Minutes from the latest Man Meeting

Guys, can I please have your attention? Thanks. I’d like to call this Man Meeting open; thank you all for coming.

We are here today to discuss a few revelations in man-ness that have been brought to my attention recently. These are very important, I’m sure you’ll agree, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say we have a mole in our midst. I remind you again, gentlemen – women must never know about these things.

The first problem is that a few of you have asked if you can bring your girlfriends to these meetings. The answer is no, and you have all been fined one slab of beer for even thinking such nonsense.

Next, and this pains me to say it, but there are a lot of women out there who are understanding the finer points of sport; they are appreciating cricket, for fuck’s sake. A five-day Test match that doesn’t necessarily provide a winner has always - ALWAYS - been a man’s game. And now there are chicks who not only know what a doosra is, but they have shown you how to bowl one.

It used to be ok for women to have a passing interest in cricket; that’s why we invented T20 and 50-over cricket; that’s why Shane Fucking Watson is in the team. They are NOT supposed to follow it like men. I have passed this onto the ICC and they have agreed to slow down Test cricket a bit more, and see if the women can still maintain interest.

This next point is a bit embarrassing for us all – women have caught onto the fact that we don’t know as much about cars as we say we do. There have been a lot of men being caught out by looking under the (pause while ChairMan looks through previous minutes) "bonnet" of a car… is that right? Yes? Ok. We can’t look under the "bonnet" and say that the flux capacitor is shot. We are going to need a new piece of jargon shortly to use in its place. A pamphlet detailing these words as well as some safe parts of the engine to touch so you can get grease on your hands so it looks like you've done some simple tests on the car will be sent out next week.

Someone, and I will not name names, has spilt the beans that guys don’t really like going to strip clubs as much as they do on TV. This particular person has admitted that strip clubs are filled with unattractive, drug-addled hookers and are not worth the price of admission nor the $10 beers they have on offer. Remember this, gentlemen: A buck’s night without boobs does not count as a buck’s night, regardless of how much fun we were having before we got dragged out to watch a bored stripper grind on an old man’s face. The informant has been fined two cases of beer and must endure a Reese Witherspoon movie marathon.

Finally, there are several guys that will also be receiving fines over their current man form; I’ve got reports of men crying during Grey’s Anatomy. THIS. WILL. NOT. BE. TOLERATED. For those who didn’t know, the only times you are allowed to cry during a film are as follows:

- Top Gun, when Goose dies.
- Lion King, when Mufasa dies.
- When John Coffey dies in The Green Mile.
- The original 1986 Transformers movie when Optimus Prime dies. Note: HE DOES NOT COME BACK.
- Whenever any dog dies in any movie.

This next one is a new addition to the list:

- in Castaway, when Wilson falls off Tom Hanks’ raft.

This is still being finalised, so don’t get too comfortable.

Gentlemen, we are a proud and ancient race, and our survival depends on our secrets. Anyone found spilling those secrets will be forced to watch motor racing, Monster Trucks and jelly wrestling, and do a convincing job that they actually like it.

That is all.

Meeting closed

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.

James Cameron's AVATARAHONTAS

AVATAR has some highly impressive special effects

No doubt everyone in the world has seen Avatar already; it is behind only Titanic in terms of box-office takings at time of writing, although this might have something to do with the fact that tickets to this puppy cost four times as much as a regular film.

So here’s the flick in a nutshell: Paraplegic bloke gets chance to walk again if he can infiltrate alien species in order for humans to mine the fuck out of their house.

In the mix, he falls in love, rides a big ol’ dragonny-pterodactyl thing and manages to piss off at least two intelligent species. He’s been pretty busy.

The story steals all of its themes from every other good movie, dumbs it down a bit and then beats it in the head until it is made retarded. Somewhere in the future, humans are exploring the planet Pandora, which is home to a race of eight-foot Smurfs, and is also rich in unobtanium, an element that the humans really really want for reasons known only to them. To properly communicate with the Smurfs, humans created the Avatar program, where alien/human hybrids are created and controlled by dudes in a lab. One of those dudes is Jake, who is given a special assignment – move the Smurfs from the mining area, and he’ll get his legs back. Nice idea. Unfortunately…

The way it all unfolds is fairly predictable. Lessons are learnt and a hero is born. If you’ve seen any big-budget movie before, you pretty much know how it’s all going to pan out. That’s not to say that it’s not worth sticking around for, as it is a visual feast that will leave your eyeballs a bit bloated and possibly sweaty. Pandora is indeed a beautiful world in which to live, although I doubt that anyone there would ever be able to sleep, because everything on the planet either glows fluorescent colours or is the size of a small house, angry and hungry. Still, it does look spiffy and is pretty cool in 3D.

As is my regular beef with movies, there’s just not enough to it. For a 3-hour movie that was green-lighted in 1997 and began production in 2004, you’d expect the characters to be nicely fleshed out, the dialogue snappy and plot holes to be filled in. While the alien scenes are without doubt the main focus, the human interaction needs to be sharper, as the humans are the ones who are actually moving the story along. But they’re as transparent, two-dimensional and paper-thin as a transparent and paper-thin two-dimensional character, and the scenes that could have been the emotional crux of this film – the idea that Jake could walk again as a human – were sadly underdone. At least he looks pretty.

I give Avatar two blue whales.

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.

TV, maths and beer

Hello sun. Thanks for fucking FINALLY turning up. I was starting to get a bit worried that you’d forgotten about the world this year.

There’s an ancient mathematical formula that comes into use for the phenomenon commonly known as “Summer”:

P + H = B

where P is people, H is heat and B is beer. If it’s really hot, you can make it H2, and it can become P3 or P4 if you have more friends. The more P you have, the more B you’ll probably require though.

Maths is easy and fun. Stay in school, kids.

Following the success of Ladette to Lady, I am pitching my own reality TV show (because we’re running out of them); one that will hopefully revolutionise the way the universe works. Welcome to

Drinking Beer

You would imagine that drinking beer is an easy thing to do, but you’d be wrong. DEAD WRONG. That’s why I have this TV show to show you how to do it properly. Remember those six gay guys who told heterosexual men what they’re doing wrong in their lives? Like how they gave great advice to them on how to impress their lady friends, because it’s common knowledge that all gay men know what women want? Remember the massive success of that? Notice how those six guys are still relevant in all that they do, and how men everywhere are still wearing pink shirts with argyle vests and decorating their houses with shit art and taking tango lessons instead of playing football?

With “Drinking Beer”, I will be as life-changing as those six pioneers of social advancement and self-improvement.

Episode #1: The shout

Invariably, if you are drinking with a group of people, there will be a “shout”, whereby people buy drinks for everyone in expectation that they will be “shouted” back later on. If all goes to plan, everyone buys everyone else a beer and equilibrium in the drinking stakes ensues. By “shout three”, however, it may become obvious that several people within your party are slower drinkers than the others, and when “shout four” is announced, the slow-pokes of the table are still sipping on their third drink.

It is impolite to request another beverage if you have more than half of your current drink sitting in front of you, and just plain rude to skull up for the sake of being included in the next shout. You snooze, you lose (until the next round).

Lesson #2: The Jug

Many places offer a jug or (if you’re American) a ‘pitcher’ of beer. This jug will usually have the quantity of around three or four glasses, so please buy accordingly. If you have five people, you will require more than one jug. It is very impolite and unAustralian to give your shoutees a half-filled glass in order for everyone to have a drink. Unless you are Jesus and you’re trying to feed thousands of people with half a dinner roll and a trout, you are way out of luck; you’re just going to have to fork out for more drinks. Sorry. However, if you are Jesus, we should hang out, I like your water into wine trick (and your beard).

Lesson #3. Being drunk

After a few rounds of drinks, you may start to laugh a bit more at jokes that really aren’t funny, tell your friends that you love them and occasionally knock things over. With the consumption of tasty, tasty alcohol, you have become a bit pissed, my friend. When someone looks at you and you’re grinning like an idiot and trying to work out how to text message your mum about how you just ate a coaster so she’d be proud instead of disappointed, they may point out that “you’re drunk.” Your natural reaction to this statement is “noooo, I’m fine, really. Nah, I’m not pissed, really. Honestly, I’m not. Seriously.” Your friend may become somewhat bored by you repeating synonyms of “truthfully” and talk to someone else. If you really want to convince them that you’re not drunk, don’t try to capture their attention before saying, “No really, I’m not drunk. I’ve only had a few, I can’t be drunk. I’m seriously not drunk man, really.” Don’t prove your sobriety by dancing on the table or bar either.

Just accept the fact that B = D; there’s nothing wrong with that.


Nothing wrong with that at all.

home sweet home

I have been living in the same place for about 3 years now, and am yet to meet my neighbours properly. I see them in my apartment complex almost every day; we pass each other on the way to the mailbox or the rubbish bins and smile happily at each other (despite the fact that they keep dobbing me in for noise complaints at 3:00 in the afternoon for eating Corn Flakes too loudly). Other than "can you please turn your iPod down?” and “sorry, but your blinking is keeping me awake,” our entire conversational history can be summed up by "Hello."

It has officially passed the time whereby we can actually have a conversation now; all we’d be able to say is, “Fancy that, we lived next door for three years and didn’t realise we had a common interest in spaghetti!” And I’m not interested in discussing pasta strings with them. Now we’re just trying to out-wait each other and hope that someone way more awesome moves in.

an open letter to the man in the lift

Dear Man in the Lift At Work Today,

You may not remember me; my name is Mister Evil Breakfast and we shared something special on my daily pilgrimage to the seventh floor today – your phone call. For some reason, you decided to use the “speaker” function on your phone to make a call so that everyone around you (aka me) could listen to it. The time between pressing the button in the foyer of the building to when the elevator actually arrived was happily filled with the stilted conversation between you and your friend about his wife having tennis elbow. Your comment that perhaps she wasn’t actually playing tennis but was giving out hand-jobs behind his back may have just crossed the line of good taste. However, I was a fan of the several seconds of silence that followed, which you broke by asking, “are you still there?” as if you’d just gone through a tunnel rather than suggest that his wife is a dirty tramp. The breaker came when we actually entered the lift and he asked if he was on speaker phone, to which you almost gave the game away by stammering “n-n-n-n-n-n-n-no.” There’s nothing more reassuring than someone turning a one-syllable word into eight. I appreciated the wink you gave me afterwards. Part of it said, “I think I fooled him” and part of it said, “That shirt looks nice, what are you doing for lunch today?”

I am not entirely sure why you decided to share that particular conversation with me, but I thank you for it. If I see you again, I’m probably going to stab you and then call your friend so you can say, “I’ve been stabbed and am bleeding to death” to which he can then ask, “was it with a cock?” or “that time of the month eh?”

You’re a dick.

Love,

Mister Evil Breakfast

take me home

Drinking is an important part of my life – this may have some bearing on why money is not as prevalent as it could be. But with great drinking comes the great responsibility of getting home, and unless you enjoy being in jail or driving your car off walls, you should hop in a cab.

From here, you will need:

Mister Evil Breakfast’s Guide to Catching a Taxi Home Because You Have Had Too Much To Drink And It Would Be Socially Irresponsible Not To Mention Totally Illegal For You To Drive Home In The State You're In (MEBGCTHBYHHTMTDAIWBSINTMTIFYTDHITSYI)

Conversation:

I have learnt that there are only two things you should ask your cab driver:
1. What time are you on until? and
2. Have you had a busy night?

Nothing else matters. I’m pretty sure cab drivers are all-consumed by their jobs, so it’s common sense to only talk about driving cabs. Don’t mention sport or music or whether he likes blondes or brunettes – if your conversation veers away from driving a taxi, he will lose interest and possibly crash and you’ll both die. It’s not like you talk to your friends about anything except their jobs, right?

Whenever I converse with my cabbie (about cab driving), I find myself putting on a bad Scottish accent. I have no idea why. I am not Scottish. I think it has something to do with me being drunk. So when I jump in and say, “Och laddie, tekmeholm!” (Please Mr Taxi-man, take me home), he will turn around and say, “Where are you from?” to which the reply (as above) will be, “Have you had a busy night?”

The downside of “being Scottish” is that you have to keep up your ruse until you’ve reached your destination as you don't want the driver to think you're taking the piss. The #1 rule of accents is that as soon as you put one on, you will receive a phone call and you’ll have to answer it in your accent. So if I ever answer your call with a stupid voice, it means I’m drunk and in a taxi.

Destination:

I approach taxis like I approach haircuts – do whatever you have to do, don’t ask me questions about it. I can’t see my hair, so I don’t really care how it looks; and I’m in a cab because I can’t get home myself. I’ll trust a hairdresser not to fuck up my ‘do, so I’ll trust a driver not to take me to Adelaide. Don’t ask me which road I want to take, I really don’t know the best way home - I am blind drunk and Scottish, and obviously not from around here.

Don’t forget to stop into 24-hour Drive-Thru McDonalds on the way - you need your cheeseburgers, and you should be nice and offer one to the driver as well.

Payment:

Yes yes yes, a twenty-minute drive home has somehow cost this driver a whole tank’s worth of petrol. Just pay the man and shut up.

Even though you’ve given your driver a cheeseburger, it was considered a gift and he will not accept that as partial payment for the drive home, especially since you had to drive in the opposite direction to go to McDonalds and then spent another ten minutes in the Drive-Thru lane asking him, “Have you had a busy night?” in a Scottish accent.

Take the safe option and catch a cab home

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.”

Deeveedee review

1. Everyone loves a sport film; whether it’s the underdog victory that comes with the Mighty Ducks, the kid from the street doing everyone proud in Rocky or the mindless stupidity of Days of Thunder, people will always find something oddly compelling and watchable about others overcoming adversity and proving themselves through sporting achievements.

2. Everyone loves horror films, whether it’s Freddy Krueger haunting your dreams and ruining a franchise, Jason swinging his machete and ruining a franchise, or Chucky still trying to become human again to ruin a franchise, scary flicks are popular, cheap to make and successful.

3. Everyone loves cricket. The thought of two teams battling it out for five days with the distinct possibility of neither one winning gets people moist and sweaty in the nether regions. The very concept of the batting team “playing for a draw” for two or three days is enough to make even the most casual of cricket observers bar up. Throw in a dirty moustache and Mike Hussey’s form slump and you’ve got the world’s greatest sporting event.

With these three Play-Doh balls of magic, it was only a matter of time before someone smooshed them together to create the film “I Know How Many Runs You Scored Last Summer”. Yes, really.

This Aussie-made hacker-slasher basically centres on a bloke who tracks down the guys from his schoolboy cricket team who teased him and gave him a massive wedgie. When two dudes on opposite sides of the world turn up deadened (one beaten to death with a cricket bat when he was in the pisser, and one impaled on a cricket stump in his garage), the only thing that links them is that they were in the same cricket team twenty years ago, so the police do the sensible thing and round up the rest of the lads and put them all in the same place.

Since being bullied by his team-mates, the Killer seems to have been sitting in a tub of “Tall Gro” and collecting stumps, as he is now about seventeen-feet tall and has an endless supply of cricketing paraphernalia with which to stab people. My personal favourite item was his modified ‘box’ - it got me thinking about Ricky Ponting and what I’m going to do when I finally manage to kidnap him.

It’s not that this movie is bad – any film that requires its hero to don full batting gear to fight the villain is worth at least a $4 DVD hire (plus a couple of bucks in late fees) in my books – it’s just that I Know How Many Runs You Scored Last Summer is a bit retarded. The acting is shithouse, the characters are completely fucked up (such as the bloke who ducks out of the safehouse to shag his missus; but instead of just having the regular sex, he makes her blindfold, handcuff and gag-ball him. Of course he’d do that. Why wouldn’t you indulge in something that leaves you absolutely defenseless when you’re being hunted by a maniac?) and the one-liners leave you wondering whether or not it was actually meant to be funny. Incidentally, I Know How Many Runs You Scored Last Summer is the winner of the “Golden Shower Award” for the most gratuitous nude scene in cinematic history.

After watching this film and meditating on it for a while, I am still undecided if I actually enjoyed it. It is ridiculously stupid and formulaic, yet had me reaching for another Milk Arrowroot biscuit to dunk in my coffee until the final scene. Let’s just say that this movie is the best cricketing-based horror film that I’ve ever seen and leave it at that.

I give I Know How Many Runs You Scored Last Summer two leg byes.

With ball-tampering of this magnitude, this guy could captain Pakistan

a load of old beard

"Upon shaving off one's beard." The scissors cut the long-grown hair; the razor scrapes the remnant fuzz. Small-jawed, weak-chinned, bug-eyed, I stare at the forgotten boy I was.” – John Updike

We are about to witness a very important milestone in the history of the world.

Dear Readers, I have been chosen by a greater power to fulfil the destiny set out for all men. I’ve known octogenarians who have not had a chance to achieve this particular feat, but I, a mere thirty years old, will cross this single item from my list within the next fortnight.

I am about to finish a can of shaving cream, and purchase some more.

I’ve bought shaving cream before, but can’t actually remember ever finishing a can. Traditionally, shaving cream is purchased when the previous can is taken away on holidays and lost, left behind when moving, borrowed and never returned, or tossed away with the arrival of an electric razor – it is not usually used and then replaced.

I am both nervous and excited at the thought of putting a fresh can of lathering goodness into my shopping basket with the 2-minute noodles, gaffa tape, sprinkles and chicken salt that are my groceries and seeing the look on the face of the check-out operator. Their eyes will open in hope, that this customer has finished a can of shaving cream before he buys another one. And I will humbly nod in silent recognition of my achievement and accept their quiet praise.

Shaving cream – is it just a foamy substance in which to spread upon one’s face and scrape off with a thin, sharp blade, or is it a message from a higher being, congratulating me on my commitment to finish the can and thus granting me a passage from adolescence to manhood and then to a deity? Upon purchasing my can of shaving cream, I will be transformed.

If I die suddenly and unexpectedly, I want everyone to know that I died a happy man.

Also, if nothing happens, it’s probably just ‘cause God is busy and he’ll reward me later. Or, it’s just because, you know, all I did was buy some shaving cream. Either way, I’ll be happy.

This is one option of fast-tracking yourself to reaching the pinnacle of your life, but I reckon it's cheating.

brown paper packages tied up with string

As I get older, I have learned to look back on my life and take stock of all that I’ve experienced over the last 30 years, or however old I am. Here’s what I remember:

- Prince Charles getting married.
- Live action Transformers movies (x 2).
- Australia losing the Ashes (twice, thank you Ricky Ponting).
- Willingly renting “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” and expecting it to be “half decent.”
- Me vomiting on myself. A lot.

These are all tragic moments in my life, but as of last weekend, I have a new contender for the #1 spot. Welcome to the list – Rove McManus interviewing his wife, Tasma Walton.

If there could possibly be a worse moment in entertainment, history, science and nature, geography or any other Trivial Pursuit category this year, then I’d rather not be involved in it. Rove has cemented himself even further into the “retard” category with this stunt, and has officially dropped below Daryl Somers and Eddie Maguire in terms of being a good host of a TV show.

The interview began somewhat poorly with Rove asking Tasma, “What have you been doing lately?” to which the ever-raunchy Tassie responds with, “You, most recently.” WOO. The world is jealous that you’re having sex with a muppet, Tasma.
“Tell us about your book,” says Rove.
“I strip down to my underpants, dip strawberries in chocolate and listen to Prince CDs,” says Tasma. Intriguing. Congratulations on losing any book sales you were planning on making following this train-wreck of a television appearance.

Somewhere along the line, Rove performed the mating dance of a lyrebird and they talked about their wedding night, when Rove split his pants whilst attempting to do the splits, Footloose-style. (“Easy access for me!” pipes up Tasma, in another display of hilarity, sexiness and absolute regard to the family of Rove’s first wife, recently-deceased Belinda Emmett – remember her? No, neither does Mr McManus apparently).

What’s wrong Rove - couldn’t you steal any more jokes from Letterman this week? Did you run out of jokes to make about Vegemite? Next time, interview someone half-decent, even if they are related to you. Your brother's probably got something interesting to say that isn't about fucking you. Biggest waste of time this year, and that counts the 45-minutes I spent on hold to Vodafone before hanging up and going into the shop to be served in 12 seconds.

Why didn’t I turn the TV off, or change the channel? Because I was severely hungover and lacked the muscle control (or strength) to lift the remote.

Fuck you, Rove. What the?

zzzz

There are many thing in life that are boring. Going to work meetings, going to work conferences, being at work, waiting to go home from work… the list goes on. Some people describe this sensation as “boring as batshit,” signifying that batshit holds the upper echelon in the boredom ranks. That’s a big call, considering that there are a great number of things that people might find boring.

My problem is that when you think about it, batshit isn’t that boring. For a start, it comes from bats. Bats are pretty cool; I mean they hang upside down and eat fruit or drink your blood. They use sonar when they fly. They turn into vampires. They fight crime. Batshit can be used as an ingredient in gunpowder.

Let’s compare that to other types of shit:

Birdshit is boring. It’s all over the place and gets stuck to your car.
Dogshit is boring. If you step in it, it gets into the tread on your shoes and you stink.
Catshit is boring. It’s so boring that you make your cat go into another room and shit into a box, that’s how bored by it you are.
Cowshit is boring – it’s big, but otherwise fairly uninteresting.
Peopleshit is commonplace and no one wants to see it.

So the next time you’re sitting around at work and someone says, “Hey man, what did you think of that report?” don’t answer with, “Boring as batshit,” because you’ve since learned that there are many things more boring than the droppings of our flying rodents, so you should say, “It was as boring as the dry birdshit that's on my windscreen, which has been smeared everywhere because I tried to clean it with my windscreen wipers. And FYI, it can’t be used as gunpowder.”

Then you can go and have a coffee.

My 6:30PM hell

It’s been a harrowing time in Ramsay St of late. Because of the complete retardation of the characters at the moment, Neighbours is even more of a chore than usual. I find myself becoming incredibly frustrated by the pissweak characters and storylines to the point where I look forward to it ending so I can watch The 7PM Project. Yeah. That’s how bad it’s been.

The recent shittiness of Neighbs began with the marriage of Paul and Rebecca. Notwithstanding the fact that their daughter-in-law died the previous week, they were determined to carry on with their nuptials regardless, despite Paul still searching for a best man the morning of the ceremony. After asking his lawyer (Toadie), his doctor (Dr Karl) and a random guy from work (unnamed extra), he finally settled on asking his daughter. Way to prove you’re a popular guy, Paul. I still love you though.

So everything’s going well, the ceremony is without incident, until… Lynne turns up. I fucking hate Lynne. She is just shit. I want to stab her. So she interrupts the wedding and announces that she and Paul are still married. Apparently their divorce wasn’t quite settled, so Lynne’s cunning plan to get some cash from Paul (I’m hoping it’s cash, because if this is her plan to woo him, she’s totally going about it the wrong way) is to turn up in the middle of his wedding and blackmail him until he hands over half of whatever he’s got.

Picking on the owner of a newspaper is a bad idea, because the next day he ran a front-page story with a picture of bag-lady Lynne with the headline “Dirty Whore” (not really, but close). The Erinsborough News is the highest circulating newspaper in existence, by the way. You also don’t need a degree or experience to be a journalist for it, they will run stories purely based on speculation, hearsay, gossip and rumour and the editor also requires a second job as a dishpig at the local café to pay her rent.

Anyway, I hate Lynne and I have no idea what’s going on now. The last I heard, she borrowed money from her daughter, bought the house next door to Paul’s place and then fucked off to Scotland or something. I hope she gets eaten by a cow. Moo.

The other major “storyline” in Neighbs at the moment is the shitstorm that is Zeke and Sunny. Zeke has developed OCD, and we know this because he keeps lining up pens and pencils, stacking his fridge in military formations and ensuring the safety of others to the point that he threw out a pair of high-heeled shoes so no-one wore them and broke their ankle. He’s a Samaritan, is our Zeke. A little, retarded, emo-monkey Samaritan. He has also fallen madly in love with Sunny, the most annoying person in the history of the world (yes, Mr Football, even more annoying than Summer). Sunny is just shit.

Sunny arrived in Dr Karl’s house as an exchange student from Korea. Korea is either on another planet, far away from the place we call “Earth,” or is stuck in a time warp and they are still in the 16th Century. Either way, I wish she’d get in her spaceship, make sure her time circuits are working and fuck off back there. She shits me. This week’s in-depth view of Sunny is about the fact that she finds it a natural instinct to literally run away from any problem (real or imagined) that she encounters:

(a) When it was revealed that she had to kiss Zeke in a play, she ran away from school and was about to hop on the next flight back to Korea. Sadly, someone stopped her.

(b) When she had “those” feelings about Zeke, she ran away to hide the fact that she has braces on her teeth and he would not want to kiss her. I’m assuming her plan was to hide for the two years that it is going to take for her to have perfectly straight teeth. Eventually she was talked out of her cave and brought back to civilisation.

(c) When Hot Donna found out that Sunny was writing love poetry to her on behalf of Ringo, she kissed her. Sunny got angry and ran away, screaming and crying that Donna stole her first kiss. It was kind of the way that you’d kiss your granny after she said that she had just given your grandad a blowjob… and he’s been dead since 1986.

(d) When “the gang” were at a music festival in the middle of nowhere and Declan walked in on her and Zeke about to kiss, she yelled at both of them and ran away, to the point of leaving the festival and falling down a cliff. Unfortunately she survived.

(e) When her relationship with Zeke became known to Karl and Susan, she ran away to hide the shame that she brought onto her family. Susan found her (I wouldn’t have bothered looking) and asked if they were “being careful.” Sunny realised that this is parental code for “sex” and ran away again. When found once more, she yelled at Zeke for pressuring her into sex. It was the first time that it had been suggested, and he wasn’t even the one who brought it up.

(f) When her father found out that she was in a relationship, he said that she was no longer allowed to stay in the same house as him. In traditional Sunny form, she ran away until the problem resolved itself by Zeke moving out of his own house to make her more comfortable.

(g) When Hot Donna was organising the school dance, Sunny (who was part of the planning committee) created a petition to NOT have a school dance. Her reason? She doesn’t know how to dance and would have found it embarrassing if someone tried to dance with her. When Hot Donna asked why she was sabotaging the dance, Sunny ran away.

Someone’s obviously found her since then and brought her back into Erinsborough, because she’s still hanging around and uglifying the set. Last thing I saw was her leaving the microphone on during Zeke’s radio show and bagging out Dr Karl on air.

Run, Sunny, run. Don’t ever be found.

In this shot, Sunny is caught between her two favourite past-times: running away and falling over.

Canberra folklore

People who have lived in Canberra for a long time will have two things in common: the fires of 2003, and Lake George stories. The fires of 2003 were fairly devastating – lives were lost and homes were destroyed – and it helped to unify Canberrans in their stories on what they did on “fire day.”

After a brutally hot and dry summer, eventually the forces of nature arched up and kicked our arses, hitting suburbs with walls of fire and razing half of the nation’s capital. Suburbs were evacuated, roads were closed and Canberra was on high-alert. Me, I sat in my room and played video games until I realised that it was dark outside and only 3pm. On closer inspection of the sky, it became apparent that it was so thick with smoke from the golf course that had gone up in flames about two streets away from the house that it had blocked out the sun. “Hmm,” I said. So I climbed up onto the roof armed with a hose and a six-pack of beer and awaited God’s wrath. The fire thankfully didn’t reach my house, which was good, because by the time the threat of a fiery death had been relieved, my beer was warm and I wasn’t feeling as stable on the roof as I once did. In hindsight, I should have taken some sandwiches up there as well. But I did flood the gutters, you know, just in case the fire was localised to the downpipes of my house, instead of the wooden deck out the back. In any case, I found a few old tennis balls and a soccer ball that didn’t belong to me, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

Other people filled up their bathtubs with water and prepared for the long haul; I got drunk on my roof and watched some trees burn.

Lake George, whilst not technically in Canberra, is also not technically a lake. In my opinion, a lake is a place that holds water and does not have livestock grazing in it without fear of drowning. But that is precisely what Lake George is now; a haven for cows and sheep to run amuck in, eat grass and chat idly amongst each other (“Moo.” “Baa.” “Moo?” “Baa.” “Moo.”) without getting their feet wet.

Go back a few years, and the experienced Canberran will tell you stories of how “back in the day,” the water of Lake George lapped at the roadside, and any sheep that were around would be thinking, “Well, I’m not going in there,” and the cows tended to agree.

There’s not a whole lot that anyone can add to the story of how we drove along that road and looked out over the endless stretch of water of Lake George, but somehow we find it incredibly important and exciting to point it out to passengers in our car. I’m never sure what the silence that follows means – it could be “I don’t believe you,” “No way! I need this time to process the very notion that this dry wasteland could have ever been filled with water,” or “I knew I shouldn’t have tried to hitch with this guy.”

This is an actual photo of Lake George. The fishing isn't what it used to be.

Man-berra

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/women-saddened-by-lack-of-humour/1575738.aspx

Canberra men have been put on notice the women of the ACT think they are a bunch of unfunny, horny, egotistical commitment-phobes.

At least that's what an online survey of 3700 people around the country has found.
The survey, commissioned by adult dating site Redhotpie.com.au, found men of the nation's capital were ''petrified'' of commitment, most likely to want sex on the first date, and the least funny of any state or territory.

They are also the least romantic.

However, the survey found they had the best level of hygiene, the best bodies, the best earning potential and the best dress sense.


I do like some social commentary. This particular ‘story’ calls Canberran men “unfunny, horny, egotistical commitment-phobes.” This means that Canberran men fit into the mould that the rest of the world call “men”. Quick, call Rove and Charlie Pickering to tell them that men enjoy sex and appear reluctant to enter a relationship. This is groundbreaking stuff right here. They might even spawn a new fucked-up dog’s balls of a show about it. As long as Rove gets to carry on his unusual obsession with Elmo, that’s all that matters.

Since the dawn of time, men have enjoyed sex. Women might also enjoy it; I don’t know – I haven’t bothered asking. Besides, they might charge extra if there are questions involved. By the way, that was a joke. It was a fucking hilarious joke. Don’t call men unfunny just because you don’t understand the humour.

The report then goes on to give us capital blokes a lift by saying that the survey revealed that the lads of Canberra “had the best level of hygiene, the best bodies, the best earning potential and the best dress sense.”

Some Canberrians might read this and think, “Yeah, fuck yeah! Score one for the boys!” I read this and think, “You fucking superficial bitches.” Apparently chicks are only after us for our chiselled abs, Armani suits and bags of cash. I wonder why we’re so “commitment-phobic” when it comes to gold-digging idiots with no sense of humour?

A great experience for everyone - licking a real life Canberra man.

Canberra by any other name

Crop circles outside Parliament House prove that aliens have a great taste in cities, and their lasers can burn more than wheat fields. Treat them nicely.

The land of Canberra is a wonderful place, full of roundabouts and broken streetlights and stormwater drains. We have a large board where people are encouraged to stick their old chewing gum, a penchant for Christmas lights the whole year round and a place called the Beaver Galleries, which was quite good, but not exactly what I was looking for. I also went to the Leisure Centre to sit around and play Nintendo, but they kept making me run on treadmills. People should be more careful about what they name their businesses.

Canberra has its fair share of attractions that defy their very definition; for example, the Canberra Museum and Gallery is probably the world’s greatest example of a four-wall collection that have been sparsely decorated with screen prints of flowers and a five-year old’s drawing of a fire engine. It also boasts a single vase that came from Copperart (and is used to hold umbrellas) and a stairwell that leads to an upstairs loft that specialises in minimalist décor and dust. Whether it qualifies as either a museum or gallery is open for debate. I hope that if it ever comes down to a debate, that I'm on the 'opposed' side. I'd also like to be second speaker, but I might be getting ahead of myself.

Other 'interesting interpretations' of Canberra attractions are the National Dinosaur Museum which tries to hide the fact that it has no fossils, models or dinosaur bones by turning the lights off ; and the Shepherds Lookout walking trail does not involve a single shepherd. Add to these the contradictions that are Gold Creek Village, which contains neither gold, nor a creek, nor a village. I mean sure, it has a pub and a few shops and a pub and stuff like a pub… oh wait. Now I get the gold creek part of it. Yeah? Did you see what I did there? I made a pee joke.

Federation Square is a part of the aforementioned Village of the Golden Creek, yet is quite circular in shape. I took my two-year old daughter there and said to her, “This is Federation Square,” and she replied, “It’s a fucking circle, man.” She’s got a mouth on her, for a non-existent baby. Anyway, she hates the place as well, and she gets lost whenever she has to go there. Like father like daughter, huh? If only she got her mother’s sense of direction; she’s like a fighter pilot or a private detective or a pigeon or something cool.

On the other side of the spectrum are the great places of Canberra which scream what they are, what they do and where they’re located to anyone with enough literacy to read the sign above the door. Places like Hyper Dome shopping centre, which is recognisable by its large dome; or it would be if you were flying over the top of it. At ground level, as is the more traditional method of transport in Canberra, it’s more recognisable by the single teenage mothers who hang out at the bus interchange spitting at people. But in a marketing decision applauded by all, the Spitting Teenage Mothers Shopping Centre will be a name resigned to the “what could have been” dream pile.

Parliament House was built to take over the old Parliament House, which is now known as Old Parliament House. If they ever make a newer Parliament House, we’re all fucked.

The Canberra Glasshouse is exactly what it sounds like; a place that deals in glass things. It’s super tops if you’re looking to buy that special something for that special someone, as long as they like things made out of glass, and as long as those things aren’t glasses, vases or anything useful. So… pendants and beads and paperweights. But hey, if glass-blowing is your thing, why not enrol in a glass-blowing demonstration and create your own unique glass decoration? For an extra million dollars, you’ll be able to stand about three steps closer than the rest of Canberra to see a couple of professional glass-blowers blow their glass and tell you what they’re doing. But you’ll have your very own souvenir to take home afterwards, as long as you pay extra for it.

While you’re in the area, why not stop in at the Old Bus Depot markets, which are fantastic, as long as you’re not looking to buy an Old Bus Depot. Man was my face red. Lucky I got outbid on my collection of old buses on eBay; I have no idea what I'd do without a depot to keep them in.

Wild Canberra

There’s a remarkable natural phenomenon that takes place every year for Canberra and the people who have lived there for years. It occurs after the winter chill has lost its edge and the rays of the sun break through the ice-blue sky to provide warmth, rather than just emitting light. As Canberrans are woken from their winter slumber by the songs of morning birds rather than people scraping ice off their windscreens with old RSL membership cards, their thoughts turn to sand, salt and a two-day migration.

Native Canberrans have a unique sense of hearing and can detect the sound of an ocean wave breaking in another state. No sooner has this sound been registered that Canberrans involve themselves in a ritual that consists of putting an esky into the boot of a car, trying to find swimmers that had been ‘packed away’ in the ritual of winter, locating beach towels, thongs and intricate headwear called a ‘hat’. Then the Canberrans will attempt to find a lotion called ‘sunscreen’ in their home; a practice that is fruitless, time-consuming and can often result in swearing and angry yelling. However, this is easily pacified with the phrase ‘we’ll pick some up on the way’. From there, the Canberrans will leave their home and drive to a common migration site called ‘the beach’.

Upon arrival at the beach, the Canberrans will find a suitable resting place upon the sand to leave their belongings and then rush into the water with the enthusiasm and coordination of a slightly retarded Labrador puppy. Due to Canberra’s chilly climate, the Canberran’s skin is thick and resistant to cold, but the water of the ocean penetrates this barrier and causes shivering, goosebumps and a desire to use the sentence ‘it’s lovely once you’re in.’ Despite the obvious discomfort of swimming in the ocean as soon as the temperature has reached double figures, Canberrans will refuse to admit that they are cold and instead turn their minds to subjects that they know absolutely nothing about, including tides, rips, currents and the fact that ‘the waves are shit’, as if they’d have a clue what a wave looked like anyway.

Like a plague of locusts, Canberrans will occupy the beach and surrounding locations with loud games and screaming children. It is traditional in the Canberra migration ritual to eat New Zealand Natural ice-cream and fish and chips from a ‘great takeaway shop’ that serves remarkably similar food to the ‘shit takeaway shops’ in Canberra.

The final part of the migration ritual occurs just before sunset; the Canberrans will once again pack up their cars with eskies and towels, curse themselves for not bringing an extra pair of undies because the ones currently being worn are ‘wet and uncomfortable as a motherfucker’ and drive home. The idea of leaving in the afternoon is to ‘avoid the traffic’, but the drone-like brains of the Canberran means that each of them is hit with the notion at the same time, and thus a two-hour drive instantly becomes a four-hour drive.

Although the migration ritual usually only lasts for between 12 and 42 hours, the effects of it can last for several days afterwards, as sand continues to be found in bodily crevices, the car and throughout the Canberran’s house. The sunscreen that was ‘to be picked up on the way’ never was, and results in severe sunburn, leading to an enormous increase in the purchase of aloe vera in the Canberra region.

For the Canberrans out there – enjoy your ritual, drive safely and remember to take more CDs than you think you’ll need.

For the coastal locals - we know you hate us. Feel free to leer at us from working at the milk bar, and don't worry - the beach will be yours again tomorrow.

The Watson shopping complex has many things; an IGA, a hairdresser and a pharmacy. But it does not have a beach.

Canberra - the awesome place

Canberra is an Aboriginal word meaning “meeting place,” and I swear I heard my dog say it a few years ago when he sneezed. I think ‘meeting place’ is a fairly good translation and should be read as ‘awesome place’ because you’d never ask your friends to meet you at a shit venue, would you?

“Hey Bazza, let’s catch up!”
“Sure MEB, where should we meet?”
“How about at a funeral home?”
“…”
“Bazza?”
“That doesn’t sound awesome.”

If you changed ‘funeral home’ to ‘Viking battle on a pirate ship in space,’ it would be more appealing to Bazza, and awesomeness would ensue. And that’s what Canberra is. A Viking battle on a pirate ship in space. It is awesome.

LOL Mitter Breakfast whya do you think Canebraa is so goud LOLZORS?

The translation for that is: Why is Canberra so bloody good? I’m glad you asked.

Australia is full of hidden nasties like giant squids and sharks which could eat you, or at least have your eye out. I’m sick of reading about people in Queensland being taken by jellyfish and having their brains sucked out. Northern Territorians can’t go anywhere without being attacked by ninety-metre long crocodiles. South Australians have red-back spiders who are so adept at camouflage that they can pose as mailmen, teachers and Rice Bubbles and drain your blood without you even realising. Those in the Sydney region have to deal with cockroaches that skull-fuck you when you’re asleep; other parts of NSW are prone to explode in spontaneous fireballs. The snakes in WA have the run of the joint – they buy shoes made out of human skin, and they don’t even have feet. West Australian snakes also don’t need to make restaurant reservations; they just turn up and get the best table and then order things that aren’t on the menu and will probably eat everyone in the restaurant anyway. Tasmanians have hordes of zombies running around the street, feasting on brains and performing random acts of violence. Victorians have to put up with AFL and art students.

Canberra’s only problem is being too awesome for the rest of the world to comprehend. It’s a problem that we’re learning to deal with.

This is apparently a pirate from space. Who am I to argue with Google Images?

Woo! Canberra! Woo!

There are few things as beautiful as the city of Canberra by the glowing light of a nuclear holocaust

Welcome to Mister Evil Breakfast's Canberra Appreciation Month (MEBCAM) for 2009.

There's not much else to say about Canberra other than - WOO! Canberra! WOO! and since I already said that in the title, there's no real need to repeat myself.

An Ode To Canberra


It's finding twenty bucks in your pants
before they go to Vinnies
It's free cover charge and biker fights
when you get dragged to Sinnies

It's pear cider at O'Malleys
on a Saturday night
It's late for work on Monday
and getting all green lights

It's August and it's Canberra and that can only mean one thing
It's Mister Evil Breakfast's Month of Canberra Appreciating!

(bridge)

A trip to Parly House
and a visit to the place
where I tried to take a cowboy hat
and some guy punched me in the face

We've got Floriade and Questacon
and a lovely little zoo
we used to have Pandora's
til it became In Blue

It's August and it's Canberra! It's MEBCAM time again;
windy, cold, a chance of snow and a high of minus ten

(awesome rap part)
There's libraries, galleries, wineries & observatories,
universities, factories; no parking fees or busy streets.
Intencity, Academy, Trinity, the Hyper D
Lake Burley G, blue-green algae, and that thing outside the ABC.

How fucking tops is Canberra? It rates up really high,
August is the greatest month; it shits on old July.

You can keep your Chapel Street,
your Collins and your Pitt.
Rundle Mall can fuck itself
and the Valley is real shit.

They don't have our Mooseheads,
or some place called Bar 32.
They don't have an ATM outside Club X
like our Northbourne Avenue.

It's MEBCAM time in Canberra, it's August so let's sing:
thank you God for Canberra. Thanks for everything!