These things happen...

That Morthos Stare writes:

Dear Mr. Dentith

I recently saw Lom Wang who is suffers from backpain. I treated a needles in his lower region - he will be unable to sit test.

Dr. Law

--

"I need an A for this course."

"No, you want an A. You don't need an A; what you need is a passing grade... Like a C-."

"I have to get into Law next semester."

"Admirable. So you've come to ask after what to study for the next test..."

"No, I just want you to give me an A."

"Really? Tell you what, you study really hard for the next test and get full marks..."

"But I've failed the course..."

"Don't be silly; the last test is worth 40%... What did you get for the other tests?"

"I didn't sit them."

"... Sorry, why should I give you this A?"

"I have to get into Law next semester or my parents will kill me."

"I’d recommend police protection then."

--

"Do we have any larger bulldog clips? Ah, thanks, that'll do nicely. Now I just need to find some nipples to pitch."

Graham Capill

RSJS writes:

Psychologists explain that the reason paedophiles can be the most vehement campaigners against child abuse is because they are really fighting a battle with their own guilty conscience, protesting not to convince others but to convince themselves of the wrongness of their deeds. Their internal struggle is played out publicly, appearing puritanical and just while in private they are tormented and tortured by sinister urges..
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Or maybe, they’re just hypocritical kiddie-fuckers. .

A Life More Ordinary

Josh writes:

I need more stories, you know? It's so much easier to write stuff when all you have to do is remember it. Flatting stories are always a good bet -- Jack has some that'd curl your hair, Jellybean has a few that'd curl your toes and Morthos lived next to a goat for a while, but by and large, I've had very few noteworthy experiences in the world of co-habitation. There's this one, I suppose:

So I used to flat with Jellybean in a run-down but centrally-located shithole, which was divided into three sub-shitholes: 5A, 5B, and perhaps a little too predictably, 5C. We were upstairs in 5A, which meant that, due to the house's complete lack of insulation, our every footstep resonated through 5B below. We'd had polite words with the guys downstairs about this: "We understand -- it's not you, it's the house, but can you try not to, y'know, walk around so much?" "Umm... OK?" All very amicable.

However.

Late one night there came a rapping on our door. I was in bed, and knew of no-one who would show up at that hour for me; Jellybean was in bed, and was expecting no-one at that hour for him. So we both rolled over and assumed the other would answer it. Not a problem, as it turned out, since whoever it was gave up after the first few knocks and buggered off.

However.

Next morning I notice a torn up piece of paper had been pushed through our mail slot. Assembled, it read:

LEARN TO PARK
STUPID BITCH
5A GLASGOW

Quick peek out the door -- nothing wrong with how either of us were parked. And how did they know our address? Then it dawned: This note had been penned by a third party and stuck on the late night knocker's car with our address on it, prompting the knockers to come a-knockin', presumably to ask us woss your fahking problem? (In my mind they were Cockneys -- dunno why.) We had, in other words, been set up. But by whom? And to what end?

The answer to the first was provided a few weeks later, when I noticed that the guys downstairs had left a note for the repair man stuck to their door; a note written on the same hotel note paper and in the same handwriting as the one that found its way into our accomodating slot. The prosecution rests, your Honour. So why did they conspire to send irate nocturnal motorists to our doorstep?

It must be noted that they were epic stoners, so maybe they just got confused and wrote down the wrong address. On the other hand, once we worked out what had gone on, Jellybean remembered that just a week or two beforehand, an episode of CSI had aired, which featured a victim being set up and killed in remarkably similar nasty-note-leaving circumstances. If not for our lazy indifference towards the basic tenets of hospitality, we could have found ourselves with William Petersen elbow deep in our Y-incised cadavers while Marg Helgenberger combed out our pubic hair.

Well no, that's just silly -- it would have just been Jorja Fox and The Other One, The One Whose Name No-one Can Remember, No, Not The Black Guy, The Other One. Nick? Is It Nick? Sounds About Right.

Waiting For The Dreams

Apathy Jack writes:

Ben from Dog Biting Men recounted a conversation he had recently about taxpayer money funding the arts. Capitalist running dog that he is, Ben was against it, and raised the point that art, being of no intrinsic value, should be paid for by them that wants it, not by Joe Taxpayer. To prove the Libertarian-esque problems in this argument (ie, that no one would buy something that they didn’t have to), whoever he was talking with asked how much he had spent on art recently.

After a few calculations, Ben figured out that, between CDs by New Zealand musicians, the three pieces he has bought by New Zealand artists, and the money he has donated to a New Zealand film production, he has spent roughly two thousand dollars on local art in the first half of 2005.

The dreams I had at University are a matter of public record, and probably quite tiresome for anyone who has been reading my various web-projects for the last few years: I was surrounded by the most amazing talent, the most incredible ideas, the brightest and most brilliant minds that I could believe. Sadly, said brainmeats were contained in the bodies of pathologically lazy borderline alcoholics. It was a source of huge frustration to me that I never saw the fruits of our barroom plottings. I wanted us to be the center of the New Renaissance. Ten years from our graduation, I wanted us running the Art of this city.

Astute readers will have noticed that this dream has not yet reached fruition.

But you know, there does seem to be something of the renaissance in this area. Those that I know are being creative, and it makes me happy. It gives me just a small thrill that of the nine odd pieces of proper art (definition: Not my Christina Aguilera posters) that will be hanging in my new flat, six of them will be by people I know.

The creativity is, at last, quantifiable. For a start, there’s this place. Sure, blogs are stupid and pointless and suck, but it’s a creative outlet, and I like that. Over and above giving me somewhere to whinge, it also gives me a nice convenient hub to read the brain discharge of a group of creative people whose writing I like. (And one can’t forget the other projects by the Brainstabbers – as found located in the convenient sidebar labelled ‘Vanity’.) Also, crap as your average webjournal is, it is nice to see the odd person like my old comrade Span(ner Grrl in the works) forgo the diary stuff that most people engage in to actually discuss something a) relevant and b) that they know about (in this case; the Sport of Kings – Politics).

I’m almost embarrassed to admit that one of the highlights of this year so far was attending Jellybean’s first exhibition. That pervert has been a friend of mine for a while now, and I’m an unashamed fan of his artistic output. To see it fully realised like that was probably almost as much fun for me as it was for him.

I like the fact that my friend Mary Magdalene is having success selling her art. I like the fact that there are more and more updates on the progress of the debut album from Stars and the Underground. I like that I can go to an exhibition by my friend Fern, and think “I have coffee with the person who created these amazing things.” I like that my friends Nick and Nat have turned heretofore unproductive alcoholism into a nice looking website to help drinkers everywhere. I like the fact Ben hasn’t written anything on Dog Biting Men for a while because he’s too busy being paid to write a politics column for the National Business Review.

I like the fact that my friend Raj produced a short film that was downloaded and watched by two million odd people around the world. And more than that, I like the fact that he is currently wrapping up filming on his next project, which, considering this one has a budget of, well, money (unlike the first one which was made with Number 8 Fencing Wire and Positive Thoughts) should be worth watching for. ‘Quentin Tarantino’s Little Red Riding Hood’ – You’ve been warned.

I remember walking through town after my friend Dryad had given me a painting she had done. A man smoking in a doorway called after me. I had the small piece half wrapped in tissue paper, but he had glimpsed it and was so intrigued that he got me to come back and show him. He was amazed by it, and spent a few minutes alternately waxing poetic about the amount of depth that had been squeezed into such a small space, and going “Fuck... I mean, just... Fuck.”

When I told him that a friend of mine had just given it to me, he said “You’re a lucky guy.” All I could say by way of reply was “Yes. I am.”

Seriously.

Josh writes:

John: I love you like a brother. But if you fight me on this, I will kill you with this remote control.
Mike: ... that's not a remote control. That's a steak knife.
John: Go turn the TV channel ... or I'll stab you with this steak knife.
Mike: I see what you're going for here.

Seriously -- you should all be reading Kung Fu Monkey. Seriously.

Don't Lie To Me

Josh writes:

OK, maybe this is obvious -- it certainly should be -- but if you want me to take your views seriously, don't lie to me.

Garth George may be biased as all fuck; he may say many, many things that I believe are untrue, but they're always in the realm of subjective opinion -- I don't recall him ever telling an outright lie. Sandra Paterson, on the other hand, talks a load of shit.

Her latest column on the evils of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas describes the game like so:

The player takes on the role of a criminal and earns points by decapitating police, raping prostitutes, shooting or slitting the throats of innocent bystanders, stealing cars and beating people with baseball bats, in between visiting strip clubs and crack dens and living a glamorised gang lifestyle.

Now, I'll come clean: I'm not a big fan of this style of game, and I've only played the GTA series a little bit, so maybe I've missed some things. Obviously, as the game's title implies, stealing cars plays a big part in it. You can kill policemen, yes, innocent bystanders too, although there aren't any points in it, and in most if not all cases you're strongly encouraged not to (by the same mechanisms that strongly encourage you not to do these things in the real world, i.e. shitloads of cops and SWAT teams with the chasing and the shooting at you). And, as far as I'm aware there is no rape in Grand Theft Auto. None. You don't get to do it, you don't "earn points" for it.

So maybe that was an oversight. No, hang on, two paragraphs later and it's "a game where they pretend to beat people to a pulp and take part in pack rapes" -- pack rapes now. And then later: "you get to rape women and steal police cars". Rape is the one thing mentioned every time she describes the game's contents, and it's the one thing its contents do not include. Liar or ignorant -- which is it?

Not the hugest of points, I'll concede, but the thing is, when she gets to the meat of her rant -- a fairly predictable anti-anti-smacking routine -- and says:

A report by Save the Children in 2000 claimed there had been no child abuse fatalities in Sweden since the ban in 1979. But according to a Goteborg newspaper, there were about seven such deaths annually throughout the 90s, and a Unicef study two years ago showed that death rates due to explicit maltreatment are virtually identical in countries with and without smacking bans.

I'm supposed to just take her word for it? If the preceding paragraphs demonstrate the extent of her fact-checking abilities, I don't think so.

She finishes by saying that "we should be taking a good hard look at the games our kids are playing." I agree completely, although it seems we have different definitions of what constitutes a "good hard look" -- when I take a good hard look at something, I actually learn about it.

Gonna start me a feud.

RSJS writes:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- -- The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses -- even against their will -- for private economic development.

Y’know those beaver-smelling hairy camo-fans in Unistat with the automatic rifles and the barbed-wire barricades drinking their own urine and preparing to blow a hole in the New World Order with a solid-slug shotgun shell? (Mmmm, aggressive AND alliterative) Those guys are right. And that pisses me off. It annoys me that the only smart people in America right now are using the family tooth to eat roadkill and complain that the Gummint is out to put tracking devices in their derrieres. It’s like when I met the only other clown I knew who thought Acapulco shirts and flak jackets were a suitable combination, and he turned out to be a wanker. Now I find the only people who agree that Unistat is a big ball of cheese-drinking insanity fuck skunks for sport and don’t shave anything. Goddammit.

Okay, it’s unfair to suggest that the new Yankee law will mean people will be shot in the streets so Walmart can bulldoze their neighbourhood for parking until America is one long line of malls linked carpark to carpark in an unending asphalt haze, dotted with trolley-carcasses rolling like rusted tumbleweeds across the wide SUV-sized parks. It is perhaps jumping the gun to imply this law will even mean mass depopulation of non-profitable anti-consumer types so more capitalist-friendly people and skyscraper facilities can be installed where once sky-high beatniks sat in beds and grew purty flowers. I’m not going to joke about hippy gulags just yet, oh no. But the fact that some Cocoa-Cola corporation can petition to have one’s quarter-acre pavlova paradise mashed into leaky apartments would make me reach for a gun and a hounddog called Zeke and go move into the Unabomber’s old shed with a box of tinned food and David Koresh’s autobiography. With only skunk-fuckers for neighbours. Soon I’d be borrowing the heirloom dentures to open my tins of baked beans and swapping tips on how to keep gunpowder dry when the tin roof leaks through the post-Superbowl-elebration bulletholes, and recipes for cured Revenue Inspector meat.

…course, I’d like to say it won’t happen here, not in civilised New Zealand.

But with councils selling off public parks so Coke can have a bit more elbow room for it’s dollar-a-day starving workers, I’d be lying. Hand me my moonshine.
.

So then I said: No, fuck you! Or at least I would have if I had thought of it...

Apathy Jack writes:

So after school a few days ago and I was bussing into town to go book shopping. Sitting next to me was a Year 13 of my acquaintance who was going into her part-time job. We got to chatting. It was entirely pleasant. We discussed sundry school related things, you know how it is.

As the journey neared it’s end, an American a few seats ahead of us turned back to my girl and said: “All you’ve been doing for ages now is raggin’ on people. There are better things to talk about.”

Now, I’m protective of my hoodrats, and the fact that this guy was talking to her rather than me got me a bit defensive.

“Yeah,” I replied to the American, primarily to buy time as I cast my mind over our conversation to try to remember how negative we had been. “But they’re nowhere near as interesting.”

“I mean, you’ve done nothing but rag on people for, like, forty five minutes now.” He continued.

And there he made his big mistake.

See, I could have explained it to this guy: I could have taken him case by case through what we were discussing, explained that it was ninety percent positive; Old School Balls, past students of outstanding accomplishment, aspirations to join student leadership bodies and the like.

There were negative things, sure, but we’re proud at my school, and we’re careful about what dirty laundry we air in public. It may have sounded like I was raggin’ on someone when I referred to them “making a few mistakes”, but that was a euphemism understood by me and my student to mean “hasn’t come to class in weeks and is spending time in questionable company.” When I said that someone was “a bit silly”, we both knew it was her friend who came to school drunk. My raggin’ a kid for “not being as clever as they usually are” meant the Year 13 who was selling cigarettes and drugs to Year 9s in her pastoral care.

Which brings us back to the ‘context’ thing I occasionally go on about. I could have gone the route of asking him where he was while all of this was going on. These kids are not anecdotes; They are her friends, and my students. We were talking, in only the broadest of terms, about our worries for them. This kid works or trains for sports teams seven days a week, and I was going into town to buy books for my classes because my school doesn’t have the disposable income to buy them what they need. I think we’ve earned the right to be worried about people we care about.

But I didn’t do any of that.

I looked at him with a big shit-eating grin on my face, modulated my voice to convey a friendly, chatty, and utterly self-righteous tone, and replied: “Nonsense! We can’t have been “raggin’” on people for forty five minutes. We’ve only been on the bus for twenty-five minutes.”

“But... You’ve just been raggin’ on people.”

“Certainly. But we can’t have been doing it for forty five minutes, as we’ve barely been travelling for twenty. And at any rate, I don’t think I could “rag” on someone for that long. Thirty minutes is about my limit for “raggin’”, so I’ve been keeping a careful eye on the time.” I smiled and tapped my watch.

The guy turned back around, muttering his point to himself, you know the way people do when they lose an argument, which this sort of was I guess.

Now, that was massively intellectually lazy of me.

Any number of intelligent (or at least convincingly self-righteous) ways I could have explained his faults to him, and I pick on a small semantic error he makes in the middle of a sentence.

This is something I find myself doing more and more.

I should be able to demolish these people in Socratic ways. This is not to say that I should use the Socratic Method, which basically involves repeating “But why?” until you get poisoned by a relieved public, but rather that I should be able to show these fucktards what fucktards they’re being. Instead I go for the easy option – picking on semantics, and being obtusely pedantic

Maybe it’s that as I get older and more curmudgeonly (yes, more curmudgeonly – I was a pretty cantankerous12 year old) I have less and less time for stupid people, or maybe I’ve spent too long arguing with teenagers. Either way, I’m becoming disgracefully intellectually lazy in my old age, and I imagine that all future disputes will see me starting any rebuttals with “Oh yeah, well, nice fuckin’ shirt, asshole” before I fire up the big guns and start in on their mothers...

U.G.L.Y You ain't got no alibi...

RSJS writes:

Welcome to irony, population, you.

Mmmmkay, here’s the freakin’ deal. Some squealing little fuckpuppet got a bad photo slapped in her school yearbook, distribution some 200 volumes. Potential exposure to the picture? Maybe a thousand undiscerning Yankee chicken-pluckers. However, her parents, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Fuck, were so incensed about their horrifying blob-faced crotch-dropping being portrayed in an accurate, unflattering, and vaguely dead light in this publication, they demanded its recall presumably so an airbrushed Photoshop masterpiece of an angel with slim hips and collagen flange-injections could be crammed in instead. They caused noise, and this caused media attention. So instead of this matter being buried out back where it belongs, or this recall occurring, the story and more importantly the picture of Fatty McUglybug is now being circulated WORLDWIDE so people from New Zealand to the Netherregions can point and laugh at the fact this child is a hippocrocodogapig swamp donkey. Who fell out of the ugly tree hitting every ugly branch on the way down only to collapse at the bottom and get hit by the ugly truck. Bet SHE’LL need counselling when she grows up and murders both her parents with a badger-poking spoon. That'll teach 'em for spawning a 1980s Dawn of the Dead extra..
.

Sex vs Gratuitous Violence

liver writes:

So last night one of our lovely below average current affairs items does another boring item on how video games are turning our children into serial killers. Now most people already know where they stand on this, I wasn't really paying any attention.

Until the mummy who let her 7 yr old play GTA came on. She didn't think there was anything wrong with this. Apparently she knows exactly what her darling child is thinking and he's a good boy! Yet she seemed quite indignant when the reporter asked her if she would ever let her child watch porn.

Which got me thinking. Would I prefer my child to watch close ups of peoples genitals, or pretend to blow peoples brains out?

It's kind of strange that there are people willing to let their children act out activities that they find completely abhorent in real life, yet they would completely lose it if they found them watching an activity that would be perfectly normal for them to partake in when they are older.

Personally I would confiscate any porn or violent games I found my child in possesion of, but I still find it unsettling that I would probably prefer it if they were pretending to be gun wielding LA gangsters.

Now With Lexicography!

Josh writes:

With so many words in the English language, and new ones popping up all the time, it's surprising that there's still not nearly enough. Still missing are many of those words that sum up complex and obscure concepts -- the sort of thing the Germans do a good line in with the likes of schadenfreude and treppenwitz (or the French l'esprit de l'escalier -- more lyrical, if less succinct), where all we have is "that feeling when someone, like, says something to you and you come up with a cool reply, only by the time you think of it, the moment's passed -- y'know?"

So here's a project for you, find a word that sums up:

The experience of buying an album by someone you like and not liking it at as much as their earlier stuff, but then going back and listening to the older stuff and realizing that the things you don't like about the new stuff are true of the old stuff as well, and you just never noticed before.

For example, listening to the Counting Crows' Recovering the Satellites and thinking "damn, these guys have got all whiny", but then listening to August and Everything After and realising that, no, they were always that whiny; you were just 17 at the time so it sounded normal.

Or listening to Lisa Loeb's recent stuff and thinking "Jesus Christ, this sounds like the contents of a 16-year-old girl's diary" and then going back to Tails and realising that it's all like that. Yes, even "Stay", darling of Generation X though it was.

Or, worst of all, being disturbed by how sombre Frenté's Shape was in comparison to Marvin the Album, but then going back and realising that, "Accidentally Kelly Street" aside, that one wasn't all that chirpy either, thus suffering the metal stresses of reconciling depressing Frenté with a world in which black remains black and up is still not down.


Suggestions for such a word to brainstab@gmail.com; comments on my musical tastes can be directed to fuckyou@no,seriously,fuckyou.com

Anecdotal Evidence is Worthless

Josh writes:

I was never smacked as a child. Not once.


I respect authority.

I love and respect my parents.

I was a model student (read: girly swot).

I went to University and earned a Masters degree with First Class Honours.

I have held the same job for five years, earning comfortably above the average wage.

I don't drink, smoke or take drugs.

I have never been in a fight.

I suffer from no psychological disorders.

I am polite, generally quiet, and patient to a fault.


I'm just saying, is all.

IT ALL TRANSPIRED ON THE 3RD OF THE 12TH, 2002...

That Morthos Stare writes:

Some stories would be much more amusing if I weren’t in them. Take, for example, this text message. If only it had been received by a talented wit rather than my own ordinary self...

I WISH U COULD JAB IT UP MY ASS LIKE U JABD IT UP MY PUSSY YSTDAY I WANNA FUCK U SO BAD MY PUSSYZ ACHING I KNO U WANT ME AGAIN

Now, how would you have answered? Would you have texted back the reply ‘Very Amusing’ or gone with something slightly more interesting? I thought as much.

Of course, had you done so then you might not have got the following reply:

DONT B LIKE THAT U MOANED LIKE I WAS A GODDESS THE WAY MY TOUNGE SWIRLED ALL AROUND THE NOB OF UR MAN CHICKN ;) U LOVED IT

Sardonic players of this game might, by this time, have raised a single eye-brow, taken a sip of their whiskey and sent back the loaded ‘Really?’ Or, maybe, thought ever so briefly about taking note of the number and giving this precocious thing a call. For me, only a touch of the former.

HELL YES WHY U BEING SHADY IS UR GF THERE? U SHOULD GET RID OF HER U NO HALF UR M8S WANT ME BUT I WANT U SO U GOTA MAKE THE DECISION

By this time ‘on to it’ readers will be wondering why I am not providing them with the number in question (sorry, fellahs, but this happened two and an half years ago and the number is not likely valid) and wouldn’t at all appreciate a ‘Highlander’ reference, such as ‘But in the end there can be only one!’ as a suggested reply...

Such readers, of course, have my highest admiration.

AND UR POINT BEING - STOP PLAYIN AROUND DO U WANT ME OR NOT IF NOT STOP GRABIN AND TOUCHIN ME WHEN U C ME GOD IM 20 I DONT NEED UR BULSHIT

Most pundits will, by now, have invoked their fantasy-states and will no longer be reading anything other than the capitalised sentence-fragments (which make up the better parts of this missive). And a good thing to; I have no idea why anyone, especially me, would think that ‘20?’ would make a good reply at this juncture.

WHY IS THAT SO SHOCKN ITHORT U SAID U LIKED MY FIRM TIGHT ASS AND MY FIRM HANDFULS HMMMM UR BING SHADY 2NGHT ANSWR MY QUESTION DO U WANT 2 FUCK ME OR NOT

The answer to this is obviously very, very, very clear and thus not suitable for genteel folk that read ‘Brainstab.’ My response, horribly predictable as it was, needs no groans of frustration or feelings of sympathy from you; being deplorably ‘English’ is bad enough. Instead, I offer this tale to you as a moral lesson, with the hope that it is not morality that you take away from it.

Now all I need is to imagine a better end to the phone call from a stranger that started ‘I’ve just got word that they’re giving me the bikini modelling contract...’

Bottled filth

RSJS writes:

http://www.wired.com/news/autotech/0,2554,67794,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_5

“Targeting self-conscious 4x4 owners whose rugged vehicles seldom see obstacles bigger than a speed bump, the enterprising British e-tailer behind Sprayonmud sells the scent of the countryside in a squirt bottle..

For 8 pounds (about $14.50), buyers get 0.75 liters (.85 quarts) of genuine filthy water, bottled from hills near the company's premises on the rural England-Wales border. The aim, says the website, is "to give your neighbors the impression you've just come back from a day's shooting or fishing -- anything but driving around town all day or visiting the retail park."”


I want to kill people very, very badly. In a vat of 11-secret-herbs-and-spices mud. Slowly, and painfully, possibly with those metal screwy things one uses to attach dog leashes to dirt, while lecturing them sternly on how this is for the good of humankind and that they are an insult to civilisation and should be ashamed to have deprived others of vital brain-feeding oxygen with their gasbagging about Chardonnay and something they almost paid attention to on the Discovery channel. I want these people do expire spitting chunks of peat and teeth and stomach lining and just before their spleens explode and their hair catches fire from the volume of my screaming lecture I want to see the glimmer of understanding in their cow-like eyes when they realise I am RIGHT and that their death is DESERVED.

That said, if strange urban entrepreneurs do start appearing sporting gaping screw-holes leaking clay and generally overstuffed with expensive mud and positioned in embarrassing poses reminiscent of Mapplethorpe exhibitions and wearing placards stating they are very very sorry for wasting everyone’s time for their meagre lifespans, I would just like to point out I was visiting my aunt in Poland at the time. That is all.

A Paedophile's Just a Friend You Haven't Met

Josh writes:

Yeah, so he's not guilty, but do you have any idea how long I've been wanting to use that title?

This is the problem with the way I write - where Jellybean reaches into his head and turns on the tap marked Stabby Stabby FUCKING STABBY Stabby, and Jack transcribes from handwritten notes stained by salty tears and still-healing wrist scars, I tend to start with a single punchline and work backwards. Or start with a one-liner and work outwards (that can get painful).

Or, in this case, start with a title and then have no idea where the hell I'm going with it. Still, at least I can get it out of me while there's some degree of topicality associated with it -- and if it manages to conjure images of a noseless lily-white freak sodomizing twelve-year-olds on top of a mountain of hardcore pornography, well, all the better.

Mostly Star Trek

Apathy Jack writes:

From an article about the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit. Offered without comment. (Except to say: I told you so – I’ve been saying this about sci-fi fans for years. Years, I tell you!)

The first thing detectives from the Toronto police sex crimes unit saw when they entered Roderick Cowan's apartment was an autographed picture of William Shatner. Along with the photos on the computer of Scott Faichnie, also busted for possessing child porn, they found a snapshot of the pediatric nurse and Boy Scout leader wearing a dress "Federation" uniform. Another suspect had a TV remote control shaped like a phaser. Yet another had a Star Trek credit card in his wallet. One was using "Picard" as his screen name. In the 3 1/2 years since police in Canada's biggest city established a special unit to tackle child pornography, investigators have been through so many dwellings packed with sci-fi books, DVDs, toys and collectibles like Klingon swords and sashes that it's become a dark squadroom joke. "We always say there are two types of pedophiles: Star Trek and Star Wars," says Det. Ian Lamond, the unit's second-in-command. "But it's mostly Star Trek."

Almost political

RSJS writes:

Doctor Shirley versus Mister Hide.

So who wants to be the first to make a "Shirley you can't be serious" joke?

Mortal Retard Annihilation - now with Animalities.

RSJS writes:

"On a personal level, religiosity is merely annoying - like bad taste," he wrote. "This immaturity represents a significant social problem, however, because religious adherents fail to recognize their limitations. So, in the name of their faith, these moral retards are running around pointing fingers and doing real harm to others. One only has to read the newspaper to see the results of their handiwork. They discriminate, exclude, and belittle. They make a virtue of closed-mindedness and virulent ignorance. They are an ugly, violent lot."

Oooh, ANGRY professor. For those who don't follow the Links effect, the above passage (heh. "Passage") is from one Professor Shortell at CUNY, which he wrote in 2001. Apparently (now that the poor spud wants to control his university's Sociology Department so that he might lord over the next generation of dole-bludgers) his comments are deemed to have been "taken out of context". Today's challenge is: putting the above paragraph into a context in which it is not offensive to the gap-toothed Mormon mother-humpers in the tumble-weed Bible Belt of the US of A. Bonus points for including monkeys. Points off for simply clapping "I'd LIKE to tell you..." at the front and "...but I'm afraid I don't know what fellatio IS" on the end.

Hit Follies, Part I Can't Be Arsed Anymore

Josh writes:

OK, the funny search terms gag is getting a bit old, isn't it? I mean sure, the knowledge that someone out there is searching for diarrhoea lipstick (23 May 1:11AM), and that this search lead them to us is cause for joy, and yes, the thought of someone typing singe minge into Google (19 May 11:51AM) keeps me warm at night, but it gets wearing after a while. Time for another True Porn Clerk Stories quote:

I'm in the good swing of my porn emotional sine wave, where everything is hilarious instead of depressing. Actually, it's not quite a sine wave - I spend a fair amount of time in numb flatlining mode where nothing even registers. And there are exceptions: There's a Black Man in My Wife's Ass! always breaks me up no matter how bad a day I'm having. [Not all the titles can always do that. On bad days, Whose Pussy Is This? is a faintly disturbing illustration of sexual domination politics, since I know the proper answer is a breathy "It's yours!" rather than "It's mine, dickhead!" On good days, though, it's a particularly entertaining glimpse into the Lost and Found office.]

I'm starting to feel similarly about wacky search strings. The usual business (anal stab, deep throat hypnosis, hairy minge and so on) still raises a chuckle, but I'm beginning to deeply regret mentioning sheep fucking -- that alone has doubled our Google hits, with dangling labia providing more than its share as well.

What really pushed me over the edge though, was the zen-like couplet of rape bo (shown up a few times) and bo rape (9 Jun 11:28AM): The former a reassuring validation from a kindred spirit who shares a love of arts and literature; the latter calling to mind images of violation by martial arts weapon. No thank you.

So with that in mind, Hitlog Follies is consigned to the medical waste furnace of history, never to be seen again until I get bored and can't think of something better to do.

Fathers Day

Apathy Jack writes:

Okay, when I first started the grueling uphill climb towards a job in the education industry, there were a surprisingly large number of people telling me what a good and noble thing it was I was doing. Specifically because there weren't enough male role models in today's schools, and we needed more men in teaching.

Well, nice of you to say, I always thought, but, in essence, bollocks.

I thought about the attributes that a role model is meant to have. I don't now, and have never had any real heroes. There are people I admire, but they all do flash and amazing things - They fight the big guys, or write amazing truths, or generally do things that not many others have the bravery, perseverance or bloody minded stupidity to do.

People don't really need male role models to teach them anything. I never had one of these mythical figures shining a guiding light on the path to my functional maturity, and I turned out okay.

I've always known I was okay, I've always known that I could do anything in particular that I wanted, that I would make a success of whatever I put my mind to. I didn't need any role models to tell me these things. I didn't need anyone to affirm me or show me the proper ways to be the well-rounded person I was. It sounds silly for someone nursing a set of complexes the size of those I carried with me through my youth to say I was self confident, but I was always self secure. I always knew I would be successful, that I could accomplish anything, that I would come out on top, that I would one day own the world (at least my small part of it, anyway).

But as I pondered this, a time from my childhood flashed into my mind.

I was about 8 or 9, living in a dilapidated, near century old ruin in the country (as opposed to the dilapidated near century old ruin in the center of town I live in these days). My father was engaged in part of the running repair job he constantly waged for our half decade occupancy, rewiring a wall socket. Now, I was eight - role model or no, a kid that age always has flashes of wanting to be like his Dad (I would have wanted to be like Mum, but near as I can tell, her job involved having mock gunfights with vaginal speculums - or at least, that's what me and my brother did with the medical equipment she was storing at home).

In this quest to be like Dad that one time, I asked him to show me how to do what he was doing.

I'm pretty sure he didn't even look around, he just kept working as he matter-of-factly told me that I wouldn't ever have to learn how to do what he was doing, because when I grew up, I would pay someone to do that sort of thing.

There's nothing wrong with being a labourer, or a shop-monkey, or any other job that you don't need a fancy city education for, but I was always raised to know that I was going to go higher, that I would choose my path rather than have it chosen for me. I was raised with the expectation that I would go far in this world, not held back by any limitations. And it wasn't an expectation from my parents, it was one I had of myself.

And you know, perhaps the reason I always knew that I'd make good, that I was always going to do well in whatever I chose, was because that's the way I was raised every day. The presence of this support and affirmation so ever-present that not only did I take it for granted, I didn't even notice it until I looked for it much later.

My father has always told me that I could do anything. He's always made sure I knew that I can go to him in times of hardship, that he will be there if and when I need him.

I'm still not convinced that we really need male role models (not only am I not spectacularly good at being a bloke, but I find the whole thing rather distasteful) but I know that my Dad had a big hand in making me into a good person, and ensuring my happiness.

Yeah yeah, I know I'm not being cynical enough - Fuck you all, I don't say this stuff enough.

The 'Lie'

That Morthos Stare writes:

Memories and love.

It’s a funny combination.

There is this girl I know. Know well, if you catch my drift... We’ve been close, on and off, buying into each other’s fantasy. And she has this memory, a recollection of how we met. Common friend’s place; playing some insipid boardgame, just the three of us. She and I were sitting next to each other, joking and doing that ‘thing’ where people talk without asking direct questions.

Typical Kiwi flirting...

Anyway, I throw the die, get a six and throw my hands in the air (at the unfairness of it all, you know) before bringing my hand down on hers.

Where, after a smug grin, it stays.

Let’s just say that later that night we ended up kissing... And, well, other stuff.

She tells me later that I did it deliberately. I immediately agree with her. Which leads to more of the ‘other stuff.’ Later she tells our friends the story (with me sheepishly nodding away in the background) until, within months, it becomes ‘the’ story of how ‘we got together.’

Which isn’t true. My hand landed on hers, alright, but it was natural clumsiness (with associated good consequences). But I, insecure enough to think that this was the be-all and end-all of the relationship, couldn’t let her think that.

And it was only a little lie, wasn’t it?

The problem was, weeks later, it wasn’t. More and more people became party to it. So when it became ‘the’ moment it went from minor to major.

So I did what I could to rectify the situation.

Perhaps, I rationalised, I had intended to touch her hand. Maybe it was me that was at fault here. I couldn’t admit to my gambit, so I was downplaying it. The lie wasn’t our story, the lie was not allowing the story to be true.

So the lie became truth and truth, oh so tritely, became fiction.

Isn’t it strange how it only takes a few moments to become convinced.

Love and memory, eh?

The Crack-pipe of Moral Indignation

Josh writes:

So I'm perusing a conversation on a friend's journal where people are mulling over the self-stratification and victimisation some people choose for themselves, when I see an erudite individual of my acquaintance has made an interesting point:

what i dont understand is why these stupid twats come & create a heirarchy in their heads AND THEN PLACE THEMSELVES AT THE BOTTOM OF IT. if i were creating a heirarchy in my head, i'd be placing myself at the TOP.

Now, as it happens, John Rogers of Kung Fu Monkey addressed this exact point a couple of days earlier:

...because one of the great secrets of human nature is that the one thing people want more than love, security, sex, chocolate or big-screen TV's is to feel hard done by.

Why? Because being hard done by is the shit. Feeling hard done by is the sweetest of drugs. If you're being persecuted -- it must mean you're doing the right thing, right? You get the mellow buzz of the moral high ground, but without arrogantly claiming it as your own. You get an instant, supportive community in a big dark scary world of such scope it may well literally be beyond rational human processing. When you are hard done by, you get purpose in a life where otherwise, you'd have to find your own. And when you ride that high, then no amount of logic, no pointing out that in actuality you and your beliefs are at a high point of popularity and influence for the last hundred years -- is going to pry that sweet crack-pipe of moral indignation from your hands.

And he's not wrong. Forget P, forget dope, forget your party pills and herbal ecstasy -- it's the sickly allure of underdog status that's the biggest threat to today's society. How many letters to the editor have there been on the theme of:

"Waah! How come Christians are the only group it's OK to pick on?"

You mean apart from immigrants, criminals and (depending on the current national mood) Maori? Well, being the major religion in this country, we figure you can take it, ya big baby. See also: why it's OK for you to pick on your little brother, but no-one else can.

"Waah! How come the media has such a liberal/conservative bias?" It doesn't -- it has a populist bias. I can't understand why so many people have yet to work out that the media isn't Labour or National -- it's Winston Fucking Peters.

"Waah! How come there isn't a Ministry of Men's Affairs or a Menspace at Auckland Uni?" Get a grip, numbnuts -- we RUN THE FUCKING PLANET! Own most of it, too.

"Waah! How come rich people have to pay so much tax!" See above.

I could go on, but it's only a matter of time before I get into "Waah! How come there's so many stupid people making life aggravating for intelligent, perceptive petals such as my delicate self?" and collapse under the weight of my own hypocrisy. I don't think anyone wants that.

Apathy Jack writes:

“I wish I had won a million dollars when I was twenty-two. Things would be different now, I can tell you.”
“Are you sure? Because even in this world, things didn’t need to turn out the way they have.”
“You make a compelling point. By this point, I‘d be the world’s fattest, poorest man.”

Nothing to do with Porn

Josh writes:

"So they've found out who Deep Throat was."

"Who?"

"Some guy."

And that's what happens to history.

Word of the Day

Josh writes:

Death and disease; poverty and indifference -- serious stuff. More importantly, what the hell does "mingy" mean?

"Minge", as we all know, is a vulgar term for the female genitalia. Is that what the author of this article is saying of us? In a national newspaper? Surely not. Going by the context, it seems to mean "stingy", a word with which it rhymes, but it takes more than assonance to imply synonymy.

And then it becomes clear -- it's not "minge-y", but "Ming-y", the implication clearly being that we're Merciless towards the less fortunate. Duly chastened, I begin to read through the rest of the article before remembering that I don't actually care.

Ooh -- bunnies!