The One Man Goon Show

You should all watch the fuck out of this video immediately. Russian metal band's loving tribute to Gorbachov - the Stalinist zombie killing barbarian who saved hot busty chicks. There is nothing about this video I don't like.


http://www.vimeo.com/1223566

Today's essay is on why Bin Laden is such a naughty boy - having no dramas writing this one, but there is only so much of that headspace I can stand.

So, here is a picture.



Again, click for a big wallpaper one.

I've got an Arabic exam in two days so I decided to spend the past hour making this:



Click for big

wait, this isn't study omg i'm gonna fail omg omg

I'm on a roll. I won three jugs of beer at pub trivia last night. One was for winning the dance off. One was for doing the most pushups. And the third was because I worked out the pixellated, blurred photo that we had to ID was Skeletor. It was like Rocky III but with more beer.

I also found out last night that I won two tickets to the Aussie premiere of Ironman tonight; it was one of those in 25 words or less questions, asking what my favourite superhero is. I said "My favourite superhero is Ironman because he is the most aussie because he made a suit of armour while drunk, just like Ned Kelly" and now I get to see the movie.

Hopefully I haven't used all my luck up as I just entered a competition to win a movie camera by answering what my greatest supernatural fear was with "My greatest fear is a ghost bike that tricks me into riding it and I'm suddenly all OH NO, GHOST BIKE! and it says HA HA HA (It can laugh) and it has spookidokes on its wheels."

It's as good as mine!

I recently have become a member of an exclusive club of the finest people; road drivers. Inspired by the constant taunting of teens whizzing around me in their cars as I gamely peddled my hundred dollar mountain bike home from Cash Convertors, I decided that enough was enough and went and got my driving license, hereby becoming the oldest Australian born P-plater in existence. Not getting your P's the moment you are weaned is, I have noticed, considered pretty bloody un-Australian and admitting that you don't have a license frequently gets the sort of blank shocked looks that I previously have only attracted when I confess that I think AFL is stupid. The Army was already suspicious about me always throwing away the vegemite in my ration packs and if they ever found out I didn't have a driving license, I might as well hand in my citizenship and get on a plane to some country where everyone gets very excited about what Danish cartoonists draw.

The next step was of course to go out and get a car. And when I mean a car, I really mean a CAR. When I drive, I want something that is designed to accessorise the Apocalypse. Something with enough backseat space to carry a couple of drums of petrol, half a dozen blue heelers and enough ordinance to provide logistical support for a small African coup. Needless to say it would have a big fat blower for out-running pesky atomic mutants on motorcycles and subscribe to my design philosophy that glass in windows is for sissy boys who are afraid of getting wet when it rains. Whereas in my car, the solution to rain would be to just drive faster.

Unfortunately for me, the salary of full time student, part time Army officer cadet and part time web consultant to Lindsay Fox doesn't stretch far enough to get this king of cars and really, when looking at the practicalities of it, it's not necessary given my current lifestyle. It is a sad thing to admit but a worldwide Apocalypse involving Commies slinging nukes everywhere is but a nostalgic dream from my childhood. The worst we have to worry about is perhaps getting on the wrong train one day and that is hardly call to go about stocking up the basement with tinned pineapples and homemade Geiger counters. And I live in a converted chocolate factory, so it's not like we even have a basement. We have a car park and it's on the fourth floor and full of the embarrassing stuff we don't want in the apartment like old computers we're keeping in the vain hope that NASA suddenly starts paying a fortune for 486 chips when they realise the shuttle can't be replaced and they have to upgrade it again.

Thankfully, this is Melbourne, a civilised place with civilised solutions for problems – although not as civilised as Holland where they have a national bike sharing scheme that operates on the honesty system, which I think is so twee and sweet it could give you diabetes. Living in a city, the biggest problem I've got is a car that won't get too banged up when it hits a university lecturer peddling sedately along on something made of drain pipes at five kilometres an hour. It's not like anywhere I ever go is not accessible by trams and if it isn't, I'm usually going there because the Army wants me to and they're nice enough to provide me with a big bus to carry me and my chums and all our guns in too. However, occasionally I do like to go to places like the country and some days even I have so many little errands to do around town that a car is what is needed. And for that, you have Flexicar.

Flexicars are dotted around Melbourne. Usually they're something that has been designed to be marketed to sedate Europeans who aren't allowed to drive more than five metres at a stretch by their green governments, which really isn't a problem as Europe is so small that nothing they ever want to get to is more than five metres away. These cars are marketed by Daimler, built by Mitsubishi and, just in case you thought they weren't appealing to your ego enough, were named SmartCars. And in case that name wasn't stupid enough, they called the variants ForTwo and ForFour which I believe is indicates the number of drinks you need before you lose enough self consciousness to be comfortable driving one of the stupid looking things. What's especially stupid about a ForFour is that it is a big SmartCar. They've gone and invented a car whose only virtue is their side and then decided to make a big one, which they call a SuperMini but we call a hatchback.

What makes them FlexiCars though is that you can simply look up the company website, find the nearest car and book it for a certain amount of time. You then find the car, swipe a card on it and you're off and away. And they are so convenient –three times I have popped into a local internet café to find out the location of the nearest car only to discover that it was located no more than five metres away from me – usually in the seat next to me, sipping a long macchiato because that's the sort of coffee this car would drink.

I had a quick look at the marketing bumf to find out what makes them so smart: there is the usual business of parking three in the amount of space that a particularly obese dachshund would occupy, something about fuel economy and there may have been some special airbags that protect your wallet in case you happen to clip one of those cycling university lecturers. However, having used one for a while, I'm inclined to think that the name should actually be SmartAssedCars (note: apparently in the 21st century, spaces are out so we get Flexicars, smartcars etc. Sointhefuturewetalklikethis. I however have no illusions about being up and 'with it', so I'll be keeping my spaces even if it doesn't make me cool thank you. However I won't be offended if you decided to go and find something much cooler to read, such as the 'recently played songs' menu on the iPod of the hip young kid sitting next to you on the tram. Not that you will need to read his menu to know what he has been listening to, as the songs will have been audible to everyone within a five kilometre radius anyway ie all of Melbourne.)
For one thing, they like to parrot on about safety, but visibility in these things is so incredibly poor. I have seen millennia ancient temples that have used less sturdy pillars to hold up their roofs – and it's not like the roof of a SmartCar is any more substantial than a sardine tin anyway. They claim it is for the steel skeleton of the car, so it can avoid being crushed by the slipstream of a ute overtaking it, which is all well and good but what is the point of having a safe ride if you can't see where you're going? I've been in tanks that have had better visibility than a SmartCar ForFour and I'd like to remind you that tanks are made of metal, a substance not generally known for its translucent properties. When a tank is going, the only way to see what is happening is through little periscopes and even they have less blind sports than a SmartCar ForFour. In fact, generally tanks are considered pretty safe vehicles, unless you happen to be a Chinese democracy protestor standing in front of one and, even then, all the tank is concerned about is which drive through car wash on the way home is most environmentally friendly. Whereas if I ever decided to go head to head with a protester, me in my ForFour and he in his natty silk pyjamas and implacable sense of dignity, I'm pretty sure I would be the one going home in a bucket.

Another 'feature' of them, which is especially designed to remind you that they come from Europe, that sensible place where everyone seems to know what is going on but is sick of being ignored and so won't tell the rest of us, is that the indicator and windscreen wiper levers are on opposite sides to where you would expect them. So now when the rain starts up, as it is prone to do in Melbourne every seventeen seconds, my reaction is usually to tell everyone I'm going to pull over, as if the gentle yellow glow and comforting tink-tink sound is enough to ward off the chilly Antarctic breeze. You'll also know when I'm about to make a turn as well as my windscreen will suddenly get very clean.

But what really annoys me about these cars is their gearboxes. I'm not going to get all technical about it hear because, quite frankly, I don't know anything about it, but let me just describe how they work; you have little flippy paddle button things on the steering wheel that you can easily reach while gripping the wheel at two and ten in white knuckled fear, and pressing these flippy paddle things takes you up and down gears. However, if the car decides you haven't changed gear fast enough, it does it for you. And more so than that, it tells you when to change gears anyway. So this car is so completely smartassed that it is the equivalent of a passenger sitting behind you, saying in a smug supercilious tone "so do you think that you should look out for that truck? That noise the engine is making means you should go up a gear – oh wait, let me just do it for you. Oh now you're stopping, here I'll handle these tricky gear things – oh you want to do it? Too late, I've done it for you. But good job for trying your hardest."

Quite frankly if I wanted to have someone change my gears for me, I would buy an automatic or even perhaps just cut to the chase and get in a taxi! I've earned my license; now let me drive damn it! And if you're going to tell me when to change gears, assume that if I haven't done what you've told me, it's for a good reason. Such as my desire to make loud noises and smoke. Don't just go ahead and do it for me!

That being said, the whole thing is remarkably convenient and that's what really living in the inner city is all about; paying a fortune to live in a shoe box that smells of Cherry Ripe because it's close to anywhere you want to go. And you ever want to go further than that – you have FlexiCar. Or you will if they ever decide to offer a car that you're not embarrassed to be seen in outside of your postcode.

There are benches around St Pauls Church, the big old one opposite Flinder St Station in Melbones. Usually they're occupied by 'the emo' and 'the derro' and 'the native australian' but this morning they were occupied by 'the skinhead.'

The skinhead was sitting there with his pitbull and a beer. He looked pretty smashed and was doing that flinching thing you do when you've been drinking all night and the sun's come up and you're not quite sure what to do now because all around you are busy city types going to work. He'd obviously been on the turps for ages and was up for nothing more challenging than considering the supremacy of his race and sitting with his doggie.

Said doggie had other things on his mind. The pitbull suddenly gets up and starts trying to hump Adolf's leg. The Ubermensch waved his arm at the dog like it was a fly, but the dog is still trying to get his game on so the skinhead takes a big swing at his dog, overbalances, falls out of the bench he was sitting on and hits the ground, splat like a pancake. He's flopping on the ground trying to get up but this is complicated because his dog's eyes have lit up with DING DING DING RAPE RAPE RAPE and he's jumped on the skinheads back and starts going at him hammer and tongs.

So there was a skinhead, outside of the big church in town, flopping around empty bottles and durry butts and getting raped by a pitbull.

It was fantastic.

I also learnt today that, no matter how much you might want to, it really is best not to look at the toes of the Big Issue man. Doubly so if he is a fatty and his girlfriend he's canoodling with has no hair.

I write this from the student union member's computing centre at the University of Melbourne. If I stop to think about that for a second, I get rather surprised.

Since I'm new at this game and have even less clue about than the 18 year olds fresh out of high school that surround me, I have only the many glossy guidebooks that have filled my letterbox these past few weeks since I was accepted here as a guide. So apparently I should be looking something like this:



Which is a bit difficult as my hair is still recovering from Kapooka, so the only people with hair as short as mine keep asking me to join their Queer advocacy group. Also, I have no desire to be impaled on a dynamic design element like that poor chap on the right.

However, I have booked in a extensive shopping trip at 'Corduroy jackets and scruffy trainers r us' so I should be blending in just as soon as this macrobiotic organic cruelty free hair tonic kicks in. I met the dean today and let me just say he was a disappointment; not a triple-secret-probation handing out in sight.

Obviously if I was pointing out all the wacky things I'm seeing people around me do I would be telling you:

1. old news as most of you have done this before.
   
2. just how much of a narc I have become. What's that Jason? People walking into lectures late and not excusing themselves? Unforgivable! You should write a minute and submit it to the proper authorities. But while I'm on the subject, PUNCTUALITY IS NOT A VICE GODDAMNIT!
   

One thing that is interesting is that I'm blowing people's minds and revolutionising paradigms as I’m doing a Major in International Studies, Minor in Islamic Studies and diploma in Arabic – however the bloody time table keeps scheduling all of my classes at the same time. I would have thought that trio would go well together, but it appears that I'm wrong – or right in all the wrong ways. Or the other way around. Anyway, it appears that I will be shaking up these hip youngsters with my crusty old ways after all as I try to make a timetable that works.

Righto, well it's taken me ages to get this into a fit state for presentation but here's a little film that I shot while in New Guinea, which involves myself and Eden running around New Ireland exploring Japanese bunkers and tank wrecks. The footage shot wasn't really planned - I was just playing with a camera and doing a bit of voice overing before I started making my PNG health films and later edited it into this so it ain't great. But it's not bad and a bit of fun, I think, so check it out and I hope you enjoy.

It's on Google Video cause its too big for youtube - so you might need to resize the window so it isn't pixellated to bugger and back.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-971139985788063399&hl=en

My former boss at IMR in PNG wanted a promo cut for the Health in Action film I made in PNG to show at a talk he's giving tomorrow night. He just wanted 'some action shots with some music or something' but if anyone is interested, here it is.

Last weekend's Induction to the Australian Army was... an induction. Lots of powerpoint: The Army's policy on non medical use of drugs. The Army's policy on equality and diversity. The Army's policy on non approved kangaroo shootage. The Army's policy on driving your M1 Abrams main battle tank through a beatnik bongo drum circle without the permission of your Commanding Officer or your Officer Commanding. There was paperwork, a few speeches, a few attempts at drill and marching, but no Full Metal Jacket boot camp shenanigans, no yelling, no waking in the middle of the night or any of that business. I will say this though : army food - at least the stuff they serve in the mess - rocks.

However, I have missed out on next month's training in Queensland and now have to wait until the next course is run in January. It's fair though - the guys who are going have been waiting three to six months for this course to come up, whereas I've been in a fortnight, and I had an uncommonly smooth run up until now; I got on the induction and recieved all my gear within a week of being appointed, whereas some guys had been in for months and still don't have their boots.

It hasn't delayed my career any though; the next course after this won't be run until April 08, so whether I do the course next month, or next January, I wouldn't be able to continue my training and get closer to my commission until April 08 anyway. And it'll give me more chance to get those basic military skills like marching in a straight line, working out when a superior officer is bullshitting you or not and not cracking up laughing when one of the other officer cadets spills a kilo of sugar all over the warrent officer who was in the middle of lecturing him. Which, I now know from experience, is fucken funny!

After six months of mucking around, two psychs, two officer interviews, a physical and complete blood work out, I walked into Simpson Barracks at 7am today to face the Officer Selection Board.

After nine and a half hours of physical tests, leadership tests, debates, arguments, presentations, interviews, more physical tests, team work tests and more team work tests and a fucking terrifying panel interview conducted by a lieutenant colonel and three majors, I was driven out as a brand new officer cadet in the Australian Army Reserve.

In other words, I passed the Board.

When I'm not driving a boat, chucking ropes or telling kids to keep their bloody hands inside the window while we're mooring, I like to make photoshops for Something Awful. The theme this week is "Grindhouse classy movies" - in other words, turn classy movies into cheap, exploitive 70s style schlock. Here's my submissions:

( Click here for the video nasties! )

I was watching the trailer for Sunshine and thinking "Wow... this looks awesome!" Then I thought, wait no, it's just the same old 'impossible natural phenomena requires implausible manned mission and heroic deaths of 80% of the crew to prevent' - it's going to be The Core but in space!!!

Of course, the reason why the trailer looks awesome is the music - "Requiem for a Tower", a remix of a track from Requiem for a Dream and used in the LOTR trailers and now in any trailer wanting to be made EPIC.

To prove, scientifically, that is can make any trailer EPIC I made this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrZUfKk_mPc

There you go: CASED CLOSED. Beware of trailers using this track as it may not be as epic as you think.

Mind you... that trailer I made is pretty AWESOME. I can't wait until October 2007! IT LOOK AWESOME! Did you see the bit where he fell off the bike!!?

I've spent the past couple of months getting used to Australian society again and getting my feet under me once more. No longer do streetlights make me think that the stars have magically come closer and are in danger of burning us up. When I go to the supermarket, I don't wander around in a daze for an hour and then leave without buying anything. Planning ahead is a thing of the past now – if I forget something, such as dinner or beer or toilet paper, I can simply talk into those little portable speaking boxes you can buy from chinamen on every street corner in the city, and within 30 minutes someone has brought what I want to my door. I've started wearing a watch again because things actually happen when they say they will happen. I've also stopped starting conversations with "Sorry about that, I've just got back from PNG, its legal there" and instead with "Hey, did you see COPS last night!? OH DUDE when that guy got tackled and was all like KEPEW, that was AWESOME!"

That being said, I'll be back there soon. I've completed the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme – NEIS to it's friends – a nine week course on starting up a business, mine being taking tours to PNG; small groups of a dozen or so people through the countryside where I spent two years working, travelling by small plane or 4x4 or ship around the islands and mountains and showing them the real PNG. Startup times of the business haven't been finalised yet – my PNG business partners are focused on being re-elected to their ministerial position in the national elections in June, so its going to be after then. And anyway, I wouldn't want to take tourists up before an election anyway; that's just asking for trouble.

So my bread and butter money is coming from building web sites (http://www.scubakavieng.com) and doing some contract work for AVI, where I've been organising security briefings for Federal Police officers being deployed internationally.

Additionally, I'm finally taking the plunge and joining the Royal Australian Navy. I went along to my assessment day and they took one look at the IQ and aptitude results and went "Hmm, we'd like you to be an officer please." Specifically a PR Officer in the Special Reserves, which is a pool of specialists (docs, dentists, chaplains, linguists, PR) that they can call on when they need – in this case, whenever they're doing anything newsworthy, they send along a PR officer to cover it and also be happy-make-nice with the locals. For example, when they sent the regional security mission into the Solomons, the first bloke out of the chopper was special forces, the second bloke was PR

So far I've passed the psych, medical and officer interview, and will be going before the Officer Selection Board in February, which is standing before three serving high ranking officers who grill you and make the final decision. Provided I pass this (and considering there is only one available position available that I'm competing for, its nowhere near a done deal), I'll be off to RAN College in Jervis Bay in March/April, which I assume is going to be something like this, but with more blue:



Lastly, and in a continuing nautical vein, I'm also crew on this vessel:



Being a replica of the Enterprize, the ship that carried the first white settlers to Melbourne in 1835. Everything about her is as authentic as possible; so I'm learning to sail a 19th century ship which, while it means that my terminology is 150 year out of date down the yacht club, does mean my beloved Aubrey/Maturin novels are about 300 times more comprehendible (they being written in the language of the day). The ship is entirely volunteer crewed and sails up to six times a week with school groups, booze cruises, sunny afternoon charters and the like – I was on the short list for the month long February trip to Hobart, where they sail her across the Bass and then around the island, but unfortunately missed out by this much. I get out on her as often as I can, which is never often enough, but is always an excellent experience, especially when she goes to Rye or Portarlington for several days, where we get to stay up all night on watch during storms or climb up the tops to reef the topsail in a thirty five knot guster in a rolling sea. And the best thing is everytime I go out on her, it counts as a sea day in my logbook, which puts me ever closer to getting the 365 days worth of sea time that I need in order to study for a deckwatch ticket.

Which of course is all part of why this journal hasn't been updated in the past four months; this rate of update is unlikely to change anytime soon but I hope to make more a record now that I've got myself a house and work and caught up on two years of missing out on movies and computer games and kebabs.

Arrived back in Aussie last night. I've got me some broadband now, so here's something I haven't been able to do for two years - UPLOAD SHIT FAST!

This is what I did today:



Here are pictures I took today.



( Read more... )

The last five months of my life are currently being burnt as a DVD; the final cut of "IMR - Research for Action" is premiering to the hordes in an hour, straight from the burner to their eyeballs. Five months work, thirty hours of footage, countless hours of travelling by pretty much all means possible (well, except train) all across this country, from jungle to mountains to swamp to ocean.

This had better bloody well work.

Back in the office after a couple of weeks running around the country. There is a month left to finish making my docos (one English language, one pidgin) and things are getting pretty hectic in that "The deadlines will be reached even if it doesn't look it," kinda way. Unfortunately, someone forgot to rub the cheetah blood on the country's internet hub so whilst I'm as busy as a bricklayer in Baghdad, I can't be showing you all the pretty fruits of my labours as of yet.

I spent a week in the Sepik, a vast, Amazonian river system that fills the north of the country. Here I was glad of the extra money I spent on the waterproof camera bags; bridges were frequently washed away and what was meant to be a quick drive out and back to a village to film a meeting between the elders and our scientists turned into a day long hike through tropical downpours when the bridges we needed to cross are washed away. Extra points for picking up some nasty bug that got into my lymphatic system through blisters on my feet and knocked me out for a couple of days.

I've also been able to get in some underwater filming, of schools of trevally, parrotfish and sweetlips hanging around the bridge of a sunken gas tanker off Moresby. Also, got lots of nice, opening of Thin Red Line style filming of Papua kids swimming underwater. Which will nicely fill out the "PNG, beautiful land" type shots I'll be opening the films with before going "BUT IT MASKS A LAND OF HORRIBLE DISEASES!" and switching to dying kids in aid posts. See? Showing the horror behind the facade. That's documentarying, baby!

I'm in town this week, but next week its off to Milne bay and some remote islands in the Ferguson group, which will involve travelling across open sea in a six metre tinny for four hours. Did I mention I'm glad I bought waterproof camera bags? I did? Right. Then back here after a week documenting our women's intervention health program there (ie, trying to save some of the four thousand women who die annually in childbirth), for a final frenzy of editing and voiceover recording with the intention of getting the films done by the end of August.