Australia’s well known for having frequently bizarre town names. A mate of mine recently pointed out the town he grew up in on a state map of Victoria, and after taking a closer look, it boggled me. Every surrounding burb sounded like a World of Warcraft level, a Shakespearean insult, or a poo joke inflicted on a town by a tittering, scatology-obsessed local planner.
This led to me researching the stranger town names of the state of Victoria, so here’s the top 10 unfortunate names I found…
#10: Wood Wood, 3596
This area of the state has got to be the cartographer’s equivalent of Family Guy. Located near the otherwise dignified locale of Swan Hill, Wood Wood undoes all the historical relevance of the area with a dick joke. If that’s not bad enough, why not pay a visit to nearby Bulga (which I desperately hope is pronounced “bulger”)?
Perhaps you’re after some ladypart-influenced town names, in which case the nearby town of Beverford may interest you. Otherwise, pay a visit to Wood Wood’s local Poon Boon Lake (I promise you, I’m not joking).
It appears the area planner got bored at some point: the next town up from Wood Wood is simply named Goodnight.
#9: Sale, 3850
One of the larger towns on this list, but I challenge you not to hear The Price is Right theme playing through your subconscious whenever you happen to pass through the town. The town’s population has been dwindling in recent decades – my suspicion is that wordplay in end of financial year “sale” advertising for local stores is slowly driving most of them to commit hari-kari.
#8: Graytown, 3608
There isn’t really any way to make this town sound exciting, is there? Visit Graytown, home of adequate tourist attractions at fairly reasonable prices! The naming protocol for the area is strangely colour-influenced: you’ll also find Redcastle nearby, in addition to Mount Black. Which I’m sure is evil and blacker than the blackest black times infinity.
#7: Cardigan, 3352
Soundingeverybit as exciting as Graytown, turns out there’s also a town named Cardigan. Perhaps it’s the origin of the wooly cardi. Funnily enough, the next town along is named Bo Peep, so perhaps she should go visit Cardigan if she’s wondering what’s happened to all her bloody sheep.
I imagine the town is populated by women with names like Maude. (Which, incidentally, is the name of another town – Maude, 3331).
#6: Musk, 3461
Sorry, this sounds like nothing other than the brand name of an adult entertainment business. Also guilty of this crime: Rainbow, 3424; and Guys Forest, 3709.
Every now and then, I gleefully entertain fantasies of laughing in the face of my current job, and becoming a full-time house painter. A mate of mine continues to espouse a theory that a bunch of us could all easily slap a few licks of paint on buildings for a living, but makes the activity sound easier than a Wii minigame. Although it seems like an honest way to earn a crust, I’m pretty sure I’d wind up looking like a washed-up piece of diseased sea anemone at the end of every workday.
There’s been stranger career changes, I suppose. But perhaps none so strange as something that Adam’s currently taking more seriously by the day: the possibility of switching his career from advertising to joining the police force.
As soon as I discovered this, I was asking ridiculously self-centred and inappropriate questions – does he have to keep the uniform at the station? Surely there’s a pair of handcuffs he could bring home with him? What if a thuggish criminal was completely hot and suggestively sprawling his legs while they were alone in a negotiation room?
As it happens, he’s just finished watching the entire series of Recruits as an eager fan. I’d normally pass this off as a passing fascination (I seem to recall he was set on chasing down fugitives after watching too many episodes of Dog the Bounty Hunter a few years ago), but he’s mentioned the idea of becoming a constable many times over the years – looks like it might actually be happening now.
Fortunately, he’s going to use his powers for our personal gain. We’re formulating a plan that our neighbours had better watch out for: he’s going to systematically arrest everyone on our street for the most minor of offenses. Once word starts spreading that we’re living in what seems to be a dangerously crim-addled street, the property prices will invariably begin tumbling downwards – then we can buy up big! Who wants in?
Over the past few weeks I’ve been spending a little quality time with a nose specialist. No, I’m not flirting with the notion of transforming my honker into a sharpened beak that could sharpen a knife. Just getting my nasal breathing problems fixed, as I mentioned a few months ago.
My regular doctor referred me to this particular nose specialist. I’m aware that specialists are renowned for exorbitant fees, but I was in his attendance for the entire length of a Brand Power infomercial! This lead me to fret about the level of attention he was paying to everything. The referral letter from my doctor was clearly signed by a “Jessica”, but he kept referring to her as “he”.
Nose specialist: So your doctor prescribed some nasal sprays prior to this, did he? Me: Yes… she did. Nose specialist: Did he suggest you try this particular brand? Me: Yes, JESSICA did. Nose specialist: How often did he prescribe you use the nasal spray? Me: SHE told me to use it twice a day, right before she excused herself from the surgery TO CHANGE HER TAMPON.
After turning it over in my head, I’m uncertain what’s more of concern: that I have a latently sexist specialist, or simply a perenially hungover specialist.
Most of my appointment consisted of the specialist ramming a tiny camera up my nasal passages and down the back of my throat, while he made worrying “ooh” and “gosh” noises. That was when he made an unexpected suggestion: would I like to take a look at the TV monitor and take a close-up view of my inner nostrils?
Without waiting for a response, he spun around the monitor he’d been studying for me to view. What confronted me on that TV screen appeared to be night-vision footage of a slimily threatening boss from Silent Hill. As I struggled to keep my breakfast down, there was little point resisting: the camera was stuck so far into my respiratory system that I had no chance of protesting.
The verdict is that my breathing problems are caused by a deformed septum (the middle part of my nose) and enlarged flappy-bits on the inside of my nostrils. That’s flappy-bits, the, er…. official latin term. After getting an x-ray, we had the all-clear that I don’t have any sinus problems – so I just need to get the insides of my nostrils drilled out, and a septoplasty so my septum’s straightened. HOT!
After looking at the x-ray of my skull, I couldn’t work out why it seemed so damn metal – then a mate reminded me that I was probably thinking of this Deftones album cover:
(click to zoom)
This inspired my mate Dan to construct an impromptu Deftones album cover titled “Septoplasty” using a photo of my x-ray…
(click to zoom)
Not only does this crack me up, it actually looks like it’d be a damn fine album!
Last week, Adam embarked on his traditional Friday night drunken bicycle ride home from work. Unluckily for him, the sky was shedding more tears than the contestants of a Channel 10 reality show, and the roads were rather sodden.
This resulted in a spectacular stack on his part – he was trying to lean into a sharp turn, but this resulted in him mashing his body against the bitumen. He arrived home as a pile of bloodied and grazed muscles dusted with gravel.
Whenever he has accidents like these, he refuses any of my medical attention until he’s got some photos of his injuries first. Being hardcore is important! What’s more frustrating, though, is that he rarely takes time to see the doctor. This strange approach to illness and injury was something I noticed within the first few weeks of going out with him: whenever he was sick, he used to search the old Ask Jeeves search engine, because “Jeeves looks authoritative, he’s probably got some good advice for me”.
His shoulder has been getting steadily more painful, but he’s refusing to see a doctor at present, no matter how much I pester him. In fact, he seems to think he’s got an even better approach.
Me: Why don’t you just go to the doctor today? It’ll only take an hour. Adam: It’ll heal itself. Mind over matter! Me: You really should see a physio or something… you don’t know damage you might’ve done. You could have really screwed up your shoulder. Adam: If I concentrate hard enough, I can fix it! (begins making high-pitched “eeeeee” noise) Me: … What on Earth are you doing? Adam: I’m healing myself! Right now! Me: This isn’t like some videogame health power-up, you dick! Adam: I can fix anything with my mind! Just like I can will people to fall over on command! Me: You can fix anything? What if you get cancer, you’ll just will it away? Adam: Well, obviously, that’s different. Me: So there’s a line as to what you can heal with your mind? Adam: Clearly. Me: You are the worst medical doctor in the world. Adam: Psychic medical doctor.
Today he’s decided to self-diagnose and put his arm in a sling. Partial victory to me, seeing as he’s halfway to admitting that he needs medical assistance! Wait until he starts getting muscle calcifications, then I’ll really be on my way to proving my point.
Recently I’ve been vaguely looking into how people earn money from writing, and have discovered that you can make a full-time living as a speechwriter. It’s probably not an option for me, as it’d prove way too dangerously tempting for me to slyly insert last-minute additions, so politicians begin blurting out statements like “That’s why I have such pleasure to open this memorial museum, and can anyone sell me a foil of coke?”
What I’ve found truly fascinating is the profession of ghostwriting. If you can work your way into the industry, it seems like there’s some serious coin to be made – Wikipedia, that towering pillar of truth, claims that the average ghostwriter’s advance is between US$30,000 and $100,000!
It doesn’t seem like this work is limited to celebrity bios, either – popular authors will continue to churn out formulaic novels under their name which are ghostwritten by someone else. I knew that bloody Ann M. Martin was up to something with that constant, vomituous flow of Babysitter’s Club books!
Admission: the Babysitter’s Club series was literary heroin during my childhood, and I was perplexingly oblivious to the female target market. No doubt this played hand-in-hand with my attendance of a 1988 Kylie Minogue concert in forming my sexuality.
There was a particularly fraught moment in my childhood when my family entered an Angus & Robertson bookstore, only to be confronted with a giant display shouting “THE BABYSITTER’S CLUB: AUSTRALIA’S FAVOURITE BOOK SERIES FOR GIRLS!” My fearful suspicions all came crashing around me, and in a moment of genuine, anxious terror, I ushered my entire family away from the display for fear they’d see the hard evidence too: it was a fact, I was obsessed with books for girls, and my parents would never let me read them again if they saw it! Or so I thought. They clearly had some idea, as they were completely happy to let me plaster my bedroom walls with posters of a shirtless Craig McLachlan. Which, strangely, should have steered me away from being gay, but look how things turned out.
But ghostwriting: what an idea. Mostly because if someone asks me what I do for a living, I can shriek “I’M A GHOST!!…… writer”.
Look, I do my very best not to give anyone crap for liking a particular musical artist. Lord knows my own taste is highly suspicious: although I’m primarily a fan of punk, hard rock and metal, it’s no secret that my gym playlist is frequently home to the tackiest pop groups in history. You may laugh, but listening to music that makes you want to run away by instinct… it’s actually not such a bad idea on the treadmill.
That said: recently a band named brokenCYDE came to my attention, and it’s the most engrossingly bad music I’ve come across in some time. Touted as a leading representative of the emerging screamo-crunk genre (which you know is as bad as it sounds) I’ve become so obsessed with their heinousness that I’m completely hypnotised. Cannot tear my eyes away from their stomach-churningly self-aware, humourless, misogynist videos in utter disbelief.
Buzzfeed describes them as what happens “if Insane Clown Posse became a boy band”. In theory, the music’s a crossover between screamo and the tepid kind of drowning-in-Autotune hip-hop-lite infiltrating the Top 40. My take is that it’s a soundtrack to the death knell of irony with built-in screaming-in-horror reactions. Take a look, if you dare, and pay special attention to the impenetrably enigmatic lyrics.
Now, don’t worry: your initial reaction is that this is an incredibly clever parody of everything that’s wrong with this kind of music. That’s what I thought too. Then my next reaction was that this was so bad, it’s surely the product of a marketing team constructed entirely of 50 year olds and up, blindly flailing around as to what “the kids” are into.
That’s when your stomach drops and you realise these little shits are deadly serious. All that misogynistic ranting and screaming (which, by screamo standards, doesn’t even approach anything good) -- they only seem to sing about girls being whores or getting drunk and stoned. The scene in that video where a girl is grabbed by the neck, screamed at, and all she does to react is coquettishly purse her lips as if it’s merely just a saucy bit of foreplay -- it’s unbearable! Even their album title is excruciatingly self-aware: “I’m Not a Fan, But the Kids Like It!”
I’m turning 30 shortly and this band has really landed a signpost in my life -- the moment when top 40 music for “the kids” ceased to be just irritating, and instead became immensely perplexing. One of the band members’ roles is to turn their fucking smoke machine on. This is not a joke -- hell, even the Prodigy’s dancing man seems credible now. The devoted prepubescent fans of the band defend them wildly across the web, claiming that nobody seems to understand the band are all in on one big joke, but it’s one terrible joke indeed.
But here’s the thing: I can’t stop listening to them. It’s the musical equivalent of letting off a reeking fart and not being able to stop yourself from smelling just how bad the product of your own body is. An absolutely fascinating snapshot of where youth culture is at this moment in time.
In anticipation of any comments defending the band, I totally acknowledge musical taste is subjective; it’s just that these guys have just particularly floored me. My only response is to go check out some bands like Enter Shikari who can actually pull off this kind of thing in a more talented, meaningful way -- you may just like them.
But for now, I’ll leave you with more brokenCYDE. If you find the music or video below even slightly distinguishable from the other one above, you’re doing better than I am.
First and foremost, I cannot claim any responsibility whatsoever for tracking down this monstrosity. You’re about to view something which is an existential slap in the face to illustrators everywhere, found by the extremely talented Mutley James. Wherever he found it, I’ve no doubt infants passed away within a 5 metre radius as he carried it home.
Can your neurons possibly compute the sheer contempt for humanity flaunted by THE WORST COMIC IN THE WORLD?
(Click to zoom, if you don’t mind undergoing a simulation
of having cancer injected directly into your urethra)
After originally having my face raped in half by this comic book cover earlier in the week, I can’t stop returning to view it some more. Every inspection reveals even further vomituous details, the likes of which are definitely only found within the pages of edu-comics.
Where do I begin? Blue Flame himself appears to be Helen Mirren on a miscalculated steroids binge. The supporting characters all look like they’ve been grudgingly forced to appear due to a well-hidden contract clause. The dog appears to have been drawn under the influence of barbiturates. Hothead looks like he’s just been forcibly exposed to Ian Hewitson’s genitals. Amber appears to be a corpse desperately inflated with LPG and moments away from bursting point.
Who knows why Blue Flame’s limbs are positioned at such awkwardly akimbo angles, either. It’s as if someone burst into his bedroom while he was engaging in unspeakable depravities with a character named something like Pilot Light, and immediately flew into the stratosphere to escape the scene – which is where we find him now.
What would Blue Flame call his team of sidekicks, anyway? I’m gnawing at my desk in desperate hope that they’re known as Flamers.
Let’s not even consider what’s involved in the “Gas Zone”, lest it’s revealed not as a fascinating world of educational dot-points about natural gas, and instead a highly specific fetish planet.
If you need any proof that this comic actually causes measurable human harm? Halfway through writing this blog post, my mate Ken phoned me after being involved in an accident so I could drive him to hospital. I’M ONTO YOU, BLUE FLAME.
What is that causes fun-l0ving musical artists who don’t take themselves seriously, to suddenly go all solemn and release an album that’s a po-faced platitudinous musical fart in the wind? I’m all for bands exploring their sounds, but is it necessary to be belting out a fun lovin’ rock anthem one moment, only to violently snap backwards like a musical bungee cord is yanking you back to performing an earnest rendition of an eastern European national anthem?
This resentment been brought about by the latest FischerSpooner album, Entertainment. Their prior albums were so much fun, really inventive and quirky electronica. They clearly had a sense of humour, too – their music videos were outrageous, and they shamelessly stamped “BEST SONG EVER” in the artwork to their Emerge single.
That’s why the new album is such a letdown. They used to sound like they’d inhaled a metric tonne of amphetamines directly from Kylie Minogue’s snatch then recorded the resulting party explosion. Now they sound like they’re stuck in a K-hole and are convinced the only method of escape is to desperately stab at a Casio keyboard until they’ve deciphered a secret musical code, which opens a portal back to the conscious world. Shame.
Of course, it’s entirely possible to transform from wacky cartoon band to a musical collective that’s so soberly grave, it makes Coldplay look like poster children for extreme sports. The trick is to execute your metamorphosis before anyone really begins paying attention to you. Some of us haven’t forgotten about you cavorting around in primary-coloured t-shirts while singing about zoo animals in the late 90s, Eskimo Joe.
If you grew up in the country, you’d be familiar with the concept of bizarre hybrid stores. In townships with smaller populations, you’d frequently find stores melding hardware with children’s toys, newsagents with chemists and other such strange combinations.
To prevent a complete homogenisation of our urban shopping strips, I call for a re-institution of such bizarre retail pairings. In fact, just inexplicably knock down the adjoining wall of every second store on your local high street and force everyone to do business together. I’M THE MAYOR OF JEBTOWN, WHAT I SAY GOES!
In my own suburb alone, this would instantly create a massage parlour/electrical repairs store, fill the growing community need for a one-stop-vet-plus-bicycle-shop, not to mention a combined post office/travel agent (actually, that last one could work!)
Any business adjacent to a pub will hit the jackpot – all those smashed patrons will hiccupingly fling their money anywhere under the influence. Praise the retail gods for my newly-dictated pub/hairdressers! Somewhat terrifyingly, this would also create a pub/architect in my own suburb – so don’t go blaming me when you submit a down payment on a home designed to accommodate a dedicated pole-dancing room.
Of course, there are still some chains proudly flying the peculiar retail hybrid flag. Take a leaf out of Priceline’s book: where else can you purchase suppositories and wholesale quantities of lollies in the one basket?
According to a friend of mine, I’m obsessed with referring to humanity’s inevitably doomed future within my blog entries.
In fact, when I happened to catch a TV commercial for “Napisan, now with built in oxy-intelligence!” last night -- my initial reaction was “wow -- that sounds like how Skynet started”. I’m sure Dynamo Sentient isn’t far away from our supermarket shelves, either.
I’d also like to raise my misgivings regarding the recent TV ads for Webjet. Witness:
For a few days, I kept catching that ad while I happened to be passing through our lounge room, and the visuals struck me as more ambiguous than Dannii Minogue’s entire career. That ad could be selling anything: real estate, breakfast cereal, cars… no, apparently it’s a discount flights website.
But there’s one thing that ad appears to be spruiking more than anything else, and it’s Scientology. It’s so apt: the cash zipping away from Earth, as if vomited from a volcano, sarcastically fluttering around just out of your grasp. The vaguely creepy, space-themed visuals. Not to mention the voice-over, which eerily discharges a series of creepily welcoming phrases. It’s as if Baby John Burgess’ body has been possessed by an alien entity, clumsily attempting to convince the population that he would make a remarkable overlord.
The only factor differentiating this ad between Webjet and scientology is a freaking free e-meter reading!
That is, unless senior scientology members have infiltrated Webjet’s management, and this is all quite deliberate. Urban myth persistently suggests that the Pancake Parlour chain also sups from the cup of Xenu, so perhaps there’s some terrifying pancake/air travel plot they’re concocting to indoctrinate us all.
Australia’s well known for having frequently bizarre town names. A mate of mine recently pointed out the town he grew up in on a state map of Victoria, and after taking a closer look, it boggled me. Every surrounding burb sounded like a World of Warcraft level, a Shakespearean insult, or a poo joke inflicted on a town by a tittering, scatology-obsessed local planner.
This resentment been brought about by the latest FischerSpooner album, Entertainment. Their prior albums were so much fun, really inventive and quirky electronica. They clearly had a sense of humour, too – their music videos were outrageous, and they shamelessly stamped “BEST SONG EVER” in the artwork to their Emerge single.
If you grew up in the country, you’d be familiar with the concept of bizarre hybrid stores. In townships with smaller populations, you’d frequently find stores melding hardware with children’s toys, newsagents with chemists and other such strange combinations.
The only factor differentiating this ad between Webjet and scientology is a freaking free e-meter reading!