The Terror of Green Energy

by Jeb on April 4, 2009

Our mate Ken lives in the same suburb as Adam and I, so we always get any advance warning if door-to-door salesmen are hitting the local area. They always seem to hit his end of town first, so he’s always quick to send us a warning of utility contract vampires on the prowl.

Warnings are definitely required, too. The last time we had door-to-door salesmen around here, it was an electricity company’s doing. They always seem to arrive in pairs, usually so they can throw around a good-cop-bad-cop, nasty-but-nice routine:

Nasty salesman: Well, congratulations! Simply by switching on the power mains at your house, you are personally raping the continued livelihood of threatened species and single-handedly fisting the Murray-Darling Basin.
Nice salesman: So… would you like to switch to green energy?

That’s not even mentioning what the bloody telcos are like. My last encounter with Optus salesmen reached existential levels.

This is why I was not so amused when I arrived home yesterday, to have Adam announce that he’d been attacked by two electricity salesmen as he arrived home from his boxing workout.

“I just told them to come back later – I’d lost too many brain cells that afternoon to communicate properly,” he apologised. “Besides, I lied and told them it was your name on our electricity contract.” WHY THANKS, THAT’S WHY I LOVE YOU!

Thus commenced an evening of anxious waiting for an argument about our utility contract. As the evening progressed, I decided – bugger it. I’m not going to waste my Friday evening arguing with some door-to-door twat about something, especially when I’m feeling sick. So when the doorbell finally rang, and rang, AND RANG, I cowardly turned off the loungeroom light and hid under the couch.

Then realised they’d probably seen me turning off the light, which would only incence them further. Oh dear. To get my mind off things, I ordered some dinner for us and caught up on some of my TV downloads instead.

Shortly afterwards, the doorbell rang again, and I realised my error: was it our dinner, or the electricity vultures back to attack their prey again? “KNOCK OUT THE NAME I PLACED THE PIZZA ORDER WITH IN MORSE CODE IF YOU’RE REALLY THE PIZZA DELIVERY GUY,” I bellowed down the hallway in fear.

There was enough confused noises to convince me it really was the pizza, so I carefully opened the door and snatched the food away. As I was doing so, I noticed two guys over the street walking around suspiciously with clipboards. Although I was incredulous, I dismissed the possibility – surely those guys would not still be pounding the pavement at 9pm?

Wrong. Having seen through my illusion of invisibility, they romped back over the street mere minutes later and began simultaneously ringing the doorbell and knocking on the door. I salted my pizza with tears of terror and screamed at Adam to answer the door (who, by this stage, was cackling uncontrollably on the floor). It had gone beyond mere avoidance to all-out war and there was no way I was giving up.

Overnight, I fell asleep to dreams of Daryl Somers becoming a door-to-door salesman and trying to sell me a renaissance series of Hey Hey It’s Saturday door-to-door (apparently, he’d become that desperate). This jarred into a terrifying reality when I awoke to the doorbell ringing again. These dickheads just don’t give up!

I’ve no idea if it actually was the door-to-door guys returning for another attempt, but I choose to assume they were. And also that I can never answer our front door again. Sorry. If any of my mates are reading this, you’ll now have to…. I dunno, skydive your way into our backyard or something instead. I refuse to submit.

As I was writing this, I remembered I’ve had a similar encounter with a pizza delivery guy in the past. This probably borders more on socialphobia than actual neurotic behaviour, but I’m clearly still an idiot when it comes to this stuff…

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Music Genres That Homos Should Claim As Their Own, IMMEDIATELY

by Jeb on April 2, 2009

The world’s current financial regurgitation has caused me to notice that everyone’s too bloody distracted to pay attention to whimisical matters at present. So, I’ve been concocting a plan.

For too long, us gay folk have only lorded over the kind of dance music that perms hair through audio power alone. Disco is also a long-captured prisoner-of-war of us homos, too. But it’s time to branch out (page 582 of the Gay Agenda commands it!)

Fellow gays, the time is perfect to sneak in and snatch another musical genre of our own, while nobody’s looking! Or, even better, invent something entirely new that the rest of the world suddenly thinks they should have been listening to three months ago! There’s an easy measure of success, too: just wait a month and see if despondent models have begun soullessly wandering around looking for their methadone treatment, to a soundtrack of your music, on Foxtel’s Fashion TV channel.

Thus, I present: New and Existing Musical Genres Us Homos Should Claim As Our Own IMMEDIATELY.

melissa-tkautzTkautzcore

The combined past, present and future recordings of anything Melissa Tkautz has ever had the misfortune of committing to record, mashed up with the themes from Pacific Drive and E Street played backwards. All percussion is beatboxed, heavily featuring Ms. Tkautz’s name (ie “Ooonse Tkautz Ooonse Tkautz Ooonse Tkautz”). Promote her as the new Kylie which Australia undemocratically forgot, confuse everyone into compliance and you’re onto the next underground club hit.

Okay, I admit it, Melissa’s getting a mention here because I’ll never get past this Read My Lips lyric: “If you want to wait ’til later/Hands off my detonator!” Long have been the days until someone challenges me to a mid-street rap battle, and I can throw that gem in as if it’s one of my own.

Breakfast Metal

This has long been a genre idea of my own, and there’s no reason it can’t be embraced as the gay community’s own. This would be a specific type of metal celebrating the delicious crunch and nutritional value of breakfast foods, primarily played in the morning. The added bonus of the homos claiming this genre is that your average citizen will wake up, put some breakfast metal on, then ponder by association: “Hmm, the gays. I sure wouldn’t mind some cock for breakfast this morning!” Some genius rebranding sees VitaWheats being crunched up and snorted at day clubs around Darlinghurst.

Nu-Oompah

Let’s face it, there’s something undeniably erotic about oompah. Combine that with some new and revolutionary sound (say, trapping a wailing Angus & Julia Stone inside a steel cube with a bunch of steak knives and nudging them down an escalator) and you’re already onto the kind of music that will accompany “Teens Out Of Control” stories on Today Tonight.

Uplifting Car Advertisement Trance

Okay, if those advertising industry bastards think they’ve got this down pat, let’s claim it as our own. Your average Uplifting Car Advertisement Trance group will be made up of a bunch of vaguely ethnic monk-chanters, fifteen timpani players, a DJ, keyboard player who only has the ability to play in flourishes, and an MP3 file of Clubbed to Death to play as every second song. Everyone will have shaved heads, glasses and the mannerism of a fey twat in honour of the genre’s visionary leader, Moby.

Adult Contemporary

This one is ripe for the picking, right when everyone least expects it. The likes of Vanessa Amarossi, Jenny Morris and Vika & Linda will suddenly be thrust from the gallows of morning television into the throbbing, pulsing clubs of Darlinghurst – with their music strangely, disturbingly untouched. Everyone else will have a moment similar to the “oh god, we’re supposed to ENJOY the output of Australian Idol?” similar to what we all experienced in 2003, but rolled with it anyway.

Juntry

This genre sounds just dirty enough to describe some horrific gay sex act that the slackjawed A Current Affair-watching public would be terrified to realise is a threat to their children. Controversy abounds as kids get into juntry dancing, before anyone realises it’s simply an awful mish-mash of jazz and country that sounds like a banjo sexually assaulting a violin.

Simultaneous-ABBA-and-Hair-Metal-core

Lead singers of this genre straddle a piano tumbling down a flight of stairs, stamping out the riffs to ABBA’s finest, while belting away at a guitar and screami– oh, wait, Andrew W.K. got here first. NEXT!

Gabber

Possibly one of the most bafflingly ridiculous microgenres of techno in the 90s, gabber is best described as the sound of being greeted into a dance club with a semi-automatic nailgun firing into your skull. Nobody seemed game enough to claim this genre as their own, but it’s easily reinventable for a new decade. All we have to do is hook a drum machine up to a binary format of MC Hammer’s Twitter feed, add a few morse-code implanted homosexual tendency suggestions, step back, and watch a genre explode into popularity before us.

Nu-metal

I’m only half joking here. Nu-metal is undeniably the gayest genre of metal there is, so let’s snap it up as our own. Unfortunately, I’m not particularly game to mock any particular nu-metal artists here for fear of the kind of comments I’ll get. Most nu-metal fans still exist on a diet primarily composed of Cheetos, bullying and World of Warcraft.

While I’m at it…

This seems like the right place to link to two gay hip-hop artists I rather like (or homo-hop, as it’s apparently called HEY STOP LAUGHING I’M SERIOUS). I’m mostly a metalhead, not particularly a hip-hop fan at all, but there’s something undeniably nice about hearing male hip-hop artists belt out some lyrics about treating dudes like inhuman sexual toys, instead of women, for a change.

I kid! These two dudes make some unique music and I recommend grabbing their albums on iTunes (they’re available in the Australian store, so no excuses!) My boy Deadlee, and secondly Johnny Dangerous (who I discovered via a guest appearance on Deadlee’s latest album). They are both welcome to visit me so we can record something that’s the gay equivalent of a Run DMC/Aerosmith crossover. With undeniably less talent on my part.

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UNO as Inspiration for Government Legislation: Another Reason I Should Never Persue Politics

by Jeb on March 29, 2009

Do you need proof that I’m a incredibly lame gamer? Here’s two quick facts:

1. I was counting down the days until the Australian version of Buzz was finally released last week, and belted to the closest JB HiFi to buy it, ike a German Shepherd suddenly spotting the ocean.

2. After pondering the possibility of purchasing a Xbox 360 recently, I eventually came to the conclusion that my primary motivation was because I could play UNO on it. This actually caused me to get incredibly angry with myself.

Yet I can’t stop playing UNO on my phone. In fact, there’s a great feature of iPhone UNO, called Jump-In:

The idea is that if you’re holding the same card that someone’s just played, you can use Jump-In and play it. Even if it’s not your turn.

This got me to thinking that it’d be bloody brilliant if you could use Jump-In in any real life situation. Gone are the days when you would impatiently stand behind someone at an ATM machine that requires you to swipe your card at a very particular speed – you could simply scream “JUMP IN!”, then barge over and swipe their bloody card for them.

Maybe you’ve walked past a cafe and spotted someone being served a delicious pasta meal. Which you happen to have eaten before. Scream “JUMP IN!” then gallop over and swipe the plate from under their nose.

I don’t even need to illustrate how useful Jump-In becomes if you visit a strip club, and you simply happen to have received a lapdance at some point in your life.

If the government passed the Jump-In Act as legal legislation, how would you use it?

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Biffy Stalko

by Jeb on March 25, 2009

Last night I was lucky enough to see my favourite band, Biffy Clyro. They’re Scottish and still building a fanbase here in Australia, so I was extremely excited – it’s only their second tour here.

Of course, the first tour they ever had in Australia last year – well, I went a little overboard with my enthusiasm. No sooner than the tickets had gone on sale, had I created a dizzying itinerary of flights and hotel bookings around the country; intending to follow the band around in a manner that was sure to raise alarm bells. That’s when it hit me – I’d become one of those fans.

Don’t kid me, either – you know the type of fan I mean. For example, the Radiohead fans that flood the entire postcode region with their own drool after finally glimpsing Thom Yorke getting off a bus, after creepily stalking the band through at least five states and territories, leaving a wake of borderline illegal fanfic and vomituously twee fan singalongs outside venues in their wake. In most cases, a level of enthusiasm which they probably also directed at Hanson’s Westfield shopping centre tour ten years ago.

But that’s me. Just with Biffy Clyro, instead of Radiohead – although I’m not quite at the level of contributing to LiveJournal communities dedicated to the horniness of their singer’s beard, or anything. Yet.

The last Biffy Clyro tour was quite the odyssey for me, though. Being sad enough that I didn’t have any other mates into them at the time, I made a sad solo trek around the country shadowing the band’s itinerary. Adam would have come along, but we’ve got a bit of an agreement in our relationship when it comes to music, and it’s best summed up by noting that metal and rock does not generally sit alongside the worst early 90s happy hardcore you’ve ever heard without drugs. So when it comes to gigs, I turn to my mates instead of my boyfriend.

Except who would be stupid enough to follow some obscure Scottish band around the country? JUST ME.

There was definitely a high point on the last tour, though. After idly standing outside the Sydney venue hours before the doors opened, I noticed their singer, Simon Neil, wandering out through a door for a bite to eat. He noticed I was wearing a tshirt of the band, and realised with dread that he’d entered my event horizon.

“Thanks so much for coming to see us,” he smiled, and shook my hand. THIS IS IT, I thought. I MAY NEVER GET THIS CHANCE AGAIN. This was the leader of the band I’d been obsessing over for years. Say something important! Say something meaningful!

Instead, in a single constanant, I blurted out something along the lines of:

“OhMyGodSimonNeilIThinkYouAreGod I’mFollowingYouAllAroundTheContinent Isn’tAustraliaAwesome ILoveYou WhatSizeShoesDoYouWear YAAAAY!”

This incited little more than a terrified look and a hasty exit.

So I keep my distance nowadays, for the band’s sake and mine. But still – check them out if you like left-of-field rock, or think the Foo Fighters turned into a Sarah McLachlan tribute act with their last few albums. You won’t be sorry.

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Undertele: A Tale of Two Trujillos

by Jeb on March 19, 2009

What would happen if Rob Trujillo (bassist for Metallica) and Sol Trujillo (head honcho at telemegaglobocorp Telstra) were brothers and forced to live together? A HILARIOUS SITCOM, THAT’S WHAT.

UNDERTELE: A TALE OF TWO TRUJILLOS
(credits roll)

ROB TRUJILLO: (knocks on door) Sol, I’m home!

SOL TRUJILLO: (opens door) Why are you here! Leave me alone! I am busy planning my hasty exit from the country and itiner– I mean, er, hello, my little brother!

ROB: It is so unfortunate that I lost all of my Metallica royalties in a drunken poker game.

SOL: Yes. Yet you still managed to fly here to Australia to live with me, and mooch off me, like some sort of public infrastructure that you’re taking for granted.

ROB: Regrettable, yes. But now we can ROCK! (plays air guitar crazily while audience inexplicably self-combusts with raucous laughter)

SOL: This is strictly a temporary arrangement. You will be only here until you have found a new job.

ROB: Awww, I thought we’d just be here to party, man! Y’know, go out, pick up some chicks, have a good time…

SOL: NO! I have to leave before I start getting my offshore assets taxed and– I mean, er… now that Telstra is in such wonderful shape…

ROB: Goddammit, Sol. You used to be COOL.

rob-trujilloSOL: Listen to me. You will be spending all your time here looking for a new job. I don’t even want you to bother me while you’re looking for work. Don’t talk to me unless you have a job. Send me a SMS if you really must, otherwise I’ll charge you a face-time administration fee.

ROB: Waaaahhh.

(bellowing laughter in the style of Australia’s Funniest Home Videos audience on ketamine)

NEXT TIME, ON A VERY SPECIAL EPISODE OF UNDERTELE: How will Sol react when he comes home to discover Rob has horrendously misinterpreted “naked internet connection”?

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More Boycotts

by Jeb on March 16, 2009

This stupid blog turns 10 years old today. Hard to believe I’ve been posting such rubbish for so long, but there you go.

To mark the occasion, I’ve compiled a new list of everything I’ve boycotted on this blog since my last boycotts post. READ AND LEARN.

Friends who mock your painful foot blisters
Boycott started: January 17, 2001
“Your feet just are just reacting to the altitude – I mean, they’re usually above your head.”

General abandonment of the word “boosies” by society
Boycott started: January 27, 2001
It really would be a shame to lose this word to history.

The Olympics torch ceremony
Boycott started: January 27, 2001
Why should they claim the concept of torch ceremonies as their own? We need more torch ceremonies.

Using Ride of the Valkyries as your ringtone
Boycott started: January 28, 2001
Slightly loses its dramatic impact in polyphonic form.

Your boyfriend wearing a polo shirt to a metal concert
Boycott started: January 28, 2001
Ride the Lightning polo shirts don’t exist for a reason.

The film Coyote Ugly
Boycott started: January 29, 2001
How are we supposed to describe this? “It’s like Cocktail, but more sexual”? “It’s like 21 Jump Street, but in a pub”?

Virgin Mobile stores
Boycott started: February 4, 2001
Virgin Mobile stores generally look like the reception area for a futuristic bordello of robot prostitutes.

[click to continue…]

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The Stupidest Retail Outlets in My End of the City

by Jeb on March 9, 2009

Hope everyone in Melbourne survived the minor earthquake on Friday night without any problems, and nobody was getting their genitals pierced or tattoos inked at the time. Just can’t help but fret that someone, somewhere, underwent a horrible body modification experience with unexpected earthquake-induced consequences…

It’s a public holiday here today, so most of the shops around here are closed. Which suits me fine, seeing as the local economy of Port Melbourne seems to run singularly on day spas and tanning salons. But it’s not just these retail outlets that drive me irrationally insane – so, just in case you thought you needed to step into the 3207 postcode region any time soon, here’s my…

Top Three Port Melbourne Stores Which Drive Me Irrationally Crackers

3. What to do when every other store on the street has upped the wanky organic/premium/gourmet scale, but you’re a mere chemist doling out cold and flu tablets? Become a wanky and exclusive “compounding pharmacy”. One of these exist down the bottom of Bay Street, and allege to differentiate themselves by individually tailoring health packages to your individual needs. All I see are cash vampires flinging overpriced moisturiser around. Of particular amusement is a gigantic sign in the store, bellowing “NO PHARMACEUTICAL BENEFITS ARE RECOGNISED BY THIS CHEMIST”. In other words: get out, lower-class scum.

2. My rage against this particular retail outlet perplexes me, but I rage nonetheless. There’s a shop in Port Melbourne which sells balloons, and that’s pretty much it. IT DRIVES ME FUCKING INSANE. Their over-enthusiastic balloon displays for every minor calendar event from St Patrick’s Day to Prince Harry dropping another racist remark make me want to set my own pubic hair on fire in protest. I refuse to believe the owners are nothing other than painfully twee 40-something suburban overweight fans of Desperate Housewives, who rush home to scrapbook the monthly exploits of their poodle; then one evening decided it would be SUCH A GAS to run a store full of PRETTY BALLOONS AND ALL THE CUSTOMERS WOULD BE SO HAPPY AND PONIES AND UNICORNS EEEEEE! Come to think of it, their original retail venture was probably a fucking scrapbooking supplies store. With any luck, they’ll hook up some nitrous to the helium tank, take up a drug habit, and get out of the suburb with their fucking balloons.

I told you it was irrational!

1. The goddamn stupidest shop in Port Melbourne is easily a mob known as FatZap. I’ll let their website explain it all:

“…FatZap™  zaps away fat and cellulite from the body and face for both men and women without surgery, knives or injections.”

The premise is that you visit this FatZap place and they use a magical wand to ZAP THE FAT AWAY! Given their run-ins with pharmaceutical advertising regulators, it seems their product offering is a little tenuous. As far as I can tell from customers on various forums on the web, the treatment just dehydrates you – they make a lot of noise about making sure you drink enough water before you attend for treatment.

This has resulted in their advertising breaches reducing their product claims down to hilarious testimonials on their website, such as:

“Since starting at gym a year ago I could see my body toning up and becoming more define, but some places you just cant lose fat, your neck! I have a little bit of fat around my neck that makes me feel a little uncomfortable with my appearance.”

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

*breathes*

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

If NECK FAT is the number one worry in your life, then goddamn get your arse down to Fatzap stat, they’re waiting for suckers like you with open arms here in Port Melbourne…

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Coles: Now Stalking Me For Your Benefit

by Jeb on March 5, 2009

Recently, I learnt that our local Coles supermarket is somewhat of a national testing ground. Apparently our suburb is almost equally covered by poor, middle-class, rich, and drug-abusing-AFL-player demographics – creating an ideal environment for Coles to test their latest bonkers ideas on us.

New store layouts and other experiments are constantly carried out at our Coles, and then carried out nationally if they work. This explains why products and layouts at our Coles keep moving around so freaking much. It’s almost impossible to find some products because where milk once lived, is now the new home of sliced meats. In particular, our fruit and veg section changes layouts constantly – everything from its current farmer’s market setup, to the bizarre diagonal aisles we had last year.

Coles also regularly test store opening celebrations at our local supermarket. Sounds very jolly in theory, but there’s only so many weekends in a row I can handle Con the Fruiterer yelling out Coles propaganda around our main street.

More interestingly, it explains why I always see Coles staff suspiciously hovering around the supermarket with clipboards. After someone did a really bad job of inconspicuously following me around the supermarket recently, I jokingly asked them what was going on, and found out that I’m shopping in a test marketing hotbed.

Someone tracking my grocery shopping is kind of creepy, so my new plan is thus: when I next spot a Coles staff member trailing me, I’ll purchase as many phallic vegetables as I can, then zoom to the medicinal aisle and agonise over lubricants. If lube starts popping up around the fruit and veg section of your local Coles in the coming months, you’ll know whot o thank.

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Marketers, The Dictionary is not your Random Flavour Generator

by Jeb on March 4, 2009

There’s an increasing marketing habit I’ve observed with food advertising in recent times, and I have something to say.

Corporations, take note: places are not flavours.

For example, what the hell am I supposed to assume “southwest sauce” is before Subway slop it all over my miserable, wrinkled sandwich? The gritty, earthy taste of Arizonian gravel? The desperate tears of Las Vegas tourists wringing out their mortgage repayments over a roulette table? Some filthy euphemism for man-sauce?

Similarly, emotions are not flavours. The “Angry Whopper” doesn’t sound like it’s supposed to be a spicy hamburger. It sounds more like Mark “Jacko” Jackson straining on the bog after a salty carbohydrates binge.

Finally, abstract concepts are not flavours. There’s a new sugar-free flavour of Eclipse mints floating around Australian convenience stores. Granted, “Sugar Free But Will Probably Give You Cancer Down The Track Mints” doesn’t quite have that zing to it, but did they really have to resort to naming the new mint flavour “Black Chill”? All I’m asking for is oral hygiene – not something which sounds like a Ministry of Sound compilation, or R-rated porn.

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Terminator 5: Rise of the Greased Pontoons

by Jeb on March 2, 2009

As locals are already aware, the following SMS was sent to all residents of Victoria today:

vic-police-sms-bushfire-warning

Nobody is going to argue this isn’t a good idea. I’m certainly not going to poke fun at the bushfires, especially considering my best mate has been going through a series of terrifying evacuations up in the Dandenongs. It’s been a horrible, shocking series of events.

However, I’m wondering if I’m the only one who received this SMS then later thought… I hope this SMS broadcast system is only used sparingly and properly.

I’ve been known to wear a tinfoil hat at times – everything from Facebook’s privacy policy to the highly suspicious uniform number of sausages in Watties Baked Beans & Sausages tins – but there is awful potential for this system to go terribly wrong. Imagine if a well-intended but carelessly worded SMS warning was sent out around the Northern Beaches area when the Cronulla riots broke out? A dreadful situation could have been intensified even further.

Nobody was expecting a SMS warning like this, I suppose, so it’s all a bit of a surprise. Most especially to any paranoid amphetamines dealer who rolled out of bed this afternoon, fired up their brekkie bong then made the ghastly discovery of a new SMS from”Vic Police” sitting unread on their phone.

So let’s hope this system is only used for clear danger and with good intentions. In this spirit, I present a list of the most unlikely messages you’d be worried about receiving on Victoria’s SMS broadcast system:

  • Reports of temporary blindness reported throughout metropolitan area. Avoid Channel 9 for next hour/any other medium displaying Matthew Newton’s pasty naked body
  • ARIA ALERT: Crash Test Dummies reformed, threatening re-entry to Victorian Top 50 Singles: remain under sturdy furniture until threat passes
  • SKYNET ACTIVE: REPORT TO NEAREST FOOTBALL OVAL FOR MANDATORY “IT’S A KNOCKOUT” TOURNAMENT HELD FOR YOUR NEW OVERLORDS’ PLEASURE
  • WARNING: reports of Gloria Jeans Coffee outlets in area no longer holding up tenuous pretense, staff shackling customers to walls until agreeing to purchase tickets to Hillsong Mens/Womens Conference. Approach with caution

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