In which I lose sleep over being called an idiot on Andrew Bolt's blog.

How can it have come to this? I only wanted to join in.... to take a small place amongst the intellectual giants who come to sit in awe of the greatest living Australian...

Instead I have been cruelly shot down. PWNED, if you will¹.

I feel so small. How did I C You know I wasn't one of the idiots form some block of 200,000 he'd counted already? How was he even able to work that out? That's just the thing about people over at Bolt's blog I guess..... they really are just that friggin smart.


¹Although, just quietly, and on a serious note to Mick. I would much rather that some random group of people dumb enough to take Andrew Bolt seriously on any issue at all think I am a 'soft touch' than to know with dread certainty in my more honest and quiet moments, that I am both a racist and a coward. I should also probably just say that it's been pointed out to me that 111 is the number of boats, not people. Just so you know I realise that now and that I still don't care (it's true, I'm afraid I don't usually bother to read Andrew Bolt's posts very carefully and this was no exception).

Kites, the Remix: Or in which I wish to beat my brother to death with a rubber pigeon.

Henry, Henry, Henry. You are a bastard. I've realised for a while that ANU film group reviews have to be read through the lens that they've gone out of their way to track down someone in their ranks who either actually likes the film in question, or is at least willing to pretend they did. I've always expected a little more from you, though. You once wrote this review of Synecdoche, New York. Thanks for that. I mean, who knows? I might have otherwise seen it unprepared or something.

The point being, I've come to think of you as a reviewer I can trust. When you wrote this review of this piece of shite, though Henry, you broke that trust. You broke it hard. You gave me the impression that the movie could conceivably be enjoyed on some level. You made me think it was possible to get to the end of it without wanting to beat to death every last person who was involved in the making of the movie. You lied, man. You robbed me of 90 minutes of my life. You even have the balls to open as follows:

I'm not sure it was necessary to edit down the Bollywood original (which, at 130 minutes, was already remarkably short by Bollywood standards) by 40 minutes.

You aren't? You weren't possibly swayed by the remaining 90 minutes still actually feeling like about, oh, 3 long hours being taken to tell some puerile story you could have done justice to in 5 minutes, after which the story-teller would probably be forced to apologise for injecting that kind of stupid into your head? Only you wouldn't accept that apology. I mean, you would say you had for form's sake, but over the years it would knaw at you and, one morning when you wake up dreaming once again of this stupid tale and convincing yourself that it was the only way to drive it out of your head, you'd track the storyteller down and torture them to death. You'd then offer the story in your own defense at trial (which would see you released on humanitarian grounds), only to end up infecting others with its banal odiousness, thus starting the same vicious cycle again and possibly bringing about the end of civilization as we know it!  

Am I exaggerating? Well, yes. But I hope I have, at least, prevented anyone reading this from actually thinking for even a second that seeing Kites, the Remix is an idea they should actually entertain. This is to say, Henry, that I just did what should have been your job for you.

I swear what they must have actually done with this movie is take their initial stupid idea for a movie then defaulted to a six year old to actually flesh the story out. We'll call this six year old 'Chuckie'.

Producer: O.K. so, how are our two lovers re-united?

Chuckie: Um, so Jay is, like scuba diving in this awesome coral reef, when he sees her swim right past him without recognizing him .... and, and, she looks kind of like a mermaid and stuff. Then, when they drive back to the house of the family they're both marrying into they, like meet up again.

Producer: Hmm... O.K. I guess that might work..... yeah, they both make independent trips to the same coral reef on day-trips from LAS VEGAS, NEVADA!?!?!?!

Chuckie: Yeah. And then after they go out on a date the night before her wedding to the brother of his fiance, she gets found out.... and, and, there's a fight and stuff. And we finish the scene with her fiance, who is like the brother of his fiance, like firing a gun right at Jay! Jay's the name of our hero, by the way. Awesome, right?


Producer: Ummm... O.K.

Chuckie: And then we get some flash-backs and shit, and we replay the scene, only this time it's like 'hey, I changed my mind, there are no gunshots at all, Natasha hits her fiance over the head with a bottle instead!'


Producer: Right..... I mean, it seems like they're going on the run rather early here, Chucky. How do we pad-out the remaining 75 minutes?

Chuckie: With, like awesome chase scenes and stuff! Like, they'll be running away from all these police cars, and it'll be like 'Oh no, they're caught!' ... but, but then they'll see these .... HOT AIR BALOONS! And, like, they'll jump onto a rope from their car and climb up it and get away!


Producer: O.K.... so I guess that'll work. I mean, a brightly coloured, slow-moving hot air balloon would be a really difficult thing for the police to follow......

Chuckie: Yeah. And they'll get into these other cool chases and then get to Mexico and get married. And it'll be really funny, cause earlier when he asks how to say 'I love you' in Spanish, she'll teach him to say 'I'm shitting my pants' instead ... which will be a really funny thing for him to say instead most of the time, cause it has the word 'shit' in it, lol, but it'll be extra special funny when he says it at the wedding.


Producer: And then her evil ex-fiance will catch up with them?

Chuckie: Yeah, and there'll be this big awesome chase scene and he'll get shot..... and, and she'll put him in a train and we won't see what happens to her. And, and we won't find out until he goes back to Las Vegas after getting all better 'cause this poor Mexican family performs surgery on him.


Producer: I see. What does happen to her?

Chuckie: Oh, it's really sad! They chase her to a remote cliff , and she drives off of it.

Producer: Wow.


Chuckie: Yeah, and then he like finds out after running away from a gunfight after being saved by Jamal, who is like the family's servant who becomes their friend because they're awesome, only Jamal's been shot and he whispers it to Jay before he dies. Sad, hey?

Producer: Yeah....

Chuckie: And then Jay will be all, like, hard-arse and he'll have an uzi and, and, when all the bad men catch up to him he'll be, like, shooting them ALL in slow motion and it'll look really cool 'cause it'll be raining really heavily.... it rains a LOT in this movie, by the way. Rain's dramatic. It says so right here.

Producer: in Las Vegas?

Chuckie: Yeah. And things get even sadder, too, 'cause, then Jay's ex-fiance appears behind him, cause she was following him all along or something and, like shoots him in the back, crying. We feel a little sorry for her, too, 'cause she's been used like a doormat. So Jay doesn't shoot her back, and she doesn't shoot him again, she just, like, cries as he staggers off.

Producer: Wow, so what happens, then?

Chuckie: Um, so he drives to the cliff where Natasha died and he jumps off it.

Producer: O.K.... so he drives back to Mexico with a bullet in his back and...wait, how did he even know where the cliff was? Did Jamal whisper the GPS co-ordinates to him when he was dying or something?

Chuckie: Maybe... Umm, it's like a really sad ending, though, hey?


Producer:  I guess.... assuming the audience doesn't feel like they would have gladly pushed Jay off the cliff themselves 5 minutes into the movie... Look, Chuckie, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. Here's a suitcase full of money. You make that movie.


Chuckie: Awesome.

News Just In: Andrew Bolt is trying to kill Bob Brown.

ZOMG! See for yourselves! How many times have we heard this tired old story? Two-bit hack outs murderous plot by evil communist harpy, hack gets rare brain-wave and turns the device against gay eco-fascist?


When will society learn!?!?!?!?!??!?!

Australian Ride to Work Day: you are hereby cordially invited to go fuck yourself.

Currently being in my 3rd week of riding to work daily, I'm sure you can imagine my sense of joy at learning that, on the 13th of October, there was to be a free breakfast at work for anyone who rode in on the day in question. On the off-chance you can't, well, take a look at this and work from there. I have never gotten over my student-days joy at free .... anything¹. A free breakfast for riding to work? A ha ha HA!!  I was going to do it anyway you fools!!!!!!!

My joy, however, was short-lived. Well, actually, it wasn't in the sense that I'd learned of this like 3 weeks ago. In the sense that this makes for a good, solid opening to a paragraph about how everything went sour ... and also in the sense that I could possibly have been even more delirious with joy, like, the night before or something .... we can all agree it was. You see, it was raining pretty heavily this morning. Finding myself suddenly thrust into the ranks of those whose decision to ride may actually be determined by the provision of a free breakfast, but being the complete out-and-out hard-arse you all know me to be, I bravely donned my Gore-Tex^TM and made my way to work through near² to impossible odds after only umming and ahing for around 20 minutes. Like people who went to 'Nam and stuff... I'm afraid I'm rather reluctant to talk about the horrors I then experienced on the way to work. I am prepared, however, to talk about the horrors that greeted me when I got there. You see...

There was no fucking breakfast left!

Well, O.K., so there was in the sense that there was some fruit and a little cereal lying around amidst people packing up and stuff. After stepping out of a much-needed (to wash all the mud and blood and shit off) shower, and arriving at 9:20 to an 8:30-9:30 breakfast, I expect a little more than a few hairy pieces of fruit and the dregs of the cereal, though, you bastards. I expect danishes. I expect coffee. I expect sausages, hash browns and young, nubile serving-folk looking to anoint my tired feet.

Congratulations 'National Ride to Work Day', you just earned a place on my hit-list.


¹Hmmm. Perhaps a disclaimer is in order here. Anyone now thinking to send my joy circuits into overload by offering me a free kick in the testicles is advised to stop being such a pedantic smart-arse.


²Assuming a rather broad definition of 'nearness'.....

News just in: Dumb Opinion Piece Published on The Drum.

Acknowledging that the above probably reads like a headline from The Onion, allow me to say that I am nonetheless shocked. Why, oh why can't Clementine Ford and Virginia Haussegger unite and fight against the common enemy, The People's Front of Judea, I hear you ask?

Well, in a sense, they can. Virginia Haussegger's article (abridged from a speech given in a debate) is a thoughtful enough kick in the pants to western feminism regarding it's (I think) cowardly cultural relativism and the resulting moral crisis she claims it finds itself in. Enter Clementine Ford, who says 'Waaaa! All this nasty stuff not our fault! We do plenty! P.S. I'd like to subtly hint that people who agreed with Hausegger are all Islamophobes, if I may', thereby neatly demonstrating Haussegger's point presenting a devastating rebuttal.

Ford's was, I think, the most mind-bogglingly silly piece of writing I have seen on the Drum. This is a highly competitive category.

A few rants at points of consideration for Ford, in the highly unlikely event she reads this blog:

1. Considering how often in subsequent comments you show frustration at people misconstruing comments about males perpetrating violence against women as meaning all men are violent towards women, you might like to take a moment to reflect on how ridiculous it is for you to take any criticism of Islam or Middle Eastern culture as an indication that the speaker thinks all Muslims are inherently evil. There is nothing at all inherently wrong with cultural criticism or even vilification, and I would submit that Islam, as it is currently practiced today, is quite profoundly misogynistic. I think that is bad. I would also like to submit that any culture that accepts honour-killing as a part of it is a culture that contains some profoundly shit elements. You might also remember certain evil acts of vilification regarding such cultural practices as disallowing women the vote and maintaining that a woman's place is in the home. I know, hey? They shock me too.
2. If you title an article Stop blaming feminists for the world's problems, you might like to consider indicating or referencing a single, solitary instance of someone actually blaming feminists for at least one problem in the world. Haussegger sure as shit didn't. She did seem to imply that systematic gross human rights abuses against women should be of special interest to those who would consider themselves feminists. I, too, was shocked by this scandalous assertion.
3. You write "Her argument is so fundamentally flawed that it's difficult to know where to begin." Might I suggest you begin with something she actually fucking said.

In any case, Clementine, on the off-chance that I'm currently coming off as too reasonable or sane or something I thought I might just sign off as follows:

Clementine, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, Clementine? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a woman who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.