sydney Morning Herald used to take a few hours to read from cover to cover, all sections, including the supplement magazine (excepting the sports section, about which I couldn’t give a flying fuck, and the car and real estate stuff).

However, of late I've noticed it's taking about an hour, maybe a little longer if there are a few reviews of books people might actually like to read rather than reviews of 800 page lumps of over-priced academic twaddle devoted to analysing Adolf Hitler's laundry lists.

Take the edition of Saturday, February 21, 2009 ...

The "news" section, that is, the main section, comprised 14 broadsheet pages. Taking into account that Page 14 is a half-page (and a half-page of ads) about so-called "society events" and the comings and goings of various celebrity grubs and butterflies which is not "news" of any sort, and Page 13 is a half-page (and a half page of ads) comprising reviews of current concerts and theatrical shows (also not "news"), that's 12 pages of national and international reportage. Then of course, take out the rest of the space devoted to advertisements, another 2 pages.

That's 10 pages, 5 bits of paper. Everything that has happened or is happening, nationally and internationally, summed up on 5 bits of paper.

It's almost enough to make a person start reading the Courier Mail.

...

Almost.

HUGELY CONFUSED

2009-02-24T13:50:00.005+10:00

From News Ltd …

From Fairfax …

Dis litle bloger is all confussed.

HALLE-F**KING-LU-OFF

2009-02-23T12:23:00.001+10:00

Having watched the Sunday edition of the ABC's "Insiders", I left the television on whilst I busied myself with a few random household chores (as one does on a Sunday). All stations gave blanket coverage to the memorial service for those who died in the recent Victorian fires, a duly serious and sombre affair attended by the usual dignitaries, officials and politicians, all of whom wore duly serious and sombre clothes and serious and sombre expressions.

Duly serious and sombre words were spoken, the national anthem was played, and so on and so forth. So far, fair enough ...

And then they went and spoiled it all by playing something stupid like "Hallelujah".

I swear, if I never hear this fucking song again for the rest of what remains of my life, I shall give thanks to the entire pantheon of Roman and Greek gods and sacrifice a few live chickens on the balcony in gratitude.

Shoving the word "hallelujah" into the lyric of a pop song does not a sacred hymn of praise make and why this bloody tune, which has had the living shit thrashed out of it by anyone and everyone with a half-decent set of pipes over the last God-knows how many years should be considered appropriate for such an affair or anything similar to it beggars belief.

Let's have a look at a verse ...

"Well, your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah"

Relevance - FAIL.

Although, I guess we can be a mite grateful they didn't go and dust off "Candle in the Wind" instead.

Or did they?

I got the shits, turned it off and went up pub.

ELLEN (NOT THAT ONE, THE OTHER ONE)

2009-02-20T11:59:00.004+10:00

In Darren Aronofsky's excellent feature film from 2000, "Requiem For A Dream", Ellen Burstyn offered up a performance so exquisitely nuanced, so beautifully played out and so ultimately tragic that, by its conclusion, any viewer would have to be either dead or comatose not to be shaken to the very core of their being by it.

She was rightfully nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress for her efforts. Julia Roberts won for "Erin Brockovich".

Moving on ...

Last night (February 19, 2009), on the often hackneyed and incredible (in the true sense of that word) "Law & Order: SVU", a franchise of the original "Law & Order" series that should have had its plug pulled when Jerry Orbach died, Burstyn turned up as guest star playing the mother of Christopher Meloni's character Elliot Stabler.

Armed with a mostly pedestrian script, and only a few key scenes, Burstyn threw herself into the role with such extraordinary flair, energy, precision and emotional commitment that her co-stars, solid performers all, were left floundering in her wake gasping for just a little spare oxygen, any oxygen at all that could allow them to wrest even the tiniest sliver of our attentions back to their own characters and their respective dilemmas. They couldn't and didn't.

The poor buggers.

In stagework, performers often refer to "hotspots", a hotspot being that space on the stage where an actor has so effectively chewed up the scenery and stolen the show from under everyone else that the space feels so charged with residual energy from the performance that other actors go out of their way to avoid it lest it diminish their own efforts in that space by comparison.

Whether the same applies to film and television performances I do not know, but, so commanding, so riveting, so high-energy was Burstyn’s performance that, at one point, I fully expected my sad old ex-rental 66cm cathode ray tube teat to blow itself into the farthest reaches of the stratosphere to play footsies with Wall-E.

There should be no criticism made of any actor, nor should it be considered a diminution of their stature and talents when they decide to pop up occasionally on an episode of some colour-by-numbers television show. For Burstyn, it may have amounted to a week’s worth of work with a day in post for a not inconsiderable sum of money. And then of course, there are always residuals and royalties from DVD sales to consider, something denied Australian actors in Australian productions.

But, for God’s sake, will someone, somewhere, please please please give this marvelous actress a role worthy of her exceptional talents?

Can we give Meryl Streep and Judi Dench a rest for a while and start casting our nets a little farther afield, beyond these usual suspects? We’ve just seen Debra Winger slam her way back into the public eye with gusto after an extended absence from the screen in “Rachel Getting Married” …

Please sir, can I have some more?

Can we have more of Julie Christie and can we have more of Sissy Spacek and can we have more, lots, lots more of Ellen Burstyn? And can we give them all something very, very good to do?

Can we put them all in a movie together? With Robert Duvall perhaps?

Now, that would be a beautiful thing to behold.

"It's unfortunate but our society is such that, for women in Hollywood, you get to a certain age and just fall off a cliff. But in my case, I refuse to die. I will hang on, by a little finger if necessary." Ellen Burstyn

"I thought it was fabulous. My next ambition is to get nominated for seven seconds, and, ultimately, I want to be nominated for a picture in which I don't even appear." Ellen Burstyn, 2004, regarding her Emmy nomination for her performance in “Mrs. Harris”, in which she appeared for 14 seconds.

Quotes sourced from IMDB

NETWORK NINE ... STILL THE SCUM

2009-02-20T07:29:00.001+10:00

Courtesy of Channel 9 News via iinet...

Incest dungeon slave Elisabeth Fritzl believes she has been sold out by a close family member, with leaked photos and personal details about the 42-year-old and her children splashed across a UK tabloid.

"Incest dungeon slave"?

Here is a woman who endured two and half decades of horror, abuse and deprivation of her freedom at the hands of a coward and now, as she attempts to build a life for herself away from the glare of the public spotlight and the gleefully ghoulish voyeurs of the mainstream press and their "readers", the best descriptor some hack at Network Nine news can come up with is something that sounds straight out of a fetish p*rn magazine.

Whoever wrote it should be stabbed in the fucking head.

POLITICAL STAFFER TELLS JOURNO TO F**K OFF!

2009-02-19T16:18:00.003+10:00

World asplodes!

JULIA Gillard's office was in damage control last night after a staff member inadvertently told a western Sydney journalist to "f..k off" in an email on ABC Learning.

Opposition childcare spokeswoman Sophie Mirabella said: "This is a real insight into what (the ALP) think of the real world, into how they operate".

Things were way more civil back in olden times, weren't they? ...

JEFF KENNETT: He said to me, “I didn’t like the way you kept me out of the campaign”. I said, “Wouldn’t have you in it, and I didn’t have any federal people in it.”

ANDREW PEACOCK: Well you didn’t have me. Didn’t have anyone.

KENNETT: And I said to him, “Tomorrow, I’m going to bucket the whole lot of you”.

PEACOCK: No! Don’t do that Jeffrey.

KENNETT: Hold your flow. I said, “Tomorrow John” and he said, “I know where your sympathies lie”, and I said, “I couldn’t give a fuck. I have no sympathies any more. You’re all a pack of shits and tomorrow I’m going berserk”. Well he went off his brain and in the end I said to him, I said, “Howard. You’re a cunt. You haven’t got my support, you never will have and I’m not going to rubbish you or the party tomorrow but I feel a lot better having told you you’re a cunt.”

PEACOCK: Oh shit!

KENNETT: And the poor little fellow didn’t know whether he was Arthur or Martha.

Yep. Way more civil. Reckon so.

A POST ABOUT NOTHING AT ALL

2009-02-19T13:49:00.003+10:00

My father was admitted to hospital on Sunday, February 8th after suffering a minor stroke, no doubt exacerbated somewhat by the extreme heat of the day (43, 44 degrees in Sydney). He's been there ever since.

They run tests. Constantly. "How are you?", I ask. "They're running tests", he replies, barely able to speak through his horribly strangled breathing. "What tests?", I ask. "I don't know", he says, "they get me to swallow things and run tests and take x-rays."

I thought about flying back to Sydney for a couple days, but was discouraged from doing so, my mother thinking it would make him paranoid in an "end is nigh" type of way.

Fair enough.

And, no doubt many of his current health problems would be as a result of smoking cigarettes for most of his adult life (he gave up about 7 years ago) and I'm sure many snitty little twerps, the usual suspects, would take great pleasure in thinning their lips and narrowing their eyes to slits and bending over his prone body to mutter, "Serves ya right."

In which case, I would happily and most enthusiastically shove a chainsaw up the arses of said snitty little twerps and take them for a quick spin.

For he started smoking in an age (early 1940’s) where smoking was acceptable in all walks of life, in all professions and places and, as a commercial artist/signwriter, spent his entire working life in barely ventilated factories surrounded by wood dust and shavings, asbestos (very probably) and fumes from paint of all varieties, methylated spirits, turpentine and so on. Back in the days when "O.H & S" sounded like an honour dished out to the upper classes from a King. Or a Benson & Hedges knockoff.

I spoke to him this morning. He sounds awful. Not deadly, or quite knocking at that door, but not too good.

A friend of mine, someone I've known for 20 years now, had a friend of his die of lung cancer a few weeks back. He was 28 years old.

He'd never smoked a cigarette in his life, and worked outdoors, in the leisure industry, farting about on boats and such.

And he was 28 years old.

My father was born in 1928. He's 80.

What may we glean from this?

...

...

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

ALL THE NEWS THAT PRINTS A FIT

2009-02-19T12:51:00.008+10:00

Here is the main page of today's world news (February 19, 2009) from The New York Times (click image to enlarge) ...

Palestine, Israel, China, Zimbabwe, etc.

Here are the world news headlines from the home page of today's (February 19, 2009) News.com website (click image to enlarge) ...

Chimpanzee goes nuts. And a tantric sex video clip.

Current standards of Australian journalism and reportage : FUCKED.

THE ROCKS IN CHERIE’S HEAD

2009-02-18T09:06:00.006+10:00

As we all know by now, Michelle Obama is poised, articulate, self-confident and highly intelligent. She's also very fucking hot.

And I do have the impression that, if you were to get into her bad books or piss her off by assuming that she is none of these things that she would simply tear you twelve new arseholes and play ping-pong with your eyeballs.

So I very much doubt the First Lady needs any advice of any kind from some stupid addle-brained bint who thinks this type of brainless bollocks makes sense.

A "Homeopathic dowser healer" who, for £85 “will sell you a pile of stones and instructions on how to lay them out in the garden”?

Imbecile.

Just shut up and fuck off, Cherie. Go eat a wafer.

VIRTUAL PANADOL FRIDAY

2009-02-13T15:36:00.001+10:00

Last night, my first real meal in six days after retching sickness. A six buck takeaway of soy-steamed chicken in noodle soup. And a can of Guinness.

My, it was good.

And now, to another matter entirely ...

I didn't catch the original UK version of "Life On Mars", but I've managed to catch the first 2 episodes of the US edition and so far I like what I'm seeing. What can you say about Harvey Keitel that hasn't already been said? The man's a fucking legend. And Gretchen Moll is practically unrecognisable from the last role I saw her in as Betty Page. Anyway, the theme song has been rabbiting around my head all day, so I thought I may as well plonk it down here ...

From 1973, David Bowie "Life On Mars"

ICE CREAM FOR GEORGE!

2009-02-13T10:02:00.003+10:00

In the United States, "Ben & Jerry’s" began a competition to create a new flavour ice-cream in honour of the newly elected President before finally settling on “Yes Pecan!”.

And while there is no truth in the rumour that they also asked people to suggest names for a George W. Bush ice-cream flavour, that didn’t stop Keith Olbermann from reading out a few (selectively edited for propriety) ideas …

Here’s the full uncensored list …

Grape Depression

Abu Grape

Cluster Fudge

Nut'n Accomplished

Iraqi Road

Chock 'n Awe

WireTapioca

Impeach Cobbler

Guantanmallow

imPeachmint

Good Riddance You Lousy Motherfucker... Swirl

Heck of a Job, Brownie!

Neocon Politan

RockyRoad to Fascism

The Reese's-cession

Cookie D'oh!

The Housing Crunch

Nougalar Proliferation

Death by Chocolate... and Torture

Freedom Vanilla Ice Cream

Chocolate Chip On My Shoulder

You're Shitting In My Mouth And Calling It A Sundae

Credit Crunch

Mission Pecanplished

Country Pumpkin

Chunky Monkey in Chief

George Bush Doesn't Care About Dark Chocolate

WMDelicious

Chocolate Chimp

Bloody Sundae

Caramel Preemptive Stripe

I Broke the Law and Am Responsible for the Deaths of Thousands...with Nuts

IN OTHER NEWS ...

2009-02-13T09:31:00.003+10:00

I'm trying to think of an appropriate response to this story from today's News.Com ...

THE pension age should be lifted from 65 to 67 to encourage older Australians to stay in the workforce for longer, the Federal Government has been told.

In its submission to the Harmer pension review, the international investment and financial consultancy firm Mercer added its voice to calls for a gradual increase in Australia's pension age, starting in 2025

Mercer's Rob Knox said 65 was no longer an appropriate retirement age for many Australians.

But all I can come up with is ...

GET. FUCKED.

SHINY HAPPY PARASITES MUST BURN

2009-02-12T12:00:00.004+10:00

From last Friday to Wednesday of this week, I was laid up sick with an unidentified stomach bug that had me rushing from the couch to the sink (closest receptacle available) to dry retch every 20 or 30 minutes. Over the course of 5 days, I've eaten 2 pieces of toast and an apple. The upside (upchuck?) is that I've lost a notch a half in belt size, so I've fought the good fight against the rampant obesity epidemic, going from a whopping 32" waist to about 30".

Fuck you, Jenny Craig.

And during this time, my brain being too rattled to concentrate on anything requiring coherent or sustained thought, I sat in front of the television whimpering like a whipped dog from the pain of a stomach in knots, and watched as the horrors of death, destruction and inconsolable grief flickered their way across the great glass teat of pop'lar ennertainment.

By Tuesday morning, enough was enough.

Thank God for SBS and the ABC, for they were the only two television channels that made any effort to report actual news about the events of that weekend rather than wallowing like fat happy pigs in the hollow pits of pain and loss that once were people with lives, with futures and with pasts, and who, now, wandered like shell-shocked soldiers through a battlefield the likes of which they could never have imagined in their most outrageous nightmares.

The shiny, happy parasites of commercial infotainment, self-anointed Masters-Of-The-Universe-As-Gods-Of-Pain outdid themselves in the rush to see which “host” of this once-in-a-lifetime entertainment opportunity could best make der unhappy, scrunchy face and convey to you, to us, just how horrible everything had been, how much worse it was going to get, and just how thoroughly and utterly fucked everybody involved were.

For we would not be able to grasp the deep import of these events without a familiar face to guide us through the proper meaning of loss, something only they could convey and can we please have some music for the underscore just in case anyone missed it? Thanks very much, Pachelbel’s Canon will do just fine, but after the break can we toss in some R.E.M. or Jeff Buckley? Cheers, thanks, ta, we have an annual licence so there’s no probs with der rights, eh?

And so, with their faces duly pasted and painted so as to take the shine off their shiny, shiny foreheads, they cast their eyes about for the wasted and the wounded, knowing full well they’ll be met with little resistance from the shocked and the stunned as they shove microphones and cameras in the faces of people who’ve lost husbands, wives, sons, daughters, parents, their homes, their pets, the entire record of their lives on earth to date and ask the really, really pertinent questions that really, really begged for an answer …

“You’ve lost your wife and your children and your home and your pets and the entire record of your life on earth to date … How do you feeeeeeeeeel nowwwwwww?”

The answer I wanted never came, or it was certainly never broadcast …

“How would you feel if I shoved this fucking microphone and this fucking camera between the flappy folds of your saggy, spotted buttocks until your fucking pinhead pops off your scrawny fucking shoulders, you ghoulish fucking lump of insensitive cuntspit?”

Better luck next time, perhaps.

And in their wake come the whores, hacks and harlots of the “popular” Australian press, ever eager to drive the standards (?!) of Australian journalism (??!) and reportage (???!) into the mediocrity it so enthusiastically and increasingly embraces ... (Hey! Psst! Wanna see a photo of Salma Hayek breastfeeding a kid? WE GOT IT! Tits, man! And boy, ain’t she got a set! Hubba hubba!).

Yet that shouldn’t be too surprising, given the “popular” press is mostly owned by some pussy-whipped old fart whose hair goes through more colour changes in a week than Joseph’s Technicolour Dreamcoat could do in a 6 month Broadway run.

Yep, round up the usual narcissistic deadshits and set ‘em to work to preach from the same old bully pulpit as always - Hell, you need talent, intelligence and imagination to think up something new and actually write about it in depth and no one wants to read that shit these days, do they? Is Australia, mate, the “lucky country”, don’t you be gittin’ above your raisin’ an’ puttin’ on airs an’ graces boy, an’ gettin’ deep on us all.

There’s a predictable lad.

Ah, fuck ‘em all. Throw some money in a bucket or a tin can or organise something at work or donate some blood or whatever, but next time these cunts of commercial “news” suggest splashing the face of someone writhing in the throes of uncontrollable grief for “your consideration” in some special extended agony remix edition, turn the fucking thing off or turn the page.

Enough is enough.

DEVINELY STUPID

2009-02-12T09:13:00.002+10:00

Sent to the Sydney Morning Herald this morning, prompted by this crap from the female Paddy McGuiness …

“For investigative journalism of skill, intelligence, common sense, balance and reasoned argument, Miranda Devine makes a nice typist.”

Myself, I blame Bill Henson.

A LETER TOO THE ARTHER

2009-02-11T14:15:00.002+10:00

An actual letter (handwritten) addressed to a (former) political figure and author. This is an accurate transcription of the layout, spelling and rather odd little P.S. at the end …

I bought ~~the~~ your book, “- ------ -- ------” for 50 cents, a couple of months ago from the ---------- Library, -------- they bought it on Dec 2005 $33. and were getting Rid of It, in Setp./Oct, 2008, the Book was in pristine Condition, obviously not many people borrowed it, if any.
I myself read other books that I bought at the same time,
By looking at the Cover, it gave me the impression it would be a Boring Political Spiel.
However when I started reading it, I was Very Pleasantly Surprised, I am at Page 141 Half way In my opinion this is a TERRIFIC Book (“You cannot judge a book by its cover” applies here)
I want to THANK YOU for your contribution to Bettering the Lives of the Working Class of Australia, Especially when you being from a Middle Class family could very well Ignored the Issue as most people in your position do. (THEM I calling them) You are an Inspiration to me, you have Done, what I was thinking Should Be Done (But I was to Busy Working), but did not have the Knowleg to Bring it to Reality.
May I sugest that you reissue the Book, but with a Cover showing 2 Beatyful NAKED Women, (I am serius), People will them open the book (expecting something else) and some may get interested and get the Book and Read It, they Should.
Men will have the Book on their Desk, just to look at the Pictures but they will read some of it. (otherwise is a case of “out of Sight Out of Mind”)

Regars, Best Wishes to You and Your Family
J--- C------
----------, VICTORIA

2 Good Looking NAKED MEN for Women and Homosexuals

It will go very well with YOUNG PEOPLE today, (Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll)

DO A SMALL RUN and see how it goes, (they will sell like hot cakes) if you are SCARED.

Scared?

Yes.

Very.

SLIMEY EGG WHITES?

2009-02-05T15:25:00.002+10:00

Only $9.95 and you need worry no more!!! ...

(Sourced from Living in Cinema)

FROZEN MEAL IN BOX

2009-02-05T12:08:00.003+10:00

I’ve never eaten “Frozen Meal in Box”.

Ever.

By “Frozen Meal in Box”, I mean those things that are tricked up to look like a full-fledged proper meal with a proper name and all the trappings and accompaniments. Like “baked potato” and “fresh peas” and “creamy sauce” and such.

I’m not talking about stuff like frozen fish fillets or frozen pies, both of which I’ve eaten on occasions and, especially in the latter case, have always wondered why on earth I bothered to put the stove on in the first place.

For frozen pies are fucking horrible. You’ll never eat a frozen pie and say afterward, “Damn, that was good”. It’s as if someone’s deliberately gone out of their way to present you with a pastry that has the consistency of a Gingernut biscuit which has been soaked in an unidentifiable meat flavour for a few seconds and then baked on the lip of an active volcano for a week or three.

And the packets advertise contents like “tender chunks” or “herbs and spices” being present in the foodstuff. If your definition of a “chunk” is something the size and shape of a toenail cutting and to you “herbs and spices” means a midget pinch of white pepper, you might find this type of mulch to your liking.

To me, however, “herbs and spices” means you add the spice to the fucking food, not wave the stuff about over the top of the pot for an eighth of a nanosecond.

Anyway …

“Frozen Meal in Box”.

Yesterday, I saw some “Frozen Meal in Box” advertised in a Coles or Woolworths brochure, and they were on special for four bucks a pop. I thought to myself, “That’s pretty cheap. Maybe I should buy some “Frozen Meal in Box” and give it a try.”

And then I thought, “Hang on. Is this an indicator of something? If I begin to eat “Frozen Meal in Box”, does this mean that I will have started an irreversible decline into old age where, by the time I’m 70, dinner will mean a slice of toast with half a tomato and a glass of milk, because I just couldn’t be bothered anymore?”

That’s what happens when people get old, isn’t it? And I’m now officially middle-aged, aren’t I?

And now, after 30 years of mostly making my own meals, I find myself at a point in life where I’m beginning to think “Frozen Meal in Box” may be a plausible option for food?

It presents me with a vision of my life 12, 13 years from now when (I hope) I’m retired …

Where every morning at about 9.56am I shall shuffle from my one-room bedsit above a bloodhouse pub somewhere in Deliverance country down to the scarred, piss-and-vomit smelling public bar (for that is all I shall be able to afford) there to sit for 8 or 9 hours grunting meaningless familiarities to the bartender, nursing 3 or 4 schooners of basic beer over that period of time as my brain slowly turns to blancmange from the constant hum and throb of Fox Sports on the 478cm holographic plasma television that hangs above the Kettle Chip rack.

And, at the end of the day, before the bar I have now come to call “home” will be invaded by loud, gaudily dressed, rude young things and their horrible music, I shall shuffle back to my tiny little nook in shapeless trousers and shapeless shoes, a shapeless t-shirt flapping about my shapeless frame of shabby bones to plop into a shapeless chair, the highlight of my day being the keen anticipation felt for the next 25 minutes as I patiently wait for my special weekly treat of “Frozen Meal in Box” to unfreeze …

“Ooh, look dear, you can get 4 varieties for 10 dollars at Aldi this week …and they have some very good generic denture solvent for only $1.75 too.”

It’s life Ross, but not as you’ve known it.

Yet.

I WISH I'D WRITTEN THAT ...

2009-02-04T08:43:00.001+10:00

Buffalo Beast list their 50 Most Loathsome Americans of 2008 and the charges against them ...

I doubt these three could be bettered for descriptions ...

At No.43, You ...

Charges: You think it’s your patriotic duty to spend money you don’t have on crap you don’t need. You think Hillary lost because of sexism, when it’s actually because she’s just a bad liar. You think Iraq is better off now than before we invaded, and don’t understand why they’re so ungrateful. You think Tim Russert was a great journalist. You’re hopping mad about an auto industry bailout that cost a squirt of piss compared to a Wall Street heist of galactic dimensions, due to a housing crash you somehow have blamed on minorities. It took you six years to figure out what a tool Bush is, but you think Obama will make it all better. You deem it hunky dory that we conduct national policy debates via 8-second clips from “The View.” You think God zapped humans into existence a few thousand years ago, although your appendix and wisdom teeth disagree. You like watching vicious assholes insult each other on TV. You support gun rights, because firing one gives you a chubby. You cuddle falsehoods and resent enlightenment. You think the fact that 43% of whites could stomach voting for an incredibly charismatic and eloquent light-skinned black guy who was raised by white people means racism is over. You think progressive taxation is socialism. 1 in 100 of you are in jail, and you think it should be more. You are shallow, inconsiderate, afraid, brand-conscious, sedentary, and totally self-obsessed. You are American.

Exhibit A: You’re more upset by Miley Cyrus’s glamour shots than the fact that you are a grown adult who is upset about Miley Cyrus.

At No.20, Joe the Plumber ...

Charges: The Che Guevara of bald, pissed off white men. In a lot of ways, Samuel Wurzelbacher really does represent the average American—basing economic opinions on unrealistic expectations of personal future success, blaming his failure to meet those expectations on minorities and old people, complaining about deadbeats getting his taxes when he isn’t actually paying his taxes, and advertising his own rudimentary historical and mathematical ignorance by warning of creeping socialism in a country whose highest income tax rate has dropped by half in thirty years. “Joe” indeed symbolizes the true American dream—to become undeservedly rich and famous through a dizzyingly improbable stroke of luck. As American folk heroes go, Wurzelbacher ranks somewhere between Hulk Hogan and Bernie Goetz.

Exhibit A: "Social Security is a joke...social security I've never believed in, don't like it. I hate that it's forced on me."

At No.11, Rush Limbaugh ...

Charges: The father of modern stupidity, Limbaugh spins reflexively, never struggling with issues, because he knows his conclusion must favor Republicans, and his only task is finding a way to get there. In other words, he may or may not actually believe what he’s saying, but it’s beside the point. His job is not to say what he thinks, but to instruct his listeners on what they should think. If the facts don’t agree, he can always change them, as his “ditto heads” are already armed against the contrary evidence with the all-purpose “liberal bias” attack. “Rush is right,” as the slogan goes, and all those nerdy reporters in the “drive by media” are lying, because they secretly love terrorists. It’s this creepily worshipful, breathtakingly infantile abdication of intellect to a blatantly dishonest hypocrite that makes Limbaugh’s audience so goddamn sad. These pathetic, insecure, failures of men look to Rush as the champion of their impotent rage, helping them to externalize responsibility for their own deficiencies, pinning the blame on those darn liberals and their racial and gender equality.

Exhibit A: You have to marvel at the sheer ignominy of someone who coins the term “Obama recession” two days after the election.

No.11 reminds me of someone ...

HUH?

2009-02-03T14:14:00.003+10:00

You're giving me money?

Shit.

It goes on the credit card.

Thanks.

UPDATE: Well, that was a short-lived hope. Thanks a bunch, Malcolm.

Cunt.

OH, TO BE A SUB-EDITOR ...

2009-02-02T09:45:00.002+10:00

From the front page of today's New York Times, this lead-in to its Sunday Styles feature ...

"Lost tribes of lesbians from the early era of communes and feminism try to stay vital to a new generation."

I can't wait to see the movie.

NO CHANGE FOR SOME

2009-01-30T13:13:00.004+10:00

From the Southern Poverty Law Center via Alternet ...

"The Obama era comes after years in which white supremacists have successfully exploited the immigration debate – both providing racist propaganda that seeps into the popular culture and benefiting from the vilification of Latino immigrants. Mainly as a result of the bigotry and xenophobia surrounding the immigration debate, the number of hate groups operating in the United States has risen by nearly 50 percent – from 602 to 888 – since 2000.
Now, these groups have begun to turn their attention to Obama – distributing racist propaganda, filling Internet message boards with threats and messages of hate, and, in some cases, taking more direct action against minorities. Here is a sampling of racial incidents reported in the wake of the election:

Police in Riverside County, California, said five attacks on minorities were likely related to the election and were believed to have been carried out by a local white supremacist gang.

In Shreveport, La., a black man wearing an Obama T-shirt was brutally beaten by a group of white men screaming "f--k Obama" and "n-----r president." The attack left the man with a broken nose, broken eye socket and broken tear duct, requiring multiple surgeries.

In Springfield, Mass., a black church was burned hours after the election was called for Obama. Authorities later arrested three white men.

In Staten Island, N.Y., a black teen was bloodied and bruised by two white teens who shouted "Obama" while pummeling him with a bat and pipe.

In Rexburg, Idaho, second- and third-graders on a school bus chanted "assassinate Obama."

In Torrance, Calif., swastikas and racial slurs were spray-painted on homes and cars of people who displayed Obama signs or bumper stickers.

In Milwaukee, a poster of Obama with a bullet going through his head was discovered in a police station.

In Maine, a sign at a convenience store invited customers to join a betting pool on when Obama would be assassinated. The sign said, "Let's hope we have a winner.""

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them ...

I'M NOT FALLING FOR IT

2009-01-29T09:25:00.006+10:00

Some clever group of individuals have managed to hack their way into the White House website and photoshopped a young, skinny black guy in place as President of the United States ...

... It's pretty clever, too. They've got official looking documents about real sounding things, a bunch of names that seem genuine enough (for example, no "Richard Heads" or obvious giveaways like that), videos and a there’s a whole bunch of photographs about of a so-called "inauguration" that was supposed to have taken place on January 20, 2009 …

Bwah-ha.

I suspect it's just another one of those viral campaigns that have become popular the last few years and wouldn't be at all surprised if it turns out to be for some movie we haven't yet heard about ...

... An imaginary biopic perhaps about a black POTUS? Morgan Freeman would probably turn up at some point ... Or an adaptation of another Philip K. Dick story, something about paranoia and split personalities and identity crises and such ...

That could be good.

I’m glad they’ve found an unfamiliar face for the role, too. I’m getting sick of seeing Will Smith in every bloody thing lately.

The man should take some time off and give us a fucking break for a while.

ANDY'S CLOUDY CRYSTAL BALL

2009-01-28T08:34:00.007+10:00

On Tuesday, January 27, 2009 at 02:23pm, Andrew Bolt predicts that the newly-elected U.S. President will be way too busy to bother giving Kevin Rudd a call any time soon ...

On Wednesday, January 28, 2009 at 9.24am, AAP reports ...

Barack Obama has made his first phone call to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd since becoming US president.

Mr Obama phoned Mr Rudd on Wednesday morning, Australian time, the prime minister's office confirmed.

No further details are available, although there is speculation the US will ask Australia to commit more troops to the conflict in Afghanistan.

WHEN YOU’RE SLAPPED, YOU’LL STAY SLAPPED

2009-01-23T10:23:00.003+10:00

A self-taught Muslim cleric says some idiotic things, thereby revealing himself to be an idiotic individual, the Islamic equivalent of a Pastor Fred W. Phelps perhaps.

"Self-taught" says it all, really. Imagine being a "self-taught" nuclear physicist at a job interview ...

"And what are your qualifications?"

"Oh, I don't have any formal qualifications. I just learnt myself real good."

"I see."

"..."

"..."

"Atoms are small."

"Yes. Quite."

... If every political or religious cracker who ever yearned for a platform from which to spout their particular brand of lunatic bullshit were given equal time in the media, then our media (such as it is) would come more and more to resemble the rabble-rousing histrionics of an Andrew Bolt blog.

Unfortunately, every fuckwit within coo-ee of a microphone who happens to identify as Islamic, and tries to pass their religion off as justification for their fuckwittery is fair game for a few slabs worth of headlines, especially from the typists at Murdoch's toilet-paper tabloids who are always on the lookout for an opportunity for a new belch of dark-people panic. Not to mention an invitation to "outraged Aussies" to post "their say" on such matters, which they inevitably clamour to do and do with such admirable clarity of point, too …

The thing about Muslim clerics and their apologists in the leftist (read “ABC") media is that we don’t get to hear half of the rotten things they *leave out* of their toxic sermons. “Preparing bread on the stove” is she? Notice the complete lack of Sea Kittens in this picture?

Either the Muslims don’t cook Sea Kittens - which would be a complete rejection of the prophet Jesus, whose friends were fishermen - or they *do* cook Sea Kittens anddon’t want us to know about it!

Which is the more sinister?

Preparing bread on the stove. Yeah right. Not likely, unless that bread is going toward Barak Obabma’s hamburger which he ate on Air Force One (Obama’s hamburger, Tim. Seriously, “I ham what I ham.” Friday’s blog).

Barak Obama eating a hamburger (not a Sea Kitten, note) prepared by the wife of a Muslim cleric - in an unforgivable affront to the Jewish and Christian faiths! No! Just the Jewish one. Wait! Which one doesn’t eat ham again? Oh yeah, the Muslims.

bill of sydney (Reply)
Fri 23 Jan 09 (05:28am)

Fuckin' hell. I thought "bill" of sydney was a cafe. I'm never eating there again.

Why must so much of the media devote so much of its time and energies to breathlessly reporting the rantings and ravings of ignorant imbeciles like Samir Mohtadi as if those rantings and ravings mattered a damn to anyone with an ounce of common sense?

Rather than engage, argue or attempt to place such comments in any type of perspective as there is no perspective in which they can be placed unless you're a retard, the appropriate response is an offhand dismissal of the man as an utter fucking moron yabbering utterly moronic things to a small bunch of other utter fucking morons who've got nothing better to do with their time.

And, having done so, we may then move on to news of actual import and get on with the business of living in the world.

Here endeth the lesson.

TONGUE-IN-CHIEF TURNS 50 ...

2009-01-13T08:31:00.001+10:00

Shit.

HE’S DEAD. GET OVER IT.

2009-01-12T10:51:00.003+10:00

By all accounts, Heath Ledger was a pretty good actor.

But …

Maybe it’s just me, but does anyone else think that the endless and quite hysterical hype that has accompanied his performance as The Joker in Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” is a lorry load of utter bollocks?

Sure, Ledger’s performance was a good one – dark, creepy and committed, it avoided lurching into comic book cliché and caricature – but, if one were to buy the buzz, one would think that this one performance by this one actor reinvented the art of acting in much the same way as the printing press reinvented the book.

And that, if Ledger does not win a Golden Globe, or an Oscar, there will be blood on the streets, as a grave injustice has been inflicted upon the decent folk of the commonweal.

What bullshit.

Here’s two performances that, in my opinion at least, are lightning streaks ahead of Ledger’s Joker …

Ted Levine as Buffalo Bill in “Silence of the Lambs” – Levine was nominated for nothing in the role, overshadowed by Anthony Hopkins’ Lecter, yet it is his (very brave) performance that ratchets the creep factor up to 12 and keeps the tale rooted in some semblance of reality, unlike Hopkins’ fantasy super serial-killer.

Ben Kingsley as Don Logan in “Sexy Beast” – Nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe as supporting actor.

Won neither.

I mean, really … Fuck. Off.

I‘d hazard a bet that Kingsley’s Logan could wipe the grin off Ledger’s Joker with naught but his little pinkie, a puff of smoke and a damp Chux …

From 2000, Ben Kingsley “Sexy Beast” (Acting Lessons 101)

SHOCK! SUPERHERO IDENTITY REVEALED!

2009-01-09T12:53:00.001+10:00

Spiderman's an evil lefty!

Unlike ~~George W. Bu~~ Batman.

ATTACK OF THE WEEING WOMEN’S BABY-KILLING ALIEN ACID PEE!!!!

2009-01-06T12:46:00.001+10:00

According to the president of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations …

“The pill "has for some years had devastating effects on the environment by releasing tonnes of hormones into nature" through female urine”

"We have sufficient evidence to state that a non-negligible cause of male infertility in the West is the environmental pollution caused by the pill," he said, without elaborating further.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Although it gives good material for a catchy headline.

THE GRAHAM NORTON SHOW WITH MARTIN SHEEN (2008)

2008-12-29T19:01:00.002+10:00

In April 2008, the U.K.'s Graham Norton interviewed actor Martin Sheen, and as far as I'm concerned it's one of the most enjoyable and entertaining interviews I've seen an actor give since Andrew Denton was interviewed by Richard E. Grant on "Enough Rope".

Sheen talks about his marriage of over 40 years, his 67 arrests for peaceful civil disobedience, and of course, his role as U.S. President Jed Bartlet in "The West Wing". In Part 3 of this interview, Sheen demonstrates the Aaron Sorkin "walk and talk" method, and it is a beautiful and wondrous thing to behold.

I've embedded only Part 1 of the proceedings here. The other 4 parts will pop up in the menu when it's done.

If you're a fan of "The West Wing", or just a great admirer of a fine, graceful, and unaffected actor at the peak of his career, pour yourself a glass of whatever takes your fancy, sit back and enjoy ...

A HERO FOR OUR TIMES

2008-12-28T21:44:00.001+10:00

I'm Ross Sharp and I fully endorse and approve of this man's actions.

THE 1ST ANNUAL SMELLY TONGUES "SNIFF MY FINGER" AWARDS ...

2008-12-28T18:12:00.007+10:00

... For the relentless pursuit and presentation of random stupidities that will forevermore stand as a testament to how the human race eventually managed to devolve back into a puddle of pond-scum ...

THE "SOMEBODY FAMOUS FARTED" AWARD (or, "WHY THE FUCK IS THIS NEWS?") goes to ...

The Sydney Morning Herald for it's breathless report about how, when Lindsay Lohan's girlfriend Samantha Ronson arrived at Sydney airport in September, 2008, she exited the terminal and lit a cigarette.

As the story is uncredited, the award, a Vegemite jar of famous people's farts will be presented to former SMH editor Alan Oakley. What a whiffy way to go, Alan, old chap! Well done, what!

THE "PHILLIP TRAVERS" AWARD for incomprehensible chatterbot claptrap comments on the intertubes goes to ...

What a fucking field of worthy contenders, ladies and gentlemen, and my-oh-my-oh-my, did this one put our judges to the test this year! Two of them stabbed themselves in their eye-sockets, and another ripped his own face off in indecision, so I guess that leaves the choice of this year's inaugural winner up to myself. It was a last minute entry, but by God, it worked for me ...

From Scott Weinberg's Cinematical review of Frank Miller's film "The Spirit", "Serge G" had this to say ...

"I'd like inform you that Scarlett Johansson (actress)actually is a clone from original person,who has nothing with acting career.Clone was created illegally using stolen biomaterial.Original Scarlett Galabekian last name is nice, CHRISTIAN young lady.I'll tell more,those clones(it's not only 1)made in GERMANY-world leader manufacturer of humans clones,it's in Ludwigshafen am Rhein,Rhineland-Palatinate,Mr.Helmut Kohl home town.You can't even imaging the scale of the cloning activity.But warning,H.Kohl staff strictly controlling their clones spreading around the world,they're NAZI type disciplined and mind controlled,be careful get close with clones you will be controlled too.Original family didn't authorize any activity with stolen biomaterials,no matter what form it was created in,it's all need to be back to original family control in Cedars-Sinai MedicalCenter in LA.Controlling clones is US military operation.Original Scarlett never was engaged,by the way"

Congratulations, Serge! Your award is this very special lead coated space bar which will be presented to you in the form of a severe beating about the head. Enjoy your brain hemorrhage, Serge! You've earned it, baby!

THE "PIERS 'I CAN'T SEE MY PENIS FROM UP HERE' AKERMAN" AWARD for services to sexual hysterics, pedophile paranoia and moral panic about pretty much anything ado about fucking and genitalia goes to ...

Jesus Christ on a cross upside-down and split up the arse with a eucalypt log, people! Where the hell can we start with this one?! Ladies and gentlemen, this was a field stuffed to the stocking top with notable nominees and, to be fair to all, no one individual stood above any other. And so, in a historical first for award programmes across the globe, we are proud to announce that everyone's a winner!

Yes-indeedy-do, this year's award will be jointly and proudly shared by ... Family First Senator Steve Fielding for suggesting that adults should be banned from viewing adult material on the internet; Miranda Devine, Hetty Johnston, Kevin Rudd and Morris Iemma for having dirty thoughts about an image of a nude adolescent and thinking everyone else on the planet is just as obsessed with sex as they are (the dirty little fuckers); and Senator Stephen Conroy just because the dumb little cunt wasn't scraped, bagged and flushed into a toilet back when he was a zygote.

Our hearty congratulations to all! Your prize will be awarded to you backstage by forty-seven Masai warriors on ice, all of whom are right now feverishly working their sixteen-inch weapons of mass destruction into a lather of rhythmically throbbing gristle on your behalf and for your pleasure.

And remember, folks, bukkake ain't another word for a bridge-game! (Please remember to collect your super-size sponges from the stage manager afore you venture back to the green room, ta).

And, last but certainly not least! May I have a drum-roll and a boom-tish, please!

THE SNIFF MY FINGER "GOLDEN JACKBOOT" AWARD!!

Generously sponsored by Odour Eaters, Stormfront and the German National Democratic Party, this year's winner is ...

ANDREW BOLT!

For his inimitable irrepressibility, snide insinuations and suspect views about anything that ain't white, ain't right and ain't about 120 years old, Andy was always a frontrunner favourite for this award and, by dang and dagnabbity goshdarn, he deserves the recognition!

Andrew's prize will be a fully escorted tour (courtesy of the N.D.P.) to Passau where he will be encouraged to slit the throat of a police officer while uttering the words, "Greetings from the Herald-Sun and Rupert Murdoch, you left-wing police pig" ...

It oughta be a doddle.

Thank you all for your attendance and attention and we look forward to doing it all again next year.

Oh, by the way, if there are any footballers in tonight's audience, try to avoid raping the ushers on your way out, boys ... I know it's a party habit thing with you guys, but it takes a helluva long time to get the stains out of the carpet ... Why don't you just go home and shove a wine glass in your girlfriend's face instead, you gutless little fuckers? You'll get a talk show out of it, I guarantee ...

ROBIN WILLIAMS ON OBAMA'S ELECTION

2008-12-12T08:38:00.003+10:00

The reign of error is over ...

I HATE THE INTERNET

2008-12-11T10:17:00.001+10:00

One last thing ...

News.com have just released their 100 most-clicked upon stories of the year. Here are the keywords from the Top 40 headlines ...

40. Racy Stephanie Rice
39. Bingle topless shots
38. Xbox
37. Schoolgirl raped
36. Named and shamed
35. Naughty Nikki
34. Brisbane Broncos
33. 19-year-old / Suicide / Webcam
32. David Brown / Sunrise
31. iPhone
30. Cosmetic surgery addict
29. Suicidal jumper
28. Girlfriend was a bloke
27. Stolen Generations
26. Orgies / Nude resort
25. Incest couple
24. Teenage / Orgy
23. Sonia Kruger
22. Sex act / Toilets
21. Lindsay Lohan / Lesbian lover
20. Mark Priestley
19. Porn
18. Ex-Idol
17. Penis
16. Sex / Video
15. Porn shock
14. Call girl
13. Google
12. Horrified
11. Jess Origliasso / Porn
10. Brendan David Dennison
09. Giant spider
08. Alien
07. Bigfoot
06. Patrick Swayze
05. Stephanie Rice
04. Pink
03. iPhone
02. Fishy-smelling
01. Heath Ledger

My natural inclination toward misanthropic nihilism just got a whole lot worse.

NOSES OFF

2008-12-10T12:22:00.001+10:00

I couldn’t be bothered for the rest of the week.

I’m on annual leave from Friday until early January, so there won’t be nothin’ going on here but spam and dust bunnies and virtual tumbleweeds.

So, have a happy whatever and a merry thingymawhatsit …

From ?, Jane Siberry “Love Is Everything (Live)”

SWOON

2008-12-09T13:10:00.005+10:00

Yeah, I know it’s a lazy excuse for a blog entry, but whaddya think you’re gonna do about it, huh?

Swoon.

JOBS! JOBS! JOBS!

2008-12-08T15:18:00.002+10:00

VIRTUAL LAY DOWN AND DIE FRIDAY

2008-12-05T10:12:00.002+10:00

I’m in a murderous mood.

I will not go into details, but it’s a filthy, foul, hateful, horrible murderous mood, and if anyone so much as looks at me askance today, I will slit their fucking throats and shit down their fucking necks.

Understand?

Now, as the scummy, low-life, gutter-sucking thrush buckets at Universal Music Group don’t allow embedding of their fucking material, go here to see Richard Kern’s clip for Sonic Youth and Lydia Lunch’s “Death Valley ‘69”. That's where my head's at right now.

In a similar vein, what I wouldn’t give to see Siouxsie Sioux beat the crap out of shiny-faced, pump-titted scrags like Spears, et al with a nail-studded baseball bat …

I’d pay good money for it. Fucking lots of money.

From 1983, Siouxsie & The Banshees “Helter Skelter”

TOM ♥ JULIE BISHOP

2008-12-04T09:25:00.002+10:00

You and your pussycat nose, whoa-oh-oh-oh …

A PLAGUE OF JESSICAS

2008-12-03T12:11:00.004+10:00

A few days ago I was lurking about the handsomely appointed lunchroom upstairs (handsomely appointed due to the presence of coffee and biscuits in it and a few chairs that don’t break when you sit on them), when I began to leaf through one of the many magazines that live there.

There's a truckload of these things laying about, some of them dating back to the days when Michael Jackson was still vaguely recognisable as a human being and Madonna didn't look like Agnes Moorehead from "Bewitched".

"Women's magazines", they call them, though no woman I've ever had more than a passing acquaintance with would be seen dead reading one of the things, and if I ever did have a passing acquaintance with a woman who admitted to reading such stuff, I'd probably shoot her in the face with a musket as an act of mercy.

These things have oodles of pictures, mostly of people I've never heard of who do things I've never been aware of, but by golly they must do ‘em well and do ‘em often cause their faces, their bums, their armpits, their blackheads, zits, nits and shaving nicks are plastered all over these magazines for the benefit of our viewing and reading pleasure.

There's not much text in these things, though if someone vaguely “known” has announced an impending pregnancy, these magazines will often run a photo of the person with a texta-like drawing of a little circle with an arrow from it pointing at the woman's belly, just as a way of reminding us (I guess) that babies come from women’s tummies and not from storks.

Fancy that.

Happily, the editors have refrained from adding little texta drawings of that thing that mostly enables a pregnancy to begin, but it's early days yet. So don't be too surprised if you pick up one of these magazines one day and find it full of little texta penises and little squiggly tadpoles heading off to party up some poor lass’s crotch. With an arrow to guide them on their way.

But on this particular day, as I was leafing through this particular magazine, I began to feel vaguely unsettled in a chilly “someone wants to eat my soul” kind of way.

For on every page I looked at, page after page after page, a JESSICA looked back at me.

There was JESSICA Alba. There was JESSICA Biel. There was JESSICA Simpson. There was JESSICA Mauboy.

There was a Sarah JESSICA Parker, too. She has a big spot on her face, did you know? It’s name is JESSICA too.

A veritable plague of JESSICA’s had taken nest in this magazine and I wondered if I’d accidentally stumbled upon a Stepford Wife conspiracy of sorts.

You see, JESSICA Alba looks like JESSICA Biel’s younger sister. And JESSICA Simpson looks like JESSICA Biel would look if you stuck JESSICA Biel in a bleach bath for a year and wrung her out with a white shagpile rug. JESSICA Mauboy looks like an "Australian Idol" contestant and, strangely enough, Sarah JESSICA Parker looks like a horse with a big spot on its face.

Also, they all have these blindingly white teeth. Or at least, I think they’re teeth. Every time one of them smiles, it’s like peering in at a bunch of enameled miniature Miele appliances and all you want to do is move in and set up house and whip up a stir-fry. Or a quiche.

Or, in Sarah JESSICA Parker’s case, hose the poop out of the stable and bring in some fresh hay.

And another thing. They’re all actors. Except for JESSICA Mauboy, who was an "Australian Idol" contestant, so we can stop mentioning her right now ‘cause the rest of her life is utterly irrelevant to any aspect of reality anymore.

Now, I’ve seen JESSICA Alba in some films, but I can’t remember a damn thing about her in any of them. She was in “Sin City”, a film I loved to bits, but as far as I can recall, all she did in that was go twirling around a pole in her underwear for a while. Not an entirely unpleasant thing to watch, but whether or not she can actually act has yet to be determined. She was also in a movie called “The Eye”, which I may have seen, but can’t really remember, though I think it was about a possessed eyeball doing whatever it is possessed eyeballs do. By the way, did you know that the name JESSICA is derived from an ancient Hebrew word meaning “foresight” or “clairvoyance”? Uncanny, what?

And JESSICA Biel was in the remake of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, which I do remember because I liked it. But all she did in that movie was run around in a shirt that was tied off above her navel and ultra-tight jeans. I found it quite distracting. In a pleasing way, I guess, but I’m watching a horror movie and it’s beginning to resemble an episode of “Baywatch” gone feral, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing for a horror movie. By the way, did you know that the first noted usage of the name JESSICA was for a character from William Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice”, a quite nifty and entertaining little play about paying debts with chunks of your own bloody flesh? Unsettling, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, all I know about JESSICA Simpson is that she once had pimples. She slapped her face with some acne treatment stuff and got rid of her pimples and decided to raise some breasts instead, which appears to have worked out quite handsomely for her. Lucky girl. By the way, did you know that the word “pimple” is derived from the Latin “papula” or “papilla” which means nipple? Are you getting chills yet?

As far as Sarah JESSICA Parker is concerned, she made a name for herself in a show about dildos and shoes, which must have been a novel experience for those who watched it, but I much preferred her early stuff. By the way, did you know that the name Sarah means “princess”, and that there was once a famous princess who wore shoes and died in a car crash?

So.

What may we glean from this plague of JESSICA’s?

If we …

…

…

…

…

Um.

…

…

…

…

I KNOW!

LET’S START OVER! …

A few days ago I was lurking about the handsomely appointed lunchroom upstairs (handsomely appointed due to the presence of coffee and biscuits in it and a few chairs that don’t break when you sit on them), when I began to leaf through one of the many magazines that live there …

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

LISTEN! NO-ONE’S MAKIN’ YA READ THIS CRAP, YA KNOW!!

…

Leave me alone.

I’m unwell.

THE WAR ON WHITE PEOPLE

2008-12-02T12:04:00.005+10:00

I’ve been blissfully unaware of the war that currently rages against white people such as myself, but Andrew Bolt has been bustin’ hisself lately to bring this latest threat against the dear hearts and gentle people of the commonweal to wider attention …

“David Warren on a new mixture of stupidity and ignorance:

Last Monday, the student council of Carleton University attracted much attention to their university and to the city of Ottawa—around Canada and the world—with their decision to cancel their annual Shinerama fundraising efforts on behalf of the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Their argument was that this disease afflicts ”white people and primarily men.” They would rather choose a charity that is more “inclusive.””

This little snippet of silly shit comes to Bolt courtesy of the obviously ‘lerted and ‘larmed “reader Perturbed of NSW” who’d been poking about the pages of the world-renowned journal of note, the Ottawa Citizen, and was so desperately disturbed by the behaviour of this globally influential university student council and their decision to raise funds for something other than the something they’d previously raised funds for that he/she felt an A.P.B. to Bolt and his Whackjob Patrol was in order .

For Satan’s godless minions are once again afoot.

(As an aside, a telling detail of the evil that stalks the land is that “Shinerama” contains the last 3 letters of the devious tobacco-suckin’ U.S. President-Elect’s surname which may just be enough to convince decent, God-fearin’ folk to start packing the shelters with bottled water, dried fruits and grains. Of course, “Shinerama” may just be a live action version of “Futurama” using ankle-sock puppets, but hell, why take chances at this perilous time in our lives?)

And so, devotees of Chaos Theory one and all, Bolt’s monkeys take this as just another signpost pointing to the impending end of civilisation as we know it …

“Western civilisation as we know it is in rapid decline, and history will show it was a suicide.” k1w1 of Brisbane (Reply) Tue 02 Dec 08 (12:49am)

“Then why don’t they piss off and join their inclusive brothers in the Middle East? Now there’s an inclusive culture for you where all are equal ..equally deranged that is .. “ frankly fed up of melbourne (Reply)

“The above says it all really..but what Cystic Fibrosis really needs is a touch of Islam to sanitize it and make it appealing to progressive thinkers like these dunderheads.” uptothebackteeth of Brisbane (Reply) Tue 02 Dec 08 (06:18am)

“I’ll bet these freaks are all in favour of AIDS “charities”, though. The type of behaviour that leads to that disease is ‘inclusive’ enough for them.” RWDB of Normalcy (Reply) Tue 02 Dec 08 (07:10am)

“Maybe this group could instead raise funds to combat Islamic Mental Derangement (IMD), a genetic illness that affects young, disaffected people used as tools by others who are even more mentally crazed … In the Islamic world, the main symptoms are an unbalanced sense of grievance and victimhood, and a desire to slaughter and terrorise others, wipe out all infidels, keep women in cages, institute brutality and cruelty and take the world back to the Dark Ages … In other parts of the world, particularly Western academia, the disease manifests itself in increasingly self-destructive and near-suicidal tendencies, a strong sense of imputed guilt, and a wish to toss away liberty, equality and hard-won freedoms with a view to undermining established democratic systems, all accompanied by an inability to think for oneself.” Baden of Sydney (Reply) Tue 02 Dec 08 (09:10am)

So, according to these colossal colonic polyps, three of them think this decision has something to do with the Middle East and Islam. That sort of flew under my radar, I must admit. Another thinks it has to do with gay sex. I missed that connection, too. Strangely, I thought it was about a bunch of students trying to decide which Canadian charity they’d throw their efforts into this time. But no, their decision is the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in the Amazon and a dark portent of times at their end.

And then, just when you think sanity is only a name for a chain of crappy music shops, along comes Bill from Tasmania …

“It’s their fundraising effort, they are free to choose who they do it for as we all are. Their reasons are nobody’s business but theirs.” Bill O Tas (Reply) Tue 02 Dec 08 (07:46am)

Nobody’s business but theirs?

Fancy that.

Bloody Tasmanians.

SMELLY TONGUES IS ONE

2008-12-01T12:23:00.003+10:00

This blog was one year old on Sunday 30th November, 2008.

And, as I’ll be taking leave in a couple of weeks and will be flat out busy from now till then with work, there may not be too much happenin’ hereabouts for the rest of the year. However, maybe that’s just as well …

… For here are some of the things people have wanted to find out about over the last year which led them to this site.

None of them stuck around for very long, and I do believe they left none the wiser for their queries ...

pretty tongues
black man smelly
black women tongues on youtube
fat people tongues
girls with smelly tongues
hard smelly tongue
holy martin is smelly
is childbirth smelly
lindsay lohan tongues
mentally ill sufferers speaking in tongues
painty smelly
people with smelly tongues
power smelly
smelly
smelly andrew
smelly black snake
smelly bush
smelly cunts
smelly flies
smelly knicker movies
smelly knicker vids
smelly knickers
smelly music
smelly nuts
smelly pincle
smelly radio
smelly sniffing
smelly teeth
smelly war
snakes with black tongues
tongues and perfect
tongues, australian for
tonguing milf
troy buswell chair sniffing smelly
ugly smelly milf
video free petite longue tongue
youtube kids tongues
youtube very smelly

People are deep. Very, very deep.

LESBO VAMPIRE KILLERS HOT VIDEO ACTION!!

2008-11-25T16:05:00.003+10:00

Dear Rupert,

I have taken the trubble to revise the layme hedline to this story as u can see from the above up there (up above).

I don’t feel your currant hedline riters and sub-editers are doing ur orgnisation the justise such a fine pubication deserves.

Give us a job, ya scraggy old cunt.

Yours Sincerely,
Ross Sharp

VIRTUAL PANADOL FRIDAY

2008-11-21T11:59:00.012+10:00

From Dikipedia …

"The only thing Sarah Palin seems to enjoy more than having children is giving those children ridiculous names and inadequate sex education …

… On August 29, 2008, Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain performed perhaps the greatest political mindfuck in American history by announcing that he had chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate. Palin celebrated by ovulating."

Now ... WATCH ME SEGUE! ...

From ovulating to the chilly twilight of barren, menopausal misery, Filmthreat have compiled their Frigid 50 for 2008, “The 50 Coldest People in Hollywood” … Curiously, neither Tom Cruise or Lindsay Lohan make the cut, which must surely mean their careers are no longer just cold, they’ve decomposed altogether and have now become one with the ether …

Coming in at No. 13 this year is …

“Scarlett Johansson - Funny how quickly that Next Big Thing title slips away, isn’t it? Not to worry, Woody Allen never tires of his young ingénues. Just ask Mia Farrow.”

Awww, poor Scarlett.

I must confess I’ve never really paid much attention to Ms. Johansson’s acting abilities. Although I do seem to recall her arse featured quite prominently in the opening credits of some movie a while back … What was that called? “Virgin Suicides”? … Whatever …

Yeah, that one. Meh.

I think it would be quite a good idea if all movies in future opened with a close-up of Scarlett Johansson’s arse. Might be just the ticket to give a much-needed lift to all these dark and depressing “small” films that blight the cinematic landscape so, with their vanishing-point narratives of doom and wretched angst, stuffed with spotty teenagers or those horridly inconvenient wobbly folk with their unsightly disabilities; fat slapper mums in fluffless fluffy slippers with upper arms that look like punched pudding dough and drugged-out deadbeat dads forever hauling slabs of XXXX from the ute to the dunny fridge who like to piss on the family dog at night for giggles.

It’s just what movies need these days, I reckon. More arse.

Yet topping (so to speak) the Frigid 50 list at No.1 is “our” Heath Ledger, the man whose face I’d like to put on a t-shirt accompanied by the slogan “Best Sleeping Pills Ever” …

“Develop the posthumous ability to go back in time and read some pharmacology textbooks that might’ve clued you in to the fact that mixing OxyContin, hydrocodone, Valium, temazepam, Xanax and doxylamine wasn’t a wise move. Hell, go ahead and lend them to River Phoenix while you’re at it.”

Run, River, run!!

And with that, a smoother segue into song you will never find. On this blog, at least …

From 1995, Suddenly Tammy “River Run”

"PSST!! THE PRESIDENT HAS GENITAL WARTS ... PASS IT ON"

2008-11-21T09:14:00.001+10:00

Where's the love?

PENNE?

2008-11-20T07:41:00.005+10:00

It's life Jim, but not as we know it ...

A MAN caught by police with his penis in a pasta sauce jar was still pleasuring himself while resisting arrest, a court has been told.

Police thought he might have a weapon because they saw him doing something with his hands in his lap, the Herald said.

Instead, they found him partially clothed with his genitals in a jar, a police statement said.

Jar jar bonking.

From 1979, Amii Stewart “Knock On Wood”

THIS YOGHURT KILLS BABIES

2008-11-19T12:38:00.011+10:00

I wrote this a while back (October 2007) on a blog that no longer exists (an early effort), however, in light of poor old Andrew’s mournful whining today about poor old Kevin Andrews, an apparently “cautious and deep[ly] Christian” fellow and an “honest man”, I thought it an apt and dandy time for a recycle …

Oh, those were the days, my friends, those were the days …

We thought they'd never end.

THIS YOGHURT KILLS BABIES (REDUX)

On the ABC television program "Insiders" of August 5, 2007, host Barrie Cassidy interviewed Kevin Andrews, the current Federal Minister for Immigration about his decision to deport Dr Mohamed Haneef on the basis of allegations that Haneef had been mucking it up and hooning about with some of those despicable terrorists we're forever being 'lerted and 'larmed about. Of course, most of these allegations have now been widely discredited and dismissed, and the good Minister Andrews in his desperately clumsy attempts to convince us all that his accusations were justified continues to reveal himself to be a man whose grey matter appears to comprise little else than a few dusty tumbleweeds and a blowfly.

And, aside from those pesky Indian doctors, Andrews ain’t too keen on foreign black folks either.

However, at the tail end of the interview, Cassidy began to ask Andrews about another matter entirely ...

Broadcast: 05/08/2007

BARRIE CASSIDY: I also read this morning that you are an adviser and an honorary patron to the radical - as it's described in the newspaper - radical pro-life group Life Decisions International. Is that true?

KEVIN ANDREWS: Look, I've been a patron, the Americans used the word "honorary adviser" because in America a patron is someone who pays money. I've been a patron of a pro-life organisation for about 10 years.

BARRIE CASSIDY: This group advocates economic boycotts against companies producing contraceptive pills. Is that something that you support?

KEVIN ANDREWS: Can I say, I'm a patron. I'm not involved and have never been involved in the day-to-day operation of the organisation. I'm, you know, patron of a variety of organisations.

BARRIE CASSIDY: But as a patron you lend your support to that organisation?

KEVIN ANDREWS: That's right.

BARRIE CASSIDY: And you wouldn't put your name to it unless you supported their tactics, and their tactics are to support an economic boycott against companies like GlaxoSmithKline, for example.

KEVIN ANDREWS: It's a free world, Barrie. People can advocate what they like. But as far as I'm aware, there's nothing illegal involved. As I said...

BARRIE CASSIDY: Nothing illegal about an economic boycott but it's something that you clearly support otherwise you wouldn't put your name to it.

KEVIN ANDREWS: Look, the bottom line is that this is an organisation which is pro-life. Everybody knows I'm pro-life. I'm patron of an organisation that's pro-life.

BARRIE CASSIDY: And pro-economic boycotts.

KEVIN ANDREWS: Well, as to the way in which they advocate a pro-life outcome, that's fine.

BARRIE CASSIDY: I'm just curious, one thing - what have they got against Walt Disney? Why are they demanding a boycott against Walt Disney?

KEVIN ANDREWS: (laughs) As I said, I'm not involved in their day-to-day operations. I'm a patron of it. I'm not running away from that. It's been on my declaration of interests forever and a day or ever since I've been a patron of it. That's that.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Thanks for your time this morning.

KEVIN ANDREWS: My pleasure.

Walt Disney aside, that Lion King of theirs having been long revealed to be queerer than a carpentry joint tacked together by someone with St.Vitus' dance, Life Decisions International also appear to be dead-set opposed to that infamous "culture of death" concept known as carpet on floors, listing among their "boycott targets", the companies Carpet One, Flooring America, Flooring Canada, and Flooring One.

Now, I know nothing of carpets, plush rugs never before having struck me as particularly sinister, but, perhaps summat's afoot aboot that lump of piles on my floor which has yet to shew it's evil intentions.

But why on earth would the poor old Coach Dairy Goat Farm of Pine Farms, New York be in their sights?

What have they got against a decent lump of curd?

NOT "THE ENGLISH PATIENT"

2008-11-18T13:50:00.007+10:00

I’m wandering back to work from the CBD and I pass a door leading upstairs to a bar of some sort. On the wall next to the otherwise unadorned entrance is a small poster advertising what is no doubt the chief attraction of this most salubrious establishment of malty excellence …

“Beer & Breasts Fridays”

Now, despite an oft-indulged penchant for the occasional cheap jug, I passed this unique enticement by (it is only Tuesday, after all), however, in that one brief moment did I come to realise that Brisbane, my adopted home these last 3 years, can now lay claim to be the one true spiritual home of worldly sophisticates everywhere …

And somewhat in that same veiny cup …

This movie looks bloody awful.

From 2008, "Bitch Slap", trailer, directed by Rick Jacobson

...

I must see it.

...

And this just looks plain silly ...

From 2008, "Machine Girl" trailer, directed by Noboru Iguchi

I! WANT! A! TICKET! NOW!

VIRTUAL PANADOL FRIDAY

2008-11-14T13:08:00.002+10:00

Talk about a filthy frame of mind …

I’m holding the elevator door open for a couple of guys who are only a few steps away. Polite thing to do, I reckon. They get to the elevator and stand outside the door, peering in, as if in awe that it is open. So I say …

“Either get in or feel free to loiter, but I’m going and I’m going now”.

So in they get. In a somewhat sheepish fashion, shall we say.

Yes, I know.

And while I’m at it, if this thing actually happened (which I very much doubt), it’s just a damn shame they didn’t pull the trigger and blow his ugly fucking face off. Wearing a hairstyle like that in public should be a criminal offence punishable by death anyway. What a silly little cockhead.

Anyhow, this clip is from an age when women with “attitude” (Hello Granma Madge, Pink, et al) didn’t have to throw themselves about in front of a camera like so many Z-grade porn-zombies in order to get a little attention …

Yummy.

From 1987, Siouxsie & The Banshees “The Passenger”

DEAD MEN'S FORESKINS

2008-11-14T09:05:00.008+10:00

I'm not one for petitions and such. Political activism is not my style, nor do I wish to make it so. An occasional letter to a newspaper, this blog, and commenting on a few others (see Blogroll) is as far as I could be bothered to go. I have a minimum of readers (anywhere from a couple to about 30 on any given day), and that suits me just fine as I have a “real” job to do and need to do it in order to eat, and endless back-and-forth bantering in the manner of a “your-muvver-wears-army-boots”, biggus dickus pissing contest up the walls of a virtual and intangible world would very possibly entice me to take up bashing puppies* as a means of relief.

I have a life and wish to live it, unhindered by the witless blatherings of ideological idiots from all sides of the coin, political and religious, whose sole purpose in life appears to be fapping and farting about in an obsessive-compulsive manner tediously trying to "correct the thinking" of their so-called "opponents" in righteousness.

Don't darken my fucking towels and I won't darken yours. Understand?

However, moved, nay, shaken to the very core of my withered and hateful so-called “lefty” soul by Jack Marx's blog of November 14, 2008, I have taken the examples he has so generously provided, and added a brief preamble to what is, essentially, a petition that should be presented to an individual who appears to be making herculean efforts to prove himself a cockless and deluded, dribbling little moron.

Feel free to pinch it, adapt it or revise these words in any manner you wish and use them for your own commie-pinko, gay-loving, foetus-killing revolutionary purposes ...

Viva what-fucking-ever.

*A figure of speech. Get a fucking grip, tools.

DEAR SENATOR CONROY,

We, the undersigned, wish to draw your attention to what we feel is material, freely available to all and sundry, both in print and via the electronic media, which is highly unsuitable in nature not only for adults, but for the children of this nation over whom it is our prime responsibility in life to protect from such disgusting and pernicious filth.

This material, examples of which are provided below (a) encourages and approves of rape for profit (b) the disfiguring of the female body (c) dismemberment (d) homophobia and the murder of homosexuals (e) the wholesale slaughter of boys and women (f) the torture of animals (g) mariticide (h) gang rape and uxoricide (i) genital mutilation and trading and profiting from same (j) cannibalism (k) infanticide (l) child abuse by assault and battery (m) incest.

This material is currently disseminated, craftily disguised as "teaching" or "moral instruction", in Sunday schools and churches across the nation, high schools and universities, public retreats and private homes. It is available, uncensored and unrestricted, in book stores, public libraries, school libraries, reading rooms, hotel and motel rooms, and it can be instantly accessed via computer in any room or home that has an internet connection, whether dial-up or broadband.

We call upon you to investigate this matter post-haste, as a matter of extreme urgency, and to take any and all appropriate steps available to you in your current capacity as the responsible senator to put an end to the dissemination of such material as this, which, in our opinion as responsible and respectable citizens of this grand, great and fundamentally decent country, may be a potential cause of extreme trauma and lasting psychological damage, not to mention a probable motivating factor in future criminal activity to and by our nation's most precious resource, our children.

a) The encouragement and approval of rape for profit:

If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives. - Deuteronomy 22:28-29

(b) Dismemberment:

With the reward he got for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. - Acts 1:8

(c) The willful disfigurement of the female body:

If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity. - Deuteronomy 25:11-12

(d) Homophobia and the murder of homosexuals:

If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads. - Leveticus 20:13

(e) The wholesale and motiveless slaughter of boys, girls and women:

“Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.” - Numbers 31:17-18

(f) The torture of animals:

So he went out and caught three hundred foxes and tied them tail to tail in pairs. He then fastened a torch to every pair of tails, lit the torches and let the foxes loose in the standing grain of the Philistines..- Judges 15:4-5

(g) Mariticide:

But Jael, Heber’s wife, picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to him while he lay fast asleep, exhausted. She drove the peg through his temple into the ground, and he died. - Judges 4:21

(h) Gang rape, uxoricide and subsequent dismemberment:

But the men would not hearken to him: so the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go. Then came the woman in the dawning of the day, and fell down at the door of the man’s house where her lord was, till it was light. And her lord rose up in the morning, and opened the doors of the house, and went out to go his way: and, behold, the woman his concubine was fallen down at the door of the house, and her hands were upon the threshold. And he said unto her, Up, and let us be going. But none answered. Then the man took her up upon an ass, and the man rose up, and gat him unto his place. And when he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel. - Judges 19:25-29

(i) Genital mutilation and the trading and profiting from same:

David and his men went out and killed two hundred Philistines. He brought their foreskins and presented the full number to the king so that he might become the king’s son-in-law. Then Saul gave him his daughter Michal in marriage. - 1 Samuel 18:27

(j) Cannibalism:

“Come and gather together for the supper of the great God, that you may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, both small and great.” - Revelation 19:17-18

So we boiled my son, and ate him. And I said to her on the next day, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him’; but she has hidden her son.” - 2 Kings 6:29

(k) Infanticide:

Happy the one who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock! .- Psalms 137:9

(l) Child abuse by assault and battery:

Do not withhold correction from a child, for if you beat him with a rod, he will not die. You shall beat him with a rod, and deliver his soul from hell. .- Proverbs 23:13-14

(m) Incest:

And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth: Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. - Genesis 19:31-35

Thank you for your kind attention in this matter, and we look forward to your prompt response.

Yours Sincerely, etcetera.

TIMBER FALLS

2008-11-13T12:25:00.006+10:00

Two new "horror" films (straight to DVD) currently available for rental ... give "Insanitarium" the flick (it has a performance from Peter Stormare that's hammier than a smallgoods smokehouse) and head straight for "Timber Falls" ...

An effective, efficient little chiller, "Timber Falls" takes a swag of what, by now, are well-trod "horror" cliches (a young couple; the woods; cabin; nut-sack crackers) and manages to put a fresh spin on them by virtue of (1) a coherent script (2) believable motivations for the actions of the characters, and (3) excellent performances, most notably from Beth Broderick as Ida and the always superb Nick Searcy as Clyde.

Set in the United States yet filmed in Romania, the film is nothing profound or ground-breaking by any means (it did remind me, thematically at least, of Jack Ketchum's short novel* "Right To Life"), but there are far worse ways to spend a lazy weekend afternoon with a few beers and a bag of chips, believe me.

And, thankfully, it eschews supernatural mumbo-jumbo (wanna know how to deal with pesky spirits? ... Get out of the house and run the fuck away) and the tiresome, mindless excesses of the slasher/torture-porn genre** so popular these days with those spotty little tools who, until they can get around to dipping their denuded wicks into an actual woman, seem to enjoy watching women get killed as a way of getting themselves all gooey in their sagging arse-crack pants.

"Giglio doesn’t quite seem able to decide what his tone is, incongruously mixing goofy redneck humor with harrowing scenes of intense pain, but horror fans should dig it nonetheless — I did. Not recommended for the devoutly religious, moralistic scolds or anyone with a sensitive stomach." Luke Y. Thompson - L.A. Weekly

*I will not call it a "novella". I loathe that word.

**There are nasty bits, but the "Saw" and "Hostel" franchises, it ain't.

WONDERS NEVER CEASE

2008-11-12T15:05:00.004+10:00

Andrew Bolt reckons Obama weren't raised black, he were raised right, er, white.

One of Andy's simpering simians (Paul of Hervey Bay- Wed 12 Nov 08 (02:16pm) reckons ...

"Andrew, it is a fact that Obama has Black skin. When people meet him on the street they assume he is a black man."

Fancy that ...

ANAPHYLAXIS ALERT!

2008-11-12T12:38:00.003+10:00

CAUTION: MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF NUTS.

$!!!!##@!~!!! ...

2008-11-12T08:53:00.002+10:00

So I wander up to the local Blockbuster on the weekend ... they've changed their system for television series rental. Instead of one disc at a time (3 or 4 episodes), you can now rent an ENTIRE SEASON for six and a half bucks a week.

WOO-HOO!

Having heard good things about it, but having not bothered when it was on free-to-air television earlier last year or whenever, because, when it comes to free-to-air television these days to do so is a waste of time, I rent season one of the “re-imagined” "Battlestar Galactica" ...

Season one, disc one, episode one ... it begins ...

"Previously on Battlestar Galactica ..."

Previously?

PREVIOUSLY?!

WHADDYA FUCKING MEAN, PREVIOUSLY?! THERE IS NO PREVIOUSLY!!!!

SEASON ONE, DISC ONE, EPISODE ONE!!

ONE!! ONE!! ONE!!!!!!!!!! O-N-E!!!!!!!!!

Oh, you mean you DIDN'T put the pilot episode on?

....

You miserable, tightarse, filthy little fuckers.

I hope you all die of cancer.

FELIXUNGERALIA

2008-11-11T12:04:00.007+10:00

Welcome to the anal-retentive capitol of the world. Mixing up the best of a spotless Singapore street with a delightfully German sense of humour, may we now present to you the funnest place you’ll ever visit …

SYDNEY!!

A place whose leaders may well be utterly incapable of running a health system, a public transport system, an education system or pretty much anything else that may actually matter to you, but hey, godammit, they have ways of keepin’ ya tidy!

... Police officers have been encouraged to issue fines of up to $400 for washing car windscreens at intersections or putting up posters on power poles ...

... NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione, who is championing the initiative, said it is not a revenue raising exercise, instead insisting it is what the community wants to feel safe ...

... Mr Scipione said he ranked this with other "quality of life issues" such as noise, car hoons and alcohol-related crime. People being approached in their cars at intersections or walking through streets "just covered" in posters may feel like they are in a dangerous situation, he said. So the crackdown is about "making people feel like they are being looked after"...

1. I've never felt threatened by a poster. I've never walked past a poster and had it whisper at me, "Gotta fag? Spare change? Wanna buy some hash?" Even when the poster has been half-unstuck from it's place of stuckness, it's never thrust a copy of the Watchtower at me or tried to talk me into taking a personality test. It's a poster.

2. And I've never felt in a dangerous situation because I may have been walking through a street "covered" in posters, especially if the posters are advertising, for example, Richard E. Grant in "My Fair Lady", or Andre Rieu or "Happy Feet". They’re posters, for Christ’s sake, not suicide bombers.

3. "Making people feel like they are being looked after" means giving them the impression that something is being done for the greater good when, in fact, nothing is being done at all. This is the New South Wales state government’s main stock-in-trade now, and has been for the better part of a decade. Hell, before I moved up to Brisbane, we used to laugh at Queenslanders, but now Queenslanders are laughing at Sydneysiders. All the time. Even the Queenslanders who’ve spent the last 200 years marrying their first cousins and giving birth to kiddies who’d make Leatherface look like George Clooney are pissing themselves. These days, tell someone interstate that you’re from Sydney, they’ll just put an arm around your shoulder and say, “You poor bugger … can I buy you a beer?”

4. Scipione's an insufferable cockhead. But then, we already knew that.

There's been mention of this on radio as well over the last few days, and most people don’t seem to be the least bit bothered by posters advertising bands, shows and exhibitions or cool and groovy "happenings" where the young folk go to take drugs and get themselves knocked up and give birth to disabled quadruplets nine months later and wind up on welfare while dad grows one of those stringy little black beards that looks like a leper’s pubic hair and he’s got that sunken chest thing happening (all the better for tossing a salad if you run out of Tupperware bowls!) and it’s tattooed all over with the names of his kiddies, who are all dead now anyway cause mum and pop locked them in a cupboard for 6 months and went on a Tim Tam and Kettle Chip bender. Is that the problem, Scip?

Although, there are a few who say such posters are “visual pollution” …

But so is Bert Newton’s shiny new face and hairplugs and those bloody things are all over the place; on the sides of buses and in newspapers and magazines and television advertisements which pop up when you least expect it and send you tootling up the hall in horror to shit out your stomach lining (fifth time since you got home, you’ve lost a kilo and half in two ad breaks and your arse feels like it’s been scraped up and down a gravel driveway).

Visual pollution?

There's Meriton apartment blocks.

And teenagers with zits.

There’s fat people with backsides the size of battered Volkswagens and faces like dropped bread'n'butter puddings, teeth the colour and shape of cloves, and fatrolls that could tyre a Mack truck and cushion it up the Andes with nary a rattle. They’re pretty unpleasant to look at.

There's Belinda Neal and John Della-Bosca, and Piers Akerman. There’s Michael Costa, and Joe Tripodi and Eddie Obeid and Milton Orkopoulos. Horrible, horrible, ugly people. Millions of them.

Hell, look, life is full of really fucking ugly people and they’re all around us. Every time you go outside and up the street for a walk or turn on a television or look at a newspaper, there they are.

Horribly ugly ugly people being horribly ugly all the horribly ugly time.

Even people who, in olden times, weren’t renowned for their horrible ugliness, have gone horribly ugly now, having spent the last several years sticking pins in various parts of their noggins out of some deranged desire to look like a land-dwelling puffer fish.

The only way to reduce visual pollution in our cities and towns is not to ban the glueing of posters to power poles, but to kill all the horribly ugly people at the moment of conception. It would be the most effective way of reducing the number of media magnates, mining magnates, stockbrokers, bankers, music industry lawyers, real estate agents, and has-been actors and actresses, not to mention putting a stop to any of them breeding a posse of horribly ugly offspring, who nearly always wind up being uglier than a ten-gallon-hat full of cane toad colons anyway.

Scrape 'em, bag 'em, flush 'em.

Birds gotta fly, fish gotta eat.

Andrew Scipione’s idea of visual pollution. A “street poster” from 1995. I have one of these in my possession, purchased in Perth from the venue and signed by Lydia Lunch and Rowland S. Howard. Visual pollution, my arse.

HOW I FEEL ABOUT I.T. CONSULTANTS PT.3

2008-11-11T07:59:00.002+10:00

No further explanation required.