Marriage? That's so Gay!

It must be fun being an arch-conservative. When everything you are doing fucks up you can trot out the spectre of the fags coming to take over the world. I mean, what do the left have to scare people with? Global warming (it's a fucking fact dammit!), rapacious corporations, lying politicians, thousands dead in Iraq with no end in sight (and the terrifying possibility of W doing worse to justify his already fucked actions). It doesn't seem to scare the voters as much as the poofs and dykes do.

It's a really simple argument that a lot of people go out of their way to obscure. Point one: do you think marriage is important? If not, the conversation's over (unless you just like arguing - if so, good for you. Fuck off and bother someone who cares.) If yes, point two: do you have a problem with homosexuals? If not, the conversation's over. If yes, admit it and I'm fine with that. You don't want same-sex marriage because you don't like gays or gay sex creeps you out or it's against God or nature or something. That's fine. You admitted it. We know what we're arguing about.

If you think you don't have a problem with gays but you don't want them to get married because marriage is only between men and women, I have some advice for you:

Stop. Fucking. Lying.

I don't know if you're lying to yourself but you're sure as shit lying to me. It's pathetic. You're homophobic - live with it. You don't like the fags. Hey, a lot of them probably don't like you. Spend all their time making fun of "breeders". So cheer up - some gays are heterophobic.

If we take the religion element out (and any religion should be able to ban gay marriage within the religion - religions are all about rules and restrictions) then we are left with the legal status of relationships. In my (not very humble) opinion, telling someone their partner has no legal status with regards to property, benefits, inheritance etc. solely because of their gender, is just fucked up. Can I be really negative and fatalistic for a minute? People talking about the "sanctity of marriage" needing to be protected from homosexuals are either delusional or lying (see homophobic, above). With a 50% divorce rate and fuck knows how many affairs going on, marriage has no sanctity - deal with it.

And then there's the "slippery slope" argument. If we let the goddam fags get married, then there's the polygamists probably closely followed by pedophiles and then the beastiality crowd. We'd be opening the flood gates I tells ya. My answer to that is as follows: my brain works in this funny way where I'm able to assess individual propositions on their own merits. I'm not limited to coming up with one conclusion to cover all eventualities. It's this crazy thing where I don't stop thinking. Weird, I know.

If gay marriage becomes legal and polygamists want to use it as a precedent to further their agenda, good luck to them. To me, they're two different propositions but if they can find someone dumb enough to agree that they should be allowed to have extended marriages solely because gay unions have been recognised then they must be pretty damn good debaters. Or they're debating with some pretty damn stupid opposition.

Oh and by the by, if you want some interesting and intelligent discourse on the topic of polygamy from a Muslim perspective, look here and here and follow some of their links. I like to end on a positive note.

McDonalds Toilet Humour

Well, there's a lot that made me angry on the drive back home but most off all I was angry at the conspiracy I uncovered at a roadside McDonalds. It isn't enough that they're clogging colons with "food" deep fried in lard, they're clogging minds now with their filthy toilet humor in kids' Happy Meals. The suggestively named "Wet and Wild" word find puzzle contains some not very well hidden depth charges to blow the kiddies' minds.

McDonalds helpfully highlights one word "RAIN" (in blue) to get you started. I have highlighted in red the first two words my kids found:
















Now, my kids were in a forgiving mood and said you cant spell "POOL" without "POO" but how they hell can they explain throwing in "WEE" (in the pool perhaps?") Particularly when they given the puzzle the suss name of "Wet and Wild". I am determined that heads will roll for this - I won't be satisfied until the head of McDonalds accepts responsibility and resigns.

And I am not immature. Shut up and leave me alone.

Deep Fried Spam Sandwich

I thought I'd evoke some Elvis style culinary delights today. It seems my Wordpress blog has attracted enough attention to earn around 50 comment spam a day. And the automatic spam protection blocks every one of them. Ha! Fuck you in the neck with Akismet anti-spam you evil, anti-social fucks!

Which of course leads me to wonder if Akismet can be so effective, why cant everyone else?

Anyway, another 12 hour drive with the kids tomorrow, after which I should be able to dedicate my full attention to the blogosphere once more. I will just say to the people finding me via "Russell Crowe Jack Marx" searches: I am indeed Russell Crowe's new stooge. Me and Rusty are best mates because I respect him as the greatest actor of his generation and he appreciates my honesty and insight. The money is secondary.

What's the worst that could happen?

I notice that another person's online life has fucked up their "real world" existence. A Texan schoolteacher by the name of Tamara Hoover lost her job because their were topless photos of her on Flickr. Pretty dumb thing to do (IMHO) but still, she was topless, not on her knees fucking the school football team. I have to admit, if I was her I wouldn't want to go back to teaching knowing that all the students and staff have now had an opportunity to check out her norks.

It has been suggested to me that this blog could have a negative impact on me and it isn't as if I haven't considered the possibility. For those who haven't guessed (or read what I've posted) the mask is a half-arsed attempt to obscure my identity. Anybody who knows me would recognise me instantly so I'm not sure why I bother. At least random strangers wouldn't recognise me.

I have also been very careful to keep truly personal content to a minimum and obscure the facts a bit when I talk about work. The one that could "out" me is Moroccan Chocolate because I actually used that analogy at work and I think I'm currently the #1 Google result for "Moroccan Chocolate". The IT job market in Melbourne is small, incestuous and conservative. If it became generally known I was a blogger it might make people paranoid to hire me so I'm keeping things pseudo-anonymous. I have to face facts that this will inevitably come up one day so I have made the following decision (see if I stick to it when the crunch comes):

Blogging has opened up so many options to me I am not giving it up. I would give up a job before giving up my blog. At the moment, I am making what is to me a shitload of money. I'm worth it (based on the job market and my experience) bit it's still way more than I ever thought I'd be making. I'm essentially a simple country boy. To get top dollar I have to fight pretty hard and this is where I could face trouble. If I was up against someone of similar experience for a role and they knew I was a blogger who hangs shit on people and the other candidate wasn't, I think many employers would go with the other one.

If all the contract agencies gossiped together and decided I was a risk for high profile jobs, my response would be "fuck you in the neck" if you think I'm knuckling under. I could take a 50% pay cut and still be earning more than people who do way harder work. And if I cut my rate, I'd be competing with graduates and other inexperienced candidates so I think employers would be likely to overlook the blog risk because they'd be getting me at a bargain rate. And I'd get some notoriety for being the latest victim of offline persecution for online activities which would give my blog more of the attention I so desperately crave.

So my pledge to readers is: I intend to keep blogging no matter what. And any fucker thinks they can fuck with me has no fucking idea who they're fucking with!

The Joy of a Break

Who'da thunk slow drivers would touch such a universal nerve? After another day's driving I can report that not only are they slow here, they take "give way" as an optional recommendation rather than a rule. Gotta make up for their passiveness by being passive-aggressive in another field I guess.

It still beats being at work. I was thinking today that I am spared conversations like the following for a while:

Me: How you doing?

Psychotic fuckwit I work with: Well I've been having some family troubles lately

Me: Oh... I hope that works out for you.

PFIWW: It turns out my ex is actually having an affair with my dead brother's widow.

Me: Oh...

PFIWW: It's really tearing the family apart.

Me: Ummm OK.

PFIWW: I thought I was over him but this has set me back and opened all the old wounds.

Me: Uhhhh you know...

PFIWW: How could he do something so cruel and thoughtless?

Me: You know, when I said "how ya doing" I didn't want to hear anything personal.

PFIWW: It makes me lose all faith in human nature.

Me: I don't even know you.

PFIWW: Sometimes I feel like I can't get out of bed to go to work.

Me: You're really freaking me out now.

PFIWW: There doesn't seem to be any point in going on...

Me: Oh hey, my mobile is ringing. It's on silent but trust me, somebody is ringing me. Oh what, you need me right away? Gee sorry, this has been great but I've got to get the fuck away from you as quickly as possible. I mean I have some work to do. See ya! Wouldn't wanna be ya! Really.

I suppose I should point out I haven't had that exact conversation at work. But there are some people who need to work on keeping work life an private life separate.

Life in the Slow Lane

I'm trying not to get too angry at people while I'm in my home town because I don't think they could take it but OHMYFUCKINGGODTHEYARESOFUCKINGSLOW! I wondered why I used to be so scared of city traffic when I first moved to Sydney - it's because everyone in country towns drives at walking pace! The adjustment you have to make between the two is goddam huge.

I know I have readers who live in real cities (New York, Prague, London, Los Angeles) who have also experienced Australian traffic and they have reliably informed me that Sydney and Melbourne are country towns by comparison. I accept this, I'm just dealing with my surroundings.

My brother finds it hilarious to drive with me. When the lights change and the car in front of me slowly rolls forward, I start ranting because I'd like to, you know, drive at a reasonable pace... something approximating the speed limit rather than 50% of the speed limit. I start shouting and waving my arms about (to myself in the car - I try not to actually pick fights with other drivers):

"C'MON! Drive already! It isn't hard to do: first gear, second gear, third gear... get it together you fucking idiot!"

Apparently nobody does this in small towns. I'll have to remember to stick to larger cities on my world tour where all the angry people are.

It wouldn't be an angry blog without angry comments

I'm not sure if everyone who visits this blog reads all the comments, if not you miss some gems. It seems my anger give my readers license to unleash their own spleen, which is entirely my intention. The funny thing is how often people feel compelled to apologise for long comments when to me this is the best possible outcome for my blog. In lieu of a guest blogger (something I might do - drop me a line if you're interested) I provide some of my favourite recent comments:

Provided by Tom, a rant from his friend Chopper:

"Here's why we're fucked in this country, why 'our kind' will always be a tiny fringe group and why these idiots re-elected Bush:

'Yet this voluntarism and this separation of church and state have not ledto religious indifference or religious apathy. Indeed, with the exceptionof Ireland, the United States is the most religious society in the Westernworld. Nearly 90 percent of Americans say they consider themselves religious believers of one sort or another, about 80 percent identify withsome Christian faith, 79 percent believe in the Virgin Birth, 78 percent say Jesus physically rose from the dead, 48 percent claim to have had a "born again" Christian experience, and more than 40 percent of Americans say that they are weekly churchgoers, although those who actually attend church may be closer to 25 percent.

At any rate there is an enormous number of different religious groups, over 1,500 by one count, with seventy-five different kinds of Baptists alone. Even in the face of the relentless "secularization" of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, religion in America still flourishes.'

--Gordon S. Wood, from an article in the New York Review of Books

It's that fucking supernatural Jesus! I just reread (or listened to) the New Testament again and i think it's a really odious document. Jesus himself is not too bad, though he is annoying, but Paul is a big fat dick! Really. He says probably half a dozen times: Slaves obey your masters. How could anyone descended from serfs or servants, indentured men or slaves--and that's most of us--ever call himself an adherent of that particular religion? And there's not one nominal christian in a thousand who actually agrees with even a tiny fraction of what Jesus said or stands for. Big fat fucking hypocrites! God's been dead for a long time and these assholes just don't get it."

Boy is Chopper pissed today or what

From Sandra:

"Ok, I hate to take over other peoples posts, but I HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY!

My workplace is becoming more and more toxic. We have a ‘multi-disciplinary’ team. Case management, corrections, medical and psychiatric. More and more the corrections part of the team is treated like brainless baby sitters. I received an e-mail yesterday via the case managers supervisor. I started to send a nasty response back to him, but I remembered that anything in writing can and WILL be used against the writer.

I printed off the e-mail and ask for audience with the superintendent. I showed her the e-mail and told her I was extremely offended by it and told her why. She asked the case manager supervisor to come into the meeting, where we discussed the e-mail and my problem with it.

While I was at it, I also defended the corrections staff. I told them both how fortunate we were to have the people who work day in and day out with these kids. They are dedicated the their resocialization and spend hours every day not only supervising but providing theraputic interventions to help them change their behavior. When kids are leaving and ask who made a difference in their lives and motivate them to change, it is invariably one of these corrections staff. That these guys have a 10 minute break one time a day. And if the case worker needs for them to communicate personally on the behavior of the youth, then that case worker needs to come out from behind their computer, and seek out the corrections officer.

How did the meeting come out? Who the fuck knows. I said what I had to say. The superintendent said she was in agreement. The cw supervisor said he would have a talk with his sub-ordinate. We’ll see. He needs to send her ass to a therapist. "

A classic bit of dirt from the anonymous "REVEALOR":

"The real Jack Marx.

I managed a small band about to sign a major record deal many years ago in Sydney Australia. Just before it was about to happen one JACK MARX a part time reviewer for the free music mag “ON THE STREET” wrote a scathing, nasty and reprehensible live review, stating that the band were stooges for EMI and set up as street credible.

Nothing could have been further from the truth, they were hard working country boys who had played together since early school years. The record company ran a mile and the band never got the chance to release their music. We later found out that MARX had been offended at the gig he reviewed when the singer was paid too much attention from some girl he had fancied on the night, hence a jealous and low act of revenge followed.

Not long after that the ferret left to work for the Melbourne TRUTH, a grubby little X rated paper specialising in sex and dirt, right up his alley.I think MARX has got everything he deserves but be very wary of his confessions to truth, this guy is a certified liar and weasel.Good night and good luck. "

And finally, short and sweet, a fabulous piece of revenge from Range:

"I got woken up on the night of Saturday to Sunday by someone named Jason Green at 04:30 am. He had the balls to leave me a message because I told him to fuck off, after my wife did the same thing. Needless to say, I posted his name on a lot of gay classifieds with interesting comments and his phone number, which is 514-823-9952. Hope he enjoys his week."

Mr Angry Vlog Number Five

My old friends the hippies. I leave you with this as I head off on a 12 hour drive. Hope you like it.

A thought before bedtime

What is it that makes pedestrians so sure I'm going to stop when they walk out in front of me? I'm not talking about when they're on a crossing or they have the green light telling them to cross - I'm a great respecter of pedestrian rights. I'm talking about suicidal fucks who step right into traffic. I would actually have some respect for them if they admitted they were deliberately trying to commit suicide - it's a pretty good plan. Sadly, I'm pretty sure it's Darwinism in action I'm witnessing, not any well thought-out plan.

The real prize-winners are:

- walking into peak hour traffic. Drivers in peak hour are either pissed off about having to go to work or worn out and desperate to get home. Don't get in their way.

- large crowds who swarm across the road against the light simply because everyone else in the crowd is doing it. Look up lemmings - there is only one way this is going to end up.

- people who walk into traffic at night on a poorly lit street while wearing black clothes. I call these ones "speed bumps".

Will you people please grow a fucking brain? I really don't want to run anyone over. I'd feel bad. But you know what? Eventually the bad feeling will go away. And you'll still be dead.

Mr Angry Vlog Number Four

Well, I spent some more time scaring the neighbour recording this one. I might be going away for a week visiting my family which might limit my ability to do vlogs but I will be doing everything in my power to keep up the daily blog posts. In the meantime, enjoy this.



As always, distribute this any way you like. And if anyone ever visits youtube.com be sure to put votes in on my videos and massage my pathetically needy ego. And in case the embed doesn't work again, follow the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HEIVDO3JF8

Punishing Ann Coulter

So it appears scary-almost-beyond-belief nutjob Ann Coulter might be the next high profile person to get nailed in a plagiarism debacle. Rude Pundit has been doing a good job (with the help of some friends) to detail the extent of Coulter's transgressions in her book "Godless" but doesn't seem too upbeat about the chances of her being nailed for it. He may be right, people have been calling her on plagiarism for years to no significant effect. Still, it would be humourous (ironic?) if her career was damaged not by being an evil, screeching, hurtful, cruel witch who deserves to be on the receiving end of the torture she supports but by simply not crediting people whose ideas she stole.

I posted in the deep dark past about how, thankfully, the whole "pundit" thing is nowhere near as big in Australia as it is in the US. The only place it has taken off is in talkback radio. And here's another potential difference between the two cultures (someone who knows US-based right-wing shock jocks better than me might answer this). Would Rush Limbaugh (or whoever) get away with inflaming the youth of a mostly white suburb who felt they were being "invaded" by some aggressive young men of middle-eastern background to the point where a "rally" degenerated into a drunken rampage where idiots in the mob attacked anyone with brown skin along with (non-brown) police and ambulance officers trying to do their job in an ugly situation? If not, Alan Jones is lucky he's in Australia, not America.

If that wouldn't raise eyebrows, how about a conservative pundit getting arrested trying to pick up an undercover cop for gay sex in a public toilet while holidaying in London? (Alan Jones did this too.) Would their career survive after an adventure like this? And would W step in to help one of his mates from Fox News if they got caught doing this? (Bob Hawke, PM at the time, used his influence to get the charges against Jones dropped.) Anyway, Alan Jones is an obnoxious loudmouth who refuses to take responsibility for his actions. So what if he enjoys anonymous gay sex in public toilets. Allegedly. Good for him.

There is one writer in Australia who clearly has Anne Coulter as his role model. I've avoided mentioning him before because, essentially, he's a fucking idiot and I didn't want to provide him with the attention he so obviously craves. His name is Andrew Bolt and he writes for one of the main conservative tabloids here. One thing it doesn't take a genius to recognise is that neither Bolt nor Coulter truly believe the ridiculous shit they spout. Sure, they are strong adherents to the underlying right-wing political orthodoxy but they spout idiotic hyperbole for the sole purpose of attracting attention to themselves and furthering their own interests. The truly evil part of this is that they have hordes of admirers who doubtless take their words as absolute truth.

Like I said, I really don't think Bolt is worthy of attention because it's what he wants but he is good fuel for an angry blog and often he is unintentionally hilarious. At least I think it's unintentional. Maybe it's some elaborate post-modernist prank. This is, after all, the man who saw a sinister plot behind Finding Nemo. More recently he took that rather cynical approach of suggesting Australian residents who don't support Australia in sporting events are unpatriotic. This was in response to the strong support shown for Greece in a recent pre-World Cup Australia vs. Greece soccer match by Australians with Greek backgrounds.

Now maybe I'm the cynical one, but I firmly believe this was nothing but a cheap shot aimed at provoking an inflamed response. Which, of course, it did. I'm not in a rush to support the people who issued death threats against Bolt in response but the reaction was exactly what he wanted and it's disingenuous of him to suggest otherwise. Don't even get me started on how he belittled people for swearing. Fucking loser.

Now, the chances of my humble blog ever being brought to his attention (I have 2 Australian readers that I know about) are very slim but on the off chance it does: swearing does not by definition make you ignorant, you pompous fuck. Spouting cynical, self-serving, inflammatory, stereotype-promoting bullshit is a far worse transgression than swearing. Fuck you in the neck with a thesaurus you cretinous fuckwad.

Speaking of which, that brings me to my proposed punishment for these cynical exploitative shits. Bolt and Coulter should have to fuck each other. Now, Mr Bolt's eyes might light up at this but I said they have to fuck each other. He can go first but then she gets to don a strap-on and fuck him up the arse (c'mon, look at her, you know that's what she's into). And be a bit open minded Andrew - you might like it too.

Bad Jobs Made Worse by Bad Managers

One of the things that makes me most angry about every bad workplace I've been stuck in is that certain managers make a conscious decision to treat people like shit. One person can't save a shitty workplace but everyone can sure do their part to not make things worse. And one person can definitely be a cancer that fucks up an entire workplace. Some places are institutionally fucked and will never get better, but that doesn't excuse bad managers. Saying "there'd nothing I can do - that's the way things work here" is bullshit.

It's the riddle of the ages: do fucked situations attract fucked people or do fucked people created fucked situations. I know I've been in crappy dead-end companies where a shitty manager managed to make things worse and I've been in basically good jobs where a psychopathic manager has gone out of her way to fuck things up. The rogues in a good workplace feel worse but that doesn't excuse sadistic managers making shitty jobs worse.

I start to think that management training consists of telling managers all they have to do to control their staff is to crush their spirits. I had a Catholic education so I always picture the devil whispering in their ear: "Go ahead, you know you don't like them. You can't trust them, they're not working nearly as hard as they could be. Look at that one, I'm sure he's blogging from his desk. I bet he's writing something bad about you."

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy - treat your staff like shit and they'll end up surly and resentful. And surly, resentful staff don't work, thereby justifying your attitude that they're lazy good-for-nothings that deserve to be treated even worse. The mistreatment of staff doesn't even have to be anything major: the death of a thousand cuts is very effective. There's a reason torture exists and it has nothing to do with getting positive results. It's the exercise of power for the sake of exercising power. It's showing people exactly how powerless they are before you.

I have this stupid "loyalty" thing going and it's worked against me many times in the past. The downsides range from minor to major and I often question why I bother to show anyone any loyalty, considering how many times I end up getting kicked in the teeth. In the end, my behaviour is for me, not anyone else. It isn't so much a belief in karma, more that I believe if I act in negative ways I have no right to complain about negative outcomes. I'm not naive enough to think that positive behaviour always brings positive rewards but I look at the fuckers trying to drag me down and I simply refuse to descend to their level.

The most egregious examples I can think of for this sort of behaviour in a workplace in my past:

A manager at one job decided "she just didn't like me". In her mind there was no need to justify what she did after that, not liking me meant she could do whatever she wanted to get rid of me. She was enough of a sociopath to actually tell someone else she was after me because she didn't like me and I actually heard her say the same thing about someone else. Apparently you can get so fucked up you don't realise that other people may not share your views. Anyway, I outlasted her - stuck to my work, kept producing results and refused to knuckle under to her. A small victory because she left for a higher paying job but a victory nevertheless.

I was actually hassled on the toilet by a manager once. I was answering phones for a courier company at the time. The workday had a very regular cycle, starting off very busy for the first hour or so as people arrived at their work and started booking couriers. This one day I'm sitting in the cubicle feeling blissful relief and this voice from outside asks who's in there. I was a bit taken aback but the manager wanted to make sure it was me because he thought I shouldn't have left the phones. I had actually waited until the morning rush had passed but he apparently didn't agree. I explained I "had to" go right then (he really didn't want the alternative, stomach cramps had been starting to set in) and his response was that I should have gone before I left home. Ummmm, I didn't need to go two and a half hours ago when I was last at home. I actually stopped responding to him because, seriously, what the fuck can you say to someone when they say something as ridiculous as that?

One that almost made me laugh even though it was fairly serious was when I was admonished during a performance review for not attending a particular social lunch with cow-orkers. I'm amazed I didn't start spitting blood because I was biting my tongue so hard to avoid saying "that's because I don't like them." This one was worse than just the manager ripping on me because the dregs around me apparently wanted me to be more like them. In some workplaces I have enjoyed socialising but more often I don't. Why can't people just accept that? I'm here to get paid not to be your fucking friend. I'm almost never rude to people I work with but honestly, quite often I want nothing to do with them once I leave my desk. Why do some people have so much trouble understanding that?

At some point, it seems many people cross the line from "we're all in this together" to "I'm dragging you down with me." I don't think any workplace is perfectly but some managers seem to make a conscious effort to ensure the workplace is perfectly fucked.

Mr Angry Vlog Number 3

Some mid-week madness for you. I'm glad my apartment has thick walls but I'm reasonably sure my neighbours can hear me screaming as I do these. It's only a matter of time before one of them calls the cops. This is from my very early material, some stuff I intended to try out in a standup routine. This was intended to be "fish out of water" type humour, highlighting the small but angryfying differences between spoken English in the US and Australia. My goal was for a high-flying Hollywood agent to see it and give me my own sitcom.

It could happen.


http://www.youtube.com/v/4VrmzuEOcq0">http://www.youtube.com/v/4VrmzuEOcq0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="600" height="350">

As always, spread the word however you see fit if you like. Embed it on your webpage, email it, tell people it's you, I don't mind. I just want people to see it.

OK, getting some weird error messages as I try to post, so in case the embed doesn't work, here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VrmzuEOcq0

Mr Angry by Request

Well, Howard thinks I'm not angry enough lately. The miserable fucker. I suppose he has a bit of a point but I thinking recommending the execution of spammers is pretty goddam angry. Howard gave me a few suggestions for angriness which I'm going to try and follow up on (with some help - what's some good stock market dirt to be angry about Howard?) and while I'm at it, I may as well hold open the door for requests. Anything in particular y'all want me to get angry about?

Also, to update my sad desperate plea for attention, Wordpress is still acting totally wacko so I'm going to hold off updating the site design until they stabilise things. So anyone who links to http://angryaussie.wordpress.com let me know via comments and I will return the favour later this week.

Also, I'm working on another vlog tonight so you might see that tomorrow. Stay tuned.

How to make Digg, Reddit, Wikipedia and Google work in the classroom. Guaranteed.

There's a bit of buzz in the online world at the moment around a recent essay posted by Jaron Lanier on edge.org which he gave the rather inflammatory title of "Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism". His essay covers a rather eclectic range of topics including Wikipedia, Boing Boing, American Idol, Digg, Reddit, Flickr, Google and totalitarian governments. Edge has also collected some interesting responses from a range of writers.

Anybody who has any interest in the development of online culture should read all of this material and you certainly shouldn't join the chorus that is apparently trying to shout Lanier down before you read it all. (Here's a tip kids: reading something you disagree with can actually strengthen your thinking. Assuming you are capable of rational thinking, regular doses of contrary viewpoints are good for consolidating arguments in favour of your viewpoint.) This isn't a small undertaking - when I copied it all to a text file to read offline it came to around 40 pages.

This isn't what I'm writing about today although it was the key inspiration for tacking a topic I'd been thinking about for a while. Every now and then some commentator in mainstream media complains about how increased access to information is actually making people dumber. The general idea is that because things are easier to look up, nobody actually bothers to learn anything.

Google was the prime target for years and still is. More recently, it been joined by Wikipedia and with the rise of "memediggers", Digg, Reddit and the rest are coming in for their share of the blame. And of course there's all those damn bloggers as well. Apparently, if people use a tool badly it's the tool's fault. This is like seeing a badly made house and saying it's the hammer's fault. (Even if the problem with the house is that there's lots of hammer shaped holes in the wall - that might actually be the hammer's fault but it's more likely that a perfectly good hammer was used badly)

This "problem" is described as particularly troubling in schools because kids don't learn anything. Writing essays has apparently become limited to looking things up online then copying and pasting chunks of text. Despite the fact that it's blindingly obvious that saying more information makes you dumber is unmitigated bullshit, I'm going to indulge this line of reasoning for a while, assume it has some validity and provide a failsafe, 100% guaranteed way to make these resources work productively in the classroom every single time.

Let's start with Google. I have heard and read pundits saying that looking things up on Google isn't research, nobody looks past the first page of results and it's too self-referencing; namely, you get a good Google ranking by having lots of inbound links and the better your Google ranking the more likely you are to get more inbound links. This is complete bollocks, I get some weird-ass search terms leading to my blog and when I plug those terms into search engines, often I don't show up on the first ten pages of results. So somebody's looking through a hell of a lot of search engine pages. But I said I'd argue as if these concerns were valid so here goes:

Set some simple rules. Every source has to be referenced and if an essay only includes sources found on the first page of Google results it automatically fails. Tell students you will do searches on blocks of text in their essays, and if they have copied content without providing references they will fail. Tell them they have to do more than find information, they have to say why they included it. What is it about that information that they liked and/or believed. And make sure there is more than one source for every assertion they make. If you want to get really tough, tell them for every point of view they agree with they have to cite at least one conflicting point of view they disagree with. Then they have to explain that, given they had two contrary points of view, why do they support the one they do?

Wikipedia should have similar rules to make it a more useful tool. Many of the criticisms of Wikipedia are similar to those leveled at Google but it has some of its own, so here goes with the rules. Wikipedia cannot be the only source for the essay/study. Find other sources that support or contradict the information in Wikipedia. Again, state why you support one point of view over the other. Add a unique rule for Wikipedia: you can't use Wikipedia as a reference without also reading and referencing the talk pages for the articles you use. Identify what are the controversial and/or frequently changed sections of the Wikipedia entry. Which point of view do you agree with? Why?

Digg is often criticised for having too narrow a focus. If you as a teacher agree with this point of view then use this as a learning tool. Ask students to find reference to a major event on Digg then look at other sources (e.g. major news sites) and compare the results. What were the differences in the results? Which was "better"? Why? What did you learn from a news site (or government site, or university site, or whatever) that you couldn't find on Digg? What did you discover on Digg that you didn't find through other sources? What did you learn from the different results?

Reddit tends to cover a broader range of topics than Digg but the above observations still hold true. For an added layer of detail, try comparing the differences in Digg and Reddit. Reddit has + and - voting while Digg has only + voting. How do student think this will affect voting? In what situations would this be good and when could it be bad? Why can selections made by many people be better than selections made by one person (e.g. a newspaper editor)? When would a newspaper editor be better at selecting content than a memedigger? How could memediggers influence news coverage?

In short, any of these (or similar) tools have almost endless possibilities for students. The catch is that is requires fairly significant engagement from teachers. The good news is that the vast majority of teachers I have known welcome opportunities like this. The bad news is that the mainstream media like reporting bad news so we're far more likely to hear more stories about the internet dumbing people down and sexual predators on MySpace.

Oh, and as for bloggers: best to ignore them. They talk nothing but crap.

Let's make a deal!

Wordpress is acting absolutely screwy today but at least I got a post up. It's made me pause a little in my plan to dump Blogger altogether, I think I'll keep it, for a while at least, as a backup. But I'm definitely only promoting the Wordpress blog. With this in mind, I have decided to try and bribe my readers.

Part of my blog promotion efforts involves an obsession with my Technorati ranking. My Blogger blogroll has been shamefully ignored, I kept meaning to add to it but it's a little bit of a hassle and I've never gotten around to it. So, if any of my loyal Blogger readers have me on their blogroll and drop me a line (comments or email) I'll add you to my Wordpress blogroll. Likewise, anyone who adds me, I'll add them. This goes for anyone who reads my Wordpress blog as well. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Share the link love!

My current target is rather modest; to get into Technorati's top 100,000. This is the last time I'll be updating my blogroll for a while, so if you're as shallow as me, jump on board! It might not be important to you but you'd be making a shallow man (me) very happy.

About to go Postal in the Workplace

I'm having a mildly stressful time at work right now trying to finish some Business Requirements documentation (note how euphemistic I can be when talking about work). We have been at this "almost finished" stage now for weeks. I think the whole project team has been thinking for 4 or 5 weeks that "we'll be finished in a day or two". I seem to recall some mathematical equation that showed a number approaching zero but never actually reaching it. I must have slept through that lesson because I don't remember what it's called. That's what this project is starting to feel like (the approaching zero part, not the sleeping part - although that would be nice.)

The main reason this is dragging on is that more managers are getting their fingers in the pie as "stakeholders" and wanting to get their 2 cents in before the document is signed off. Obviously, these people should have been brought into the process earlier (or not at all) and I am wondering why they are important enough to hold up sign-off but not important enough to have been brought in earlier in the requirements gathering process. In a less positive workplace this would be absolutely intolerable.

Endless iterations coupled with a culture of blame make for a deeply toxic workplace - I've been in enough of them to recognise I'm fairly lucky with the positive approach being taken in my current workplace. No amount of positivity can hide the fact that working in a high pressure "must finish" environment is stressful and aggravating. The project hasn't reached death march status yet but I'll be having pointed words with the project manager if everything isn't signed off this week. We have been treating every delay as a "learning process" to be applied to future projects which alleviates anger and frustration for a while.

It won't be much longer until "learning" is limited to learning which people should never been consulted because they lock you into an endless review process/death spiral. I feel like I'm within a day or two of losing my shit if this doesn't end but, weirdly enough, I've been feeling like that for weeks and yet I haven't lost it. One thing this is making me consider is the fine line between taking a principled stand and throwing a hissy fit.

In my worst-ever workplace, my former team member (FTM) coped with stress by throwing the occasional hissy fit. He would simply explode, go on quite loudly about how he wasn't going to take it any more and storm off. Then he'd wander back some time later and the people who had pissed him off would apologise. I can never bring myself to do this in a workplace as it strikes me as incredibly unprofessional. I know this may be a surprise to some readers of this blog (where I never seem to stop "going off") but for those who haven't worked it out yet - I maintain a significant degree of separation between my blog self and real self.

I have noticed, bizarrely enough, that dysfunctional workplaces tend to reward, or at least recognise, extreme behaviour. Staying quiet and doing your job doesn't work. Being loud and abrasive gets you noticed and in crap workplaces it gets you promoted. I think there must be some sort of mathematical equation to express this, something that says the level of reward increases the more closely aligned your behaviour is with the health of the workplace.

In other words, a positive workplace rewards positive behaviour and a negative workplace rewards negative behaviour. Surely there's a mathematician out there who could earn their PhD by studying this field?

A Bit of Perspective

Christ on a fucking bike. The image above is from Robert Scoble's blog. It shows even the number one blogger on Wordpress can be impressed with his statistics. It shows that a "normal" day for him is between 4,000 and 10,000 hits but when word got out he'd left Microsoft, his traffic spiked to 90,000.

Wow. I can't think of anything else to say. Wow.

A 100% Guaranteed Solution to Spam

I was wondering what I was going to post about today as I wasn't feeling particularly angry. Like that was gonna last. I checked the stats for my Wordpress site and I'd gotten near enough to 100 comment spam in 24 hours. Fucking spammers! And Akismet anti-spam got nearly every one of them. Ha! Fuck you in the neck with a search engine ranking you scum-sucking spam bastards. This is another nail in Blogger's coffin because they have no damn spam protection that I know of.

The rare occasions that I get comment spam on Blogger I delete it manually (here's a tip kids: make sure you set the blog to email you every time you get a comment, because the scamming bastards will drop spam comments in old posts hoping you won't notice.) It would be a little hard to delete 100 spam manually every day so I'm fucking glad I chose to promote the Wordpress blog over Blogger. There's no way the spamming bastards are getting me to make it harder for people to post comments unless things get really out of control.

Now I think of it, why hasn't somebody killed these fuckers. I don't mean shut them down, I mean literally kill them. They are coming damn close to breaking the internet, they are stealing millions with their scams and costing billions with the bandwidth they consume and quite simply making nearly everyone's online experience miserable. People are killed for way less than this every day. Sergey, Larry, if you're listening; killing these fuckers would NOT be evil.

And the first time someone gets serious about taking these pricks on, the arms race escalates quickly to the point of doing some real damage. If you've never heard of Blue Security or their program Blue Frog, here's a summary: Blue Frog worked by sending automated "opt-out" messages to spammers as spam victims have the right to do. Essentially if thousands of users get spammed, the spammers in return get bombarded with automated responses saying "don't spam me any more." Not quite a denial of service attack but it can certainly make life tough for spammers. Tough enough that some spammer waged all-out war in response.

Massive distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks credited to a loser spammer known as "Pharma Master" took down Blue Security 's server along with Tucows, TypePad blogs and a hell of a lot of other sites. Blue Security shut up shop after this (although there's some grey area surrounding what really went on and the motivations behind everything) saying they didn't want to be responsible for such massive disruption to the internet at large. Some weenies didn't like Blue's approach because they saw it as too aggressive or even claimed it was illegal. Every rational analysis of it I've seen said it was completely legal and quite effective.

So here we have a legal (if aggressive) service providing much needed relief to users. In response we get a destructive and completely illegal attack that damages the internet as a whole. Obviously, half-measures aren't going to work with these fuckers. If the boys at the big end of town (I'm thinking Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Amazon) aren't meeting in a smoky back room somewhere working on a plan to take these piece of shit spammer down, they're (a) wussies and (b) stupid.

Because this shit is going to start to really hurt them soon, as in destroy their whole business model when nobody trusts the internet for anything any more. So by all means, use those big brains to come up with some technological solutions. But give some thought to just having the fuckers whacked. In the end, it would be way easier and much more satisfying.

A short angry blog post

Busy busy day... family stuff. But I'm still going to make my one post a day, dammit. I was gearing up to have a bit of a spray about Australian politics but I'll be honest with you, it's pretty boring.

Our Prime Minister seems to be this immovable object that won't retire despite being past retirement age. And he keeps winning elections. This is possibly the most boring politician in the world - he lived at home with his mother until his 30s and seems to want Australia to move back to his idealised view of the 1950s. What I'm most angry about regarding John Howard (the PM) is that I'll never be able to say anything funnier about him than the summary recently pronounced by Billy Connolly - that the only useful thing about Howard is that he shows us what Harry Potter will look like at 70.

I really wish he'd retire because then the leader and deputy leader of the Liberal party (I know it's confusing - in Australia the conservative party is called the Liberals) would be named Abbott and Costello (not necessarily in that order). You can't invent stuff that funny. It would only be better if their first names were Terrence and Philip.

Another Week with an Angry Blog

Well, quite a week. A few appearances on reddit led to some leaps and bound on my Wordpress stats (by my standards anyway). Apparently if they really like you, it results in thousands of hits rather than the hundreds I got, but I'm pretty impressed with the results. Now, I'm not suggesting any of my loyal readers should go and submit any of my posts to the various "memediggers"... but if you thought any posts deserved it (wink, wink).

Of course, the biggest step forward was posting my first video blogs. I had a lot of fun doing them and they've received a pretty positive response so I'll definitely be doing more. Until I get into a rhythm with them I won't predict how often they'll appear but hopefully I'll manage a couple a week. Those with long memories would notice that the material in the vlogs is from old posts, so if you have any favourites you think I should perform, let me know. (also, feel free to visit youtube to rate my videos there too: http://www.youtube.com/user/AngryAussie

Some trivia point from the video that nobody mentioned in comments:

- the toilet one was actually video-ed in my toilet. I'll leave it up to your imagination how much "realism" I went for during the making.

- the t-shirt in the second one was specifically purchased to be worn during Mr Angry performances. I saw the slogan and couldn't say no.

- I actually gave this material a test run at a party where various people were doing various performances. It was supposed to be adults-only so I was comfortable with their ability to handle my potty mouth. I rehearsed for a while and was all ready to go when at the last minute someone included an 8 year old girl in the audience. Now that made me angry - I had to re-do all the material on the fly to make it clean. Although I did still let slip with sodomising wallabies. Sod it - she was 8, she shouldn't have understood what I was saying anyway.

I'll close off with some of my favourite search terms from the logs.

I continue to be major destination for all things foreskin and circumcision, which is as it should be. The other foreskin sites are all "serious" to some degree, either being circumcision support groups or selling some sort of foreskin replacement. It must really piss them off that they're being outranked by some idiot with an angry blog. Sucks to be them. The number one circumcision question I feel I can answer is "do circumcised men get more blowjobs". The answer is a definitive yes - slice it off now boys.

My favourite term "clothed sex" continues to appear and I really wish I could find some decent fully-clothed porn to keep these punters happy. Likewise, I don't have any beastiality pix or underage porn but that doesn't stop the searchers. Non-sex related searches that I'm equally useless for are the many people looking for ways to fix washing machines. I don't fix the damn things - I break them. Speaking of which, the dryer I kicked the crap out of got replaced with a much better one. Should I feel guilty for killing it or proud that I got everyone a better dryer?

I'm going for proud. Angry and proud.

The one that's cracking me up is searches for Alan Jones and toilet sex. This is unlikely to mean much to non-Australians but he's a fairly prominent right-wing shock here, and he got busted about 20 years ago in London for toilet trading. I mentioned him once in passing and he's started to show up in search terms lately. I don't know if there's a new scandal brewing but you need to get your spin doctors onto this Alan, people want to know about you having sex in public toilets.

And finally, my quest to be more recognised as the premier angry blog is going well. Last week I didn't figure at all in the Google results but now I've reached the second page. I have you bastards at the top in my sights. Watch your backs.

Mr Angry Vlog Number Two

Insert gratuitous "number two" joke here. This one is way angrier. Lots of swears too. Don't play it around the kids. I really like how these have gone so far and I'm looking forward to making them better so any feedback is appreciated. Even negative feedback - because if you're a prick about it I'll just make fun of you in comments.



By the way, if you like these, go nuts with spreading the word. Put them on your own site, send them to friends, go viral, pretend you wrote the script, whatever. Have fun!

UPDATE: After this initial flurry of activity, you probably won't see any new vlogs for a while. My kids arrive in about an hour and I don't really want them to se me acting crazy like this. I don't know if I'll get around to doing any more during the week so you might have to wait until next weekend for a new vlog post.

Vlog Number One

Okay, I actually did it. This is done all by myself, no rehearsal, no help. And I didn't read the instructions on the video editing tool. They will get better.

This will probably push me to do some live performances too. I'll video anything I do and post that as well.

And in case the embed doesn't work, go to youtube directly.

Last Minute Feedback Request

I'm going to start work on Mr Angry's video blog today and I'm looking for some advice from regular readers (or random passing strangers for that matter) who may have formed an opinion of what Mr Angry is like. Which do you think sounds funnier: Mr Angry's natural state is screaming all the time or Mr Angry spends most of his time struggling (semi-successfully) to keep his rage under control and occasionally loses his shit and ends up screaming?

Or do you think I should try both and see which works best?

Requirements are like Ogres

If ever I think I know everything I spend a little time talking to my eight year old daughter. She's very good at asking questions I can't answer, or at least have to think hard about. The thinking hard bit is important because she cuts through bullshit quickly. When she was five and her mother had been sending her to Sunday School, out of the blue one day she asked me:

"If God made us, and God loves us, why would God let us get sick?"

What would you have said? I squeaked by this one but "ask your mother" has limited effectiveness. When she asks me about my work I have to give her real answers and frame them in a way that makes sense to her. Recently she wanted to know if everyone who worked with computers was a programmer.

"No," I responded. "I'm not, I'm a Business Analyst."

"Do you know how to program computers?"

"Not really, no."

"And it's the programmers who make the computer work?"

"Basically, yes."

"So why do programmers need you?"

"That's what they keep saying to me."

"I'm serious Daddy, what do you do?"

"I write the business requirements. I work with the programmers to make sure the computer ends up doing the right thing."

"Does that mean you're in charge?"

"I wish. First, I talk to the people in charge about what they want. I work out what their requirements are, that's why we call it business requirements."

"Don't they know what they want?"

"Not always."

"That's silly, everyone knows what they want."

"Not always. And people aren't always good at explaining to someone else what they want. How about if I told you I wanted you to buy me a car, what car would you get me?"

"Ummm, a Smart car, they're cute."

"That's too small for me."

"Then I'll get you a 4WD."

That's too big and slow. I want something faster."

"I'll get you a Porsche."

"I don't have enough money for that."

"Well, what sort of car will I get you?"

"See, now you're asking me about my requirements. I want a Volkswagen Passat."

"OK, I'll get you that."

"What colour did you get me?"

"Red."

"I don't want red, I want black."

"Why didn't you say so?"

"You didn't ask."

"Is this what you have to do all day?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"No wonder you're angry all the time."

"I AM NOT ANGRY ALL THE TIME! See, this is what I have to do - ask the right questions. The programmer is like the car dealer, they can get you whatever car you want. All you have to do is be clear about what car you want. It's like in Shrek, when Shrek said ogres are like onions because they have layers. Requirements have layers and I have to pull them off one layer at a time to get to the middle. Then I know what to tell the programmers."

"So the people you work with are like onions?"

"I guess."

"Do they stink?" Gotta love 8 year old humour.

"That's a bit harsh."

"Do they make you cry?"

"Sometimes I come close. Usually they make me want to scream."

"So they really are like an ogre? They're scary!"

Sometimes they are very scary. And I know I don't want to find one of them under my bed.

Angry at the mistreatment of Russell Crowe.

There is a funny article in today's Sydney Morning Herald detailing a journalist's brief flirtation with being Russell Crowe's stooge. The writer, Jack Marx, was approached by Rusty to essentially generate good publicity - be his "mole" in the media. It didn't go flawlessly and now Marx is telling his version of what happened. I think it's funny for what it reveals about both Crowe and the writer.

After reading it, I have to admit I thought it was a bit rich that a "journalist" was worrying about the morality of a situation. I put journalist in quotes because, really, the guy's an entertainment writer. Journalists have questionable enough ethics but showbiz gossip should be about fun, not deep moral issues. Read it for yourself, but my take is the writer really screwed up. This was a golden opportunity. Any job I have ever had essentially involved prostituting myself - taking money from someone to do something I'd rather not be doing.

I probably have this worse than many being a contractor. I jump from job to job chasing dollars - job fulfillment would be nice but most of my focus is simply on getting the next job. I have joked with other contractors before that we should just put "prostitute" on our tax returns to describe our work. We always need pimps; most employers will only deal with agencies rather than hire you directly, so the best we can hope for is a high-class madam like Heidi Fleiss who gives you nice surroundings rather than a street corner pimp who will smack you upside the head at regular intervals.

So yeah, I'd pimp myself out to Russell Crowe in a second. In fact, I've already put the plan in motion: I'm going to periodically say good things about Russell Crowe on the off chance my blog gets popular enough that he would pay me to promote him. That way, when I start taking payoffs, nobody will know the difference. This is almost wandering into urban legend territory - I'm creating the story that I'd be willing to shill for Russell Crowe in the future but I'll start being positive now so nobody can accuse me of selling out in the future. So how would you know in the future is I was being paid because I started writing positive stories about Crowe now? Indeed, how do you know I'm not already on his payroll and this is the start of an elaborate smokescreen?

Have I fucked with your head enough yet?

It's an easy choice to make because he'd be way better than most bosses I've had and the pay and the perks would be good (pretending to be friends with Hollywood stars? Hell yeah!) Besides, I think he is a good actor and I can respect that. So he's not nice to people in public, boo-fucking-hoo. He doesn't want you to like him, he doesn't want to be your friend, he wants you to respect his acting.

And he has been hard done by. That dickhead concierge that he threw a phone at deserved way worse. A self-important prick who is supposed to be helping people getting all uppity and copping an attitude with a star to prove what a wicked attitude he has? Get real you wanker, people paying a fortune to stay in your fucking hotel have a right to get pissed off when you cop an attitude. If I was Rusty I would have paid to have somebody whack you. You got off lucky.

And the bullshit that is the Academy Awards. Crowe deserved an Oscar for Gladiator - seriously, how hard was it to get people to take the whole swords and sandals genre seriously? The downside is he's indirectly responsible for the cavalcade of shit that followed like Troy, King Arthur, Kingdom of Heaven and Alexander. Then he got totally ripped off when he was nominated for "A Beautiful Mind". I think we all know that the Academy Awards are not really about talent, it's all politics, but the campaign against him that year blew my mind.

Competing films ran a campaign against "A beautiful Mind" saying people shouldn't vote for Rusty as best actor because in real life, the guy he portrayed (who was batshit crazy) said anti-semetic things and cheated on his wife and the film ignored this. If that sort of shit is important, why is the awards called "Best Actor" and not "Best actor portraying a character of whom I approve and in a way that conforms to my worldview"?

This is how Orson Welles got screwed on "Citizen Kane" too. It's all about politics, not talent. "Citizen Kane" is easily one of the best films made in Hollywood but was snubbed at the Oscars because Welles pissed off the wrong people (Hearst and his Hollywood suck-ups). That's right, it's out there - I said it. Russell Crowe is a creative genius on par with Orson Welles.

Now prove I got paid to say that.

Invasion of the Gay Cane Toads

Environmental disasters causes by the careless introduction of foreign species makes me angry. In Australia we have feral foxes, pigs, cats, camels and possibly the most toxic of all - the cane toad. The idea was that introducing cane toads would help the sugar cane crops in the north because the toads would eat bugs that were troubling the crops. They didn't eat the bugs and ever since they have been breeding at a prodigious rate and slowly but inexorably spreading across the entire country.

They kill a huge amount of native animals and many efforts have been made to stop them. The latest idea is to genetically engineer some toad embryos so you end up with an all male toad population - no more breeding. This sounds like a fine idea - genetically engineered mutant poisonous toads; what could possibly go wrong?

My issue with this is that I've seen the movie "Cane Toads - an Unnatural History" and one interesting fact a naturalist pointed out in that movie was that cane toads are incredibly horny. He witness one of them humping a dead one that had been squashed by a car. So if this population is made all male, there's only one possible outcome: hordes of gay cane toads! This ought to push the government into action - they seem to think expending their energy stopping gay marriage is a good idea so I'm sure they won't put up with gay cane toads humping in the streets.

Who has the angriest blog?

I've been very happy with the growth of my blog so far. My measure of success (at this point) is that I'm happy with the quality of my writing, I'm maintaining daily posting and I'm getting readers. All of these are going well. Actually, I want to give another thank you to my readers and commenters - I had no right to expect to get such dedicated readers and the positive feedback I receive is both immensely gratifying and a real stimulus to constantly improve.

But it wouldn't be so good for my readers if I was too happy would it? This is not the sunshine and flowers blog, it's the angry blog - Mr Angry want to stay angry 365 days a year. Becoming the number one foreskin blog was a true honour but I was essentially ego-surfing Google and found I don't even figure on searches for "angry blog". This is more than a failure on my part - this is a crime against humanity.

It wouldn't be so bad if the other blogs were actually angrier than me but some of them aren't angry at all. It is clearly my duty to be even angrier. I never actually go hunting but right now I am dedicating myself to a virtual hunting trip. I will hunt down every so called angry blog that doesn't deserve to be called angry, get them in my cyber cross-hairs and blow their virtual brains out. Which is to say two things, I'm going to be focusing on being even angrier and I'm going to spend more time promoting how angry I am.

Because that's the sort of guy I am. Angry, shallow and vain. As John Lydon said "Anger is an energy" and it is my goal to spread the angry meme far and wide across teh internets. One thing that is important to me is also to promote the difference between productive anger and moronic behaviour. One example: railing against how mind bogglingly stupid other drivers are = good. Actually attacking someone in a road rage incident = bad. Stupid. Fucked in the head.

Road rage has apparently recently been diagnosed in some circles as an illness: Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED). I am going to sue the people promoting this because they stole it from me. I diagnosed IED years ago but in my study it stood for Idiotic Example of a Dickhead. I had this crazy idea that doctors have enough work but apparently they have to keep creating new diseases because they cured cancer years ago. The real idiocy of this is the claim of how widespread it is - up to 16 million Americans are suffering from IED apparently. Listen, they aren't suffering from an illness - they're fuckwits who need a smackdown. Cut loose Chuck Norris on their arses and give them a sense of proportion.

It's sad when you can't out-parody reality. I keep hoping each of these new "diseases" is an April Fool's joke but sadly that's hardly ever the case. Apparently these idiots are serious.

6/6/6 Update

No significant satanic manifestations to report although my Wordpress counter did pass 6660 while it was still 6/6/6 in other parts of the world. Does this mean I have 10 times the power of the beast?

Blogger vs. Wordpress

I was recently asked to help someone set up a blog so I had to decide which tool to recommend to them. This helped crystallise a lot of my thinking on which tool I should be using myself as I have been conducting an ongoing road test by running this blog on both Wordpress and Blogger. Neither of them is perfect and they have different positives and negatives. So to tilt this in my normal manner, the following review covers what makes me angry about each of these tools.

Obviously there are a hell of a lot more blogging options than just Blogger and Wordpress but I don't have the time or energy to compare them all. I started on Blogger because I figured as Google owns it, this would be the easiest one to include Adsense ads on if I wanted to go that way (so far I don't want to do this but it is true, Blogger is the easiest one to put ads on). There are plenty of good comparisons out there, do a Google search on "blogging tool comparison" or try this one that I found to be really comprehensive. This particular review was the one that convinced me to try Wordpress for comparison.

So what good things did I discover upon setting up a blog on Blogger? Well, it's damn easy to set up. You can do a nice profile with photo if you want. My girlfriend likes the fact it puts a date and timestamp at the top of each post. It has an auto-save function when you are drafting a post that usually work (although not always). That's about it. Blogger is a bastard to customise, you have to go right down to html. There are no diagnostic/site visit measuring tools provided. It's hard to find other active blogs you might have something in common with - in the early days of a blog when you're linkwhoring this is important. Broadly speaking, site management tools are shit compared to Wordpress.

Wordpress is slightly more involved to set up but still dead easy. You can't put Adsense ads on a Wordpress blog (although they have pretty good reasons for this) and they don't have an easy profile with photo setup like Blogger. Beyond that, the customisation options provided by Wordpress are awesome. Through the magic of "widgets" you can add all sorts of features in a few seconds (literally - it's drag and drop). You can be a clueless non-techie like me and still have heaps of customisation on your blog. Sadly, it's very easy to over-design and you don't have to go far to see a Wordpress blog where the user has gone way over the top and added so many bells and whistles the site is unusable.

Wordpress include very good site stats monitoring tools, it's way easier to track comments and they have excellent anti-spam protection. I had a doomsayer comment on Blogger a while back that said I needed to introduce word verification and/or comment moderation or I'd be overwhelmed with comment spam. I made a specific choice to make it as easy as possible for people to comment on my blog because that's what makes it worthwhile for me. I figured I'd manage comment spam manually for as long as I could. I haven't had a significant issue with spam on Blogger yet, I've had to delete maybe half a dozen altogether (although one dick posted 3 spam comments in one day last week). Recently on Wordpress I have had about 20 spam comments and the spam protection has worked brilliantly.

Wordpress only missed one spam that I had to delete manually and it only had one false positive. That was the right-wing dork I was arguing with a while back and it happened because he included a lot of links in a comment (classic sign of spam). Or maybe Wordpress agreed with me and decided the fuckwit shouldn't be allowed to comment. Either way, it was a simple job to mark it "not spam" and have it appear.

You might have noticed by now I'm quite a cheerleader for Wordpress over Blogger. And if you look at the site stats you'll see all the traffic is coming to my Wordpress blog (around 6500 vs. 1500 on Blogger). This is largely because Wordpress is way easier to promote, they provide lots of links to active and popular blogs - the bread and butter of shameless comment whores like myself. Oh, and it's way easier to add people to your blogroll on Wordpress. I kept meaning to change the html on Blogger to add my friend to the blogroll but it is a pain. I'm pretty sure it's going to die soon so I'll add everyone to my Wordpress blogroll instead. So if you happen to have a link to my Blogger blog, you'd make me very happy if you changed it to Wordpress.

There is one flaw they have in common - they both have shit spell-checkers. It's churlish to pick on a free tool (you get what you pay for) but one aspect of their spell checkers actually makes me laugh more than it makes me angry. Neither of them recognise blog, blogger, blogging etc. as words. Nice attention to details guys.

666 - No Satanic Manifestations Yet

Thought I'd give my northern hemisphere readers a heads-up as my time zone reaches 06/06/06 sooner. So far, Satan's day is not living up to the hype. Although I do have some weird red swelling on the top knuckle of both of my little fingers. Seriously. Weird because I've never had anything like it before, I have no idea what's causing it and it's happening to the same finger on both hands at the same.

I'll let you know if claws burst through at any time during the day. After all, my middle name is Damien. Seriously.

I wish people who say that people over 30 should be dead would die

Every now and then the same old chestnut gets circulated via email, on a web site or a blog. Normally I ignore them but occasionally one comes along and strikes me as the perfect storm of stupidity: an old joke, not particularly funny and masquerading as insightful social commentary while actually being banal sanctimonious crap.

One such example cropped up on Reddit today and it wasn't really the site owner's fault because they posted in July 2003. It's headed "People over 30 should be dead" and while I won't blame the site owner for its appearance on Reddit, I will blame them for posting this shit and thinking it's funny/insightful/true. And as people still forward drivel like this via email and blogs I think it's worth refuting. To deconstruct it line by line:

"Our baby cribs were covered with brightly coloured lead paint"

I'm sorry, but if you think lead based paint on a baby crib (or anywhere) is a good idea, you're a fucking idiot.

"We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets"

And kids did eat medicine and drain cleaner and get sick and die. How are these things bad?

"when we rode our bikes we had no helmets. (Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.)"

Try comparing head injuries between "then" and "now". I think you'll find helmets have significantly reduced fatalities and disabilities from head injuries. And hitch-hiking? People still do that now. And occasionally get killed. If you think hitch-hiking is all fluffy bunnies and chocolate rainbows, maybe I should introduce you to Ivan Milat.

"We would ride in cars with no seatbelts or airbags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat."

Oh come on! The reduction in fatalities due to the introduction of seatbelts and airbags must be just about too high to count. In Australia it would be hundreds per year. In the US it would be many thousands per year. And you still see utes with kids in the back in country towns around here. And the result is still the same when the ute crashes.

"We drank water from the garden hose and not a bottle."

Who the fuck is saying water from the tap is bad? Obsessive yuppies? If you are in a developed country with no major pollution problems and your pipes aren't as crappy as the ones in my building (I have to filter tap water) then the tap water is probably healthier than bottled water. I think this one is bullshit and doesn't even belong with the other - bottled water isn't a safety issue, it's some bullshit marketing.

"We ate (unhealthy things) and we were never overweight because we were outside playing."

Good point although it's glossing over the increases in processed sugar and fats contained in foods now.

"We shared one soft drink with four friends from one bottle and nobody actually died from this."

Again, WTF? What is the point here? Crap like this doesn't belong in a discussion about safety issues.

"We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. No cell phones. Unthinkable!"

This one I agree with. People are too paranoid about constantly staying in contact these days.

"We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cell phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms. We had friends! We went outside and found them. We played dodge ball, and sometimes, the ball would really hurt."

We're on a roll here, I agree with this one too.

"We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame but us. Remember accidents?"

Still in pretty good territory, I'm not a fan of the culture of blame.

"We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it."

Back into bullshit. This sounds like the words of a psychopathic bully. I had fights too but not everybody got over it. Some people were constantly victimised and brutalised (and this still happens) and "get over it" doesn't really cut it when you are in mortal terror every day at school.

"We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms, and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live inside us forever."

You ate worms? You sick bastard. And what constitutes an acceptable number of eyes being put out? I'm guessing "lots so long as none of them are mine."

"Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Some students weren't as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. Horrors! Tests were not adjusted for any reason."

Again, I agree here. Although I think that the incidence of kids not being allowed to fail so they don't feel bad is greatly exaggerated by people trying to make a political point.

"Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law. Imagine that!"

True story: my older brother got busted for joy riding (also known as stealing a car) with his friends about 30 years ago. Because he had no record, the judge was going to let him off but my dad insisted he pay the price for his crime and sent him to a juvenile jail. Where his three cell mates had all killed family members. That was a real bright idea.

So all of the above is meant to add up to the collective wisdom that anyone over 30 should be dead because safety standards were so poor by comparison in our childhoods. What passes for logic here is "I didn't die when none of these safety standards were in place so therefore nobody's life has been saved by improved safety standards." The fact that this could only be accepted as sound logic by somebody who actually did suffer some severe childhood head trauma is telling.

I think parents and authority figures today do need to lighten up. Learning how to deal with risk and consequences is an important part of life. But saying a risk isn't bad because it only affects one in a thousands kids is glibness born of the fact that the one kid wasn't yours. And spouting mindless claptrap that you think makes you look wise or witty really isn't helping.

In Praise of Percussive Maintenance

Is anyone else a fan of percussive maintenance? I love it. For those unfamiliar with the concept, it's a technical term that means smacking the shit out of something that doesn't work. It isn't the most productive method for dealing with out of order machinery (assuming your goal is to make the machine work) but it remains popular with people of all works of life. I think there are two reasons people keep doing it: one, because sometimes it actually works and two, because it feels so damn good.

I've just had what I am determined will be my last fight with the laundry facilities in my apartment building. I've previously shared with you how I won't use the washing machines any more because they keep making oily stains on my clothes. As an aside, "oily stains from washing machines" is a popular search term that leads to my blog. To anyone who comes here looking for solutions, I'm not much help - my only solution is to stop using the fucking thing. Well, I was still using the dryer, right up until the bastard machine just took my money and didn't work.

It wasn't a lot of money ($2) but it pushed me over the edge. I kicked the absolute crap out of the dryer which resulted in nether the return of my money nor the dryer suddenly working. But I think I heard some of the machine's inner workings fall out. Which made me feel good. Then I ran away before any of the other residents came in and found me. Won't the next person who uses it get a surprise? There's probably a slowly spreading pool of oil on the ground now from the dryer slowly bleeding to death.

Fuck this, I'm going out to buy my own dryer.

100 Posts - Where to now?

Anybody who's been reading this blog for a while knows how self-indulgent I am so it should be no surprise that I take time in my 1ooth post to get all self-reflective and think about... me. It's taken me less than three months to get this far (first post on Blogger was March 23rd) but I'm still looking forward to maintaining my original goal of posting at least once every day for a year. One thing I don't think I've ever shared is why I actually started the blog.

The character of Mr Angry (yes, it's a character, I'm not really like this - well, not completely) was originally an idea for a standup performance. I had written some material and was getting ready to try it out on some open mike nights when I started to think a blog might be a lower-risk way to get some feedback on whether or not the material was actually funny. Then I found what looked like a reverse goatse picture in the local paper - something that absolutely cried out to be in a blog. So this was what sealed the deal for me; a chance to inflict my sick humour on the world demanded I start a blog. The fact that nobody apart from me seemed to find the goatse picture funny is an ongoing tragedy in my life.

I used up the first batch of material by halfway through April so I've had to come up with something new every day since then. The funny thing is I've has very little trouble coming up with that new material each day. If I didn't have such good feedback going on with readers I'd probably give up but so long as y'all keep commenting, I'll keep writing. The twist is, I've been so focused on the blog I haven't had a chance to think about rehearsing any live performance. I'm feeling comfortable enough with the blog I might actually start converting some of the crowd favourites into a standup routine. I'll be sure and let you know what happens if I ever get around to it.

The other things about the blog that has changed as I have continued along is that I am not as scared of failure as I used to be. In the early stages I was a wuss. The posts were really short, I was doling out my stored content in constant fear that I'd run out of things to blog. I wouldn't post more than once a day because that would be a waste, I should save it for tomorrow. If I was smart, I'd be writing material in advance now but I guess I work better under pressure. Also, I have come to the conclusion that the world is even more fucked up than I thought when I started - I'm never going to run out of material.

One thing I know for sure, writing is definitely what I want to do for a living. I sort of do that now as a BA but not in the way I really want to. I can get paid quite well as an IT contractor, so it's very seductive to give up "dreams" in favour of the comparatively easy money. I think by the end of one year I can work out how to parlay my blog writing into filthy lucre. So save up your pennies, because as soon as I work out how I'm going to be hoovering your wallets dry.

Hmmmm, I'm getting a vision... Mr Angry - The Movie. The feel good hit of the year. Watch out for it. Step one to this goal: I have broadband now, maybe I should podcast. Would anybody be interested in a Mr Angry podcast?

Updates

Well, I'm pretty excited today. I've shared with you before how shallow I am with my shameless pursuit of blog traffic. I hit some new highs this week with my post on Moroccan chocolate. It's been quite popular with my regular readers (thanks for all the comments - as usual, it's the interaction with all of you that keeps me motivated) but the stats went a little wild when it was posted to the Joel on Software Reddit. I hit a freakish new one day high of over 900 hits yesterday and it looks like being over 300 today. I'd say about 1000 of those come from Reddit. Yowza!

This was all on the Wordpress version of the blog, the Blogger version (which I don't promote very much) is maintaining its steady 30 or so hits a day. Blogger readers shouldn't feel bad, it's more... intimate. I was particularly happy that the post was well-received on the Joel sub-Reddit, I've been a big fan of the Joel on Software site for years and I often use his stuff for my work. It feels quite good to have gotten such a positive response from that forum. And now the post has appeared on Wordpress's "Top Posts" listing - I've often wondered what the hell you had to do to get on that listing. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why posts appeared there. I will be interested to see if that provides any sort of boost to traffic.

I remain very interested in what search terms point to my blogs. My gratuitous "Foreskin King" post last week worked far better than I expected. My Wordpress and Blogger blogs are now the number 1 and 2 results on Google for "foreskin blog". Words can't express the pride I'm feeling right now.

I'm also amused with how often searches for "how to hang toilet paper" end up here. I have to thank James and Pirate Jen who used my blog to settle their office argument on the topic. Particular thanks to James for pointing me to the Current Configuration site. More than one person has told me I didn't make it clear which way I intended for toilet paper should be hung (I thought I did) but this site actually uses illustrations:


And Check this out:



I thought I had too much time on my hands. Truly teh internets are wonderful things. Tomorrow will be a big day; post number 100. Damn, that got here fast.

Force-feeding good intentions doesn't work

I feel like I should start this post with a disclaimer: I quite like my current workplace. I don't want to sound like a non-stop whiner who can never be happy - I'm only angry at things that are worth being angry over. Like bad toilet etiquette at work. The incident I'm about to relate would make me very angry if I was in a shitty workplace but here, well, it actually made me laugh. The irony of the situation (I've written before about the correct use of the term "Irony" - I'm pretty sure this is correct usage) appealed to me.

This is the third workplace in a row (the life of a contractor means many and varied workplaces) that has undertaken a "Blue Review." It's one of those enlightened business practice dealies (I think it was developed by the university of Illinois at Chicago) where everyone says let's be positive instead of negative. Behaviour is broken down into three colour coded types: Blue is "constructive styles" (good), Green is "passive/defensive styles" (bad) and Red is "aggressive/defensive styles" (also bad). This is one of those almost new age concepts that would really piss me off if it was done wrong.

The good thing is, in the three workplaces I have seen it, it has been done constructively and positively. People (including management) have seemed to genuinely want to honestly assess their shortcomings in these areas and work actively to improvement. The idea is be less Green (things like always relying on others, avoiding conflict, going along with rules to the letter) and Red (being overly critical, a control freak, overly competitive) and try to be more Blue (co-operative, receptive to change, takes on challenges).

The funny/ironic thing that happened involved the IT network people's desire to have complete control of PCs on the network. Before any IT security people jump down my throat, I'm all for stopping users from installing programs or running executables. People are dumb as shit and need to be protected from themselves ("a free screensaver to download from the internet? What could possibly go wrong with that?) But I think stopping people from setting their own wallpaper or selecting from default MS screensavers is stupid. Common but stupid.

Invariably when this is the workplace rules you are forced to have some sort of corporate desktop and screensaver. Like this is somehow going to make you love the company more or some such bullshit. You can't ram corporate conformity down people's throats and expect them to feel positive about it. Well, I suppose you could feel that way but you'd be a dickhead. Anyway, a few of us had discovered we could change the screensaver to be a slideshow of personal photos. A small thing but it was a nice humanising touch.

When I switched on my PC yesterday I discovered that the IT network people didn't think this was a good idea. They had done a network "upgrade" that locked us out of the screensaver controls and forced us to have a corporate screensaver. And what does this screensaver feature? Wonderful, uplifting "Blue" slogans. This made me laugh and yet again I had to explain to my cow-orkers why I was having a giggle fit. If one checks on the Blue/Green/Red chart one finds the following negative behaviour described under "Red":

Has little confidence in people.
Wants to control everything.

That sounds about right. The ultimate workplace irony. Thinking you can inspire Blue values with blatantly Red behaviour. As I like this workplace, it's only an annoyance and it's lightened by the fact I appreciate the irony. In a bad workplace it would make me really fucking angry.

It's All About Moroccan Chocolate

I'm a genius.

It makes me angry that this isn't more widely recognised. I should be making millions from book deals and speaking engagements but that will come. It's all part of the master plan. For now I have to convince people of my genius one by one at work and in slightly higher numbers via this blog. The fact that my rantings on this blog probably convince an equal number of people I'm insane is neither here nor there. There a fine line between genius and insanity. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Anyway, on to my latest evidence that I am in fact a genius. At work yesterday I had a breakthrough with the age-old problem of IT workers, how do you explain IT requirements to non-IT people? My role as a Business Analyst (BA) means I have to document the requirements for IT projects which usually presents two challenges. One is the actual discovery process - finding what the requirements actually are is harder than it sounds. Everybody thinks they know what they want from an IT system but once you start to press them on the specifics they realise (9 times out of 10) they haven't thought it through very well.

The second issue is often simply convincing a business they need some sort of formal requirements gathering process. This usually follows on closely from the "we know what we want" delusion. I call it the "just do it" delusion - that might work as a slogan for a shoe company but it's the equivalent of a suicide note for most IT projects. At this point any proponents of XP/Agile development approaches will be calling me an old stick-in-the-mud. Any reader who has no idea what XP/Agile development means can safely ignore that comment. Proponents of XP/Agile methodologies are crazy people (who nevertheless never respond to deliberate troll comments in blog posts).

So we had a team meeting yesterday to discuss our methodology, how to improve it and how to communicate the process to the business. Our System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) involves defining scope first, then formalising the Business Requirements, then a Functional Specification then handing off to the development group. One team member put forward how he had tried to describe the SDLC in architectural terms because he used to be an architect. This didn't work because nobody else used to be an architect. So we decided we needed a simpler analogy, how about describing it like a recipe? Why not indeed. So I took that idea and ran with it.

Forget IT, we're working on something else. There's a big party coming up and our project is to provide a chocolate cake. The first step is to meet with the business and confirm the scope. Do we have to do anything else for the party? Book a venue? Set up decorations? Bring beer and chips? No on all counts. Our scope is confirmed: all we are providing is a chocolate cake.

Next we have to confirm the Business Requirements in some more detail. What do they specifically want from the chocolate cake? Well, it has to be enough for 36 people. Ken is allergic to nuts so make sure it doesn't contain nuts. Should it be a sponge cake or a mud cake? At this point we don't worry about the details of the recipe (that's in the Functional Specification) or the baking process (that's the Technical Specification), we just talk about the outcomes we want. A mud cake that can feed 36 people and won't kill Ken because of his nut allergy.

Then comes finalising the recipe (the Functional Specification). This tells us everything that needs to happen to deliver on the business requirements (the mud cake needs this much flour, this much cocoa etc.) but doesn't tell a baker what to do (the IT development team write a Technical Specification - the equivalent of baking instructions).

If you've ever worked on an IT project you'll know one of your big enemies is "scope creep". This is when the business wants more and more features even when you have previously agreed on the limits of what you are doing. This takes longer, costs more money and makes it more likely that something will go wrong. So what happens when our chocolate cake project is chugging along and a manager sees a lifestyle program extolling the virtues of Moroccan chocolate? He decides the cake absolutely must be made with Moroccan chocolate and comes in the next day to insist the project plan is changed. How do you deal with this?

It depends how far the project has progressed when the manager starts pressing for Moroccan chocolate. If this happens in your requirements stage, you're in luck. The manager declares the cake project will be a failure without this so, by definition, Moroccan chocolate is a core business requirement. This may require some changes to your project plan. Is Moroccan chocolate more expensive? If it is, that means either increasing the budget or cutting back somewhere else. Can you get it locally or will someone have to fly to Morocco? Does cooking with Moroccan chocolate require special training? If so, do the skills already exist in-house or will an outside expert be required. Time and money comes into it again.

The later the requirement for Moroccan chocolate is identified, the bigger the impact may be. If you were already finalising your recipe (Functional Specification), you need to change it. If you want to keep track of why the project changed (and it's a big mistake not to) you need to document this change request. You can use this later to identify why it took longer and cost more. The later you were in your project the more trouble you may have making the change. If the bakers had already started they will have to throw out the work they've done so far. And if they don't have Moroccan chocolate cooking expertise, well, the whole thing's on hold until you find someone with the right experience.

In essence, you can always add Moroccan chocolate as a requirement, so long as the person asking for it appreciates the additional trouble, time and expense involved. And this is harder to establish if you don't document your scope, business requirements and functional specification.

And with that convoluted analogy we had had our solution. Explain to the business: it's all about the Moroccan chocolate. Do you need it? Are you willing to accept increased time and expense? Can you see how bringing up these requirements later causes many more problems than bringing them up earlier? And the funny thing is the business understood what we were getting at. It's quickly becoming a catchphrase, if someone talks about a new or potentially difficult requirement the response is "Is that a Moroccan chocolate requirement?"

And that's how I spend the non-blog part of my day.