if you haven’t got anything nice to say, say it on the internet

wow.

I just read this article about why the viewing for the NBA finals is up compared to most years, until the story turns to why viewership has been down lately.

The theory behind all of this? Tattoos.

They suggest that the teams in this finals are less tattooed, meaning that more people are tuning in. You know, despite the fact that the great old stalwarts of the NBA are all in the finals, teams like the Celtics and the Lakers.

It’s also suggested that “you just want to watch basketball and feel like you’re watching people you can relate to a little bit“. I dunno about you, but I know I can totally relate to a 7 foot tall black man earning millions of dollars every year with the entire world at his feet, mobbed by fans wherever he goes, and living a dream that’s dreamt by billions all over the world, yet realised by only a few hundred. Yeah, I can totally related. Me and Kobe are like two peas in a pod, man. Two fucking kindred spirits.

There’s also bullshit comments like “Growing NBA ratings is what’s best for the players in the long term. Adopting a non-prison-ready appearance would help everyone in the league earn more money. But no one will talk about it.” As opposed to, oh I dunno, adopting a don’t-rape-women policy? A stop-smoking-crack policy?

Then there’s just the stupidity of saying shit like: “part of the reason more people are watching these playoffs is because the average fan isn’t constantly repulsed by the appearance of most of the players on the court.” Because as we all know, appearance is everything. Idiots. If appearances were everything, then the WNBA uniforms would be cut-off jeans and bikini tops. When I’m watching sport, I couldn’t give a fuck what the players look like. If people were that hung-up on looks, then St Kilda would lose it’s entire supporter base, because let’s face it, Fraser Gehrig is quite possibly the ugliest motherfucker on this planet.

The one comment that fucks me off the most though, is this absolute clanger:

You don’t want to waste time explaining to your kids that some millionaire athletes have so little genuine self-confidence that they find it necessary to cover themselves in tattoos as a way to mask their insecurities.

Mask their insecurities? A-huh. Right. Because, you know that’s the only reason why people get tattoos. They’re insecure. Especially NBA players. My god, they must be the most insecure bunch ever. Can you imagine what an awful life they have? It must be so hard for them. The only way that they could possibly express themselves is by defacing the bodies that god gave them with the devil’s markings.

Idiots.

Charm’s watching one of those fucking annoying “trinny and susannah prance around like cheap whores and make everyone else into whores, like some pied piper of whoredom” shows.

I had to leave the room because it was annoying me far too much. God I hate those shows. It just frustrates me so much that those two english whores seem to project their whore-ish views onto the general unwhoreish public, as if they’re secretly striving to be whores themselves, and NOT being a whore is somehow unacceptable.

WHORES.

here’s another reason to hate mainstream media:

As posted on news.com.au is this article. It’s basically a big panic because some FBI douchebag saw some internet forum and some islamic geeks were talking about some new video is going to be uploaded to instruct people to kill whitey or something to that description.

What was funny about it was the image that they used to go with it…

The caption says “Aftermath … a computer-generated image, showing how Washinton DC would look after a nuclear attack, which monitoring group SITE says was posted on a radical chat site”

What they don’t seem to know is that this image that was posted on a “radical chat site” (my inner 80s child laughs at the usage of this word), is that this is merely concept art for a new videogame, Fallout 3, a game that takes place in post-apocalyptic United States.

idiots.

I’m willing to put money down that this “video” is the new trailer for Fallout 3.

dont’ worry.

Something will be here soon. Don’t worry. It’ll be awesome.

1) Girls that push in when ordering drinks at a bar. And yes, it’s always girls. You’ll be waiting patiently for your turn, and some chick with enough cleavage to park your bmx manages to squeeze in front of you and orders her drinks being selectively oblivious to everyone behind her.

2) Kurt Halsey tattoos. I’m not being a tattoo snob here, either. There’s a lot of tattoos that I don’t like but can still think “well yeah, I can see why someone would want that”. But seriously, Kurt Halsey? He’s like, the poster-boy for emo art. It’s just so fucking ‘twee’ (that’s another word I hate). 9 times out of 10, the tattoo is one someone who’s just had their 18th birthday. There are hundreds of these things everywhere. Do a Google Image search, or go to BME or any other tattoo site, search for his name and I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that there’ll be hundreds of results. I even hate the artwork itself. It’s the most base-level high-school-poetry inspired shit I’ve ever seen in my life.

3) Journalists who don’t know what the word “supergroup” means. It comes up to many times and it fuckin shits me. Especially with the latest resurgence of bands reforming or old bands touring, so many journo’s (and it’s usually proper journalists, I’m not talking about bloggers here) are so quick to write dumb shit like “80s supergroup Iron Maiden are touring…” or “rock supergroup REM have a new album…” A supergroup is a band made of members from other famous bands. Velvet Revolver, Temple Of The Dog, Me First & The Gimme Gimmes, A Perfect Circle, The Travelling Wilburys, THEY are supergoups. REM, Radiohead, Metallica, The Police, etc, while popular and have record sales in the millions each, are NOT supergroups.

4) Idiots at my work. Now, I won’t go into details here, but I work with some people that are seriously fucking retarded. There’s 1 guy in particular who, all my hatred for him aside, I honestly worry about him, because he just seems to function on such a completely different plain of existence to everyone else, I honestly wonder how he’s made it this far without dying. And that’s not even a joke, I honestly wonder this. This is a guy that fell for one of those Nigerian email scams, his house got robbed after he picked up a guy in a club and despite all his friends telling him that “something’s not right here”, he took him home, and woke up the next day to find a heap of his things had been stolen. He also owns several Ed Hardy tshirts, but doesn’t actually know who Ed Hardy is. Oh, and he didn’t know what the word “phallic” meant until I told him, then a few days later he got excited when he was telling me a story about how he was watching an episode of Friends and they used the word “phallic” and now he understands the joke.

5) Trash-talking on xbox Live.  Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s an Aussie tradition to give a bit of sledging every now and then, but this evening I was trash-talked while playing a fucking game of Carcassone. Seriously dude, how angry are you that you feel the need send me a PM after the game is over? Go have a wank or something.
6) Making a mental list of ‘things that have been shitting me this week’, only to turn my PC on and totally forget half of them. I’m sure as soon as I walk away from the computer, I’ll remember.

My girlfriend’s been watching a lot of Six Feet Under lately, and I really really don’t like it. I find it to be just far too aware of how clever it is. It’s kinda like that smokin’ hot girl you meet at a bar - the more you talk to her, the more you realise just how self-aware of how amazingly hot she is, and then the less hot she becomes. The only bits I like are the really graphic bits that you ordinarily wouldn’t see on any other network (god bless HBO).

So given the only bits of that show I like, I think that they need to re-edit the show and cut out all the boring bits, and instead of “Six Feet Under”, call it “Six Feet Guys Fuck Each Other In The Arse And Then Die In A Really Graphic And Gruesome Way” I would totally buy the entire show on dvd and watch it over and over.

This is in the paper today…

IT’S something very few mothers ever have to do - attend a toy fair to launch a doll modelled on their daughter.

But as Terri Irwin proudly held a Bindi doll in each hand yesterday, she insisted her nine-year-old daughter was just a “normal little girl”.

Bindi saw the dolls, which repeat favourite sayings such as “love it, don’t hurt it”, on Saturday night in New York and told her mother it was every girl’s dream to have their own doll.Mrs Irwin also cautioned that her daughter, who has been at the centre of controversy about her extensive public commitments, was still a child.

Bindi’s young brother Robert is the only family member not to have a doll, with dolls of Mrs Irwin and her crocodile hunter husband already on sale.

Die. in. a. fucking. fire.
Seriously.
I’m not making a joke - go the shed, grab the petrol can, pour it over yourself and light a fucking match.

One thing I always find amusing is when a new commercial is on tv, or even a tv show promo, or overly-repeated news story, and it has some hip new song in the background that, while musically may fit the feel of what they are trying to convey, totally miss the point of the song. When “Trainspotting” was still a popular movie, every second tv commercial seemed to have “Lust For Life” on it, while sounding upbeat and happy, is riddled with drug references. Last year, there was the Ford commercial for their new model ute, with AC/DC’s classic “Back In Black”, which is actually a song about the death of Bon Scott. Now maybe it’s just me, but I know when mourning the death of a friend and trying to get my life back together, I like nothing more than to hop in a ute and do doughnuts in a dusty field. Even a tv promo for The O.C a while back used the first Joel Turner single “These Kids”. Yeah, because a show about bunch of spoilt little rich kids fits well with a song about homeless unemployed and drug-addicted street-kids.

However, given all this, the recent flooding in Queensland has yielded none of these ill-advised musical selections. So I’ve decided to help them out a little.

Top 10 Music Suggestions To Accompany Flooding News Stories :
10. Led Zeppelin - When The Levee Breaks
9. Marvin Gaye - Aint No Mountain High Enough
8. Bruce Springsteen - Lost In The Flood
7. Nine Inch Nails - Adrift & At Peace
6. Tool - Undertow
5. Powderfinger - Change The Tide
4. Sunny Day Real Estate - The Rising Tide
3. Peter Gabriel - Here Comes The Flood
2. U2 - Drowning Man
1. Ocean Colour Scene – Flood Tide Rising

… *sigh* I’m gonna get a flood hate mail for this.

ahahahaha, geddit? A FLOOD of hate mail.

Most of the time, as some of the regular readers would know, I spend a lot of hatred on the smaller intricacies of life. Not because I’m petty, but I figure that with so many people caring about shit like cancer, AIDS and wars, I’m here to pick up the pieces and take care of the smaller things in life. So here’s another minute thing that sends my blood pressure soaring…

As you know, there are a few unspoken rules when going to gigs and a strict list of do’s and dont’s that are normally adhered to by all punters. However, there’s one simple mistake that so many people seem to make. It’s a special hand position that you make that normally shows the band that you think they “rock out” and is a little show of appreciation. Yes, that’s right, the metal sign.

“What’s wrong with making the metal sign, man? The metal sign is fucking sweet dude!” I hear you ask (yes, you even said “dude”). Well, the problem this: very few people, including you, do it correctly. It’s a small subtle mistake many people make, but it’s oh-so important. Ok, here’s what I mean:

Despite public opinion, this is NOT the metal sign:

Make this sign instead:

THIS is the metal sign. Most people don’t realise the difference. It’s all about the thumb. (yes yes, I have an Strong Bad jumper on. I’m still up with the kiddies and what’s cool, or something) The two fingers, in case you haven’t worked this out, is meant to be the horns, and your hand is the devils head.

The Metal Sign + thumb is actually the sign language equivalent of blowing someone a kiss . Making this sign is a way of saying that you’re in love with the lead singer (or whoever you happen to be pointing it at).

Now, unless you actually ARE in love with the band, in that wierd creepy groupie-style way, then I’m going to assume that you’re doing it wrong.

Because I’m all about teaching the masses, I feel that I shouldn’t just be angry about this, but I should be proactive to help out my fellow man, I’ve decided that from now on I’m going to take a pair of pinking shears to gigs, and if the lead axeman breaks out into the 7th minute of his guitar solor, I’m going to look out into the crowd. If I see that thumb poking out on your hand, there’ll be no warning, just the sound of thumbs hitting the ground and claret spraying your fellow punters.

Don’t even try and call my bluff.

Just remember kiddies,

BECAUSE WHEN IT COMES TO THUMBS, AUSTRALIA SAYS NO