Thursday, February 14, 2008

all that jazz.

By Winston

If you put your ear against your computer screen you might just be able to hear the tumble weed as it drifts through this long abandoned ghost-blog. It's dusty in here, mighty dusty, dustier than... nah I'm going to skip the crude jokes, at least for this post. I don't want to offend the one other reader besides myself and my co-authors.

I should probably tell you about me, but I really don't want to as you undoubtedly don't care. However, I will persevere, my name is Matthew, I am white, middle-class and live within a stone's throw of suburbia, it is a constant reminder of where I don't want to be in ten years time. I'm not the quickest of cats nor the tallest or most hansdsome of hippopotomi, I came out of highschool with an average TER and a powerful distain for all things popular. Nonetheless I crave recognition and one day hope to earn the respect and admiration of my school peers. How ironic. I admire the likes of Confucious, Shakespeare, Shinchiro Watanabe, graffiti artists, craftsmen (sigh... and women) and artisans, also dogs, I like dogs.

I guess I will be writing mostly about foreign affairs and popular culture. I'm a philospher at heart but my thoughts, while beautiful butterflies in my head, fall like dead moths as they exit my mouth. So I'll leave the philosphy to my friend Patrick, Nah I'm more interested blowing shit up! You know, the end of the world, bombs, dirty backroom deals, girls, dirty back room deals involving girls. All that jazz.

Friday, October 19, 2007

warmongers.

By Challi

(In advance, I apologise to jsb for the obscure esoteric references in this post and video about people and things that only Australians understand. Think of it as revenge for all the obscure esoteric references in Family Guy. Who the hell are Kristy McNichol or Tom Brokaw?)

A Current Affair are snakes! Snakes! Why? They pick on other shows on other channels that just happen to have higher ratings than pretty much any show on Channel 9. Coincidence? I think not. They're clearly using blatant slander to avoid people watching the shows, which never works anyway. They've done it with Dancing With the Stars, The Biggest Loser, Australian Idol, Summer Heights High and, of course, The Chaser's War on Everything.

In fact, they've recently been picking on The Chaser's War on Everything the most of all of those shows at any chance they can get. Seriously, it's non-stop. There were fabricated rumours that they would sell out, ACA do a story on it. They call some old guy a paedophile, ACA do a story on it. They do a joke video of Osama Bin Laden, ACA do a story on it.

The Chaser have been doing this kind of shit for years now but did ACA give a damn? No, because they weren't a ratings threat back then. Now they are. In fact, there must be a whole lot of ACA journalists watching ABC on Wednesday with notebooks in hand waiting to see if The Chaser do something that they could sensationalise and make it seem controversial.

and those journalists must have been yelling "SCORE! SCORE!" last Wednesday when they heard this song on the show:



Sure, it's offensive, but ACA clearly missed the point of the song. Either that, or they knew the point of the song but chose to ignore it in place of making it seem like all they were doing was disrespecting the dead. Melodramatic garbage obviously works much better than actual facts in a current affairs show.

Nobody watches ACA here so I'll explain. What they decided to focus on instead was the fact that they were making fun of dead people and they interviewed the families and friends of the dead people being made fun of. Gosh, I wonder what they'd think of it. Obviously, they were disgusted by it and for the only person they interviewed who wasn't disgusted by it, they decided to discredit him by saying he's said controversial things as well before we get to hear what he has to say about it. Gee, great fucking journalism, ACA, I wonder who Australia's supposed to side with. Hey, let's be biased, it's not like news stories are supposed to be neutral or anything. That last sentence was sarcastic if you couldn't tell.

Through this biased journalism, they were trying to make it seem like the whole of Australia must be against them. They went as far as to say that the ABC's switchboard was jammed with complaints about it. If you consider six calls to be jamming the switchboard, it must be a really shit switchboard.

They actually even recorded Bev Brock saying that they were just doing this to get free publicity. Well, they didn't actually advertise that the song was being played, but if they were trying to get publicity from it, ACA's segment on it means "mission accomplished", right? Thanks for the publicity, ACA!

Another bit in the segment referenced how The Chaser went as far as to say that even Martin Bryant, the guy responsible for the Port Arthur Massacre, would be a top bloke after death and that it is a disgusting thing to say. Duh, but their point was that it's wrong to think that all dead people's wrongs should be forgotten, like Kerry Packer's tax evasion, just because they're dead. So to say that it's disgusting for them to think Martin Bryant will be praised when he's dead proves the real point of the song that ACA tried to avoid.

Obviously Martin Bryant won't be a saint when he dies but I guess it required an extreme view to get the point across that ACA still couldn't comprehend even though it's pretty freaking conspicuous especially after that.

The Glass House made fun of dead celebrities too, but they didn't have quite as good ratings to be a threat so they got let off. It seems to be that ACA's ethics are that your show can get away with anything if it's not popular.

What about Channel 9 itself? "Comedy" inc. were making fun of the dead even back when people still watched the awful show so why not pick on them? Oh that's right, they're on Channel 9.

and to top everything off, I'd think the song was so outrageous to the point of it being a parody of itself so nobody should need to take it seriously. They even made fun of it's own outrageousness by stopping Andrew Hansen before he said what he was about to say about Belinda Emmett. So get the fuck over it, snakes.

-C

Thursday, October 11, 2007

when metamorphosis goes retrograde.

By PJK

I want to use this blog for a moment to promote a friend's band. They are called Retrograde Metamorphosis and they play a kind of avant-garde post-rock psychedelic shoegaze surf rock. Oh, and it's all improvised. Neat huh? They have a guitarist, a violinist, two synthesizers, and a drummer.

Here's a 10 minute clip from their first gig, at the TAFE Centre for the Arts. If I recall correctly they played for over a half hour, uninterrupted. They had some really trippy projections going in the background too that you can't see very well in the footage (cells dividing and insects and stuff).



Also check out their MySpace to hear some studio recordings.

Kudos level: high.

Monday, October 01, 2007

rat race.

By Challi

First of all, way to suck, Port! I knew Geelong was going to win because they wanted it more, but yikes, a 119 point margin? That's just taking the piss. Also, I might know very little about AFL strategy, but maybe any defense at all would have helped? but hey, I'm just being an asshole. Who I really feel sorry for are those fans who spent all that money to go to the cesspool that is Melbourne, some even without tickets, to watch their team do their best, and that's definitely not what they saw.

Anyway, I was watching the Sunday program yesterday and there was this bit about a doctor deeming that Australia is racist in regards to our attitude to Muslims. Now, although I don't deny that Australians are racist (in fact, being part Asian, I've experienced it first hand), I feel like I need to clarify a few things:

1. "Muslim" is not a race of people, they're followers of a particular religion called Islam. Therefore it's not racism, it's religious discrimination. I'm not saying it's still not bad, just saying that it's dumb to call us racist towards something that's not even a race.

2. Race only exists as a social construct, not a biological one. I'm not too sure how this gets us off the hook for being racist, but I just felt like showing off my Uni intellectual prowess.

Racism is way too an obscure definition anyway and I still haven't quite grasped what it means. Apparently generalisation is a form of racism but I've been involved in a situation where it seemed like it was perfectly valid to generalise (in fact, it was impossible not to generalise in the context it was in) and I was accused of being racist even though I couldn't really avoid it. So in what situation could I have not avoided being generalistic? Well gather round and I'll tell you the story:

At our catholic school's year 11 spiritual retreat, we were put into groups of 10 or so people and we were given a scenario where there were several people on a boat and the boat was slowly sinking and the only nearby island was kilometre away and they had to get rid of some of the people on the boat and leave 5 so that they could make it to the island without sinking. Sounds ridiculous, I know, but bear with me. The people we could choose to save included a lawyer, a doctor and her husband, an Iraqi man, and a 24-year-old Aboriginal man. I don't remember the rest. I stated that the Aborigine should be on the boat because he could make smoke signals and get help.

but no, the supervising teacher was having none of that. She stated that not all Aborigines make smoke signals and since I apparently generalised that they do, I was racist for doing so.

That's just stupid. This is a fictional Aborigine in a scenario where we clearly had to make shit up, and I think it's perfectly valid that the Aborigine should be able to make smoke signals. They want to get off the island, don't they? Besides, since it's fictional and we're only given the detail that it's a 24-year old Aboriginal man, of course I'm going to assume everything else and use stereotypes to do so. I had no other option.

and why was the Aboriginal and the Iraqi man the only ones whom it was deemed their nationality was worth pointing out? Why not go ahead and give us the nationalities of the lawyer and the doctor? Why was it so damn important that the 24-year old man was Aborigine if we couldn't make use of it in the scenario?

Man, I hate retreats.

So that's my story. In the context I was accused of racist in, I think we are all racist in some way. We all generalise and assume things about races and we've all laughed at racist jokes, don't deny it. As long as we don't start Cronulla-esque riots or start a political party built on racism we can pretty much get away with it, and that's what makes Australia great.

-C

Monday, September 24, 2007

mr. mime!

By Challi

Marcel Marceau, emo pioneer.

Let's give a thankyou to the great mime Marcel Marceau, who died on September 22, 2007. Yes, the mime has been officially silenced. He was the man who brought miming to the modern era. Without him, there'd be nowhere near as many street performers at the Botanic gardens in silly white makeup and black skivvies pretending to eat dinner or walk in the wind or be entertaining. Wait, why are we thanking him again?

Channel nine news already did the tasteful "let's have a moment of silence" quip already so they killed my routine. Thanks, channel nine.

So how did Marcel Marceau die? Rumor has it that the imaginary dog he was walking attacked him. Other people say the glass box he was pretending to be stuck inside caved in on him. Some say it was heart attack but nah, the first two were much more plausible.

Apparently Marcel Marceau's "walking in the wind" gag inspired Michael Jackson's moonwalk. Really? Was Marcel the inspiration for Michael Jackson's face too?

and does anyone find it odd that he even has quotes?

Marcel Marceau had very little to do with kettles, and there's a smooth segue into the other thing I wanted to talk about that I can't be stuffed making another post for.

What is with this sudden influx of people using the old "Pot calling the kettle black" idiom? The phrase implies hypocrisy so I'm not sure why people bothered using such a stupid metaphor of coloured kitchen objects when they could just go "You're a hypocrite".

and why the hell are people giving a damn that the pot in the saying is a hypocrite? Wouldn't they be much more surprised that there's a talking piece of cookware? I sure as hell would be. They should change the phrase to "Hey look, talking metallic cookware" though I'm sure the phrase would end up losing it's point if that was the case.

How did this phrase even come about? Was some opium-fueled deadhead looking at the stuff in his kitchen and going "Gee, I wonder what would happen if the stuff in my kitchen could suddenly talk and if the first thing my cooking pot would do is accuse the kettle of being a certain colour whilst being that colour itself. OMG let's make a proverb out of it!"? I'm sure he wouldn't have said it that coherently, or even have said "OMG" but that's the only rational explanation I can think of.

Besides this semantics, why are people still using that particular metaphor as a phrase? It's kind of dated, isn't it? I believe it has been around since the 16th century and relates back to the days when people cooked their food and heated their water in their fireplace, the "black" being soot. Get with the times, yo! We have microwaves and electric kettles now. Cooking metaphors are lazy anyway, let's try some new ones:

"That's like the Nokia 6300 calling the LG KE600 connected to Bluetooth"
"That's like the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 calling the ATI Radeon HD 2000 laptop compatible"
"That's like YouTube calling MySpace a waste of time"
"That's like anyone reading this blog calling this post fail"

and so on.
but don't take my word for it, let's hear what Marcel Marceau has to say

"..."
-C

Thursday, August 30, 2007

to be or not to be, that is the equestrian.

By Challi

Just felt like sharing with you a great hidden treasure I found at JB Hi-Fi!


That's right, equestrian challenge! You've fallen asleep to it during the olympics, now you can live the tedium! Trotting my horse around a field while a bunch of old people with monocles look on is lots of fun! Whoa, be careful your horse doesn't halt in the wrong place, that was a close one! Oh you can just smell the grass growing.

You can even customise your rider, with all the dorky headgear and tanned tight pants you can think of. The only way they could make a game like this game even more fun is if it was a completely different game altogether and not one where the world's most boring sport is utilised in a video game! I mean c'mon, equestrian? It doesn't deserve it's own video game, and why Lucinda Green, whoever the hell she is, reckoned she was worthy of a video game just because she is tops in an obscure sport, is beyond comprehension.

and who the hell would be the market for this game? Kids and uni students, of whom are the main consumers in the video game market, would definitely not fork out their undeserved cash for a sport sim about a sport that only old fuddy duddies like. Said old fuddy duddies, who like the sport of equestrian, obviously don't play video games because they're not into video games and wouldn't play them anyway because their arthritis has completely screwed up their hands.

So who would want this game? Nobody. I'd be surprised if anyone even thought about buying it, though I'm sure those people who did buy it did it on impulse and didn't think about it at all, then came home and just realised what they just did and headbutted several holes in their wall.

At the end of the thought, it's just some weirdos trying to cover every sport simulation ever (case in point, World Championship Darts) and congratulations guys, you did it! Now enjoy having no money.

Some treasures are just meant to stay hidden. Frankly, I hope this one gets hit with equine flu.

-C

Sunday, August 05, 2007

post-poned.

By PJK

Well folks I can't help but feel bad. I feel bad because right now Challi is probably slaving away under sweatshop conditions to devise another in his series of highly entertaining posts, whereas I am lying on my ridiculously comfortable bed devouring "Groovy Candy Rolls". Can you believe that? They call them Groovy Candy Rolls now! In my day they were called Fizzers. That's just terrible. I feel bad about that.

Mind you, I'm not paying Challi for nothing. That would be a gross waste of finances, a little like throwing money into the event horizon of a black hole only to have it snatched by an an alternate version of me in a parallel universe wherein money is worthless and its inhabitants are also jerks who won't give stuff back to people in other universes. No, I pay Challi's salary for the exceptional quality of his articles, and in that regard he's certainly been earning his keep of late. And I'm glad, because now his kids won't have to eat rats anymore.

So where does this leave me, alleged co-conspirator in this whole operation? Right here. I haven't moved since I started writing and I'm not sure why you would ask that anyway. Do you really need to know my every whereabouts? I guess for my sake I'll just have to lift my game and post something worth reading. After all, the title of this blog clearly contains an 's' in brackets, and that means there's supposed to be more than one unenthusiast around here to complain about stuff. Well... technically it only means that we allow for the possibility of more than one, but you get the idea.

tl;dr? More posts from me soon.