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

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

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

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.

man on the moon.

By Challi

I was thinking today about music I liked from the '90s and then remembered about Savage Garden and how I liked their music but made the right choice not to admit it, because yeah, Savage Garden. So who are Savage Garden? They're not a poor sexual euphemism, no sir, they were like the biggest Australian band of the '90s if you don't count all those other bands that were bigger than them. They also performed one of my favourite songs when I was a kid: To The Moon and Back.

If you still are unaware of what the hell I'm talking about (understandable), here is the video to the song:



Infectious, huh? I'm surprised nobody realised the lead singer was gay back then, considering how fabulously styled his hair was in that clip.

but now, when I look back on it, It's actually a really stupid song, and still was even when I didn't look back on it. Let's have a look at the lyrics so you know what I mean.

She's taking her time making up the reasons
To justify all the hurt inside
Guess she knows from the smiles and the look in their eyes
Everyone's got a theory about the bitter one

Ok, so basically this implies that she's got some kind of special talent for reading people's facial expressions, and what has she figured out from looking at their faces? They're all theorists!

They're saying, "Mama never loved her much"
And, "Daddy never keeps in touch
That's why she shies away from human affection"
But somewhere in a private place
She packs her bags for outer space
And now she's waiting for the right kind of pilot to come

So she's basically waiting for the kind of pilot that can operate a vehicle that will go into space. Kind of like an astronaut? Duh.

And she'll say to him
She's sayin

This bit's just kind of annoying, they changed from future tense to present tense awful quickly. Nyaiben.

and here's the chorus, which is actually the only bit worth analysing. So, sorry for the other pointless bits leading up to it.

I would fly up to the moon and back if you'll be...
If you'll be my baby
I've got a ticket for a world where we belong
So would you be my baby?

First of all, if she's the one doing the flying, then why does she need a pilot? and why does it matter whether or not they have tickets when they're the ones flying the vehicle?

The chorus also claims that the ticket is for going to a world where they all belong. I guess they mean Earth, which is where they already were, because the moon isn't a world, it isn't even a freaking planet. Even if the moon was the "world" being referred to here, it still doesn't make sense, because they'll be going to the moon AND back. Back home, to Earth, where they were originally. Is Earth where they both belong? because I don't think they should waste so much money to go to the moon just to realise that they belong on Earth! Maybe they should've realised that before they decided to buy a return ticket.

Also, she's only willing to accept him as a pilot/astronaut for her vehicle to the moon if he will "be her baby". So, basically, if he pretends to be an infant for the flight! Geez, this woman's got weird fetishes. Anyway, if he is is the pilot, then that would be completely illegal and a horrendously bad idea, as he would be a baby and babies are way too young to be operating interspace vehicles, or vehicles of any sort for that matter, unless of course it's Britney Spears' baby. Oh zing!

So yeah, I'm not a nerd.

-C

a Chip off the old 'munk?

By Challi

I'm all for the upcoming wave of live-action movie remakes of old cartoons. They're great for nostalgia value and good fun for the adults who grew up on them to take their kids to so that they can wonder why the hell their parents liked crap like this. It's also a great distraction for Hollywood to give to the moviegoers until they can actually come up with something original. I can't wait to see how Hollywood have remade Speed Racer, Tintin and The Jetsons using their own unique adaptations which are still somehow loyal to the original show in some way.

However, I do have some sort of dignity and, although I know I should never judge a movie by its poster, I think I'm going to have to try to avoid the following movie. I think it speaks for itself:

May God have mercy on us all.

-C

ad-libbed.

By Challi

This is the Fisher-Price animal sounds farm.

This is a sticker.

These are TIGHTS!

This is handy!

but yeah, back to the animal sounds farm. To the untrained eye, it's just a crappy fiberglass toy barn with crappy toy animals that make sounds for the kids playing with it to listen to, and even to the trained eye it still probably seems like that. However, according to the ad for this product, it's more than that. Apparently it "gives kids a real feel for working on the farm".

Yes, because clearly all that farmers do is sit around and listen to their animals make noises. Forget about trying to make a profit off of them, they must of only bought their animals so they can listen to them and then go to sleep. Job done, now they can retire because they've listened to their animals make animal noises! Shut up, I was being sarcastic.

What this toy should really have to give kids a feel of life in the farm is to have toy crops and a sunlamp and have the crops be harmed by the suns powerful rays and lack of water so much that they die and be rendered useless so they have to be fed to the livestock. That's right, the toy should be drought-affected! Oh the fun the kids shall have when they learn how it sucks to be a farmer. Either that, or change the product's stupid slogan to something like "It gives kids a real feel of what it's like to play with a fiberglass toy barn that has toy animals in it that make noises" because that's what they're actually doing!

and here's an ad that's been freaking me out, for Coke and Coke Zero:



Ok, that's completely scared me off of Coca Cola for at least a minute. What I'm gathering from this ad is that, as soon as you take one sip of Coke or Coke Zero, you start having a huge uncontrollable epileptic seizure for a whole 4 seconds, which also involves speaking in tongues, saying incomprehensible crap like "Za Zang!". No thanks, Coke, I'll just stick to my red cordial.

-C

donkey-punched.

By Challi

There's been a lot of talk going around that Shrek, the lovable bald green ogre version of John Goodman, should stop being used for advertising junk food, like cheesy bacon balls and Nutella, because, apparently, that would only contribute to the obesity epidemic.



but of course, that's stupid. Kids will eat what their parents give them and usually nothing else, therefore parents are the ones responsible for their children's health. So how freaking stupid must the parents be to assume that some food being represented a clearly obese, ugly, green monster could possibly be good for their kids? Not very stupid at all, actually. Parents are usually smart and they have enough common sense to know that cheesy bacon balls and Nutella are bad for their kids but they'll buy it anyway, ugly ogre or not, because they know it will shut the kids up.

Back to the point of a fat green ogre advertising junk food, it makes perfect sense, doesn't it? He's fat and he's promoting kids to eat stuff that makes them fat, and possibly green. If he was actually promoting food that was good and healthy for kids, it wouldn't actually work.

What really grinds my gears about all this is that all these health organisations and such are basically trying to eliminate the junk food companies' right to promote their product at all. They have a right to advertise as much as everyone else does. How else are they going to make people aware of their junk?So what's the mentality of these health organisations trying to get rid of ads and promotions like these for junk food? Apparently, it's bad for us. No shit! We wouldn't buy it if it wasn't bad for us. Are we now going to get rid of every ad promoting things that are bad for us? Well there goes all the ads for beer, Travel Auction, 4WDs, Optus and any ad for Big Brother, then what the hell's left?

If the people aren't aware of the product, it might as well not exist and will just be sitting on the shelves unbought and label-less. And although that's probably what is preferred by these protesters, you can't take away the right for us already obese people to enjoy such wonderful food as much as we want. We earned it!

So get stuffed!

-C

stupor troopers?

By Challi

Like any lily-livered pinko in Australia, I want the Australian troops out of Iraq. My original reason for this was that they're participating in an unjust war in a god-forsaken hellhole and they might get hurt blah blah blah I want my mummy, but then I reattached my testicles and now actually have a practical reason as to why they shouldn't be in Iraq that even your average heartless bastard will understand:

They're not doing anything there!

Yes, according to a recent report from Iraq which I'll be sure to cite as soon as it comes up on a news site and obviously will have this sentence removed, Australian soldiers are being taunted by American troops for not participating as much as they should be. I tend to agree, mostly because the body count for American troops stands at around the 3500 mark, whereas the body count for Australian troops stands at a measly 2, and they were both accidental. If the Australian soldiers were really doing their jobs, we'd see a lot more dead Australian soldiers, and that's what we'd want to see! If it takes someone to be cleaning their gun and it accidentally going off for a death to happen, they may as well leave right now because they clearly aren't pulling their weight!

Ok, I don't actually wish death on the Australian troops and I understand they probably ran out of things to do, but they're also basically going in there and getting paid extra for nothing, except to stay in a war zone for a few months. So what? I went to the Philippines and Melbourne, I didn't get paid at all for that. Some of my brother's navy buddies, excluding himself, went to Iraq's coast and stayed there for a month or so and did absolutely nothing except stay there and await an attack that obviously isn't gonna happen (because the rebels have no submarines, duh) and they got paid extra for it. My brother went to Aceh and helped to rebuild an entire town after the Boxing Day Tsunami and he just got his regular pay. Injustice!

and to top it all off, it's American troops that are telling our troops that they're not doing enough in the war. That's got to be the last straw. Australians, either do your job and get a nice tally of deaths that somehow indicate a job well done, or get the hell out of there and stop getting paid for no reason whatsoever, slackers!

-C

philosophy and 'Tales From Earthsea'.

By PJK



Few would argue against Miyazaki's film making genius. But does it run in the family? Studio Ghibli's latest offering is not by Miyazaki but in fact by his son. It's called Tales from Earthsea, and like Howl's Moving Castle, it's based on a book by some lady I've never heard of. Not that it matters. By the way, just a warning for anyone who, like me, was expecting a plurality of 'tales' throughout the movie: there is only one tale, the title is erroneous.

By their usual standards the movie was pretty average. You can be sure that, being Studio Ghbili, the artwork and visuals will be as amazing as you've come to expect. Quite frankly though the story is disjointed and its telling is overly dramatic, at times cringe-worthy. Yet the movie does get one thing very right: its philosophical message. After the dragons and sorcery of the first half of the film, the last thing I expected was to be confronted with philosophy in the second half. But sure enough, there were sections of dialogue that sounded hardly dissimilar to something by Albert Camus. I don't want to spoil it for those who have yet to see it, but the movie ultimately deals with the exact themes I discussed in my last post: death, fear of dying, eternal life, and ultimate meaning.

The message is not one of despair but one of hope. As humans, we are the only beings aware of our own mortality. Faced with this knowledge, we should neither by burdened by the immense weight of it all, nor should we take for granted the 'unbearable lightness of being' and in so doing dismiss its value. Whether the promise of eternal life comes from science or from religion (or, in the fictional world of the movie, from magic), it makes no difference: the promise is an empty one. A life without end would be like a song without its final chord, or a story without the last, poignant words of its closing chapter.

Death makes life poetic. Surely we might better embrace life by accepting death?

death is like a box of chocolates.

By PJK

Religion seems to be a hot topic at the moment (the subject of two of our most recent posts, and several before that). This post is a supplement to my recent rant wherein I discussed how people's religious beliefs — specifically their notion of an afterlife — affect their worldview (and hence their attitudes to others). I've been thinking about death a lot lately; not necessarily fretting about it, just pondering. No particular reason, just because I'm getting older I guess (I'll be 20 next month; as a teen it felt like time was standing still for me, now it feels like time is racing ahead much too fast). So I thought I'd now share my beliefs about death honestly and with a frankness that I hope no one finds disrespectful, in the hope that someone out there on the Wide World of Web might find it enlightening. Yes, yes, I know. For a light-hearted satirical blog like this one, I couldn't have picked a less cheery subject. I can only urge you to read on, and you can forget all about the subject in a few short minutes. Sound fair?

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome." — Isaac Asimov.

Of course you might ask why I'm bothering to mention it at all; I'm still young, I have my whole life ahead of me, right? I hate this phrase because it implies that I will surely live a long time and that I won't say, be hit by a car tomorrow and be killed, which is a distinct possibility and one which we should all be aware of, at least some of the time. Here in the developed world we take for granted our ever-increasing lifespan. We owe a great deal of thanks to the benefits of modern healthcare, ready access to food and clean water and a comfortable standard of living. Because of these we therefore expect, nay demand, a long and prosperous life for ourselves and our loved ones. But as we are all made painfully aware from time to time, death can take any one of us at any moment.

What happens when it does? Well, as you might have guessed by now, my belief is that death is final. There is no soul. You and I will someday cease to exist altogether. Some people use very emotionally-charged language to describe this end. They call it 'oblivion', 'nothingness', 'eternal darkness', and so on. It is an idea that makes a lot of people very afraid indeed. This, along with the lack of an objective source of morality, is probably one of the least attractive aspects of modern atheist materialism. But I urge everyone to overcome these emotional stumbling blocks. I contend that death should not be scary, and by confronting it honestly we can achieve a better outlook on the life we have here and now. The rest of this post will be dedicated to showing why this kind of death is actually the ideal, and that belief in a life after death is both unnecessary and undesirable.

"The world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better, it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look Death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides." — Carl Sagan.

Afterlife beliefs are probably as old as human thought itself. Ever since early man was first able to reason causally (cause X will bring about effect Y), we have considered certain facts about our existence. This includes the observable truth that human beings and other creatures will eventually die. The corpse of a stone age hunter mauled by a sabre-toothed tiger ceases to move, no matter how many times his companions must have tried to rouse him from his slumber. Since primitive humans were a bit of stickler for spirits and sprites and other invisible forces working in nature, they concluded that there must be a spirit in all of us that departs the body at death. Dying, they thought, was just the process of shedding our earthly bodies so we may travel to a wonderful spirit world in the sky.

Let's take one example of an eternal spirit world that continues to have a huge influence on Western Civilization. Let's assume that I (and billions of Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, Pagans and other assorted heathens) am wrong, and Christianity is indeed the one true faith (ignoring denominational differences of course). If you've been good you get go to a place called Heaven where everything is perfect and anything is possible. You can meet and converse with God, Jesus, lost relatives, famous dead people from history and so on. Awesome! Well, for a while I guess. But for ETERNITY? That's forever. Think about it. You will eventually get around to doing every activity you've ever wanted to do (many, many times over). You'll have met every dead celebrity from history you've ever wanted to meet. By now you're sick of playing Nintendo with Jesus. Mozart is writing another symphony?! Does this guy ever stop? And watching through the clouds as life on Earth unfolds is getting pretty damn boring. Think of the old saying, history repeats itself. Watching the endless follies of humanity would be a bit like watching endless re-runs on daytime TV.

Heaven: boring?

So the boredom of eternal life starts to look more like an agony without end than a reward, and you'll probably end up having lengthy, heated arguments with God about why he came up with the idea in the first place. Ditto eternal punishment in Hell. Sure, being constantly whipped and beaten by imps and sodomised by Satan's demonic member might be a sheer relentless nightmare for the first few months, but after a dozen or so years of torment, you'll get used to non-stop pain (particularly since you were quite a hardcore dude to get into Hell in the first place). You're there for eternity remember, so pain will soon become a very normal occurrence. At some point you'll start to grow apathetic. Yo Satan, this the best you've got? Give me some real suffering, this stuff's for pussies!

"Since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn't it be better for God if we refuse to believe in Him, and struggle with all our might against death without raising our eyes towards the heaven where He sits in silence?" — Albert Camus.

What about the more esoteric idea that life is cyclical? Reincarnation has been central to many ancient religions East and West and is still widely believed today. At first glance it has a lot going for it: uh oh, dead... I guess that means Game Over, right? Nope! Simply insert coins and try again! Life is a never-ending arcade lock-in where everyone becomes a winner eventually! Sounds like a positive message huh?

But it raises too many questions. Where do new souls come from? What happens to all the souls if people all agree to stop having babies? But a more profound question: does reincarnation actually guarantee us anything? By which I mean, philosophically speaking, are we still 'us' when we reincarnate? We consider our sense of 'self' to be an accumulation of our deeds, our behaviour, our personality, our thoughts. Our spirit is said to be the enduring qualities of our embodied minds. But when you think about it, a lot of our identity has to do with memory. If we permanently lose our memory due to some sort of brain damage (as many people do), can we ever be 'us' again? Many people who suffer amnesia feel like different people, and fail to connect their past experience with what they think and feel at the present moment. So if at death we lose everything that had contributed to building our identity, does reincarnating without full awareness of our previous life make any difference anyway? Isn't it almost the same as the atheist version of death?

Reincarnation: not the answer.

There is another life-after-death belief that some people posit; I tend to associate the idea with hokey New Age crap and spaced-out hippies on acid. This is the notion that when we die we will all become 'one with the universe'. It's like y'know, dude, perhaps there is like this single, enduring consciousness, okay? Like a universal mind that we are all a part of man, and like, when we die, the like, essences of our being totally become a part of this eternal one-ness! Yeah. Maybe. Maybe not. I just don't find this one very reassuring, which is what afterlife beliefs are supposed to be. If it's true (and there's certainly no reason to think that it is, other than wishful thinking), it's kind of cool. But like re-incarnation, it ignores the fact that what we're really afraid of losing in death is our identity; if we become 'one' with the universe, aren't we becoming something that's pretty far removed from the person we were before we died? So is it really that much better than the atheist version of death?

Far out dude! I'm one with the universe.

So we're back where we're started: death as an eternal, dreamless slumber. Perhaps you're still not convinced. If not on an intellectual level, maybe you object to the idea on an emotional level. After all, if we're all going to die and that's it... why do anything at all? Doesn't death invalidate our lives? Doesn't it make our existence ultimately 'meaningless'? There are many and varied philosophical responses to questions like these. Indeed, the idea is nothing new: people have been considering such questions since at least the mid-19th Century, around the time many people began to suspect there might not be a god after all. This branch of thought is known as existentialism, expounded by thinkers like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Russel, Satre, and Camus.

It is possible the philosophers listed above didn't consider the possibility (now becoming more and more realistic) that as technology advances, we may be able to cheat death altogether. Should we, if possible, do away with death? If we have the technology to 'live forever', would it be a good idea? If current knowledge of the laws of physics is to believed, such a feat would be impossible. The universe is finite, and billions of years from now it will collapse, at which point it will no longer be possible for anything to exist. We may be able to increase our lifespan for aeons to come, but since our lives would still be finite, questions of life and death would simply be put off for a later day.

'Transhumanism' is thus not an answer, merely a means of delaying the question. In any case, as I mentioned in my response to traditional afterlife beliefs, living forever simply isn't desirable anyway. What gives us our impetus for action, what drives us to fill our days with the things that bring us great joy, is the knowledge that our time on earth is limited. If there was no end in sight we would simply put off all our ambitions, take for granted everything we have and everything we strive for, and eventually grow completely apathetic and weary of the world. That's not living. That's not the kind of existence I want, and on reflection, I don't think there are many people who would want it either (and those that think they do now would live to regret their mistake!)

"Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not." — Epicurus.

In sum, there is no reason to fear death, and indeed it gives us a solid grounding from which we may make sense of our lives. I argue that given this knowledge, we must either accept that death is final, or else live our lives as if it were. Because if we don't, and our beliefs about an afterlife are wrong, we risk taking for granted the only life we get. Of course, if I'm wrong and there really is a hell, I can only hope God is not so petty that he'd send me there simply for not believing in him.

Obviously none of this is really the most comforting message. When a loved one dies, the knowledge that they are gone forever, that it is impossible to ever see them again, is shattering. As anyone who has suffered loss will know, the first stage of the grief process is denial. Even when you finally accept that they're gone, it's still difficult to think that they aren't somehow here in spirit. I lost my grandmother when I was seven. I didn't see her very often and we were never very close, but it was still a huge shock. I was not raised in any religion and I don't believe in Heaven, but I still felt as if she was here, watching over me somehow. This feeling lasted many years, even as I became more convinced of my atheism.

This 'feeling' might not represent a metaphysical reality, but there is a sense in which it is significant. Indeed, we can all achieve some kind of immortality, because in a sense we do survive our death; in the thoughts and memories of our loved ones; on inscriptions on tombstones and in photographs and written records; through our contributions to society (whether they be our life's labours or our creative accomplishments); and in our genetic lineage, through our children and grandchildren and so on. Some day the planet will burn up, or we will destroy ourselves in a petty war, or the universe will have collapsed. But by then it won't matter. As long as the spark of humanity persists, we will all have shared in it, an experience which is significant to us if only because we know it can't last forever.

"Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have." — James Baldwin.

a smite at the museum.

By Challi

Does anyone else just find this adorable? A museum has been opened in America that tries to scientifically explain Creation and other completely understandable things like how Noah had dinosaurs on board the Ark with him! Oh yes, wood was really strong back then.



Now look, I understand how frustrating it is for Catholics to be believed by pretty much anyone that aren't them, but this stupid museum isn't exactly helping. I mean c'mon, dinosaurs on the Ark? Not even most hardcore Catholics are that fucking stupid. Besides, why do Catholics even feel that they have to explain themselves to the scientific world? Isn't God supposed to be some super all-powerful magic being that defies such restrictive boundaries like logic? If there was no evidence available to support otherwise, then wouldn't that prove that point more, and thus restore the majesty of God for the followers who would want to believe it like that? It's much better than trying to find a systematically sound reason as to how eating fruit from one particular tree made us ashamed of our nudity or how an old guy parted the sea with a magic stick, isn't it?

So likewise, I'm also annoyed that there were party-pooper protesters outside the museum with signs like "DEFCON SAYS THOU SHALT NOT LIE".



Yes, sure the museum is stupid and pointless, but that doesn't give them the right to ruin the creation idea for believers anyway. Do Catholic priests go around telling the little kids they lured into their confessional booths that the Easter Bunny and tooth fairy doesn't exist? Hell no, and they shouldn't do the same.

-C

a useful self-deception?

By PJK

Sloth: one of the seven deadly sins. Also a large tree-dwelling mammal (see above). We may not be living in trees just yet, but perhaps it's possible that through the former we might in fact be evolving (or is it devolving?) into the latter...

Who knows, maybe it's the absurd over-abundance of modern conveniences in our consumer-driven lifestyles, or maybe it's the legacy of 20th Century counter-culture movements. Or something. In any case, in this day and age laziness is not uncommon and is certainly no longer something to be frowned upon. I would go as far as to say that laziness is now almost seen as a virtue. Thanks to the Simpsons, lazy people are chic; the energetic are to be pitied. Calling someone a 'try-hard' is a term of derision amongst the youth of today; if something takes effort it is not considered cool, no matter how cool it might be.

I for one have adopted laziness as a way of life, taking the great hedonists of Ancient Greece as my mentors. I won't even look at an assignment until at least a week before the due date, and many of my peers are even more adept at putting things off than I am. This should hardly come as a surprise; students are born procrastinators. In fact, we go to such great lengths to avoid studying that paradoxically, we end up performing a lot more activity on impulse than we would ever manage otherwise. It's why this blog exists, it's why all these posts were written, it's probably the very reason you're reading this right now.

This is precisely the phenomenon that Marc Abraham discusses in this week's Guardian:

Critics say modern philosophy is a useless waste of time. They are wrong. At its best, modern philosophy tells us how to waste time usefully. Philosophy's great recent achievement, in this respect and perhaps overall, is the theory of structured procrastination.

In a 1995 paper, Structured Procrastination, John Perry, a professor of philosophy at Stanford University, explains: "I have been intending to write this essay for months. Why am I finally doing it? Because I finally found some uncommitted time? Wrong. I have papers to grade, textbook orders to fill out, a National Science Foundation proposal to referee, dissertation drafts to read. I am working on this essay as a way of not doing all of those things. This is the essence of what I call structured procrastination, an amazing strategy I have discovered that converts procrastinators into effective human beings, respected and admired for all that they can accomplish, and the good use they make of time."

Perry's notion is to channel an ostensibly bad habit ... "Structured procrastination means shaping the structure of the tasks one has to do in a way that exploits this fact. The list of tasks one has in mind will be ordered by importance. Tasks that seem most urgent and important are on top. But there are also worthwhile tasks to perform lower down on the list. Doing these tasks becomes a way of not doing the things higher up on the list."

...

Perry points out that "structured procrastination requires a certain amount of self-deception, since one is, in effect, constantly perpetrating a pyramid scheme on oneself ... This is not a problem, because virtually all procrastinators have excellent self-deceptive skills . And what could be more noble than using one character flaw to offset the bad effects of another?"

I couldn't agree more. Perhaps there is a better means of coping with the rigorous, boredom-inducing workload of academic life, rather than resorting to the masochism of procrastination. But if there is, I'll look into it some other time. Right now I'm going to go sort my entire wardrobe by colour. Maybe when I'm done I'll arrange my DVD collection alphabetically...

imagine no religion...

By PJK

"The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most destructive to the peace of man since man began to exist."

Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason.

Atheist opposition to religion should be unnecessary in principle. It makes no difference to me whether you believe in an omniscient creator, or whether you believe in the tooth fairy. As readers may have noticed, I am firmly against the idea that anyone's beliefs (political, religious, cultural, etc.) should be grounds for discrimination in a democratic, secular, and pluralist society. But this is not the same as saying that belief should be immune from criticism, and when it comes to religion there is certainly a lot to critique, even oppose.

For one thing, my tolerance is certainly strained after having personally encountered (on no less that two occasions in the past six months) representatives of organised religion who have either directly stated or implied that I am going to Hell.

Sure, we could ignore them. We could just walk away. But should we? Shouldn't we be opposed to this kind of hateful bile as a matter of principle? The idea that 'sinners' and 'unbelievers' will be subjected to a divine punishment (especially the Christian and Islamic conceptions of Hell) is an archaic and poisonous one, particularly when what is considered 'sinful' is based on ancient and erroneous notions of morality. But sadly this view continues to have an emotional stranglehold on millions around the world. Even simply implying that the godless will have no place in an eternal afterlife is in my opinion emotional blackmail of the most sickening kind. While there exist people and organizations that continue to espouse these views, they MUST BE OPPOSED by all rational and tolerant people.

So too must religious interference in politics. The faith of a political figure is one thing; it's as personal as my preference for coffee over tea. But when the leader of a secular democracy openly promotes the religious views of one sect over all others, then our liberty (in the Enlightenment sense) is compromised. This means no references to 'God' in official documents and ceremonies. No 'Day of Prayer'. No public money for pushing 'abstinence' or 'intelligent design' into schools. These are all aberrations. Thomas Paine would've been appalled.

Enforcing secularism and promoting tolerance is a noble cause, but I would suggest that it alone is not enough. Rational people have a duty to oppose intolerant faiths. When Churches and Sunday Schools evoke the concept of Hell and divine punishment, they are blackmailing and threatening people. Worst of all, they are blackmailing and threatening children. If I threatened or blackmailed a child, shouldn't I be prosecuted? And if there is any justice in the world, shouldn't I be punished for it? People are easily led astray by hateful rhetoric. So why let religions get away with propagating the worst threat of all? (ie. an eternity of the worst suffering imaginable!)

Finally, I have this to add. People object to the way 'militant' atheists such as Richard Dawkins attack religion. You might be inclined to think he is just as bad. I would disagree. Dawkins is not threatening anybody. Unlike many religious believers, Dawkins is not suggesting that if you don't adopt his beliefs, you will be eternally punished. And though I haven't read The God Delusion, from what I've heard it mainly targets the fundamentalist God (ie. a bearded man in the clouds), and this I have no qualms with. If anything, Fundamentalists should be attacked more often and more harshly by noteworthy intellectuals, and their ludicrously primitive and dangerous beliefs like 'creationism' should be exposed for what they're truly worth (ie. nothing).

And if this argument sounds one-sided, understand too that my tolerance for 'Islamic sensibilities', particularly the hypocrisy involved in responding to cultural offences with senseless violence, is wearing thinner by the day.

Islamic sensibilities or Islamic double standards?

yes, Virginia, there is a bodycount.

By Challi

I was actually going to talk about this while it was still relevant but, hey, that's procrastination for you. Besides, I think we who weren't affected at all personally by the Virginia Tech Massacre has gotten over the shock of it by now so we can just look back on the event and laugh.

...

Ok, that was kind of tasteless, but at least it's been long enough to at least get away with the title and the rest of this post without a lynch mob waiting within the comments section.

Anyway, I think that the perpetrator of this most heinous act, Cho Seung-Hui, was clearly a bit of an attention-seeking drama queen who wanted to go out with a bang (sorry) which is why he sent those videos of him talking about why he was about to kill all those innocent hedonists to NBC, so that he could be seen as some sort of awesome martyr on national TV rather than just some angsty acne-ridden nutjob, not that it worked. In fact, all he really did was seem like a jealous kid who hated everyone who had a better life than him. He is like a lot of Uni students in that respect, except not in regards to the "killing 33 people" part, most of us only get to about 12 and then we get back to finishing that damn 2500-word essay. I'm not sure where I'm going with this.

Fear my wonky eyes and overbite

What I really want to mention, though, is how this weirdo decided to compare himself to Jesus Christ in one of his videos, here's a transcript:

"You thought it was one pathetic void life you were extinguishing, but thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ to inspire generations of the weak and defenseless people."

Umm...huh? You died like Jesus, did you? I don't recall that bit in the Bible where Jesus walked into a university and shot 31 people on top of the 2 he shot a few days before and then put the gun in his mouth and shot himself. I'm pretty sure he died while nailed to a cross and died for our sins without killing other people in the process. Sure, the New Testament was written to make Jesus look good, but I doubt the writers stretched the truth that much.

Ah, and you did what you did to inspire the weak and defenseless did you? Is that a small price to pay for killing 33 defenseless people, or are you just unfamiliar with your own hypocrisy? or both? I know these questions I ask will not be answered because the person I'm asking them to is too much of a coward to answer them...and he's also dead.

In the rest of that video, he also mentions the future victims being a bunch of hedonistic brats who couldn't live without all those material goods. The irony of that is that he couldn't kill that many people without his own material posession, his guns and he wouldn't bother with killing the other 31 people without taping himself on another material possession, a video camera, because otherwise he wouldn't be as infamous. So he's as bad as everyone else, except that he killed people so he's a little worse.

I'll end this post with one final irony: Does anyone else find it strange in this picture below that he looks like he's trying to shoot someone when he's clearly being sniped himself?

Ok, I'll shut up now
-C

the nostril sneer.

By PJK

I haven't blogged about my experiences of being a law student yet, so here's one recent anecdote from my chat logs that should provide a revealing glimpse of what goes on:

Pat: so get this
Pat: GET THIS
Pat: I'm up at the assignment office
Tyson: that is?
Pat: ugg
Pat: its the office where you hand in assignments and get them back
Pat: so anyway I'm at the assignment office
Pat: I ask the lady if she has an assignment for me (I knew there was one I was supposed to get back just couldn't remember which). but she just HAS to be a bitch about it and demands to know for what subject specifically
Pat: so I'm like, torts (I guess)
Pat: she goes, nope nothing for torts
Pat: and then shes like, oh wait, have you got back the last assignment?
Pat: and I have one of those moments where I can't really remember because there are so many freaking assignments its impossible to remember which ones Ive collected
Pat: so I pause and go.. "I'm not sure.."
Pat: anyway some bitch in line behind me does that laugh where, its not really a full laugh because it wouldn't be polite, but she just kind of sneers through her nostrils
Pat: only I totally heard it
Tyson: so just as impolite really
Tyson: i know the one
Pat: I'm thinking, fuck you bitch, not everyone is thinking about their assignments 24/7
Pat: I overheard a conversation she was having with her friends before hand
Pat: she's one of those freaks who organises every little detail of her life down to the Nth degree
Pat: she was there picking up some assignment that had only just been given back
Pat: obviously she found it amusing that someone could pay less attention to their assignments than she does
Pat: anyway suffice to say that was a very boring story but the point is LAW STUDENTS ARE ASSHATS
Pat: yes even me. probably especially me but that's not the point

Just to clarify, the bitch in question was some random from another year, I didn't know her. Stuff like this (ie. something or someone doing something trivial to piss me off) happens pretty much daily.

So basically it's no different from anything else.

yet more NineMSN idiocy *sigh*.

By PJK

Remember two posts ago, that inane NineMSN poll about a Mulsim, err... 'religious' immigration cap? Here's yet another shocker for ya:

Oh FFS.

Okay, this isn't the same thing as asking if migrants should merely be screened for HIV before entering the country. Perhaps a mandatory screening process would arguably serve the greater good. After all, we have the resources for such a programme that many countries perhaps lack, so at least someone carrying HIV into the country could become aware of it and get proper treatment here... though even that seems like an invasion of privacy to me. In any case, that's another debate entirely. What this poll is asking is whether or not any migrants that arrive HIV positive should be kicked out of the country. Australia's answer: a resounding yes.

Hussah! Once again our stalwart citizen-soldiers rally to erect yet more barricades in defence of Fortress Australia™.

THIS IS SPARTAA!!!

Shut up. Think for a minute about how you would feel if you were HIV positive. It's the most horrible thing. Condemned to an early grave, you become a walking taboo. People are literally afraid of you, as this poll shows. Think how you would feel if you were denied access to a great country like ours simply because you arrive and discover you're HIV positive, and subsequently have to return home to a country where treatment may not be available.

Human rights apply to all humans, 'diseased' or no. This is no different from the bigotry of the previous poll I mentioned.

Clearly people have been watching too much 300. This is NOT Sparta.

Morons.

EDIT: Well it looks as if I'm the real moron, having failed to realise this poll was based on comments made by, of all people, our Prime Minister. Glorious Leader is apparenly being blasted over the comments, and rightly so. Also, according to that article, migrants over the age of 15 are indeed tested for HIV and it is apparently very difficult for them to be accepted into the country under current government policy. Shows what I know.

Turns out this is indeed Sparta. My bad.

the brush off.

By Challi

No matter how many fun songs are sung about it on Sesame Street and Play school, nothing can make the concept of brushing your teeth fun. It's just a stupid meaningful task which we all feel we have to do because we want our teeth to still be attached at 30 and hate the idea of gingivitis and bloated gums. Trouble is, we - and by that I mean me - tend to avoid it because it takes off 2 minutes of my life that I could be using for playing video games, which is so much more important to me. Hedonism comes before personal hygiene all the time. Also, if I miss the bus, I'd hate it to be for the reason I was taking care of myself. Another thing I hate about brushing my teeth is that I like to put extra toothpaste on the brush just to be sure of clean teeth and a lot of that ends up on my shirt, and that always looks a little suss.

but even though I can't be bothered to find time to do it and I hate the mess, it's a task that must be done. So after about a year of neglecting my teeth, I've been combining the frivolous brushing of my teeth with a task that I love doing and feel more obligated to do that doesn't get toothpaste on my shirt and also make it seem like I give a crap about saving water for those farmers whining about the drought.

I've been brushing my teeth in the shower.

Now, I'm sure I'm not the first person to come up with this idea but I'm sure as hell taking credit for it because it's brilliant. I just brush my teeth during my shower and use the water pelting down to rinse my mouth and clean off the brush when I'm done. It's also a great excuse to stay in the shower a little longer and I'm obviously not wearing my clothe in the shower so the stains won't still be there after I clean the toothpaste off my chest.

Now if you want to rip off this idea which I'm sure I unintentionally ripped off someone else, if that makes sense at all, be my guest. Just make sure you don't get the toothpaste tube mixed up with the shampoo bottle, which may induce tragic results.

Just saying
-C

officially un-Australian.

By PJK

Yes, that's right. I am now officially un-Australian. Explanation follows.

When you log into MSN Messenger, you have the option of displaying "MSN Today", which summarises the daily news as decided by our good friends over at Murdoch's Nine Network. You know this already, but read on! Each day it has a user poll pertaining to a particular news item, which is the main reason I look at it rather than turning it off — the polls are always so absurdly biased, set-up or worded in such a way that they almost always coincide with the government's latest talking-points, or whatever blatant rightwingery Rupert Murdoch has decided we ought to be buying-into at the moment.

Today's poll is possibly the most outrageous I've seen thus far: "should the government cap immigration for particular religions?" If you didn't manage to take that in properly at first glance, what it's asking is this: should the government limit the number of people belonging to a certain religion from living in Australia or not.

Here's what MSN users have to say thus far:

WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK???

And gee, I wonder what the "particular religion" is they had in mind?

Democracy, people. Ever hear of it? It entitles people to certain freedoms. One of those freedoms is the one that allowed you (and I'm now addressing the average Joe nationalists who voted yes in the above poll) to wake up this morning without being beaten to within an inch of your life by men with large sticks, for example. There are others.

One freedom that we've associated with democracy since, well, let's say the American Revolution OVER 200 YEARS AGO, is called Freedom of Religion. The deal is, you get to worship whatever make-believe deity you want, and get this: as a bonus, you don't get a hot iron rod inserted into your anus (ala a certain Spanish Inquisition). Until recently it has generally been thought of as a good idea.

But I guess now you want to shit upon that idea huh? Those Muslims, they don't respect OUR way of life, do they? And terrorism and things. Therefore we don't want THEM coming HERE anymore. Yeah, I can totally understand where you're coming from. I get your line of thinking. Oh wait, hang on a mo', THAT'S RETARDED.

Religion and culture are two different things. The former is just an idea. The latter is how you put it into practice. Now I'm not saying there aren't aspects of people's culture that are definately NOT compatible with the Australian way of life. There most certainly are. Treating women like sub-human scum for example is going to get me very mad at you indeed. Blowing yourself and others to smithereens in order to promote medieval bullshit like Sharia law is another. That kind of shit severely riles me.

But belief in a particular God or a particular Holy Book is no basis for discrimination in any civilised society, and until recently I was sort of hoping Australia was still one of those. If the majority of you fucktards though want to make this country into one giant Cronulla riot then I guess that makes me what you're not.

And judging by the Stormfront posters I've been seeing all over town, including at the bus stop by my house, I guess such thinking is becoming the norm.

Guess that makes me un-Australian. Meh.

Enjoy your Crusade, bitches.

blue dodo down.

By Challi

I'm bringing blogging back (yeah), them other n00bs don't know how to act.

Yes, I had a nice half of a summer holiday that involved me getting drunk off my ass at my brother's wedding and watching the worst of daytime TV and overall just avoiding this blog, thanks for asking. However, now I'm back from outer space and you just walked in to find me here with that sad look upon my face. Should you have changed that stupid lock or even made me leave my key if you had known for just one second I'd be back to follow you?

*water splashes on face*

Ok, back to business. Let's start this blogging year with a pointless rant about an annoying ad.

Not only is this ad annoying, it is also immoral and just downright evil. It's bad enough that Dodo Australia has played God by resurrecting an extinct bird and painting it blue in order to sell their services but they also are playing on people's addictions to sell their services too.

In this ad, there are people in a group counselling session ala Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous where they go around the circle and everyone states their name and tells everyone that they have an addiction or dependency. In this case, they are apparently all mobile phone addicts. The first guy stands up and states his name and says he is a mobile phone junkie. The next person is an overtly happy woman who just says "I don't have a problem because my mobile charges are half price!"

Wrong! It's wrong!

If it's an addiction then the idea of getting it cheaper won't stop the addiction, it would only make it worse! That's like going into a Narcotics Anonymous meeting and saying "I don't have a problem with my addiction to crack anymore because I know a place where I can get 10kg of crack for 50 bucks!" How much it costs shouldn't be the problem, it should have something to do with, oh I don't know, how much it can kill you? How much you get addicted to it and ruin your life? Even if the addiction is mobile phones, the radiation poisoning can kill you and you're always paying for it anyway and yeah, it damn well ruins your life! So for ruining everybody's life, Dodo, Derryn Hinch just has this to say to you:

Shame, Shame, Shame

Oh wait, while I still have Derryn Hinch, he also has this to say to you:

Paw-paw because you pour pour the milk, Mango because it makes a man go.

Oh, and this:

A licky boom boom down

*Water splashes on face*

Where's all this water coming from?

Before I stop wasting your time, another ad I hate is that god damn ad for Off! insect repellent. Sure we should be concerned that it's called "Off!" but there's more. In it, there is some family outside going all "I don't think I've got it on but you've got it on well I've got it on let's get it on and something about mosquitos".

Now look, I don't mind American ads on television, but they shouldn't need to dub everyone with Australian accents when we can plainly see that the ad was American to begin with. Australians don't look like that, and if we know they're not Australian then your pathetic attempt to make it seem like it's a product of Australia has failed miserably. This isn't the only ad where they do it either, and it's always painfully obvious when they do. Stop dubbing ads, thanks.

-C

welcome to 2007!

By PJK

Happy New Year!!! Wooo!

With 2006 now little more than a drunken haze somewhere at the back of our collective memories, it's time to embrace 2007.

Why? Because as Julian Baggini notes:

Even if you have had a happy Christmas and flourished in 2006, the changing of the calendars is a rude reminder that the Grinch of Time has just walked off with another year. And he is an unrelenting thief who's going to carry on taking every hour, minute and second from us until we have none left.

That goddamn Grinch of Time! I for one am sick of his thieving ways. Stealing all our precious moments and bagging them up in his big hessian sack. How dare he?!

No doubt the Grinch of Time has already pawned our favourite years down at his local Cash Converters. I bet they gave him a good price for the year 2000. That was a damn good year. A premium time to be alive. 2006 on the other hand probably would have only bagged him about 20 bucks. Oh well. Keep on trucking oh Grinch of Time. Someday you'll have enough money to buy that place you were after.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go eat some macadamia nuts before the Grinch of Time steals them too.