How to Confuse Drunk Viewers of Sports TV into Gambling Their Money Away

by Jeb on May 19, 2009

After a recent poker night in which I inexplicably did pretty well, I’ve been watching a little televised poker. As far as I can tell, One HD doesn’t have much else to broadcast yet, besides foreign cricket matches and Slamball.

What particularly struck me on this show was seeing an advertisement for a new poker tournament TV series being filmed locally, and inviting anyone to apply. “Any player level welcome – beginner to expert!” the telly trumpeted. As you can imagine, I applied immediately. The only problem was that I was incredibly drunk at the time, so now I’m terrified I may have signed some sort of contract online requiring me to take part whether I like it or not. Considering I’m the kind of newbie to the game who still has to ask “does a flush beat a straight? What about if I have a Draw Four card?” and the like, it doesn’t bode well.

The most prominent advertiser on One HD during these poker shows is a company called PokerStars. If you’re into online gambling, you’ve no doubt heard of them – they’re one of the biggest online poker sites around. My assumption is that their executive board meetings consist mostly of them laughing ominously and endlessly, while conducting mass orgies on top of an endless flood of cash being pumped into the room from a Pacific island with hilariously lax financial laws. What causes their TV advertisement to transcend into farce is the unbelievable message they flash on-screen at the ad’s conclusion:

“PokerStars.net is not a gambling website.”

Now, if you visit PokerStars.net within Australia, this genuinely appears to be the case: you’re presented with a “Oh, we’re all clean, this is all for fun, no money involved!” type website, as you’d expect – how else would they be able to advertise within Australia? Perhaps they really are an above-board corporation and are simply funneling thousands of dollars into providing free for-fun poker online out of their goodness of their heart.

OR NOT! But this is where the genius lies. If you’re drunk, like most of One HD’s viewers probably are, you probably failed to notice they were advertising pokerstars.net rather than pokerstars.com. Therein lies what I’m sure is a gigantic loophole. Although PokerStars.net only ever mentions playing poker for free with no cash involved, PokerStars.com features all sorts of advertising noise about paid online poker.

Maybe you were clever enough to remember the correct website, and visited PokerStars.net anyway. Although they’re correct in stating that “PokerStars.net is not a gambling website”, you’ll find that once you download the client software from the noticed gambling-free website, the software itself is certainly capable of hoovering up your disposable income.

Anyway, I don’t have to worry about all these advertising technicalities – I’m just living in dread that One HD are going to phone me up and demand I audition for their new poker tournament show, probably out of my own pocket. The best I can hope for is that I’m playing against a guy named Ben whose car numberplate also starts with “BEN” – surely a dude like that’s already used up his entire allotment of luck in life?

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There’s a Bloody Good Reason Why CDs were Limited to 74 Minutes in Length

by Jeb on May 16, 2009

cdNow that MP3 downloads are about to supersede CDs completely, there’s an unexpected threat on the horizon. To date, artists have been forced to limit their albums to 74 minutes or less, to fit within the maximum length of a CD.

Albums in MP3 format terrifyingly remove this time restriction. Did you think the recent resurgence of prog rock albums were lengthy enough already? Prepare to have your perceptions of space and time torn open like James Matheson’s mouth!

Trent Reznor’s already hinting at his desires for lengthier formats by releasing Ghosts I-IV as a four disc set. The album concept was based around the final four hours of a box of industrial kitchen knives being kicked around a wretched dystopian wasteland by a bunch of android soccer players, I believe. But no matter what the concept was, it’s clear that he’s secretly aggrieved. You can just tell he wanted to force us to listen to those albums for fifteen hours longer than he was able to.

On the plus side, without a 74-minute limitation; Ministry of Sound compilations could finally provide a dance mix to accommodate the entire six hour length of your manic, sweaty, flail-dancing acid trips. Prog metal albums will progress to day-long odysseys, but will continue to be comprised of six tracks or less.

One thing’s for sure, the Presets sure won’t have any problems filling up a three hour album: they’ll be certain to stick to their formula of repeating a key phrase relentlessly (“I’m here with all of my people!” “Are you the one?” “This boy’s in love!” x 5000), in the vocal style of a disgruntled Nick Cave discovering he’s purchased an unsavoury sandwich.

The Presets actually inspired a possible business idea for me. Since I first saw Moan My IP.com (NSFW) – a site where needy girls moan your IP address in a worrying manner – I figured the Presets must be successful for a reason. Surely there’s also room for The Singer of the Presets Monotonously Repeats Your IP Address.com?

In fact, I’m sure there’s a few other related website ideas that have the potential for success:

  • That Depressing-Sounding Dude from Interpol Injects Heroin and Moans Your IP Address in the Style of a Dirge Song.com
  • Gina G Over-Attempts a Pop Comeback By Perkily Shrieking Your IP Address.com
  • Aphex Twin Transmit Your IP Address by Dropping Ball Bearings in Morse Code Format onto a Microphone.com
  • Daniel Johns Wistfully Penetrates a Trombone and Wails Your IP Address in Falsetto as he Climaxes.com

There’s money in those ideas, surely?

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Australia’s Next Top Lesbian, Mortal Kleaning, and Other Unrealised Game Ideas

by Jeb on May 14, 2009

What ho! This past week I’ve had a visiting interstate friend to entertain. My buddy was a fine house guest, and even spent the better part of 30 minutes running after a rogue mouse we’ve been trying to entrap for weeks. Any boarder who arrives with rodent eradication skills is welcome in Chez Jeb!

Any mate of ours who crashes in our spare bed seems to be obsessed with the enchanted softness of our mattress. The thing is, it’s a cheap-ass nasty Ikea mattress – the most inexpensive one they sold at the time. It’s probably constructed from at least fourteen Chinese children’s souls, but everyone claims they drift off to sleep immediately because it’s the most comfortable thing to sleep on in the world. This could be an ongoing condition of my ladyconfusion, but I’d always figured a heaving pile of breasts would be the most comfortable thing possible to sleep on. If there was such a mattress molded in this concept – say, the Sealy Breastopedic – I’d be replacing my existing mattress stat.

This week I’ve also been joking with my best mate about the ridiculous things which can set off anxiety in us. Since my childhood, I’ve been terrified by the phone ringing (you can imagine what a rip-snorter this was during my call centre years). My gut automatically assumes the worst case scenario before I answer the call. Caller ID has helped me get over it, but when I get an “unknown caller”… I’m always a little hesitant to answer. Even worse is when I let the call drift to voicemail, then I’m forced to make the gut-wrenching call to discover what I’m convinced will be awful news (but is usually just something like our real estate whinging that they want to organise an inspection).

That’s why I was so into the idea of Voice2Text. Your callers leave a voicemail, it’s converted into a SMS, then you receive it! No messy anxiety dialling into my voicemail, it’s there for me to read, BAM. Problem solved.

The problem is that Voice2Text is not quite perfect when it comes to interpreting voices. It does a pretty decent job, but sometimes it’s unintentionally ridiculous. My best mate’s name is Cam, but the service frequently misinterprets his name as “Gam”, amongst other gibberish misspellings when he leaves a message. In the world of Gays™, “GAM” usually interprets to Gay Asian Male… which Cam isn’t, as far as I’m aware. But alongside the other misspellings and acronyms whenever he leaves me voicemail, the resulting SMS usually sounds like a horny Asian guy has left me a message, ready for sweaty manlove involving sexual practices I’ve yet to grapple.

At least my voicemail-based anxiety was eventually rewarded with hilarious SMS. See, there’s a good outcome to everything! I’m sure there’s room for a mental health-based version of The Biggest Loser out there (I’m going to regret writing this, because every time I joke about implausible reality shows on here, they appear a few years later. Stand by – Jules Lund will need a new gig eventually, anyway).

washing-handsIf you’re feeling impatient and can’t wait for a TV-based version of The Biggest Headcase, then prepare for your nipples to crystalise like diamonds! Many months ago I had the misfortune of enduring an episode of Today Tonight. On this particular occasion they were wheeling out the fun ol’ “OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE PEOPLE ARE FREAKS, AREN’T THEY?!” story. They had all the usual black-and-white slow-mo scenes of people washing their hands endlessly (although, to be fair, that’s a fairly permissible response to letting a Today Tonight reporter into your own home).

What piqued my interest was the treatment they were purporting: a computer simulator which plunged OCD victims into a gratingly pixellated world where their trigger fears were catapulted at them relentlessly. It was completely indistinguishable from a bargain bin Super Nintendo game. The psychologists in the story swore black and blue that it all worked perfectly, although I suspect their certifications were on par with, say, one Dr. Mario.

Still, I can’t help but think that could be the next hit arcade machine at Intencity and Timezone. Obsessive Hand Washer IV! Mortal Kleaning! Etc, etc.

Speaking of my mate Cam, it’d be a disservice if I didn’t mention a current life-need of his which has arisen. Throughout his life as a committed homosexualist, he’s never had the pleasure of a lesbian friend. This seems to have become quite the goal for him lately, so given the number of hypothetical gameshows I’ve already mentioned in this post, I’d like to propose Australia’s Next Top Lesbian, connecting Australia’s dykes with the gay dudes who… still can’t quite work out why they need a lesbian mate, but want one anyway.

Given Cam’s vagueness over his actual need for a lesbian, the challenges in Next Top Lesbian will play out in an similarly confusing manner:

  • Design a emoticon which expresses displeasure, but only as a lesbian.
  • Fashion a lesbian flower arrangement using only wrenches and hammers.
  • Compose a perplexingly ambiguous gender-shifting acoustic ballad.
  • Product-placement-heavy pillow fights, featuring Sealy Breastopedic mattresses.

The elimination ceremony will feature… oh, I don’t know, Deborah Hutton symbolically smashing some of her own branded kitchenware on the face of the least popular lesbian of the week. But really, if you’re a lesbian in Melbourne with a similar inexplicable desire to become mates with a 6′8″ dude who will inevitably invert you by your ankles while he’s drunk, go bother him on Twitter!

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Logie Awards 2009 Live Blog

by Jeb on May 3, 2009

logie-award

While a rotten cold has struck me down, self-medicating myself with Codral and bourbon seems like the ultimate combination for live blogging the Logie Awards this evening.

For those international folk unfamiliar with the Logie: it’s not a disease, nor a skateboarding trick. It’s an Australian TV award which has a shockingly similar appearance to a particular brand of male prostate massagers (kind of NSFW, but then again, so is watching the Logies for four hours straight).

6:57 PM – Jeb says: Jeb I’ve roped in my mate Tophe to help out with the Logie blogging tonight. Blogging an entire four hours of this nonsense is not a one-man job.

Only half an hour to go until the dreaded red carpet special. Enduring that rubbish is akin to suffering through half an hour of tortuously bad foreplay in the dark, before having the lights switched onto reveal Dicko is the “stallion” who’s going to be pleasuring you for the next four hours. Then having him fart on your head.

7:20 PM – Tophe says: Tophe So, apparently Channel 9 had to actually FORCE Gretel to do a publicity shot for the Logies. And even then it was in that stupid top hat and with hair extensions. Gretel Killeen appears to believe her hair has Jennifer Aniston levels of mystique.

7:23 PM: Jeb Yup… if the media are to be believed, as soon as Gretel reveals her hairstyle, it’ll be as if the Large Hadron Collider was fired up with a faulty battery. I’m preparing to belt to my nuclear shelter as I type, just in case.

7:27 PM: Tophe I’m so excited I could scream. I’m watching a biopic on Princess Margaret on Bio while I wait. The question is – will my night’s viewing get better or worse?

7:34 PM: Jeb The three crazed hosts of the Red Carpet special are speaking in fast forward and ending every sentence as if it’s a question. I’m having trouble keeping up already. Oh, and now Carson Kressley’s here. That’s not helping matters.

7:35 PM: Tophe GAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!! Carson!! I wasn’t expecting to see anyone who is actually recognised outside of Australia. But considering Queer Eye finished many years ago, his level of celebrity probably now matches Rhonda Burchmore’s, which is perfect.

7:36 PM: Jeb Are Maybelline sponsoring this special again? They keep showing shots of this totem pole dedicated to the patron saint of bleach and tangerine tans, or something.

7:37 PM: Jeb OH! It’s Jules Lund.

7:38 PM: Tophe Lindsay Rodrigues can’t remember to put the microphone in front of the mouth of the person who is speaking at the time! Bless. MTV probably axed TRL just to get rid of her.

7:38 PM: Jeb Kerri-Anne Kennerly has this disarming technique of breaking the fourth wall during interviews. It’s as if she’s barking out implanted commands in morse code via manic laughter, then staring down the barrel of the camera threateningly to activate her sleeper agents.

7:39 PM: Tophe Shelley Craft is wearing a mirkin.

7:41 PM: Jeb The global financial crisis kinda hits home when Red Rooster replaces Maybelline as the sponsor of the red carpet special. More product placement please! I can’t think of anything hotter than Claudia Karvan wolfing down a Rooster Roll at the entrance to Crown.

7:44 PM: Jeb “Lisa McCune… you are… one… big spunk?” Jules Lund splutters, with all the technique of a gay man trying to pick up a girl so his straight mates don’t blow his cover. Then: “Haven’t you done well for yourself?” Rove’s asked with a nod over to Tasma Walton, as if he got a good trade-in on the old model or something.

7:47 PM: Tophe You know with Rove & Tasma, there are old people all over the country hissing with dissatisfaction. Too soon! Too soon!
RUN Annie Lennox, RUN!! YOU ARE TOO GOOD FOR THIS!

7:49 PM: Jeb Natalie Bassingthwaighte just mentioned that her one wish is to “not trip and spill a drink on my dress”. Except she already seems a little tipsy and slurred “dress” out as something sounding like “breasts”. Let’s see how she throws together her choreography later on.

7:50 PM: Tophe Fuck, Lindsay is DYING. Simone Jade? She just left off her entire last name! Simone Jade MacKinnon. I mean, I don’t blame her for forgetting, because I have no idea who she is either. But I have actually worked a red carpet before, and everyone’s name is on A GIANT HONKING LIST IN FRONT OF YOU.

7:51 PM: Jeb Carson Kressley seems to be cosplaying Jeannie Little.

[click to continue…]

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Why Most Kids Will Be Snorting the Output of a PedEgg™ in the Future

by Jeb on May 1, 2009

Everyone seems to have a mate of a mate who’s a drug-based version of the Tasmanian Devil. Someone who runs around with pupils the size of nearby planets, manically shouting about how high they are, before collapsing in a heap mid-sentence then spending five hours staring at the pavement. When they come down, all they can continue talking about are all the drugs they’ve been doing, with a small interlude permitted only for discussion of psytrance.

Adam and I recently caught up with a lovably druggy mate of ours, who was falling over himself to regale us with tales of his latest pharmadventures.

“Everyone’s gonna be doing DMT this year, man,” he declared. “It’s the same stuff that your body releases from a gland if you’re dying – so the whole trip is like a near-death experience. IT’S TOTALLY BANGING.”

“I see,” I nodded with my best attempt at authority, suddenly feeling incredibly lame that I had a beer in my hand instead of a meth vaporiser. “Er, that sounds kind of unlikely, um…”

“No, no, no, no,” he assured me. “It really does have the same properties as this near-death gland. My dealer told me to look it up on Wikipedia, it’s all there!”

This was when everyone in the room collapsed into laughter and applauded the potential genius of our mate’s drug dealer. Near-death properties this drug may have, but what’s to have stopped his dealer performing a quick edit of the Wikipedia page right before he’d begun the conversation? Even as I write this, the Wikipedia entry for DMT also trumpets promises of “intense erotic imagery” and “experiences with perceived alien entities”. SIGN ME UP, DRUG DEALER WITH STRANGELY ELABORATE WRITING SKILLS!

Fortunately, this has given me a grand idea for income should I lose my job at any stage in the near future. First, I’m going to purchase a PedEgg™ (you know, those awful foot filer things that are constantly hawked on infomercials). Have you seen that disgusting money-shot in the TV ad where they dump out almost a kilo’s worth of foot gunk collected in the PedEgg™ onto a table? I’m going to collect that, bag it, create a Wikipedia page for a brand new drug, then sell it to the kind of gullible emo kids who hang out at the last train station of pretty much any train line.

So exactly what outrageous properties will pedgglalanine possess, according to Wikipedia?

  • Will cause viewing Dr Phil to become a dark fun-house experience, parading through your soul
  • Consumption of corn chips will become almost unstoppable
  • Perceived hallucinogenic properties while working out when the Federal Government’s tax bonus payment will hit your postcode

In other words, nothing that actually doesn’t happen in real life anyway, but how are these kids to know?

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Why You Shouldn’t Let Drug Dealers Handle Your Financial Affairs

by Jeb on April 29, 2009

Have you ever noticed how all “addicts” in those “OH GOD DON’T BECOME AN ADDICT OR YOUR FACE WILL BECOME PREGNANT AND YOU’LL IMPLODE” scare campaign ads look exactly the same? It doesn’t even matter what the addiction is – drugs, gambling, chronic masturbation, using Microsoft Publisher to create fuchsia-heavy signage – all the “addict” models have the same look. I present some examples:

As far as I can gather, the basic guidelines to any anti-addiction advertising are:

  • Take one genuinely attractive model
  • Have them run through a paintball field without any protection (yes – even the gambling guy – look at his face! Those cards are BRUISING him)
  • Remove at least one upper-body item of clothing
  • Force-feed an entire case of West Coast Cooler to the model
  • If there’s any toilet seats nearby, apply Yogo

Then there’s the facial expressions. Precisely what is the photographer demanding of these folk? “Pretend you’ve just received a Five for Fighting album for Christmas!” from the looks of things.

More than anything else, I’m wondering exactly how a model finds themselves stuck in a niche that only allows them to find work as a troubled addict. It’s a skill, to be certain, but how transferable is it beyond appearing as someone crying in a Kings of Leon music video or something along those lines? Think these things through, you bloody models, or you’ll end up as a drug-dealing-accountant in no time!

What, you say? Drug-dealing-accountant? Well, as tax time draws nearer, I feel it’s my responsibility to offer my single piece of accounting advice to you all.

DO. NOT. LET. DRUG. DEALERS. HANDLE. YOUR. FINANCIAL. AFFAIRS.

No, really. Let me explain.

My partner, Adam, freelances for a living. Not disclosing if it’s as a jiggly dancer or an art director, I’ll leave that up to you to discern. But the point is that he needed someone to handle the financial affairs for his personal business. Having long been scarred by my high school accounting teacher’s intestinal gas problems (profit and loss statements are now synonymous with spicy red curry to me), I threw my hands in the air like I didn’t fiscally care.

“You need to let a professional handle all that guff,” I protested. So we did. A mate of a mate of a mate knew a mate who was an accountant. Sorted. He had a business card and seemed professional enough, so off we went.

Around eight months down the track, I began thinking it was rather strange that Adam’s quarterly BAS statements had stopped turning up in our mailbox, but figured the accountant knew what he was doing. After querying this with Adam, he remarked something along the lines that he didn’t want to be bothered by BAS anyway – after all, “BAS” sounded like a cheap form of amphetamines manufactured in a shed at Hopper’s Crossing. This comment would eventually prove to be a form of bollock-crushing foresight.

You see, as time went on, I’m pretty sure we came to believe this accountant was so hyper-efficient that he was gallantly protecting us from a formidable land of Tax Office sadism. We barely heard a peep from him, just some insistent reassurance that everything was being taken care of. Probably our own fault for not looking into things a bit closer, but we really didn’t think Adam’s business affairs were that complicated.

Out of the blue, one day Adam received a phone call from the Federal Police. “I didn’t mean to drag that gigantic TV from the 1970s down the street with me! I was drunk and it looked like it was left out as rubbish!” he immediately protested.

“No, er.. that’s not what we’re calling about,” the cop on the end of the phone muttered. “Look, I just wanted to check if this particular fella we’ve arrested happens to be your accountant.”

This is when it transpired that our accountant had defrauded the Tax Office to the tune of almost $50,000 under Adam’s business, via GST fraud. After some research, we eventually discovered the guy hadn’t been a certified practicing accountant for some time, and generally considered it much more fun to both deal and use meth for a living. The total amount he’d managed to defraud, via his various sucker clients, approached $1 million dollars. Dude, I know you’re a fucking meth addict and all, but you must have some idea when to stop before you get noticed?

This whole shambles cost us an awful lot in accountant’s fees to get the debt written off (that’s real accountants, not injecting-your-GST-payments-up-their arm accountants). To this day, every time we so much as breathe in an ATO public servant’s direction who glances at Adam’s account, the whole thing comes undone and they determine that we owe them $50,000 again. It’s a pain in the arse and we hardly did anything wrong, except be a little ignorant of the fact that our accountant was a massive drug dealer across Melbourne’s western suburbs.

So choose your accountant wisely. Where possible, separate your accountant from your drug dealer, too. And if you’re a model, ensure you expand your skillset.

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Trapdance

by Jeb on April 26, 2009

My boyfriend has recently been inflicting an abhorrent form of mental warfare. Whenever he’s doing his absolute best to shit me, out comes this slow rumble:

“Heads… shoulders… knees and toes…. knees… and… toes….”

That’s all it takes for the goddamn song to be stuck in my head all day. Just like any good torturer (he has a background in hotel security, so I’m sure that skill came into play at some point) he will begin repeating the song, over and over, faster and faster. In the end, he’s usually running around me in circles singing the song at quadruple-speed, flicking the lights on and off until everything starts to resemble the tunnel scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

At first, I was retaliating by singing the song back at him in Japanese. It’s one of the few things I can actually remember from my high school classes – we used it to remember names of body parts. In the end, though, that ended up making things even worse – now Adam can torment me with the lyrics in two languages.

My perfect revenge came into play earlier this week.

After he jokingly jabbed an air-punch in my direction for using up all the milk, I quickly stabbed back at him at him with my own fist. Which caused him, by boxer’s reflex, to quickly jab back. Back and forth this went a few more times, then I was able to claim victory.

“Suck shit,” I bellowed with victory. “I just tricked you into dancing. You’ve been TRAPDANCED!”

So now our household has progressed from merely implanting torturous nursery rhymes into each other’s heads, to attempting to trapdance each other. My favourite trapdancing tactics to trick Adam into dancing thus far include:

  • That silly shuffle when someone’s in the hallway and you’re both trying to get past each other – then revealing it was deliberate, and I’ve trapdanced him
  • Pretending to pass him something, but continually stepping away, forcing him to step closer, then exploding into dance around him – TRAPDANCE! (Note: I recommend against this method when passing a cup of coffee)
  • Holding up Adam’s boxing pads and moving around with a suspicious rhythm while he boxes, forcing him to dance around to hit them – boxing trapdance!

I give you only a couple of years before the concept of trapdancing turns into a sequel to Flashdance for the gen-Y flash mob age.

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Big Bother

by Jeb on April 22, 2009

big-brotherReading about the recent shenanigans of Big Brother’s Mike Goldman has got me thinking about an old job I used to have. Many, many years ago I was a “talent” manager for the evicted housemates on Big Brother. On paper, that was supposed to involve high-profile endorsement deals and media appearances; but usually consisted of organising a string of nightclub appearances in Geelong, Wollongong, Fremantle and the like.

Enough years have passed that most sensible people don’t care about the old BB housemates of the past, so I can probably start writing about the more amusing things which happened during my time at that job. Without naming names, these are some of my favourites…

One particularly dislodged individual had a habit of arriving to the office and trying to snort coke behind an upright clipboard. Apparently, this was an impenetrable force-field of invisibility. Usually, she’d thrust her head up afterwards like a meerkat and scream out something like “JEB! I’VE GOT AN IDEA, WE NEED TO SELL BARBIE DOLLS IN MY IMAGE, EXCEPT DRESSED LIKE LEATHER DOMINATRIXES”.

Then there was the bloke who managed to score an appearance in a fairly major advertising campaign. After phoning him to find out how it went, he mentioned that he was asked to get progressively more naked as the photo shoot went on. Thinking he meant he’d taken his shirt off, I assured him they wouldn’t run anything too saucy. This was when he offhandedly mentioned the photographer had asked him to take off his pants so photos of his arse could be taken. Then some shots of him hiding his junk with just his hands. All while nobody else was present. Inexplicably, he didn’t find any of this too bothersome, even though he’d been promised beforehand the shots would be rather innocent. The naughty shots never appeared in the ads, although I suspect they remain archived away on the external hard drive of some pervy photographer.

There were only two housemates I genuinely liked. One bloke was trying to use his new-found fame for good, and promote something near and dear to his heart. He was a good bloke and was willing to relatively compromise the sillier stuff he was being asked to do for the sake of his ultimate dream. Plus, I had a major boner for him and he tended to mysteriously get more nightclub gigs than the other housemates. I HAVE NO IDEA WHY. Anyway, back in the day, all the housemates were asked to perform in a dreadful Christmas pantomime for charity on TV – he rightfully resisted, because he was being ask to do some incredibly humilating things. There’s nothing to help you understand why people in the media industry are cunts when a TV employee is screaming “SO HOW WILL IT LOOK WHEN WE EXPOSE YOU AS THE HOUSEMATE WHO HATES STARVING CHILDREN?” at a terrified, quivering bloke who just doesn’t want to be seen on TV braying in a two-man donkey suit.

There’s also the housemate who was kind enough to fill me in on what was being discussed during those scenes on Up Late where the camera mysteriously cut away to static footage of the backyard. “Oh, you know,” he nodded earnestly. “Mostly what drugs we’d been doing right before we entered the house, our favourite fuck stories, nothing too heavy.”

One particularly painful housemate had a weary habit of bursting into tears at the drop of a pin, when I eventually came to realise it was a highly manipulative emotional tool they could turn on in the switch of a button. When it was used with such frequency that they’d turn on the waterworks just to score a free Bacardi Breezer (then have the gall to wail even louder when the supplied beverage wasn’t mango-flavoured), you began to see through it all a little. I can’t be too harsh on this particular person, though – this was a long time ago, and they seem to have developed into a much saner individual.

As time went by, we eventually began ending the contracts of housemates we could no longer find work for. Or, in the case of one individual, were simply too much trouble to even bother with. I think my favourite phrase spat out by my co-worker in one of these situations was: “Look – at this stage, Australia can’t see you as anything other than a prostitute. The best thing you can do to continue making money for yourself is to open a brothel in your name.”

There was one particular incident which sticks in my mind above all others, though. One of the lesser-known (and much less likable) housemates was really giving a career in the media a red-hot go. They were well-known for being an employee of a particular company while BB was on air. By coincidence, this particular company fell into a very public and very controversial bankruptcy shortly after she was evicted from the show. “Eureka!” I thought – here’s her chance to get into the media, seeing as she was virtually a celebrity employee of the company. This would have her face all over the papers and on TV, without question.

So I went ahead and organised a string of media appearances for her. Frankly, I surprised myself with how much interest there was in her, and things really looked like they were about to turn around.

The scheduled date for all these interviews? September 11, 2001. Not to discount the awful events of that day, but is there any surer sign from the universe that you should be rethinking your career?

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Backdraft 2: Revenge of the Electric Blanket

by Jeb on April 21, 2009

electric-blanketI’m one of those kids who grew up in the fearless 80s with both an electric blanket and an occasional bed-wetting problem. Hey, I turned out okay! My parents even refused to replace my Target-brand electric blanket when it began exposing raw wires, assuring me “it’ll be right”.

Perhaps it’s the childhood comfort of climbing into a toasty warm bed that causes me to yearn for an electric blanket in the growing chill of Melbourne recently. That said, I do have an established history of nodding off while an electric blanket roars away at its highest possible setting, causing me to wake five kilograms lighter due to drowning in sweat. (Maybe I’ve just stumbled on the next weight loss sensation to rival FatZap).

Recently I’ve been gently suggesting to Adam that an electric blanket could be the ideal solution to our freezing bedroom. Have you ever seen that final scene from Backdraft? That’s precisely what he predicts will happen to our entire suburb if we ever use an electric blanket. As far as he’s concerned, they’re the Saddam Hussein of the bedroom.

(Struggling to suppress a diversion into the possibilities of what Saddam Hussein’s Bedroom would involve as a porno… struggling… struggling… suppressed!)

Even my suggestion that I purchase a single-bed electric blanket, and only use it on my side of the bed, didn’t fly. I was trying to be a dude and take all the heat for the team! But no, he won’t hear a word of it. Even trying to convince him of the merits of my horizontal electric blanket concept didn’t impress (it’d make an ideal foot warmer for those too terrified to fully commit to an electric blanket).

This is when he snapped and spat that I should go buy some of those battery powered electric socks if I wanted to stay warm.

THIS CAUSED MY MIND TO IMPLODE WITH VOLCANIC LEVELS OF AMAZEMENT. HOW HAVE I NOT HEARD OF ELECTRIC SOCKS?!

Yet they exist! Now I’m off and running with the possibilities of all-over battery-powered clothing for every winter occasion. Electric undies? Toasty! Electric jeans? Cozy! Electric beanie? Snug! Electric puffa jacket? Still looks as stupid as it did in 1999, but even cozier and warm than it was before!

Mark my words – soon we’ll think nothing of slinging a car battery around in our backpack to keep our electrical-powered clothing deliciously warm all day.

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Paranoid Adenoid

by Jeb on April 15, 2009

All my life, I’ve had problems with my nose. It constantly runs, intermittently feels like my nostrils’ breathing passages have sealed over, and often talk like I’ve got my nose pinched. People think I’m just doing my best impression of Placebo’s Brian Molko most of the time.

Sexy, I know.

adenoidsBut it’s just something I’ve learnt to live with. Carrying around a handkerchief at all times certainly does make me feel like a grandpa, but there’s absolutely no telling when my nose is going to flood like a faucet. Has it happened during a job interview? ABSOLUTELY! Does it happen when I’m trying to do something romantic and it spoils the moment? YOU BET! Did it happen when I was dancing with Andrew W.K. on stage at a concert? YES, BUT HIS SWEAT WENT ALL OVER ME SO NOBODY NOTICED!

You get the idea. Sheerly random. If you ever saw You Can’t Do That On Television, it’s kinda like that – except with my nose, and I haven’t yet worked the trigger phrase for the sliming.

But it’s not just the snot (I know, you’re probably getting right horny reading all this, but there’s a reason I’m explaining it all). The nasal passage issue is more embarrassing than you may think. Rather quickly, my nasal passages can almost completely seal over for no reason, and I’m forced to start mouth-breathing, which makes me look like nothing other than a complete doofus. This can put me in some tricky situations – for example, when I was recently having a massage, and was lying face-up with the masseuse not too far away from my face. Rather than start breathing through my mouth up in her biz-ness, I thought it’d be an immeasurably better idea to hold my breath until she moved away. So here I am, turning cyanotic while I wait for her to focus her attention elsewhere on my body… and she doesn’t. She just stays there with little knowledge of what lies ahead.

What felt like hours passed, and I couldn’t keep it in my lungs any longer. “PWWWAAAAAAAAHHH!” I exploded with a gasp that blew the hair away from her face. Try explaining that one away to being ticklish during a massage.

There’s also the issue of my speech. When my nose starts suffering the symptoms above, I plain can’t speak clearly. Imagine having a peg on your nose while you speak. Now imagine Kyle Sandilands sitting on it while you speak. That’s more or less what it’s like – it just turns me into a mumbling nub. Which, for someone who worked in community radio in their yoof, is fairly hilarious. “You just heard Rip It Up by 28 Days, and coming up nerrrrxxt weeev geet fofioff smurrg snnaiief”.

Truth be told, most people had that reaction listening to 28 Days back in the day, but you understand the point I’m trying to make, right?

This week, a workmate recently proclaims loud and clear that I’ve got enlarged adenoids. That’s my problem. HOT, I think. That sounds super sexy, enlarged baby, oh yeah! Except it turns out it’s rather horrible, if easily fixed.

Perhaps what vexes and bugs me is that most medical websites talk about this problem presenting itself in children. My behaviour can be infantile at the best of times, but really, universe? This is what I get?

Many websites I’ve looked at (HEY, THE INTERNET IS TOTALLY A MEDICAL DOCTOR, OKAY) also mention that it’s common for the tonsils to be removed at the same time as your adenoids are fixed. Which, by the way, is equally as bad: as far as I can tell, they drill out the outer layers of your adenoids. Mmm-mmm.

The only way I can see out of this mess that avoids an operation is drugs. Either enough amyl nitrate to burn out the next few layers of my nostrils, or enough coke to burn everything out. I may lose my septum during the process, but that’s the price to pay.

If anyone else is suffering these symptoms, don’t be a knob like I was and wait until you’re almost 30 before you do something about it. You can live snot-free and speak clearly too! At least, I hope so. I’ll be right shitty if I’ve still got the symptoms after getting half of my head ripped out of my nostrils…

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