My new favourite pastime.

When you are killed in a round of Gears of War multiplayer, you are given the convenient option of ghosting around the place and taking killersweet action shots of your teammates and the scenery. You can then upload them to your windows live account and if you are especially smart, you can caption them with your own witty retorts.

These are their stories.

Earth Hour 2009: Who Passed?

For the record, i didn't even know earth hour existed until it was well and truly over. It's quite safe to say that while everyone was 'saving the planet' i was playing x-box with all the lights on in the house, four lamps, an oven, two televisions, my laptop, an i-pod charger, a stereo and an electronic water purifying device. Plus, i'm house sitting for a couple of friends at the moment and was doing all of that at their houses as well.
There's always next year right?

Where i failed though, millions succeeded. Earth hour 2009 was a raging success and an A+ on the report card of a currently failing planet.
Not everybody passed though. Having seen photographic evidence of the attempts, i've gone through and highlighted everyone's mistakes for more awareness next year.











To the eighty cities that competed, good try and better luck next year!

Things you used to be able to do, but can't anymore.

Completely mispronounce the word 'vagina'.

The existence of this mystical piece of anatomy wasn't brought to my attention until i hit about eight or nine, but please believe that when it did, me and my friends had no fucking idea how to say it.

Pah-jyn-a.
Bah-jyn-a.
Ber-jam-a.

The above was normally followed by incessant children's laughter and grounds for peeing inside pants. We didn't care though, as soon as we learnt 'cunt' in year 7 it was all on for young and old.

Be politically incorrect.

Disabled people. Differences in race/sexuality. Animals, cancer patients, fat people, ugly people. No-one is safe from a child's lack of intelligence/abundance of ignorance and if you tried address a disabled person as a 'wheeler' now, it's pretty safe to say that you may become one yourself.

Wipe your nose with the sleeve of your jumper.

Tissue paper is for two things. The removal of manure from your eternal sunshine and crybabies. When you were young and your nose was making waterfalls, the sleeve of your jumper was the only option and funnily enough, the most realistic. If anyone contested, you could either flick it at them, or paint their face.
Fun Fact: After a few days of abuse the mucus build-up would become so solid that you could build an entire go-kart using only your sleeve and some nails.

Fiddle in public.

Ever see kids just hanging out with their hands down their pants? Nothing sinister, just some quick exploration while mum pays for the shopping? If you got caught, it didn't matter because you didn't understand and as soon as the coast was clear, your hand was straight back down there. What i want to know is, why is is a federal offence if we do it post-childhood? The goal still remains, the treasure is in the same spot it always was, but for some reason the love got lost along the way and now instead of getting a literal slap on the wrist, you get done for conspiring to expose yourself to schoolgirls.

Fail.

Failure as a child is a natural occurrence. Fail at running races, fail at being smart, fail at not crying when you drop your ice-cream. It is an integral part of life's intricate learning process and a good way to find out if you're going to become a junkie or not. Fail as a child and you're met with praise, forgiveness and that whole "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again" attitude that makes no sense whatsoever.
Fail now and it's all over.

In fact, if you fail in public nowadays, it's pretty much a guarantee that someone is going to see it, capture it, post it on the internet and show the world how much of a Faily Mcfailstein you are.



Where's my fucking $950 at?

Retail space of the week

Good customer service is like the dinosaur age, you know it existed once but no-one has actually seen proof with their own eyes.
Having worked in retail for a healthy slice of my occupational life, i know this all too well. I also know that whenever i walk into a retail space that i don't work at, i feel like spitting on the staff members for even offering me the inconvenience of what they define as 'service'. Know-nothings, overzealous teens with aspirations of irritation, bitter middle-aged women and badly dressed men with superiority complexes are but a small example of the employees i have to deal with when i want to buy something. It sucks, but unfortunately it's always going to be like that.

Luckily, Gametraders takes a big digital dump on tradition with their A-grade service and super-friendly attitudes towards closet nerds like myself. Ever since Hi-tech world Innaloo closed down, i've been forced to chop and change my local game emporium on a monthly basis according to where i recieve the best service or whichever store stocks the best games first. I used to shop at EB, until i realised that they hate me for being a customer and JB Hi-Fi is way too impersonal for someone that might want to stand around and reminisce about the good old days for protracted time periods. I found gametraders by chance in the city and as soon as i had walked in there my preconceptions of all gaming retail spaces were swiftly taken out the back, shot and buried next to the vacant hole that used to occupy my need for deadstock Super Nintendo games.
I win.

Seriously though, Winter is approaching and you're going to need video games as much as homeless people need blankets. While Gametraders doesn't have the greatest selection of blankets in town (they could if they wanted to), they do stock a plethora of games for every platform since the NES era at super reasonable prices and they'll even offer you credit for any old games you've become to snobby to play. Plus, they have more toys and assorted gaming paraphenalia than that other place does.
Also, this is probably the only post i'll ever do that doesn't relate to stuff that i hate, so feel free to marinate in it for a while, but don't get used to it. Just like i won't get used to getting good customer service anywhere else.

/shameless plug.

Hey buddy! How the fuck does that work?

New segment announcement! It's called 'Hey buddy! How the fuck does that work?' and it's about to molest your world in ways you never thought possible.
Basically, i take something that i assume no-one knows anything about and i explain the shit out of it! Even a baby could understand what i'm about to throw down, yo!

Today's victim: That shitty little 'news to gossip' bar atop the ninemsn quick update jimmy when you sign into messenger.


Can't define between actual news that doesn't matter or gossip that doesn't matter? Fuck that! This bar does it all for you! It features two functions, News and Goss, both of which will blow your mind with their accuracy in regards to their names.

"But guy, i'm sure there's only two options right? Surely there can't be any way of differentiating between news and gossip on a bar this small?" i hear you collectively chant.

Pfft! Whatever! Each marking features articles of varying importance and happily directs you to the parts you find more interesting! Don't like boring news that may actually affect you one day and prevent you from selling your children? Take that marker all the way to goss baby!

So next time you're wondering whether or not you'd like to know which douchebag sportstar has soiled himself in public or the legal limit of water you can store in that bomb shelter you've built, ninemsn has all the answers and they'd never dream of just putting rugby scores in between the polar extremes of 'news' and 'goss'.

People that hang around at parties and do the dishes for props piss me off.

Women, you're ok. Dishes are your specialty.
But if there are any men that hang around until the end of the party to do the dishes, you need to submit your balls to the nearest garbage depository and call it a day.
First of all, you're messing with the basic itinerary of a party. You are a guest, therefore it is tradition that you sit there, eat hamburgers, drink beer and make derogatory comments about women, animals, your digestive process and the digestive processes of others, lying politicians, lesser men and gays. The rule here is: In exchange for your compliance and entertainment, the host of the party gets to talk about how good a host they were for the next year. Their claims of excellence will include the fact that they kept their guests intoxicated, fed them a nice meal incorporating the five food groups and pavlova and DID THE DISHES AT THE END OF IT, possibly yapping on about the private lives of their guests in a constructively criticizing but totally bitchy manner whilst doing so.

We all know why you do the dishes as well. You want everyone to see how much of a nice guy you are. You think that maybe if everyone sees how handy you are to have around the house, maybe that girl that just broke up with her boyfriend will sidle up next to you and start drying said dishes, breaking the ice for some meaningful conversation and a possible chance at intercourse. Tell me i'm wrong.
Problem is though, that girl thinks you're a bitch. She left half an hour ago with the drunk guy wreaking of burgers because you were inside doing the dishes as if you were getting paid for it.

In fact, she is probably getting pumped right now as you scrub those bowls.

No-one is going to remember you, the hosts are upset because they can't claim back all of their duties on prop insurance and you ruined the party with you pious, do-gooder, goody-two-shoes approach to life.

I hope you drown in detergent one day. I'm not sure how it will happen, but it will be ironic and it will teach you a lesson.

Quick thought.

That five food groups table on the side of cereal boxes. You know, apples, fish, bread, meat, eat all this shit and you'll probably live a while so long as you don't get aids or cancer or assassinated? Yeah, that one.

Is that a pyramid scheme?

Were the slavemasters back in the ancient Egyptian era the originators of this scheme?

"Psst, hey, peasant, come here. It'd be totally stellar if you stacked all this cinderblock in a pyramid formation. The pharaoh would be monolith psyched and he'll give you a whole heap of those Egyptian girls with the cool eyes."

An offer a peasant couldn't refuse perhaps? The problem was, the peasants didn't end up getting chicks and grapes, they got whipped and killed in that order, possibly in reverse. So effectively, the pyramids weren't named after their shape, they were named after the scheme that got them there, which is also shaped like a pyramid.
Hence, the creation of the pyramid scheme and me learning it myself.

Click below for a detailed and structured synopsis:


Next week, Fascism.

"Before we change the world, we gotta change ourselves".....pffft.

For those that don't know, "for those that don't know" is by far the most pretentious and amateur way to start a review or article on anything. I see it everywhere. Cookbooks, blurbs on the back of cookbooks, music reviews and shitty editorials to name a few, because naming them all would take longer than desired.
It's like opening a paragraph with "I know this stuff, and you don't, that's why you're reading what i've written".

Really?

People are reading what you know because you know more than the people that are reading it?

Thanks for summarizing the basic concept of journalism and insulting my intelligence in the same opening sentence, now the only way i want your review to end is your death via the old pen-through-the-nosebone-puncture-the-old-brain method. Fucking douchebag incompetent writing fuck.

And what's with me starting blogs with "so, i was doing this the other day"? What the fuck? That's how a parent approaches their child about finding pornography under their bed, dancing around the truth with pleasantries like "well, well, well" and "so, i was cleaning your room the other day" until the child gets so anxious and freaked out that he/she admits to it out of fear and cowardice. It's wack, i'm not going to do it anymore, but at least i'm not getting paid by a company that distributes to the mass populous and starting my pieces with "for those that don't already know".

Let's get back to business though. The Notorious film was unbelievable. I'll admit that I went in there with a cup full of haterade and a box of salty preconceptions due to previous rapper-cum-moviestar disappointments '8 Mile' and that movie with 50 Cent in it, but to compare 'Notorious' to those two is like comparing every other review of this movie to my review; there's no competition.

The cast was extremely well chosen, although Tupac could have looked a little more psychotic. Like, the guy who played him did a pretty good job and you'd be hard pushed to find someone that could play that role to a tee, i just personally think that his role could have been much more effective played by presence and the word-of-mouth of the characters to avoid any missteps in capturing the essence of the most hard out rapper ever. Still, kudos to the guy that played him anyway. Gold stars and all that.

The primary concern for this film's success was how well Gravy would be able to play the big guy. Having gained notoriety for looking and sounding like a man that called himself 'Notorious', Gravy's aspirations of becoming an actual rapper never left the ground. Funnily enough, i think Gravy played Biggie better than Biggie could have played Biggie. Everything from his hobbled walk, his grunt-heavy breathing, voice and general laid back demeanor was so fine tuned that it not only did the late great justice but also solidified Gravy's status as an actor. Where things could have gone totally wrong, Gravy's personification of every rapper's favourite rapper was what saved this movie from a straight to dvd release and a $9.99 price tag.

The rest of the characters were played so true to their originals that i had to sit back and remember that i wasn't watching a live documentary. From Lil Kim's hoodrat sex appeal to Lil Cease's position as Biggie's weed carrier and Diddy's over-management and diddy-bopping, every secondary role was played to perfection, or as close to perfection as humanly possible when re-enacting such colourful characters. In fact, there were points in the movie where i kind of wished the whole thing was centered around Lil Kim, possibly because she was really good at getting undressed and rapping.

We all know the story and how fucking cool it is, so i won't even breach that, and aside from the odd obligatory corny catchphrase, the dialogue was impeccable. The cinematography wasn't groundbreaking, but the few environmentally focused shots definitely captured the essence of the East vs. West beef era as a whole and made for some nice transitions between all the drama. The primary shooting scenes weren't blown out of proportion and had me at the edge of my seat in the lead-up, even though i know what happened a million times over and the soundtrack was a culmination of everyone's favourite tracks played at just the right time.

In the end though, everyone got what they came to see, B.I.G in all his (almost) glory, spitting phenomenal verses, toting .44's, shifting crack in the streets, macking every bitch that caught his attention and basically being the reason a-lot of people still listen to hip-hop today. I'm not going to lie to you when i noticed that everyone looked a whole lot more gangster when they came out of the cinema and the general consensus was that Jay-z should have at least made a cameo, but more importantly, hip-hop today could definitely use another Biggie Smalls. Here is a photo of him being the greatest.



Also:

*Hey America, could you maybe send some copies of the movie over when it comes out? We kind of look like assholes when we're premiering the move years after it comes out over there.

*Sorry to the actors for not actually using your real names. I was going to guess them but i figured it would've gotten real awkward for the ones that i genuinely didn't know (aka all of them).

*Biggie > Pac

The week that was...

Chris Brown goes to put his hands in his pocket, but accidentally beats the shit out of his girlfriend.

So unless you've been living under a rock surrounded by soundproof foam, underwater in the bermuda triangle wearing nothing but a blindfold, you probably heard about this. My stance on the matter is irrelevant and unless you were in the car with them at the point of impact, yours is as well. With that said, my stance on the matter is completely relevant because A). I met them and B). I took photos of them and wrote a now famous piece of literature on the experience. Was it their chance encounter with me that started a series of events that lead to Chris' unusual massage techniques on that fateful evening? Am i responsible?

No i'm not you morons! Regardless though, i've gone to the trouble of building a timeline that could help the case along so we can put this whole situation behind us.

November 11 2008. 2.30pm
I meet Rihanna and Chris Brown at my workplace because the place i work is cooler than everywhere else according to people that are considered cool by the majority of the world's population. Me and Chris discuss the pros and cons of being amazing people, Rihanna browses the store.

November 11 2008. 2.35pm
Having thrown down mighty with Chris five minutes prior, i approach him for a photo while he is buying lots of sunglasses. He declines with "not right now". All previous throwdowns are forgotten and i go back to being bitter about celebrities.

November 11 2008. 2.45pm
Having bought everything in the store (or thereabouts) Rihanna approaches the till and i request that i take photos of her holding the bags that display the name of our shop on either side for promotional and personal use only. She becomes overwhelmed with excitement at my invitation and i tell her to calm down because she's scaring the customers. Did happen.

November 11 2008. 2.50pm
Chris gets in on the photo because Rihanna looked like she really enjoyed having her picture taken by me, which she was. I post it on the internet and write a short story about it and every Chris Brown and Rihanna fansite forum member gets on my nuts for around 30 hours. My web traffic goes through the roof and i realise why it was all meant to happen.

February 8 2009.
Chris Brown offers Rihanna the hand of god. Possibly due to an argument over who looked better in the photo that i took. Chris claims the steroids made him do it and now they're getting married/are already married. The world actually stops for a solid minute and for the three weeks following the incident, news reporters, gossip columnists, fail bloggers and a bunch of other shit-kickers are all made to sign contracts. These contracts state that no news article shall be given airtime unless they include the words Chris Brown, Rihanna and 'Beat'. Michael Jackson announces a comeback tour, a 5000 year old iceman is uncovered (not related to Michael Jackson's comeback tour) and a man murders his girlfriend because he became embarassed after she rejected his proposal for marriage on live television.
None of that matters though, Chris Brown beat Rihanna in a car, so that is what we will talk about and that is what is important.

And i STILL haven't heard any of their music.

The Senagalian Sidestep.

Who'd have thought walking could be so difficult? Not me that's for sure, and i'm good at everything.

It all started out so innocently as well. Walking down one of the many barren streets in the City, i-pod earphone in one ear, i-pod earphone in the other and everything seemed to be in cruise control. I decided let down my social intolerance barrier in light of my current complacency.

Big mistake.

Halfway down the street i see a young man walking towards me at a very brisk pace. He had a look on his face of pure certainty of his destination but his stride gave me the complete opposite impression. Being the upstanding citizen and avoider of all unfair scenarios that i am, i kept left. Then, as if to try and bend the fabric of space, time and walkway rules, this chump starts looking at his i-pod as he approaches my radius. We're about twenty metres apart at this stage and i'm not completely concerned, just a little more alert to the implications that his ignorance could bring forward.

Ten metres and he's still looking at his i-pod. We're head to head now, almost in an unplanned game of 'chicken', only he's not as privy as i am to the awkwardness this situation could create. What do i do? Do i call out to him and tell him to stay in his lane? Do i just keep walking and hope he looks up and realises what a chump he's being and moves in the nick of time? Who's nick anyway? And why does he control time? Do i just stop in my tracks, roll my eyes and guess which way he's going to dodge and act accordingly?
Too late. Our paths have crossed and the dance off has begun.

I go left, he does the same. I know what's happening, i've been through this before. I don't move at the second phase, but neither does he. It's at this point i realise I'm dealing with a valedictorian in awkwardness. One, two seconds now. I feel like a crowd is going to circle us any moment and start chanting "FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!", because that's what it looks like. I step right and he follows suit. Who follows a suit?

That's it. Before this goes any further, i'm going to have to bow out. I take an even bigger sidestep to the right and give him the "just fucking go past me please" arm gesture, similar to how a concierge shows a guest to a room, except he wants to kill them when they go to sleep that night. He accepts my invite, much to my surprise as this fascist was obviously on some kind of awkwardness payroll the way he was carrying on. I had made a new worst enemy, and i knew it wasn't over between us.

The whole ordeal lasted about half an hour and i was actually approached by several talent scouts afterwards because they liked the way i moved and were under the impression i was a professional dancer. I swiftly declined their offers and got the fuck out of there, hoping that i never have to go through such hardship again.