On Friday night I played a short and fun DJ set in Kings Cross at a Michael Jackson tribute night (he was good before he went bonkers).

I even somehow slipped some 2 Live Crew in there.

After the set, my three beers needed somewhere to go, so I went to the loo.
All urinals full, I ducked into the cubicle.
What is it with guys and toilets in bars?
When they go out do they forget the simple “Point and Shoot” mechanism of their penises?
Do they attach a sprinkler system to the end of their knobs?
Are they channeling Brett Whitely and trying to create art?
Why is every nightclub toilet cubicle floor and seat covered in piss?

It’s not that hard lads, no matter how drunk you are, you simply hold on to both walls and aim for the hole in the middle. Eaaaaasy.

Is it because you don’t get to piss all over the floor and walls and seat in the toilet at your house that you feel the need to do it when out of the house?
I mean really!
My friend’s three year old son has better aim, and he is balancing on his tip toes to get over the rim.

So, simply put.
If you’ve had a few too many, and you need to wee (we all do) USE THE URINAL.
It’s a WHOLE WALL. You can’t possibly miss.

If you use the cubicle,
lift the seat, one hand on the wall, the other on your willy, relax, point and shoot.
Easy.

This is not primary school, and in the end it’s someone’s job to mop up your Smirnoff Ice-smelling urine.
Spare a thought for that guy/girl.

Other than that, I had a corker of a night, especially once my shoes dried out..
Thanks to the cute people who were dancing to the songs that I played, too..
xx aa

So, a politician went to a strip club, four years ago, in another country.

As a result he’s being crucified for it.

Now – bear in mind that I have not researched the policies of that particular party enough just yet, so my next statement does not apply to him per se:

If a politician that I liked went to a strip club, he’d have more in common with me than a politician who had never been in a strip club.
That’s a man of the people, people.

I certainly believe that this kind of political and public flaying of a man’s character, over and incident that occurred years ago in a foreign country is a pathetic mockery of our precious democratic process.

How far back do you want to go when making a judgement on someone? How far into the private details of their personal lives do you need to see to know if he’s a good man or not. How many things can you take out of context and hold against someone?
Think about how you would feel if you were subjected to the same scrutiny?

And above all of this, do the things that our politicians do in their personal lives hold a candle to the moral judgement calls that they make in their offices in Canberra (eg: education funding, ongoing Aboriginal health issues, sustainability of our lifestyle) that they wash their hands of afterwards saying, “I was just doing my job”.

I will tell you one thing – the men (yes they’re all men) who are in charge over how much you pay for groceries, petrol, your phone bill, your car, your beers, your day to day expenses – these men have more control over how you live than anyone you’ll ever vote for.
I will guarantee hands down, each and every one of those business men has attended a strip club on an overseas business trip once in their lives.
How much do you care about that?

A grown man away from his wife and kids out with the boys in NYC?
There’s practically a shuttle bus from the hotel to Scores or Flashdancers.

For fuck’s sake, give the man a break.
Sometimes when you’re on a business trip and need to get information out of an increasingly boozed-up and loose-lipped potential client or political ally, you go wherever the night takes you.

I mean, really.

Your children idolise sportsmen who party like madmen in foreign countries on their end of season trips, men who have been far more well documented doing far more risque things, and you’ve no problem with their poster being on your kids’ wall.

The man may have had some clue that he was shooting for PM back then, and may have had an idea about how clean to keep his image, though going to a strip club once does not constitute a breach of character as far as I’m concerned.

If he went every day, at 3pm – then I may be worried.
If he sat in front of a pokie machine wasting his life away every day, then I’d be worried.

Until then, leave the man alone and get back on the real issues please.
This entire process is quickly becoming reminiscent of the
Andrew Günsberg vs. Patrick Dooley affair of early 1987, except that we were twelve years old, and we behaved somewhat more maturely than this about our brief rivalry.

A businessman goes on an overseas trip, and in the process of entertaining a political ally, ends up at a strip club.
He got there, figured it out, and apparently split fairly quickly.
He felt it was important to apologise to his wife about it, and he did.
Years later when asked about it in public, he felt he should apologise to the people, and so he did.
Do we not then leave it alone?

You can’t say it on Sunrise or Alan Jones or Lawsie so I’ll say it here.

BIG FUCKIN WOOP.

Get on with the real job and stop wasting everybody’s time.

xx aa

And so last week, I leapt into the world of Facebook.

For the same reason that I started a myspace, I started a facebook page.
ie: impostors creep me out, and I’d rather it be me on there not replying to you than someone else doing it.

So yeah, I joined Facebook.

Myspace for accountants as my friend Digby calls it.

Within about a nanosecond of me signing on, all these friend requests came through.
People who I haven’t known for years started hitting me up, and people whom I’ve never me were all poking me or asking to let in.

Now.
From what I can gather, Facebook is a way for people to maintain contact with each other, is much more immediate than myspace and is more intertwined on many levels.
Also from what I can gather, my personal stuff/messages etc can be seen by people who I befriend.

Concerned about this, I noticed that I could also choose to have certain people only see a limited profile of me.

I then figured that if someone I worked with for a few months five years ago, only saw at work, and had a pleasant but professional relationship with found that they were only allowed at my limited profile, they might get shirty.

So I made a few decisions.

If I would have you in my house, then I will have you on my Facebook.
If I have held your hair while you vomit, or you have held mine, then I will have you on my facebook.
If I haven’t been in touch with you and you haven’t made any effort to contact me for a few years, then there’s probably a reason.
If we’re destined to meet, then we will bump into each other another way.
Otherwise, I apologise, but no thank you.
Know this means more about me than it does you.

So curse me all you like, I reserve the right to keep this one quiet..
Be my Myspace friend. I write back all the time and read every message that comes in.
Send me an email on the left there, I answer them all.

Does this make me a cyber snob?

xx aa

Here’s a very interesting article that reflects on how our society has come to be bent out of shape in order to be coerced into buying/voting more easily.
A rather spiffy read if you have five minutes.

Is it odd that I post this, and I’m part of the media?

No.
The revolution will begin from within!
AH HA!!

Seven Negative Attitudes

Very interesting.
xx aa

I just watched the Bourne Ultimatum.

A great film with a great plot and stunning visually, except for one little thing.
Paul Greengrass, the director, obviously blew the budget on having second unit crews shooting in Madrid, Morocco and Italy, because there obviously wasn’t enough money left in the kitty TO BUY A FREAKIN TRIPOD.

The whole film is shot in medium close up shots (nipples to forehead), on what looks to be a handheld camera.
It must be one of those colossal Panavision jobs that weighs about forty kilos because the operator can’t hold the bloody thing steady.

It’s the first time since I watched the notoriously shaky-camera film ‘The Blair witch Project’ that I had to leave the room because I was getting seasick.
Dead-set, I thought I was giong to hurl.
Paul Greengrass had enough money to afford a pigeon wrangler, even an assistant pigeon wrangler (thanks Noa for spotting that one in the credits), but no cash left for a tripod.

I am bitching because I fall into the small percentile of the human population that can not watch subjective (point of view) footage shot with a certain focal depth without waiting to vomit.
It’s shot that way so as to immerse the viewer in the action, but the only thing it immerses me in is bile and whatever I had for lunch.
I think it’s about three in two hundred people that get affected this way.
I know this made up statistic because my friend Jeremy who makes Playstation games (coolest job ever) told me about the first-person camera angle that the programmers use to give that immersive sensation to a video game.
All those games that are first-person shooters? If I play them, the only thing I’m shooting is chunks out of my nose.
Halo 2? GTA San Andreas? Time Crisis? Doom? Wolfenstein? All of these I can not play without being horridly seasick and off balance.

As a result of my genetic pre-disposition to have an adverse reaction to certain camera angles, I was unable to enjoy the solid acting of Matt Damon.
Ahem.
Great script, great plot, brilliant locations, incredible action, heart pounding chases, very mean baddies, and me excusing myself from the packed theatre lest I spray the poor person in front of me with the tofu that I ate for lunch.

After watching this fabulously shaky movie, we went to my mate’s house to check out “Victoria Beckham, Coming to America” that he had on the recorder box.

It was not, as I had hoped, a remake of the Eddie Murphy classic, but instead one hour salvaged from an aborted reality series aimed to introduce America to the Beckhams and try to get them to embrace the family, and the game of soccer that he plays.
What an unintentionally hilarious piece of television.
Truly incredibly brilliant in its’ genius self-hole digging of Posh.
“Adam my hairstylist and Meg my make up artist are my two best friends”. You PAY your two best friends? I was a little sad. Also wondered how much she gets them for, as mine are costing me a mint to keep up…

Idol’s on tonight.
I hope you enjoy it.
About a sixty people worked their arses off to make those audition show happen.
I hope you spot a favourite early!
Take care, have fun, hold the camera still..

xx aa

There are a few signs I have seen this week, that if you read them like tea leaves or goat entrails, that you can predict the coming apocalypse.

I have noticed them, but have hesitated to talk about them lest I be locked up and considered a nut bar, but I can hold silent no longer…
Until I make a hat out of alfoil, here they are:

- Again: People who aren’t kids that wear Croc shoes.
- People who aren’t kids on Razor scooters.
- Fifteen skaters Vs One devout religious man on You Tube.
- Every band wishing that they sounded like Joy Division.
- Fall Out Boy covering “Love will tear us apart”

Do whatever it is you have to do today, because we can’t be far off.

xx aa