Death Bird

The Wah and I spent Sunday afternoon at Alma Park Zoo. We saw many animals.

Including the Death Bird. Enjoy.



I also have some mean looking photos of an emu (otherwise known as second-largest Death Bird).

Gee, that Amy Winehouse

I know I'm probably the seven-billionth person to write a blog post about Amy Winehouse, but woah. She's not a well puppy, is she?

If you click through to this link, you'll be able to see more eyebrow-and-hair-raising images of the scrawny chanteuse having a "tired and emotional" night out in London. I give you the option of clicking the link because a) it is the Daily Mail online, b) you may not want to lower yourself to looking at paparazzi shots and c) you may want to keep your dinner down.

The most disturbing shots are those of Amy's ravaged face. I remember disagreeing with a friend - Disco Stu, in fact - some time back over whether the scars, scabs and sores were the result of chronic drug use. I understood Amy to have acne, and defended her by saying it was probably unfortunate skin problems, and we should try to be a bit more understanding.

Now I think I should probably eat my words, as it seems obvious there's something else going on there well above and beyond the trauma of cystic acne. Of course as we all know Disco Stu mainlines "Mother" energy drinks, so he's really not in a position to judge anyone about their addiction.

Perhaps I have to accept a certain fondness for the crackpipe on Amy's part - if only because she's persisting with that ridiculous black eye make-up. Surely a sober person would think twice about applying more kohl than Robert Smith? Mind you, there's an uncanny resemblance with the enormous backcomb as well - perhaps Amy Winehouse wants to BE Robert Smith? Or Trent Resnor, or Billy Corgan, or some other hard-rocking twat who thinks outrageous hair & make-up = hardcore?

The upside of Amy Winehouse's sad addiction (that is, for everybody else bar Amy) is that it makes for some easy laughs. I mentioned in an earlier post that I took part in a Griffith Uni Debating Society comedy showcase last week - one of the biggest responses I got was when I said the stockmarkets had collapsed "harder than Amy Winehouse at a nightclub". That really cut through to the 19-year-old law students in the audience. It's good to know despite her prodigous musical talent, she's become a punchline. Maybe a punch-drunk-line.

Happy Birthday Wah

'Cause he's just a bit lovely, really - even with the supposedly affectionate poking, pinching, slapping and limb-twisting he doles out (mostly to me).

It's the anniversary of the Wah's birth today - an occasion I'm reliably informed was accompanied by great tremors of the earth, blackening of the stars and lamentations of the women.

As the Wah points out on his all-too-rarely updated blog, he's now lived longer than Jesus.

This photo was taken at Essaouira during our travels through Morocco. As I think we all know, the Wah loves a cannon (or if you want to go fully retro, a trebuchet). Pity I couldn't afford a fold-out pewter cannonette for his birthday; he's had to settle for a hip flask instead.

Happy Birthday, Wah!

Impro, debates and romping - oh my!

I'm exhausted.

It began Friday night, with a comedy debate for the Griffith Uni Debating Society. Some fellow Impro Mafiosos and I did an impro showcase for the audience, before Al and I went up against each other on the topic "That we would deny reality". I had a blast, and was so pleased that I seemed able to keep the audience entertained with jokes about the stockmarket and credit card debt - without reverting to any gags involving penises or bodily fluids (although one jab at the Broncos danced near the line).

Saturday saw an impro rehearsal, before IM artistic director (otherwise known as the Puppetmaster) Wade and I wandered down to West End amid a lightning show to catch the last bit of the Writers' Fringe Festival at the Sling Bar. We saw performance art. It was.... performance-y.

Sunday dawned with much excitement - Brisbane City Romp day! I was so excited, probably much more than my fellow teammates in "The Evil League of Evil". I spent much of our four hours of Romp time about 50 metres ahead of the rest of the group, trying to find the next elusive checkpoint.

Here's the gang out front of the new Brisbane Wheel. This was just after our Nepalese pagoda checkpoint, but just before our QPAC challenge.

People kept asking us if we were doctors. "No!" we'd cry. "We're evil geniuses!" The best fun was possibly when Wade and The Wah got to have a debate inside the Red Chamber of Parliament House. Couldn't believe we got that challenge - us, improvisers? Forced to get up and rabbit on inside Queensland's seat of power? Bwa-ha-ha!

We did all right points-scoring wise, but we have to wait until Thursday to find out if we've won any prizes. You can see more photos on our Romp profile page. What was certain was our aching muscles and joints. We hightailed it back to Chez Clumsy for showers and refreshing snacks of "pomm frites" and "nugget de poulet", before The Wah, Dan, Wade and I headed up to the Brisbane Arts Theatre for Impro Mafia's performance of "The Wake of Simon Chesterfield".

The show was just brilliant. I was so proud of everybody. The first half of personal stories and short games warmed the audience up really nicely for our second half long-form, the actual "wake" itself. There was humour, great character work, and a psychopathic ventriloquist doll. What more can you ask for?

Finally on Monday night, my body still sore from romping and improvising, I headed into the city for our first "Open Mic Improv" night at O'Malleys. Half of the players were from Impro Mafia's beginner workshops - and boy did they do us proud. Some great work, particularly considering the noise that is the pub venue's biggest challenge. Alicia, Chris and Joel deserve a great big slap on the back, and it augers well for a weekly show. I'll be playing in a couple of weeks' time, and can't wait.

But now - to bed!

For Your Consideration...

This Sunday 21 September, I'm participating in the inaugural Brisbane City Romp - a citywide treasure hunt with a dash of "Amazing Race" thrown in. I've managed to conscript some friends along for the ride. While we're hoping to score our fair share of the $100,000 prize pool on offer, we're mostly just doing it for fun.

The Romp is raising money for the Burnet Institute, which is Australia's leading infectious diseases, immunology, cancer and public health institute. If you click here, you can see our team profile ("The Evil League of Evil"), and sponsor us online. All donations over $2.00 are tax deductible! We're currently sitting on $392.00, so please help us crack $400, or maybe even $500!

After the romp, I and several team members will be backing up for Impro Mafia's latest show at the Brisbane Arts Theatre -  The Wake of Simon Chesterfield. This is a long-form format, which will basically see us improvise a 45-min play. Don't let the idea of a "wake" put you off - this is set to be a show with some pathos, but also a fair whack of humour, and a first half which containing undoubted silliness. It's only $10, and starts at 7pm.

Something to put on your calendar is How to Get Almost Anyone to Want to Sleep With You, the brilliant one-woman show by my friend Deborah Frances-White. Deborah's a London-based improviser, comedian and screenwriter, and her show is full of hilarious insights into the minds of both men and women. It will help you achieve the goal of being universally desired, but best of all it's just great comedy.

This show's been a sell-out both at this year's Melbourne Comedy Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe. It's on for ONE NIGHT ONLY at the StageDoor Dinner Theatre at Bowen Hills. It's on Friday 10th October at 8pm, with tickets just $22. You can book via the website, or call 3216 1115.

Thanks again everybody for your support of my extra-curricular activities!

Motherload

There's no doubt Coca-Cola is to advertising what Nigerians are to the internet - they can sell you anything.

But the company didn't fare too well in Australia with their carbonated energy drink Mother first time round - supposedly it was quite terrible, even by the metallic tangy standard of energy drinks.

Rather than shying red-facedly away from a marketing and commercial disaster, the slick geniuses at Coke decided to "own" the controversy. When they reformulated the drink, they brought it back as Mother, rather than give it a whole new jazzy, zazzy name (I still remember the heartbreak of the Mello Yello/Lift saga, Coke, you bastards).

But obviously they're worried their tongue-in-cheek campaign, that proudly boasts the new Mother is "nothing like the old one!", won't be enough. So they've decided to get you hooked on sheer volume for cost value.

I picked this can up at Coles for just $2.70. Most energy drinks will set you back around $3.50 for a can half the size. The Mother can is 500ml. It looks like a can of European beer. But instead, it's half a litre of taurine and caffeine. The message here is "If God drank energy drinks, he'd drink this one, 'cause he's HARD. F***ING. CORE."

Who needs this much energy? Certainly not a work colleague of mine, Disco Stu, with whom I had to have a quiet word last week after noticing his repeated trips to our work vending machine, where the giant cans still cost only $3.00. I believe he's still yet to sleep after consuming two a day during shifts. THAT'S A LITRE, STU. A LITRE. It's fair enough, we do shift work, it's hard to keep the tiredness at bay sometimes. But STU, IT'S A LITRE. DUDE.

Ahem.

As you can see from this photo, I have yet to crack open the tab on this one. It remains a tantalising top-shelf-of-the-fridge mystery. I'm somewhat hesistant to try it, as I think I'd rather like to get some sleep before Christmas.

NO, STU, YOU CAN'T HAVE IT.

Do you enjoy energy drinks? Did you try Mother back when it was bad? Would you try the new one just to see if it is, in fact, any better at all?

Or will you do what I will and just stick to Pepsi Max?

Start decking the halls

Snapped this evening at Myer Carindale.

I mean, you can't even call this late September, can you?

When Particles Collide

Right now, the boffins at CERN are getting ready to fire up their Large Hadron Collider for the first time. This Wednesday, dudes in white coats and lab goggles will flick some switches and fire a particle beam through the entire 27 kilometres of underground pipelines, forming a giant circle under the Franco-Swiss borders.

How awesome is that?

Over coming months and years, physicists from eighty countries will use and observe the LHC in action, and hope to discover things like the Higgs bosun, and a whole bunch of other stuff that I’m going to pretend I understand. I actually found this excellent geek rap video posted on YouTube, which goes some way to explaining what goes on at CERN (including bad dancing).

Now I probably shouldn’t reveal this embarrassing fact, but the first time I became truly aware of CERN and the LHC was when I read Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons. I’m sure the Wah had mentioned it to me before then, but like much of what that keen New Scientist reader regales me with, it had failed to find a firm footing in my cotton fluffball of a brain.

(And by the way – did you know the film version of Angels and Demons is set for release next May? That’s right, Tom Hanks and his appalling mullet are coming back. Still, it’s got Ewan Macgregor in it – let’s hope Ron Howard doesn’t screw him over the way he did Paul Bettany in The Da Vinci Code.)

Still, I’m interested now. Interested enough to discover the web-based hoopla surrounding the launch of the LHC. People have even taken out lawsuits trying to stop it going ahead. They fear that when the high-energy particles smash together, they’ll create micro black holes, and something called “strangelets”, which will quickly expand and consume the entire Planet Earth into their empty void.

But hey, maybe micro black holes aren’t such a bad thing. Maybe the world could do with a bit of a quantum clean-up. I therefore present my wishlist of “Things I Would Like to See Disappear Into A Naked Singularity”:

*My sore throat.
*The phrase “thanking you”.
*Bad baby names.
*My thighs.
*Religious evangelists and fundamentalists.
*The Actinoids.
*The TV show “Primeval” (which is appropriate, if you know the show).
*Joss Whedon’s obsession with super-powered skinny chicks.
*Stupid effeminate haircuts currently being sported by males aged 15-19.
*That godawful “I Kissed A Girl” song. No, you’re not edgy. You’re lame.
*The irritating smugness of Apple Mac users.

Is there anything in your life that could do with some black hole absorption?

Palin-drones

Gee, that Sarah Palin. She’s really whipped Americans of all political colours into a frenzy, hasn’t she?

I actually do find her rather engaging, despite disagreeing with her on key issues. Of course, I’m in another country, so that hardly matters.

But I’ve always wanted to coin a catchphrase, and I’ve decided Sarah Palin’s flag-wavin’, gun-totin’, choice-hatin’, God-fearin’ supporters deserve their own title. I’m suggesting “Palin-drones”. I’m sure you can assemble the definition in your own mind – something along the lines of the backwards thinking taking them forwards.

Palin-drones. Anybody?

(I’m surprised the Democrats haven’t gone with “Biden Time” for their VP pick, although I can see how that could be used to twist Senator Joseph Biden into some sort of twisted, Richard III-style president-in-waiting. An Iago to Barack Obama's Othello, if you like. Hmmm. That's possibly inappropriately too appropriate.)

Moreover, I've been baffled by the choice of names she and her husband have given their brood – Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig. A Google search yielded this quote from Todd Palin, explaining their reasoning to People Magazine:

Sarah's parents were coaches and the whole family was involved in track and I was an athlete in high school, so with our first-born, I was, like, 'Track!' Bristol is named after Bristol Bay. That's where I grew up, that's where we commercial fish. Willow is a community there in Alaska. And then Piper, you know, there's just not too many Pipers out there and it's a cool name. And Trig is a Norse name for "strength."

Now I have no immediate plans to bear five children (or four and a grandchild, if you believe the conspiracy rumours). But I am interested to know what my own lil' bundles o' joy would be named if I were to follow this exact template.

First would be something I excelled in at high school. So break out the blue balloons for my eldest son DEBATING, because I was captain of that at St Paul’s. Next is ALBANY CREEK, because it’s where I grew up. Although you wouldn’t want to eat the fish out of the Pine River behind our place – not since they dammed Cash’s Crossing anyway. Ick.

Third is a community in Alaska. I found a map of Alaskan communities, and waggled my mouse over it until a friend said stop. It landed on YUKON-KOYUKUK, which adds a charming dash of Innuit to my little Aussie battler’s moniker. The requirements for kiddie number four’s name is that it be cool, and uncommon. I’m going to go with DINOSAUR.

Finally, bub the fifth. I went to this online translator, and plugged the word “strength” into the English to Norwegian translator. I chose Norwegian as it’s Scandanavian, and has “Nor” in it, which I figure is close enough to Norse.

The response is the name for my last little one: NO MATCHES FOUND.

Did you read that? According to the internet, Norwegians don’t have a word for strength.

I have no idea how they power those bobsleds at the Winter Olympics.

But anyway. That’s my little family, my very own Palin-drones. I look forward to birthing them in screaming agony, and naming them amidst the mocking laughter of my learned fellows.