Three French Hens, Two Plastic Wangs

I don't understand office Christmas parties. It seems to me that a large percentage of the population consider it the adult equivalent of the bubblers during a game of tips -- a 'bars' zone where the real rules don't apply. Half hearted office romances are brought to a Jägermeister fuelled head and every man and their dog goes gang-busters to be the first idiot to remove their pants. Hilarity: I knew thee well.

The thing that confuses me is that they wait this long. The rest of us have been trying all year to develop a definitive rat bag model, then these jokers come in lagered to the hilt and think they can pull off a one night coup without even considering the collateral damage to the industry. It's bringing the craft of yahooism into disrepute, and that makes me sad.

Furthermore, on the subject of office romance, who in their right mind would think that an office Christmas party is the adequate stage for the making for pre-marital whoopee? Seriously, would you really want to be having this conversation in your not so distant fuuuuuture:




Friend:
Didn't you guys get TOGETHER at the last Christmas party?

You:
Betcha nuts we did. Me and that cute filly you see over there were one minute fetching a glass of Midori Lemonade, next minute WHAM BAM - photocopier room gettin' in ooonnnnn.

Friend:
High five!

You:
That's how I roll.

Friend:
That's a story to keep for the kids alright.

You:
(leans in conspiratorially) Speaking of keeping, I even managed to grab the accidental Xerox we took of her arse, you know, for prosperity.

Friend:
You're a die hard romantic, Stan.

You:
(winks) Takes one to know one, Gary Glitter.




no no NO. I'd much rather the conversation I had with my friend Sluggo after I cunningly escaped my own Christmas party ("Holy shit! Is that one of the Ronnies from that show with the two Ronnies? You know what's it called... the Ronnie brothers?") after things started to get a bit out of hand:





Sluggo:
Hey dude. How's the party going?

Me:
Secret Santa was a bit unnerving. My boss was disappointed with the fake buttocks he received, that is, until he discovered that they could instead be worn under his shirt as fake boobs. This was later deemed inappropriate, so he drew some nipples onto each buttock with a magic marker and then added about a hundred toothpicks into the front which I can only assume were supposed to resemble chest hair. I left him at the point where he began beating his chest repeatedly where the toothpicks were and shouting "I love the pain!" to anyone who dared look at him.

Sluggo:
So.. well then?

Me:
As well as can be expected. I got a beanie that was shaped like a big penis.

Sluggo:
I see what they did there. Clever.




Perhaps I should just grow up and accept that strapping a big plastic knob to my forehead is all part of social networking in the real world. It's funny you know, they never tend to mention this stuff on Oprah.

Merry Christmas!

Creepy-looking David Bowie says:

Merry Christmas, you funky junky spaceman!

A big thankyou to everyone who has stopped by this year, it's been a lot of fun. Assuming that I make it safely through the new year festivities, I'll see you and your kind for more in 2008.

How to Win at eBay and Influence People

1. Decide that a beautiful new sunburst lawsuit-era Ibanez guitar with pretty pictures on it will exponentially increase your quality of life and your chances of hooking up with babes.
   
   
2. Studiously scour eBay during office hours until such a guitar appears.
   
   
3. Notice with disdain as two hateful eBay novices start a bidding war for the object of your affection, paying no heed to the eBayers code of last-minute engagement.
   
   
4. Decide to balk convention yourself and immediately contact both members, kindly pointing out that bidding on an item 6 days out is fruitless and serves only to increase the final sale price. Feel confident that you are being helpful and avoiding unnecessary condescension.
   
   
5. Receive no reply from the first member, and the following message from the second:
   
   
   
   
   
   
6. Wrinkle nose at lack of punctuation and civility. Shake head at overly clichéd war-cry. Begin devising cunning retaliation.
   
   
7. Download eBay sniping program Auction Sentry. Marvel at application's ability to automatically place winning bid on item 30 seconds before auction close. Configure winning snipe on lusty guitar and cackle in pre-emptive glee.
   
   
8. Win guitar.
   
   
9. Send following message to Strummer69:
   
   
   
   
   
   
10. Take receipt of guitar at work from long haired death metal rocker that smells of Vicks Vapour Drops. Impress pink haired ladies at the front desk with less than adequate rendition of Stairway to Heaven. Receive no reply from substandard rival. Live happily, guitar playingly, ever after.
    

From May 2007, no chance I could afford this now.

When NineMSN turns bad

Coincidence?

I think not.

Incidentally, my keycard still hasn't arrived, which means I've now been 4 months in London without access to money. Any money. At all. Except Mums. Thanks Mum!

So, I'm now building presents for people out of whatever I can scrounge together. Because my scrounging skills are somewhat limited, I've decided that homemade cards, mixtapes, and compliments are the go this year.

I've just made a new Hackney acquaintance that is well into (shudder) Phil Collins. She loves him dearly, so I thought I'd put together a Phil Collins covers CD for her. You know, as a means of her weaning herself off him.

My research has so far yielded thus:



And this:

The Postal Service - Against All Odds


I'm kinda digging on both of them. Tell me I'm wrong.

I make hamburgers, I get all the girls

Although this probably won't satisfy the requirements of Miss Bloom's meme request, it is none-the-less a story. It is set in the past. It does contain two or more primary actors. The main hitch I can see is that it's not one of my earliest memories -- though considering the amount of self inflicted amnesia I was suffering at the time due to the excesses of high living, I'm pretty certain I can contest that point with some success. Perhaps not in a court of law, as they say on the telly, but in any court that ol' Hell on Wheelsanor would be privy to I dare say.

When I was only a little Davey of 19 years I decided to take a year off from the pressures of first year Uni (retroactive scoff), move out of home, and get myself a job at the high class catering establishment known as 'Pizza Hut'. It was a shitty job. I smelled like pizza most of the time and after paying the rent I only had about 100 bucks left over to live on. Most of that was inevitably spent on weed, with everything left being spent of booze and petrol. I guess we figured that sustenance could be established through the ritualized consumption of pizza. I can't remember being that concerned with the effects that this diet was having on my health, but as you might imagine, being healthy didn't rank too highly on our give-a-shit list.

I was working under a new government initiative at the time that was putting fast food workers through a monthly Tafe training program. A 'catering traineeship' I think it was alluringly called. While this seemed great in theory, the entire process was a complete farce. The lesson plan at Tafe revolved around simple sums and role playing scenarios such as:

A customer approaches the counter and makes a complaint about finding a hair in their food. Do you:

A) Laugh and say 'Plenty more where that came from!'
B) Ignore them and hope that the problem goes away, hiding behind the counter if necessary
C) Apologise and offer an immediate replacement for the food, followed by a refund.
D) Ask for the box. The box!

In exchange for this wealth of information the powers that be had devised an ingenious trainee compensation plan. Firstly our pay was docked to cover the course, then we were given longer hours to make up for those lost studying, and finally we were allocated extra responsibilities so that we could 'practice' what we were learning -- so long as it wasn't during work hours of course. It was a grueling schedule, but I consoled myself with the knowledge that I had an illustrious career ahead of me working at like, Hungry Jacks. Tops.

I used to ride my skateboard to work. We were pretty big into skating at the time anyway, and due to never having more than 5 bucks worth of petrol in the car driving was out of the question. It was a boring and routine life, and I did it 5 days a week. Week in and week out. Nothing really changed in my schedule until one morning.

Opening the store, bleary eyed and pot hazed, I yawned my way toward the back of the kitchen. Suddenly, surreality wearing a balaclava and brandishing a shitty looking knife jumped out from behind the cool room door and yelled "Drop the board man!".

Although my stoner reactions were probably still grappling with the nuances of the previous evenings Simpsons episode, some olfactory sense must have kicked in and my hand immediately let go of the board. I was astonished at the speed of my reflexes to be honest. If only I could pull the same moves during Datona I'd be the undisputed rally driving king of Port Jackson Crc.

"I don't want to hurt you man!" my intruder blurted excitedly, ripping me from my dreams of racing accolade and manhandling me into the back room. "Just open the safe and you and the girl will be fine! Ok?"

Girl? Oh shit. Michelle. "What have you done with her?" I demanded with transparently false bravado, thankfully remembering to omit the suffix 'you cad'. "Is she ok?"

"She's fine. She's tied up in the cool room." Oh what a relief, only lifelong counseling to deal with then. "So just shut up and open the safe man!"

Sensing a disruption in the force, I immediately executed a perfectly timed roundhouse kick to the face, immediately knocking myself unconscious. The next thing I remember is that I got two paid days off work. Score!

Ok, ok. That bit is made up, obv. In reality I opened the safe, got tied up on the floor with plastic slip ties and began accusing the guy of picking up his crappy knife at a Woolworths sale on the way to the gig. It was a completely stupid and reckless thing to do in hindsight, but then most of my behavior was in those days. He laughed and said that's exactly what he did, and then took off. I waited for a few minutes, pulled out of the ties and barreled into the cool room. I found a hysterical Michelle gagged and bound. I got rid of the tape around her mouth and her hands. She was a limp kneed mess of tears and anxiety.

"I didn't know what he was going to do to you!" She finally managed through the sobs. I just held her and waited until we could call the cops.

I did get two days off work out of it. Undoubtedly I had to make it up later. Michelle was given much longer, thankfully. I'm not sure whether they helped her get counseling for what happened as she didn't really work there much after that, which is completely understandable. I never thought to get any help myself. It didn't really seem necessary.

Maybe the 19 year old pseudo tough guy in me was still making the decisions. Who knows.



sorry for the long post!

Books? You mean scripts, right?

Apparently the publishers of the Harry Potter series had to change the titles of the books in America because they feared that people wouldn't be able to understand some of the more difficult words. Those zany Americans. What will they think of next? Government sanctioned torture? Ya big kidders.

First of all they had to change Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone because no-one could rightly say what a philosopher was. Who can blame em! Instead, they decided to call it Harry Potter and The Guy Who Thought About A Lot Of Stuff's Stone. Well, that's much more descriptive! Publishers 1, Stupid Kids Nil.

Then you've got that romping epic Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Goblet? What the hell is that? Isn't that the bit of a chicken you throw away? What idiot would go around causing spot fires with chicken goblets? Luckily they managed to shuffle a few things around with the title guys and came up with the much more arresting title of Harry Potter and the Big Gulp of Fanta. Such canny product placement! You'd hardly even notice it. Man I feel like a Fanta.

But who would have thought they needed to change Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban? Surely everyone knows what a prisoner is? Anyway, apparently that one needed to be changed to Harry Potter and the Unlawful Enemy Combatant of Azkaban. I assume that there was some legal reason for doing so, but it's all a bit over my noggin to be honest.

Although there are a lot of naysayers suggesting that this strategy of 'lowest common denominator' is counter productive to the intellectual growth of our kids, I'm all for language rebranding. After all, the argument suggesting that a person's vocabulary suffers from coddling is flawed.

I would point out all the reasons why this is so, but I've really got to dash. Im cing m8s 2nite 4 phun or sumthing LOL.

Parroting My Mates

Charlie made up a joke about a group of pirates playing hangman.


Pirate 1: "Is it ARrrr?"

Pirate 2: "Yes. Thar is one ARr."

Pirate 3: "Is it ARrrr?"

Pirate 2: "Yes. I already said thar is one ARr."

Pirate 4: "Is it ARrrr?"


etc.

Snooze. Just a little longer.

Recently I've started to think that I might be suffering from sleep apnea. I may have to go to a sleep clinic to get it checked out, which actually sounds quite appealing -- I really like the idea of people working for me while I take a nap.

Kerblammo!

Amazon announced recently that they have decided to diversify their already extensive product range. Recovered artifacts from the Pacific Rim you think? Pft, old hat. Titillating under garments for the bedroom connoisseur perchance? Ho hum. Depleted isotopic weapons grade uranium?

Wheee!

How much fun could you have with this stuff? I bet it could make all kinds of explosions. And you know, assuming you don't have the necessary brain thinkery to setup another Chernobyl-esk fireworks display, you and your trusty can of u-238 could always provide the local Pets Paradise store with a horde of jive talking ninja types.

This is sounding better by the minute. Just have a listen to all the satisfied customer feedback:

An adequate solution...., November 30, 2007
by Chris Gladis "Chris"

I have to admit, I've tried many different power sources for my orbiting satellite death beam, and nothing does it like good old U-238. If you've never held an entire nation hostage for your maniacal whims (I always ask for my ransom in kittens), then you haven't lived yet. And this can make it happen!

Does anyone else suddenly feel unfulfilled due to a distinct lack of orbiting satellite death beams in their lives? Yo mum! Scratch that homemade beanie for Christmas, I'm now in the market for a bitchin' space laser. Yes, yes, I'll be careful.

Better than Ovaltine. , November 30, 2007

by J. Stanfield

When mixed with Tuscan whole milk I gained the power to control deceased woodland creatures. I am now in the process of raising an army of undead wombats to overthrow the government from deep within my volcanic lair. Soon you all will bow down before the wombat king!

Ok, I'm now seeing that there could be some drawbacks to this whole 'playing with radiation' thing. Not that I'm saying an army of mutated wombats wouldn't have its charms, just that they would be more disarming when controlled by someone less, well, volcano-like. Like me for instance. I'm very un-volcano-like. People have always said that I'm your more 'meadow' type of guy. Plus, my mutant wombats would be all awesome and friendly and house-trained, like Fatso from A Country Practice.

Anyway, I think I've clearly demonstrated how great this product is. I'm going to order a crate as soon as it comes back into stock. You're all welcome to chuck in, but please be aware that I have a strict security protocol to ensure that it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. Basically you can't be Russian, or the Shredder, or live in a volcano.

For everyone else it's party time.



All customer feedback reproduced from Amazon. Original link. Seriously, I didn't make this up.

And the Winner Is..

I managed to catch up with Will briefly over MSN yesterday, which I regretted almost immediately as he begun talking about the 2007 Music Oz Awards show that he had recently been asked to present an award for. In my opinion, a close friend like Will should have been far more sensitive in the way he broached the news, considering that being an awards host is a lifelong dream of mine. In fact, it's Lifelong Dream #208; right behind playing a game of life-sized ten pin bowling using people as pins. Which is of course right behind owning an island shaped like a giant butt, you know, so that anytime a helicopter tried to land you'd be effectively mooning them with the entire island.

Anyway, sulking, as it turns out, is a highly ineffective battle tactic when the only form of emotive communication at your disposal is based around the smiley methodology. Furthermore, *pouts* just wasn't cutting the mustard. I begun trying to point this out to Will, but he obviously had far more pressing issues to talk about. Sure, pressing to HIM.



Will (avenge my life):
So I'm presenting the award for Excellence in Dance Music.


Davey (smells):
Excellence in Dance Music... Isn't that an oxymoron?


Will (avenge my life):
You're an oxymoron. The issue is that I need a gag to say before I present the award. You know. They always do these 'gag' things. I'm fairly sure it has something to do with humour.


Davey (smells):
Surely the award itself is funny enough.


Will (avenge my life):
I was thinking something along the lines of: "You know, it really irritates me that everyone thinks that as a DJ my life revolves around taking drugs and partying all weekend."


Davey (smells):
Good so far.


Will (avenge my life):
"Well it's simply not true. For instance, sometimes my dealer is out."


Davey (smells):
Yeah, and sometimes you're so wasted you have no idea whether today actually falls on a weekend or not.


Will (avenge my life):
Haha, Awesome! I'll say that.


Davey (smells):
Yeah. I mean, standing up in front of a room full of your colleagues and peers -- how could a joke about drug abuse NOT go down well?


Will (avenge my life):
My thoughts exactly. Now.. powder blue rayon suit, or that hot little number I wore briefly at the Bathurst B&S ball?



Obviously the suit, considering that the other outfit had been (thankfully) impounded and (hopefully) incinerated. Clothed in this regal ensemble and armed with the new material, Will took to the stage and gave it his awards-hosting all. I was told later that despite my reservations, the joke went down a treat, with music aficionados and band cool kids hooting in self-depreciating approval. How about that! I suppose you should never underestimate the music industry's capacity to see the funny side of drug induced catatonia.

Easy mistake to make though.


The Oz Music Awards screens Wed Dec 5th on Channel V. See Will make some jokes up about Whopper value meals, and all kinds of other exciting stuff.