An Angry New Year

I've never made a New Year's resolution and I'm not about to start now. The only arbitrarily timed resolutions I make are for each 100 blog posts I make. I realised today that my 400th post would go live when I'm on my New Zealand holiday. Given that I'm likely to only be making short posts and/or using guest posts while on holidays I probably won't have the time to focus on my goals for the next 100 posts.

I only point this out to head off anyone who's particularly attentive and/or anally retentive. I really don't like it when people tell me what I should be doing. So I won't be ignoring this landmark but I probably won't set my goals I want to reach before post 500 until I get back from my holiday. So now you know.

And while I'm not making any new year's resolutions I do have some predictions for you, courtesy of the Blogging Bot from the future:



So that was my last video for 2006 (the 206th for anyone who's counting). Now I have to go and work on my first for 2007.

Marketing worthless crap

As usual, the TV has provided me with ample reason to be angry. Advertising in particular gives ample fodder for an angry life and not big things like sexist ads of the encouragement of over-consumption. It's the small thing that make me want to pound the responsible marketing slug's face into some concrete until it cracks or they learn the error of their ways. I'm pretty sure the concrete would crack before one of those fuckers would change.

The object of my anger today is advertising for cleaning products. Stupid fucked-up advertising for cleaning products usually falls into one of two categories: disinfectant thingies that try to convince you that that you're surrounded by germs and you'll die immediately if you don't swab/spray/soak with this product and some minor "improvement" to a traditional cleaning product that you can't possibly exist without.

It's actually the second sort that annoy me the most - the ad tends to show people struggling with an old mop, broom or vacuum cleaner and their life is clearly miserable. All of civilization is being held back because of this archaic device. People's home's are not clean enough! We are being repressed by dirt! The only thing that can save us is this... thing. Why this makes me angry is I really fucking hate having my intelligence insulted.

I can imagine the conversation at EvilFuckers International Advertising Inc when they have a new product:

Senior Executive: Billy, we've got an exciting new project for you!

Junior Executive: Sounds great JT! What is it?

SE: You're developing the campaign for the new Ultima 3000 Cleanovator.

JE: Hmmm. Looks like a map.

SE: This is going to revolutionise mopping.

JE: I'm not sure mopping needs a revolution - mopping just kind of... works.

SE: That's why this is so exciting. For you. You need to convince people they absolutely need this product. Or you're fired. And you know what happens if you're fired.

JE: You'll eat my soul?

SE: Hahaahahaha. That's why everyone loves you Jimmy, you're funny. No, no, no. We ate your soul when you started working here. No, if we fire you we'll eat your head.

JE: Oh, great. Well, let's go with the Ultima 300 then. Awesome.

SE: Awesome!

I'm sure it goes almost exactly like that.

The downside(?) of anger...

...or: How I got my work nickname.

You can never really tell what aspect of your behaviour, your past or your appearance people will latch onto and use as your nickname. After all, it's very rare you get to pick your own nickname - someone usually "anoints" you.

You might think my nickname at work would be Mr Angry. You'd be wrong. This video reveals all:

More reasons being angry is good

Essentially, when you give off the right angry vibe, people won't fuck with you. I don't recommend being angry around people you deal with every day - they'll think you're crazy and it can make holding down a job difficult.

But practice your angry vibe and you can radiate "don't fuck with me" without actually doing anything overtly angry. People won't be able to put their finger on exactly what they're being cautious about, but they'll have a strong sense that their life will be less troublesome if they leave you the fuck alone.

It's amazing how much you can actually freak people out by being emotionless - I've used what I call me "ice man" expression to sterling effect more than once. One of my favourite examples was way back when I was at college. I was with a friend at a "non-college" pub which could occasionally be a dicey proposition in a country town. I made my life more difficult by letting a hairdresser friend do a wacky haircut on me that nobody local would dare get - I had a design that looked like crop circles cut into my hair.

So I was walking up to the bar and I passed a table of yobs who felt compelled to comment on my haircut. The most eloquent of this little brains trust shouted "Nice haircut, mate," as I passed. This was actually quite threatening as their were four of them and they were all bigger than me. I was going to ignore them and continue on without acknowledging them but then I thought "No, fuck these idiots."

I stopped, then slowly turned to face them. I stared at them for a second, expressionless, then said in a monotone: "Thanks (long pause) I'm glad you like it."

This table of cavemen were absolutely gobsmacked. I was actually terrified of them but had managed to convince them I was totally fucking insane. The look in their faces made it apparent that they believed I'd swap my intended order at the bar for a bucket of their blood without hesitation.

Then the poet laureate of the group broke their stunned silence by stammering "No... uh, no. I, uh, really meant it. I think it's... ummm, a good haircut."

At this point I realised my bluff had worked but still betrayed no emotion - simply rolled my eyes and muttered "Yeah, right."

They were real careful not to make eye contact with me for the rest of the time I was at the pub.

Body safely home - brain due sometime later

I have this strategy when I go on long drives - consume enough caffeine to stay alert for the trip but not so much that I'm an incoherent gibbering wreck when I get home. Being able to sleep sometime in the next 48 hours would be good too.

I got my plan half right.

So I'm safely home but twitching and drooling more than I'd like. My brain is sorta like radio slightly out of tune with a channel. Lots of static that occasionally almost forms coherent sounds that make some sort of sense. I think I'll run around outside and chase cicadas for a while.

Preparing for the drive home

I'll be heading home tomorrow so I have to start preparing myself for the long haul with a highway full of idiots. I made this video before I left home but I'll be going through the "exercises" at the end of it again to make sure I'm ready. I find this approach works very well for me, maybe it will for you too.



The URL for this video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTnD-DyS8Tk

So I've got a week at home then I'm off for my first international travel since before the terrorist attacks of 9/11. So, while I'm looking forward to the holiday in Lord of the Rings country, I'm sure the bullshit routine at airports is going to give me all sorts of angry fuel.

Get out of my goddam way!

I'd like to wax angry for a moment about the demented bastard sibling of the driver I was getting all angrified about yesterday. Someone who sits right behind you but won't overtake really pisses me off. Right up with them is a driver who you get stuck behind who makes it impossible to pass them.

When the road is clear the accelerate to well above the speed limit. But if there's oncoming traffic or you're going uphill or around a bend so it isn't safe to pass the bastard slows right down. And then you get an overtaking lane so you think you'll finally get past them BUT there's another vehicle in front of them so they swing around to pass that car.

But they don't overtake.

They keep pace with that car so both lanes are blocked. Until the overtaking lane runs out. Then they seem to wake up to the fact they were supposed to ACTUALLY FUCKING OVERTAKE WHILE THEY WERE IN THE OVERTAKING LANE. So they pass the car as the overtaking lane leaving you shit out of luck.

For ages I was unsure as to whether they were doing this shit deliberately or they were just fucking morons. So I ran one of them off the road. Purely in the name of science you understand. I dragged them from their overturned car and politely asked them what the fuck they thought they were doing. They seemed a little dazed and confused so I helped them out by slapping them repeatedly until they made sense.

They admitted they were completely unuaware of how obstructive they were being. Or they might have been asking for an ambulance. It's hard to be sure - they were coughing up a lot of blood.

Still, at the end of the day I think I provided them with some much needed education.

I'm nobody's pace car

There are about a million variations of drivers that piss me off on the highway. Right near the top of the list is people who use me as a pace car. They come out of nowhere and suddenly they're on your back bumper.

And they stay there.

You speed up and they speed up. You slow down and they slow down. Apparently they love your company. That might be nice if they weren't so fucking intrustive. I've got some advice for dickheads who do this:

Either back off or overtake. Don't just sit there. My back seat is already full, I don't want you there too.

200 videos for Mr Angry

Can't get enough of Mr Angry? Here's 100 videos in 15 minutes! It's taken me just over six months to compile over 200 videos on YouTube. You're honour, I'd like to tender this as "People's Exhibit A" in the case of Mr Angry vs. Having a Life. Case closed. But I wouldn't have it any other way.

Actually, as a tease, I'll lead in with the video of the first 100 vids. Most of my regular will have already seen this but it's worth a viewing for anyone who missed it.



The URL for this video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8karvfqR_HI

SO here's the follow up. Special thanks to Gruntski who has no idea he was going to play such a prominent role in my 200th video when he sent me the little piece of video you see right at the end of this piece.



The URL for this video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RWtbfNhol8

On the road again

It's amazing when you think you've had a good drive because there were only about a dozen fuckwits on the road. Anyway, after ten hours on the road the best thing I can say about this trip is that it's over.

I'm planning on doing a number of posts over the coming days inspired by Tom's "Epikles" characters - one for each genus of moron I encountered on the road. But that's ahead of me as are approximately 36 hours of my kids saying "can we open our Festivus presents yet?"

Oh and I'm going to post my 200th YouTube video as well.

See you soon!

Five things I've never done

It's a bit hard to miss the "meme" that's doing the round of blogs at them moment, a game of tag where, once tagged, you write five things that people might not know about you and then you tag five more people asking them to do the same. I've been tagged multiple times for this meme but I'm not going to take part for a couple of reasons (I've also received similar tags in the past and haven't responded for the same reasons.)

The main reason is telling you secrets about myself would jeopardise my tissue-thin anonymity. A determined person would work out who I am pretty quickly and in fact several people online already know who I am. But let me cling to the illusion that I'm not going to get dooced tomorrow.

A secondary reason is that this is just a little too much like a chain letter for me. This is not a criticism of people who are taking part (which seems to be just about everyone in the blogosphere) but it's a personal choice of mine not to propogate it. I hope this doesn't offend anyone. Who am I kidding? Anyone who's that easily offended would have dropped me like a hot potato ages ago. No fucking weenies on Team Angry!

I did actually reveal a fair bit about myself in a video a while ago. For those who want to revisit it, here it is:



The URL for this video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UDiq2eQs1E

I have actually done a response of sorts to the tag meme. By coincidence, I'm up to video number 199 on YouTube and I took this opportunity to do a sort of a retrospective. So here's my psuedo-response to being tagged; five things I've never done on YouTube (for those who can't watch videos there's a transcript of sorts following the video).



The URL for this video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cJ09mA2L7I

One thing I've never done is leave a negative comment on someone else’s video. When some moron has had a go at me via comments on one of my own videos I’ve frequently let them have it with both barrels but I’ve never played the hater game on someone else’s video. And I’ve never followed an argument with a hater back to their profile or their own videos in the rare cases where haters have actually bothered to put together videos. I’ve backed up friends on their profiles and videos but I won’t chase haters. That’s just a downward spiral.

A second thing I've never done is I’ve never tried to have a user banned or a video banned. I’ve voiced my opinion in my own videos about what I see as despicable behaviour and I encourage others to speak out against hateful behaviour but my personal belief system doesn’t support censorship.

A third thing I've never done is rate someone’s video at less than 5 stars. I don’t rate every video I watch but when I can see someone’s making an effort I always give five stars. Life’s too short to not encourage people to keep trying.

A fourth thing I've never done is to go after any individual YouTuber. I’m almost always disappointed when someone goes after another individual and some people I really respect have done it. I’ve spoken out against types of behaviour, notably racists and haters but I’ve never gone after an individual YouTube user. I’ve gone after some very public figures but they make their living by being in the public eye and they frequently go after other people, usually people who are defenceless so they pretty much invite this sort of attack on themselves. But I don’t see the value in going after people on Youtube. No matter how many some of them deserve it. Except Mr Safety. Fuck that guy, who does he think he is?

A fifth thing I've never done is I've never regretted something I’ve done in a video or tried to retract something I’ve said or done in a video. Which is not to say I’m never wrong, just that (despite appearances to the contrary) I put a lot of thought into what I say in videos. I’m usually well aware ahead of time when I’m doing something that might offend someone. As it turns out, I’m often far more sensitive to this than most of my viewers. This goes for my blog readers too, whenever I write something that I worry will alienate people, my regular readers are cosistently astute enough to get the joke. When I know something’s in risky territory I usually go ahead because I think it’s important... or I think it’s really funny. I’m happy for them to continue to stand, flaws and all. People can either deal with that or stop watching.

By the way, this is not my “rules for life” – I’m not saying everyone should follow these guidelines, they’re mine and they won’t necessarily suit everybody. Whatever works for you, be true to that. I get asked a lot for advice and I try to give the best I can but knowing for yourself what’s important to you is the best advice I can give. What is important to you? What are the things you want to achieve? What are the things you won’t do? If you don’t have a clear idea of these things then how will you know when you succeed? If you get all these things clear in your head, You’ll find it a lot easier to go forward. You’ll still screw up, but you’ll screw up on your own terms. And that counts for a lot.

My acceptance speech on receiving Time's "Person of the Year" award

Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to be here tonight accepting this award. It's been a long time coming and of all the people you've given this award to over the years which now includes (officially) everybody, I think I'm by far the most deserving recipient.

I know you'll hear people saying that this is evidence that you're totally clueless and this is nothing more than a stupid publicity stunt but it's obvious how wrong they are. When a stunt makes you the most widely discussed topic on the internet, the stunt is anything but stupid. I'd call it a pretty fucking cunning stunt (with apologies to Reverend Spooner).

Your example will be held up to marketers for years to come. There is no tired old annual cliche that can't have new life breathed into it so long as you are willing to keep sinking lower into cliche and cheap grabs for attention. The only thing holding you back is your dignity and I think we can all agree that this means nobody in the media will ever be held back.

Publishers of Time magazine, I salute you just as you have saluted me. Really, you're the people of the year. Oh wait, you've said that yourself haven't you? Never mind, good job anyway.

Here's my Angry News bulletin covering the story:



The URL for the video of my acceptance speech is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUPpnLOXj1c

Whining office morons win again

I little while ago I blogged about a fantastic instance of lateral thinking winning the day in the office where I work. Essentially there was a blind corner and nobody could figure out how to make it safe. Then came the master stroke of putting a large pot plant on the corner which forced people slow down and walk around the corner rather than cutting around quickly and causing collisions.

At the time I noted that there was one whiner who complained they would run into the plant. Apparently they are so fucking stupid they think they are more likely to suffer trauma from running into a two metre rubber plant (that you could not possibly fail to notice no matter how fucking stupid you are) than from someone they can't see coming around the corner holding a hot coffee. Nobody paid attention to them.

Or so I thought.

This week the big plant was taken away and replaced with a small plant because of the complaints of this one fucked-up loser. This is the worst of both worlds: there's still an obstacle on the corner but it's below your natural line of sight so it's a fucking hazard rather than a help. The idiot calls this a "compromise" but I call it fucking moronic. A compromise is where both sides gain something. This is just a whiny control freak who couldn't deal with not getting their way.

So far this week I've bashed my shin on the pot three times and had half a dozen near misses with people coming around the corner because the small plant does nothing to encourage you to take the corner wide and slowly.

If I get my way there's going to be a MUCH bigger pot there because I'm going to kill this bastard and I'll need somewhere to stash the body. It's the perfect solution - the only way this person could possibly be of any use to society is as compost.

Mr Angry brings you the news that matters

We all get busy in this modern world and it's easy to miss the important news stories of the day. Fortunately, you have me to keep you informed. Here are some stories that have caught my eye in the last week. Remember our motto at the Angry News Network (ANN) - everyone else is lying to you!

This first story is about how some media companies have decided to band together to build a massive multi-million dollar neon sign proclaiming how stupid they are. The sign will be visible from space. Well, OK, strictly speaking that isn't what they're doing. But it may as well be their plan.



The URL for this video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJZarM788Eg

This next story shows how evil criminal masterminds are planning to take over the world. Again, it is possible that this description is not entirely accurate.



The URL for this video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSr4T7fhVAI

Finally, in this video I get to explore my long held desire to present a nature documentary. No, seriously.



The URL for this video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XGiWYLbtQg

While I'm on the subject of videos, I have now uploaded 196 videos to YouTube. I'm planning an extravaganza for the 200th video featuring snippets of each of the previous 99 videos. Essentially the same as I planned for the 100th video. This didn't work out exactly as I wanted because of logistical issues and the compilation video ended up being the 102nd video I posted. But I'm prepared this time and I've already edited the first 90 videos. In case anyone is wondering, it's taken me a little over six months to reach this milestone - I posted my first video on June 9th.

I'll be the first to agree with anyone who wants to question my sanity regarding this little venture.

A reminder about me deleting your comments because I hate you

My Wordpress blog now seems to be getting around 500 comment spam a day. All successfully blocked by Akismet - eat that you spamming sacks of shit! The downside of this is that if I forget to clear the spam traps for even a few hours it builds up to the point where checking for false positives is a pain in the arse. In other words, I'm deleting huge chunks of comment spam and just living with the possibility that legitimate comments might get caught up in the filters.

A quick tip: the thing most likely to get you caught in the filters is including more than one URL in a comment. I'm not trying to put people off providing relevant links (I like links) but more than one greatly increases your risk of being filtered as spam.

I'd actually like to single out two of the spammers for special mention and tell you what I'm going to do to them if I ever catch them. One of them precedes their URLs with a line of broken English saying essentially "Hi, this isn't spam." There's something about the sheer affront of this lie that makes me want to punch the person in the face. Then there's the one who submits literally hundreds of URLs in each spam which seem to take forever to scroll through.

If I ever catch this bastard I'm going to shoot them in the face so their mother can't give them an open coffin at their funeral (I'm channelling "Goodfellahs" today.)

Mandatory means Mandatory!

In one of life's strange ironies, last week, the day after I put up a post about the appropriate level of analysis for IT project, I was given a project that has been staggering along for 18 months (I shit you not) all because of inappropriate levels of analysis being applied. Now that this slow-moving train wreck has been handed off to me, I can see its doom was sealed almost from the get-go.

The initial two-page scope document for this project (which is about to celebrate its second Christmas) gives a few dot points about the business problems that need to be solved and then declares that this will be solved by updating some databases and developing a custom application.

This may not sound so serious to people who haven't worked on IT projects but declaring what the solution will be before you even adequately describe what your requirements are is a recipe for unmitigated disaster. This is known in the industry as the "Ready, fire, aim" approach except this is a little worse than usual in that someone shouted "Fire!" 18 months ago and now it's my job to tell them that they have to take aim.

It was actually mildly entertaining to see the look in the manager's eyes as I told him all of the work done in the last 18 months was essentially in the wrong direction and I was going to have to start from the beginning. He very quietly and slowly said "That's a little disappointing," but he looked a hell of a lot like he was going to have a stroke.

But that isn't my topic for today. Part of the conversation I had with the previous Project Manager when this dog's breakfast was being handed over to me was "Be careful when you're defining requirements because the business users on this project have a tendency to say everything is mandatory." This is a common complaint from IT developers, they're told everything is mandatory but then they're starved of time, resources and budget to actually achieve these supposedly mandatory requirements.

It is certainly common for business users to insist "everything is mandatory" and if this happens it becomes the Business Analyst's job to define what's really mandatory and what falls under "really, really important". The first helpful advice I'll offer in this area is to define terminology. The usual scale for importance of requirements I follow is:

• Mandatory - The project will fail if this requirement isn't met. You'd be better off not starting the project if you can't meet this requirement. In cases of software procurement, not meeting this requirement would totally rule a particular software package out of contention.
• High - A major factor in how successful a project will be. This would deliver major benefits but is not absolutely essential.
• Medium - Nice to have. Not having this feature would not have a major negative impact.
• Low - A bonus. This requirement should not be a significant part of deciding whether or not the project goes forward.

The next big task is often dealing with someone from the business who still says all 200 requirements are mandatory. In cases like this, really put them on the spot. How are you dealing with this situation now? Why is it not viable to keep handling it the same way? What alternatives are there? What would the impact on the business be if this requirement wasn't met? If someone can't quantify why something is mandatory then it probably isn't. Mind you, if they can quantify why it's mandatory, you probably have to go along with it, no matter how painful it seems.

And the really important thing to remember is mandatory is mandatory! It's rarely a good idea to leave a mandatory requirement until the last minute. Even if you think it will be easy to manage, it's better to be sure of this early in a project rather than later. Nasty surprises are easier to manage when you have a bit of time up your sleeve. I'll illustrate this with a couple of recent examples from my life outside of work.

Regular readers of this blog would have seen my recent venture into "Agile comedy." This was essentially treating a stand-up comedy competition the same way I would an IT project and going through multiple quick iterations to reach the end product. (I didn't win that competition by the way, the winner goes to air this week and I'll be very interested to see them.) One of the mandatory requirements I ignored until pretty much the last minute was that the video file submitted had to me smaller than 5MB. I thought this would be easy but it turned out not to be. I eventually delivered on this requirement within the deadline but it resulted in quite a bit of unnecessary stress. On the plus side, I now know I can punch my PC screen very hard without damaging it.

My other experience revolves around the holiday I'm planning for January. I had to book flights, accommodation and a vehicle, all of which I did quite methodically. Now, I'm going to New Zealand so another mandatory requirement is a valid passport. I thought I had this under control BUT I DIDN'T CHECK. It is not a good idea to let mandatory requirements slide. It turns out that my passport expired in September. So added to my normal Christmas rush is the stress of trying to get a passport renewal through quickly at the busiest time of the year. It should be all sorted this week but I caused myself mountains of unnecessary stress by ignoring an absolutely mandatory requirement.

So the moral of the story is, be sure of what requirements are really mandatory and identify the difference between important and mandatory. But once you're sure of what's mandatory, you can carve this in stone: Mandatory is Mandatory!

Sex kittens and pussy = many YouTube views

OK, due to popular demand I've done another video of the cute animals and wacky captions. And being a completely evil individual I used really leading tags for the videos that doubtless resulted in many desperate horny types being greatly disappointed. As will the heading of this post.

But the video seems insanely popular and this one has my favourite: "Jesus Christ, it's a lion! GET IN THE CAR!"



The URL for this video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BtDkILHFfc

Women appal me Part II

Just in case anyone thought I was too PC yesterday, I did want to add something specifically about some women that appalls me (and does involve my friend, the dick.) There is something I've seen a couple of times at work that I'm really hoping isn't going to be any sort of a significant trend for the summer.

In short, I've seen a couple of examples of slightly overweight middle-aged women dressing in such a way that, to put it mildly, puts their rather abundant cleavage front and centre. Some might argue that this is up to them and some people might even argue that it's a good look but this is work for fuck's sake. And yes, I did point out that this involved middle aged women who are on the generously proportioned side of things. If they were young and hot and pushing their boobies out I would doubtless find the distraction more pleasant but it would still be totally inappropriate for work.

And the middle aged aspect is an important part of what appalls me and not just because I'm not enjoying the spectacle. Is it too much to ask people to act their age? The phrase "mutton dressed up as lamb" springs to mind. It would be like me wearing hip-hop gear and thinking I looked like anything but a fucking idiot. It's not so much that I've "grown up" (my level of immaturity should be obvious to anyone who reads this blog) but there's certain things that basically make you look desperate.

What on earth is the impression these women think they are making? Do they think the men are thinking "she has big boobies, that's hot"? Well, OK some men will think that but they're pretty creepy. And what's so great about attracting creepy guys? All it makes me think is "oh my god what the fuck is she thinking."

Then I have nightmares about being suffocated by my pillows while I'm sleeping.

Women appal me

A more accurate heading for this post would be "the actions of some women appal me, make life more difficult for all women and either confuse men or reinforce negative behaviour in men." But really, that's too long a heading for a blog post and I'm shallow enough to resort to a an inflammatory, attention-grabbing heading when I see an opportunity.

The specific behaviour that is appalling me the most at the moment is the behaviour of the women who are dating a friend of mine. Their behaviour starts to be appalling when they agree to date him at all. He's about 45, not much to look at, not fabulously wealthy, the possessor of a range of disturbing personality traits and he refuses to consider dating women who are (a) over 30 and (b) fail his measure of attractiveness (a measure he would fail dismally if it were applied to him).

Essentially, although he's a friend of mine, I think it's fair to characterise him as a prick. Vain, self-centred and shallow. And he does very little to hide his nature when he meets these women. Amazingly, not all of them run screaming for the hills. Some of them even put out. What the fuck is up with these women? Lift your fucking game already, you're letting the whole team down!

He regularly asks for my opinion and/or advice (basically because I'm happy and he isn't) and I regularly refuse to give it. Because he doesn't fucking listen. Every now and then I'll snap and be unable to resist giving him advice. The advice will usually be some variant of "Stop what you're doing! That thing you're doing, (and the particular thing will change from time to time) stop doing it because it's a really fucked thing to do!"

But why should he listen? These women keep lining up for dates and he keeps getting semi-regular sex (which is how he measures success) so he can't understand why I tell him to change his behaviour. Maybe I'm more concerned for his immortal soul than he is. I keep telling him "You're 45 and single, this is probably your last chance going up to bat. Stop fucking it up!" But his "results" suggest to him he doesn't need to change.

From my experience in dating, the biggest thing he has going in his favour is that he doesn't have any kids (that puts a lot of women off - rightly or wrongly). Like I said, he's not much to look at but attractive women as young as 20 are going out with him. He's not fabulously wealthy but he is a successful professional so I guess at least some of them are "after his money" but it still doesn't make much sense to me.

Ladies, if you want my advice, don't try and change men. Men aren't going to stop being pricks as long as there are ANY women who'll put up with it and even reward it. Plus, it leads men who aren't pre-disposed to act like pricks to think they'd be more successful with women if they WERE pricks. Focus your attention on changing women who put up with this shit. The enemy within always does more damage than the enemy outside.

Ah'm uh perfeshnul vidyo makur!

Well readers, I've officially reached the goal I set for myself back at my 300th post. For those who weren't paying attention, I set myself the goal of making some money and/or cutting some sort of distribution deal with someone I didn't already know. I got a cheque via courier this week from The FIZZ and made this video to commemorate the fact:



Admittedly, $500US (which translated to $630AU - yay for crappy exchange rates!) is not a fortune and I'm not about to give up my day job but it aint bad! That money will actually pay for flights to New Zealand in January for myself and Ms Angry. Two weeks in Lord of the Rings country, woohoo!

While having the holiday is going to be awesome, it requires some planning in order for me to maintain my one post a day rule. I may or may not be able to find internet connections in NZ so I'm planning a two-pronged backup. One is writing some short posts ahead of time and timestamp them to come up once a day while I'm away. The second is to invite guest contributions to fill in the gaps.

Gruntski is already on board with providing some video blogs but there's plenty of space to fill so if anyone feels like getting angry, drop me a line. These could be either written posts or video posts. Maybe there's something you really want to get off your chest but it doesn't fit in with your own blog or site. You can have things published under your own blog name with links back to your site or it can be completely anonymous. Maybe you don't want people to know how angry you can get :)

I personally recommend getting extremely angry from time to time. The catharsis is great!