Get your pitchforks - The Internet is coming

(Note from the future: Surnames removed from story, this now very much grown up person doesn't need her kids Googling this unsympathetic analysis of the story)

This is what we call a world class passing of the buck. The girl was later found to be safe but her chances of LOL’ing and ROFL’ing again in the near future are slim to none. The internet - IT’S VOODOO I TELL YOU. KEEP YOUR KIDS AWAY FROM IT. Or, like some people just let your kids do whatever they like on it completely unsupervised! 

Chat site ‘brainwashed’ girl 

Well, that's not a good start. 

The distraught parents of a teenage girl missing for three days believe she is with someone she met on an internet chat site. Nathalia ****, 15, of Kew, in Melbourne’s east, went missing on Tuesday after arguing with her parents the night before. David and Ingrid **** have since been shocked to find an email contact list of more than 400 names and copies of emails their daughter had been sending and receiving over a general internet chat site. 

Mr and Mrs **** found their daughter had sent her mobile phone number to people on the list, which includes addresses such as “Iwannahavesex” and “Iluvnat”. They believe she has run away to meet someone she met through the website and are desperate for her to return home safely. Police are investigating a sighting of her this week in the Geelong area. 

So far so much like every other online teenage runaway fiasco, even down to the potential for an online pervert. Here comes the hype:

Mrs **** said Nathalia’s personality had changed since she started using the chat site in the last six months. She said her daughter, who had previously appeared happy, recently became secretive and deceptive. “Ever since she’s had that (chat site) she’s changed her personality,” Mrs **** said. “It’s as if she’s been brainwashed into something.” 

The couple said Nathalia was a very sensitive, vulnerable girl and begged her to come home. 

So how did she manage to stumble onto this CLEARLY EVIL site (whatever it is) under such strict parental supervision and guidance? Oh, you mean there doesn’t appear to be any? But it MUST be the fault of that evil computer. No parent wants to think their kid is going to be enough of a dolt to go on the run with some 45-year-old truck driver from Griffith who was posing as a 18yo superhunk but guess what you clowns IT HAPPENS. ALL THE TIME. 

How many more times do people have to hear it before they get the idea that if your kid is “sensitive” and “vulnerable” then stuffing their computer away and giving them unlimited access to whatever they want on the web may end in tears? I mean really. You come to expect people to view everything through rose-tinted glasses with their heads tilted slightly sideways as if they were under heavy sedation but this is your kids we’re talking about. The least you can do is check what they’re doing online and in the case of teenage boys bust in the door unexpectedly once in a while. 

Sure the internet has made it easier for perverts to operate but who’s fault is that? Thousands of people are having their drinks spiked across the city every week but we’re not going out and picketing Bacardi Breezer for providing the implement to which the pervert can add his gear. Parents, take SOME responsibility at least for what your kids are doing. If you let the computer act as a surrogate parent 90% of the time of course the dumbass impressionable kid is going to start to get a warped sense of what’s right or wrong, and when some idiot starts showing affection to them or listening to their gripes they’re obviously going to get some attachment to this person.

The world is a sick place you fuckers, don’t tell me you didn’t know it already. No doubt the girl has made a mistake, up and we’ll probably never know the true story. But nor should we. Of course if there is a guy involved he's significantly more responsible than anyone and is likely to be on the receiving end of some digital stimulation of his own in the slammer. Let that be a lesson to potential perverts - no matter what you do there’s a 400lb man with tattoos and liberal views on human sexuality who will do it to you ten times harder whether you like it or not. Idiot. 

I'd burn down the Internet’s offices but my copy of the White Pages doesn't list the address. I tried send them an email through internet@internet.com explaining how disgusted I was that they created a program to ENSNARE HELPLESS CHILDREN but I’d already thrown my modem and monitor from my 9th floor window (almost hitting a schoolbus full of nuns and sick children) to make sure it didn’t capture me as well. I was lucky - please shelter your children under the stairs until they are 18 to make sure this does not happen to them as well. 

PS - Another good reason not to breed.
PPS - How about just banning everyone under 17 from the internet full stop? Livejournal would go out of business.

So close but yet so completely useless

Brief off-topic conversations with a mid level programming executive from a major Australian television network.

“Can I have my own talk show?”
“Umm…”
“Come on, it’ll be mad. Part current affairs, part talk show, part just pissfarting around. You can put it on at midnight and it’ll cost nothing to make”
“Umm…”
“I’m telling you. It equals ratings. Better than that game show with Hot Dogs off Big Brother for sure”
“Umm…”
“I can tell you’re not really into this idea”
“Hah. No sorry”
“Your loss”

I’d like to think that he’ll pick up the phone and call when they’ve got a hole in their summer schedule but I’m not counting on it. For starters he doesn’t even know my phone number. Or who I am for that matter.

Such a shame. Midnight Shenanigans had so much potential. Afterall I’ve trained under the master of the genre,

Australian TV just doesn’t have balls anymore. Write in now and demand that it be shown.

Hit and Miss Thursday (Synthetic Seventies Super Special)

Velvet Goldmine is an underrated film. So sez me anyway, everyone else tends to think it’s complete bollocks. David Stratton probably hammered it as nothing more than a cheap excuse to see Ewan McGregor’s balls and Toni Collette’s muff. Possibly true, but it’s also got a pre-Bateman Christian Bale (who is, let’s be frank, hot in both movies) and the always entertaining Eddie Izzard. Anyway, this is Hit and Miss Thursday and not the Movie Show so piss the film off and let’s discuss the soundtrack instead. Most of it is either classics of the era (Satellite Of Love, Virginia Plain etc..) and covers of same. Notable is the thinly veiled Radiohead as the “Venus In Furs”. Their glam rock covers are so much better than that shoegazing prog-rock shit they pump out now. It might not be right to say it but fuck it I’m going there - glam beats prog hands down. I’m not for glitter and giant shoes but give me the choice between that an a cape and I’m yours.

The most impressive contributions come from the band Shudder To Think. Two new songs that are easily to comparable to anything from the era the movie is set in. The songs are in the film but are wobbly at best, when the band takes over on the soundtrack they’re off the charts. According to AllMusic (the people who, lest we forget, we give almost any album four stars) Shudder To Think had a “hardcore punk background” but you’d never pick it. Not that I’d know - I’ve heard precisely one other song of theirs and even that was sung by somebody else. Who cares? They couldn’t live up to these.

Image hosted by Photobucket.com
Download: Shudder To Think - Ballad Of Maxwell Demon (2.2mb)

Image hosted by Photobucket.com
Download: Shudder To Think - Hot One (1.4mb - shithouse bitrate alert)

They’re extremely Bowie. Like SERIOUSLY Bowie. These songs ranked 360th and 60th respectively in the TSP 1000. Hot One especially. Gah, that song has sex written all over it. From the opening piano right through. *sigh* Almost makes me wish I was interested. It’s a crime, A CRIME I TELL YOU, that these songs aren’t better known. I insist that some shitty “Wham! Bam! Thank You Glam!” CD (and yes, I own something with that exact title) is rewritten to eliminate anything ever perpetrated by Gary Glitter and includes these instead.

P.S - I’ve got hundreds of fuckers that I want to post so get used to cheap posts tacked on to top music. The only way you can stop it is to narc me into the feds for posting MP3’s and you don’t want to do that. Because we all know what happens to laggers don’t we?

Celebrity Stalker Corner (Week #13)

It’s back! After a pathetically barren few months for the random spotting of D-Grade celebrities it was a BUMPER night in the Melbourne CBD.

Thursday December 8th, 2005

Approximately 8pm
Near the corner of Swanston and Little Bourke Streets, Melbourne

Ron Walker, former head of the Australian Grand Prix and “Liberal Party heavyweight” shaking hands and chatting enthusiastically with some people wearing bandages outside the Hi-Fi Bar. He looked like he was having the time of his life and his hair was absolutely massive in person.

Approximately 8.15pm
Same place

Paul “Fatty” Vautin wandering down the street towards Bourke Street looking completely shattered. You wouldn’t want to make a guess but by the looks of it he still isn’t over falling off the back of a truck a few months ago. I was tempted to go over and dissect Wests and their 2005 Premiership triumph but he was just too shattered to go over and do a 100% celebrity stalk on.

Your gun stalkings of the August-December period in the comments please. Anyone deemed to have performed a 5 Star Stalk (5SS) wins a TSP Mystery Prize*

* May or may not be a 60 minute audio CD where every track is Rupert Holmes singing the Pina Colada Song

A tribute

Humphrey B Bear? Who? And you can cram your Romper Room with it’s enforced formality of making the kids call the adults “Mr” and “Mrs”. Then there’s the Mulligrubs and whatever the fuck they were thinking of with that freaky floating face thing. For the tip one and all.

For my mind there was really only one children’s entertainer that has emerged from this country in my lifetime good enough to enter the TSP Hall of Fame. Ladies and gentlemen, with thanks to our new major sponsor Wikipedia I give you - the myth, the legend, the porky feline..



All hail Fat Cat. What a dead set legend - just look at him. I don’t know who Paul was to score such a mention but I’m deeply envious. The Wikipedia article explains the demise of this underrated celebrity,

The show ran on the Seven Network from 1972 until it was cancelled in 1992 after the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal claimed that the program was not educational enough and was “not clearly defined and might confuse the young”.

I spit upon your collective graves and make several offensive gestures. It was a giant cat in overalls and a hat you mad cunts - what’s there to be confused about? Look at it from a kids perspective for once. He wasn’t suggesting you go out and make molotov cocktails with which to bring about violent revolution, and unlike the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from the same era he wasn’t implying that you could get away with living in a sewer, eating pizza and taking moral guidance from a giant rat. So what was wrong with it? Even John Howard stepped in to save Humphrey (in a far more successful result than his recent attempts at saving people), so where was Keating in ‘91 when this national icon was under threat? Still trying to pick the knife out of Bob Hawke’s back probably. Obviously he wasn’t the Paul in the above photo. Or was he? What a complete bastard anyway. The bear doesn’t even wear pants and he gets government support. Insert your own Malcolm Fraser gag here.

I seem to recall Fat Cat as the only kiddie culture thing I was ever interested in. Probably why I’m so bitter. I do, however, remember hanging out for the school holidays so that I could watch Open All Hours with Ronnie Barker. How we laughed when his attempts at porking the fat nurse failed. What a well rounded childhood.

Great Moments in Television Advertising (Part 3)

Two under-rated advertisements that are remembered by absolutely nobody but have been stuck in my head for the last five years week. I am aware that this is terrifically random and rubbish, but if I don’t get them out of my head now I’ll end up screaming it from a tenth floor window as I fire at a schoolbus passing below.

a) The Lincraft ad where they sung “It’s a beautiful Lincraft sale!” to the tune of “It’s A Beautiful Life” by Ace of Base. I have no idea what the next line was, or indeed if there even was one, but it was an advertising triumph nonetheless. In an attempt to end up in their “what’s wrong with you?” Hall of Fame I emailed them to ask what the second line was. As yet there has been no response, presumably because they’re trawling their archives for the ad in question. If they send me a copy of it I’m going to lose the plot and put it in the same folder as the video of Beautiful Life as performed on Pop Up Video. The Pop Ups on that video include “Belching can bring about a reflux of stomach contents”, “the band formed in Sweden in 1990 - they got equipment from a government grant” and “The flu virus travels in airborne droplets of respiratory fluids”. Best show ever. Best ad ever. Perhaps the best habidashery and home furnishings ever - I’ve never been there so I wouldn’t know. But you can be sure that if I ever need fabrics or crafts that they will be the first people I go to. Fuck Spotlight - what have they ever done?

b) One for Epson printers from the early 90’s where some soft-rock types belted out “EPSON COLOR MAGIC!” to the tune of Queen’s “It’s A Kind of Magic”. A brief search of the internet for that phrase comes up with just one hit, which would seem to indicate that it wasn’t an outrageous success of a campaign. At least the ponytailed executives responsible can take heart in that I’ve never been able to hear that Queen song, or see the video, since without thinking of the advert line instead of the main chorus. Even as a child that advertisement said to me was that anybody can be an advertising exec as long as they can find a song chorus with the same amount of syllables as the product they’re trying to flog, and the advertising budget to licence it.

So, yeah… Random advertisements are burnt deep into my brain. Is this nutbag territory? That would be distressing.

Clip Show Bloggage

Long term TSP’ers (if any still exist, or are willing to admit to it) have probably seen most of this before. Meh, what can you do? Consider it the equivalent of when the writers of The Simpsons couldn’t come up with a whole episode and just threw some clips around a flimsy plot while they frantically tried to think of something new. On that note I present to you the eleven most farcical items that I currently own. 56k modem users please note that I am doing this just to annoy you.

1. Afro Dog

The dog has scored a mention on here before. It was bought it from the alarmingly named “Morning Glory” store near the corner of Swanston and Lonsdale St in the city. Obviously I only bought it because it amused me so much. Green afro on an animal with birds coming out of the side? COMEDY. GOLD. MINE. This is officially one of the few things I own that cheers me up. Admitting that publically is probably a risky manouevre, and I can only do it safe in the knowledge that nobody who reads this has the power to put me in a mental hospital. So suck it up bitches, the dog rules. Morning Glory, on the other hand, has not fared as well and are currently in the process of closing down. Don’t look to me to launch a rescue bid - I haven’t been in there once since I bought this thing. There was another one with a rainbow afro but that would just be weird.

2. Shonky facemask

Bought solely for the fact that Patrick Bateman wears an absolutely identical one in American Psycho. See,



This should not imply that I have any interest in murders and executions, wish to indulge in startling displays of violence or am going to try and feed a cat to the ATM anytime soon. Unfortunately I am unlikely to achieve the same ripped physique as the above, because instead of wearing as I do a thousand sit-ups a day a’la the movie I just lie there with it on trying not to spew when I’ve got a headache. Does it work? Of course not. But the important thing is that in some small and pissweak way I’m contributing to Hollywood. Sadly the instructions are long since binned because they contained some of the most frighteningly extreme Engrish ever committed to paper.

3. Alarmingly shit looking purple bathmat in the shape of a daisy


Even my own mother questioned my sexuality upon seeing this. She walked in, looked down and went “Is there anything you want to tell me?” That sort of thing could give you a complex.

4. Laundry hamper in the shape of a dolphin

Then she turned around, saw this and went “Oh, you’re just strange”. True, but at $10 from the Bourke Street Mall Reject Shop this could be one of the biggest bargains of ‘05. What more explanation do you need? It’s shaped like a fucking Dolphin. How good is that? You may scoff now, but if Kelly Osborne had hid her Oxycontin in one of these on that bloody TV show then every single person in the country would have one. Such is the fine line between genius and stupidity. The only way they could have made it better would be to have a competing model in the shape of a Japanese fisherman wielding a drift-net and a harpoon.

4. #2/3

Liberated from the ground of [team name deleted] by [name deleted] at the conclusion of a match this year. Rumor has it that there’s also a #0/#1 floating around somewhere as well. Now all I need is some team names and I can sit here and play Fantasy Scoreboard all day instead of going to work.

5. Electric blue Santa hat.

Purchased for no other good reason than to wear to the South Melbourne/Sydney Olympic game of a few years ago (sample festive chant: “Away in a manger, no crib for a bed. The little lord Jesus lay down and he said… FUCK OFF OLYMPIC! FUCK OFF OLYMPIC!” Sacrilicious.) it saw double duty during last year’s family Xmas celebrations when I attempted to gimmick up for the day to disguise the fact that I don’t actually believe in the holiday. Worked nicely. I was later pictured mounting a statue in the same hat, but those pictures are remaining conveniently hidden lest they expose my secret identity.

P.S - I don’t even know what “Electric” blue means. Sounds more like a cheap porno than a color.

6. Indecent t-shirt

I bought it from a guy in a pub in St. Kilda. What else do you need to know? Due to the offensive content on the front, which looked great when I was plastered but not so clever sober, it has only been worn once and never in the state of Victoria. For the record I have absolutely no idea who Sarah Tonen is, and the only thing Google can tell me is that somebody of the same name is an “Angelina Jolie Fetishist”. Which is odd in itself but hardly a reason for imprisonment.

*UPDATE: See the comments of this post for what it actually means. Makes a fair case for me having been dropped on my head as a child. When I start watching Everybody Loves Raymond it’ll be official.

The back of the shirt looks like this,



I’m sure it all means something to someone. But not me.

7. Flags of the Soviet Union and German Democratic Republic


No idea why I bought these. I don’t even subscribe to their agendas. Maybe it’s just the thought that someday somebody will need an East German flag and I’ll be the shock provider? There’s something worth hanging your hat on. More likely it’s useful for creating comedy situations such as we had the other day here at Living With The Stars when 2.0 and I stood on the balcony waving them at office workers and trying to incite a revolution amongst National Australia Bank employees. Good thing it didn’t happen I suppose. Proof undeniable that EBay isn’t the harmless entertainment vehicle they pretend it is. Crunts.

8. Sexpo Media Pass


Speaking of Living With The Stars, this was the first piece of graft and corruption I received from the arrangement. I’ve always wanted to be in the media, and if you can get away with it AND see breasts for free at the same time I say you’ve done well. The cover story was that I was the photographer. A tale that would surely have collapsed in a heap had I been challenged on it. Personally I wanted to say that I was from TSP and that we were going to liveblog the event but nobody ever listens to the photographer. I refused to take this pass off for the rest of the day and wandered the aisles of my local supermarket proudly displaying it to absolutely no interest from anyone whatsoever.

9. Paranoia tags

I conceded to Schapelle Corby mania and bought these at the same time as my suitcase, thanks to an A+ sales pitch from the woman in the store on Burke Road, Camberwell. Then I just never bothered, and decided to keep things interesting and risk ending up in a Turkish prison. Distressingly for corrupt bagagge handlers everywhere I opted to have the super glad-wrap option on my bags instead and thus foiled their evil plot to fill my bags with heroin and drop me off somewhere in central Asia. On the way back I left my bags completely unattended, on the assumption that if I got busted coming back here that I’d surely get off on the residual S. Corby sympathy vote. Didn’t turn out to be necessary, but I’m willing to bet that nobody would have given a shit.

10. The Porkinator

It came off the bottom of a seat in a construction area during Year 9. For some reason it then became a mythical weapon. Probably because we were the biggest group of nerdlingers ever to walk the planet earth. The other side of it says “You’ve been porked by the Porkinator”. What does it all mean? I have no idea. All I know is that if I took it back in time to meet Adam of 16yrs of age I would probably end up bludgeoning him around the head with it while I screamed something about “tough love”. Approximately two years later we discovered a “Super Porkinator” which was about 20 times the size and was eventually stuffed into a spare locker and never to be seen again. How nobody caught tetanus from the super version is a complete mystery because it was the dodgiest piece of shit on earth. Score one for the Victorian schools immunisation program. To the best of my knowledge the Porkinator has never been deployed at any time, though I did carry it on me once whilst walking through a dubious neighbourhood late at night.

11. Belgian fishing team jacket

I bought this from Episode on Sydney Road, Brunswick because I was convinced it was talking about some mad 70’s cycling team and that I would have instant credability with Europeans. Then somebody translated it for me and it turned out that it was plugging a Rod’s n’ Reels supply shop in the city of Onkerzele. I have not worn it since because I fear being mocked by visiting Belgian tourists, and because I think fishing is the biggest farce ever. You sit there alone all day and something might happen? You may as well watch Sheffield Shield Cricket. Get your bids in and it’s yours.

While EBay, the Reject Shop, Amazon and JB Hi-Fi are still open, and people are still leaving their doors unlocked at night there’ll be more to come in this collection. There’s something to look forward to.

Victoria Bitter

Sports fans will recall that despite being a massive soccer football fan for the last fifteen years, and having been sledged as a “wog” more than once for it, I’ve got no love for the new Australian national competition. For the last year we’ve had the same debate again and again - why South Melbourne should have been in it, why they shouldn’t have been etc.. Now on the verge of the new Victorian Premier League season, and our attractive clashes against world class sides like Richmond and Sunshine George Cross, the arguments have come up again. I’d like to say I’m over it, but sadly that would be a complete lie.

I think we’d be slightly less paranoid about it if the New Zealand and Central Coast teams weren’t in it. Everyone knows the NSL was a farce, and even if we don’t say it openly most of us will admit that the major markets needed a “broadbased” team to get people interested. The problem is that there’s only five major markets in Australia - and you can’t have a competition that’s just Melbourne vs Sydney vs Perth vs Adelaide vs Brisbane every week. So they forced a few experimental sides in there and are being rewarded with pathetic crowds for those teams. Relatively speaking the “big five” are doing well in crowd numbers (despite drops in Adelaide and Perth they’re still thrashing most of the NSL averages) but what are they going to do for the other three? Hang in and hope that some miracle is going to occur and suddenly all of New Zealand are going to start following their team? Their last gate was 1500. And what else can you do in a city like Newcastle? Either these people are going to go for it or they’re not. And at the moment they’re seriously lukewarm about the process. They pulled off 10k for a top of the table clash last night, but their crowd has been hovering around 5k all season.

The Brisbane Strikers of the NSL weren’t even close to an ‘ethnic’ team, and by the last days of the competition they found themselves with a thousand fans and rapidly losing money. All that says to me is that there was nothing you could do for the game in this country without decent coverage and media attention. Replace the Strikers with “Queensland Roar” this year and suddenly they’ve got 15000 fans from nowhere. Maybe South/Knights/Sydney Olympic/Marconi etc.. wouldn’t have grown to be the huge powerhouse clubs of a properly marketed and run competition but we sure as fuck would have contributed to it’s overall strength.

Personally I think that by pissing off Parramatta, Northern Spirit, Auckland, Brisbane, Wollongong and one of Marconi/Olympic/Syd U and introducing Victory, Sydney FC and Qld Roar it would have created a perfect balance. 3 teams in Sydney, 3 in Melbourne, one in the next three biggest markets and a relatively well established country side for a ten team competition. The people with a hard-on for “mainstream” teams get their wish, and the established “ethnic” clubs survive to play in a league where there’s no danger of any of the violence that everyone is so scared of.

But instead we get to watch a team from Gosford (current population, lest we forget, of 154,654) run around a stadium owned by a board member of the FFA in front of a couple of thousand people and are somehow expected to stand up and applaud this new leap forward? Fuck that for a joke. It’s painful to see it. To paraphrase the Timmy O’Toole charity song from the Simpsons

Well there’s a hole in my heart
As deep as a well
For another summer with no NSL
We can’t get in the A-League
So we’ll do the next best thing
Go on the net and WHINGE! WHINGE! WHINGE!

Still.. I’d rather stand with 750 people watching a club that I love than 10000 in front of a heartless corporate machine chanting “[team name] CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!” for 90 minutes.

Day Nineteen/Twenty etc.. - October 22nd onwards

European Vacation over.. Now that it’s historically archived we can forget it ever happened

Who knows what day it is anymore? Not me, that’s for sure. It was Saturday afternoon in London, the middle of the night in Dubai and afternoon some other day in Singapore. At the time of writing we are 30000 feet high and staying quite steady on the way to Melbourne. It was a wrench to leave London, and my decision not to stay an extra day was exposed as a farce when I checked the Wimbledon score on the net in Singapore Airport and found out they’d won. Pah.

The first leg of the trip was a complete dud. You could tell it was going to be a long 6 hours right off the bat when I found myself spit roasted in a middle seat between a surly Australian male of approximately 50 years who was bitter and twisted when I asked to get past him and sit in my seat, and some old bastard who randomly reached over and started touching up my TV. When I asked him if I could help him with his fingering of my screen he gave me some half arsed explanation about helping me turn it off. Peanut. You just knew the whole thing was going to be a shambles when the woman at the check-in desk tells you they’ve merged the flight with something that’s going to Bangladesh and all the good seats are subsequently taken. I’d already read every magazine of interest and consumed two books with no hope of finding another one that would get me all the way. A 20hr in-flight Tetris Marathon was the only logical conclusion to save me. And lovely it would have been too had it actually worked. Unfortunately the game section of the ‘entertainment’ died in the arse five minutes after take off and we were left with 5hrs, 55 minutes of the same tired TV/video lineup we’d suffered through three weeks earlier. Had I been interested in yachting, or deformed enough to mark out for Everybody Loves Raymond on tap I would been in heaven. Sadly I wasn’t dropped on my head as a child and it did nothing for me.

What a disasterous trip. Bogan male and I were hostile to each other all throughout the flight. Even when Peter The Phantom Pusher and I had reconciled I was still worrying about copping elbows from the bastard on the other side. The whole place was packed with kids running around screeching and their parents doing nothing but making baby talk at them and discussing amongst themselves how the other kid had shit himself. All class in the skies. It’s a wonder that with free booze - of which bogan male was going wild for - that I don’t ask them to bring a bottle of scotch, a straw and a bag of sleeping pills. Given that there was twenty plus hours of this in prospect, and my only meaningful chance of sleep would be due to death, things were looking grim.

Would downgrading from a 777-300 to a 777-200 (or is that an upgrade? How the fuck should I know?) at Dubai reverse my ailing fortunes and spur on a great victory? Would it what! The shambles family took their screaming brats and crappy nappies and pissed off to a connecting flight to Perth, and bogan male disappeared to another flight. Probably to connect to a sex tour in Bangkok or something. In a “where have you been all my life?” moment Emirates redeemed themselves after their earlier disgraces by FINALLY giving us their real entertainment system. Might not be important to many, but for me it was a life saver. If you can knock out an entire leg by sleeping you’ll have the time of your life, but for those of us who are no chance it’s imperative. Shows on demand rather than a 3hr cycle, and with the rubbish radio stations thrown out the door and replaced by a pick the song/album system instead. Sweet as. I would have lost it if I’d had to spend any longer on that other plane. Even better I ended up on the aisle of the middle section after my seat allocation for the 2nd flight mysteriously changed. I hereby claim that it’s because I was accepting of my fate when the initial check-in woman initially told me I’d been dropped in the coffin seat. I’m fairly sure that after I left it was “accidentally” altered for the 2nd leg. Good work. I broke my all-time in-flight record and slept for a grand total of seven minutes. Didn’t help the situation, and I’d started to really lose the plot at this point.

One person on that second flight concerned me. She looked like the sort of old crone who would piss herself laughing at Kath and Kim, unaware that it’s actually mocking her, and write letters to the Herald Sun demanding that all muslims are deported and she was wearing a t-shirt ten sizes too big for her with a giant middle finger on the back and UP YOURS WE WON THE ASHES written on it. I assumed she was English and was going for a bold “fuck you” arrival in Australia but she turned out to be a local. How embarassing. The fact that I didn’t have to sit next to her made me face Mecca and pray. Thanks to Emirates for continually pointing out exactly what direction Mecca was in. I would have jumped out of the emergency exit at 25000 feet and caused explosive decompression if I’d had to sit there for twelve hours listening to the best of Boganry, and how great a man John Laws was.

Eventually we landed in Melbourne. Back to life, back to reality as Soul II Soul once so accurately noted. The guy on the customs desk tried to recruit me, and unlike at least one other person on my flight I made it through Quarantine without having my bag pulled open and groped like a pissed schoolgirl. And that.. was.. it. The end. No great finale, no epic finish. Just a crushing return to normality. Fuck it.

ADDITIONAL BONUS (Additional? Where were the others?)

For putting up with this self indulgent toss for the last month I present you with a free copyright defying copy of the song that absolutely DOMINATED my time in Britain. Every radio station, every second video on the music stations, being played in stores, having people sing it etc.. In fact I was the one singing it most of the time. Ladies and gentlemen I present you arguably the best British song of the last year and a bit and one of the finest of the decade so far,

Download: Kaiser Chiefs - I Predict A Riot (3.6mb)

It makes me want to leap around like a knob and sing it. Nothing else they’ve done has come close yet. The only thing that can possibly rival it for first place is Apply Some Pressure by Maximo Park.

Grassroots Activism 101

By the time you read this Singapore will probably, pursuant to the laws of their nation, have necked Van Tuong Nguyen. As previously discussed it might not be right, but unfortunately it’s the inevitable consequence of breaking their law. With just a few hours to go before the penalty is carried out I suddenly recieved this MSN message from somebody not in my contact list who I can’t recall ever having spoken in my life ever. If it was you then I withdraw nothing - you’re a clown.

sori 2 disturb but 2moz van tuong ngyen will b hung in singapore. to show we hve respect plz put a rose in front of ur msn name . 4 pplz hu dont, u shud feel ashmd of urself then u can take the rose away late 2moz. thx send it 2 at least ten pplz wtin da nex hr plz

Once I ran the OMG! WTF! speech translator and worked out what it was saying in English I wasn’t impressed. Sure his/her heart is in the right place, but telling me I should be ashamed of myself if I don’t follow some shambolic empty gesture chain letter? Cram it. Twice.

I said, What about the thousands of other people executed across the globe every week?

Then he/she confirmed that they had absolutely no idea what was going on and were just being caught up in the same national wave of bandwagon activism that made everyone look like a cock when the Schappelle Corby verdict came down. Clearly this is more important, given that it involves somebody ending up on a rope, but the outcry is almost identical. Half the public are trying to apply for a hangman’s job, and the other half think we should invade immediately in order to free him from the evil regime.

In answer to my question, which I thought was a fair and balanced one..

LOL i dunno

LOL? Laughing out loud? Two seconds ago you were crying out about the injustice of it all and now you’re giving me crazy internet speak? BLOCKED. These are the sort of people who’ll be sending white powder to the Singaporean embassy and throwing eggs at Uni students tomorrow in some misguided attempt to feel like they’ve actually got some influence in the world. Before you jump on the bandwagon and start pushing causes to complete strangers (albeit not in English) shouldn’t you stop to think about it for a second? Clowns.

Can’t wait for the national outpouring of sympathy when the Bali Nine are about to face a firing squad. Bet you anything that nobody gives a rats then - and I will suffer a breakdown at the hypocrisy of it all. Any danger of inter-faith religious gatherings and marches to save the life of Renae Lawrence and the guys that nobody has ever heard of? I’ll believe it when I see it. If you think John Howard hasn’t done enough for Nguyen (and what exactly more is he supposed to do?) wait until he has to talk it up for a bunch of people who our own government agency basically loaded up and sent on their way to cop it. That’ll be interesting.

UPDATE - Here’s some of those intelligent activists now. From Wikipedia,



The kids of Australia have made their choice.

Heavy Metal Memories

(Originally posted at Counterfeit)

Hard Rock. There's a genre that gets no respect. Not from people who don't wear leather pants and do that devil horn thing with their hands anyway. But what if I told you metal needn't be all about goat slaying and the ritual sacrifice of virgins? If I said that it provided what must be, with all apologies to Moscow by Genghis Khan, the greatest videoclip ever produced? You'd say I was crazy - and I probably am. On that note I present to you the epic that is Judas Priest's Breaking The Law


Security guard of major bank is asleep at his post.


Priest comes out of a porn shop. He may very well be up to something dodgy. Who are we kidding? He's a priest!


Suddenly Ian Fitzgerald, bank employee, sees something that troubles him. Is it Ronnie Biggs wielding a shotty and demanding all the cash in small unmarked notes?


Bollocks to that, it's Judas Priest and they've got electric guitars.


Hostages are forced, at Fender point, to listen to the band’s manifesto on why sometimes you have to break to law.


The vault is then located (via a giant door that says BANK), the plastic bars are ripped away by the rock behemoth that is Rob Halford and the gold records are liberated.


Yeah, just look at those bars go. This is sensational. Rob is the hardest man ever to come out of Sheffield.


Security guard wakes up and is so inspired by the raid that he rips out his wooden guitar and ROCKS OUT LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER.

Anyone can spend $10m on a video and not have it come anywhere near the quality of this. I’m calling for the return of plastic bars and wooden guitars to the music video of today. As an added bonus we present the song (alas not the video) in it’s entirety,

Download: Judas Priest - Breaking The Law

This song ranked #225 in the TSP 1000

Forgotten Band in Comeback Shambles Shock

In terms of money acquired, and international success INXS was probably the biggest Australian band of the last 25 years. Whether they were any good or not is up to you to decide, but I’m sure whatever decision we come to will hardly trouble its remaining members, who are, as we speak, probably rolling around in a vault somewhere throwing piles of money in the air like Scrooge McDuck. 

Not content with coining in on sales revenue and royalties in the years since Michael Hutchence passed away they decided to go on touring with guest vocalists. Contenders stretched to the quality and calibre of Terrance Trent D’Arby, shortly after he lost the plot and began trading under the name Sanandra Maitreya, and “that guy who sang Hot Chilli Woman”.  A decision I’m sure their bank manager was wildly celebrating given the millions of dollars flying around for big acts touring the US and Europe. Sadly for INXS the general reaction in the US was (or more accurately would have been) “what does a Noiseworks make, and who is Sandra Maitreya?”

So what did they do? The sensible thing and release 200 different greatest hits albums, DVD’s and approved remixes? Well, yes they did. But they also noticed that reality television had gone off the charts, that the entire world seemingly stopped as one whenever an American Idol contestant was eliminated. There was a new and exciting way to milk the public, even eight years after its best known element snuffed it. Enter, to a public rapidly losing interest, Rockstar INXS. It's your standard Popstars farce, but with the added bonus of ending up as the frontman of “one of the world’s biggest bands” if you win. Not sure who the big band are, given that INXS hasn't had a hit album in fifteen years, but you get the chance to be their lead singer too. So far, so rancid.

At this point I would like to include a disclaimer and state that this post is not a giant “how shit were they?” like everything else on here. In fact, I quite liked INXS in their day and have more than one of their albums. I’ve even got love for Elegantly Wasted, an album that even All Music Guide - the best chance any band have of a 5 star review - only gave **. But who wants to see them go down like this? We all know what's going to happen, they’ll release an album with whichever guy they pick (no chance a woman is going to win it is there?), it'll sell twice as much as anything they've done recently despite being slop that Creed would have turned back, and a tour will briefly have everybody talkin' INXS. 

Then the next fad will come along (and personally I vote for a TV contest to pick two new random lasses for The Human League, and an immediate release of “Don’t You Want Me” part three) and the entire enterprise will die in the arse with force. No great loss for the original members, who will be lying poolside drinking cocktails nonetheless. Our lucky contest winner, on the other hand, probably won't be writing any of the songs for the album and will tour as lead singer on a salary. When it all collapses (again) he’ll be left in reality TV hell doing game shows with Vanilla Ice and eventually attempting to one up Hutchence he will die in bed with a hooker.

And isn’t it getting a huuuuuge push? Usually people without Pay-TV can easily avoid over-hyped shows by sticking to the usual channels and their policy of burying every award winning American show at 2.30am (see, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Six Feet Under, West Wing etc..) so they can put more World’s Worst Babysitters shows on. This time Foxtel decided to not beat us to death with it but have shelled out god knows how much money on posters up, bus ads, and an entire round of the rotating advertising shit on the boundary line at Telstra Dome. They really want you to watch this show, and they want you to sign up to Foxtel to do it. NOW! How much did it cost them in the first place? I don’t see any buses driving past and ordering me to sign up and watch Fox Footy’s “White Line Fever” with Clinton Grybas.

Sure, the whole concept is less sleazy than the 13 singles - count them - that 2pac has “released” since he carked it but it’s pretty rank. I’ve never actually met an INXS purist that I could ask for an opinion (please note: for this purpose purist is defined as somebody who not only knows all the albums in order but also why Gary Gary Beers has such a farcical name) but surely they’re not getting into this. And is it a step up or a step down from Judas Priest hiring somebody out of a tribute band when they were without a lead singer. SMS a) for “No, it’s ten times worse” and b) for “It’s not nearly as bad, and this post has gone on just about long enough”. Remember, your vote counts.

There’s even forums, and as usual they’re populated by mad stalking lunatics. Here’s some wild discussion and debate:

I honestly believe that JD paid someone to pretend to be his sister to take away from his pitiful performance. Hmmmm…..
I also must say that the beginning of the song sounded like a really really bad elvis impersonation.,

Your response Ms. Teeny Bopper?,

Given that JD was supposedly living out of his car, and that contact with the outside world is limited, with what would JD pay someone off and how? His car? His good looks?

He’s driven and competitive but he’s no “Johnny Fairplay” from Survivor.

Me thinks you are just being a crass sh** disturber. :^)

I’ll take INXS 1980-1997 if it’s all the same with you.

More Victorian AFL teams? Perhaps a bit of wishful thinking by the Herald-Sun.

Personally I'd settle for the return of the VFA (even without my mediocre local side) with the AFL reserves as a separate competition again. Who doesn't miss Dandenong, Oakleigh, Prahran and Brunswick? And how many of us want to see a decent curtain raiser before every AFL game? I used to show up early to watch the Melbourne reserves every week (and even the Under 19's sometimes in the very old days), on the other hand I've seen Sandringham once since the AFL/VFL (and what is up with that name?) 'agreement' started. There might be a sizeable group of listed players running around out there but it's not really Melbourne. When I look at the results I don't give a monkey's whether they win or not, just that our players were amongst the best on ground. It was different when you watched the reserves, even if half the people playing were just fill-ins they were still wearing your teams jumper and you still wanted them to win.

Can we have the mid-season draft back too while we're at it?

I'm starting to get nostalgic again, somebody shoot me.

I've been writing far too much about sports recently. I'd really like to comment on the great Governor-General debacle like everyone else is but the simple fact is that I don't particuarly care about it. The office is just so completely pointless to me that I can't treat it like a national crisis when something like this happens.

I've always wondered though, if the Governor-General can sack the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister can sack the Governor-General then what would happen if they both decided to fire each other? ("You're fired!" "No, YOU'RE fired") I know the Queen is involved somehow, but she's probably forgotten she even owns Australia and rubber-stamps anything put in front of her. Kerr vs Whitlam in a Texas Death Match would have been quite an attractive proposition I feel.

Road trip weekend - Pt. 2

At Wobbie’s World there’s heaps to do
Bring your friends, and Mum too
Visit the castle or fly in the sky
Wobbie’s World has lots of rides
Helicopters, fire engines, trams and slides
Wobbie’s World
Springvale Road, Nunawading
It’s great at Wobbie’s World*

To an entire generation of Melbourne children Wobbies World has become the term to describe an especially pissy theme park. Despite having been closed in what we estimate to be the very early 1990’s it still enjoys a cult following to this day. Sadly, though, information about this landmark of Melbourne’s Eastern suburbs on the internet is very, very thin. In fact it doesn’t exist. We might not be able to provide any real historical information but we thought we’d do the next best thing and pay the former site a visit and check out the vibe. What does Wobbies World look like now? Do the people of Nunawading still sing that half-remembered jingle with all the shonky 80’s whistles under their breath? There was only one way to find out.

Joined by our special roadtrip guest, Jellyfish, myself and Adam 2.0 set out to unlock the secret of the land that inspired the Late Show’s “Pissweak World”. Throughout the post there’ll be pictures, and there will be links to pictures to keep the page size down and stop those of you on a 56k modem from slashing your wrists.

The officially listed address of the World was 469 Springvale Road, Nunawading but we decided to attack it from a different angle and instead pulled into the back streets of what was once Wob but is now second-rate cheap and affordable housing.

We took one final group picture - lest we never return from what we were about to throw ourselves into and attacked the parkland on the spot where the now defunct world used to be. Things looked grim at first, it appeared that there was absolutely no sign of what had once been there.

We saw some random shack, found some bog water and posed for zany pictures outside ye olde chicken coops but there was no signs of life. There were, however, some serious signs of dubious behaviour having taken place within. But no tram, no helicopter ride, no fireman with a hose and no old plane. At all. I was starting to become very depressed and wondered if the mission was going to be the biggest failure ever. Even a random old man in the park was asked whether he knew that he was sitting right in the middle of a piece of unknown Melbourne history - he had no idea. It was almost time to declare the mission off and escape the suburbs - and then I looked over to my left and saw a barbed wire fence. This was it.

Taken through said fence this is a live action shot of the moment we discovered the mother-lode of Wobbie mania. We’d found the start of the pissy ride featured in the famous advertisement - and a quick look through the fence showed that hidden away in this corner of Nunawading was a big chunk of what once was Wobbie’s World itself. The only problem was getting in. Once we eventually located a portion of fencing where the barbed wire had been cut off I leapt onto it but due to bendy fencing issues and general physical ineptitude I couldn’t manage to get over without snapping myself in two - and try explaining that to an ambulance driver. Had the dream been ripped away from us after we’d come so close? I thought so. We walked around the fence looking for a way in, and found nothing better than a clear gimmick photo opportunity created inside.

Then I had one of those bright ideas. The sort that, in crappy cartoons, leads to a light bulb coming up above your head. The concept was, in fact, to go around to the side with all the housing and jump over somebody’s fence instead. Now that’s what I call dubious. Of course I didn’t actually tell Jellyfish or AFE this as they would probably have called the cops on me before any of the locals had the opportunity. I just demanded they follow me around to that side where I would explain my controversial plan. Then, in a Magistrates Court saving moment, we walked straight past a tiny little fence that was surely constructed just to help people get in. I hope one of the other two took a picture because I forgot, I was too busy going up and over. This time we were in for sure. Confirmed.

And what a place. It certainly looked as if it had been abandoned for 15 years but there was parts of it still intact like the day it closed,

In the office next door to the snackbar there was a fridge and a bottle of Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice - which leads me to believe that there are people who use Castle Wobbie for something or other more often than you’d expect. Kinky urban swingers parties? Crack lab? Something dubious. Given that you could still see the price list in the snack bar, and a can of Fanta was listed as $1.20 I’m not sure exactly what was going on. Either people were being ripped off blind in 1990 or there’s been some dodgy catered event there in recent years. I loved it. I think the other two noticed my childlike glee in being there. This was an unprecedented excursion into the history of Melbourne’s childrens entertainment. The only way you could get further into the heartland of the industry would be to get touched up by a Moomba Clown. Try finding a picture of Wobbies World on the internet. You’ve got no chance. These might not be ideal but they’re the best you’ll find anywhere online. Here the Agent poses in the old start of the shonky one rail ride

I located a pair of ticket booths and the very spot where the boundary between old Wob and new housing project met and the former Helicopter ride track ran straight into a brick wall - thus destroying my idea of a “return to Wobbies” party.

My old favourite, the mini-golf course, was pretty much intact. I can’t believe there was actually a hole where you had to play around the supports of the castle and snackbar. That’s shambolic. Sadly the giant rock face that marked the 18th hole where you could score a free game by sinking a hole in one is gone - presumably it’s been auctioned to the highest bidder and is now sitting in regional Queensland or something.

We discovered the old “birthday hut”, with some motivational slogans and pissy boats within. Painted on the outside of the hut was the actual Wobbies World mascot itself but sadly due to shade issues, and the fact that getting close enough to take an unshaded picture would have risked falling in the swamp, we got a poor quality picture of it. Missing out on a real shot of the Wob Elephant may live to be one of my great regrets in life.

My final memory of the place will always be the moment I almost spewed when I looked deep and hard into the crusty swamp water that had overtaken the former helicopter track. I defy you not to puke your own guts out when you view it. There was actually a crusty film of evil stuff on top of it. The photo doesn’t do it justice - but it does frame that very spot where the helicopter came up the hill in the ad so it’s historic nonetheless.

And that was it. We’d seen it all. There was a giant sign face down in the grass at the back that was, I think, the main Wobbies World sign. One day I’m going back with a giant lever and turning that over. It’s probably got several bodies underneath it but I must see it. Just as we headed back to jump the fence and debrief on what we had seen a head poked over the fence and we had the following scintillating conversation,

Wob Neighbour: “Are you guys alive?”
A: “Yeah. We’re just checking out Wobbie’s World!”
(silence)
A: (fishing for anecdotes) “Did you ever go there?”
WN: “No, it’s just that we don’t allow trespassers. So if you’re trespassing…”
A: “Yeah, doesn’t matter we’re going anyway”

Then more silence. I was wondering who exactly “we” was. Had we just spoken to Roy Wobbie Jr, the heir to the throne? Or just a smartarse local who didn’t know the history and significance of what he lives next door to but wanted to make sure we weren’t going to bring thousands of screaming children onto his doorstep. One of the two. Either way he was a knob.
That was it. We’d seen the very spot where you used to be able to sit in the derelict aeroplane and watch video of “flight”, we’d seen where the helicopter bounced around on second rate springs purchased from Pick-a-Part, we’d seen the castle, the snackbar and the golf course. My life is complete.. Well, almost complete anyway. 

On that note,
In association with Hecho En Mexico and Jellyfish Online; TSP is launching it’s
“WOBBLOG 2005”
campaign. We want your memories of this iconic venue, we want pictures of you pissfarting about there as a kid and we especially want to talk to anyone who used to work there. Please discuss this campaign widely. Ask your family and friends for their memories and get back to us - we MUST unlock the secret of Wobbie. Who was he? When did it open? What was the exact layout? What exact date did it close? I have to know before I die.

Wobbies World - Rest in Peace. We will never forget you.