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I think Guy Sebastian would be a millionaire by now.
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Glen Campbell’s let himself go a bit.
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But then in America I found this product called Ex-Lax which does the same thing.
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Why can’t Channel Ten put together a weekly show of highlights of Bert Newton hosting GMA?
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There’s a new one that Olivia Newton-John has just opened.
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You can’t beat a good old bottle of Johnson’s Baby Oil.
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I like a good massage. That’s about it.
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I just can’t understand knockers of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music.
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It’s only lousy if you don’t like the music.
Had enough? No? Destroy your brAne with the all-consuming black hole of arse that is the Nightline web site.
Filed under: Stupidity by Ben.H
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“Phelps Watch” can be found elsewhere
Tuesday 15 March 2005
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Specifically, over at Karma to Burn.
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Leisure Town is back online!
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Rollertrain has the best opening line for a blog entry this month, if not all year. “After watching really gross porn all morning, I started thinking about all the things I’ve put into my ass.” And it just gets better.
Filed under: Stupidity by Ben.H
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Filler by Proxy avalanche! Gratuitous exclamations!
Tuesday 8 March 2005
New frontiers in legal testimony!
She later told police the gunman was a good-looking, fit man about six foot tall and aged no more than 25. She told the court the gunman reminded her of a young Bert Newton.
Crap drawings!
But I bet you can’t do better.
But I bet you can’t do better.
Bad Toon Rising is a collection of drawings of well-known cartoon characters produced by amateur artists entirely from memory and without any reference materials whatsoever. We can all picture what Mickey Mouse or the Pink Panther look like in our minds, but getting that image down on paper is another matter! Never mind, we think that some of the worst drawings are the best.
Random image from someone else’s blog!
In Korea, expect a traditional breakfast like this:
Nick Hornby: About A Young Boy.It was Monday. I was at home listening to my 10 inch original of Turquoise’s “Tales of Flossie Fillet” on my stereo. It reminded me of when I first heard that Arsenal had signed John Rape from Spartak Lowestoft. Suddenly there was a knock at the door. I wasn’t expecting anyone, as I’m a sad bald cunt with only football memories and crap ELO records for friends. Also, my son is some sort of spastic and he can’t knock on doors. He can tap them, though; he’s got a headstick which John Cougar Mellencamp signed. I hope he doesnt snap that headstick. It’s got sentimental value now. Anyway, it was a young boy. About 10, I guess. And black like my favourite black singer. You won’t have heard of him, but trust me he’s very black.Anyway, this boy appeared to be bleeding heavily. I went to phone an ambulance but then I saw this boy’s vein spurting blood all over my floor – some of the blood was trickling towards my pile of old bus tickets. Nooooo! I kicked the little bastard out to die on the stairwell. Then I turned the volume up on the stereo and waited for the police.
Filed under: Filler By Proxy, Stupidity by Ben.H
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Small Man Syndrome
Monday 28 February 2005
Jesus, if it’s not Peter Phelps it’s Johnny Farnham thrashing about in his tiny, inflatable wading pool of insular celebrity in the misbegotten belief that you can endear yourself to the world by acting like an egomaniacal tool.
A week ago the prime minister of New Zealand suggested that an ageing pop singer warbling “Sadie the Cleaning Lady” (or even “Pressure Down”) might not be the most appropriate way to commemorate the slaughter of ANZACs at Gallipoli this year. Not only did Johnny F. take it personally, but he’s still whingeing about it:
I won’t say she is a real dog. I wouldn’t say that about my mother-in-law … and she is.
Charming bloke; fragile sense of self-worth. I suppose we shd be grateful he didn’t call her a dopey, hairy-backed sheila. Or at least grateful if we weren’t at his gig on the weekend, judging by the playlist (posted after the article above). “Hold On I’m Coming”? “It’s A Long Way To The Top”? Brrrr!
Now to show how topical and up-to-date I am here’s a photie of Michael Moore or somebody from last year’s Oscar ceremony.
My apologies to anyone who may have read the title and was worried I was going to post something about the Fred Durst sex tape.
Filed under: Music, Stupidity by Ben.H
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In lieu of a real post, another fleeting glimpse into my psyche through something I said in a dream (and there were at least five whole rolls of it.)
Sunday 27 February 2005
“Oh no, the cat’s eaten all the toilet paper.”
Filed under: Stupidity by Ben.H
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Firing off neurons that have lain dormant in your brain since October
Wednesday 23 February 2005
I haven’t felt the need to add to the justified sneering at the contrived and cynical abortion “debate” that just happened to spontaneously pop up at the end of the silly season. But now that whatever point was to be made has been lost in a welter of jokes about discovering your dad is really the Mad Monk, one burning question has been left unresolved.
What the hell happened to Family First?
These were the guys we were told had Changed Australia Forever by every political columnist staring down a deadline and three more years of status quo. Isn’t this type of issue supposed to be their bread and butter? So many hacks were telling us a few months ago how influential FF is going to be, and now not one of them can be bothered hunting down one of the happyclappers for a soundbite. According to their website they haven’t said boo since December. Did the entire party take their Christmas vacation in Aceh? Or is it possible that their good luck last time at the polls was just a teensy bit overstated?
Filed under: Journalism, Stupidity by Ben.H
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What the hell is wrong with me?
Wednesday 16 February 2005
I just can’t stop thinking about Peter Phelps. How does he do it? It must be his extreme versatility that dazzles me. One day he’s running for the Senate, and the next he’s soliciting public humiliation for being a self-confessed lardarse on 3rd-rate TV filler.
It reminds me of Ita Buttrose: one day she’s named in all seriousness as a special advisor to the would-be Prime Minister John Hewson, and the next she’s happily cuddling bog rolls in TV ads. I would also add Gough Whitlam spruiking pasta sauce, but so many decades of being swaddled in sycophancy have extinguished his desire for credibility.
Filed under: Stupidity, Television by Ben.H
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Phelps Watch: Are you sitting down?
Wednesday 16 February 2005
On the positive side, his career has soared to the dizzy heights of Sunday evening reality TV, where those greedy stupid scriptwriters can’t hog all the credit for his character development.
(Thanks to TV-watching bloggers linked above. Reception of Channel Nine under the bed is fuzzy at the best of times.)
Filed under: Stupidity, Television by Ben.H
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South Australian Icons: A Rich, Noble Heritage
Wednesday 16 February 2005
Many weeks ago when I was a pretentious young nerdboy I went around telling people I was a writer. Invariably they would ask if I was working on the Great Australian Novel, and with equal predictability I would answer that I was writing the Great Adelaide Novel. Drunken ranting ensued.
For a while I kept a collection of the incidences when some person, thing or abstract concept with vaguely Australian connection was publicly referred to as an ‘ICON’. This task took up far too much time and effort, so I tried restricting it to South Australian icons. This, however, also felt like too much work, so I just googled for the phrase and found that National Trust has been awarding lucky South Australian doodads officially-recognised iconicity annually since 2001. Prepare to be enlightened as you meet some of the South Australian Heritage Icons of 2002.
Police Greys. Did you know that the South Australian police force have recruited aliens to do their dirty work? Neither did I, but it would explain a lot about Adelaide: kids mysteriously disappearing en masse, mutilated bodies popping up in the darndest places, law lecturers floating face-down in the Torrens. Then I read a bit further and found that by ‘police greys’ they mean horses. Apparently all police horses in SA are grey. I never noticed this, but then I’m not a thirteen year-old girl and so don’t notice horses much.
Police Greys. Did you know that the South Australian police force have recruited aliens to do their dirty work? Neither did I, but it would explain a lot about Adelaide: kids mysteriously disappearing en masse, mutilated bodies popping up in the darndest places, law lecturers floating face-down in the Torrens. Then I read a bit further and found that by ‘police greys’ they mean horses. Apparently all police horses in SA are grey. I never noticed this, but then I’m not a thirteen year-old girl and so don’t notice horses much.
SA police like grey horses “for night visibility”, which is unique somehow. They don’t say if the unique part is that all the horses are grey, or that Adelaide has yet to discover the secret of artificial light.
The horses are used for “crowd control, patrols, searches & ceremonial events” (my emphasis). So if you read a news report about some kids from Adelaide getting busted outside the Big Day Out with sugarcubes in their pockets, you know that Sgt. Dobbin was on their case.
The Stump-Jump Fucking Plough. Along with the Hills Fucking Hoist and the Victa Fucking Mower, the stump-jump fucking plough is one of the only three things ever invented by Australians. Every year thousands of school children are taught about Australian ingenuity, and every time these are the only three fucking things the teacher can think of, because they are the only three fucking things he/she was taught.
Every year dozens of politicians waste precious oxygen about Australia forging ahead into the 20th (sic) century with a strong manufacturing sector and, when casting around for examples of Australian technical innovation since The War, will quickly give up and just mention the stump-jump fucking plough again.
In ever case the result is the same. Everybody walks away thinking (a) “I hate the stump-jump fucking plough” and (b) “Christ this country is doomed.”
Why is there such gratuitous hostility toward the stump-jump fucking plough? Unlike the Hills Fucking Hoist and the Victa Fucking Mower, no-one can explain what the stump-jump fucking plough does or how it works. It seems to have something to do with the plough going over the stump, somehow, instead of you having to go around it. Thus the need for steering was obviated, influencing the design and technical specifications of Holden motorcars until the mid 1980s.
The last remaining stump in pastoral Australia was dynamited in 1847.
The Ligurian Bee. I remember when I was a kid watching that episode of Batman when The Penguin unleashed a swarm of Ligurian Bees on Gotham City. Wait a second. On second thought, they were actually Lysergic Fruitflies. In which case, I have never heard of Ligurian Bees until today.
Apparently Kangaroo Island has been a Ligurian Bee Sanctuary since 1885, and remains home to “the purest strain of bee in the world” Which is nice for them, but it’s a pity they couldn’t find an indigenous species to be an icon. Of course, we could have named the short-legged emus, which were unique to Kangaroo Island, but we killed them all.
According to the website, “Ligurian bees supply a very high quality honey” which is exported all over the world, but then they would say that. I can’t imagine the local chamber of commerce would put out press releases saying “COME TO KANGAROO ISLAND, QUARANTINE FOR THE WORLD’S SHITTIEST ARYAN HONEYBEES! EMU-FREE SINCE 1897!” I can imagine, however, Batman episode where the caped crusader investigates sinister goings-on at the P.N. Guinn Honey Factory Inc. Come to think of it, I am not convinced that Kangaroo Island exists. I’ve never seen it, and it sounds like the sort of Australian place name Americans would make up for a TV show.
The Green and Gold Cookbook. The above photograph is a lie. You do not need eggs when making recipes from the Green and Gold. Or real milk. It was “conceived” (eww!) in 1923 and “although revised, it is little changed from its original edition”. This is easy to believe, and what revisions were made must have been during World War II, unless chickens and cows had yet to be domesticated eighty years ago.
If your mum has one of these she’s never cooked from it, otherwise you wouldn’t be alive to read this. Every dish begins with a hefty dollop of lard, dripping or suet. Milk is powdered; eggs are something you can only dream of owning one day when you win X-Lotto, each time you’re instructed to dissolve a dessertspoon of bicarbonated soda in water. It’s amazing these books weren’t thrown ecstatically en masse onto bonfires on V-J Day.
If you do get your hands on a copy, try to follow their recipes for cooking vegetables. Every one is identical: boil for 40 minutes, toss in hot lard. Invite your friends for tea. Make sure your larder is stocked up on copha, Cream of Tartar, junket, waterglass, borax and alum before you start, or you won’t get very far.
On the plus side, the back of the book contains useful information on how to remove bloodstains from carpets and soft furnishings, in response to housewives from Rose Park needing to know what to do in case they bayonet a Hun in their drawing room.
Stobie Poles. It’s good to see they’ve picked one heritage icon everyone can agree on: both the “Convict-free universal-suffrage Humphrey-B-Bear” camp of SA lovers and the “Child-raping bodies-in-barrels Fat-Cat” camp of SA lovers. You can’t help but notice they have photographed said poles from a long way away, so you can’t get a good look to see how ugly they are. I tried Googling for images of stobie poles but couldn’t find one that does justice to their uglitudiness. However, I do remember a newspaper years ago running a contest to find the biggest eyesore in Adelaide. The winning entry was a photo of a stobie pole which had recently had a station wagon ram into it.
It says ‘ere these engineering marvels of rusted steel and reinforced concrete were invented in 1924 “due to SA’s lack of suitable timber”. This always sounded like an urban legend to me. They can get wooden poles from Sydney to Broken Hill, but it’s only after the border that timber gets scarce?
The website tries to talk them up by pointing out ‘advantages’, such as “they’re termite proof and have a life span of around 50 years”, as if no-one’s going to remember this was the sales pitch for vinyl furniture. Or you can go them one better by arguing that in future the poles should be made from plutonium.
I actually know where this photo was taken; it’s the top end of Goodwood Road in Panorama, where it turns into Fiveash Drive. Sad.
The Checkside Punt. It’s a banana kick. I’ve never heard it called a checkside punt, and I suspect I never will.
Filed under: Stupidity by Ben.H
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Help a clueless Chinese student uncover Hitler’s mystery
Sunday 13 February 2005
Influenza and apathy have delayed the rant about music. Besides, it’s much easier to cut and paste stupid emails I get at work. Spelling and punctuation are unaltered.
Subject: uncover hitler’s mystery
Honorable American friends,How do you do?I am a Chinese students of Moslem people university .I have a new idea on psychology ,concerning Hitler.I hope you can pass the important points of the theories on to the experts who study domestic psychology and sociology.I think it is better to offer these ideas to the experts studying Hitler.In Hitler there exists two ‘I’s,one is himself,which can be called the ‘ego’, the other is his fatherly image,which can be called the ‘super I’. During Hitlers childhood he was educated by his father whom he looked up to.Hitler’s father intentionally educated and guided him in his childhood and had his figure deeply rooted in Hitler’s mind and formed his ‘super I’.After growing up,Hitler used his fathers ideas to mould his political career.He treated the German people and individuals the same way his father raised him.Hitler treated his nation,public and other individuals as his father once treated him.That is to say, the nation,public and other individuals take the place of the young Hitler and become the object of the ‘super I’ of Hitler.
All the former opinions Chinese government has known.
my name jinbo
Unfortunately I don’t know any experts who study domestic psychology, but perhaps you do. Please send on this vital information, and let’s hope that established wisdom doesn’t dismiss this corageous student’s radical new concepts such as ‘ego’, and that children may somehow be influenced by their parents.
With your help, maybe we can stop Hitler before he invades China.
Filed under: Stupidity by Ben.H
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Designations of Geezerhood
Thursday 10 February 2005
Unsolicited emails, recently received:
After the 24 age, our trunk tardily desists carries out a important internal secretion known as Someone Increase Internal Secretion. The decrease of it, that governs levels of other internal secretions in your trunk is at once liable for many of the largest prevalent designations of geezerhood, for example furrows, gray light hair, subsided energy, and diminished intimate role.
So spammers trust Babelfish to translate their spiel for them, it would seem. But wait, later the same day I get…
Since the 24 years, our trunk sluggishly desists carries out a weighty hormone known as Mortal Increase Hormone. The decrease of it, which governs grades of another internal secretions in our physical structure is shortly liable for all of the greatest general designations of eld, as crinkles, light hair, declined power, and weakened sexual function.
Best spam poetry ever! Magniloquent verbiage one might expect from Sergeant Fottrell after a sharp blow to the back of the head. Google lists another dozen or so variations on this theme. What happened here? My guess is an original message in English got Babelled into a dozen different languages and now spammers around the world are trying to Babel it back. Alternatively, somewhere in China is a basement full of 500 geeks each individually translating and sending each spam by hand.
Filed under: Stupidity by Ben.H
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“there are more things / twixt the vermiform appendix / and nirvana than are dreamt of / in thy philosophy horatio”
Sunday 6 February 2005
Two quotes from the unbridled phantasmagoria that are my dreams:
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“Hmmm, gonna have to buy some more socks soon.”
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“Wow, the Cash Converters in Dandenong stays open really late!”
Filed under: Stupidity by Ben.H
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If you’re talking to me your cult must be in trouble
Sunday 6 February 2005
Remember the Raelians? Two years ago they were telling the world they had cloned a human baby – hell, they’d cloned thirteen of the little suckers. So, what have they been up to lately? Sweet bugger all, other than sending me one unsolicited email a month telling me that “Extraterrestrial Elohim created life on earth!” and asking me to download a free e-book. In Farsi.
They send it to my work address. My workplace gets inundated with spam but as far as I know I’m the only one who gets the Raelians. If they think an email address ending in ‘.au’ is Persian, it makes me wonder if they really, truly have the technical smarts to clone kiddies. Perhaps they expect me to rely on the dedicated team of native speakers at Translation Express.
Funnily enough, the website of Clonaid doesn’t mention anything about having successfully cloned people. They’re pretty vague about where they are and what they do, too, which makes me imagine the Clonaid laboratories to be a series of empty white rooms with a few people in lab coats wandering back and forth. Kind of like the Ponds Institute, only without all the science.
For anyone else having trouble remembering the day the world changed:
The president of a firm that doesn’t formally exist said yesterday that she still can’t prove that her “human cloning company” has cloned any humans.
Filed under: Stupidity by Ben.H
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Filler by Proxy VIII: Lost in Translation
Wednesday 12 January 2005
Are you the Pope? Are you not the Pope, but still over 1500 years old? Translation Express has your translation needs covered! Their team of experienced, qualified bilingual and multilingual native Latin speakers is waiting for your call….
If you require professional, high quality Latin to Latin translations and Latin to Latin translations or translations from other languages into Latin or from Latin into other languages, our Latin language translation services will help you achieve your global strategy.
Latin to Latin to Latin. All of Translation Express’ work is carefully proofread for errors. Latin Latin Latin. Excuse me, I think there’s a echo in here.
Judging by their use of the term ‘global strategy’, I guess their target demographic really is the Pope. Or Caesar.
Don’t ask them to do Harry Potter, it’s probably been done. Yeah, thought so.
Filed under: Filler By Proxy, Stupidity, Writing by Ben.H
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Since you asked: yes, this site runs on self-indulgence and stale jokes
Tuesday 11 January 2005
Just in: an addition to the list of people or things I have been mistaken for, or allegedly physically resemble, in increasing order of ridiculousness. Russell Crowe is the new entry, but I wd welcome your input about whether he shd go above Ben Lee (but below Harry Potter) or below Ben Lee (but above shit). I’m pretty sure Ben Lee represents some line of truth.
In other news, I got a digital camera. It was a gift: I think the donor was trading up and wanted to get rid of his old one. It may not work at all. Otherwise I haven’t figured out how to use it, because all my shots so far look like this:
