My TV is spying on me... and it's really, really bored.

Idiots all over Australia are pissing their pants in anger over their Samsung Smart TV’s ability to recordprivate conversations and send the information to a “third party.”  I’m actually surprised that anyone who had a voice-activated television would be bothered to complain about anything, to be honest. 

It all sounds a bit scary, and even people who have never read George Orwell’s 1984 will be complaining about Big Brother (and how Lawson should never have cheated with Kat, and like, what’s going on with Leo?).  But what they’re not really getting is the fact that “Big Brother” has been recording their conversations for years so they can advertise straight to you.  You think Google doesn’t collect, use and sell your search history?  The advertising on the sidebar of Gmail literally changes within keystrokes depending on what you’re emailing someone about.  Those “recommended for you” items that appear on your Facebook wall aren’t coincidental either – funnily enough, they’re linked into your social media accounts.  If you change your status to “just got back from walking the dog! LOL!!!!111” you will most likely see ads trying to sell you shit for your dog, ads trying to sell you shit for walking, and a massive crowbar across the face from me.  People really don’t give a fuck about you shuffling around the block for 10 minutes while texting your friend and carrying a bag full of dog poo at the same time.  And if they do, then they are probably already being advertised to about that.  "HALF PRICE DOG POO FOR NEXT 48 HOURS!" 

When you record an episode of I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, the information it gathers might be that you’re a fan of reality shows, celebrity shows and are slightly retarded, and recommend whichever version of the Kardashians is on.  The Smart TV is the next inevitable step – it’s just being more obvious about it.  While it will analyse your viewing habits, it will also pick up on some topics of conversation, so when you’re on the couch discussing your upcoming holiday, which sports team you like, the fact that you’re out of milk or how you need a new crowbar, your telly is paying just enough attention to pick out the important words so the next time you use social media, you’ll have ads and recommendations for flight details, the official Twitter feed of @sports_team_official, some bonus Fly Buy points for buying Coles brand moo juice and a link to my blog. 

Just click the link, I need thehits.

If you’re seriously worried about all of your private information being collected, I’m afraid you’re probably too late.  But just for your own safety, you should burn your computer and phone; deactivate your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram; lose your throne as king of Four Square; let go of your Flappy Bird record; sell your Farmville farm; and for fuck’s sake, stop talking to your television, you creepy, lazy fuck.  Use your remote like the athletes among us.

My friends don't do this. My friends suck.

Whenever I'm at a concert, there are always people in the crowd who are intent on filming the band on their mobile phone or tablet, probably so they can really impress their friends later on by showing them a video recording of a wall of sound and feedback.

This actually happened to me today

I was walking through Big W on my lunch break today, and I had four people ask me where things were. I explained to them all that I did not work there. Two people apologised, one said, "You should work here, then you could help me, because I can't find anything in this shop," and the fourth one advised me that I shouldn't go into Big W if I'm wearing a blue shirt. 

I told them that I was actually in there to buy a different coloured shirt, but kept being interrupted by other customers that I hadn't had time to get one yet. She advised that I should also get a different tie, because it wouldn't look good on a red shirt. I told her that I was going to buy a black shirt, which she thought was a better idea (phew), and then I proceeded to tell her about how I usually take a short-cut through David Jones to get back to work, and how I was now going to have to go the long way so people didn't mistake me for a David Jones employee if I was in the store with a black shirt on, which meant I was going to have to walk past the Cancer Council desk, and every time I walk past them, they talk to me and suck me in and make me feel guilty for not donating money, and I feel obligated to give them an ongoing monthly (tax deductible) donation of $28 per month, which I normally keep going for three months before cancelling it.

I explained that I didn't really have that kind of expendable cash right now, to be spending over $100 on a shirt that I didn't really want. I was kind of hoping that she'd give me some money, but she didn't. She just patted me on the arm and walked away.

 Big W didn't have what I wanted, by the way. I did manage to track down an employee, and she said, "No, we don't have that."

 It was still a pretty good lunch break though.

On The (Dark, Dark) Road

Canberra Appreciation Month is slipping away faster than a hotted-up Excel (lowered, rims, No Fear sticker and Southern Cross seat covers) on the parkway (until the speed camera bits), so it’s time to celebrate some of the natural beauty of Australia’s capital city.

One of Canberra’s wonders of the modern age is Hindmarsh Drive, a naturally occurring road that links Weston Creek to Fyshwick.  So if you’re ever after some hardcore porn  on VHS and some Kingsley’s chicken, Hindy is your best bet (again, watch out for the speed cameras).

For years, scientists have studied Hindmarsh Drive, hoping to uncover its magical secrets that allow it to transform from a normal road during the day, to the darkest, most soul-sucking motorway in the history of everything everywhere.  Hindmarsh takes the light out of anything that dares to face it.  True fact: there are no fireflies in Canberra, because Hindmarsh Drive sucked the light out of them.  There are only flies. 

The fear of having the earth sucked into a black hole and destroyed forever is very, very real, and it is happening right now in Canberra.  Stephen Hawking can’t save us (or breathe on his own), so it’s up to us, the citizens of the capital, to fight the good fight and do what Bruce Willis did in Armageddon.  Do what that crazy drunk guy did in Independence Day.  What Leonardo di Caprio did in Titanic (other than Kate Winslet).  Do what Atreyu did in the Never Ending Story.  We need sacrifice to stop The Nothing from taking over Canberra's inner southern suburbs.

Or, you know, someone could just donk a couple of dirty great light poles along the sides of the road.  Either way.

My coinundrum

People drop coins; these things happen to the best of us, as a general rule. When someone is receiving change at a shop, restaurant, bar etc, occasionally the fingers don’t always agree with the brain, and a handful of silver hits the ground. Whenever I am in the vicinity, the change-dropping frequency increases exponentially.

When this happens, two things occur:

1. I bend down to help the person collect their coins. Instead of being gracious for my assistance, the dropper of the coins will snatch each precious silver piece that I hold out to them and eye me with suspicion as if I’ve just pulled off a master heist to relieve them of fifteen cents. That’s right, dickhead, I carry around FAKE ten-cent pieces that I subtly use to replace real coins whenever someone drops their change. I have a funny feeling that a fake ten-cent coin would cost around eighty cents. Ocean’s 11 this is not.

2. A single coin lands on its edge and rolls past me, and continues to merrily defy physics as it glides along. As I watch it, I know that I have to stop its progress, and a conundrum presents itself to me - how far am I willing to chase this coin? The fact is, the money isn’t mine; I don’t even know the person to whom it belongs, so I don’t really have a vested interest in it, but the dropper has seen me watch the coin roll, so I feel compelled to do something about it. The coin is now a few metres into its happy little journey, so I take two quick strides after it, and bend down to snatch it up. The coin suddenly makes a 90-degree turn and I clutch at thin air and am forced to take another step or two to catch up with it. Finally, I’m able to corner the silver, and pick it up to return it to its owner. There they are, about eighteen metres away, watching me awkwardly chase a coin through a shopping centre.

Feeling stupid, I nonetheless give the coin back to the person who dropped it, someone who probably wouldn’t give a shit if they dropped twenty cents, let alone chase it for a half-marathon, let alone chase someone else’s coin. As I return it to them, I will attempt to be uber-casual and instead of handing the money back to them, the coin will drop to the ground once again. In a perfect world, we’d just laugh it off before having a beer together. In this world though, I usually dig through my own pockets for a coin and give it to them so they don’t have to chase theirs again. Sometimes, those things just need to be set free.

Shit. These coins have adopted the Phalanx formation. I have no chance

Horses, start your engines

It’s that time of year again that the nation stops doing whatever it's doing so we can watch a couple of horses prance around a field whilst carrying a dwarf atop their back. If there’s a better Australian tradition, then it means I’ve forgotten about Australia Day, the day after Australia Day, any day where there’s a cricket match on, and every other fucking day except for Melbourne Cup Day.

This year, the awesomeness of the Cup extends itself to the famewhores of the United States of Merica, as Sarah Jessica Parker intends on making an appearance. For a $40,000 appearance fee. To spruik her new movie. That no one will see. That she received a few million dollars to appear in. That is a piece of shit.

It is nice that SJP gets to attend the Cup this year though – (a) it’s most likely the last time anyone will have to hear her fucking name again, and (b) she gets to be among people of her own disposition.



There is also a rumour that Kim Kardashian is also going to be there, perhaps to form the back half of a pantomime horse (with Sarah Parker up front), if her schedule of doing … uuuh… allows it. This is a genius move from the Cup Public Relations people, as they try to tap into the elusive “vapid 15-year old slut” market, as they are the only people who would think that Kardashian has any actual value, other than Kardashian herself (another easy $45,000 for her). Kim will also be unveiling her new perfume range. That smells like her last perfume range. That she had no part of making. That she doesn’t wear. For those who won’t be able to be there in person, we’ll just have to make do with watching her on all four of her identical reality TV shows.

But by far the biggest name appearing this year is Brynne Edelstein. Oh wait, I mean “the biggest fuckwit.” I hate this old bag and I hope she gets eaten by a rabid horse. In fact, I hate this whole fucking day – why do we have "A-List" "Celebrities" from America and Cirque du Soleil acrobats doing hour-long trapeze shows in a “tent” made out of diamonds, with a butterfly house being set up by Myer? WHAT THE FUCK DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH FUCKING HORSES?

The only sensible thing that happened this year in an attempt to drum up some national pride for the Melbourne Cup was some champion deciding to make a movie about the Cup. They called it The Cup. It had that bloke from The Castle in it. Unfortunately it looked shit boring and fairly depressing and was about jockeys. No one saw it. Because it was boring and about jockeys. And not really funny at all.

But who am I to piss all over this great day? Australians, grab yourself a chicken leg (the traditional meal for this traditional day), head to the TAB, pop on a stupid hat and get acceptably drunk at work. My money’s on Sarah Jessica Parker, but only if she’s being ridden by the guy from The Castle. Even though he’s not funny any more. Except on those ads.

Neigh

It’s the first Tuesday of November, so it’s time to buy a new frock, donk some feathers in your head and donate $20 to the nearest bookie, all in the name of celebrating the “Race that Stops the Nation,” the Melbourne Cup.

This day fucking astounds me, honestly. For those not in the know, the Melbourne Cup involves a bunch of horses who run a lap of a racing track, you know, kind of like every other fucking horse race in history. The winning jockey is named a national treasure and Australia’s greatest athlete, the horse is given the good bits of hay and immortalised on a Carlton Draught stubbie lid trivia question, and the cashed-up alcoholic dickwhacker owner is declared a saint who can speak to animals, when all they really did was buy a fucking horse who happened to run slightly faster than all the other horses in the race.

The day itself used to hold some kind of prestige; now it’s an excuse for drunk sluts to be drunk sluts from 8am, and if you haven’t spewed on yourself, lost a shoe and hooked up with eight pissed fuckmuppets who are at the races for the sole reason to hook up with drunk sluts, then you’ve failed, and you might as well just stick to drinking the dregs of champagne from bottles that you “found” outside corporate tents. Nothing warms my cold, dead heart more than seeing drunk bogans at the races leering at a television camera during the evening news.

The only reason the race actually stops the nation is due to the fact that a lot of people around Australia are quite literally forced to have a punt on the outcome of the race, so there’s at least $2 of vested interest there. I also remember during each year of school, students had to sit down and observe the yearly custom of watching a bunch of horses run around a field. It may not have left a glowing reminder of a “great Australian tradition” in my memory (other than seeing my primary school teachers crying because they bet their yearly salary on a horse that probably still hasn’t finished), but it did inspire me to think that a more interesting way to run the race would be if half the horses went in the opposite direction to the others, and the jockeys carried morning stars and cricket bats.

I’m not saying the day is a complete waste of everyone’s time though, far from it. If you enjoy the Cup, good on you. If you’re one of those dickheads that makes the news because they slapped $250,000 on a trifecta, only to have one stupid fuckbag horse come in fourth and so you lost it all, good on you. If you have a punt and win, good on you. If you enjoy shrieking at brightly coloured midgets sitting on thoroughbred nags, good on you. Just leave me out of it while my I am forced to drink beer, eat chicken sandwiches and ignore my phone calls at work.

I went for a job as a blacksmith the other day and the guy asked me if I had any experience shoeing horses.
“No”, I replied, “but I once told a donkey to fuck off”.

small, annoying item #102,427,812

Why the fuck do places with double doors always have one super-glued shut? And why is it always the one that I try to go through?

Pop Quiz, Hotshot...

Back in my day, a week would rarely go by without hearing about kids falling off their roof because they were trying to “fly like Superman” or being admitted to hospital with missing eyes after making ninja weapons out of rusty corrugated iron, gaffa tape and a chainsaw blade. We would risk life and limb just for that one moment that our friends would say, “Fuck, Mister Evil Breakfast; I swear you actually turned into Spider-Man just then. Also, would you like some help to straighten out your spine?” I would spit out a mouthful of blood and respond, “I fucking am Spider-Man,” before passing out.

I haven’t heard anything even remotely like that for years; the worst hijinx that kids are getting up to these days is posting “YOUR FAT!!!11 LOLZ” on some fat kid’s Facebook page, throwing an online Pokemon ball at a ‘friend’ they’ve never met and then “pwning” some “newbs” on World of Warcraft in a universe that doesn’t exist.

In an attempt to bring back senseless violence and carefree danger to the masses, I am going to pick up where I left off since stabbing my neighbour with a sword (an old fence paling) at age 12 in a dramatic recreation of what would happen if He-Man and My Little Pony ever met. As an adult, I possess the means, the money and the alcohol to surpass the backyard ninjas and pirates (and He-Man if his power sword was indeed a splintery old piece of wood) of my youth - I can become any fucking hero I want to be.

I bring to you, dear readers, and drivers of Canberra: SPEED: The Reality Event. Speed was a 1994 movie starring Keanu Reeves (winner of the Mister Evil Breakfast Award For Being The Most Awesome Human Being Ever [MEBAFBTMAHBE]) and Sandra Bullock (Mister Evil Breakfast Award For Being Fairly Hot Even Though She’s A Bit Old And Has Had To Resort To Doing “Based On A True Story” Movies [MEBAFBFHETSABOAHHTRTDBOATSM]).

The basic premise of the film is that there’s a bus that can’t drop below 55 mph or it will explode and kill the guy from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

To play Speed, I was required to don a pair of awesome sunglasses, work out for a bit (not too long though, I got tired and bored pretty quickly) and hop into my car; a 2005 Ford Focus (for the uninitiated, it’s basically the same as a rally car - it has a similar engineering TAFE course) and hit the streets.

55 miles per hour is 88.51 kilometres per hour, by the way. That’s pretty quick to maintain, and on the day that I decided to play Speed: The Reality Game, I still had some shit to do; I wasn’t going to let a bomb get in the way of me hitting up McDonalds, going for a beer and picking up some ill-thought out Ebay purchase from the Post Office.

Stupidly, I hit the magic 55mph coming out of my driveway, so I really put myself under some pressure from the get-go – could I somehow get through the Maccas drive-thru, order a large Big Mac meal, 6 nuggets and a hot apple pie whilst maintaining close to 90kmh? Turns out I couldn’t, but I was honestly let down by the fucktards at the McDonalds window, who not only technically blew me up, but also lost the lives of the passengers in the car in front of me, one behind, and at least one person in the restaurant. To top things off, they didn’t even give me my fries. In all fairness, I was yelling “I’ve got a bomb! I’ve got a bomb!” into the speaker box, which probably scared the Maccas workers a little and may have caused some unnecessary panic.

Driving whilst eating a Big Mac (and texting a few mates) at 90kmh turned out to be harder than I thought, and I “exploded” another few times on my way to the pub. I almost had a newfound respect for Sandra Bullock until I remembered that she made Miss Congeniality 2 and quickly changed my mind; in fact, I wish she had exploded in my car with me, or at the very least held my little tub of McDonalds sauce so I could dunk my McNuggets.

After a quick pint (it was three), I was ready to hit the road again, in a much better frame of mind to navigate the streets at close to 100 clicks. My game plan from here on in was to maintain speed at all time, lest I lose the last third of my McDonalds Coke to a fiery death. Leaving the pub immediately presented me with an issue as I came across a red light, so I did the right thing by the world and put my head down and sped through it. It was nice to hear other motorists cheering me on with honking horns and raising their middle finger in the universal sign for “You’re number one!” as I careered through the busy intersection. I maintained speed for another 10 minutes or so until I became bored with driving straight down the highway (keep in mind I didn’t have Sandra Bullock in her prime to keep me company) so I headed back into the suburbs to spice things up a bit.

Short story even shorter, I ended up “dousing” the “bomb” in someone’s backyard swimming pool (via three fences and after running over a dog) about four minutes later. I was hoping to inspire a new wave of children to copy some violent movies and fill the hospital emergency ward with injuries involving match-bombs and home-made nunchuks. But as the media caught wind of the events of the day, they thwarted my plans and ensured that the only injuries the youth of today will receive will be getting their chubby fingers caught in the middle of video game discs.

another day, another crowbar

I am not, at time of writing, a celebrity. And I will tell you why – it has nothing to do with talent or looks or marketing. It is because I am not a whore.

Celebrities go on chat shows with Oprah and Ellen and Letterman and talk about what’s going on in their life. I have no problem with rich people doing rich person things, but it’s when they expect applause for every fucking little thing they do, that I get pissed off.

“So what did you do for your holidays?”
“After filming ‘Another Shit Movie 4’, I felt like I needed a break, so I headed to the unspoilt tropical paradise of the Caribbean with my family for a few months. It was just what we needed, you know, swimming with dolphins and relaxing for eighteen hours a day on the beach.”
“Well you thoroughly deserved it; your role ‘Another Shit Movie 4’ is being touted as one of the hardest characters you’ve ever played.”
“That’s right, it was very difficult. I had to do a lot of research, you know, reading and such, to really understand the character. I even met with people who had been through similar experiences to my character and spoke to them about it. Yeah, it was a really tough time.”
*audience applauds*
“Well, you were paid over $10 million to do this film, but it sounds like you really earned your money.”
“Oh definitely. I mean, filming took a couple of weeks, like, five or six weeks. And it was intense. Some of the scenes were really late at night, others were very early in the morning, plus I had to have my make-up and hair done every day – sometimes more than once a day – which was really hard as well.”
“I understand you were injured while filming?”
“Yeah, that’s correct – it’s a really intense scene on a boat where I fall into the water. And the water was really cold. When I fell in, the cold water shocked me so much that I thrashed around a bit too much - I went into shock - and scratched my arm on the protective harness I was wearing. But you know, these things happen and after a bit of time back on land, I was like, 'You know what? Let’s just film this scene.'”
*audience applauds*
“You also had a baby recently, am I right?”
“That’s right as well – my wife and I recently welcomed our baby Arizona D’Artagnan Makynzie.”
*audience applauds*
“Thanks, thanks a lot. It was a really special time.”
“And how is Arizona going with the family?”
“Just great. She is sleeping a few hours a night – “
“Just like you, am I right?”
“—haha yeah, exactly. I mean it’s hard, passing her onto our live-in nanny, but with a yoga-lates class early the next morning, I really do need my eight hours. It's true what they say, being a parent is very hard work. But you know what? I wouldn't change a damn thing.”
*audience applauds*
“You’re preaching to the converted, my friend! Ladies and gentleman, please thank special guest Over Paid Actor!”
*audience applauds*

Won’t Somebody Not Think Of The Children?

Children are the future

I know that children are the future. According to Whitney Houston, if we teach them well, we can let them lead the way.

Fuck that in the ear. Whitney Houston taught us one thing: Crack isn’t as awesome as we first thought.

Every fucking idiot in the world apparently needs to worry about how everything they do, say or touch is “going to affect the children.” Even the foodstuffs that grace the supermarket shelves give me ‘helpful’ information about how eating it will benefit my growing bones and provide me with the energy I need to get through a busy day at school. I am fairly certain at 30 years of age (31 this year, that’s a bit fucking scary), my bones have done all the growing they’re going to do. I’ll start shrinking before I grow any more, but thanks for the help, Sultana Bran. And if I get enough energy to get me through a highly stressful day at school, I think I’d die. School these days is about wagging off maths to smoke in the toilets, Facebooking your way through history class, texting your mates at lunch and spitting and swearing at your teachers the rest of the time.

Don't adults get a look in at anything anymore? Can't we eat something just for the sake of eating it without having to wonder how it is going to help lower my cholesterol or keep me regular? Is that what life has come to for me -worrying about how often I should be taking a crap? At what point did I stop trying to get seventy million different vitamins from a bowl of cereal to get me through a hectic day of sitting around a classroom to needing eighteen tonnes of fibre so I can take a massive dump while thinking about eating a different brand of butter so my heart can cope with the stress of sitting around an office cubicle?

Even worse news for those celebrities amongst us - and anyone can be a celeb these days - you have to watch yourself every fucking second of every fucking day. Whatever you do, don’t get caught having a beer at your local pub – there are kids who look up to you, fucko! Are you trying to turn them into alcoholics?! Don’t you know that kids will do EVERYTHING they see their idols do? Ignore the fact that their idols are probably rich, dumb sluts who got a reality TV show by releasing a sex tape of them and a shit rapper that no one's ever heard of. Everyone needs a role model.

Whether you won Big Brother eight years ago, just got back from a Sumo-wrestler-bench-pressing competition or are in training for a beer-drinking tournament, these kids are looking up to you and you are not allowed to shatter their tiny dreams of how fucking perfect you and the world is.

Because it is. Just ask Whitney.

Just ask her

Brrrring bring

This instalment of angry ranting is for one particular group who walk among us like regular people. They eat the same food, shop at the same Two-Dollar Shops and rent the same DVDs that we do. They’re in our workplaces, at our schools and universities and in our bars.

They are the people who yell “Yuppie!” whenever someone’s mobile phone rings.

To those dickheads, I welcome them to the year 2010; a place in history where you can buy mobile phones for $20 from Woolworths with your groceries.

This is not the 1980s anymore, Yuppie Yellers; everyone from 10-year old kids to 90-year old pensioners have mobile phones and they don't even have an income. The worst part about the Yuppie Yeller is that the only time they stop Googling their own balls on their iPhone is to shriek “Yuppie!” when someone else’s mobile goes off. I wonder if there’s a crowbar protection application they can download? If there is, they’d better do it soon.

Chips

If television has taught me anything, it’s that it’s important to be yourself. Call a spade a spade, wear your hat forwards when everyone else is wearing theirs backwards and read Harry Potter when everyone else is on Twilight.

Why then, are we being taught to do the opposite of that in the world of chips?

Chips, or as they are slowly becoming known, crisps, go well with a couple of beers. I am quite an advocate of a pint and a pack of chips on a lazy Sunday afternoon as the sun beats down with the last rays of warmth for another weekend and I heartily advise that you follow suit. The flavour of chip that you munch while you toast the oncoming week is a highly personal one – they all have their place in the world, even original (or “plain”) flavour. But what happened to me last weekend will shock and annoy you. Well, it annoyed me; you probably won’t give a shit.

I asked for a packet of Cheese n Onion chips; I could see the yellow packet winking at me from behind the bar. Mildly Attractive Bargirl says, “We don’t have Cheese n Onion.” I was shocked. “What do you have, please?” I ask. Mildly Attractive Bargirl lays out the selection of chips on the bar for me to peruse. The shiny foil packages were less bright than I remembered them being, and there was something odd about the labelling. Gone was Cheese n Onion, there wasn’t a Chicken option, Salt n Vinegar was no more and Barbecue flavour was strangely absent. Fuck, even Plain had been replaced. I looked at the chips, then at Mildly Attractive Bargirl and then back to the chips. She shrugged apologetically and continued (in my mind) to mentally undress me.

Vintage Cheddar and Red Onion.
Moroccan Spiced Chicken.
Sea Salt & Balsamic.
Grilled Spare Ribs.
Rock salt.

WHAT. THE. FUCK. I know everyone’s being a massive food-wanker lately and refusing to eat anything that hasn’t been blessed by Jamie Oliver and Matt the Cravat from MasterChef and isn't infused with Wagu goodness on a bed of aioli mash and roasted pig’s dick with pumpkin seeds (organic, please), but these are fucking CHIPS, people. You reach into the packet, grab a few slices of fried potato, shove them in your gob and wipe your hands on your pants. It’s a universal chip eating method; it’s the same way the Queen eats them, the same way the homeless bloke who spits at you at the bus stop eats them, the same way you eat them, the same way I do. It’s a fucking chip, for fuck’s sake. Rock salt? Vintage cheddar? In the real world, it's salt and cheese flavouring.

And for the record, Vintage Cheddar and Red Onion tastes suspiciously like Cheese and Onion. You can imagine the surprise on my face.

Broom broom!

Every time I open a newspaper these days, there are a thousand stories about a Toyota that’s developed some kind of glitch whereby the ABS brakes aren’t bluetoothed to the CPU and therefore the cruise control onboard computer isn’t responding to the manual override commands. Invariably, this means that the car is sent into hyperdrive down a freeway and crashes into a large metal pole. If that was your car, I’d say that such an event would pretty much ruin your day and possibly your pants.

This would never have happened in my day. With my first car, if something in it broke down, it didn’t move. It didn’t grow artificial intelligence and attempt to kill me, it didn’t lock into a GPS signal to try and destroy a government facility, and it didn’t develop self-awareness and a sense of loathing and drive itself off a cliff to end the pain and torture of its own existence. It just didn’t move. The last time I drove it, the radiator blew up and the it shuddered to a steaming halt of not-moving-car-ness. The brakes still worked but the accelerator didn’t; kind of the way God intended it to be.

When you get your licence, you should also get a 1986 Ford Laser. A hatchback with a faded paint job, key marks down the sides, a de-mister that doesn’t work, a tape-deck and a fucked-up driver’s side door lock that requires you to get in through the passenger side. It has a top speed of around 130kph, but anything over 110 makes a horrible noise in the engine and the car begins to shake violently. There are no voice-activated CD changers, no moisture-sensitive windscreen-wipers to clear the rain, no space-aware braking mechanisms, no automatic height-adjusting mirrors, no computer-memorised seat positions, no auto-correct steering and no collision-detecting sensors – this is a car that you have to fucking learn how to drive before you hit the road. God forbid your tilt-sensitive coffee holder misfires and spills your soy mocha latte.

another reason why I hate tennis...

Some whinging little bitch called Bernard has had a whinging bitch about having to play tennis at “way past bedtime.” Sorry, what? Back in my day, seventeen year olds would be able to make it to 2am and then play tennis and still have enough in them to steal a car and thieve newspapers. Maybe this kid just needs to hang out with Andre Agassi some more.

an overdue rant

Sorry for the recent lack of additions to the blog thing – I know how much you depend on me to fill you in on the highlights of the world and I apologise for not giving you frequent updates as to how awesome I am, but I’ve been working on a few outside projects that involve beer and do not relate in any way to being coordinated enough to use a computer.

Things that have annoyed me recently:

TV commercials:

The stupid Ford ad with the chick who’s driving around with her dog and using her voice activated car. I’m sorry, but this is just going too far. Are people that retarded that they can’t drive and adjust the temperature gauge or change CDs at the same time? The only time that talking cars are awesome is if they transform into 50-foot robots or fight crime with David Hasselhoff. And what the fuck kind of CDs does that chick have in her car? “The Best Dog Songs Ever: Volume #4”? I’m also pretty sure that it’s illegal to have a dog unrestrained in the front seat of your car, and even more so if it’s intelligent enough to work the voice controls of your vehicle. Fuck it, Ford should just make a car that is able to be driven by dogs. I’d probably be impressed by that.

Sport:

I still hate Shane Watson. I don’t care how well he’s playing at the moment, I still hate him like I hated Andrew Symonds, like I hate Karmichael Hunt like I hate soccer.

Pop music:

All of it. It’s all rubbish right now. It can all go and get fucked. Whenever I make the mistake of watching Saturday-morning music show (I don’t know which one I watch, it’s hosted by some bright young scamps with good hair and hope for the future), my ear-hairs are greeted by the most absolutely appalling songs I have ever been privy to since I tuned into Video Hits the week before. I try to make an effort to remember the names of the artists, but that information constantly gets replaced by more important things (about dinosaurs), and I doubt that I’ll ever hear the names of any of those people again anyway. Britney Spears brought the “slutty teenage girl” into vogue in 1997. Thirteen years on, nothing has changed; if anything, there are more Spears clones out there than I can poke a stick at. I’ve even got my special poking stick ready to go, sharpened to a point for such an occasion.

Help lines:

Stupid robot voice-activated fucking things. "Press 1 for a kick in the balls, press 2 for a scorpion being shoved into your eyeballs, press 3 for more information about our website, press 4 to have these options repeated." They only ever give you four choices that you can make, and none of them are what you actually rang up about. They also have the most annoyingly-voiced people in the history of the world to speak on them – if they have to have voice recordings to help me through life, it should be the voice of Optimus Prime, Robocop or Sean Connery giving me direction.

File under Shit-On-A-Stick

I have a rather large collection of job application rejection letters that all say the same thing: “Thank you for your application. Unfortunately you were unsuccessful in this instance but your details will be kept on file for future positions.”

Really? You’re going to keep my details on file, along with every other dickhead who applied for a single position within your company?

I can just imagine the director thinking about hiring another person to expand the business. “Cheryl, can you please bring me the ‘not good enough’ files? I want to employ someone who’s a bit shit.” Or maybe, “Cheryl, remember that guy who applied for the sales role? Call him back; I need someone to rub ointment onto my haemorrhoids.”

Banks a lot, you bankers

Organisation has never really been a part of my life. I am, by all definitions of the word, disorganised. I have good intentions, really; one day I will file my bank statements together in chronological order; one day I will take my rubbish out; one day I will iron a shirt instead of giving it two shakes before I put it on. One day I even hope to be early for something. Just once. But I’ll try not to get too far ahead of myself, I think baby steps are the way to go for now.

Due to this lack of organisation, sometimes I run out of money. And by sometimes, I mean fortnightly. It’s not that I lead an extravagant lifestyle – a lot of people would put an extra coat of gold on their salt and pepper shakers, but not me. I’m happy to sleep on a bed that’s stuffed with $50 notes and shower in Moet like regular people. I eat wagu beef stuffed with caviar and abalone and throw it away because I don’t like either caviar or abalone, and I buy a new Cray Supercomputer every time I close an application in Windows. So yes, I am living well below the poverty line to the point that a homeless bloke gave me a few bucks “to catch the bus” the other day. More fool him, I spent it on drugs. Not very good ones though; for $2, the guy I bought heroin from sold me an empty baggie.

Anyway, after a weekend that possibly involved a pint or two too many, I knew I was a smidge short in the old commerce area of my life. Since I’ve already got drunk and bought a guitar online and completely forgot about it until eBay sent me an email congratulating me on my winning bid (true story), I figured I was good for a couple more days of eating Prada handbags and burning Ferraris to keep warm. That’s until I checked my bank thingy on the intergoogleweb and discovered that I’d had a few direct debits slide their way out of my account while I was looking at this ant on my balcony:

Those sneaky bastards at the bank took all my money; so much so that they took more money than I had. That’s quite rude. It’s like a ‘no smoking’ sign on your cigarette break. It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife. It’s. Just. Fucking. Rude.

Captain Bank took my cash until it was gone, then they took more, and THEN they slapped a fine on me for the pain and heartache I obviously caused them by not having any money. I have no idea how this ever became an option; there’s no money in the account, yet they’ve penalised me the sum of $45.

That’s like being involved in an organ transplant where you need to donate three kidneys. You can try as hard as you like to produce a third; hell, you can even offer your liver and spleen as consolation prizes, but it’s just not going to work. Stupid banks, they should stop trying to do organ transplants and stick to what they’re best at: not serving customers and giving people a queue to stand in during their lunch break.

breaking up is hard to do. especially when it's food.

A little while ago, I bought a box of Le Snaks; you know the things that your mum used to pop into your lunch box when you were nine or something? Six packets of goodness, each one containing three crackers with a little pool of cheese spread in which to dip them. I saw the Le Snak pack on the supermarket shelf and thought, "Fuck yes. Those things were awesome! I haven't had one in about 20 years." I honestly thought they had been taken out of production or something. Maybe mum didn't buy them and I didn't ask for them. Touche, mother. Maybe the Uncle Toby's recipe was stolen and they couldn't produce the cheese anymore. Personally, I'd like to think that Uncle Toby's realised that the world wasn't quite ready for Le Snak in 1988 and have been waiting to unleash hell in 2009.

Or maybe, just maybe, they didn't actually ever sell, and the Le Snak that is sitting in my pantry is from the same batch that my mum bought when I was in grade three. When I peeled back the alfoil "freshness protector" thing on top of one of the packets, I immediately felt a harsh desert wind sweeping up from the biscuits. These fuckers were dry, man. Like, really dry. You know how sometimes you eat something that's dry and you turn to someone and say, "Man, this is really dry." And they'll say, "It doesn't look very dry." And you reply, "Well it is dry; try some." And then they eat it and say, "You're right, this is really dry." Well, whatever you ate has nothing on my Le Snak biscuits. Incidentally, Le Snak is the winner of the inaugral Mister Evil Breakfast Award For Being Really Dry (Food Category):

Le Snak have won the coveted MEB Award For Being Really Dry (Food Category)

Anyway, I picked up one of the biscuits and dipped it into the little pool of cheese - after all, that is what we all ate those things for, right? No one wants crackers, give us fake cheese that doesn't need to be refridgerated. It sunk about a millimetre into the cheese spread before it snapped. Being the bonza little Aussie that I am, I tried again. The biscuit broke once more. Snap. Snap snap fucking snap. Well... fuck. The years have been unkind to my "le french" snacky friend as the biscuits have become brittle and the cheese has become impenetrable. C'est la vie.

Le Snak - even though we have ended badly, I will always remember you for the good times.

Le Snak; it's French for "the snak" which is poor english for "the snack." I'd say it fits into the "edible" category, but wouldn't go too much further.

Welcome to my bedroom

Every so often, I find myself going through bouts of insomnia. Normally I just let it ride and wander through life in a half-daze (not too many people notice the difference) until whatever chemicals are in my body (alcohol) work their magic and life resumes as normal. I am in such a bout at the moment, and it's been going on for about 5 months now. That's almost half a year, in case your maths isn't quite up to scratch. If I make it to the full 6 months, I am totally baking a cake and buying some flowers. If I get to a year (without killing myself or someone else), I will take myself out for a fancy meal and (maybe) slip an engagement ring into my own champagne. But I'm getting ahead of myself; I don't want to jinx it!!!!11

Seriously though, I sought out some advice recently as to why I might be lying awake all fucking night. My friend (ok, so it was some random person posting on an online forum) said that I should analyse my sleeping problems more closely. Foolishly, I decided to do this at 3am rather than in the afternoon. I concluded that I am awake at 3am because I am analysing the reasons why I am awake at 3am. I decided to quit analysing for the night, assuming that if I just slept on it, things would make more sense in the morning. Of course, I couldn't get to sleep and my problems went unsolved.

One night I tried watching a documentary about insomnia because it is supposed to be good for helping people sleep; unfortunately the volume was too loud and it kept me up.

It makes sense to say that if you do something for long enough, you'll become good at it (Ricky Ponting is the exception rather than the rule). However, after 29 years of trying to sleep, I'm still struggling. Normally I just give up on things if I'm no good at them, but sleep is one of those things that I'm going to knuckle out and do properly. I mean, there are still some issues that haunt me; for example, I still don't know whether I prefer to have two pillows or one. Sometimes I don't have any. I am also still not sure about where I should put my arms while I'm asleep. Do I lie on them? Do I place them out in front of me? I have no idea. Lying on your arms can be fun when you realise you've cut off the circulation and you can't move them, and all day long you feel really weird and mushy.

There's also a theory that goes along the lines of "the best way to fall asleep is to actually try and keep yourself awake." I'm up for anything, so the other night I decided to try it. I did whatever it took to stay awake - I put on some music, ordered a pizza and invited some friends over. I didn't sleep.

Apparently there is no better way of falling asleep than in the arms of a beautiful woman. So I tried it, and it worked, briefly, until the beautiful woman asked me what I was doing in her bed. Her husband wasn't particularly happy, either. And for the record, she had three pillows. I have no idea how that works.

I went to the doctor last week as a last resort (fuck you, internet, for your useless suggestions and bullshit theories). I pleaded with him to give me some advice, or some pills, or a new mattress; but he refused and said I should just exercise more. Of course, I followed his advice but found it even harder to sleep whilst running on a treadmill. I do have a nice arse now though.