How to make Muslims angry

One of the best things I've gained from blogging over the last two years is learning from the diverse perspectives of other bloggers around the world. It's one thing to read a journalist reporting on what life is like in other parts of the world. It's quite another to get first hand accounts.

Like it or not, one of the major issues in the world today is the clash of cultures between Islam and the Christian/secular west. How much of a clash this may actually be depends on your point of view of course. It's somewhere between people from different cultures learning to respect the differences between each other and an apocalyptic battle between good and evil.

I like to think I'm capable of making up my own mind and I'm not overly swayed by the self serving braying of politicians, media talking heads and religious figures on all sides of the debate. But I remain eternally grateful to people I've met through this blog who have given me a first hand view of what it's like to be a Muslim in today's world.

While there are undoubtedly a scary number of people willing to distort their religion to justify the murder of innocent people I'm not the type to tar everyone with the same brush. I have too much Irish Catholic in me to go along blindly with that. You don't have to have a very long memory to know the prejudice and vilification the Irish suffered in the UK.

But to have the pleasure of reading the work young Muslims who are devout, thoughtful, intelligent, questioning and (shock, horror) female... well, it makes it easier to take the sensationalism of the media with a grain of salt.

So when I read an article about a right wing politician in the Netherlands launching a film critical of Islam I didn't immediately assume the worst would happen. I put my thoughts together into the following video:

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-DjtLYiZxE

The comments on YouTube were pretty much what I expected. There were more than twice as many comments as I usually get for a video which is not surprising seeing as it's such a hot button issue. Most commenters thought I was even handed but there were the usual close minded bigots who don't like having their binary good/evil worldview challenged.

It used to bug me when idiots attacked me for things I didn't say while ignoring things I did say but now I take it as a gift. Having some first hand experience of people blatantly misrepresenting my words, it's easier not to get quite so worked up by media reports. When people have their own barrows to push, the truth tends not to matter very much.

Mr Safety's 2 Girls 1 Cup reaction

For those who don't know, Cory Williams AKA Mr Safety of SMP Films is one of the highest profile people on YouTube. Cory stayed with me when he came out for last year's As One gathering in Melbourne. We uploaded a few videos together at the time but we actually shot a bit of stuff we never used.

I was doing some editing in preparation for my 600th video (it won't be up for a while yet but I've learned it's better to do the editing in stages) and this involves cleaning out my hard drive a little.

I found a few bits of video I had shot of Cory and thought "what better way to celebrate becoming a partner than cashing in on the profile of someone who's more popular than me?" Oh yeah, I'm a YouTube partner now which means instead of just doing the videos for fun, I'll continue to do them for fun but may actually make a few cents from ad revenue. But probably not.

Anyway, Cory was one of the first friends I made on YouTube which has worked out well for me because now I get to exploit his online fame. I plan to debase his good name now by showing the video I shot of him seeing 2 Girls 1 Cup for the first time.

So how did I come to get his reaction to seeing 2 Girls 1 Cup for the first time? Well, one afternoon we decided to go on Stickam and Cory spent about an hour chatting with various people (the room was featured on Stickam's front page and I think there were over 1,00 people in there at one point). One sick little monkey sent Cory the link to 2 Girls 1 Cup and told him to watch it.

When Cory said he didn't know what 2 Girls 1 Cup was, I realised I had a golden opportunity. I wouldn't let him watch it until I had my camera ready and so now I present for your viewing pleasure, Mr Safety losing his innocence as he watches that famous moment in internet gross-out porn "2 Girls 1 Cup".

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=R653ACbI9IQ

By the way, if you don't what 2 Girls 1 Cup is, DON'T LOOK IT UP! Seriously, save that part of your soul. If you feel tempted to look for it, poke out your eyes with knitting needles instead. Trust me, that will be less painful.

Beware the zombie Jesus!

I made this video on Good Friday but Easter Sunday seems like a fair time to post it here. A new background and a new t-shirt. I'm bursting with new-ness!

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=rf3ZU36ueuI

Bigotry online (part two)

Wherein my rambling continues. And is unexpectedly cut short when the memory card in my video camera gets filled up. That's what I get for not stopping the camera between takes. There's at least one more part of this video series to come.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=zWLhsvte7kw

And I promised I will reply to all the comments the first in this series generated.

Tomorrow. I'll do that tomorrow.

Bigotry online

Let me tell you what the problem with niggers is...

Better still, let me tell you how I'd solve the the Jew problem in this town...

Or maybe I'd be better off explaining how the Muslims are invading our country...

Actually, speaking as someone who's been called gay, black, Asian, Lebanese, Jewish, Muslim and several other weirdly inaccurate things by people who thought they were insulting me, allow me to have a little ramble on the topic of bigotry. I've even chosen a pleasant setting in which to discuss this unpleasant topic.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=T-FUjdCkr0w

Angry at the doctor's office

So I had the wonderful experience of spending half an hour in the waiting room of a doctor's office today. My first big question is how do doctors manage to be running late five fucking minutes after the day starts? Why do I ever bother showing up on time for appointments? There's ALWAYS a half hour wait.

At least this doctor's office has good magazines. I passed the time by reading The New Yorker. All right, I'll be honest: I passed the time time by reading the cartoons in the New Yorker. About 20 minutes into my wait I noticed something weird about a woman sitting opposite me. Every time I looked up she was in exactly the same position, hunched over and writing furiously in a notebook. And I mean EXACTLY the same position.

Normal people move occasionally.

A few minutes later, the answer started to reveal itself. I was reading when I noticed a weird noise. It's a little hard to describe, it was a whiny, squeaky sound. After a while I realised it wasn't going away and looked up to see what it was. And I was greeted by the sight of this... dude. Said dud was wearing white track suit pants. And nothing else. And he was bent over, presenting me with a disturbing amount of arse crack.

Let me explain a little. This doctor's office is in St Kilda which is a rather seedy area of Melbourne. So while it has nice beachfront and expensive real estate, it also has lots of junkies and hookers. The situation was now becoming clear. The obsessive tendencies of ice addicts tended to explain sitting lady's weird behaviour. Now it seemed as if some little druggie domestic dilemma was being played out for a full waiting room's enjoyment.

Actually, I have to hand it to the junkies. They kept it quiet. It never got to be more than this weird, muted whining. Anyway, after a few minutes Arse-Out-Of-Track-Suit-Pants man left and crazy lady went back to her weird behaviour. She was now apparently bored with sitting still and scurried around obsessively tidying up the magazines (more classic ice user behaviour).

In retrospect, I'm sorry I didn't get her number before she left. I hate cleaning up my own place and I think that job would have kept her occupied for hours. And she wouldn't have stopped until everything was organised into neat piles, even if it meant not sleeping for 72 hours.

These really were considerate junkies, though. They stayed quiet (if weird) while in the waiting room. When crazy lady eventually went outside to meet up with arse man they spent a lot of time trying to attract the attention of someone called Paul. By which I mean they spent 10 minutes in the middle of a busy road screaming "PAAAAAAUUUUUULLLLLLL!!!!!"

I have no idea why Paul didn't rush out to meet them.

I have fun

Sorry I haven't been posting much. I've been selfish enough to be enjoying my life. Here's a lttle taste of what I've been doing for the last two weeks:

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=TG1IPSXIbwM

The place I stayed is called The Goat and Goose and no, they didn't give me any freebies for mentioning them, I just like the place.
http://www.thegoatandgoose.com

The following people can shut the fuck up (part one)

Any time now...

Let me preface this by saying concentrated stupidity annoys me more than I realised. I've just taken a long weekend off to have a lovely, restful time in a Bed & Breakfast on the coast northeast of Melbourne (I may share some videos of this break at a later date). This was a proper holiday - I not only didn't post any videos or make any blog posts, I didn't go online at all. This meant when I got home I had about 200 comments to read through.

There are a couple of videos I've posted to YouTube where I was, quite frankly, deliberately trying to pick a fight. I picked some groups who annoyed the shit out of me and went for their throats. This results in me regularly getting stupid comments from said antagonised groups which was exactly what I wanted. As my general obsessive pattern is to check messages several times a day, I usually only have to deal with these moronic comments one at a time which makes them funny.

But having not looked at messages for three days meant I had to read through about a dozen really stupid comments in rapid succession. This got very fucking annoying. To clarify: I don't mind when people disagree with me. I know very intelligent people frequently have divergent opinions. That's why they're called opinions, they're subjective - they are not objective reality. I get on quite well with some people who disagree with me on almost every political and social issue.

It's stupid people that piss me off. People who obsessively cling to dogma and seem to believe if they repeat the same, easily disprovable crap over and over it will magically become true. And what's more, these brain-damaged rejects have some insane belief that I am compelled to "debate" them. Let me make this clear: you can have whatever insane beliefs you want, I really don't give a fuck. But when you want to control public discourse or you want to influence politics in such a way that it affects everyone's lives then I'm not going to be quiet.

But I'm not going to "debate" you. First, I have better things to do with my time. I will decide when I want to go back and forth with someone, I will not have this requirement forced on me by someone I regard as a fuckwit. Second, some things simply aren't up for debate. The evidence is in. The fact that some loudmouths (including people who may run for US President) insist on spouting insane shit doesn't mean there's any "debate". It simply means that loudmouths are spouting insane shit.

So that's the preamble, let's get to the first group who can shut the fuck up any time now:

Creationists
Believe in the magic bloke in the sky all you like - I don't think belief in god means a person in stupid. I've met way to many smart religious people and way too many stupid atheists to fall into that trap. But creationism is plain fucking stupid. Denying evolution is plain fucking stupid. Trying to subvert the teaching of science in schools is sick, evil and wrong. And it must be stopped.

I have actually had to deal with morons saying creationism is valid science. There is no science whatsoever in creationism or its evil, inbred cousin, so-called "intelligent" design. ID is nothing apart from creationism wearing a cheap white smock they bought at a costume shop that they think makes them look like a scientist. The evil scum who propose that this drivel should be taught as science are worse than pure religious creationists.

At least the religious fundamentalists wear their ignorance proudly. The unintelligent design shysters aren't even that honest. I'd hate to break it to you freaks, but your lies are really obvious. You can repeatedly say your spirit worhip is science but it doesn't stop being voodoo. And I really don't fucking care how much you have politicians scared into not speaking out against you. The fact that the President of the USA says your shit should be taught alongside evolution doesn't make it valid. It simply means he's a fucking moron.

So, in short, I will not engage creationists. They're not worth it. I will, however, enjoy myself by taunting them and even viciously attacking them. They aren't worth expending one iota of intellectual effort. They are beneath contempt. But I will take every opportunity to have fun by ripping them apart.

Oh, and for those fuckwits who are such a charming mix of pedantry, indignation and flat-out stupidity - this isn't an ad hominem attack. If I said you are stupid which proves your argument is stupid that would be an ad hominem attack. Science has objectively proven your argument is unmitigated bullshit so I don't have to do that. I'm launching personal attacks on you because it's fun.

Puppy killing marine and Internet vigilantes vie for title of world's biggest psychopath

So with everything wrong in the world right now, a lot of people are getting worked up about a video that appears to show a US marine throwing a puppy off a cliff. I say "appears" because I really don't believe it conclusively shows whether or not it was a real, live puppy.

Despite the assertions of a lot of people I don't see any conclusive signs of life from the "puppy". And for all the people who say that a toy couldn't look that realistic, I say you haven't spent enough time in toy shops.

Second, I'm extremely dubious about the sound. As someone who makes a lot of videos, the yipping of the dog you hear as it goes over the cliff doesn't sound real. It sounds like a cartoon-ish sound effect that was added at a later point.

Also, the truncated nature of the video makes me a little suspicious. You only see about ten seconds - what happened before, what happened after? It's extremely likely that the before and after would prove conclusively whether or not it was an actual, live puppy being thrown. That would say whether or not the guy just had a sick sense of humour and set up a prank or if he's a sick psychopathic bastard who thinks killing puppies is funny.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=A1GjfapSrnw

The fact that no video has surfaced that clear the marine actually makes me suspect the footage is real. Which is quite disturbing. I understand why people have found this so horrific. A lot of people have said "why care about a puppy?" but it's more what the puppy symbolises. The utter defenselessness and innocence of a puppy make the way the marine seems to casually kill it all the more horrific. As it literally engendering a sense of horror.

When stuff like this can happen, humanity is utterly fucked.

Also for me, sometimes the big stuff is too big. The travesty that is the Bush administration occasionally gets too horrific to process. The utter destruction of everything that is good about America is more than a tad disturbing. The death of hundreds of thousands of civilians gets to be too much. The fact that they totally fucked over their own soldiers as well is too much. The fact that they feel they have the right to treat their own citizens as the worst sort of criminals and take away all their rights is too much.

So caring about a puppy is a sort of stand-in for all of that.

And by the way, fuck the internet vigilantes who have been going after his family. They don't KNOW a goddam thing. They are convinced of their righteousness and there's nothing as dangerous as righteous anger. Even going after the marine when they don't know the full story is wrong. But going after his family is just fucked and utterly indefensible.

I posted a video on the topic on youtube (provided above for your viewing pleasure) and the most bizarre response I got was 9/11 conspiracy theorists going after me. WHAT THE FUCK? What is wrong with these freaks? A recurring comment was people disagreeing with me when I said attacking his family was worse than killing a puppy. So let me be clear:

Making graphic threats of violence, rape and murder against his family, people who had NOTHING to do with the act, even if the act is true, is far, far worse than killing a puppy. You are a sick, psychopathic fuck and you deserve to burn in your own special corner of hell.

I just like to be clear.

I'm scarier when I'm quiet

Here's one of my occasional story time videos. In this video I relate a story from a St Patrick's Day long past wherein your noble protagonist is accosted by large drunken thugs.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=axa8IeFXvV4

Today's lesson is: you don't have to be big to be scary. You don't have to know martial arts to deal with big guys. You just have to be able to convince them that you're fucking crazy.

Oh, and I was experimenting with the sound on this video. To be frank, I fucked it up. This is one of those painful learning experiences.

Great moments in workplace safety

We had a big workshop on Occupational Health and Safety issues at work today. Senior management were all in attendance to show how seriously they all take OH&S (despite the fact they cram too many of us into cubicles that are too small). I was helping out the presenter by cleaning the whiteboard at the start of the presentation.

Maybe I rubbed the board a bit vigorously but whatever the reason, the fucking thing came off the wall, bounced off my head and hit the floor with an ominous crash, barely missing my toes. I wasn't hurt (it was only my head) but it was startling to say the least.

Considering I was almost killed while setting up a safety seminar, does this qualify as irony? Or is it bad timing? Or possibly even just plain funny. Judging from the laughter from the audience, there was a popular vote for funny.

Oh, except for the management types. They were sitting with an external safety auditor. They didn't laugh at all.

Free sex and money! Best competition ever!

There may be a little hyperbole in that title. But I'm running a competition nevertheless. Ever wanter to be a video blogger but you don't have a camera? I could help you with that. I'm giving away a cheap (and quite frankly dodgy - particularly audio-wise) digital camera to the person who can convince me that they would make the best use of said camera.

The details:
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=MecAws8HrJc

This is mainly aimed at my YouTube audience but I thought I'd post it here as well to see if anyone was interested. I've taken to calling it my "better than nothing" competition. For the obvious reason.