Mr Angry to take Manhattan?

The New York deal is looking good.

I want to take a moment to thank everyone for all the positive responses to my post from yesterday. It's obviously exciting to me that I might get to go on US network TV but it's also really gratifying to get such a show of support from everyone. And not just for this specific incident; the support and feedback I've received from readers over the last 18 months is what keeps me going.

The story so far: I got the expected call from the TV guy last night and it went well. This is for a show that will be produced by the news/current affairs department at this network in New York. Apparently they are doing a show all about anger and they want to interview me for it.

The guy asked me a whole bunch of questions about my blog, my character, why I'm angry, all that sort of thing. He's going to take his notes to his producer where I guess the final decision on whether or not to use me is made. He said I should hear in the next week or so.

I don't actually know if they plan to do more than one show or whether they might use me for 5 seconds or 5 minutes. I guess I'll find out more as I go along. Still. T fucking V! Me! And it ain't cable, baby! (No disrespect to the fine folks at The Fizz on DirecTV who have been very good to me over the last year)

I'll hold off actually giving identifying details regarding the network until things get verified. I'm not sure if that's important but it feels like the right thing to do at the moment. Plus it adds an element of suspense. Which network will debut Mr Angry? It's sure to be the talk of tinsel town. Or possibly not.

As for people suggesting some sort of get-together if I get there: FUCK YES! I'd love that! I've never been to New York so I'm going to be a bit of a goggle-eyed tourist. Some local help would be appreciated. My only regret is I'm unlikely to have an opportunity to do any sort of a road trip. I'd love to explore some more of the country and meet a few more people but I don't think I'll have the time.

Obviously when I get my own series or make a feature film I'll make the time to get around a bit more ;)

Here's how I announced the news on YouTube:

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

I have to add, I'm really pleased this possible break has come from the blog, not YouTube. The TV guy in question found me via my famous alli diet pill post from a few months back. It just goes to show, kids: writing about pooping your pants is the path to success.

I've mentioned on several occasions in the past how not being featured on YouTube has pissed me off. That's the easy path to lots of recognition and I'll be honest; it frustrates me that they feature some real shit and haven't featured me. I've been more philosophical about it recently. As I approach the twin milestones of 1000 subscribers and one million views I actually feel good that I accomplished that without the help of being featured. That's an achievement I can own.

I almost wrote that I'd done it alone but that isn't true. I've had great support from a couple of people, most notably Cory Williams (Mr Safety) of SMP Films. People in the community have been great to me - it's the YouTube editors who haven't done me any favours.

But this potential New York gig is all about the blog. That belongs to me and you, dear readers. And that feels damn good!

Holy Fucking Shit!

It looks like I might be going to New York.

I mentioned in a previous post that although some negative things had happened to me recently I wasn't sinking into depression because of the good things happening in my life. I woke up to an email this morning that blew me away.

It seems that somebody working for a US television network read my alli diet pill post and liked it. A lot. They think they can use me on a show. On a major US network. This would involve me flying to New York in October.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

OK, to allay anyone's fears about my potential naivety: my first reaction was "This is bullshit". Some bastard was winding me up so they could make fun of me for being excited by the prospect. There was a phone number included in the email for me to call. My suspicion was that any call I made would go through to voicemail. There would be a recording of me getting all excited and maybe giving away some personal details that would later be used to humiliate me.

Not this little black duck! You don't get me that easy. The return email address was from a TV network's domain but it's easy enough to fake a return email address. BUT it's easy enough for me to send an email directly to the TV station to find out if this guy is real. Then I get to do a blog post and video saying how I outsmarted the prick that wanted to prank me.

Ummmmm, it appears not. It's for real. He replies with an email saying "haha I understand your caution, how do I prove I'm real? Here's the number for the switchboard - call them and ask to be put through to me." Yeah, that's a pretty good way to prove this isn't a prank.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

So I called the switchboard. By the way, the switch operator lived up to every Australian's stereotype (good and bad) of an American telephone operator. She had a syrupy sweet voice and used all the "how may I direct your call" lines to perfection. Her intonation was so friendly and perfect it seemed creepily unrealistic. But that's probably just me.

Right now I'm on my lunch break at work and I haven't been able to form a single fucking coherent thought all day. And they're kinda expecting me to do a few things today. Sucks to be them. I've actually given four weeks notice at this job so I can work on another big project. So right now, this job doesn't seem like the most important thing in the world to me. I'm sure my professionalism will win out though and I'll do the boring, non-life-changing stuff that's expected of me.

Once I have some solid details I'll be letting anyone interested (and doubtless quite a few people who aren't interested) know all about it. My other big project is in its last stages of stealth mode so I should be shouting that from the rooftops this week as well.

The big project I've been working on with others has been in planning for months. We're just about to lock in the final critical details (basically, a date) and then we'll be going public. Which is just as well because my brain has been on the edge of exploding having to keep this stuff secret. The big project and the possible TV thing feel like the culmination of what I've been doing online for the last 18 months, even if I didn't realise what it is I've been doing. Now I have to go back to work... I'll have to find some way to disguise the fact I don't give a shit about it right now.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Mr Angry learns to manage his angry feelings

Have you ever been in a situation where someone drops "hints" about a problem they think you have? They don't come out and say anything to you but they might leave an article about Alcoholics Anonymous lying about or maybe a brochure titled "So You're Having Erectile Dysfunction Problems?" I don't know why I went for those two. Nobody's ever left them lying around for me. Honest.

The people who do this type of thing call themselves "helpful". I call them passive-aggressive jerks. In this video, I discuss what I learned when someone left a booklet titled "Managing Angry Feelings" on my keyboard.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVglVYT2u0M

Remember: if you aren't angry, you clearly aren't paying enough attention to what's going on.

I have angered God

God has spoken to me. I used to think that people who claimed God spoke to them were crazy, or self-serving televangelists trying to swindle gullible people out of their money. But now God has spoken to me so maybe those other people weren't lying and/or deluded.

So what has God said to me? A lot of things, but the divine communiques can be summarised as "You done fucked up son. Now I'm going to fuck things up for you for a while." I wasn't given a lot of specifics about how I'd fucked up, it was more a case of a cavalcade of punishments to make it clear I had displeased the creator.

Anyone who has been reading this blog will know about how I appear to have been blacklisted by Google. I still don't know what to do about that. I haven't been going on about it at length or doing particularly angry rants which may surprise some. The reason for this is that it is rather important to me. Most of my angry rants are actually about things I don't care much about, done for comedic value.

This Google thing is quite disheartening. A real kick in the balls actually. The timing is appalling too because I was about to use the blog to publicise an upcoming event but that's impossible if I'm blacklisted. Actually, I've done a little research that suggests I'm not technically blacklisted because my site shouldn't show up at all if I was on a blacklist. It's just that for some reason I don't show up anywhere on any of the search terms I used to be top for. Whatever. It's still fucked.

Then I have a whole cavalcade of shit happening with my car that's going to cost me about a thousand bucks to fix up. I'll spare you the details but let me say that I'm an innocent party in all of this. If that old lady didn't want to get hit she should have walked across the pedestrian crossing quicker. I haven't been helped by the fact that both her sons are cops. Now I'm being persecuted.

I think it's because I'm black*.

So why haven't I lost my shit over this? Well, to sound sappy for a minute, my partner and kids are a very big help in this area. Without them I'd be in a far worse mood. Second, there is some very exciting good stuff happening in my life at the moment too. So good, it far outweighs the bad. It's still in the planning stages and I can't say much more until some details are finalised.

Hopefully by mid-week the final arrangements will be confirmed and I can go public. Here's a hint in the meantime: there's a reason I've been making videos promoting Melbourne lately.

Fo now, I'll struggle manfully on. I had been meaning to post more often for the last week but these various event had sucked the motivation out of me for a while. Hopefully, this week I will be back to normal.

*NOTE: I'm not actually black. But the various white supremacists and self-proclaimed nazis I have crossed paths with online have called me black, jewish, muslim, asian, lebanese and gay so I think that counts. Plus I've been playing a lot of Grand Theft Auto lately and the cops in that game persecute my character for being black. And for all those car-jackings and drive-bys I do.

Angry Comix#4 - Watching God, Inc

I'm rather easily led. So many people have been telling me to do more of the comics that I decided to go ahead and do some more. All I had to do is decide on the script. Then I had a brainwave.

One of my most viewed ever videos on YouTube is also, bizarrely enough, one of my worst. The jokes in it are pretty good but I made almost no effort when shooting it. It has multiple characters but when I cut between them, they're actually sitting in the same seat and facing in the same direction so it makes no sense visually.

The video was a response to a featured video called "God, Inc". It's essentially a sitcom set in heaven but heaven is this really crappy office environment with all the bureaucracy and petty politics that happens in an office. I thought it was really funny and perfectly suited for a response from my "demon" characters. Basically, my idea was they see "God, Inc" as their competition.

I did the video a day before I went on my New Zealand holiday so I was thinking far more about my holiday than the video. Then about two days later I checked my email at an internet cafe in New Zealand. The inbox was full of comments from YouTube. It turns out that God, Inc was quite popular and my video was the only response they approved at the time so I was getting thousands of views a day.

And, surprise surprise, I was getting dozens of stupid comments a day. Quite a few positive ones at well but the morons were making themselves well and truly known. I had enormous amounts of fun ripping into the haters, most of them were stupid enough to leave themselves wide open. But truth be told, I knew I'd made a pretty ordinary effort with the video.

For ages I'd been promising myself I'd redo the video properly but I'd never gotten around to it. It can be a little difficult to shoot the pieces with more than one character but I realised this would be ideal for the comic medium. It's much easier to incorporate multiple characters when you're only using still images.

So here it is, my God, Inc response done as a comic:



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

For completists, here is the original God, Inc video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2f4heaG288

And here's my original response video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJgXsUlaFvU

I think Google has blacklisted me

I noticed the weirdest thing today. One of my regular YouTube viewers mentioned he couldn't find my blog on Google. When I check some of my old standby search terms ("Mr Angry", "Angry Blog", "foreskin blog") I wasn't showing up. At first I thought they might have recalibrated their algorithm which resulted in me being moved further down the list.

Then I actually put in "angryaussie" and got back a whole bunch of stuff from YouTube and some other sites but nothing from my blog. It's always possible that this is not about me specifically - maybe they've just demoted hosted blogs generally. But I have no idea how to find out what's happening.

If anyone has any expertise in this area (that includes working out what the hell happened and what the hell I can do about it) I'd appreciate some advice.

Why our next Prime Minister got drunk in a strip club

I was asked recently in a comment why I write about US politics and not Australian politics. This is mainly because Australian politics is boring. I'm not vain enough to think what happens on this remote island has much effect on the world stage. Decisions and actions taken by the US administration, on the other hand, affect pretty much the whole world.

That said, I'll tell you the most interesting things about Oz politics right now. We're having an election some time in the next six months (the Prime Minister gets to set the date within a certain range and he hasn't set it yet.) All the polls point to a fairly massive loss for the incumbent conservative government. A few key points about how our political system differs from the US:

• We have a Westminster-style parliament (like England)
• We don't have a president
• If your party (or coalition) wins the most seats in the House of Representatives (analogous to the US Congress) you win the government. The head of your party runs things and is known as the Prime Minister
• All of the ministers in the Cabinet (analogous to US "Secretary of..." roles) are elected representative, NOT appointed as they are in the US
• The conservatives in Australia (broadly analogous to US Republicans) are a coalition of the Liberal and National Parties. The "Liberal" bit will be confusing to those used to US political terminology, I know
• The other party (broadly analogous to Democrats) is known as the Labor party
• There is actually a party called the Democrats. They're losers. There's only a few of them left and they're facing extinction

The current government (Liberal/National coalition) have been in power with the same Prime Minister since 1996. I am not a supporter of this regime. I'm sure they'll learn to live with that. I'll give PM John Howard credit for two things: first, he's a survivor. Members of his own party tried to screw him over for years. Ultimately he won and they lost. Second, for ten years he completely neutered pretty much all opposition. The Labor party were his bitch for years.

That all changed when Labor got a new leader in the form of Kevin Rudd. The guy is teflon. No attack on him sticks. And now the Liberals are staring down the barrel of a really humiliating defeat at the next election. The title of this post refers to my favourite failed attempt to smear Rudd.

The story broke recently that Rudd visited Scores "gentlemen's club" in Manhattan in 2003 with fellow Labor MP Warren Snowdon and New York Post editor Col Allan during a taxpayer-funded trip when he was opposition foreign affairs spokesman. Because Rudd is a Christian with a fairly clean image some may have thought this would hurt his reputation and his lead in the polls. Not so.

I'll be honest, it was Rudd's goody-two-shoes Christianity that gave me doubts about him. I'm uncomfortable with governments anywhere being run according to theology (any theology). So I felt this actually humanised him a little. Public reaction shows I'm not alone in thinking that. He even has the greatest defence if someone tries to embarrass him with specifics ("Did you get a lapdance?" "Were the strippers hot?" "Who was your favourite?")

He was too drunk to remember anything! Legend! I actually suspect this story was leaked by his own side. Obviously, it's been known about for ages in political circles but it wasn't given to the media or at least no media ran with it. If you knew Australians you'd realise that thinking this would hurt his image is a stupid idea. He's much more of a bloke now. And he'll probably be Prime Minister soon.

So I mentioned the things I give current PM John Howard credit for, what don't I like about him? Simple - his politics. He's a very dry conservative economically and extremely conservative socially. He's overwhelmingly committed to ideology over pragmatism. Most of the time this has served him well but it's led to some spectacular blunders.

He's staunchly anti-union and introduced laws that tilted workplace relations heavily in favour of employers over employees. Unions had been dying a natural death - membership was steadily dwindling because people didn't think they needed them. Then Howard introduces a raft of draconian industrial laws that scare the crap out of people, making them run to unions. The man who hates unions gave them their biggest membership boost in 20 years.

His other blunder (in my opinion) has been how he's handled the Australian/US alliance. This alliance is incredibly important to Australia but the alliance is about countries, not political parties. Howard has tied himself intimately to President Bush and is without doubt Bush's most loyal supporter in the world. Seriously. Bush treats Howard better than any other world leader when he visits because no other world leader supports Bush so strongly.

Howard has criticised opposition politicians who have criticised Bush's policies saying they are hurting the alliance. Yet Howard has had no hesitation in attacking Democrats who may well form the next US administration. This sort of hypocrisy and political game playing really pisses me off. In fact, I lost all respect for Howard when he repeated the appalling Republican talking points about a vote for the Democrats being a vote for terrorists, a subject I tackled in the following video for The Fizz Newzz:

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

High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens nude photos and video - for real!

How stupid would you have to be to be working for Disney AND taking nude photos of yourself. It turns out the stories about the star of Disney's Move High School Musical 2, Vanessa Hudgens, doing nude photos are true. She could win an Academy Award AND a Nobel Prize and she'd still be more famous for these nude photos.

Mind you, if this ruins her career she could always have a second life as a soft core porn star. Some well placed Google Adsense ads and she could make a fortune talking about sex like Emmalina. Millions of horny males would flock to hear her talk about her lesbian sex experiences with co-stars, having to indulge in anal sex, oral sex and orgies on the Disney casting couch (come on - you know those Disney types are wild deviants and perverts when they get going). She's 18 so it doesn't count as child porn but those sick bastard pedophiles have an active imagination. OK, now I've made myself feel dirty.

I hate having to explain things like this to my kids. And huge billboards covered in strippers or ads for erectile dysfunction or penis enlargement. But this is the world we live in. How much of this stupid crap has to happen before people actually realise that this is a stupid way to behave? I'm hoping by the time my kids are teenagers these cautionary tales will have sunk in - there's no such thing as "private" nude photos.

And here's the video I made in a blatant grab for horndog viewers:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhOxyNrmvd0

Crazy Windows Error Messages

Here's the sort of thing I do when I'm bored. I found a site that lets you generate authentic looking Windows error messages. It's good for a bit of aimless fun and I used it to put together the following comic:

Video version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0DllD2jAL0

Still version

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1328/1350253530_c850c03dd8_o.jpg


http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1072/1349362487_90d389d755_o.jpg


http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1150/1349362775_e1c5a5e02b_o.jpg

If you want to make your own error messages, go to the Atom Smasher website.

What's a Republican's favourite sex fetish?

The cavalcade of embarrassing revelations about the secret lives of ultra-conservatives that seem
to come out every day have me wondering. Is the easiest way to work out what a Republican's fetish is to look at what he denounces? Consider the evidence provided bu just a few recent examples:

• Bob Allen (Florida Chairman of John McCain's Presidential Campaign) gets caught offering a dude money to suck his dick in a public toilet. Turns out dude was an undercover cop.
  
• Glen Murphy Jnr (National Chairman of the Young Republicans) is facing charges for sucking a sleeping dude's dick. Turns out sleeping dude wasn't a willing participant
• Senator Larry Craig is another closeted Republican with the poor judgement to proposition an undercover cop in a public toilet
• Mark Foley, champion of all who oppose child predators online, spends his free time sending sexually explicit text messages to teenagers who work in his office
• Ted Haggard, leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, gets busted for liaisons with a gay prostitute that involve plenty of butt sex and crack smoking. This guy's my personal favourite as despite railing against "immorality" generally and homosexuality specifically for years, he managed to (a) hook up with a prostitute (b) have plenty of gay sex and (c) do hard drugs.

I have nothing against rational adults engaging in consensual sex (gay, prostitute-assisted or otherwise) and even doing drugs. It's the hypocrisy I can't stand. And the REAL conservatives, the REAL Republicans, the REAL christians must be having a far worse time than me trying to deal with these hypocritical scumbags. I never liked them, but when they're the champions of your cause, it's gotta hurt.


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

I'm serious about Rick Santorum by the way. I have no doubt he will eventually be revealed to be into some REALLY sick stuff. When an evangelical minister does crack with a gay escort, nothing is impossible.

Melbourne by night

I'm in the middle of taking a week off work right now. My relaxation mode has spilled over into my blogging. You may have noticed. I'm not dead- simply resting.

I will still be posting. Like right now. Just maybe not with the regularity and depth/length that I usually do. I've also been making less angry videos - it's amazing how much screaming at a camera interferes with relaxing.

I've been shooting some scenic videos around Melbourne actually. As the weather gets better you'll be seeing more of this fair city. Here a video I shot in the city centre the other night.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WW1bImS98s

I'm thinking of doing some more with that ferris wheel - it's really trippy. Maybe I'll do some to camera stuff with the shirting lights behind my head like some sort of acid trip halo. Yeah, that oughta get me arrested.

A Cry For Help

Sometimes when I'm jumping randomly through videos on YouTube, I like to play a game I call "Committed to character or a cry for help?" It's a game the whole family can play. The rules are simple. You find a video where the person in it seems a bit "out there". Then you try to guess whether the person is really committed to a character they're playing or if you're witnessing a desperate cry for help.

It may not surprise you to learn that this game is born out of reactions I often get to my videos. It never ceases to amaze me how many people there are out there who have concept of what a character is. They see me say certain things in a video and believe what they have seen is literally me. Despite obvious pointers that this is not actually "me" (like I'm wearing a weird fucking mask) these mental midgets pass sweeping judgements on who I am.

By the way, I'm not talking about judgements like "this is a person who likes performing"... "this is a person who likes creating characters"... "this is a person who like using comedic exaggerations to make points." That would actually qualify as insight.

I'm far from the only one subjected to this sort of stupidity. One individual who springs immediately to mind uses the name "Daxflame" on YouTube. This is a truly bizarre character but I find myself admiring the guy's dedication to his trade. Check his YouTube channel if you want to see some weird, almost inexplicable, shit. The guy is obviously playing a character (although hell if I know what he intends to do with the character) but he continually gets comments from people who clearly believe they are seeing a real person rather than a character.

The video performances that I find funny are the ones where the person is giving away far more than they realise. They aren't playing a character as such but they are telling you a lot more than their words alone say. These are people who strike me as distinctly lacking in self-awareness, I doubt they understand how clearly they are broadcasting their true motivations and indeed, their true selves.

One who got me thinking about this was a guy who'd had a video taken down for being "offensive". It finished with a shot of the Koran in a toilet bowl covered by a huge shit. Seriously. It wasn't a special effect. This guy eats his fibre. He made a video protesting the takedown where he literally could not finish a coherent thought. I'm sure he'd say it was because he was so angry at what he saw as injustice. Me, I think he's the type who has trouble forming a coherent thought on a good day.

So join the craze that's sweeping the nation! Get on over to YouTube and play "Committed to character or a cry for help?"


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZmfaXdEj8w

Comment ratings on YouTube

YouTube recently made a series of changes to their commenting system. Any long term YT user will know what that means. They fucked the comment system beyond all recognition. I don't think YouTube have ever managed to change the comment system without screwing it. Then they have to apply fixes until they sort it out.

This time was probably their biggest fuck-up ever. That's a big call but they really borked the system totally. You literally can't see follow comment thread. Answering comments actually results in the comments no longer being visible. The "view all comments" function doesn't... ummmm... function.

BUT they've done one good thing. They've introduced a ratings system for comments. Anyone familiar with Slashdot, Reddit or Digg (among others) will be familiar with this concept. I'm really hoping this concept takes off with users, to me it's the ultimate way to do with haters.

Comment ratings make blocking and deleting comments superfluous. If you've worked to develop a community then the community will vote down idiots. You have an adjustable filter that lets you set a threshold for what you see - when a comment gets sufficient downvotes it becomes "invisible" although you always have the option to see the comment if you really want to.

I like it because it takes the power away from random idiots and gives it to the community. Of course cliques can develop and people have a tendency to downvote comments simply because they disagree with them. People are people and people are imperfect. But haters are fuck-heads and I'll take any weapon I can use against them.

It turns out that surprisingly few people on YouTube were familiar with the concept of comment ratings, so I did this instructional video to help out:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnk5P9HZ_Ds

Copyright Bullshit

I frequently get worked up by the way big companies take an extreme position with regards to copyright. As a creator of original work (in my own modest way) I'm not a fan of people making money from the work of others without fair recompense to the originator. But some of the practices of media companies are simply fucked up.

My personal pet hate is being subjected to anti piracy messages when I'm at the cinema or watching a DVD I've bought. Listen up you fucking geniuses: if I've paid money to watch the fucking movie I'm not a fucking pirate so your fucking anti piracy message is a waste of fucking time and nothing short of insulting. JUST FUCKING STOP IT, OK?

And I've never understood the way they go after their most loyal fans. You literally can't buy the sort of rabid fandom that makes people want to promote music, TV shows and movies to all and sundry. Yet when people make fan tributes the copyright lawyers go after them like a pack of hyenas.

Their biggest target these days is YouTube. Partly because there actually is a lot of infringing material on there. Partly because it's owned by Google and Google's billions make them a prime target for lawsuits. And honestly, I think a big part of it is jealousy. None of these fucked-up companies has a clue on how to launch a successful online video site. It's way easier to sue a success story than succeed on your own.

By now the apologist are gearing up to leave comments saying how the media companies are in the right, they're protecting their property, people are stealing their content online. I don't fucking care. You know why? These companies are liars, hypocrites and thieves.

The poster child for aggressive legal action in the name of copyright protection these days is Viacom. They have a billion dollar lawsuit pending against YouTube (which they're going to lose - big time.) They go after people at the drop of a hat. And it doesn't seem to matter to them whether they're right or wrong.

You'd think if they were going to go after other people so aggressively for copyright infringement, they'd make sure they were squeaky clean themselves, right? Wrong. VH1, which is a Viaom channel, run a show called "Web Junk". In this show, they post online videos with what they think is witty commentary.

But they don't get permission to run these videos which is textbook copyright infringement (you don't have to assert copyright - simply creating something gives you copyright over it). Case in point is Christopher Knight. He details in a post on his blog how VH1 used a video he'd created on their Web Junk show. They didn't even ask permission, let alone pay for the right to use it.

Turns out Knight didn't mind. He was actually flattered that they thought his work was worth showing. He put a video up on YouTube showing his material being used on Vh1. And Viacom had the audacity to issue a takedown notice to YouTube. For copyright infringement. These people deserve to have a rabid chipmunk rectally inserted. In fact, these sick bastards probably already do that sort of thing for fun.

This bullshit has got to stop.

A horse sneezes and an industry catches the flu

Strange goings-on in Australia this week. An outbreak of horse flu (more properly known as equine influenza) has shut down the horse racing industry. This may not sound like a big deal but horse racing (or more specifically, the attendant betting) is a big deal in Australia.

Aussie are mad for gambling. The old saying is that if there was nothing else, Australians would bet on two flies crawling up a wall. Horseracing in Australia involves billions of dollars a year so when it grinds to a halt a few people start squeaking.

It's also happened at the worst possible time. The biggest part of the racing calendar in Australia is the Spring Racing Carnival which was due to start in the coming months. As I understand it, Sydney's Spring carnival has been cancelled because of the horse flu being found at their major racecourse. It isn't this bad in Melbourne (yet) which is lucky because the major horse race of the year is in Melbourne on the first Tuesday in November.

It's hard to describe how big the Melbourne Cup is in Australia. I guess horse racing is big almost everywhere but the Melbourne Cup is different. I understand the Kentucky Derby is regarded as somewhat of a big deal by locals. On Melbourne Cup day, we have a public holiday. For a horse race.

I think it is a uniquely Australian trait to get so obsessed about a horse race which is a really inconsequential thing when you get down to it. I imagine a lot of people in the racing industry are on serious doses of tranquilisers right now. To try and control the spread of the disease there is a complete freeze on the movement of horses across Australia.

There's no confirmed cases of horse flu in Melbourne yet and because of the impact it would have on the Melbourne Cup, a lot of people are holding their breath at the moment. I believe the racing industry have set up machine guns along the Victorian border and are shooting at anything vaguely horse-shaped they see.

Tori Spelling is advised not to show her face in Australia anytime soon.

The big problem is that horse flu was unknown in Australia prior to this outbreak. Because it didn't exist here, none of our horses have any resistance to it. If one horse gets it, ever horse it comes into contact with will get it. It isn't killing horses yet, apparently it's like human flu in that regard - it's most dangerous to the very old, the very young and those already sick.

Oh, and unlike avian flu, there is apparently no danger of transmission to humans so we're not about to be wiped out by a killer plague. Phew. But a few people will be out of pocket. I did hear some announcers on the radio this morning joking "Won't someone think of the milliners?" It's a big tradition for the ladies to wear outlandish hats to the Spring Racing Carnival. It looks like that won't be happening this year.

Jokes aside, a few hat makers will be freaking out right now. I'm pretty sure they depend on Spring Racing the same way florists depend on Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. Without this annual boost to their revenue, a lot of them are going to be utterly screwed.

At the big end of town, the NSW betting authority (a government licensed company called TAB is the only outlet allowed to take legal bets) says the cancellation of racing in Sydney means a loss of about $50 million a week in wagers. There are estimates that the cancellation of the Victorian Spring Racing Carnival would mean $50 million a day!

I have a bit of trouble getting too worked up about this figure. It isn't the same as factories being shut down or mines being closed or primary industry being crippled by drought. That $50 million isn't literally being lost. Quite the opposite really - it's staying in punters' pockets. That's rent being paid and kids being fed. Maybe even a few less lives being ruined. It isn't all bad.

I wonder if we still get a holiday if the Melbourne Cup is cancelled?

Zombie Pride

It seems like every special interest group in the world spends a lot of time expressing their "pride". I figured it was time zombies got in on the act.

This video was actually inspired when fellow YouTuber SeanBedlam did a video entitled "Stupid people are dumb". In the description for the video, he wondered "As awash with retards as the net is, I wonder how all this dumbness affects me mind? (If representatives from the Retarded Community could comment, that would be great.)"

He sure as hell got his wish. The level of stupidity displayed in some of the comments was truly staggering. Even with my famously low opinion of some of the fuckwits found on YouTube, I found some of the responses surprisingly stupid. I decided the only appropriate respondent to these morons was another zombie. Besides which, it was an excuse for me to invent another character.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1RGISZxCyI

I'm actually undecided whether or not a zombie (excuse me, I should have said "member of the life-challenged community") is a perfect match for a YouTube hater. On the one hand, they're both brain-dead so I figure they'd have a lot in common. On the other hand, zombies famously subsist on braaaaaaaaains. The poor bastards would starve to death around these hater fucktards.

Project Management on the Titanic

One good way to highlight how stupid "accepted wisdom" can be is to transpose the situation into a different setting and see how ridiculous it looks. This week I've been imagining software project management being applied on the Titanic. Because the project I'm working on hit a big fucking iceberg.

The basic situation is the company I work for has bought a big software package. The vendor submitted a fixed price tender to supply, configure and install the software. Fixed price contacts sound great in concept but anyone who's dealt with them knows their shortcoming.

Whether you're building a house or installing software, there are always things you didn't allow for. You, the buyer, want these things when they come to light and the supplier says "Sure, you can have that but it's a change to the contract which means I have to charge you more."

One of three things happens now:

1. You don't get what you want so you're dissatisfied with the end result
2. You pay more so you're dissatisfied with the final cost
3. You have a big fight over whether or not this is a change and the relationship becomes really adversarial which is no fun for anybody

We seem to be stuck with outcome 3. And as the Business Analyst I'm stuck in the middle of the business Project Manager and the vendor Project Manager. I've been imagining the scenario playing out on the Titanic as follows:

ME: Iceberg, dead ahead!

Business PM: Quick, get us past the iceberg.

Vendor PM: There was no mention of icebergs in the contract.

BPM: So what? There's an iceberg there now, we have to deal with it.

VPM: We can deal with the iceberg but we'll have to charge you for a change request.

BPM: But the owners won't agree to pay any more. They wanted you to steer the ship for a fixed price.

VPM: But there were no icebergs in the original plan. It's going to take time to deal with it and we'll have to charge you for it. You'll have to document what you want us to do.

BPM: I can't believe you've never encountered icebergs in any of your other ships, what did you do in similar situations?

VPM: I talked to the owner and he was clear he wanted the ship to reach its destination as quickly as possible so we configured the navigation differently. Don't you have any existing processes for dealing with icebergs?

ME: Kind of. People just do whatever's required to deal with situations as the come up. There are some guidelines like "don't hit icebergs" but there's no detailed instructions. That's why we hired you, for your expertise.

VPM: We can come up with a solution but we'll have to bill you for the time.

BPM: There are other cruise lines thinking of installing similar systems on their ships but they're waiting to see how things turn out for us. Isn't it more important to your future to deliver a good result to us than to screw every possible dollar out of us here and now?

VPM: But I can't keep ordering my engineers to do more and more work when we signed on for a fixed price. I have no more money to pay them.

ME: Oh shit! The iceberg just ripped a big hole in the hull. We're sinking.

BPM: You have to help us now or we'll all sink together.

VPM: We have to agree on a change request first.

ME: You two go off and have a meeting then, leave me out of it.

BPM: What are you going to do?

ME: I'm going to throw myself into the icy water and hope I die quickly.

I told you I was sick

I haven't had as much energy as usual lately due to my previously mentioned illness. My efforts with both blog posts and videos have suffered as a result. I offer up this video as proof I'm not faking it:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy6V-6jNRDo

Top seven angry weight loss tips

I noticed I'm putting on a little weight. The first spring blossoms are appearing now so I need to take some action to be in better shape for summer. I used to be on the upper end of the "husky" scale but I managed to lose 25kg. So I know about weight loss.

Here's Mr Angry's top weight loss tips:

1. STOP EATING, YOU FAT FUCK!

2. Get off your arse once in a while. Why are you sitting at your computer writing about weight loss? Get out and do something.

3. Why are there chips and chocolate in your pantry? Those things aren't food! Stop buying them!

4. Portion control! A little bit extra with one meal won't hurt. A little bit extra with every meal is what turns you into a fat bastard.

5. Only drink sugar-free drinks - it makes a big difference. Don't pay attention to those freaks who say you should only drink water, that's boring. And definitely ignore the conspiracy theory freaks who want to tell you diet cola will give you cancer. Those nutjobs think the World Trade Centre was blown up with Aspartame.

6. See a doctor about prescription appetite suppressants. That stuff is the shit! Legal speed! Oh, and it's easier to lose weight when your appetite is suppressed.

7. DO NOT go for alli or Xenical. That shit is fucked up.

But don't forget rule one: STOP EATING YOU FAT FUCK!

Seriously.

- - - - - -

By the way, I'm sure someone's going to make a comment along the lines that this post is insensitive. That fat people are discriminated against. That it's someone's fault besides their own that they're so fucking fat. Yeah, you're right. I'm incredibly insensitive and prejudiced towards myself. I'm very cruel that way. You can go away now.

A pseudo war on drugs

I'm sick as a dog this week which is why I haven't been posting much. I'm propped up with pseudoephedrine at the moment which is successfully suppressing the symptoms but has my body sending me weird signals. My lungs feel really dry which is better than full of phlegm but it feels unnatural. Tsunamis of phlegm are just waiting to overwhelm my lungs the moment the drug effects recede.

Feeling like crap is bad enough but these days even buying decent cold and flu medication can be a challenge. Part of trade treaties between Australia and the US mean our government is compelled to follow most of America's fucked-up "War on Drugs" policies. It isn't quite as insane here as it is in the land of the free but it has its moments.

One of the fun effects is when a chemist treats you like a criminal for buying a legal product. Apparently the pseudoephedrine in the cold pills can be used to make actual ephedrine i.e. speed. I can see why this might make you suspicious of someone who buys 20 packets but why the fuck would it make you hassle someone buying a single packet?

To their credit, the chemists tend not to "profile". You don't have to look like a greasy biker to get hassled. You can be wearing a suit and tie (as I do for work) and still be given the 3rd degree.

Suspicious Chemist: "Why do you want these pills?"

ME: (snorking back a litre of snot) "Because I have a cold."

SC: (pointing to pills that don't contain pseudoephedrine) "Why don't you get these ones."

ME: "Because they don't work. I feel like crap and I'd like some pills that actually suppress the symptoms a little and make me feel better for a while."

SC: "We have to be careful because these pills can be used to manufacture illegal drugs."

ME: "Why do you even sell them if they're so dangerous?"

Apparently this was a bad question as the chemist started getting really belligerent with me at this point.

SC: "I'll have to see a photo ID before I can sell them to you."

ME: "Are you saying you won't sell me a single package of a legal, non-prescription product without seeing my ID?"

SC: "That's the rules."

ME: "Are you saying there's a law that makes you do that?"

At this point he indicates a sign on the wall labelled "pseudo watch" that says they're doing their part to stop illegal drug manufacturing by monitoring sales of products containing pseudoephedrine. This makes me laugh because "pseudo watch" sounds to me like they're only sort-of watching. And me giggling apparently convinces the chemist that I'm high.

The upshot of which is that it seems we now live in a world where some tiny minded dweeb can jerk you around as much as they like with no justification. "The rules" have become more important than the actual law. Let alone treating people decently. Life is really looking rosy for all the little Hitlers of the world.

And this wasn't even in an airport.

The biggest lie ever told

One of my YouTube pals, known as JustA11en, made a video he titled "The biggest lies ever told". He sent me a message suggesting I respond. Apparently he thought I might have an issue with liars.

He was right.

I had so many ideas about the biggest liars in the world my brain was buzzing for a day thinking about it. Lies told to justify war. Lies told by hypocrites who preach morality and condemn the sexuality of other while practicing quite extreme perversion of their own. The possibilities were almost endless.

In the end I settled on what I thought was the biggest lie I've seen told on YouTube.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DREFf_di3Yk

Bloggerman to the rescue

Like most bloggers, I suffer from the delusion that my writing actually means something. In the bigger picture, I mean. As in, I'm going to change the world. While thinking about this I started to imagine a blogging superhero in full spandex-wearing, underpants-on-the-outside glory. Hence, "Bloggerman".

I like the idea of being a superhero but all superheroes have a weakness. Superman had Kryptonite. My weakness is pretty lame. I have a light sensitivity known as photic sneeze reflex. Essentially, bright sunshine makes me sneeze. Even looking straight into a bright artificial light can trigger sneezing. By bright, I mean about 100 watts will do it if I stare straight into the light.

Once the bad guys latched onto this I'd be screwed. I'd be all flying in to save the day and the criminals would say "Oh no, it's Bloggerman! Quick, shine the bright flashlight in his eyes and we'll make our getaway while he's sneezing."

I think I would use my blogging powers to confuse them. I'd start false stories through blogs that said my true weakness was hot naked chicks writhing in oil. Then they'd make the mistake of putting hot, oiled babes in my path to stop me pursuing them.

Actually, that would probably be pretty effective in distracting me from crime fighting.

Milestones

If someone had asked me a year ago did I think I’d be posting 400 videos to YouTube I would have said “Of course not, do I look that stupid?” Well, apparently I am that stupid. I never would have imagined that I’d get so much enjoyment out of putting so much work into something for which I get no direct reward. Yet.

To qualify, I don’t actually think it’s a stupid thing to do. I enjoy and get fulfilment out of blogging and making videos. So every time I get stupid comment along the lines of “you don’t have a life” it makes me laugh. These clueless individuals seem to be suggesting that I should do less of what I enjoy because it doesn’t conform to their narrow perception of what makes a life.

I’ll tell you this for free: I’d rather be the person who spends hours creating things, even if it seems to be for no purpose, than the fucker who wastes five minutes passing a negative judgement on someone else’s creation. Now that is a wasted life.

Anyway, 400 videos isn’t my only milestone for my video making. It looks like I’ll be hitting both a thousand subscribers and a million video views on YouTube soon. All without being featured. I know I’ve complained before about not being featured on YT but I’ve got to the point where I’m OK with it.

I’ve seen people get absolutely hammered with tens of thousands of abusive messages after being featured. To say it’s a mixed blessing is putting it mildly. And this way I feel a sense of ownership over my achievements (modest as they are) on YT. So without further ado, here’s my 400th YouTube video. And I remembered to announce the t-shirt competition winner as well – you’ll have to watch through to about the 15 minute mark to find out.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDSwbowdM7g

OK, just in case you aren’t in a position to watch the video, the winner was LadySadist for “Anger is the body’s natural defence against stupid.”

While on the subject of milestones, I’ve been extraordinarily happy with the progress I’ve made on this blog. I passed 600 posts recently and I've had two posts reach the top of Reddit in the last couple of months, as well as getting some prominence on Digg and StumbleUpon. It seems like it wasn’t that long ago that I was celebrating a quarter of a million views in a little over a year and then I shot past half a million in about a month. And 1/10 of all of my views in the last 18 months come from a single day!

Damn, the internet is weird.

I’ve passed a number of milestones with the rather artificial measuring stick of my Technorati ranking as well. I say artificial because it doesn’t seem to mean anything. It certainly doesn’t drive any referrals to the blog. Even if it’s totally meaningless, I was still excited when I got into their top 10,000. Now I’m inside their top 8,000 with over 500 referring links according to their figures.

And I still haven’t earned a damn cent from any of it. OK, that isn’t strictly true. I have made money doing stuff for The Fizz, and although that’s technically outside of both the blog and YouTube I never would have had the opportunity if I had been out there doing stuff already. That said, I think it’s about time I got serious about this shit.

I have a major plan underway at the moment. I’m planning a significant event with some other people for later in the year. Stay tuned for more details. The time is soon coming when you’ll be able to say “Oh, Mr Angry? I was into him way before he was famous.”

Goodbye Freedom

It isn't as if I want to encourage armed insurrection but seriously, why the fuck aren't Americans rioting in the streets? How far does this shit have to go?

Americans may need passports to board domestic flights or to picnic in a national park next year...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FtGehp6KVI

Death is just the beginning

When I wrote a post about the diet drug "alli" a while back, the actual news part was not the drug itself. The drug had been available on prescription for a long time, known as Xenical. The big news was that it had been declared "safe" by the USFDA to allow a version of the drug to be sold over the counter.

Of the wide and varied comments I received (if you count all the forums it appeared on, it generated well over 1,000 comments) one stood out for me. A couple of times people posted comments along the lines of "why are you worried? the FDA says it's safe!" These tools are apparently unaware of the long and proud history of drugs being declared safe then later discovered to have side effects like causing birth defects. And death.

The latest in this parade is a painkiller marketed in Australia as Prexige. It turns out this "safe" drug can kill you too. I guess you stop feeling pain after that. It was banned in Australia last Friday. The reports into this intrigued me because they included the warning that your condition could get worse after you stop taking the drug.

What's worse than death?

Anyway, this story prompted me to file the following Angry News report:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gti-QaRDQ3Q

The more I think about the Chinese authorities executing people for poor job performance, the weirder it seems. Where do they draw the line? Is it defined in your work contract? And it must make recruitment hellishly difficult. And how about annual reviews? You'd be terrified of getting a good review. It might be followed by

"Congratulations, we're promoting you!"

"Nooooooo, you can't promote me!"

"But you're the best performer we have, we want you to run the company."

"No, anything but that. Listen, you never found out but I've been stealing stuff. And I've been hiding my heroin habit from you. Pleeeease don't make me the boss."

It would certainly make for a weird variation of the Peter Principle.

T-shirt competition finalists

I can't believe nobody hassled me to finalise my t-shirt competition. I finally remembered to do it. Without your help! Lucky I'm here to pick up the slack. Before I give the finalists, I'm going to reiterate the two most important rules of the competition:

1. You're not allowed to get pissed off at me if I don't choose you
2. The popular vote does not dictate the winner

I really mean rule one. Getting pissed off at me over this is illegal. The police will be around to pick you up if I hear any complaining. And rule two means vote stacking won't work. I'm shallow and will probably be swayed by popular opinion but I guarantee nothing. So here are the finalists:

I know exactly how you feel,I’m just not interested - Paul Brown(blog)

How about a nice cup of shut the fuck up - Cailin (blog)

I'm not angry at you, you pathetic little worm - Massif (blog)

I'm blogging about what an idiot you are - Engtech (blog)

People call you stupid for a reason - Elizabeth (blog)

I exist because of your idiocy - LongbowHawk (YT)

If I could have one wish it would be for you to shut the fuck up - Katara (YT)

I'm only angry because you're an idiot - RandomEdd (YT)

Anger is your body's natural defence against stupid - LadySadist (YT)

Anger is not an emotion - it's a way of life - MokongX3M (YT)

By coincidence I ended up with 5 finalists each from the blog and from YouTube. For those who like such things, I'm including the video version of this announcement that I did for YouTube. I'm wearing the "pirate" gear again because I couldn't find my Mr Angry mask.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6ree8HU4Wc

So there you go. Get voting!

More stupid recruiting questions

I swear I'm going to kill one of these recruiting agencies soon. Most of them are fine. Helpful, even. But some of them need some sense slapped into them. Slapping them may not actually make them any more sensible but I'd sure as hell feel better afterwards.

My pet hate this week is when they ask questions for which the answer would be obvious if they'd apply even a shred of intelligence. I'm a contractor. Which means by definition I work somewhere for a fixed period of time and then I leave. But these idiots insist on asking why I'm finishing a contract. Because the fucking contract has fucking finished OK? Can I make it any clearer?

To be fair, it is possible for a contract to finish early because of a bad experience. Either the contractor or the employer may have decided to end it early because of dissatisfaction. But I tell these morons I signed on for 6 months and extended my stay to over two years. But they still ask why I'm leaving with a tone in their voice that suggests something must be horribly wrong.

OK, you got me! I embezzled millions and got found out. I murdered the auditors who discovered my scam but it's only a matter of time until the bodies I stashed in the stationery cupboard start to smell. I have to get out now!

The other thing they do is hassle me to start a new contract straight away. Is this person's planning so bad that they REALLY need someone to start tomorrow? I explain the situation to them:

"I promised to give four weeks notice."

"Why does it have to be so long?"

"We negotiated that term so that there wouldn't be a major disruption to either party."

"But this employer only wants to talk to people who can start straight away."

"So he's only interested in unemployed people?"

"What?"

"The only people who can start straight away are unemployed people. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with unemployed people. But you're saying that gainfully employed people are automatically precluded from this role. That doesn't sound like a smart selection criterion to me."

This led to an extended silence until the recruitment gimp came back with:

"Couldn't you just walk out?"

"Despite the fact I gave my word about a notice period?"

"Yeah, you're a contractor, you could just walk out."

"So you're suggesting that I should start my professional relationship with you by doing something really unprofessional to someone else?"

"Well, yeah."

"I'm hanging up now. Don't even think of calling me back until you understand why I can't do that."

Call me crazy but I have a hard time entrusting my fate to a stranger who wants me to screw over someone I already know and like.

I'd make a great babysitter

A prominent YouTuber who goes by the name of Renetto put up a joke video suggesting he was running a competition to find a babysitter for his kids. Here we discover a bit of an insight into my psyche. This video was how I chose to respond:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFlIKIwl8pk

As an aside, my girlfriend refuses to kiss me when I wear this getup. I know, because I wore it previously at a party. She is a woman of impeccable taste.

Equal Opportunities

Anyone who's read this blog for a while would know I'm a supporter of equal opportunities. But why is that when I hear things like "Equal Opportunity Committee" I expect to see fat, ugly, bitter people?

I'm just saying is all.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL-Qmk4AguU

Too much information

I think someone slipped me some alli diet pills.

I'll spare you the details. As it appears half of the western world read my post about these pills there's very little chance a reader of this doesn't know what I was suggesting. The short version of the story is I was in a meeting when my body, in its own special way, suggested to me I should leave the room. Very quickly.

Figuring that nobody in the meeting wanted specifics, I stood up in the middle of a cow-orker's droning monologue and said:

"Excuse me, I have to leave the room."

I was standing up when droning cow-orker felt compelled to ask:

"Can't it wait?"

I paused for a microsecond. Even though I was wearing dark pants, I had to make a quick decision. Waste time justifying myself to this moron or just make for the facilities I so desperately required. As justifying myself would (a) take up valuable time and (b) involve sharing more information than I'm sure most people would be comfortable with, I chose the rapid exit option.

"No. Sorry. I'll be back in a few minutes."

It seems droning doofus had not paid a visit to Clue Town recently. He was still going on as I charged out the door.

"It's just that we're right in the middle of something and..."

I considered shouting "Can you not fucking tell I'm about to shit my pants?" But that falls into a grey are with regard to acceptable workplace conversation, even for me. Besides, I didn't want to be known as "Mr ShittyPants" around the office. Trust me, the people I work with would do this.

Anyway, disaster averted. I made it back to my seat with no major trauma and only a few minutes had elapsed. But it seemed as though Captain Fuckhead wasn't prepared to let it go. As I came through the door he made a big show of suspending his monologue until I sat down. Then he did the condescending schoolteacher thing of saying:

"I trust you can stay with us now?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Go ahead now."

"Because I wouldn't want to stop you from doing something that's so important you can't tell us about it."

"Look, me leaving the room wasn't optional OK? I'm back now, let's just move on."

"Well, it isn't as if the group deserves an explanation, we've all given up time to be here."

At this point pretty much everyone else around the table has taken a good guess as to why I had to leave so suddenly. People are rolling their eyes at how clueless this fuckwit is. I'm about to say "the same stuff coming out of your mouth was just shooting out of my arse" when someone defuses the situation by saying "Let's forget about it and keep going."

What I couldn't get over was this dork's inability to accept that I'm a grownup and I wouldn't just leave the room without good reason. The thing is, he's such a control freak if I had told him the nature of my emergency he'd probably want a detailed report on proceedings. Worse still would be the same emergency befalling him. I have a horrible feeling he'd recount his time away from the meeting in graphic detail.

There really is such a thing as too much information.

Mall cops are funny

I went out to a nearby mall to grab some lunch and I had to laugh at the security guy I saw there. He was young (probably under 25) and, quite frankly, stupid looking. He'd bought every bit of kit he could think of. He had a walkie-talkie, a big torch, a truncheon and he'd even gone and got an earpiece with a springy cord trailing out of it. The dork even had a military style buzzcut.

Some people might have expected him to go for the wanker gadget du jour - the Bluetooth earpiece. But you'd be missing the point. You see, all the CIA spooks in the movies have these spingy cables coming out of their ears. Bluetooth is for civilians.

What does the jerk think he needs his hands free for anyway? The CIA and Secret Service need it to deal with potentially lethal threats. This bloke's biggest problem seem to be the way he was utterly failing to chat up the teenage shop assistant.

I feel sure that this idiot gets a semi-erection every morning when he looks at himself in the mirror wearing his pseudo-military outfit. "Yeah," he thinks, "I totally look like that Jack Bauer bloke what's on the telly." Face it dickhead, if you're under 30 and working as a security guard that pretty much means you're too fucked up to make it as a soldier or a cop.

On top of everything else, in Australia a mall cop has all the authority of a school crossing guard. I've heard some outrageous stories from the US about mall cop excesses. You'd be in jail in five seconds flat if you tried that shit here.

He reminded me of the security guards I used to see on the streets back where I used to live, except they were way more serious. I was in the eastern suburbs of Melboure, the area John Safran called "Jewtown". There was a major synagogue on the same block as me and they had security up and down the street. This crew were in full spook mode: black suits, white shirt, earpieces and talking into their sleeves.

I often wanted to ask them if they were responding to a specific threat or if they were generally cautious. But they scared me. I'm pretty sure they were packing heat. I used to call them "Jews on Patrol". But not to their faces.

They were actually one of the reasons I used to laugh when self-proclaimed nazis said they were going to come and get me because of something I'd written in a post or said in a video. Showing up in my neighbourhood ranting about "killing the jew-lover" would be a shortcut to getting shot.

I was right - Web 2.0 IS a government plot!

Sometimes my powers of deduction amaze even me. A couple of weeks ago I had a bit of a go at the way people blithely put and absurd amount of identifying information online for all the world to see. To exaggerate things in my standard style of humour, I suggested that this was all a government plot. Who needs warrantless wiretapping when people willingly tell you every goddam thing about their lives?

Well, the conspiracy theorists are all over this like Bob Allen on dick. (I wonder if he also hits the crack pipe like Ted Haggard?) Anyway, the truth of it all has been uncovered:

Facebook is run by the CIA!

Well, maybe not. But there are certainly enough crumbs of evidence to drive the tinfoil hat brigade crazy. Crazier than they already are. Hard as that is to believe. So bear in mind I'm not only angry I'm also psychic. Right here is where you find the news that matters before it even breaks.

Oh, and to the Digg commenter who said in response to my original "government plot" post: "I don't know what's more ridiculously inaccurate; the term Web 2.0 or the idea it's a government conspiracy." Congratulations! That whistling sound you heard was the joke sailing right over your head.

You fucking moron.

The meeting from hell

I read a survey recently that asked business people what they disliked most about work. 80% of them cited time wasting meetings as the bane of their existence. It seems a hatred of meetings is universal. And at the same time most of us are stuck with them. The thing is, if they're properly organised, meetings don't have to be so bad.

It is remotely possible that someone reading this blog could come to the conclusion that I have a negative attitude. Particularly about work. In fact, I enjoy my work most of the time. People piss me off, true. But that doesn't make me negative. That makes me a realist. Besides, how entertaining would it be to read about how happy I am every day?

I've been a Business Analyst for almost 12 years. This suggests I either like the work or I'm not very career driven. The answer is mostly I like being a BA. The usual career path is to move into Project Management and I've made it clear before that I think Project Management sucks. I'd rather be a BA where I get to do things than be a PM stuck trying to manage schedules and budgets.

It also makes it a little more interesting when people ask me what I do because my usual answer is "that depends on who's employing me." Depending on the nature of the contract, I might be involved in some early stage requirements gathering, researching options for new software or a website, putting together a tender, writing up Business Requirements and/or Functional Specifications or maybe coming in towards the end of a project to write user documentation and/or help with implementation.

One thing I'm frequently called upon to do is run meetings and/or workshops. This terrifies some people but I actually enjoy getting up in front of people. The videos I post here should give you some clue that I like to perform. When I'm planning sessions I usually look online for tips (Google is my co-pilot).

When I was doing such a search recently, I found one guide included on a number of UK government websites. It seems as though it was aimed more at community and political groups than corporate groups but it looked like there was some worthwhile information in there. The full guide ran to about 10 pages. As I worked my way through it, I started to notice a weird tone was developing.

It seemed to have been written by a passive-aggressive hippy.

The hippy side came out because there was a lot of touchy-feely, positive atmosphere, support everyone guff in there. But I suspect the author was not aware how much of their passive-aggressive side was leaking through. There seemed to be a paranoia about disruptive elements in the meeting along with a really punitive approach to dealing with them. Phrases like "watch body language”, “Note digressions and remind members to stay on task” and “Guide members who speak a great deal to be briefer," started to pop up.

And every time the author gave a suggestion for what to say to a troublemaker, the comment was always directed at a female. I’m sure the author would say they were simply being gender inclusive but I couldn’t help thinking there might be some… issues behind this.

Then we come to the part that really made me think the author was a hippy: make everything FUN! This isn't a completely terrible idea but I don't think it has to be binary choice between all fun all the time and complete drudgery. Plus, "fun" is a subjective concept. One person's fun is another person's hideous torture. And some of the suggestions provided went waaaay into trying too hard territory.

The hippy's central idea was that if you start each meeting with something fun, then everyone will rush to get to the meeting on time. After all, who wants to miss out on the FUN? I don't know how I've missed this in the past. For years now, my strategy has been to make meetings relevant, concise and as brief as possible. Clearly I'm talking out my arse.

Here's where I let the expert take over. I now present for your reading pleasure some verbatim extracts from "Ideas for launches and fun." Possibly followed by some bile filled editorialising from me.

• Sing your name and have the group sing it back to you

Oh. My. Fucking. God. I stared at this suggestions for a full minute. Seriously. If I ever do this in a meeting, someone stab me in the fucking eye, please. Because I’ll sure as hell do it to anyone who sings their name at me.

• Break into small groups and do a mime or skit about an agenda item

I cannot imagine a presenter who made this suggestion getting out of the room alive. I know I would be leading my group in a plot to murder the idiot.

• Become someone else, mime it and have people guess

I would not be able to restrain myself if a presenter did this. I'd be shouting guesses like "You're a moron... You're an escapee from a mental institution... No, I've got it, you're a brain-damaged weasel!"

• Sing and dance the song, the hokey-pokey

Personally, I'd lead a conga line straight out the door at this point.

• Do a weather report on how you are feeling. “Sunny and warm. Cloudy with chance of grumpiness…”

I am Hurricane Katrina. You are New Orleans. Start swimming.

• Dress up in a costume and make up a story about the history of an agenda item

Here's a tip from Mr Angry, kids. You can take this one to the bank. If someone sends you a meeting invitation asking you to bring along a costume, DO NOT GO!

• Have everyone write their middle name on a piece of paper then try to guess what name belongs to whom.

I would conspire with the others so that everyone wrote “dildo” and then every time we’d guess it was the presenter’s middle name.

• Have everyone write something about themselves nobody knows then try and guess who wrote what.

Again, I would conspire with the group. This time we would all write “I’m going to kill the presenter before the end of the meeting.” Each time the presenter read one out, we would all act really innocent. I'd love to see how the presenter's "fun" mood was going after about the third one.

So much for the fun. Another stellar piece of advice was "Praise people twice as much as you criticise them." My previous (and obviously misguided) strategy was to avoid criticism altogether whenever possible. But I like this equation. I look forward to going "Excellent point, Bob... I'm glad you brought that up, Bob... Bob, will you shut the fuck up already? We all hate you."

If anyone is actually looking for serious advice on running meetings, here's mine:

• Plan it out
• Know what you need to achieve
• Set an agenda and stick to it
• Set a time limit and stick to it - set another meeting for another time if there are still things to resolve at the end of the meeting
• Make sure everybody knows ahead of time what's expected of them
• Make sure the right people (knowledge holders and decision makers) are at the meeting

There are times when you need to get creative to keep people engaged, particularly with longer sessions. Anything longer than two hours needs serious planning and some variety. Actually, a better idea is to not run sessions longer than two hours. Whenever possible, follow the KISS principle (which, of course, stands for Keep It Simple, Shit-for-brains).

Cut the bullshit and people will thank you for it.

Cow-orkers don't have non-stick faces

Have you ever noticed how people who offer unsolicited advice have trouble backing down? Telling someone you don't want their input usually won't shut them up. Bizarrely, these type of people tend to go on for longer the more you make it clear you want them to shut the fuck up. The Cult of Angry shall make these people slaves.

One of the simple pleasures in my life is toasted sandwiches. Any sandwich tastes twice as good toasted. A little qualification for this statement: any sandwich I like tastes twice as good toasted. If you can come up with a sandwich that would be gross if toasted trust me, I already thought the sandwich was gross.

These two points are linked by the (mis)adventure I had at lunch today. I was toasting my lunchtime sandwich when disaster struck. My sandwich stuck to the sandwich press! I'd had to move departments recently and the sandwich press in this department's kitchen has lost all of its non-stick qualities.

So I'm gently trying to prize my bread from the surface without totally destroying the sandwich when some intrusive know-it-all feels compelled to pipe up:

"You shouldn't use a knife on it like that, you'll damage the surface."

"The surface is already completely ruined, that's why my sandwich is stuck."

"But you'll scrape the surface."

"I'm not scraping the surface, I'm scraping the bread. I don't want any of the surface attached to my sandwich."

"But that knife will damage the coating."

"I told you, there is no coating. This thing has lost all of its non-stick qualities."

"But you're not supposed to scrape the surface."

"Do you have any brilliant ideas on how to get my sandwich out? Any alternatives at all?" This was the first time the fuckwit actually paused. The time I ask them to say something is the only time they're silent. "I'm doing the only thing possible to get my sandwich out."

"But you can't use a knife on the surface like that."

"FOR FUCK'S SAKE! WHAT PART OF 'THERE IS NO OTHER FUCKING WAY' DO YOU NOT FUCKING UNDERSTAND?"

"But the knife... the surface... the scraping."

On an unrelated note, through scientific experimentation I now know how long it takes for someone to stop screaming after you jam their face into a hot sandwich press.

The Cult of Angry

I'm forming my own religion. Sure, readers and viewers are nice but it doesn't have the same ring to it as "disciples". I figure the only thing that's been holding me back so far is I haven't been setting my sights high enough. If something as fucked up as Scientology (which is clearly batshit insane) can get a following then I can definitely put together a cult of my own.

I feel confident that I can offer followers far more enlightenment than Mormonism, for instance. Seriously, I'm not going to ask anyone to believe anything as deranged as "Jesus was a white American". Not that I'm worried about coming up with a stupid, illogical belief system. That seems to actually work on your favour in cult-land. Apparently, believing in bizarre things that are clear indicators of mental illness doesn't even automatically preclude you from being taken seriously as a contender for President of the USA.

I'll even let you in on one of the key revelations of the Cult of Angry. I want you to know that it's worth your while to join, after all. The central tenet of the Cult of Angry is this:

None of this is real.

By "this" I mean the intarwebnettubes. A true adept would not have needed that explanation. People online have a tendency to suspend reality and believe they really are "online". No you're not. You're sitting in a goddam chair. Your computer is requesting information from a remote server. It's being represented graphically on a screen. It's phoshor excited by electrons. Or something. But it isn't real.

That, grasshopper, is the first step on your road to enlightenment. The journey will be long and hard. It will involve lots of money and ritual sex in the Temple of Angry. But it will be worth it. I know this because the Blogging Bot From The Future has sent back this video message:


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

Don't delay! The next step involves forwarding all of your money to The Most Sacred And Revered PayPal Account Of Angry. Account details to follow.

When insults had class

It's stating the obvious to say that the worst thing about the internet is the horde of morons that populate it (present company excluded, of course). I will admit to antagonising these sad excuses for human beings for my own amusement in the past. What can I say? As a kid I used to stir up ant's nests.

But no more. I'm done with these losers. I refuse to even acknowledge their pathetic attempts at insults until they make a decent effort. They may never reach the standard of the classics listed below but I'm not going to indulge people who don't even try.

There really was a time when insults had class.

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." --
Winston Churchill

"A modest little person, with much to be modest about." --
Winston Churchill

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." --
Clarence Darrow

"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." --
William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time in reading it." --
Moses Hadas

"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." --
Abraham Lincoln

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." --
Groucho Marx

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." --
Mark Twain

"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." --
Oscar Wilde

"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play. Bring a friend... if you have one." --
George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

"Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one." --
Winston Churchill, in response

"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." --
Irvin S. Cobb

"He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others." --
Samuel Johnson

"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up." --
Paul Keating

"He had delusions of adequacy." --
Walter Kerr

"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." --
Jack E. Leonard

"He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them." --
James Reston (about Richard Nixon)

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?" --
Mark Twain

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." --
Mae West

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever..." --
Oscar Wilde

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts... for support rather than illumination. " --
Andrew Lang

"He has Van Gogh's ear for music." --
Billy Wilder


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok9g-hmMQFI

When Stupid drivers DON'T get what they deserve

I like to think of my car as a four footed destroyer of stupidity. "Sent to strike down the unroadworthy" to quote a the Night Rider from Mad Max. I have had passengers question why I sound my horn so enthusiastically when some brain dead fuckwit cuts me off (for instance) or runs a give way sign. "Why not just let them go?" passengers often ask.

It's education as far as I'm concerned. Not calling them to account for their stupidity is the same as rewarding stupidity in my book. Maybe they'll wake up to themselves and stop doing stupid shit. If I let them get away with it, they'll keep doing it. I could even be saving their life. I'm very selfless that way.

I bring this up because I had to let one go this morning. I have to drive about 45 minutes out into boodock suburbs for my current job. I'm sure it isn't my imagination - the further I get out in the suburbs, the drivers get... slower. This normally gives me many opportunities to "educate" them.

But when I start to get close to work I ease off a bit. I don't want to have conversations with cow-orkers along the lines of "Why was I behind you beeping for 90 seconds screaming GET OFF THE FUCKING ROAD YOU FUCKING MORON WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING!?!?!? That wasn't at you. That was at... someone else."

So when some fucking tool backed out of a driveway right in front of me and then blocked two busy lanes while they did a three point turn, I let it go. It was only a few blocks from work and they were pointing in the direction of the office so I figured it wasn't worth the risk.

Actually I've been easing of a bit in general lately. I'm a big believer in Murphy's Law and seeing as I'm doing job interviews at the moment I don't want to push my luck. It's actually a recurring nightmare of mine that I abuse someone on the way to an interview and they turn out to be the interviewer. Talk about starting off on the back foot:

"Just now, when I said you were a fuckwit... I didn't mean it. Oh, and when I followed it up by saying you were brain dead pond scum who shouldn't be allowed to breathe, let alone drive... I didn't mean that either. And the stuff I said about your mother? I meant that. C'mon, be fair, we both know she must have fucked some sort of farm animal to end up with you."

Hey, if I've failed the interview before even starting I want to at least have a bit of fun.

Passwords suck

I'm sure I'm not alone in this: at the start of each month I have to change my network password at work. Part of the "security protocols". (Side note: It's August already! How the hell did that happen? I know it's a cliché, but where the fuck did this year go?)

So when I logged in today I dutifully changed my password. Now every time I have to log back in I type in last month's password by mistake. I HATE the first couple of days of having a new password. Another of the security protocols mandates that the screensaver kicks in really quickly if you're away from your PC. So I have to re-log in about a dozen times a day.

It's a relatively small thing but it's fucking annoying. Having to log in so many times every day PLUS getting it wrong the first time for a day or so each time I have to change password. I know some people suggest you should change all of your passwords regularly but that's fucking crazy.

With all of the passwords I have to keep track of online (internet access itself, banking, blog, YouTube, LiveVideo, Reddit, Digg, Flickr and a bunch of other sites) actually changing them regularly would be impossible. The only surefire way of tracking them would be to write them down which, um, kind of reduces the security.

But then you hear stories of "hackers" all the time. The latest pack of fuckwit losers acting out their inadequacies online go by the name of "anonymous". There are all sorts of stories circulating about them "hacking" people's accounts. In some of the stories they deliberately target people and in others the people were just unlucky.

So how do they even "hack" people's passwords? Are these people using any sort of firewall or anti-virus software? Do they have a stupid password like "password"? Do they have the same password for every site they visit? (not a good idea) Do they leave their PC switched on and connected to the net when they aren't there? (also not a good idea) Were they tricked into signing up for a site whose sole purpose was to trick them into providing password details? (most likely porn)

Hacking is one of those all-purpose, borderline meaningless words the media like to throw around. I'd really like an idea of what method was used to "hack" these people's passwords. If only stupid people are vulnerable, I'd feel better.

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? My first impulse was "ask your mother" but that has limited effectiveness. My eventual answer was some lame variation of "what doesn't kill us makes us stronger" but I squeaked by.

When she asks me about my work I give her real answers and frame them in a way that makes sense to her. It's good practice for explaining IT concepts to management types. She's smarter than most of the managers I have to deal with but I figure if I can explain something clearly to her I only have to dumb it down a little bit more for managers.

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!"

This conversation was slipping beyond my control quickly. I decided to try a different approach. This past school holidays we'd seen Shrek 3 which had led to watching Shrek 1 & 2 on DVD again. I decided to explain requirement gathering in relation to Shrek.

"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 you need you car to be able to do. Usually you have to start by asking big questions and work your way through layers of detail.

"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.