The Shoddy Blog

Vroom

2010-03-17T01:03:00.003+10:30

I’ve had a few guesses sent in for the Car Quiz – Aspen and Lachie gave a few answers, Dowling had an unsettling knowledge of animated TV shows while Ozi had an unnerving knowledge of animated films. Greg chimed in late in the piece, I already had most of his answers, but he gets accolades for providing the solution to number 40 – that fucker was haunting a few of us (and the car wasn’t from Grease, Cobra or Tucker like we first thought). A bunch of people wrote to say they liked the quiz and would send their answers when they had time, but I haven’t heard back. I think this was because a list of 55 cars was a bit of a long haul, so next time I put one of these silhouette quizzes up (and I have about half a dozen more) I will leave the comments open, so that the more enthusiastic readers can have a crack, and the rest can fill in the spaces later.

The Car picture is actually a T-Shirt design from Chop Shop, the creators recommended putting it up on blogs for people to take guesses. I’ll put a few more of these up in the next few weeks (I think we’ll tackle the robots one next). It’s a great t-shirt design, but gets a furrowed brow from me for not including the station wagon from National Lampoon’s Vacation.

I was glad to have you guys send in your answers, because I was stumped on a lot of these. I’m usually good with movie centric quizzes, but I’m a complete dunce when it comes to cars (even though I’m a big fan of movie cars too). If the car had a visual clue I could get it, but I couldn’t spot the cars on shape alone. There was no cheating either, as there are no answers available from the site the design came from.

Visual clues you may, or may not have spotted:

Loud speakers on top of number 6, so that we can tell the neighborhood about the upcoming concert to save the orphanage.

Bull horns on the bonnet of number 10, Confederate flag on the roof of number 12. Both from the same TV Show.

The skis on top of number 37 (though John Cusack only ends up using one of them to win the race).

The jack holding up the back of number 45, so that we can roll back the odometer before Cameron’s dad gets home from work.

Our final score for combined correct answers is 41/55, which gives us a 75% success rate and therefore a “B” rating. That’s not bad, but still not impressive enough to get us high fives from complete strangers on the street. I’ll stick the robot quiz up on Monday.

The car quiz picture is below, and I have set up three sets of remarks in the comments section. The first part is our 41 correct answers, the second part is a further eight I found through extensive net surfing. A combination of sifting through famous car lists, and just plain pure luck (but didn’t include these cars in the grading – we’ll keep that bitch pure using webless memory power alone), and the third part is the remaining five cars I have no idea about. I've given the complete model name of the cars if i could find it, because I know there are a few petrol heads who frequent the site.

Click on the date of this article below to get the picture and comments on the same screen. If you know any of the cars that are still baffling us, please put us out of our fucking misery. Else, just write some random shit if the mood strikes you. This is the first time the comments section has been open in over four months, so go nuts.

Just a touch more film riffing

2010-03-15T17:49:00.003+10:30

At the end of the day, quality plays a limited function in the Hollywood machine. It’s not something I’m bitter about, I actually find it kind of interesting. The last two winners of the best picture award (Hurt Locker, and Slumdog Millioniare) came within a hair’s width of being direct to DVD releases – had this happened they wouldn’t have been eligible for Academy Awards in the first place. Meanwhile, no less than 100 critics (as per rotten tomatoes.com) have chimed in to declare Alice in Wonderland a steaming pile of shit – not that your average viewer cares, the film has raked in $208 million in just ten days (to get a better idea of that figure, Back to the Future made $210 million in it’s entire theatrical run).

In recent years, giant plasma and LCD screens have been infiltrating our homes at a phenomenal rate. Surround sound and the invention of Blu-Ray have made the home viewing experience one to rival the cinema, and the percentage of people happy to wait for films to come out on DVD has been growing as a result.

Those mighty brains at Hollywood are aware of this, and so have come up with a way to counteract this: bring back 3D.

3D has not only brought back that “Holy shit, we need to see this on the big screen” mentality, but can also crank up the profits as well. On average, a 3D ticket will cost 50% more than a usual ticket – something that has played a huge part in Avatar’s financial windfall. 3D is not yet a valid part of the home theatre experience (though I’m guessing it will be in only a matter of years, if not months). I was quite excited to find a pair of old red and blue 3D glasses in my hire of My Bloody Valentine from Blockbuster last year, only to find the effect blurry at best. In fact, it gave me a head ache, and reminded me of my 3D boob adventure of 2007.

The reintroduction of 3D is probably Hollywood’s biggest fuck you to the cinema goer. It is often added lazily in post production, and you’re usually guaranteed about half a dozen flinching shots (like when a spear or shotgun comes right out of the screen at you) at best. They have to keep these kind of shots to a minimum, because they look kind of stupid in 2D, and that is how the film will be seen in cinemas who can’t support the 3D experience, and how the film will be seen once it is on DVD.

I saw Mosters vs Aliens in 3D, and could count the number of flinch shots on one hand (they included the classic paddle-bat gag). I’ll admit that the experience was fun, but at the end of the day it was just a gimmick, and I winced at the $21.50 price tag. That’s how much it costs for an adult to see a film in 3D in Adelaide (on average), a child’s ticket is $16.50. So for a family of four to see a 3D film, you’re looking at over $70. Fuck me.

At the end of the day, it is a gambit that is paying off for Hollywood and you can expect a wave of 3D films to be hitting the cinemas over the next few years. We’re not just talking animated adventures, but action and even drama films too. There is a 3D version of the Bible in the works, and I wish I was kidding.

While we are on the topic of cinema, I’ll round off this post with a few random Oscar moments from this year’s ceremony. Feel free to stop the youtube clips once you get the gist, they are of horrible quality but were the best I could find on short notice:

Campbell gets a Guernsey:

Each Oscars ceremony pays tribute to a particular genre, and this year it was Horror. Two of the flavourless hags from Twilight presented the montage: Kirsten Stewart (that chick who looks like a boy) and Taylor Lautner (that boy who looks like a chick).

Stewart points out that “..It’s been 37 long years since Horror has had it’s place on this show when the Exorcist picked up two Academy Awards..” . Yet Silence of the Lambs took home five Oscars, including best picture, at the 1991 Academy Awards. I guess that doesn’t count, what with it being a romantic comedy and all.

The Horror montage (including the “well, duh” moment at 0:34, when Hannibal Lecter makes an appearance), is a little hacky (and why is Edward Scissorhands in there?) but it’s nice to see Bruce Campbell at the Oscars, even if it’s just for an Evil Dead 2 clip:

If Kanye West was a crazy middle aged white chick:

Chud.com tell it best.

And finally, Horse Goblin is now the Sherbet Pony:

Sarah Horseica Parker turned up to the Oscars with the worst fake tan I’ve seen outside of Liverpool. The Australian pointed out that she ”..was so enamoured with the Oscars, she came as a bronze statue..”. Devin Faraci wrote that “Sarah Jessica Parker colour coordinated her dress, her hair and her horrific fake tan.”

Horse Goblin has always been a whipping girl for the Shoddy Blog, but now it just feels like I’m kicking a handicapped kid who has fallen out of their wheelchair. I’m bored with this train wreck.

Integrity 1, Smurf Cats 0

2010-03-13T03:57:00.002+10:30

Traditionally I’ve always followed the results of the Academy Awards. I find you can’t be a film fan without showing at least a passing interest in the Ceremony.

Like pretty much all award institutions, the ceremony is a garish and, well, kind of wanky affair. The actual winners themselves can raise an eyebrow or two, as politics take precedence over quality in the deciding process. For me it has always been about the after effects of the awards, to see the ripple effect it has on those who win. Many unknown directors, producers, animators and sound technicians have gone on to bigger and brighter things because of the accolades. It seems to be a little more random when it comes to actors though, with winners falling into four separate groups:

Big time careers stay big time: eg Denzel Washington

Floundering careers hit the big time: eg Geoffrey Rush

Floundering careers stay floundering: eg Mira Sorvino, Marisa Tomei

Big time careers flounder (aka the Oscar’s curse): eg Cuba Gooding Jr

I sat through Channel Nine’s entire Oscar telecast last year. The time difference meant that the initial showing was on the Monday morning, but they put a repeat on that night which I sat and watched. My favourite film for that year was The Wrestler, so I wanted to see that do well and for Mickey Rourke to pick up the Oscar for best actor. Slumdog Millionaire was also an excellent film, and I was quite happy for that to reap some rewards (which it did), and had a passing interest in Heath Ledger’s Best Supporting Actor nod.

I read up on the Oscar telecast the following day, and realised that I missed a lot of interesting moments (Ben Stiller’s last minute idea to do a mock Joaquin Phoneix presentation, acrobat Philippe Petit accepting his award and then balancing it on his chin to name a few) because of Channel Nine’s truncated approach to the Ceremony. Nine had chucked their Oscars repeat on at the late time slot of 9:30pm, obviously considering Monday night too precious to waste on such frivolous garbage as the Academy Awards, and filled the earlier time slots with Two and a Half Men reruns (as usual). Because of the late airing, it meant they had to ditch at least 90 minutes of the show, and as such lose about half a dozen award presentations in the process.

To be fair, the Academy Awards is a very long haul, and Nine had rightfully decided that your average viewer couldn’t be fucked sitting through four hours of this stuff. I decided to give most of the ceremony a miss this year – one thing I had learnt from the 2009 telecast was that you could sit through two and a half hours of shitty jokes and boring dance numbers, only to miss decent stuff that hit the cutting room floor.

I was actually at a barbecue on the Monday of the Oscars (it was a public holiday here in South Australia), and got my fix of Oscar updates by checking the web site every hour or so, a much simpler form of intel. A lot of my barbecue peers found my interest in the Oscars to be quite amusing, and more than a few declared my interest an obsession. The irony being that my update process consisted of hitting the refresh button on the list of winners page a total of three times for the entire afternoon, while my detractors would soon be clocking up ten hours a week on their fantasy teams once the football season starts at the end of the month (those crazy cats).

I guess it was also the wrong crowd for Oscars interest. This was a meeting of school friends, many of who had been breeding like rabbits in the last few years. I shit you not, there were hundreds of kids and babies crawling around the backyard of this social gathering. (I found a baby chewing on a clothes peg at one point, and yanked it out of it’s mouth before it choked. True Story.) Cinema excursions were few and far between for this crowd, and even then it would be for the latest Ice Age or Madagascar sequel to keep the rug rats happy. Why would they care about this year’s line up of nominees?

The Oscars has always had a bit of a stigma surrounding it. Pretty much everybody has their own story of watching their preferred film of the year lose out at the Oscars, get the sulks up, and have turned their backs on the ceremony ever since.

For me, the Oscars has always trod the tight rope between reputable and complete horseshit. As far as Awards ceremonies go, you have the bullshit at one end (the Blockbuster and MTV awards), the prestige at the other end (Cannes and Sundance), and the Oscars floating somewhere in between.

On a personal note, this Oscars was going to be the decider of whether I continued to follow the awards in future years, or whether I would declare the institution a pile of shit. Like so many others who have turned their backs on the most famous of awards ceremonies, it was down to the best picture award.

The interest in the Academy Awards has been slowly dwindling over the last few years, as the older generation dies out and the younger one takes centre stage, and viewing figures have been on a sliding demise. The I-pod generation can’t be fucked with a four hour ceremony, a fact that doesn’t really surprise anybody, and so the Academy Awards have tried to counter this problem with various measures. One such “measure” they installed last year, and continued this year, is to put the spotlight on popular younger actors, such as the High School Musical and Twilight kids. Actors who should not be within several hundred miles of the Academy Awards (I’m looking at you Miley Fucking Cyrus) are taking to the stage to present awards.

A more extreme measure was to expand on the most popular of the awards: best film. Many of the awards of the night are surrounded by disinterest (Best Costume Design goes to that Victorian Era period piece nobody saw, and there is ALWAYS a Victorian Era film at these awards) or just plain confusion (Best-Sound-Editing-What-Now?). To counteract this, they have taken the number of Best Film Nominees and doubled it to the kind of stupid figure of ten.

The silly thing here, is that they threw ten titles out there, and then declared it a race between just two films: Avatar and The Hurt Locker. This was a marketing strategy to garner interest, as fans were divided in a David and Goliath battle between the most profitable Oscar nominee of all time, and the least profitable. That the two directors were once married to each other only helped fan the flames of interest.

It was a shame that the main drawcard had come to this show down, as a few very good films fell to the way side in the process such asDistrict 9 and Inglourious Basterds (Up is also a fantastic film, but I think we are still a few years off Pixar taking home best picture nod - that got best Animated Feature anyway). However, it was the Avatar vs Hurt Locker affair that made this the deciding Oscars ceremony for me. It was a style vs substance battle, and if style won, I would declare the Oscars a ”load of shit” and not bother with the 2011 ones – my passing interest would devolve into no interest at all.

Before anybody gets shitty with me, I want to point out that I think Avatar is a good film. I saw it during the Christmas holidays with a bunch of relatives, and found it to be an engaging experience. Although it was almost three hours long, I was happy to sit and watch the adventure on screen.

Yes, Avatar is a “good” film, but it is not a “great” one. When I start to point out Avatar’s faults in conversation, everybody stares at me like I broke into a child’s birthday party and took a shit on the cake, but I’m not trying to be a spoilsport on this one. If Avatar is going to be thrown into the ring for the “Best Movie” accolades, then I feel that my hand has been forced and that all cards should be shown.

As I pointed out in my Golden Goose series (a set if posts I one day hope to finish), I’ve never been a fan of films high on budget and low on substance. Avatar sure is a pretty thing, but the story and characters are decidedly lacking.

The overall story feels like something you would find in a notebook, one belonging to a 14 year old girl who has just discovered the joys of recycling and environmental awareness. In between the puffy Unicorn stickers and “I Heart Zac Efron” scrawling, lies the highly unoriginal (South Park best sums it up: Dances with Smurfs) love story set in an alien world. The horribly nasty corporate scum (“Fuck it, let’s blow up that giant tree and kill those pesky aliens”) fight the honourable blue cat people (who can plug their hair into the trees and animals to connect with them spiritually, sorry but that’s fucking dumb), who in turn team up with a few stupidly heroic humans (for absolutely no reason at all, Michelle Rodriguez’s soldier character, who has had next to no contact with the Na’vi, decides to go on a suicide mission against her own unit to help the aliens).

This all happens because the humans want a precious mineral called “unobtainium” (I wish I was kidding, but that’s what’s it called), located under the Na’vi’s home.

Throw in a wooden performance by Sam Worthington (there’s a reason this guy only get’s action film roles), and a host of forgettable paper-thin characters and predictable plot points, and what you have is a colourful, yet ultimately empty experience.

There is the argument that because of the spectacularly ground breaking effects, the film doesn’t need a well thought out plot or character arcs. However, it is possible to have an effects driven film without forsaking story and character development (off the top of my head: The Empire Strikes Back, Starship Troopers, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy...). Besides, Avatar’s effects are a decent step in CGI development, but they are not the huge leap we were promised; the best quote I read on the effects was by the critic Devin Faraci ”I was whelmed by the effects”. Not overwhelmed, not underwhelmed. Just ‘whelmed”.

I feel like I might have lost a few of you kids, so to reiterate: Avatar is a fun, visually exciting film. But it has an unoriginal plot, with weak characters and phoned in performances. Just because you and your silly-ass friends enjoyed it, doesn’t mean it should win an Oscar for best film. It would be like giving the fourth place runner in the 100 metre sprint the gold medal, because he had the best sneakers.

On the other side of the coin, we have The Hurt Locker. It wasn’t my favourite film of last year (I’ll post my top 15 of 2009 in a few weeks), but it is still an exceptional accomplishment. A tight script, with tense scenes and incredible performances shot on a low budget – it’s everything Avatar is not.

Avatar is like having a birthday at McDonalds with all of your friends, while Hurt Locker is hunting down an incredible restaurant in a back alley to dine with the person you love. I can see why one of these experiences is going to be more popular to your average Joe. You just can’t tell me it’s the more rewarding of the two.

It’s all down to the Substance vs Style question (The Australian was a little kinder with their explanation, calling it a showdown between “the experience” and “the story”). Avatar is certainly an accomplishment, and it deserves to make a shitload of money. It just doesn’t deserve to be named the best film of the year. It would be like a hunk of Styrofoam winning a cake contest, because it had incredible icing and the biggest candles. Had the Academy bought into all of the hype and awarded Avatar the Oscar for best film, then style would have won over substance, and the Oscars would no longer hold any more weight with me.

As it happens, The Hurt Locker won. My Academy Awards interest survives for another year, and I’ll be tuning in come March 2011.

Car Quiz

2010-03-06T22:54:00.004+10:30

Stumbled across this picture while surfing for famous cars on the net (click to enlarge it), and thought it would make a decent quiz for the Shoddy Blog. 55 silhouettes of famous cars from movies, TV and a few computer games. Let’s see if we guess them all, email me if you know some of the answers (beefabeef@yahoo.com). To help you along, here are a few clues starring Dowling and myself, and even Lachie in the last one.

Mum took away Che’s Atari. Viva La Revolution!

Gay marriage legalized in Hazard County

Rolling in our five point Oh, with our rag top down, so our hair can blow

”Get in the car Marty, I’ve got Candy!”

”Uh oh...lost the race...shouldn’t have stopped for that spit roast!”

I’ll post a running update once the answers start coming in.

More Olympics. Sorta.

2010-02-27T19:45:00.004+10:30

Australia has won another medal, this time Gold to Lydia Lassila for the Freestyle Skiing.

This puts Australia in 17th place on the medal tally board:

That's not fantastic, but still, that’s better than 18th place. So in other words:

I still haven’t watched a single minute of events yet, so don’t have much else to report. A guy at work told me that American Snowboarder Shaun White did a triple Arial McFuckburger or some shit, so that sounds pretty cool I guess. Besides that, looks like the Olympics finish on the 28th. The final event is the Men’s Ice Hockey – USA vs Canada. That would actually be pretty good, but I’m not getting up 6am (or whenever) Monday morning to watch it.

This post is light on material, so let me direct you to additional random antics from the interwebs:

Here is a wonderfully serious answer to a stupid question.

Here is a short film by Derrick Comedy called Don’t Jerk Off to This:

And on a final note, don’t fuck with this little girl:

Canangry

2010-02-23T17:20:00.002+10:30

I always thought Canada was a nice country, full of pleasant people. They seemed harmless enough. Which makes their antics at the Olympics all the more confusing.

First up we had the violent protest against capitalism on the opening day (I’m still confused about the motive there. Stop all this ice skating and give money to Ethiopia? Hippies suck no matter which continent they’re on).

Then Dale Begg Smith took to the podium to collect a silver medal amongst jeers and boos (Smith left Canada as a teenager, as they wanted him to give up his business and concentrate on skiing. He moved to Australia, where the training was less constrictive). Followed by a barrage of twitter venom and even Wikipedia hacks.

"Way to be a complete tool Dale Begg-Smith. You got shown up on your home soil....TRAITOR!," allanetmanski tweeted.

Now this story, courtesy of yahoo News:

A Danish curler was brought to tears after a boisterous Canadian crowd intentionally distracted her during crucial shots in her team's match against the home nation. With the crowd stomping and making deafening noise, Denmark skip Madeleine Dupont missed two potentially game-winning shots and tearfully blamed the fans for it afterward. Canada won the match 5-4 in an extra end.

I’m not sure what is going on at the Winter Games. As far as I can tell, it’s a bunch of skiing, sequin covered skating and the odd extreme sport. Why are the Canadians treating it like they’re at a cage fight? I’m sure the Ice Hockey players couldn’t care less, but some of the more genteel participants are getting caught off guard. Are there spectators who have been waiting four years to let loose with their practiced Curling jibes?

Okay Eskimo, on the count of three go attack those filthy foreigners ...

I’ll stop ragging on the Canucks now, just found it all a bit curious was all. No new medals for Australia as of writing. Kazakhstan has joined the Winter Olympics table with a Silver medal. Wait, what?

Winter Olympics Update

2010-02-20T21:03:00.002+10:30

Thought we’d take a break from my 2009 ramblings for a post on the Winter Olympics. In case you were wondering, I have six posts left for the 2009 recap. I should be finished these by Mid March, and if you want an update on this current year of 2010 so far: Haiti is fucked, and JD Salinger is dead.

The 2010 Winter Olympics have been running for about nine days, a fact which I almost forgot. I was reminded today when my workmates were chatting about the poor bastard who died on the luge track, and about our first and second Australian medals. Apparently Channel Nine have been showing a heap of coverage, but I hadn’t seen any of it. My TV is for DVD viewing and the odd bit of GTAIV when I feel like doing a burnout on a stripper’s head with a stolen motorbike. I’ve made the odd journey here and there into terrestrial television to see if it’s as bad as I remember it, and have been rewarded with something like Celebrity Dish Washing for my efforts. It’s that, or Two and a Half Men reruns. No shit, I have watched minimal TV in the last 12 months, and still have managed to see that episode where Charlie gets tricked into buying a car from Jenny McCarthy five times.

But I hate to see a major sporting event come and go without me throwing at least a few words on screen for the shoddy blog, so I switched on the TV when I got home from work. As soon as I saw Eddie McGuire, I switched it off again. I think I caught about 2.4 seconds, which isn’t enough source material for an article, so onto the net I went.

Jesus, the first few days of the Winter Olympics seemed like a never ending shit fight. First the death of the Georgian Slider in training. 100s of vigilantes caused a detour in the torch relay during a violent protest. Then the Opening Ceremony didn’t go to plan when their spectacular torch lighting mechanism suffered from a glitch, and only three of the four pillars rose to the Olympic cauldron. Finally, due to a logistical error a dozen orphans were lowered into a pit full of hungry Polar Bears.

I spent a full week rinsing my eyes with Saline solution after catching only ten minutes of the Beijing Opening ceremony, so decided to give the Vancouver one a miss. Apparently they had such Canadian luminaries as Wayne Gretzky and Steve Nash lighting the torch. Wait, Steve Nash? The Basketballer? Fair enough Gretzky, a champion Ice Hockey player who managed the Gold Medal Winning team in 2002. What the fuck has Basketball got to do with the Winter Olympics? Are they that starved for Winter sport champions they can’t pull a few out of bed to light a friggin’ flame?

Speaking of random Canadians, I was on the Winter Olympics page when I saw an advert promoting Vancouver, using Kim Cattrall as the Spokesperson. I didn't get a screen capture at the time, but I thought it was a peculiar campaign. Come to Vancouver, we have chips with mayonnaise...and 60 year old whores.

The web site also gave me my first glimpse of the Olympic slogan for these games:

I chucked that phrase into google image source, it gave me this:

The website is truly a page of wonders, I sat there staring at the Vancouver mascots for a good ten minutes, trying to work out just what the fuck they were supposed to be:

Sumi is "an animal spirit who wears the hat of the orca whale, flies with the wings of the mighty thunderbird and runs on the furry legs of the black bear."

Quatchi is a hockey-happy sasquatch.

And Miga is a sea bear. Which is an Orca that turns into a bear when on land.

It seems that we have to come up with some kooky combinations to create original mascots these days. Here is my design for the 2036 Adelaide Winter Olympics Mascot:

Mr Chotley: A Squark (half Squirrel half Shark) who wears a bow tie made out of frozen peas.

Still, the biggest event at these Games has been the death of 21-year-old slider Nodar Kumaritashvili, it seemed everybody and their dog were completely shocked at his death. Who knew flying down a metre wide icy slope at 100kmh on a board smaller than a coffee table could be dangerous? The event not only put a shadow over proceedings, but also gave some competitors pause for reflection on their own lives. Eight hours of training a day for four years for an event lasting less than a minute, Jesus – is it really worth it?

My favourite sports quote so far this year has come from this Winter Olympics, and it’s going to be a hard one to top. Usually interviewing Sports personalities is a cliché ridden affair baring tedious fruit, but check out Argentinean Slider Ruben Gonzalez, who just realised at his fourth Olympic games appearance that he is well and truly fucking over it.

”I realised at the Opening Ceremony last night that this wasn’t for me anymore. I didn’t know how to celebrate, so at one point, when I would normally be hanging off every moment, I went outside and got a hotdog. This is my last Olympics. A few weeks ago I wouldn’t have said that. I wanted to keep going. Yesterday it gave me perspective. There are other things to do in life.”

God bless Gonzalez for providing a brutally honest bit of speech amongst the sea of teary eyed saccharine diarrhoea these kind of tournaments usually bring. For some reason it reminded me of a quote from Hunter S Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:

“..with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

Anyway, here is Australia’s Medal Count

Gold: 1, Silver: 1, Bronze: 0

Gold was for the women’s Snowboarding half pipe, Silver for the men’s Moguls (which as far as I can tell is “lumpy skiing”). Australia has been competing in the Winter Olympics since 1936, but didn’t win a medal until 1994 (bronze for the short track relay). Our best result between 1936 and 1994 was a 6th place in a 10km speed skating race. Unsurprising we are crap at winter sports, considering our country is essentially a giant frying pan full of sand.

More on the Winter Olympics in a week or so.

Your oxymoron for today is ”Saccharine Diarrhoea”.

S & H

2010-02-17T02:25:00.002+10:30

The next update is very close, I can feel it’s hot musky breath on the back of my neck.

In the mean time, go kill a minute or two at the British Pub Name Generator.

And next time you’re in the UK, make sure to drop into my new pub “The Swan & Hostage”. It’s an authentic British pub experience, complete with unfriendly Polish chicks behind the bar, a wide range of sports on the TV (provided you like Soccer, and by Soccer we mean the top four teams) and original oak floors that stink of vomit and stale beer since the smoking laws came in.

Our pub features a fantastic bar menu including fish and chips, pie and chips, steak and chips, chips and chips, and our unique “Sushi” (chips carved to look like fish).

If you can name Football managers from the 1970s, you will love our Sunday afternoon Pub Quizzes, and if you don’t mind getting glassed in the face, try your hand at our fortnightly pool competitions. For those fearless punters after a truly blood curdling experience, try your hand at our Tuesday night “Murderous Music Challenge” – a series of drunk British Women will get up and sing Karaoke while you are forced to sit and listen, and if you can last longer than a minute without blocking your ears or crying, you win a free pint.

The Swan & Hostage
32 Bumsweetie Road
(Between ASDA and the stray dogs home)
Shroppinghamshirevilleshire

Open every day
Noon until really late (11pm)

2009 part 5: Swine Flu

2010-02-12T13:38:00.002+10:30

Swine Flu rocked the world for a while there. The disease is still infecting people at an accelerated rate (at the time of writing there are 1.4 million cases including 24,000 recorded deaths attributed to the disease worldwide), but you don’t hear about it as much anymore because, well, we all kind of got bored with it.

I was running a leader board of swine flu tallies for a while there including multiple posts mocking the disease, but then I found out about a mate’s mother dying due to complications brought on by the disease, so decided to put that series to rest.

This final take on the subject will include a list of the 10 most afflicted countries (from stats that were updated on the 9th of feb), just to show how swine flu numbers have leapt dramatically in a few countries. Australia was a front-runner for the swine flu epidemic, but now it looks like we will drop out of the top 10 within a month or two. Nice to see China finally stop lying about their numbers. Too bad north Korea doesn’t follow suit – South Korea is reporting over 100,000 cases, while the North is reporting 50. Yeah right. Even Micronesia owned up to 79.

GERMANY: 215,881
PORTUGAL: 166,922
CHINA: 120,940
SOUTH KOREA: 108,234
BELGIUM: 76,973
MEXICO: 69,824
BRAZIL: 58,178
UKRAINE: 57,862
USA: 44,640
AUSTRALIA: 37,642

In the last few months I’ve read of Swine Flu II scares, and how a group of vets caught Horse Flu. No news of Squirrel AIDs as of writing, but I’m quite happy to leave these animal flus to the annals of 2009.

Next post: The 2009 Neck Up Awards part 1.

2009 part 4: Climate Change, the Environment and Green Issues

2010-02-10T19:25:00.004+10:30

Who gives a fuck?

2009 part 3: 10 Celebrity Deaths

2010-02-08T14:40:00.014+10:30

I wanted to peruse a comprehensive list of deaths, so first went to Wikipedia’s “notable deaths of 2009” article, but those clowns are insane. They had over 300 names for January alone, and I don’t really consider a dude who won a Bronze medal for cycling in 1936 as memorable.

I’ve ranked these deaths in order of impact from ”Who gives a fuck?” to “Holy shit, they died? Really? Oh well. Who gives a fuck?”. Of course your own list may look a little different, if you’re a 60 year old American, you might have given two shits that Ted Kennedy carked it for example.

Here be 9 persons and 1 animal who shuffled off our mortal coil last year, join me as I trivialise decades of their lives and achievements into a sentence or two.

Dom Deluise, 75

Actor, Blazing Saddles.

Cause of death: complications from diabetes and high blood pressure

Bea Arthur, 86

Old ~~dude~~ chick from Golden Girls

Cause of death: cancer

Farrah Fawcett, 62

Actress. Possibly batshit insane.

Cause of death: Anal cancer.

John Hughes, 59

Director. If you don’t know his films, then you weren’t alive in the 1980s. (Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club , Weird Science, Ferris Bueller's Day Off )

His last film was Curly Sue in 1991, and then he disappeared from the public eye entirely in 1994. He was a farmer in his last years in Illinois, that’s random.

Cause of Death: Cardiac Arrest.

Dakota Fanning, 15

Actress.

Cause of death: Died in early December when a semi trailer carrying pitch forks toppled onto her in a freak accident.

Sam the Koala

Icon of hope during the Victorian bushfires.

Cause of death: Koalaymidia

David Carradine, 72

Old school actor, but you’re probably familiar with him from his surge of work in recent years. He’s been in 26 films and 11 TV shows since 2000, most notably as Bill in Kill Bill and trying to steal Jason Statham’s heart (literally) in Crank 2.

Cause of death: Unusual Circumstances (ie burping the worm with a belt round his neck).

Brittany Murphy, 32

Actress. Made famous by roles in Girl Interrupted, 8 Mile and Sin City.

Cause of death: pneumonia, with secondary factors of iron-deficiency anemia and multiple drug intoxication.

Brittany Murphy was 2009’s traditional yearly “Actor fucking around with their medication, to disastrous results”, though her death wasn’t as much of a shock as Heath Ledger’s. Ledger went on to win a posthumous Oscar, while Murphy’s last half dozen films were direct to DVD releases.

Her husband Simon Monjack was completely devastated by her death, and it was no wonder, the dude was punching well above his weight. Murphy often looked like a crack whore that didn’t know what day it was – but could scrub up nicely when she made an effort. Meanwhile, Monjack looked like a spruiker from a Bulgarian Strip Club.

Patrick Swayze, 57

Actor. Fuck you if you don’t know who he is.

Cause of death: Pancreatic Cancer.

Not really a shock death, as Swayze was on his death bed for quite some time. Swayze is one of those dudes nobody gives a fuck about (check out his last 14 films on imdb, you may find them in the bargain bin at Blockbuster if you’re lucky) until he dies, and then we’ll have a nonstop barrage of clips of his work. Well, his work from 20 years ago anyway. I still think every bouncer should watch Roadhouse as the bible for proper bar room security etiquette.

Michael Jackson, 50

Singer.

The guy who everybody considered a joke, up until he died, then everybody missed him immensely. This is the death you’ll still be hearing about a decade from now, as court battles and inquests continue. He’s the Lady Di for the 21st century.

DJs continue to squeeze Jackson songs into their sets to relieve of us of the terrors of modern music. A Jackson song here and there helped me through the pure horror of Ace of Base in my uni days, built up my resistance to Usher in my London days, and now provide me with a vaccine to the gential wart that is Lady Gaga.

Our grandchildren will be getting jiggy to Billie Jean, during breaks from the war against the I-Robots.

Next up: Climate Change, the Environment and Green Issues.

2009 part 2: Those Effin' Pandas

2010-02-01T23:56:00.004+10:30

2009 produced it’s fair share of new celebrities. People who were once unknown but by year’s end had become household names. Adelaide’s two biggest stars for the year weren’t people, but were in fact Giant Pandas: Wang Wang and Funi.

Wang Wang (the male) is on the left, Funi (the female) is on the right. No wait, Funi is on the left and Wang Wang is on the right. No...I was right the first time, Wang Wang on the...Fuck it, I’ll give Wang Wang a Male wig and Funi a Female one so we can tell them apart.

Better.

What follows is a timeline of notable events in the Adelaide Panda Phenomenon.

2007: Chinese President Hu Jintao offers two pandas to Australia as a goodwill gesture during a visit to Australia.

When Hu Jintao offers pandas, you best take them.

It is decided that Adelaide Zoo will house the panda enclosure. This is a Zoo where a 75 year old Flamingo was nearly beaten to death in 2008, and a bored Orangutan simply climbed out of his enclosure and went for a walk in 2009. We also own an epileptic Lion. If the director of the Zoo turns out to be David Lynch, I would not be surprised.

The pandas chosen for the Australian adventure are Wang Wang and Funi. “Funi” means “lucky one” which is kind of nice, I guess. “Wang Wang” means “net net”, which makes no fucking sense whatsoever.

June 2008: Thailand learns of Australia’s impending panda extravaganza, and tries to steal their thunder by releasing pictures of their own family of pandas. Some notable animal experts doubt the validity of their claim.

January 2009: With news of a late 2009 opening of the panda enclosure, the panda news machine starts to heat up.

April 2009: The panda news hits full swing, as Wang Wang and Funi grace the front covers of South Australian newspapers (the Sunday Mail and the Advertiser) and magazines.

May 2009: The general public starts to tire of panda news.

June 2009: Wang Wang and Funi are declared the most important addition to the Adelaide Zoo, since the extremely rare Whore-Turtle “Francine” of 1993.

July 2009: The reveal date edges closer, as the media ups the ante with even more coverage of the panda story. Front page news gives way to four page spreads and fold outs. Radio stations get on the band wagon with promotions and gimmicks, including triple M’s mind blowingly clever wordplay:

August 2009: The general public starts to choke on the saturation of panda news, and their fatigue gives way to a slowly simmering hatred.

September 2009: Panda merchandising goes into overdrive. Consumers could now get their hands on:

The Wang Wang and Funi Book.

The Wang Wang and Funi dolls.

The Wang Wang and Funi Commemorative stamps.

The Wang Wang and FuniBoard Game.

I’m not sure what this is. Backscratcher maybe?

October 2009: The Wang Wang and Funi Christmas float is revealed to the public.

Early December: Almost every man, woman, and child within the limits of the greater Adelaide area have well and truly had a gutful of “those fucking pandas”.

November 25th: (From the LA Times): According to Zoos SA president Heather Caddick, the pandas are expected to generate more than $600 million (Australian) for the South Australia state economy during their time here, with an anticipated 262,000 foreign visitors and 1.3 million Australians visiting Adelaide to see the animals.

That’s a lot of cash, more than enough to cover the $1 million a year hire of the pandas, and the $8 million it took to build the enclosure. Kind of makes me wonder why there are so many charities and fund raisers set up for the panda cause. It also makes me wonder why foreign visitors would fly all the way to Adelaide just to see the pandas, it’s not something we’re usually synonymous with.

Mexico, France and Germany also have giant pandas in their zoos. I bet you didn‘t know that. And if you did, did you ever sit down and think “I would love to visit Paris. Check out the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the pandas....”?

Probably not.

November 13th: The float is included in the annual christmas pageant, as well as two actors in panda suits seen here with the King and Queen of the pageant. Staring at this picture makes me wish I had some Shrooms.

November 28th 2009: The fucking pandas finally arrive in Adelaide. Their plane lands by a runway lined with giant plastic pandas, and well wishers who stopped snorting glue long enough to put together welcome signs.

December 11th: The pandas are revealed for the first time to a lucky group at a high society fund raising dinner at the zoo. Tickets went for a hefty $1000 a head, and it was unclear whether you actually got to fuck the pandas for that price. Wang Wang and Funi were welcomed to Australia by Governor-General Quentin Bryce (who wikipedia tells me is actually a chick), and Chinese Ambassador Zhang Junsai declared that he already had some great names worked out for the future offspring. This was good news, as usually baby animals in the Adelaide Zoo are named by school kids, in competitions promoted by McDonalds or other fast food establishments. This process can lead to some embarrassments, such as in June last year when a retarded kid by the name of Eric won the opportunity to name the new cheetah cub.

It’s a moot point anyway, as a panda cub may not even eventuate. The mating season window for a giant panda is exceptionally small, with the female having an estrous cycle lasting only 2 – 3 days, which occurs only once a year. Half the time the female produces a cub, only to sit on the fucking thing and kill it anyway. If she has two, she will abandon one and leave it to die. The father plays no role in raising the young. Is there any wonder this fucking species is endangered?

I’ll stop writing for a second, because cutting and pasting from wikipedia is producing far more amusing results:

”Initially the primary method of breeding Giant Pandas in captivity was by artificial insemination, as they seemed to lose their interest in mating once they were captured. This led some scientists to try extreme methods such as showing them videos of giant Pandas mating and giving the males Viagra.”

Indeed.

The Berlin Zoo has a panda named Bao Bao that has not mated in 25 years, despite various attempts at hooking him up. We’ve got Wang Wang and Funi on loan for less than half of that time scale.

I wouldn’t be painting the panda cub nursery anytime soon.

February 1st 2010: Uncle Beef writes a post about Wang Wang and Funi.

FOOTNOTE: Here is a quick guide for the non-South Australians explaining a few entities you may not be familiar with.

The Sunday Mail: Our perennial weekend news paper. As a whole, South Australians generally don’t take a shining to anything exciting, dangerous or controversial. Low key and up beat is the order of the day, and the Sunday Mail represents this ideology.

Front page news will include a picture of school kids celebrating their perfect High School graduation scores, a retired footballer celebrating the birth of his third child, or a photo of a disgruntled pensioner in her front yard leaning against her gate – angry at the local hoons who drive their cars late at night. If you explore the paper deeper, you may find a small article about an earthquake or a presidential assassination somewhere on page 37.

I had to give the Sunday Mail kudos a few months ago though. Usually I scroll through the paper with deepening apathy (I read it because they usually keep a copy in our staff canteen), but they actually got an emotional response out of me. In a late December edition, there was a whole section on top fives for the year (movies, tv shows etc). One writer put together a list of “Top 5 things we are sick of”, and Wang Wang and Funi were included on that list as a pair of overhyped, overrated pandas. This was after a full year of Sunday Mail front pages and two page spreads reporting on the animals. I physically frowned at the hypocrisy on display.

It’s not all bad with the Sunday Mail though. Due to it’s many pages, it is ideal for spreading out on the kitchen floor when you are toilet training your domestic pets. It also makes a decent makeshift club when rolled up tightly, and ideal for hitting homeless people with.

The Advertiser: is pretty much identical to the Sunday mail, but as it is a daily publication, it is less formidable as a weapon. I found a homeless woman going through the cans in my bin today, and it took five swings of my rolled up Advertiser before she ran off crying. It would have only taken one swing with the Sunday mail.

Triple M: is that laborious radio channel you’ve probably caught your parents listening to. Though you may not have Triple M in your city, you would most definitely have a similar beast on your radio dial. It’s that station with the vanilla hosts who often do such “edgy” things as start Battle of the Sexes competitions whereby bored housewives are encouraged to ring up and talk about how badly their husbands snore. The hosts will embark on pointless conversations, until they run out of shit to say and then will literally look up jokes on the internet to tell (have you heard the latest Tiger Woods joke?? LOLZ!!!). The music consists of one cassette tape they bought in the late 80’s consisting of American Pie, Piano Man, Khe San, and half a dozen Crowded House tunes. They leave this album on repeat, breaking it up occasionally with commercials for local bakeries and car dealerships.

It’s piss.

The Christmas Pageant: Is an annual parade held down North terrace, and is the biggest of it’s kind in the world. The pageant has been running since 1933, and last year was led by Pogo the clown:

Because nothing says Christmas like a terrifying 20 foot clown.

The Governor General of Australia: This is more an explanation for the international readers. Australia is part of the Commonwealth, meaning we are under Britain’s wing. This means that we have to go to stupid wars happening thousands of miles away that having nothing to do with us. But to be fair, it also means bastards like me can go live and work in the UK for a few years. The Governor General (who is currently Quentin Bryce, a name that sounds half Reservoir Dogs, half The Power of One, but as I pointed out earlier, is actually a chick) is one of those useless figureheads Australia needs as a Commonwealth. Her responsibilities include hosting Dinners for pandas, playing online poker with the Queen once a week, and getting free Jamie Oliver cook books in the mail.

Thus end my panda post, which honestly turned out to be ten times longer than I was expecting. Next up: Celebrity Deaths of 2009. FUN!

So true.

2010-01-29T16:33:00.001+10:30

Next update on 2009 coming very soon. In the mean time, watch this clip: Charlie Brooker - How To Report The News.

2009 part 1: The heat is....on

2010-01-27T21:16:00.001+10:30

Happy Birthday to Australia for yesterday, celebrating her 222nd birthday. My, we’ve come a long way since Captain Cook first founded the country.

1788

Today

Nice to see Captain James Cook fondly remembered on Google anyway:

The day after Australia Day seems an apt day to kick off our first recap of 2009, a post on the weather. You kids all psyched up to chat about the weather?

Excellent. Away we go.

As I’ve no doubt mentioned many times before, the biggest difference you notice between going from a Londoner back to an Adelaidean is the weather. 14 months later and I still marvel at the constant blue skies. I generally find the Adelaide climate to be the best I’ve come across, those who swear that tropical Asian countries have the best weather obviously don’t mind sweating from humidity. You can compliment the Thai islands all you want, but until you’ve been there during wet season there really isn’t any argument.

Yes, I do love my Adelaide weather. It’s just the heat waves that make me antsy.

I’ve was lucky enough to experience a few temperature records last year, and of course lucky being the operative word. From January 27th until February 2nd, the weather didn’t dip below 40 degrees including one Fuck-Blister day of 45.7.

I still recall that day and the all encompassing heat, and the next senior citizen to tell me how hard he had it when he was young is going to have 45.7C carved into his forehead with a knife, and then will be body slammed through a glass coffee table.

This was the was the worst heat wave the city had seen in a century, but as far as dopey headlines were concerned, it could be topped.

November 9th brought a 35 degree day and the start of a heatwave. I mentioned this quote by forecaster Hannah Marsh in an earlier post:

”if we only get to four days above 35 degrees, it will essentially be for the first time in more than a 100 years, but if we do get to five, it will be the greatest number ever recorded for November

As it turns out, we had eight days straight above 35 degrees. This was followed by a couple of cool days, then a day of 39 degrees. That day was followed by a what-is-this-a-fucking-volcano 43 degree day on the 19th of November. Forty friggin’ three degrees, and it was only Spring.

The problem with South Australia, though, is that your boasts of insufferable heat in the big city are eclipsed by those living in the country towns. Those smart asses living up in the dusty, shit-hole Mad Max mining towns always have to one up our achievements. These towns always have such stupid names as well. So when I’m strutting around town in my jocks and sunglasses, gasping about 43 degree heat to anybody that will listen, some bastard has to come up and tell me

”Well, just be grateful you don’t live up North. It got to 47 degrees in Moomba and Marree...”

What the fuck is Moomba and Maree anyway? Isn’t that the pig and the ferret thing from The Lion King?

Bah.

That’s the general problem with South Australian weather, 40+ degree days pop out of nowhere and bake you in the face. But due to our cool changes, these hot peaks are hidden well within our monthly averages. The average temperature for Adelaide in January is 29 degrees, a fact that is much publicised by our tourism industry. I wonder how many poor bastard tourists read this figure and thought ”I’m guessing it will be 28C on some days, and 30C on others” only to step off the plane smack bang in the middle of a 45C face melter?

Yes, those forty plus degrees can be pesky. Thankfully, the 2010 climate has been more forgiving than last year’s. That’s not to say the hot days don’t pop up. It was 42 degrees just the other day, and the heat infiltrated my feverish brain and made me start to hallucinate. I walked past the Norwood Cinema and saw a vision of pure evil hanging in their “Now Showing” window. I shrugged it off as an illusion brought on by heat stroke.

Imagine my pure terror when I logged onto the web to find that the film actually exists:

God help us all. That befuddled fuckwit Hugh grant and that Horse Faced Goblin Sarah Jessica Parker crammed into one horrific world ending romantic comedy.

The deeply, deeply original plot synopsis has our two stars playing big city lovers with a waning relationship, forced to live in a rural country town for protective custody.

Yeah and I bet the fish out of water laughs come thick and fast too. It will be like watching Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun drowning kittens for two hours straight. I would rather dip my dick in seal blood and wave it at a polar bear than watch this movie. My heart genuinely bleeds for every boyfriend, husband and first date forced to go watch this tripe.

Man, heat rants bring out the worst in me. By my count, this is the third time I’ve blustered about heat waves on the blog – but this recap rant seems to have polished off my final thoughts on the subject, so my first resolution for 2010 is to not mention the Adelaide weather for the rest of the year.

Okay, one more:

Next Post....PANDAS!

Side Note: For those who do not use the metric system, 40 degrees is equal to one hectowidget plus one sixteenth of a yardmuffin.

Side Note 2: The web seems pretty divided on whether SJP looks like a Horse, or whether she looks like a foot (a claim first made by Peter Griffin). A third party is tagging her trans-gender. I’m sticking with horse.

zero nine

2010-01-25T21:12:00.001+10:30

Starting Wednesday, I will post a series of articles recapping various newsworthy events of 2009. These posts will run until the end of January, and part of the way into February too. I should have posted these at the end of December, but didn’t, because I spent the entirety of that month staring at this picture:

Stop by in a couple of days.

Kind acts of Randomness

2010-01-24T15:06:00.006+10:30

You kids have stepped up to Akinator’s challenge and punched him in the genie face with your fists of pure randomness. Here are 11 characters that fooled the so called web genius:

Sam from Lost Boys

I was quite surprised to find Akinator had dropped the ball on a Corey Haim character. That’s pretty inexcusable.

Random Lost Boys fact: “Kiefer Sutherland was only meant to wear the black gloves he wears as David when riding the motorbike. However, while messing around on the bike behind-the-scenes, he fell off, breaking his arm so he had to wear the gloves through the whole movie to cover his cast.”

Mathew Cuthbert from Anne of Green gables

Random Anne of green Gables fact: Megan Follows beat out 3,000 girls for the role of Anne Shirley. That's a hell of a casting call.

Tom, Bridget Jones’ gay friend

Random Bridget Jones fact: ”To prepare for the role, Renée Zellweger gained 25 pounds, and then actually worked at a British publishing company for a month in preparation for the role. She adopted an alias as well as her posh accent and was apparently not recognized.” But that’s limeys for you. They’d recognise the runner up of Series 3 of Big Brother from across the street, but could work with an A list Hollywood actress for an entire month and not even realise.

Betty, the idiot secretary from Hey Dad

Random Hey Dad fact: Foreigners who are scratching their head and wondering ”What the fuck is that show?”; Hey Dad was an Australian sitcom that soiled our airwaves from 1987 to 1994. It ran for 12 fucking seasons for a grand total of 291 episodes without raising a single laugh. If you’re counting (and fuck it why not, let’s count) that’s ten more seasons than Flight of the Conchords, and over 14 times more episodes than the run of The Mighty Boosh. There is no justice with TV.

Even more random: ”In the series finale, the entire family is confined to the house with a fugitive bank robber holding the characters hostage. The robber places a bomb in the family's VCR, as leverage with the police. The bomb presumably detonates, at which point the cast break the fourth wall to thank the studio audience.” What. The. Fuck.

Bonus fact: Mr Kelly looks like a middle aged Jimmy, my old flatmate.

Keith from Voltron

Random Voltron fact: ”There were a total of three "Voltrons": Voltron I of the Near Universe was the "Vehicle Force", and the "Lion Force" of the Far Universe was Voltron III. Voltron II, from the Middle Universe, featured three humanoid robots that combined into one multi-armed fighter; this version was never shown in the US.” Study this quote well, who knows when it might pop up in a pub quiz.

Brett Mathews, aka Turbo Teen

Random Turbo Teen fact: ”the show broadcast during the growing popularity of the Knight Rider television series and mirrors much of it, even down to very similar sounding theme music. The car that Brett turns into looks like an amalgam of a Chevrolet Camaro and its sister car the Pontiac Trans Am that Knight Rider's KITT is modeled after.”

Ned Ryerson from Groundhog Day

Random Groundhog Day facts: Why the fuck did Bill Murray keep experiencing the same day over and over? Because a disaffected ex-lover called Stephanie cast a spell on him to teach him a lesson. That scene was removed from the final draft of the script.

There are exactly 38 days depicted in this film either partially or in full. The original idea was to have Murray’s character live February 2nd repeatedly for 10,000 years (fucking hell). The final storyline is closer to a decade, though somebody has sat down and actually calculated it to be 8.7 years.

Teddy Daniels from the book, and soon to be released film Shutter Island

Random Shutter Island fact: When Paramount Pictures first developed this as a project for the director/star team of David Fincher and Brad Pitt, Mark Wahlberg was wanted for the opposite leading role of Chuck Aule. However, Fincher and Pitt moved on to other commitments, and Martin Scorsese and Leonardo Dicaprio took up the reigns. Scorses and Dicaprio initially wanted Robert Downey Jr to play Aule, and had they secured him would have doubled the chances of me watching the film. They finally went with mark Ruffalo.

Mick Molloy, Australian Comedian

Random Mick Molloy fact: ”In the 2006 Australian feature film Macbeth, Molloy played Brown; it was the second time he has appeared in a production of Macbeth.” Just look at his picture, he's got Shakespeare written all over him.

Roger Rogerson, dodgy NSW cop

Random Roger Rogerson Fact: Rogerson was a big name cop in the 70s, by 1978 his reputation was sufficient to gain convictions based on unsigned records of interviews (ie verbals), and he was brought onto cases that weren’t even within his level of expertise (such as the Sydney Hilton bombing).

He was also a dodgy bastard.

He was acquitted of the wrongful shooting of a Heroin Dealer in 1981, and found not guilty of shooting a fellow officer (twice) in 1984. Rogerson was also convicted for involvement with drug dealing, but had this overturned by appeal. Rogerson was dismissed by the NSW police force in 1986. He spent nine months in jail in 1990 for perverting the course of justice (regarding a mysterious deposit of $110,000 under a false name), lost the appeal, and served a further three years. Just for good measure, he served another year in prison in 2005 for lying to a 1999 police commission.

Roger Rogerson is my second favourite Akinator fooling name. First still stands as Mitchell Goosen.

Siti Nurhaliza, Malaysian singer

Random Siti Nurhaliza Fact: She is currently the most successful Malaysian singer, having garnered more than 200 local awards

Thanks to Lala (1,2,3), Billsy (4), Dowling (5,6), Richo (7,8,9,10) and Ozi (11) for your submissions. You kids have stumped the web genie with your awesome skills. Here is my latest attempt at fooling Akinator:

The Dead Squirrel that was put on Bruce Willis, while he slept in his car at the start of the Last Boyscout.

(Akinator incorrectly guessed Hello Kitty, the gopher from Caddyshack and the goat from Jurassic Park).

It’s been educational. Let’s do this again some time. While we’re on the topic of random characters though, here is round 13 of Ozi and my Photoshop Tennis project. Click to enlarge:

Check the Jingezz site for the latest updates.

(All quotes taken from imdb, except for Hey Dad and Turbo Teen which was wikipedia).

PS Tennis begins (Updated)

2010-01-22T20:14:00.006+10:30

(UPDATE: For the second round, check Ozi's site - click here)

I’ve started a game of Photoshop tennis with Ozi. Basically I took a picture, added something random with Photoshop, then sent it to the Malaysian. He then adds something else to the picture, then sends it back. Then I add something else, and so on, and so forth. You might have seen the game played on a message board in your travels, either way it follows the age old philosophy of the interwebs: if you’re going to waste time, you might as well do it creatively.

This is what we have so far after round One (click to enlarge):

The Happy Holidays Post

2010-01-21T14:22:00.004+10:30

Well kids, looks like a new year is upon us and it’s time to get back into the swing of things. But first, a few festive updates.

I spent Christmas in the picturesque town of Bermagui on the New South Wales Coast, where my Uncle lives. It was my first interstate family Christmas since 1994, which was also the last time I saw my Uncle and Aunt. He had a nice house situated near a lake with copious amounts of wildlife inhabiting the area, it was just unfortunate it’s such a bitch to get to. It took us two days to drive there, with the ironic added bonus of a 43 degree day on the drive there, a 41 degree drive home a week later, yet non stop rain in between. Just one of those situations when the weather gods decided not to be nice, and chose to pick pussy scabs off their knees and stuff them in our mouths instead.

It’s probably worth mentioning that I’d had a bad back for at least three months leading up to the trip, and sitting for longer than an hour caused me grief. Riding in a car for two days straight left my spine feeling as battered as a porn star’s tonsils, and I limped out of the vehicle when we arrived at my Uncle’s house late Christmas Eve. After a series of hugs and cheek kisses (I used to have a couple elderly Aunts who insisted on kissing family members on the mouth, thankfully they are both dead now) we made our way to my Uncle’s recently finished outdoor entertainment area, whereby he revealed a pleasing amount of beers and fine wines, and a Seafood spread that made me weep with joy. Come midnight we were shuffled off to our accommodation, whereby I learnt the house was at maximum capacity of sleeping relatives, and I had to spend the week sleeping in a tent in the backyard. This fact should amuse most of you guys, as you all know I’m about as outdoorsy as Anne Frank.

Christmas Day was the usual fanfare of present opening and feasting, with the traditional crappy crackers getting pulled. I was looking forward to getting a miniature compass or toy from my cracker, only to be rewarded with a plastic whistle. In fact, all of the crackers had plastic whistles in them. We all blew the whistles in a piercing fanfare at the table, until the novelty wore off roughly four seconds later. After lunch my Uncle suggested we drink a couple of bottles of red and watch Bad Santa, and in one deft swoop elevated himself from mere Uncle, to most favourite relative ever. It set the mood for the rest of the week, seven days of drinking, sightseeing, poker playing, and getting to know the neighbourhood fauna.

The house was surrounded by native vegetation, which meant all kinds of local animals would come through the front and backyards for a visit. On one day we woke up to find nine kangaroos sitting round the yard chewing on grass, including joeys sticking out of pouches and everything. I took a heap of photos on my old lady’s camera, and I might upload some photos and post them on the blog if I can be fucked making the effort (spoiler: I can’t).

Besides the kangaroos, there were possums and all kinds of colourful birds hanging about. There was even a pair of Kookaburras that would stop by every day, and sit in a gum tree and laugh their insane cackle. Yes, it was a good old Aussie Christmas complete with local fauna, which made for great viewing during the day as we sipped beers and ate from the barbie. Of course, it was a different story at night, as the various beasts crawled and slithered past my tent while I lay there shaking in the darkness. On more than one occasion I awoke to hear marsupials mating less than a foot from my head. It was a little unnerving to say the least. The overcast nights made for pitch black darkness in the tent, and I would wake to that five second “holy shit, where am I!?” zone humans experience when we are in that limbo between sleeping and waking, only to hear a growling, gurgling sound not completely dissimilar to the one Predator makes. I’d pull the covers tight, with my heart beating like a jackhammer and the only thought that could penetrate my sweaty skull was a recurring ”What would Bear Grylls do?”

Seriously, fuck camping. Next person who asks me to go on a camping weekend will get punched in the throat.

The Excursion eventually came to a close, and we departed early on the morning of the 30th. Before we departed, the wildlife had one last act of torment in store for me. We had decided to do the drive home in one hit, which involved us leaving at 4:30am. I was chatting on the front lawn with my Uncle at about 4:25am, saying my goodbyes in a hazy sleep deprived state, when two bats flew between us out of nowhere, one of the bats clipping me in the face with its wing. I was so tired it didn’t either register until at least an hour later that, holy shit, I had just been hit in the face by a fucking bat.

Driving from Bermagui to Adelaide in one day involves sitting in a car for 17 fucking hours straight. The first fifth of the trip isn’t too bad, as the Snowy Mountains are quite scenic. But then you hit the long stretch, where you experience the “true Australia”: scrubland and yellowing acres of rural fields. Miles and miles of endless nothing, it’s so agonisingly boring that local farmers have been known to light bush fires, just so they have something to fucking look at. I relented to the lure of texting to relieve the boredom somewhere out on the hay plain, and found that no less than three groups of mates were descending on the coastal town of Victor Harbour for New year’s Eve (only an hour from Adelaide, so a doddle compared to the odyssey I had just been on). Several texts later, and I had a lift, accommodation, and for the first time in almost a decade, something to actually do on New Year’s Eve sorted.

We hit home base at about 10:30pm, and I’d been shaking for the last hour from Cabin Fever. I got out of the car to find that somehow, mysteriously, the 17 straight hours of sitting had fixed my bad back. Seriously, it hasn’t hurt since. Irony working in my favour is a completely alien sensation, I have to tell you.

I crashed that night in my much missed bed, enjoying the serenity of sleeping without possums fucking in my ear hole. The following morning I awoke to the last day of 2009, packed a bag, and jumped into a car with Aspin and Mule to head to Victor.

We stopped off at a winery to have lunch with Yatesy, Wal and others, whereby we ate expensive platters of fine foods, drank a few bottles of wine, and drank the only two beers they had in the whole winery (!). The rest of the day was spent driving around and catching up with various felons around the greater area of Victor Harbour, or trying to catch up and failing due to lousy directions. We finally settled at a holiday home rented by Dowling and Lachie, and spent the night drinking piss and playing card games. At the stroke of midnight we watched the Sydney Harbour Bridge fire works on TV, which was followed by (what definitely was a strange choice of broadcasting considering the prime programming slot) the 1980 musical Can’t Stop the Music.

Which, as far as I could tell, involved a young music writer putting together a band to sing his collection of songs. The musician was a 21 year old Steve Guttenberg, putting in the most spastically hyperactive performance I’ve ever seen put to film. The singers he “randomly” came across on his musical journey were the Village People. He happens to cross paths with the various singers (except for the Indian, who was already Guttenberg’s flatmate), and all of their characters based on their costumed alter egos. So the Cop is actually a cop, the Construction worker, a construction worker.

We watched the entire film sitting on the couch sipping Coronas, with the volume off. The laptop with the night’s music choices was dominating the soundtrack of the house, so we listened to that while watching Can’t Stop the Music on mute. My first film experience of 2010 was a surreal one, and more than a little foreboding.

gumtree.com: Room for rent. Three bedroom house.
Current occupants Steve Guttenberg and a gay Apache.

I managed to get to bed before 3am in a reasonable state, which left me hangover free for our beach adventure at noon the next day. Our beach of choice was Boomer’s, a local stretch of coast infested with bratty teenagers (like most of Victor Harbour), but with the odd chance of having some decent waves. There was also the odd chance that the beach would have constant choppy waves to smash at your bruised bodies relentlessly, which was what Boomer’s was providing on that sunny day of January 1st. Of course.

I’m not much of a beach person, so I was more than a little out of practice when I hit the surf. I managed to hold my own for a decent amount of time, diving under the waves that were hitting, swimming up and over the ones yet to break. But I knew I was in trouble when Dowling warned me with a stern “We need to go LOW for this next wave”, and suddenly the water that had been up to my chest was pulled out to around my knees, and in front of me was a giant fuck you wave. I dived down as far as I could, but it wasn’t far enough and the liquid leviathan grabbed me and tossed and turned me around like a penis in a vacuum cleaner. I finally managed to get my bearings and stand up, gasping for air, only to find another wave beating down on me and sending me through the exact same motions. This time I didn’t have the luxury of air in my lungs, as the wave pile drove me into the sand under a tonne of sea water. I tumbled and squirmed as the current kept me under, fighting to get back above sea level as the current held me down. At one point, everything went all black, and I swear Davy Jones himself tried to finger me. I eventually came bursting back out of the water like an angry Poseidon, gasping to get air back into my aching lungs. I stumbled back onto the safe shore with sea weed in my hair and crabs hanging off my nipples, I would have muttered “fuck this” if the three gallons of salt water I had swallowed hadn’t impeded my ability to speak. I had ocean up my nose and in my ears. I had sand in places only a Scout Master would venture. I rubbed my red raw eyes to spot several locals staring at me like I was some kind of retarded sea monster (did I mention all of the above had happened in about four feet of water?), there was only one thing I really knew for sure:

Next person who asks me to go to the beach will get punched in the throat.

I arrived back in Adelaide at Five in the afternoon, sporting an impressive sun burn, bar the white hand prints of my juvenile attempts at applying suntan lotion. I showered for about 30 minutes, trying to get all of the sand out of my body, and all of the Guttenberg out of my mind. I failed on both counts.

And that, my dear friends, was how I spent the final week of 2009, a year that Time Magazine described as (and I’m paraphrasing here) ”kinda shit”. For me, 2009 was a year I concentrated on paying off debts and working my way through the “Rock n Roll Hangover”, that first 12 months of London detox every returning ex-patriot must go through. As a whole, 2009 wasn’t bad. A transitional year for me, marking the end of an era.

Although technically the decade isn’t over until the end of this year, it is the end of that patch of time we called “the Noughties”. Anybody have any idea what the next decade is called? I’ve heard it referred to as the “tens” , the “twenty tens” and the “teens” , though “teens” doesn’t really fit for 2010, 2011 or 2012. One guy on Google Answers suggested that if the years are in their teens, let’s call this next ten years “the Pubies” . One thing is for sure, the topic has warranted countless hours of aggressively retarded conversation.

Welcome to 2010 anyway, kids. Did you all have a boozy New year’s Eve? What about Christmas? Get any awesome gifts? My best present came from a cousin currently living in Tokyo, and I gotta tell ya, it’s pretty damn sweet:

I wear this every night, so that I don’t get cold when I go sleepwalking. A few of the neighbourhood kids have seen me walking around my backyard after dark wearing it, and think that I am some kind of crime fighter. God bless their fertile imaginations.

That wasn’t the only interesting present I received, I also got this from the Secret Santa at work:

I need a new job.

Filler

2010-01-17T23:39:00.006+10:30

Currently working on “My Happy Holidays post” which should be finished in a few days. In the mean time if you’re looking to kill a few lazy minutes, go and try to stump Akinator the web genius.

He’ll ask you to think of a character (ie a real person or a character from film, television, literature etc doesn’t have to be human), then he will attempt to guess it by asking a series of yes or no questions. He’ll take a guess after the 20th question, and if he doesn’t get it he’ll take another guess after the 30th. If you can make it to the 40th question without him guessing correctly, then you win.

It’s actually trickier than it sounds: he has an extensive knowledge (he guessed Jubei from Ninja Scroll correctly), and even when he fails he is usually on the right track (I was thinking of Emil, the dude who got melted by toxic waste in Robocop, Akinator guessed Clarence Boddiker). Also, if you pick somebody (or something) too random, you’re not going to know the correct answers to his questions, so can’t claim a successful victory through that route.

I’ve managed to stump him with a few characters, including Marlene McFly (Marty’s future daughter), and Rupert 'Stiles' Stilinski from Teen Wolf. Dowling topped my acts of randomness by winning with Mitchell Goosen from the 1993 Rollerblading movie Airborne.

Are you as cool as this guy? Didn’t think so.

But for every time he failed to guess correctly, there was more than a few times when Akinator freaked out my delicate brain with spot on answers. Just a few of the characters he managed to guess correctly:

Yes, that is the Chinese Wildman from Big Trouble in Little China. As for Master Shake, Akinator guessed him in only 12 questions. Freaky.

Give it a go anyway, click here. If you beat him*, email me and let me know the character you stumped him with (beefabeef@yahoo.com), because if there’s anything I love more than movie and TV characters, it’s random-ass third tier supporting movie and TV characters.

I mean, what else have you got to do online anyway? Work? Solitaire? Jealously stare at your friends’ extravagant holiday photos on facebook, with growing bitterness and resentment? Bah.

Go visit Akinator, and if you see Stiles, tell him I say ‘hi”.

* But don’t be too spastically esoteric about it, I doubt Aki will know ”That kinda cute tractor repairman from two episodes of series four of McCleod’s Daughters”.

Sunrise, Sunset

2009-12-23T01:02:00.001+10:30

So the virus in my computer became so severe that a couple of dudes in hazmat suits came and took the fucking thing away.

I don't know, fucking computers. One minute you're watching a hot Spanish chick push her tongue up a midget's A-hole, the next thing you're dealing with a “High Level Trojan Worm”. Fuck you Bill Gates.

Anyway, I have a new computer now. One that is big and beautiful and fast, which is good news for you, my faithful filthy readers.

I can now churn through my backlog of outstanding posts, including a series entitled ”2009 the Year in Review”, which will no doubt ~~bore and confuse~~ enthrall you. Yeah, I'd get right on that...except I'm heading off on a family vacation at 6am later today (it's currently 1am, still haven't set my blog post time to Central Australian Time Zone Format), and wont be able to post anything until at least January 2nd. Be patient, my little fuck rats, and we'll bathe in shoddy filth at a prolific rate in the early days of 2010.

Until then: enjoy the expensive cluster-fuckery of Christmas, and the overrated and ultimately anticlimactic event that is New Year's Eve.

See you next year kids.

yeah

2009-12-10T23:31:00.002+10:30

Bare with me kids - my computer is goosed with a virus, and I'm sorting out the situation.

Frustrating, because I've had a few posts that are near completion sitting on my hard drive for a few weeks now, and I have a heap more I want to churn out before the year ends.

Shit happens.

Probably the most relentless Serial Killer you'll ever see

2009-11-14T12:51:00.004+10:30

Trailer for: The Incredibly Slow Murderer With the Extremely Inefficient Weapon

Christ, here we go again

2009-11-09T00:32:00.003+10:30

So the Advertiser tells me to brace myself, as we are heading for November’s first official heat wave next week.

The Advertiser is predicting:

Today: 35C
Monday: 35C
Tuesday: 37C
Wednesday: 37C
Thursday: 37C
Friday: 36C

Duty forecaster Hannah Marsh (a pornstar name if ever I heard one) revealed that

”if we only get to four days above 35 degrees, it will essentially be for the first time in more than a 100 years, but if we do get to five, it will be the greatest number ever recorded for November”

Greatest number ever, I’ll just let those words mill around in your head for a while.

Ever is a long time kids. It means we may beat our previous hottest November week in history:

I told Morgan Freeman the kind of weather we could be expecting this week, and he just sat there staring at me like this:

No shit. He just froze up for what seemed like hours, but must have only been about ten minutes or so. It was kind of awkward, and I ended up excusing myself and leaving the room.

Six days straight of 35+ degree days. Not that I’m all that concerned. I’ve been back home over a year now, and have acclimatized just swimmingly. The Australian sun has finally beaten the London out of my skin and 37 degrees doesn’t phase me like it used to. When I think 37C, I think beer gardens. I no longer think of hiding inside my refrigerator weeping like a sexually abused cucumber.

Though keep in mind we are still three weeks off Summer kids, and I very well may change my tune come December.

Custom Troops

2009-11-06T22:45:00.007+10:30

I was surfing the net for information on Comic Con (America’s largest Comic and Film convention, held in San Diego in July this year), and in amongst the film promotions and photos of fat Goths dressed like Anime characters (shudder), I spotted these nifty custom made Storm Trooper figures.

Star Wars can be a bit of a dirty word these days, what with those piss-awful prequel films molesting us in the face. However, I still have a lot of love for the design of the characters from the original trilogy (before Lucas finger fucked it with CGI like some drunk Step-Father on Christmas Eve, that is). I also crack a fat over genre hybrids, which you probably already knew.

Here are the pictures (I ganked from MWCToys and i-mockery).

I love the fact that somebody had a Stormtrooper figure and thought “You know what?, I’m going to turn this fucking thing into a fly and stick it on some fruit!”. Star Wars fans can be pretty creative. Check out this guy:

What’s his story? Where did he go dressed like that? A job interview? Wherever he was, no doubt he kicked some ass.

And check out this invention, by some kind of sex toy MacGyver:

Do you have anything that innovative in your bedroom?

Didn’t think so.

201st

2009-11-03T23:58:00.003+10:30

Hi kids, I’ve been in Asia for a few weeks so haven’t had time to post – but more on that later.

We were due for a milestone, so here it is:

Bit of a random number I agree, but the Grand Final post took up the coveted 200th spot, and you know how I hate to see an achievement go by unheralded, so here we are. The 201st post.

Here are a few stats for you to stare at nonchalantly:

Accumulated number of words (not including this post): 103,890.

The average novel is between 80,000 – 100,000 words. So if you have read every post I have ever written, that time could have been spent reading an actual book. Or even two novellas. You could have read George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Notes From Underground, and still had enough words left over to read a dozen short stories. Instead, you chose to read about me eating booger flavoured jelly beans.

Unique hits: 10,620

Page views: 15,915

It amused me to see the stats counter click over the 10k mark, to know that the shoddy blog with all it’s dead hooker charm had that many visits. 10,000 hits might not seem a lot to some bloggers (who could rack that up in a single day), but I was pleased with that figure seeing how I haven’t followed the four golden rules of blogging:

1. Written quality articles.
2. Updated on a regular basis.
3. Promoted the blog.
4. Christmas Carded.

In the case of rule number three: promoting the blog; I pretty much started the shoddy blog, told a handful of people about it – and then left it at that. I haven’t made any attempts to encourage more readers to attend this barrage of filth and fury, and I still have long standing friends (some who often get mentioned on the site) who have no idea this blog actually exists. I prefer to have this tight little community of likeminded cretins (that’s you, kids) then letting the whole world know I’m here. Do I really want potential employers to read about my rants on flicking the bean? Or for potential girlfriends to hear about me head butting the homeless? Or for my great Aunt May to grab a hot cup of tea, sit down in front of her computer, and engage herself in my online witticisms of spinning plates on my morning boners?

It’s just not a blog for mass consumption. If I notify my fellow face-bookers of an update, I do it in code: Status Update - ”beef has updated the shoddy b”. Those who are down with the sickness will know what I am on about, the rest are left in the dark.

And though my parents are aware I have a web-site, as far as I know they’ve never been here. (But if you are reading: Hi mum, and sorry for tackling you when I drank too much red wine when I was 17 and mistook you for a burglar).

In the case of rule number four: Christmas Carding; the tried and true way of building a readership on a blog, is to visit other blogs and make yourself known. If you visit a blog, and leave a comment – then that blogger feels obliged to come back and visit your blog, and leave a comment on yours. After all, it’s the polite thing to do. Visit 50 blogs, comment, and voila – you’ll have 50 more hits before the day is through (and probably 50 comments too). If you spot regular commenters on the blogs you have commented on, then you can harass those people as well – until you have one giant spider web of people commenting on each other’s blogs (aka the blogosphere). I like to call this phenomenon “Christmas Carding”, due to the level of obligation.

Of course, it isn’t all just vapid small talk etched into cyber-space. Genuine ideas and knowledge can be passed back and forth, and real friendships can be forged with people you would otherwise have never met. It all depends on the level of energy you have for such things, of which unfortunately I have fuck all.

I’ve only been visiting a handful of blogs over the years, of which I have included in the link section to the right (fuck, I’ve been meaning to update that thing for a few years now, the Chewbacca blog was taken offline back in 2007). Ironically, I wouldn’t have known about most of these if they hadn’t first commented on my site. Bart, Eris, Lala and Ozi you’ll probably be familiar with, the newest addition is Billo – who is easily the best photographer I know, so go check out his stuff.

To Bart, Eris and Lala – apologies for my absence in your comments sections, know it was due to laziness and not disrespect. No need to apologise to Ozi, he is well aware of my slothfulness, having spent most of his Uni days trying to drag me out of bed.

So anyway, this is how my figures look as per comments over the years:

2006 – 265 comments (3.9 comments per post)

2007 – 209 comments (3.5 comments per post)

2008 – 34 comments (2.1 comments per post)

2009 – 33 comments (0.6 comments per post)

Most of those comments are from casual readers, and not other bloggers. It’s hard to imagine, but we were having entire conversations in the comments boxes at one point (I racked up 34 comments in a single week back in December 06). Compare that to this year, when at one point I received one comment in a 13 post stretch.
My own slackness in commenting is a factor in this outcome. Also, I squandered a lot of momentum I built in those earlier years with an obscene tardiness of posts in 2008 – I think a lot of readers dropped by the wayside at that point. Maybe I’ve jumped the shark with this blog, I certainly get a sense of de ja vu when writing about drunken antics and hangovers, and no doubt my life was more interesting to read about when I was living in a derelict flat in London, as opposed to my current situation of just hanging around Adelaide. All of these factors have something to do with it, but probably the biggest shock to the blogosphere is the rise of facebook, and to a lesser extent twitter.

Back in 2006, blogging was a novelty – as there was a small percentage of people willing to post their pictures and opinions on the internet. Now with the advent of facebook, everybody is doing it. Millions of people who couldn’t be arsed with MySpace, have logged on to the social network of facebook – posting photos, exchanging opinions, taking polls, writing movie reviews, the list goes on. I know of a few bloggers who lost interest in the realm of blogging, and turned their attentions to the upkeep of their facebook profiles, which is, to be honest, a far simpler soap box to stand on. That is what facebook essentially is, millions of small blogs tied together.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing, quite the opposite. The more people involved, the merrier.

At the end of the day, I still get comments about posts I write all the time – but through emails, facebook messages, phone calls and conversations I have at the pub. Nobody can be fucked actually logging in to blogger to leave their comments, and I’m fine with that.

However, it does look pretty fucking lame when every post is full stopped with a glaring “0 comments” reminder. So I’m going to meet you guys halfway on this, and remove the comments function altogether.

If you feel the burning urge to slap me in the face with an opinion, contact me by email:

beefabeef@yahoo.com

Just make sure you put shoddy blog as the subject heading, or I’ll think it’s spam and delete it.

Christ, enough pontification. One last set of stats for ya:

Number of posts per year:

2006 starting March: 68 posts (average of 6.8 posts per month)

2007: 60 posts (average of 5 posts per month)

2008: 16 posts (average of 1.3 posts per month)

2009 up until November: 57 posts (average of 5.7 posts per month)

Though not as prolific as the inaugural year, 2009 certainly hasn’t been tardy in any respect. Stay tuned, as we worm our way into 2010.

If you keep reading it, I’ll keep writing it.