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

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.

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