And some of these people probably drive cars

Get it while it's incredibly stupid

I know editors are being downsized in the mainstream media, but I didn't realise that it actually meant hiring 7-year-olds.
Read the tag-line for this video, before someone changes it.

Minimal posts due to completely exciting hospital trip this weekend! We're all better now!

I don't care if it IS an OH&S issue

if I come into the lunchroom and there are bowls, cups, spoons, food containers or coffee plungers sitting in the sink, soaking in cold water, grease and cabbage, I will assume that, because they are in the sink (o ye crucible of cleansing!), they are all clean and washed up and only in need of neat stacking on the drying rack, which I am more than happy to do for you.

Throw another struggle on the fire, my darling

Scene - Suburban Super Mall - Gargantuan Cineplexiopolis. Mele and Franzy have spent an annoying day shopping for boring clothes and have decided to see a movie.

Franzy: Two students for Eagle Eye, please.
Ticket Seller: Where would you like to sit?
Franzy (sharing a puzzled look with Mele): In a chair?
Ticket Seller (assuming the polite smile of murderous fantasist): Ha. No, I mean where in the cinema? Front or back?

*Freeze frame*
Franzy strolls into view, wearing a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches and smoking a pipe. His speaking voice is so nasally that he must surely be endowed with all the useful knowledge of the universe and must be listened to.

Tweed Jacket Franzy: Rest assured, dear people, that this is not some bungle in the storytelling. We are not about to discover that in fact Franzy and Mele are at the front of the queue for the world premiere of this film. The diehard fans have already come, absorbed and left. Friends, this isn't even a whimsical anecdote about stumbling into the wrong mall, the wrong cinema or even the wrong queue. This is the twelfth showing for Eagle Eye this week. 3:40pm is not a popular time to be lining up outside the movie theatre to watch a film that will surely cut into the regularly regimented times associated with school holiday dinners, sleepovers and twilight football matches. Our stunning heroes are not going to go Seatless in Seatle or anywhere else this fine afternoon. There is plenty of room at the inn.

Tweed Jacket Franzy flourishes his pipe like a conductor's baton.

*Unfreeze*

Mele: Uh, in the middle.
Ticket Seller (barely restraining himself from spitting into the hand with which Franzy is taking his change and tickets): Okay, you're in K 18 and 19, Cinema 21, up there on your right!
Franzy: What the fuck was that all about?
Mele: They don't need allocated seating! There's no one here!
Tweed Jacket Franzy: I just told them that!

Mele and Franzy walk into the 300 seat cinema. It is entirely empty. They ignore their allocated seats and sit wherever the fuck they feel like. Around the middle somewhere. Mele puts her purse on the seat next to her. Franzy puts the box of popcorn next to himself. They relax and listen to the kind of cockless musak in which the singer sounds as though he has decided that the voice of a grown man singing about the emotional struggle of declaring his undying love for his sweetheart should sound just like that same grown man straining on a four-steak turtle-head and losing. You know: Matchbox 20.
Teenagers march in declaring exactly how the ticket seller can deal with himself and his seating allocations and sitting defiantly up the back.

Enter Tiresome Couple Number One. They are hunched over their tickets, checking the letters on each vacant row before arriving at whatever row Mele and Franzy ended up in the middle of. They edge along the row, checking each seat number. Finally Tiresome Woman Number One stops in front of Franzy's popcorn.

Tiresome Woman Number One (looking first at popcorn, then at Franzy, then at popcorn again): Is this ...? Would you ...? Does that ...? I got a ticket for ...? Can I ... just ...?

Franzy gazes glaze-eyed first at woman, then popcorn, then woman again. He picks up the box of popcorn just in time before Tiresome Woman Number One engages the considerable landing gear and touches down, filling up the entire seat, right next to Franzy, in the middle of an almost entirely empty cinema. Franzy manages to keep his beefy arm glued to the armrest, but Tiresome Woman Number One is taking off her jacket, tossing her hair all over the damn place and generally acting as though she and Franzy were on a first and last date. Franzy and Mele share a second puzzled look, even more puzzled than the last.
Franzy, stubborn prick to the last, decides that he will die rather than move.

Enter Tiresome Couple Number Two. They also carefully navigate the confusingly arranged seating using their tickets as treasure maps and arrive at the same destination, this time on Mele's side.
They check their tickets. They confer with one another. They check their numbers, their tickets, one another, the breeze and some handy fish entrails.
Mele and Franzy grit their teeth.

Tiresome Man Number Two (doing his Kindly-Cop-Produces-Arrest-Warrant bit with their ticket stubs): Excuse me, what seats do you have?

Tweed Jacket Franzy (puffing on pipe): Bear in mind that the entire cinema is still empty at this point, some six minutes before the feature presentation is due to begin ...

Mele (sighing in a charming manner while looking about the cinema): These ones.
Tiresome Woman Number Two (tossing out a well-practised Anything To Avoid A Fuss Titter): Ha ha. Sorry, I mean: what does your ticket say?
Mele (turning to Franzy): What the fuck is going on here?
Franzy: I have no idea. (To Tiresome Couple Number Two) I don't know. Do you want me to look? They're here somewhere.
Tiresome Couple Number Two watch Franzy and Mele slowly and unenthusiastically go through some of their things, digging in handbags and thrusting hips to reach low-access back pockets.
Tiresome Man Number Two (this time treating us all to his finest Traffic Cop Letting Young Driver Off With A Warning): Oh, look, don't worry about it.
Tiresome Woman Number Two (overbaked relief): Yes, we'll just sit up there.
She indicates the completely vacant row behind Mele and Franzy.
Tiresome Man Number Two (to Tiresome Woman Number Two as they shuffle back out):If anyone else comes along, it'll be tough luck.
Tiresome Woman Number Two: Here, it's just where we were supposed to be, but one seat back.
Tiresome Man Number Two: But if anyone comes along, it'll be tough luck.

No one else came along.

***
GTH - Oh lookie! Squib takes out two points! Hooray! Hooray for Squib!

Had something to do with a bucket ...

I hope everybody enjoyed Single Sentence September and didn't become too frustrated with the topsy-turvy standards and themes. I tried to run with a weekly theme, but then that seemed too predictable so I went down a different path which (obviously) involved no theme at all.
I seem to have failed at that theme as well.
The biggest problem I had was similar to the one experienced by Josh Hartnett's character in the modern-day tale of religious purity, 40 Days and 40 Nights. My problem was only similar in that I really had no outlet for my nigh-unquenchable desire for pleasure. In his case it was sex. Which was why the movie did so poorly. "Man goes without sex for 40 days!" is hardly something that's going to entice movie-goers to part with their $15. I may have been single at around the time this movie came out and I can remember my initial reaction being something along the lines of "Boo Fucking Hoo. I just saw that in real life. Twice."
In my case, however, I was starved of my own natural outlet for stimulation and pleasure: writing.

If you don't have a blog and are reading this, you are probably furrowing your brow and wondering if I'm okay. You may even be considering making a casserole and popping over to do my laundry and make sure I'm brushing my teeth properly. If you do have a blog, you are probably still stuck at the end of the last paragraph,having laughed your breakfast all over the cat at the mere suggestion that I had actually stopped writing anything more than a sentence long all month.
You know what I'm talking about: every blog I've visited over the last month has been subject to at least one Big Mac-sized slab of text wedged squarely in the comments section, doubling the length of the post itself and skipping off on tangents like a gay geometry teacher. Single Sentence September should have been more accurately titled: 'Blog On Other Bloggers' Blogs September', but alliteration is always awesome and that would have let everybody know that I was coming.
I like to be sneaky.

So, by way of saying 'thank you' to all the bloggers who hosted my guest-spots (or "put up with my mutton-headed takeovers"), I will be searching back and finding a couple of the silliest examples of my blog invasions and posting them here with links to their original, more inspirational post. Yes, Writing has been reborn as an environmentalist: I am recycling my own shit.

The first one is rather special.
The formidably fantastic Poetsquib is currently hosting a competition. By a combination of luck, fate and chaos, she has acquired a free t-shirt. It's a ripper.
See?
But she is not keeping it, she is not selling it, she is not dumping it in a charity bin (lest it be burnt at a Goodwill stake) she is giving it away. Free postage. The t-shirt will go to the commenter with best reason for being given the shirt as explained in her comments section.
I went first with a mystical tale of curse and destiny and have since been both trounced, served and delivered a litany of literary smackdowns at the hands of snappy poetry and a longer, crazier sentence than I ever came up with.
I tried my hand at poetry, but it didn't really make the splash I might have been hoping for. But, since you are allowed to enter as many times as you like, I gave it another, longer go.
Bear in mind that I posted this right into Squib's comments section and what you read below is not the entire entry. You'll have to mosey on over to poetsquib's great big blue t-shirt competition to find out what happens ...

It would have been a dark and stormy night, but Franzy had locked himself indoors with all of the lights on and the stereo tuned to out-rattle the watered-down sludge which fell from the sky as what passed for God's Great Rain these days. He was band-aid ripper kind of person, unable to put up with the tediousness of prolonged suffering before the inevitable snuff. Taking his final queues from Thomas and Cobain, he preferred to leave, not with a whimper, but a bang.

The generator gauge fell like a twirling leaf in a slow motion info-sermon explaining God’s Greatest Design Triumphs. Less-than-6000-year-old fossil fuel heated, burned, died and fled to The One True Heaven from the exhaust spire. Franzy pulled on his homemade Llama t-shirt, just to be ready when the Divination And Prayer Brigade would undoubtedly arrive to claim back his mortal soul and save him from the wickedness of scientific lightbulbs not illuminating any proper moral teachings and also from the hellish sound of decades-banned secular music lest it poison the air and ears of the Good Soldiers Of God throughout the neighbourhood.

He turned up the music and peered out into the street. A few curtains swayed as hunched shapes cowered behind them, praying to their Holy Candles that this last threat to True Spiritual Peace and Righteousness would be taken from their Pure And Perfect Lives Unsullied By Controversial Thought Or Deed. Divination And Prayer would arrive soon and, with the might of God, set everything right once again.

Franzy smiled and slumped into a Counsel-issued Prayer Chair which he had carefully broken and rebuilt into a normal seat that didn’t force you to lean forward and kneel and pray to almighty God every time you wanted to sit or stand. He checked the generator gauge and plugged in his most forbidden treasure, hidden all these years in a hollowed-out illustrated Holy Book which he had sealed with canvas, claiming it was untouched by Sinner’s Hands. The Web Weaver Of Satan had held up very well for something that would have been laughably out of date had The Gentle Holy Counsel allowed personal computers to continue being developed and distributed. As such, they had been declared sinful and morally diseased: the soul-raping plague rats of the mid-21^st Century, spreading anti-Godist propaganda and cutting the hearts from The Pure Children Of God as they went.

Franzy plugged the old smiley-face plug into his home-made converter and plugged the converter into the now-icon-shaped electrical socket. Little green lights flickered warmed up as he turned on the laptop.

There was no point in having it on really. Just for memories. Satan’s Web had long been dismantled and banished as the Evil Cancer Which Rotted The Souls And Minds Of God’s Pure Children. There was no Blogger, no Google, no Boingboing. No electrical pulses carrying information of any sort.

But that didn’t mean that he couldn’t still look at the old cache files he had madly saved during the internet’s final days before it was bricked up in a cold tomb, along with free media, non-religious texts and anyone else who tried to stop the entire place turning into a mega-sized puritanical village run by power-mad elders and assisted by God-fearing zombies praying for righteousness and good at whatever cost.

Over the polluted rain pounding on the roof and the throbbing metal wailing from the speakers Franzy could just make out the furious pounding of horses’ hooves and rusty farming tools banging together. Out in the street somebody was singing a shaky-voiced prayer as they assembled a large wooden frame.

He scanned his old blog posts, noticing a missed plural there, a spelling error here and a bunch of absent apostrophes that had gone to join the twenty generations of floating fathers who crowded into the room with him, hands stuffed in ill-fitting pockets, plucking at poorly-cut shirts, shuffing amateur-grade chain mail and rewrapping badly tied loin-cloths. They shook their ghostly heads and peered out of the window at the chanting mob, jabbering in unison as a man stood in front of them on a make-shift stage, yelling and waving a book and a torch.

Franzy finally found what he was looking for and a couple of the ghosts gathered over his shoulder.

I command you. Go to poetsquib! Live the heightening drama!

***

Guess The Header - Oh yeah. You thought I'd forgotten. I haven't.

Inaugural winner is The Mighty Other, other Sam, who may now refer to himself by his Nom du Bling (or 'Rap Name'), T-MOoS. Two points. Two comments. Two points. Plus two chest thumps and a fist pound.

Is that how it will work from now on? Maybe. You'll just have to suck it up and see to it.

The squinty-eyed, jut-jawed handshakes which were gripped across the kitchen table that evening after we at last tumbled upon the Collins Shortened only to discover that the word 'automated' actually fulfilled the seemingly-opposing definitions defended as unassailable gospel by each hubristic generation were as meaningful as oil region peace accords, twice as tense and productive of a ceasefire over matters grammatical, syntactical and punctuational which possessed only a fraction of the tendency to longevity.

ANYONE not wearing two MILLION sunblock is going to have a really FUCKING BAD DAY!!!

I present: T1.

I know Terminator is on TV now. I've watched it and it rubbed my brain up the right way a couple of times, but I just don't have the patience for the non-Cameronesque filming and the Ahnold-less dialogue. Lena Heady does a good job, the cutie chick robot needs more jokes and the thing that made all the Terminators from the movies good was their personalities. Please don't bother hitting the comments page to make ironic little quips about the lack of engaging renaissance-style wit possessed by action heroes in general because it ain't what they say, it's how they say it, when, where and with how many weapons. The Terminators I've seen in the TV show are just big tough guys who got chosen because that's what they looked like. They needed to be chosen for their resemblance to what an artificially intelligent computer defence system has gleaned to be appropriately human-like in both looks and behaviour. See how complicated and dorky TV shows need to be nowadays to actually be worth anything? I'm re-reading Chris Turner's excellent book Planet Simpson (which I have discussed before) and taking note of the interesting things he has to say about the effect that The Simpsons has had on television comedy and comedy in general. He talks about the Freeze Frame Fun gags, wherein the writers would decorate the backgrounds of each scene with hilarious jokes, ads, graffiti and other writings that actually move past too fast for the casual viewer to take in. Due to the (now not) endlessly repeated nature of The Simpsons in syndication, we now all take care to read all the signs in the background of Simpsons shows precisely because they are funny. Family Guy has inherited (stolen) this trait and any other comedy movie or TV show worth watching makes the entire world it depicts funny, not just the dialogue going on between two actors (Naked Gun, The Incredibles, The Iron Giant, 40 Year Old Virgin, Drawn Together). This has resulted in a decline in the effect that previously hilarious shows have upon me, the obsessively observant viewer. Last night I watch Bedazzled, the original 1970s version. It was still funny, but only a bit funny. Something funny would happen and the laughter would stop almost as it began because it was only funny on one level. Pigeon shits on toff's hat. Funny. Dudley Moore fooled into being a nun. Funny. But that was all, because since comedy began to become a real art, the question is no longer 'Why is that funny?', but 'Why else is that funny?'

Sorry to come off all snooty and boring, but recently my church has been dismantled. It is no longer possible to watch The Simpsons on free-to-air television. Every day now at 6pm when I've finish working I ... nothing. I sit forlornly in my bean bag and stare at the wall.

***
GTH - Points go to River for her public conversion and to a personal hero of mine, Adam Y, for the best suggestion I've heard in years.

Wake up, Australia

It's been a little while since I mounted a crusade on this blog. In fact, I've only ever mounted one from memory and that seems to have either been very effective, or so unimportant that it dropped from view anyway.

This one, however, is an issue I have come to feel very strongly about. As all of you will know from her blog, Nai, of Legend of a Cowgirl fame, has recently completed a month of working in the Pitjantjara Lands in Central Australia and has written two of the most confronting and evocative blogs I have ever read. They are the thoughts and emotions of a young white woman working in an indigenous community in 2007. The two posts, entitled Welcome to the Hellmouth (Parts 1 & 2) show her journey from feeling the responsibility of a gentle, comfortable, white outsider to respect and work with the community

"I like to think (and man, I hope I'm right) that I am in a different category from the reactionary right because I can see the 'how's' and the 'whys' not just the mess that needs fixing, but I could be wrong." (Part 1)

to the shock, anger and despair for the current (almost?) irreversible situation that indigenous Australian communities are in:

"Here is another basic timeline: Stone-age hunter-gatherer culture, invasion and disempowerment, dehumanisation (not citizens until 1967!), indentured and forced workers, limited education possibilities for the majority of indigenous people and then; "Here, have a multi-million dollar corporation and welfare/guilt money- but don't fuck it up". (Part 2)

If you only read one blog post about the current state of indigenous Australia, read this one. It's in two parts, and I strongly urge you to read them both:

Welcome to the Hellmouth (Part 1)
Welcome to the Hellmouth (Part 2)

If you have a blog, an email, a large-readership print publication, whatever, please try to direct your readers to this fascinating and infuriating piece.

***

GTH The points go to River for getting in first and fastest in this week of multiple blog entries! They were ginger pork dumplings from Beijing and the most delicate things I've ever eaten.

He should have gone with the magic beans

I just finished watching Four Corners.
No, this is not going to be a blog about how I'm becoming my parents.
Tonight's story was about Australia's fleet of aging fighter planes. In order to keep the ladies interested, I'll keep the technoporn to an absolute minimum:
The F-111 has been Australia's fighter plane for ages. In an age where you replace your computer more regularly than your car, these things have been flying around blowing up shit since the 60s. So, it's time to replace them with something new. Something exciting. As any fan of technology will tell you, "new" and "exciting" almost always equal "spine-gougingly expensive". There are a few planes around to replace the Kingswood Of The Skies, but Four Corners focused on the one we Australians eventually bought to replace it: the Boeing Super Hornet. It interviewed a bunch of pointy-heads who said that it was a piece of shit, and a couple of jarheads who loved it.
I can't tell.
It flies, it shoots. Done deal.
Four Corners made it seem like a bucket of bolts, and that may be true, but it's not my concern. What piqued my interest was the little tale about how we ended up pressing the "Ship Now" button on the Boeing website in the first place, on a whizzer that apparently the US didn't really want, but bought anyway because it felt bad that no one else in the world wanted it (except for eventually Sheriff South-East Asia). Brendan Nielson apparently watched the Boeing promo video, decided it was tops and told the Australian Government to hand over its credit card. The rest of the show was about how shithouse the Super Hornets are and how we should all just stay with the Kingswoods Of The Skies. The bit that caught my attention most, however was how much a carton of Super Hornets cost:
6.6 BILLION DOLLARS! (place little finger on bottom lip). That is with a 'B' as in 'bullshit', by the way. For 24 planes that are only being used to fill a gap until the next bargain comes along from Lockheed-Martin, which should arrive sometime before we all divide into Eloi and Morlocks.
I was dumbfounded, as I'm sure you are (or better be). I'm not about to debate the cost of effective military hardware and arms races and all that frankly macho bullshit. The point is that it's $6.6 Billion that I seem to remember a certain politician taking away from my colleagues and myself during the horrors of V.S.U. $6.6 Billion that he carefully trimmed away from higher education like so much long-pig so that he could spend it on planes that fly and shoot, but, as demonstrated in a simulation on Four Corners, couldn't actually make it to Indonesia and back without needing paddles, inflatable life-raft and a few infants to toss over the side to ensure national attention around election time.
As someone who is about to start work on the dreaded Research Quality Framework, making humanities and social science academics justify the positive life influence of their research (like trying to extrapolate the cost-benefits of telling children stories at bedtime), I want to just send this video along instead of every report with a note that says "I might be studying poetry in an extinct language, but at least I'm not blowing $6.6 Billion on shit that don't work!"

The only catch is that in this economically conservative environment, the cost of paying for those fighter planes is probably less than the cost now needed to re-invigorate Australia's education system to the point where we can actually think our way out of the need for them.

***

I'd also like to take this opportunity to welcome to the blogoblag, my personal hero: Jimmy Thins. The Jimmy Thins Style is a publication of taste, hilarity, hand-made flash and chocolate chips. I wanted to link one of his videos here, but he is mix mastering them to a new location, bitches. I will host the next one. I urge you to check it check it one two. Now!

***

GTH
Trent rolled out with the dirtiest joke (I won't reprint - check last post's comments!). Sorry O.o. Sam, crapped out. Jono was geographically closest with his guess at the Cologne Cathedral for the picture, sorry Neil, it was the St Peter's Cathedral in Prague.

This Sim is Unhappy!

I have just been to one of the more poorly-organised festivals that I imagine I will be attending in my life. The OzAsia Moon Festival was, at the outset, brilliantly conceived: a gentle night of family entertainment and cultural enrichment on the banks of the still-not-so-stinky-you-can’t-ignore-it River Torrens. Lanterns, music and food were promised and banners, posters and television commercials have heralded its coming for quite some time.

If you weren’t in Adelaide this evening, I also need to confirm that it was a balmy summer evening of perfection. Neither too sweaty or breezy. Perfect.

However, someone forgot to organise the festival. I counted three food vendors, including the mooncake shop and the over-priced, over-worked Festival café. The lantern parade was less a spectacle than a school pageant. A somber announcer read out the names of each school and informed the increasingly puzzled 3000 attendees that the children had been making their own lanterns from paper and that some particular schools actually had a few students who were from Asia itself. The undoubtedly excited kiddies paraded around the edge of the park past a parental guard of honour that was just enthusiastic enough to block the view from everyone else. I did mention music. That was also provided by the junior members of local Asian music societies and was, I’m sure, brilliant for people that age.

A few dragon boats with a Chinese lantern fixed to their bows punted up and down, but mixed with the now-incredibly-attractive reflections of the streetlights from War Memorial Drive. When the martial arts demonstration began, Mele and I decided it was high time to high-tail.

I felt particularly sorry for the poor women behind us who defended every inch of their turf from the encroaching crowds. ‘Don’t sit on that jacket please!’ they would politely call. ‘We have seven other people coming!’ Saving festival lawn-space without a blanket is no picnic. Heh. Shameful jokes aside, the bitchy looks they got from every pusher-carrying dad and hamper-toting mum were enough to win a little bit of my respect. And my pity when the seven people finally turned up. They hugged, apologised for being late (the traffic was a nightmare), sat in their long-fortressed area, craned their necks to glimpse through the gloom nothing but the backs of about a hundred proud parents of primary schoolers, declared the event fucked and left.

We knew how they felt.


Jokes ahoy
The little book shall go to Jono for his multitude of number puns. Ever since embarking on this joke book I have come to two theories. 1. There is no clean joke, suitable for children that is not in some way a pun. 2. There is no lower form of joke, gag, whit or humour than the pun. It has often been posited to me that sarcasm is the lowest form of humour, but I am here to tell you now that at least sarcasm has a bit of worldliness about it. The pun, the putting one word in place of another, contains humour surely no more deserving of laughter than putting your gloves on backwards. Since reading a large collection of joke books published for children I believe that I have truly discovered the most depraved forms of humour and whimsy. I am devoid of hope for those who expected to get more laughter out of these jokes than from twisting the stalk from an apple or looking right when crossing the street. Behold:
What has fins and buzzes?
A fish gnat (fish net).
Which bugs should you hire to build your house?
Carpenter ants.
What corn do spiders make?
Cobwebs.
I see why the authors rarely put their names to these joke books. Could I do better? No - this is about as punny as it gets here in Writing.
What did the pun say to the egg?
Is this a yolk?

GTH
The point goes to River for playing on to win and playing creatively at that.

***

Update
My faith is restored! While trawling joke sites for inspiration (read: stuff to plagiarise) I came across this little ripper on a site where all the jokes are submitted only by kids from around the world:

How many ADD kids does it take to change a lightbulb?
You wanna go ride bikes!?

The Bloodhound Gang wouldn't have made it past the blue dye

According to anecdotal evidence*, STDs are on the rise. There are a multitude of reasons - most of them to do with the rise of conservatism and the religious right. This has been blogged about before by great writers than I, but there are two easy targets: shithouse sex education in schools and confusing advertising. When I went through school I had no less than two term long periods where we were taught about sex and everything surrounding it.
In primary school the wonderful Ms Safe (her real name, she assured us) told us all about why our dangly bits were doing those things and why it was wrong to point at other kids' dangly bits. We got pictures of nude children that we were allowed to draw on, a full and frank explanation about how babies were made (sex) and exactly where they came from (vaginas). And, if any of us doubted that last point, we were all sat in front of the TV in a corner of the library and shown a video of a baby coming out of a vagina, umbilical cord, placenta, maternal screaming and all.
In high school were moved on to what is known in rap circles as The Nitty-Gritty. We were given a quick refresher about how sex worked, reminded that it caused babies and then introduced to contraception, safe sex STD avoision. At no point were we told that condoms were against god or that we would be safe from STDs within the bonds of holy matrimony (like Mele was). We were even briefly divided up for a frank discussion about menstruation given by a friendly-yet-businesslike lady from a specialist government department. The girls went in first for women's business (I never found out what - maybe they told lightbulb jokes) and then the boys were allowed in to learn all about periods. But not before the Vice-Principal herself interrupted her busy day to line us all up, military parade-style, and inform us that having periods was a natural and beautiful, yet sensitive part of all young women's lives and that any mockery, joking, sly sideways glances or improper smiling during our short lesson on menses would result in immediate suspension. We all nodded maturely and trooped in to watch the lady from the government give a straight-talking description of periods while we watched tampon slowly absorb a glass of clear blue liquid.
The thing I remember thinking at the time was that all that education about STDs was almost unnecessary, given the pre-sex-education sex education our generation had all had at the hands of one TV commercial. Talk to anyone around my age and we will all tell you of a deep-seated fear of AIDS and condomless sex at the hands of The Grim Reaper. We need to re-screen this ad. I guarantee STDs will go down again.




***

In other news: the winner of the inaugural Guess The Header Competition is River for her flashy science talk and the gag about the pizza (which correctly unraveled my cypher, placing the photo of weird fish alongside the blog about weird fish, or anchovies if you prefer). Sorry other OTHER Sam, you were way way way off with the China guess, and yet, so close ... How? This photo was taken in Chinatown in San Fransisco. It was the only place in America where I actually saw fresh fish and vegetables that weren't marketed as an exclusive novelty. If you scroll down, the (as yet) blogless River will be immortalised with her leading score of one on the Writing Guess The Header Competition Glory Board. Who will guess this blog's photo? Who? Clue? Think "Bad Word Play".


*stories Mele tells me about the private school she used to work at.

Harry blahblahblahclevertitlerhymeswith-otter

Just got back from the latest Harry Potter film. First things first: I went with Mele, Dan and Marc, all of whom think nothing of bringing a literal shopping bag of sweets to the movies. Before dinner. Needless to say I am scratching the sugar crystals from my skin as they osmosise and solidify, it's both beautiful and scary to watch. I am also on a sugar crash. Ouchy yuck.

How was the movie?
Just like the book. In fact, they relied solely upon the audience having read the book before seeing the film - an extremely safe bet. After every single scene, I kept waiting for the director to lean into shot, expectant grin on his face, and say encouragingly 'You know - like in the book!'
It was kind of lazy in that way, and that's the problem with making a movie from such a long and involved book: you can't show every nuance of character and twist of plot because there isn't the time, nor can you cut too many things out or it just becomes a crazy zombie of a movie. The only solution present is to do what they did tonight and brush over everything as briefly or as thinly as possible so that at least no one can accuse you of missing something out.
Well, to the directors and writers of Harry Potter and the Order of The Phoenix I say this:
J'accuse!
Yes, indeed. You missed out something. You missed out something big. And that was heart. And balls for JK's sake! The books are getting better and better because they are getting darker. The reason they are getting darker is because they aren't just delving into the evil within the individual person any more, they are beginning to expose just how evil manifests itself into society. The whole Stazi/Secret Police storyline courtesy of the wickedest character in the Potter series after Voldemort himself, Dolores Umbridge, was treated with all the darkness and danger of a Paul Robinson prank on Neighbours. Too much zany and not enough panoptical, self-surveilling fear.
So, yes, not so much a Harry Potter movie, as a slide show of the Harry Potter book upon which it was based. But, in the category of Movies I Have Watched This Week, it wins all the Oscars and a meat tray.

***

In true double-post tradition, before I fall into bed, I have discovered via The Chocolate Witch, Blurb from the 'Burbs's Blog Award Sticker a new webcomic. I'm happy to say that it is far too intelligent for me at this stage. Either that, or it's not funny. But if it weren't funny, I wouldn't be posting about it after a sugar crash at one in the morning. It's called The Flowfield Unity and here is the first comic from its archives to make me laugh. Well, not so much laugh, as nod my head sagely and say "...aaaahhh ... I get it."

Everything is dirty now.

There aren’t enough rotten tomatoes in all of history. There really aren’t. Like all of us, I have suffered painful, wounding experiences in my time. Been witness to some things I would rather have gone without. But Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer was a literal time machine. It robbed me of two hours of existence, stealing them away from me so that at the end of my life, as I hurtle through space, piloting the last star-fighter against the enemy fleet bent on enslaving the human race while I simultaneously write about the experience timeless and whimsically emotional prose, I will think back to this black day and curse that movie for the portion of my life it was able to claim away from me. That’s two more hours I could have spent, doing any of the millions of things that I love more than pointing my eyeballs towards a spectacle like that. That’s two hours I wasn’t enjoying the finer, more joyous activities that my life has to offer, like punching myself in the face, dangling my nuts into a food-processor or licking skittish tarantulas.

This was ground zero, people. There have been other contenders, but the most recent installment of the Fantastic Four franchise was The Worst Movie I Have Ever Seen.

What was so bad about it?

Well, dear reader, make a list of all the dozens of facets that make up a movie. For example:

Acting
Script
Plot
Visual Effects
Inter-character relationships
Underlying message
Humour
Emotion
Suspense

Any more? No? Let’s begin with those then:

Acting – The actors may themselves have been talented, but the decision to be in the movie have forever tarnished their careers in my eyes.

Script – “Let’s go for a spin!” was what the cops came up with when they busted the terrorist hideout where the script was being written and found that the writers had been put away for twenty-to-life for crimes against humanity without finishing the catchy tagline a flying bad guy needed just before he ‘spins’ the heroes away from himself.

Plot – (spoiler alert!!!) – It sucked. Feel spoilt? Seriously, I’ve seen sturdier premises at camping grounds. During cyclones.

Visual Effects – I went high and was still more interested in Trent’s score on the solitaire game he was playing on his phone.

Inter-character relationships – They look at and talk to each other. That’s as complex as it gets.

Underlying message – Actually quite difficult to surmise until the final credits. Then it suddenly becomes clear: you are two hours closer to death.

Humour – The funniest joke still wasn’t as funny as flushing nine bucks down the toilet.

Emotion – Utter horror. That was my emotion that such a thing had been allowed to exist.

Suspense – This was supposed to be list detailing my responses to various aspects of the movie and instead it has turned into a scream-fest of regret and pain.

That’s how truly awful Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is. We actually stumbled out of the cinema, unable to meet each other’s gaze, like a bachelor party that wandered into The Wrong Kind of Strip Club. My guess is that no one who went will ever mention this to anybody ever again.

This review is over, but the whole experience was so sinful that there are still two more bombshells I haven’t dropped.

1. We were there for Triton’s birthday (happy birthday buddy!) and
2. We were supposed to see Transformers, but it sold out literally as we fronted up to the counter. We were the late chumps who get the box-office ticket window curtains slammed in their faces.

So … so … painful. Trits – sorry about that. I’ll make it up to you, I swear. I got you a great present: my honourable suicide. Kidding.