Fuck my brain is fried today. It’s been a busy week on multiple fronts and while it’s better to be busy than bored, fucked if I’m not looking forward to the weekend, a few beers and some serious sleep.
Anyway, off for some beers and dinner with some mates this evening which will be a fine diversion and then some serious and committed sleep. Try not to break anything will you? You’re a rowdy lot.
Filed under life
When it comes to a lot of things in life it’s pretty safe to assume that people are trying to put one over on you. For example, buying a used car, or taking a girl out for dinner. She’s scoring a free meal, you’re scoring the opportunity to pay for her meal.
Even so, there are some people in life who aren’t just trying to scam you, they’re trying to completely and utterly treat you with the contempt that they believe you deserve and show you up for the idiot that you are. These people are called Sub-Editors (who write headlines) and Opinion Pollsters (who write lies).
Take this article in today’s SMH online as an example. The headline implies that there’s some life in the Gillard government’s chances at the next election. Un-fucking-true.
When you read the article, the polling shows that the Coalition would still beat six shades of shit out of Labor at the next election with a margin so large it’s embarrassing to us all. The fly in the ointment is that when you go head-to-head between Gillard and Abbott as preferred Prime Minister, Gillard comes out ahead, although not with a majority margin.
What does this tell us? Well first of all it tells us that headline writers and opinion pollsters are lying cunts. But that’s sort of ok, because we all know that to be true anyway. More importantly it tells us that the Australian electorate is SO FUCKING SICK of this Labor government that they would vote it out by a huge margin, thereby installing a man they hate more than the current PM.
Now that’s an interesting fact. When the voting public dislike and mistrust Tony Abbott more than Julia Gillard, well… it’s really saying something about Abbott (something I’d tend to agree with – the guy will say or do anything for a vote).
But the most important part is that they’d still rather a Tony Abbott led government. Imagine how far the Coalition could go if it had a leader the Australian electorate actually respected?
Filed under politics
A friend from the US recently introduced me to this act. Still trying to track down a copy of the album in Australia, as we still seem to be stuck in some past century… Anyway, a nice mean track and a video full of juvenile hostility. Awesome.
Filed under music
I’ll just wait a moment to let TNA gather himself up off the floor after fainting like a schoolgirl meeting the Beatles. The thing is TNA, that these world class brewers are just passing through…
While most of the article is worth ignoring for its simplistic and advertorial nature, I did bother to look up the locations listed towards the end of bars/purveyors of these allegedly great brews.
I have to admit that I’m rather alarmed by the Pumphouse on two fronts. First it’s located in Darling Harbour, but it’s possible I’m just being a dick about it, so I’ll try not to hold that against the place. Secondly, on the page listing the tap beers it refers to “true blue Aussie favourites Toohey’s, Hahn and Boag’s”. Sorry Pumphouse, you’ve ruled yourself out of contention. You can fuck off home.
The Beer Cartel in Artarmon seem to be a bunch of tools that want you to sign up to get a “mixed pack” of the usual suspects every month. Don’t trust them myself so they’re ruled out too.
So instead we turn to The Local Taphouse. Their selection of beers currently on the taps is a bit more promising and some of the bottled options have me rather interested. Wondering if TNA can advise on some of the UK brews listed there?
Filed under beer
I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m under no illusions here. I’m not a good person, but fuck it, neither are you. There’s no such thing as a good person and it’s a fucking childish lie that’s useful in some circumstances but is totally fucking insidious in most of life.
There are good words, good thoughts, good intentions, good desires and good deeds. But no good people. The tendency of society to a Manachean viewpoint means most people would expect me to say that there’s no such thing as a bad person, but that’s not really the case. There are some people, so far removed from the rest of society that they are freed from all concerns or considerations of others. We call them psychopaths and sociopaths and they are bad people.
But fuck it, people do good things, and they do bad things. How do the fucking scales work on that? Is helping the old lady cross the street good enough to off-set beating your wife? Most people would probably say no. But why? How is this determined? It’s not. It just is. Somehow there’s a natural level of knowledge that seems to get passed on through the generations. That’s the idea behind memetics anyway.
In any case it doesn’t fucking matter because none of us are good, not one. Jesus said it and I’m not fucking arguing with him on that point. He was also cool with gamblers, political zealots, hookers, organized crime syndicates and so on. If only the Catholic church had continued to hang out with scum like this instead of raping young kids, covering it up and doing it again, all around the world… fuck it, there’s no such thing as a good person, priests included.
In fact, the best priests will tell you that themselves. Humble fuckers the good priests. I’m cool with that though. I enjoy a good dose of humility.
Sometimes the words just come and they don’t really mean anything. There’s no real thought. No complete arc, no story, no thematic continuity. Sometimes it’s just a mood and one miserable fucking word has to follow another until you’re done and the mood’s beaten you or you’ve beaten it. Like the world’s shittiest video game.
Sometimes the music helps and sometimes it’s just a pleasing background that does little to improve things in anything more than an aesthetic sense. But let’s not be too dismissive of aesthetics, they’re fucking beautiful.
Sometimes the whisky will help. Not the volume of it, usually it’s less then, not more. But the ritual of it. The glass, the selection of region, age, cask. The opening of the bottle, the pour. The inhale, the first sip, the intake of breath across the tongue, lighting the fire.
Sometimes I think smoking would help. Again it’s the ritual. The pipe holds appeal because there’s more time in preparing than there is in partaking and a good fucking ritualistic distraction should do that for you.
Sometimes the words come and they read like they might mean something, but they don’t. And even if they did, the meaning that anyone reading would derive from them would be wrong. After all, what anyone else reads is not what I wrote. They read themselves into it. They imagine their whisky, even if they’ve never had a drop in their lives. They imagine that inhalation of smoke and they hear their music. And so they are completely fucking wrong.
But that’s alright because being wrong is fine. It’s natural, it’s healthy, it’s part of life. Fuck it, we’re all wrong. And I’ll be as wrong as the rest of you because when I’m done writing, and start reading I’ll stop being me and I’ll be someone else and this won’t mean the same thing at all. Not that it meant anything to begin with. But even knowing that won’t stop me from constructing meaning.
And that’s ok too, because there’s no such thing as a good person.
Filed under writing
Well hopefully this will be worthwhile. Several months ago I told my mate TNA about a few Aussie comedians that I thought weren’t completely shit.
One of the people I mentioned was Shaun Micallef who I think has been largely underutilised and underrated for much of his career.
So I’m looking forward to seeing how his new show turns out. Titled “Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell“, we’re promised something of a news satire program based on actual events. While I am wary of the already lazy, fatuous and obvious references to Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert’s The Colbert Report – I’m hoping this will be something different enough. Not that I mind those American shows, they’re pretty fucking funny and some of the smartest commentary on American news is found on those shows.
Fuck, even TNA has to give The Daily Show a nod for its job pointing out how badly Ron Paul has been screwed over in the Republican Presidential Primaries campaign.
So yeah, I’m fine with those shows, but I’m really hoping Micallef gets a chance to shine here and make a decent Australian show. After years of Underbelly spilling its guts all over our screens, we deserve a good Australian show.
You may not use twitter much or at all. I first experimented with it through my work. Like all gateway drugs, it wasn’t long before I’d slid past the social media gateway of facebook (which really is for children) and was onto the hard stuff.
Anyway, there’s a pretty funny woman by the name of Patricia Lockwood who has made the terrible life choice of being a poet (as the lady says herself, “Poetry is just any cool boob-spill that doesn’t fit into the regular bra of the sentence”). Tricia’s become semi-famous on twitter for sending “SEXT” messages that are utterly bizarre and awesome.
I present Exhibit A:
“Sext: We bump glasses when we kiss and open our eyes to discover that we can penetrate each other with Gazes alone”
Anyway, Tricia’s run into a bit of trouble on the home front. Her husband’s been diagnosed with a serious cataract problem which will render him blind in rather short order. So she’s asked (at the urging of hundreds, maybe thousands of strangers) if you might be able to help out a little bit.
I’d urge you to do so, because I think we all need a little more sexting in our lives. Here are more details on what you can do.
Filed under charity
