I Was Watching a Documentary on Food Manufacturing Recently…

Boy, some confectioners have a lot of problems with hygiene practices don’t they? I’ll leave that issue to people with more food preparation or sailing experience than me – but for the record – I reckon a Viking longboat, rowed by genetically fiddled identical midgets, is not as appetising in your hot chocolate, as a marshmallow.

I’m also not an expert on ‘little people’ hiring ethics, but Gurdeep Roy had better’ve been paid more than the Munchkins ‘cause those little fuckers were ripped off. 

In fact, by my in-depth calculations, Roy had better have been paid more than Johnny Depp. I say this having applied RCA to the film.

RCA - Relative Celluloid Acreage.

• Actor’s film acreage = amount of celluloid in one film, covered by an actor.
• Proportionally adjusted by the actual real-life size differences between the actors.
• (King Kong should always earn less than Fay Wray. Gurdeep Roy plays every Umpalumpa and he’s a midget.)
• Therefore, Deep should get more than Depp.

Something else occurred to me later in the evening - Wonka stops at a three-course-flavoured-chewing-gum. Think big, Wonka. Why stop there? Degustation chewing gum. Why not have a gum that finishes off with a cocktail at Trader Vick’s or getting pepper sprayed in the carpark? 

Fatting The Gap

One of the highlights of my television year was on last night. While there have been better episodes, i.e. more unethical, this one still bore the hallmarks of entertainment designed by Donald Rumsfeld. It was the “Challenge” edition of The Biggest Loser.

Or, Get A Fatty To Shit Themselves To A Better Life.

This year they were taken to Switzerland to be challenged by going from high places to low places. The reward for getting enormously heavy was to let gravity do its job.

(If I didn’t know a little something about Galileo and falling bodies, I’d suspect that the tubbies would be better at that than the rest of us. The real challenge would be getting them to go up… but I digress.)

Last night, Switzerland played host to, by weight, about 18 Australians. By headcount, about five. Even though it's ANZAC time of year, I've got to say that the Swiss were incredibly brave.

They got those fatsos up in helicopters, on thin suspension bridges, hanging off ropes and all sorts of other adventurous stuff. I mean, who wants to pilot a helicopter with a hysterical shifting load in the back that could roll you into a mountainside at any moment?

For that matter, who wants to stand on a wire-and-sky-hook construction, ninety metres above the earth, with a panicking fatty? They drag you down just like the fabled drowning man. They don’t have much to live for. If you’re lucky, they just take a bite out of you as they shamble past to throw themselves off the platform. More likely though, they make a lunge and hug you all the way down - like the last lamington at the gates of a health farm.

Who’s the guy who does a tandem sky-dive with a panicking lardo strapped to the front of him? The physical limits of what a harness and parachute can take beggar the imagination, let alone the opportunity for the fatty-in-free-fall-feeding-frenzy-fiasco where the instructor arrives back on earth as nothing more than a pair of hands gripping the chute controls, while the ‘contestant’ dabs at the corners of their mouth. Croix de Guerre for that guy.

Last night had some high points, but mostly low. The Swiss will be convinced of a few things after dealing with this lot of winners:

• The only response to anything outside the set of experience even narrower than the set of their own eyes, is “Or Mar Gawd”
• The only response to having just achieved something momentous, such as relaxing and letting the equipment and tour personnel do all of the fucking work as per usual is “Or Mar Gawd! I didn’t think I could do it. I am so brave.”
• Despite the wheezing and asthma, those lard-balls can really scream. There’d be wildlife in those cliffs that are going to grow up slightly deaf and fearing a legendary wild-thing they once saw swing by

Yup, the rolly-pollies really did us proud last night and I was relieved to see that the angry lesbian who pulled the full Gabor before her jump, was able to pull it together enough after her jump to make another pass at her instructor - before waddling off to the all-you-can-eat buffet. It was a win for equal rights all around. I’m pro-Gay Marriage. I’m anti-Gay Cannibalism.

Next year, I’m looking forward to a naked chubster fighting their own weight in angry lemurs and another, using nothing but Sellotape on their eyelids and a giant adult nappy, to fake their way into the Sumo grand finals.

Sit Up Straight. Elbows Off The Remote. Chew Your Telly Properly

The signs of old age are legion. It’s not just the obvious ones like needing to take your pants off as soon as you get home or preferring a night in, to a night out. There are the really unlikely ones.

Emergency Contact and I recently bought a new couch. This couch has quite a “lead time” before delivery. This is salesperson speak for, “It’ll take fucking ages to be made and delivered.”

We were getting antsy about where it was, so EC rang the shop and asked. We were told, “This week.”

That was last week.

That wouldn’t have mattered so much in the grand scheme of things if I hadn’t immediately given the old couch, armchair and Ottoman to a mate. We’ve been indoor camping for a week now and it’s not nearly as fun as it sounds.

I’ve discovered I would rather spend an entire evening watching TV sitting on an unpadded dining chair, than get down and slum it on a single mattress. There’s something hopelessly old-age and conservative about preferring to watch Breaking Bad in a straight backed chair. I feel like someone presiding over proceedings rather than lying back, being reassured.

That's Going On The Bill, Too

"A good pre-soak, Darlin', and that should come right out."

I once said that I was all vampired out. I might have been a bit hasty ‘cause on the whole, I’m enjoying the third season of True Blood. The show does worry me on two counts, though.

The first one is a minor quibble. Vambars (say it like Bill Compton. It’s more fun that way.) are very tough on clothes and Manchester. Mein Gott they get that blood everywhere! And they don’t clean up nearly quickly enough. They munch down on some innocent and leave the goo all over their faces and clothes for hours. Don’t get me started on what they do to the bed linen. While all that biting and humping and strangling and gargling and chewing and burping might be fun, there’s absolutely no thought for the poor maid who’s going to have to clean that up. How many sheets do they have, anyway? I can’t see a lot of those stains coming out and it’s not just the bodily juices. There are lumps!

But that’s a problem for the props department and can be relegated to the realms of disbelief suspension. My second concern is far more pressing.

I saw my first ugly person in the cast.

Yep. Well. Not actually ugly, but not as over the top gorgeous as everybody else. I mean, there is the odd realistic looking human in the cast list; there’s that dumb cop, and somebody’s mother isn’t absolutely smoking, but by and large they’re a pretty drop-dead bunch of undead and this girl stands out like a severed thumb.

My only consolation is that I can’t see her lasting long. She’s fallen for the wrong guy so we’ll probably see her body in a ditch soon enough so I shouldn’t get all sooky about it. (Yep. Say it like Bill. Much more fun that way.)

It Doesn't Really Change Who I Am

Last night I had a conversation with Emergency Contact that I prefaced with, “Don’t tell anyone, but…” and after having told her the news, I felt much better. She didn’t react so well at first, but I think she’ll get used to it in the long run and I had shed a burden I've been carrying for years.

Having experienced the joy of revealing myself in a supportive and private atmosphere, I want the thrill and liberation of ‘coming out’, publicly.

But first; context: The TV hard-drive has hundreds of hours of films that I’ve recorded for wet Sunday afternoons and non-ratings periods. The quality control on this collection is almost non-existent. This explains how we ended up watching Hollywood Homicide. It was quite literally just sitting there.

So, after a particularly clunky scene which elicited a, “Who does that?” from EC, I turned to her and said, “Don’t tell anyone, but I think Harrison Ford is a crap actor. There. I’ve said it.”

Speaking as someone who, as a kid, had his mind broken by Star Wars, had it reset by Raiders of the Lost Ark and then re-broken by Blade Runner, Harrison Ford occupies a special place in my heart. But, it’s the characters and the situations I love. I’ve never revered the work of the actor. In fact, I’ve always felt great unease about Ford’s work. This discomfort has felt like a disloyal, almost treasonous thing to have living inside me but a burden shared is a burden lightened.

I want to shout it from the roof tops. I want to parade down the street wearing a fedora while swinging a whip, singing,

He’s Ford

I’m bored

Get used to it

Raw Hide

There are certain areas, particularly in the treatment of obesity, where the United States still leads the world.

I came to The Biggest Loser because of the American first series. While that series remains the high-watermark of Western Civilisation, I have subsequently become an admirer of the work of Michelle, the senior female trainer from the Australian Biggest Loser franchise.

Michelle climbs up on the backs of those fatties and rides them around like the big, unfit beasts of burden that they are. But, as any scientist knows, this is a very dangerous thing to do. Tubbiness is well known to be contagious and being in such close physical contact is putting her at risk of catching fatness. She might even get fallen on, rubbed up against a wall, backed under a low hanging tree branch or something equally unpleasant.

After a bit of a break, I’m watching American Biggest Loser again and I see how much further us Aussies have to go in advanced fattie-torture-for-amusement. Jillian, the American trainer I assume to be a personal guru of Michelle's, has taken fattie riding to the next level.

She’s eliminated personal risk and upped the amusement value so it is 100% unalloyed joy. Rather than having to climb up on them, come in to contact, and risk all those nasty outcomes I mention above; Jillian ropes them and skis behind them.

OM fucking G. Skiing behind crying lard-arses as they lean into the wind and scramble across the gym floor. Five stars, gold thumbs up, elephant stamp and the Congressional Medal of Honour to you, Jillian.

Important Lessons Learnt From Recent Events

People who live in Sydney are obsessed with property prices. If conversation falls a bit flat at a social gathering, the ‘get out of jail’ topic is real estate. The rest of Australia holds us in contempt for our shallow obsession, but can I just say in our defence – when something eats that much of your income, it’s perfectly reasonable that it would occupy your thoughts. We can’t talk about other things because we don’t do them. We can’t afford it.

So, the next observation comes from that context and will probably reveal more about me than it does about international politics.

I keep seeing footage of that “Million Dollar Compound, just outside Islamabad,” where Osama was shot and thinking,

“You know, even if you allow for the blood stains (And they will wash out. You’ve just got to visualise what your furniture will look like, once it’s in.) a million schmackos doesn’t get you much in the Pakistani real estate game, does it?”

Micallef's A Replicant

I'll get to the heart of what this blob's about in a tick, just let me explain the picture. I wanted a simple image of a meerkat, preferably with a white background. A meerkat has only the most tenuous link to the subject matter, and would therefore be mildly amusing to me... and blend nicely with the new theme. Instead, I found that and... well... um. Look, it's got absolutely nothing to do with this blob. It just made me giggle. Ok, down to business...


Shaun Micallef is the best Australian TV presenter. In fact, he’s the best presenter on Australian TV, but he’s got problems.

 I’ve just read his book, watched him on telly and spent the weekend in a bush outside his house peering in through the windows and I think he’s suffering an obsession.

 For those of you who aren’t sci-fi fans, I’ll let you in on the clues.

His book, Preincarnation, has a character or two quoting the movie Blade Runner completely out of context. In fact, he finishes the book with a pretty memorable set of lines from the film. I laughed out loud when I read it, partly through the shock of recognition, partly because it was so ludicrously misplaced and partly because it was a pretty daring way to finish a book. Emergency Contact was dead impressed at one in the morning.

On the game show he hosts, when talking about what is carried around inside the heads of Baby Boomers, he lapsed into the death monologue of Rutger Hauer’s character from Blade Runner. “Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion…”

He hosts his show from a chair with “Tyrell Corp.” stencilled on the backrest. Tyrell is a fictional organisation featured in, you guessed it, Blade Runner. They manufacture bespoke human beings and trade with the catchy motto, “More human than human”.

The chair features in a scene of the movie where a cop is interviewing a suspected escaped artificial human (replicant) and places the suspect under interrogation stress. The suspect reacts very badly to this and it’s one of those scenes that is hard to forget, especially when witnessed at an impressionable age.

I enjoy Micallef’s show as much as I enjoy a meerkat with a bon-bon on its head, but it would be less tense for me if I didn't expect an angry replicant to turn up and blow Shaun through the wall because he didn‘t want to talk about his mother.I will also say this, Shaun (I know you’re a regular reader): The artificial meerkat that keeps popping up and down on your TV host desk, I think was locally manufactured. Finest quality. Superior workmanship.*

 *... and the award tonight for most oblique film reference of all time, goes to...

Break Time

During the non-ratings season, Emergency Contact and I like to get into self-funded TV series festivals. We hire or buy a series that we’ve heard good things about and then watch the entire thing in a few sittings.

At the moment we are serving a Prison Break Stretch and this leads me to an observation. I’m sure I’m not surprising anyone when I say that some prisons in the United States have “conjugal visits”. Your EC turns up for some ‘hide the file in the cake’ and it’s sanctioned by the correctional institution you are the guest of.

That just about tips it. Seriously, what are the down sides of prison?

Some of the activities we find most onerous in day-to-day living are all about acting like an adult and maintaining our freedom. Paying the bills and feeding yourself require you to go to work. At work, you are required to think about things that do not interest you, and quite often for other people who couldn’t be bothered thinking about them on their own. Parking is always hard to find, the cost of real estate is a joke, the need to think of something for dinner comes around far more often than it should and even though in theory you can sleep in on a Saturday, when was the last time you actually did? Knowing that you can have all that removed from the daily equation and still get a federally mandated regular bonk, sounds like the answer.

Look, I know there are some downsides - and getting a new girlfriend called Vince is not the worst of them - but just for a minute there...

Anyway, as I said, we’re in the middle of a Prison Break Stretch (fancy names for the 'binge watching' makes it sound better) and it’s a bit of fun. There are holes in the plot bigger than the underground tunnel system the heroes run through, but I can’t fault the pace of Season One. You’ve got to be careful not to let the binge viewing affect your mind, though. I don’t want to go stir, know what I mean? After the West Wing Incumbency  I could only talk while I was walking, but I can’t worry about that now. I’ve got to go sharpen my toothbrush.

Sassy

I watched a documentary on the SAS selection trials on SBS the other night*. It’s called The Search for Warriors and follows the process an already hardened soldier goes through in the hope to join “The Regiment”.  

For those of you not of the military mindset – let’s face it, for the women who read this blob – to say that SAS soldiers are expected to be tough is almost a libellous understatement.

Allow me to illustrate:

In the non-fiction book, subtly entitled Operation Certain Death, two SAS members had to get behind enemy lines to act as reconnaissance for the main assault that was to happen later. Because of an intelligence blunder, they were forced to stay perfectly still for three days, under a small bush, which happened to be on a fire-ant nest. On day four, they had to spring into action and go and kill the baddies with all of their mates as though they were fresh off the farm. They did and reported that it was part of the job. No problem.

As Friedrich Nietzsche not-so-famously said of the SAS, “There’s tough. There’s bloody tough. There’s too tough... and then there’s the Chicken Stranglers”. (He loved a bit of Australian military slang, did Freddy.)

Of all the contestants in the show, I’ve got a soft spot for Candidate 42. Being 35 years old, he is ancient for the selection and he’s a charmless, simultaneous mix of hang-dog and dogged. He had a bit of a setback – breaking his neck running head-first into a ditch while carrying a 30 kilo pack – but he showed a bit of grit and was back the next day when he felt better.

My own internal smartarse commentary was running as I watched (largely in relief that I wasn’t there, doing any of that) and decided it was time for the laziest style of blob - a list.

Sixteen phrases not heard in the SAS selection trials:

1. But it looks like there are bindis in it.
2. I think the daybed would look better next to the chaise.
3. This is heavy.
4. This is smelly.
5. You’re smelly.
6. You’re heavy.
7. Khaki brings out your eyes.
8. Vampires are cool and sexy and so hot right now.
9. You’re not the boss of me.
10. He was mean and he looked at me funny.
11. You can have the business lift-out, I just want the crosswords.
12. I know you are but what am I?
13. I said one sugar.
14. Stop. Collaborate and listen.
15. Do you think having a woman Prime Minister is going to stretch John Clarke’s impersonation range?
16. ... and that’s why you should always wear rubber underwear when approaching an untamed goldfish.

I’ll be tuning in next week:

“Tonight, on The Toughest Loser Killers, will Candidate 153 successfully beat the crocodile to death using its own leg, or will he wimp out again and just head-butt it into a coma? Candidate 12 is told to get over his childish fear of sky diving without a parachute and is asked if he really is made of the right stuff for The Regiment, or just a big girl’s blouse with spikes on it.”

*Coincidentally, SBS is also the acronym for the water version of the SAS. You don’t want to get those two mixed up, though. Trying to watch Anton Penis read the news on the wrong SBS is only going to get you shot in the ASS.

Classy-Fication

I watched a documentary last night called Race and Intelligence: Science’s Last Taboo. It did alright in rounding up a big, fraught subject and it reminded me of something quaint. In the scientific context, the words idiot, moron and imbecile used to mean specific ranges of IQ (or lack thereof).

This illustrates the sloppy science in the field of human intelligence that has been tolerated for far too long. The appalling consequences of such wilfully inhumane categorisation are hard to stomach. There are huge gaps to be filled in on that spectrum, and refinement with sub-categories ranging from spazimodo to fucktard and weaponhead to knucklescraper would make it a far more useful as a classification system.

When The AGA Hits The Fan

Anyone who gives consumerism a nanosecond’s thought will be aware of the importance of freshly invented needs that give freshly invented products niches to fill.

I like to sum it up as, ‘Answering the questions no-one was asking.’

I want to get three invented needs off my chest and while I’m at it offer some friendly advice to a famous domestic appliance manufacturer.

I’ll start with proximity-sensing-liquid-soap-dispensers: Obviously for those of us who are using too few batteries around the house. The justification for this ‘invention’ is that a normal pump that you might (shiver) come into contact with harbours killer germs and bacteria. First of all, I haven’t died much yet and I don’t think it’s just the luck of having only ever used clean soap dispenser buttons that has kept me alive. This product is so pointless its existence actually cancels itself out. Essentially, it is admitting that it doesn’t work, “This soap is so crap it won’t help remove the germs you get on your thumb after pressing the top of the pump-pack.”

Next, Glade and Ambi Pur and any other manufacturers of whiffy things. This niche reaches its moronic apotheosis in the motion-tracking-air-freshener department. A real bubble came off the top of the think-tank that day. Plus their ads are unforgivably American. The badly lip-synced Australian voices over the top are not fooling anyone, and I have never seen a house of that interior design in Australia. I have never seen four women, one of them an African-American who’s not Marcia Hines, dressed like that in Australia. Even the film/video quality is instantly recognisable as American. Go away you stinky Americans. Ponginess is not a national problem of ours.

Lastly, one that’s in a slightly different category. It’s the one that makes me a bit sad as well as angry. This product could have a place in our lives if it was just properly defined: The Dyson fan. (Pictured) It makes me angry because someone thought that rather than calling it a “fan”, they should call it an “Air Multiplier”. I want to meet this person and introduce them to a cricket bat or, as the Grey Area Marketing Department call it, a “Bruise Multiplier”.

It makes me angry because they have invented a need that is so ridiculous, it’s kind of post-ironic. Apparently, the Dyson Air Multiplier is saving us from the ‘buffeting’ our normal fans put us through. I want to meet the person who has suffered buffeting from a standard fan and take them out to a buffet lunch. Or as the Grey Area Marketing Dept call it, “Surf and Turf You Off Something High”.

It also makes me sad because I will stand by our Dyson vacuum cleaner and say that it is a really good bit of kit, but they have tarnished the brand by being so spectacularly stupid.

I reckon if they’d been more honest about it, I know that a few of us would have had a completely different reaction.

Why not this approach:

Look, it’s a fan! It doesn’t do anything much more than a normal fan does, but just look at it! It’s the kind of industrial design that gets remembered. You know the Alessi lemon squeezer and the VW Beetle? Of course you do. Well, neither of them were spectacularly good at their stated tasks but they were the kind of thing that it was a pleasure to be around. They were fun for your eyes. It’s the kind of thing that says, “Not everything has to be the most efficient or powerful or the best way to get there. How about beauty for beauty’s sake? Oh, and it sort of does the job in a magical, invisible kind of way.”

I like a bit of whimsical stuff around the house. In fact, I take the safety guards completely off fans I own because it looks a whole lot better, it makes them quieter, they stay cleaner and I like the sense of daring. Emergency Contact looked on in horror the first time she saw me do this and predicted mayhem. I was breaking some sacred domestic covenant. But I think if you’re silly enough to insert yourself into a spinning blade, you don’t deserve the limbs you were issued with. (I should also point out that up to a certain size and power, domestic fans cannot take your finger off, no matter how inventively you stick them in. Don’t ask me how I know that.) But, my point is that the fan looks good and basically does the job – and there is a genuine need for a fan in our little flat, come a Sydney summer.

So Dyson, pick your game up, call it what it is – a bit of good looking industrial design for the desperately fashionable – and watch your sales go through the roof... or the Rain Diffuser... whatever. Don’t pretend it was answering any crushing need other than aesthetic.

Doctor What’s-On

My international modelling career is on hold at the moment due to a slight case of facial paralysis, so I’ve got a bit of free time on my hands. Telly, in the right amount, can be good for what ails you and this brings me to the modern Sherlock. It’s not the right amount.


I don’t know if they turned six episodes into three by banging doubles together and saying, “Here. Three movie-length episodes” but the shows were not the right length. A bit too long and with a double bump, if you know what I mean. They then left us at the end of the third one with a cliff-hanger and a promise to return, maybe, next year. I’ve got a pinhead. I’m not going to remember! This is just another case of free-to-air broadcasters treating us like dirt and I’m sick of it.


But, maybe I don’t need to go back. There’s something inherently wrong with the modern Sherlock and I can only work through it, detective stylee, by metaphorically talking out loud.


In a break with tradition, I’ll start with the good stuff. The nods to all the devices and character habits that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (or Sac-Dee as he would be known now) are really good.


For those not familiar, the Sherlock I’m writing about is set NOW. Not Holmes blasted forward in time to the 1970s in a Hounds of the Baskervilles Chase Life on Mars mash up - but defiantly now. There are text additions to the screen like augmented reality. It uses a baroque instrument, the harpsichord, a la Dexter. That’s how NOW it is. There wasn’t any explanation for this, or if there was I missed it but the point is that the fun, or at least the novelty of the show, is predicated on Sherlock being modernised.


Many of the character’s devices and habits have been modernised. Instead of Sherlock’s minute scouring of the papers each morning, he’s joined at the fingertips to his smart-phone. Instead of a ragingly unfashionable morphine addiction, we’ve seen him abuse nicotine patches. The living arrangements between Dr John and Sherlock have come under semi-comic questioning (as they stake out a place of interest from a restaurant, a candle is brought to their table by a kindly restaurateur - to improve the ambience.) Sherlock, instead of generously tipping urchins as a source of street gossip, makes sizable donations to homeless women - and so on. I found these really fun and enjoyed putting the pieces together from my memories of the stories.


However, it is not sustainable and Sherlock Holmes would be complete crap these days - the world is at the same time too big and too small and we‘ve put too much stuff in it for him to work.


One of the major faculties that the traditional Sherlock would bring to the art of detection was a vast knowledge of stuff. He knew who brewed what brand of port. He knew where the tobacco was grown, packaged and who shipped it. All ladies perfumes were identifiable. Jewellers’ individual stamps, watermarks, addresses and opening hours were all stored away in his head. London was known to the last backstreet. These things were believable for a deeply brilliant sociopath with an eidetic memory in 19th Century London.


Let’s put this in the modern context. Sherlock does his trick of divining from a client that he’s just been around the world twice by looking at the client’s watch. The watch’s date display is out by two days, but it’s a brand new Breitling. In fact, one of the tell-tales was that it was a newly (that week) released model.


This is not possible to say about a Breitling having glanced at it from a distance of eight feet. They release new models all the freakin’ time, at different times depending on the sales territory, some of them never to be seen in certain markets at all. This is true of all large commodity manufacturers. Imagine trying to get across all women’s fragrances on the market and staying abreast of the changes. I reckon you’d be challenged to just stay ahead of perfumes released on Rodeo Drive in a week by actresses or pop divas with flagging careers.


Imagine trying to work out what the hell Nokia is up to. Imagine trying to stay ahead of all developments in the major tool of modern crime - the computer. Even given an unfillable and infallible memory, there still isn’t the time to get across the stuff. You can’t know the market. It is global and changes daily and this leads to the next problem.


London isn’t the London it used to be. Sure, it was and is a transport hub, a money nexus and an all around gravitational well for business, culture and crime, but the interconnectedness, the inescapable globalisation that you experience in a proper metropolis means that just being an expert on London is almost pointless when you are talking about anything other than the most petty crime… which Sherlock isn’t interested in. He likes the big, juicy stuff - and that’s international - and again, one person could not have the time to get across all of it and still have time to smash away on a Yamaha violin and solve a couple of crimes.


So, I have some conceptual difficulties with the likelihood of Sherlock Holmes actually working in the modern context - so let’s put my belief in suspenders and get to some other elements of the show.


How about the moral angle. I never thought I’d write this, but I don’t like the morals of the character, Sherlock Holmes. In the traditional setting, his sociopathy and ruthlessness seemed less evil. His consideration for “the game” over the players in it seemed a much less odious character trait. I don’t know if a couple of world wars, a few genocides and a general awakening of the need for us to treat each other better and more ethically since the 19th Century is what’s underlying my concern, but I find the modern Sherlock’s disdain for the innocent humans caught up in the strategising, deeply unpleasant. I sort of find it impossible to really root for him. I feel more for the slightly angry copper who calls him ‘Freak’ and wants to bang him up. At least her heart is in the right place. But, that’s the kind of concern that gets me called a wanker in polite society, so let’s just pretend I didn’t write that bit.


What about the acting? As I was tucking my dickey-shirt into my cumberbatch, I was trying to put my finger on what was annoying me - not least of all the lead actor’s name. Common! What kind of name is Benedict Cumberbatch? I feel like flying to the UK to bully him, just on principle. He’s alright, but he’s not great. Every time I see him getting a bit to self serious, I think of how much I probably would’ve liked Richard E. Grant in the role. There are times when I just see a bit of Withnail poking through in the performance.


The guy who plays Moriarty is atrocious. Serious boo-boo there.


I tell you who’s the revelation, though, Martin Freeman as Dr John. He is just terrific. I read that he is supposed to be Bilbo in The Hobbit. He will be perfect. If they screw that up by taking it away from New Zealand or going into some pre-production meltdown (as of writing, it looks like it is) that will be a fucking crime worth investigating.


So, yeah it’s got ups and downs and I’d like to think that I’ll remember to come back to it, just to see the wind-up, next year… but I don’t know. There’s just so much stuff I’ve got to watch and remember.

Wake Me When It's Over

Joe Hockey pleaded with the crowd at a public address yesterday not to trivialise Australian politics by preferring to watch the MasterChef finale, to the debate between the two political leaders. (This comes from a man who raised his political profile by appearing on Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation.)

I want to have a quick glance at cause and effect here, Joe (or even 'affect' in this case). Are you accusing me of trivialising Australian politics to the point that I’d prefer to keep a dinner-date than listen to more vacuous, sound-bite drivel? Pull your giant, empty head in. And talking of empty, I’m not reserving my distaste just for you. A whole bunch of people might be really pleased that Gillard’s in, but has she actually said anything concrete yet? I might have missed it, but all I’ve heard so far is carefully managed nothings.

The one small mercy is that the election isn’t too far away.

For Those Who Are About To Fall On Their Face, We Salute You

I was rude about channel Go! when it first went to air. I said it was the equivalent of building an island out of sewage and calling it a paradise resort. Well, a little palm tree of goodness has taken root in the filth. Go! plays the new bread and circuses, which is cheese and Wipeout.

Wipeout and its British inbred cousin, Total Wipeout, are champagne television. That might state my case enough for you to turn away now, go look for the remote and turn it on. But, if you think you are not cultured enough for it and are a little intimidated by its highbrow content, let me try and change your mind.

It has loads of single entendres.

It has people falling on their faces in the mud.

It has very few minutes of “getting to know” the contestant.

It has people falling on their faces from heights.

It has a number of different challenges per show, but not so different that you don’t get to anticipate the fact that it will include…

People falling on their faces. (Quite often in a pose that has the soles of their shoes touching the backs of their heads. Sham-paggun, I tell you!)

If the silly old Romans had removed all the gore from their entertainment and stuck some big ol’, bouncy, red balls in the Colosseum, who knows, they might still be with us?

It’s not as morally corrupt as lion v Christian, but you still get to laugh like a loon at other people’s misfortune. With a tasty old cheese and a glass of wine, it is the perfect pick-me-up (and throw me face down in the mud) at the end of the day.

I give it two Roman thumbs up.

Take Me To Your Lizard

Dear Aliens,

I hear that you are making solid inroads into our societies, mainly by hiding your lizard selves underneath good looking wetsuits - as shown in the documentary, V.

Kudos. Apart from some minor hiccups, the plan seems to be going well. Have you considered the need for a local spin-doctor when it comes time for you to devour most other earthlings?

If I could be so bold, I would like to make a suggestion (in good faith) in the hope we will have a closer working relationship in the future. (And, can you please start devouring the people who park across two carparks out the front of my place during soccer practice? They won’t be missed.)

If you want the message of “We come in peace” to have a slightly more authentic edge, can I harp back to this parking thing again? Move your giant spaceships from hanging directly over the major capital cities of the world. You seem to be able to cover intergalactic distances fairly easily, and yet you park right over the top. Bad semiotics - and this is the type of thing that I can help you with… as a monkey-boy.

Also, it’s playing havoc with rental prices in the CBD and there’s a huge dead patch in the lawn where it doesn’t get enough sun.

Regards,
AGA.

On A School Night, Too

I had a busy time last night. Here’s what I’ve been getting up to on your behalf.

You see, the aliens had landed and I was part of a task force that was going to negotiate where they were going to set up camp. They wanted to pitch down near Lunar Park because it reminded them of home and they liked the view. The residents got up to their usual tricks and as well as complaining about the noise from the big dipper, added a complaint about the noise from the big spaceship.

I was sent in as a specialised generalist to smooth over the increasingly tense negotiations. We had a stumbling block that the politicians and ambassadors from Earth couldn’t get past. They felt the aliens were really rude.

Everyone was just plain rankled because, about half an hour into every speech or presentation, if there was a moment’s silence, snoring could be heard coming from the alien’s table. We’d look over and there they’d be, heads lolling back, tongues out, bit of dribble on the cheek, snoring like large, intergalactic babies.

Hillary Clinton, after taking her unshod foot from tickling my inner-thigh under the table, (weird where you subconscious takes you, isn’t it? I’d be less alarmed at a gay dream.) leant over to me and said,

“They can’t be jet-lagged, they’ve got beds on that ship.”

“You’re right Hil,” I said. But I had an idea.

During a tea break, where we were having some tea... and a biscuit, I asked one of the aliens how long their day was on the home planet.

“Forty of your earth minutes,” they answered.

And there you had it. We were keeping them up past their bedtime about ten times a day. It also meant that they couldn’t watch one full episode of The Wire without needing a nap. A point that the aliens and I had in common.

Pensioners Insurance... Please

There’s an ad on telly for a pensioners-only insurance agency that illustrates nicely the depth of baby-boomer’s self deception. Yet again, the hateful bunch of bastards are so certain of their place in the world, they absolve themselves of  all responsibility - certain in the knowledge that we are honoured to have them around.

The ad tells these self-satisfied retards that no matter how life-threateningly inept they are with their cars, if the vehicle they wrote-off was under ten years old, they get a new one.

The ad then amuses us with little vignettes of the difficulties they’re going to have when they are befuddled by their new-fangled horseless carriages.

One can’t find his fuel cap. Sigh. Imagine how charmed we are, as he jams up an entire row of bowsers on a work day.

One leaps his car onto a raised flowerbed after not being able to tell the difference between reverse and first. Chuckle. Especially funny when later, the quick learner does the same thing onto a toddler playing in their front garden.

One turns her windscreen-wipers on instead of signalling. Oh, bless. What could possibly go wrong, while changing lanes at 110 km/h into a westerly sun with grit on the windscreen?

This insurance company, APIA, calls this policy the “rewarding experience” policy.

I call it the “PUNISHING THE REST OF THE PLANET WITHOUT A THOUGHT IN YOUR HEAD FOR ANYONE ELSE - AS PER USUAL - NOW GET OFF THE FUCKING ROAD BECAUSE I HAVE TO GO AND EARN A LIVING SO I CAN PAY MORE TAX TO ENSURE YOUR RETIREMENT BECAUSE YOU DO NOT HAVE THE GOOD GRACE TO GO AWAY AND DIE!” policy.

Not as catchy an acronym on the disclosure statement, I’ll grant you, but I want a little more truth in advertising.

Over Promise

Westpac is currently advertising that they are: "Backing over 600 bank managers."

As a consumer, I just want to know if they are using a big enough vehicle.

Palin Into Insignificance

I heard something nice on the radio today. Sarah Palin has joined the Fox “News” Channel. She said she was really excited to be joining an organisation that was so committed to fair and balanced news coverage. I don't even need to add anything there, do I? Let's just sit back and bask in the glow of that for a while.

I suppose she's qualified though. In the same way that she was qualified to deal in foreign relations because she could see Russia from her kitchen window, I bet she's watched telly before. So, yeah. Cool.

Jesus tap-dancing H Christ.