Researchers in Ethiopia have unearthed the fossils of a 10 million year old ape. Something that old can normally only be identified by carbon dating. But htis time the experts had a little help. Close to the apes fossil they found a copy of a RolingStones record. Incredible. I didn't even know that they used to like the Rolling Stones in Ethiopia.
It’s funny how horns mean different things in different countries. In New Zealand if you beep your horn at another car it generally means ‘fuck you’. Sometimes it can mean ‘hi’ or ‘bye’. But 9 times out of 10 it means ‘fuck you’.
In Abu Dhabi there is a lot more horn action, but a lot less agro. The horn means many things in the UAE’s capital. ‘My taxi is empty, anyone want a ride?’ ‘How dare you slow down to turn into a side street’, ‘the light went green .0005 seconds ago get moving’. Horn use here isn’t personal. It’s simply a communication tool. Then you go to Cairo and horn use there is just out of control. I haven’t heard the Egyptian national anthem, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s played on car horns. It got me thinking about a way government’s could make more money. Horn credits. You get 1 minute’s worth of free horn time a year when you register your car and then you have to pay for extra. Obvioulsy people with novelty horns would get more credits as recognition for their efforts to do something a little different.
So there I am in the lounge aged about 6, Lego all over the floor. And this was back in the day when Lego was just blocks. If you wanted to build a castle or space ship you had to build it out of blocks. Like actually think how to make it. Not like the lame, fully formed Lego they sell now where it is all done for you.
But that’s not what this rant is about.
So my box of Lego is all over the floor. The lounge looks like a bombsite. But I decide I want to go off and do some painting. Up I hop, but just as I am about to leave the room mum busts me with the old ‘Darling. If you’re finished with the Lego how about you tidy it away.’ And that was one of the things my mum taught me as a kid. Another thing she told me was that if I ate my crusts my hair would go curly. But that turned out to be bullshit. But the tidying up thing made sense.
If you make a mess you are only going to have to come back and tidy it up later, or live in the mess you’ve created and probably piss other people off at the same time. Either way you make trouble for yourself. So parents teach their kids to finish what they start or tidy up. Now the coalition of the willing didn’t heed this advice when they left the job half done in Afghanistan and ran off to invade Iraq. Pity, because now they have created two giant messes. It’s all too much for the Poms. They’re packing up and leaving Iraq. Job done. Well, not done actually. Things are a hell of a lot worse for the people in southeastern Iraq. The mission was to bring democracy and stability to them. They had Saddam and stability now they have democracy and chaos. Wonder which they prefer? The Poms will find it easier to bail on the Yanks now because they have a new PM. It’s like me tipping the Lego all over the floor then leaving it for my brother to play with. When it all gets too much he just walks out telling mum that he wasn’t really responsible for the mess because he didn’t make it. The yanks will pull the same stunt when the Democrats get their arses into the White Houser.
Of course what my brother and me really needed was an older stupider brother. One who would do whatever we said. That way when the Lego mess needed to be looked after we could have got him to come in a take care of it. Not tidy it up because he wouldn’t be clever enough to do that. Just kind of watch over it. Monitor the mess if you will. Me and brother didn’t have anyone like that. But the British and the US do. It’s called the United Nations.
So a guy I worked with had this book. When I say ‘a guy I work with’ I actually mean that. I’m not going to go into the details of the book there are plenty of sites on the interweb you can go to for that kind of stuff. But the chapter headings made me laugh.
The Menthol Marinade
The Sicilian Corkscrew
The Cotton Spritzer
The Standing Wrap
Parad-ice
Walking The Wall
Mint Two-lip
The Steaming Diamond
The Dutch Drawbridge
Rescuing The Captain
The Tasmanian Jack-knife
Showergasm
Chinese Field Goal
Baby Elephant Trunks
The Indian Rocking Horse
The Venus Butterfly
Cyrano's Triangle
The Flickering Candle
Oriental Shoe Shine
The Double "V"
The Grapes Of Rapture
So the naked baby from Nirvana’s Nevermind album is 17 now. His name is Elden and he lives in LA and works part time in a juice bar. Got me thinking about another person who was famous for being a naked kid in a photo. That poor girl during the Vietnam war who was snapped running down the road naked tyring to get away from the napalm. Imagine if they hooked up, became a celebrity couple and had babies. Man, they would be like THE celebrity couple. I bet their kid would get to play with Brad an Angelina’s kids. And I bet Annie Lebowitz would offer to take a photo of their kid in the nude for free. But it would be a tasteful nude. If they hooked up right now in LA they would totally eclipse Posh and Becks. It would be a match made in photographic heaven. I might ring that plonker from American Idol who manages Posh and Becks Simon whatshisname. If anyone can make it happen it's him.
So Mattel are the latest company to recall their Chinese made toys because of safety concerns. Lead paint and little magnets that kids could swallow apparently.
I have had a few run ins with the fun police who control the Chinese toy manufacturing safety standards.
Production on my Freddy Mercury squeeze doll was shit down because the authorities found out we were filing them with real mercury.
I had the same problem with content of my George W Bush squeeze dolls. Apparently bullshit is considered a health hazard. Really? Bush has been dishing it out to the American public for years and no one has died…….. Oh hang on.
Maybe I wouldn’t have been so concerned except that it was in a travel agency. And you would think they of all people would have a rough idea of what we look like. Check out the big knob in the Tasman sea. That must be a tourist from Oz coming over for a holiday.
Remember that guy in your class at school when you were about 10 or 11 who was already hairy. He was the one who hit puberty years ahead of everyone else. He looked like a 40 year old in a school uniform. They were easy to spot and I think that is why the schools would share them out. There was usually only one per year. And oddly they always seemed to have names that matched their hairiness.
The guy in my class was called Mark. The hairy dude at my friend’s school was called Vaughn. I was talking about this with another mate recently and he nodded knowingly, then confided to me that in his class, he was that guy. Gary has never really struck me as a hairy guy, but then I haven’t seen him with his shirt off.
Incidentally, how long to you think a bloke can be in a relationship before he asks his girlfriend to wax his back? Gary says the answer is one day short of two weeks and his girlfriend agrees.
But hair is a funny thing. Especially for blokes. You get it too soon and everyone notices it. You lose it to soon and everyone spots that as well. I knew this guy called Glenn whose hairline was receding before he even left college. I don’t see the problem with hair loss. If you’re losing it cut your losses. Well don’t cut, shave. NOTHING, is more tragic than a guy living in denial about his receding hair. The ones that have the bald patch on top but try to make up for it with longer whips round the edges. Or worse. The guy who is losing it all over but compensates by growing a little tuft at the front. That way, when he looks in the mirror all he sees is hair.
Don’t these men have anyone in their lives to say ‘BRIAN YOU SAD SACK. SHAVE YOUR FRICKENN HEAD!
The worst example of this hair loss denial. The follicly challenged granddaddy of them all, is the comb over. Thank god it seems to be dying out. Who was the genius that came up with that? ‘Sir you appear to have lost all your hair on top of your head so I suggest you grow the few hairs you have left on one side, really long. Then we can give you this waxy sludge to slick it down over your shiny dome. This will give the impression of a full head of hair.” BOLLOCKS! It looks stupid. People that have comb overs should be taxed extra. Or made to all live together so they are constantly being reminded how silly they look.
The amount of money spent on hair restoring products and fake hair implies that having a full head of hair is important to many men. Especially retired Australasian cricket players for some reason. Of all the fake hair option the hair plugs seem like the most ridiculous. One of my PE teachers had them and whenever he bent down to pick up a medicine ball you could cope a look at the work. Hundreds of little plugs of brown hair all perfectly spaced in neat rows. If you got close it was a bit like the view out the window of a plane over a pine plantation. Must have cost a bomb. Inserting 743 hair plugs would be a mind numbingly boring job. You would want to make sure you got paid loads for doing that. So what make a guy go to all that hassle and expense? Some people feel that a full head of hair implies virility or power. If that’s true how come the Marines have shaved heads? And kung Fu monks. Which Arnold Schwarzenegger do you think could kick more arse. Connan the Barbarian Arnie? Or Predator Arnie? Apparently they reckon Americans wouldn’t vote for a bald President. But what about Captain Jean Luc Picard? If it is ok to have a bald guy in charge of a space ship that boldly goes where no man with or without hair has gone before, then surely a chrome dome can run the USA.
Hair loss affects more and more people, as they get older. On the head anyway. But is it lost or just redirected? Because it seems to start growing out your nose and ears. I found a hair in my ear last year. I plucked that sucker straight out and immediately made ear hair security checks part of my monthly beauty regime. Since then a couple of others have tried to establish themselves and that’s got me worried. My granddad had hairy ears. Real hairy. They looked like long blonde pubes and they grew in clumps. I’m surprised he didn’t get grandma to plat them. If he had ever wanted to do the comb over he could have used his blonde ear hair. He would have looked like a really wrinkly elf from Lord of the rings. As a kid I couldn’t work out why he didn’t do anything about them. Why no one had told him. Maybe they tried but he could hear them because of the tangled mass of ear pubes stuffed in his head. But what worries me now is he might have started off like I have. Shocked and horrified and determined to rip those suckers out. But maybe they just kept on coming. Maybe he was eventually overwhelmed like those pommy soldiers in Zulu Dawn. Maybe he realised he could only fight on one front and decided to direct all his resources to the nasal area which looked pretty good right to the end. Or maybe he just didn’t give a toss. Old people can pretty much do what they want when it comes to hair. Some give up the fight others take the fight to the street. If a 16-year-old girl dyes her hair purple she’s a renegade. If a 76 year old does it, she’s Aunty Betty from Wanganui. And she is probably on her way home to her husband Albert, to platt his ear pubes.
If I were in charge of making US flags I would make them out of flameproof material in the hope that would stop people in foreign countries burning them in the streets. Another option might be for the US to dump a few states. Or make some states share stars. That would cut down on the size of the flag. Folllowing that line of thnking the other rule I would introduce is that
the American people can only elect US presidents that are really really skinny. Like super model skinny. That way, when the flag burners go to the next level and build effigys of the US president to burn in the street they would end up with really small ones that burn so fast no one had time to film them. That way the American people wouldn't have to go through the torment of seeing a likeness of their elected leader burning.
Sure the effigy builders could make their models a little bigger, but when they carried it out into the street everyone would say ‘Who’s that meant to be?’
‘It is the President of USA.’ answers the proud guy who was voted most likely to end up, as a professional effigy builder at his primary school.
‘But it doesn’t look anything like him.’
That is like the ultimate insult you can give to a professionl effigy builder. And it would probably be enough tp put him off the business for good. It would be like meeting a person that owns one of the rehab centres that Lindsay Lohan has used ( and there are a few now) and saying ‘Oh, you looked after Lindsay. You must do good work.’
Flame proof flags and skinny presidents. These two things could really help the US with their image overseas. Of course the other option would be for America to stop using the bullshit pretence of ‘Bringing freedom to the world’ as an excuse to interfere with other nations business.
Might be time to make a bulk order of that flame proof material and get all the presidential hopefuls on the grapefruit diet. Or maybe they could all start living on a diet of vodka and cocaine. That keeps Lindsay pretty slim.
Bean bags. What a brilliant invention. You don’t have to be a F1 driver to have a seat that fits the contours of your body. Just plonk your arse down (doesn’t matter what size) in a beanbags.
Bean bags. Inspired by the hacky sacks left behind by the giants that used to live in earth before us. I made a beanbag at school when I was 12. It was sewing class, which like cooking class was compulsory. First I made a pencil case. What could be easier? Two bits of material and a zip. Then I felt I was ready to move to the next level. A beanbag. 3 or 4 bits of material and a slightly longer zip. Of course the name beanbag can be a little miss leading. They are actually full of thousands and thousands and thousands of little polystyrene balls. But polystyrene Ball Bags just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Plus a bean bag looks a bit like a large nut sack and if it was called a something ball bag that would reinforce that image and probably put off a large number of buyers.
Ever unzip the beanbag and plunge your hand deep inside its recesses. You had to do it when mum wasn’t around casue if she saw you she would go off her head about the balls that would spill out and get on the floor. Remember that program All Creatures Great and Small about the English vet? It was [pretty crap but back then there were only two channels to watch anyway. But the from that show that stuck with me was when James Harriet the vet had to stick his hand up the cows arse right to his elbow. I reckon when he did that he would have been trying to pretend his arm was in a beanbag. Probably a nice tweed one.
One night at my friend Grant’s house when we were about 17 I was in his bathroom and noticed the bath was full of polystyrene balls. They had a flash red leather beanbag but Grants mum had sent it away to repairs. If you ever get the chance can I recommend you try getting into a bath full of polystyrene balls in your undies…….
So I was reminiscing about beanbags the other night with my friend Jeremy. He’s a base player so you have to understand that you can’t stretch the conversation to far. But the J mesiter had a cracker of an idea. Bean bags for the third world. Think about it. Whenever you see footage of starving people in refugee camps they are always standing around. They need somewhere to sit and if you gave them chairs they would probably pull them apart make a trolley, load up the family and piss off. They need bean bags. Now I know what you’re thinking. ‘A base player came up with this idea?’ I swear its true. And it gets better. Jeremy’s brain wave was to fill the beanbags with real beans so that when they get hungry. Which would probably be all the time. They can unzip the bag and whip out some beans and cook up a feed. This is how we are going to save the world people. Smart thinking for the rhythm section and shit loads of beanbags. We could even go one step further. Get Heniz involved and make Baked Beanbags. You would want to take the beans out of the can first though, cause if you put the cans in the beanbag it would be bloody uncomfortable and starving or not no one is going to be compfy in a lumpy beanbag.
Saddam has gone now. But he lives on with one of histories great lines.
‘The Mother of all battles’
The battle – Gulf War1, never lived up to the hype. Kind of like a Don King fight. But the line lived on through the 90’s and into the 21st century. And I bet Saddam kicked himself or had some of his advisors shot for letting that opportunity slip away. He should have secured the rights to that little puppy. Then he wouldn’t have had to worry about the royalties from his romance novels to make him his millions. (I assume that is what paid for all his palaces and not using his position as leader of Iraq for his own personal financial gain).
Imagine the pressure Saddam was under in 2003. With the invasion of Iraq looming the world’s media waited eagerly for his new creation. But he couldn’t repeat the magic. Like Dirty Dancing 2 it just never managed to live up to the hype.
Mind you George W didn’t do so good either - Mission Accomplished? Not only was it bullshit it just didn’t have that extra zing that makes you want to adapt it for your own person use. Now Saddam’s line has turned up in all sorts of different places. We’ve had,
The Mother of all hurricanes, The Mother of all budgets, The Mother of all ride on lawn mower sales. And for the lucky few, the line can be made to work even harder.
The Mother of all Mothers day buffets
The mother of all Mother Fuckers (that could be the line for a Steven Segal film. One where he plays an ex special forces commando retired to a small town who has to use all his deadly skills to confront the rich baddie who runs the town using a bunch of check shirt, trucker cap wearing farmhands with m16’s. In other words the plot for every Segal movie)
Saddam is gone, but his line lives on. He set the standard. Not only for the amount of gold fixtures you should have in your bathroom, but also the kind of tag line you take into battle. Perhaps when the White House extracts itself from the mother of all foreign invasion fuck ups they will take the time to acknowledge that and ensure that never again do the American people have to settle for a ‘Mission Accomplished’.
You remember Bobby Brown. He had some hits in the late 80’s and since then has concentrated on hits on the crack pipe. Well he must have enough money left to hire the world’s greatest PR people because you have to be good to come up with the kind of story they put out last week. Bobby announced to the world that Osama Bin Laden had at some stage, wanted him dead so he could marry his ex missus, Whitney Houston. Now I know what you’re thinking. This was timed to come out with Bobby’s tour of Australia as a way of generating publicity and letting Australia’s crack dealers know he is on the way. No way. No one could make this kind of shit up. And once you stop to think about it, it seems so obvious.
Stuck in a cave, somewhere on the Afghan/ Pakistan border, Bin laden only has his dialysis machine and a pile of Whitney Houston Cd’s to keep him company. It stands to reason that he would put the war on terror on hold to focus his amorous attentions on a burnt out crack addict. It probably wasn’t Whitney’s music that put her on Osama’s lust radar. It would have been her riveting performance in the cinematic masterpiece ‘Bodyguard’.
If George W Bush was a smarter man (as opposed to an ex alchoholic, drug taking spoilt rich kid who was installed as a puppet president to give the illusion of democracy so George seniors cronies can push through their own agenda) he would use Whitney to lure Osama out of hiding. Get her to announce a big concert in Islamabad. Wait till she is halfway through ‘I will always love you’ then nuke the stadium. Mind you, that could lead to some American casualties. There are bound to be a few entertainment press in the crowd as well as Whitney’s drug rehab buddy and her crack dealer. It might be easier just to take out the corporate boxes with a few cruise missiles. Al Queda are bond to have a corporate box. Osama would be right at home up there. It would be just like being in his cave but with a better view and a fully stocked bar.
