cracking the rsvp code...

In the interests of helping some of you desperates find a mate, I'll continue with Part II of my RSVP-profile-appraisal-series. Today we'll be looking at headers again, with a view to illustrating the difference between what YOU (chicks) write and what WE (poor slobs) read.

'I’m a very good listener.'
TRANSLATION: 'I’ve got absolutely nothing to say.'

'An angel yet a devil. A dove yet a tiger!'
TRANSLATION: 'I’m bipolar and potentially violent. My last boyfriend was afraid to go to sleep around me!'

'Just looking for a partner with whom I can share all the great things in life!'
TRANSLATION: 'I have nothing myself; no personality, no money, no ideas...so I want some of yours. I'll take half now and the rest when I leave!'

'Strong-willed, independent, spontaneous!!!'
TRANSLATION: 'Fuck you, I’m leaving, NOW !!!

'Finding my destined fate that draw me to this RSVP, my dream from unknown would cross our path through by mysterious phenomenon.'
TRANSLATION: 'I have recently arrived from Vladivostok, where I was once their most prestigious university's Head of Cardiac Surgery. I came to Australia to seek a better life, however I've been working as a lap-dancing whore in 'Mens Gallery' for the past 6 months and am getting a bit sick of giving handjobs. Please save me.'

More next week...

just how dumb do you think we are...

OK…grieving period over; I’m a cunt…so what else is new ??
It’s Anzac Day, I’ve been up since 3-00am, attended the dawn service in Martin Place, I’m soaked to the bone and now I’m at work.
At work…but there’s nothing to do…so I’ve been poodling around the RSVP site, just window shopping…and here’s the scoop. 50% of all chicks are total cabbages !!!
On RSVP, you create a profile, with or without a photo…then you have about 50 words or so with which to grab a guy’s attention. Minimal attention at that…
And how do most chicks go about it ??
By saying something like, ‘I love to laugh’, or ‘I live life to the fullest’.
Yeah…me too…I love to live and love and laugh and live life loving and living and laughing...I mean…FFS…what’s the alternative?? Killing yourself ??
Then there’s the alliteration brigade: ‘Sexy, sassy, single, sophisticated, smiling and smart…”.
That’s fucking super; certainly beats ‘Monstrous, misshapen, married, mediocre, mundane, moody, morose and moronic’ I suppose.
Or the rhetorical daydreamers: ‘Would you like to walk with me in the clouds?’

Um…yes…that sounds fabulous…and while we’re doing all that we can discuss the magical healing power of rainbows.

The gormless: ‘Inspire me!’
No thanks. Inspire yourself, you lazy cunt.

The disillusioned: ‘Just looking for someone honest/nice’.
Translation; if one more guy cheats on me I’m going to cut my fucking head off.
What about ‘My friends say I’m a sweet, gentle person’.
Of course they do; they’re your friends, idiot. That’s what friends say. Well, maybe not my friends. They say I’m a complete cunt…but I bet I’m still more fun to sit next to at dinner than you.
BUT…I think my favourite is, ‘I’m just an easy-going gal’…followed by a 300-point inclusion/exclusion list of attributes desirable/undesirable for her ideal partner.
YOU ARE ALL SOOOOOOOOO GOING TO DIE ALONE…

i'm a bad person...

I did a bad thing recently.
It doesn't matter what it was, or who I did it to...it was wrong and I need to make ammends.
This blog is closed until those ammends have been made.

the fisherman's basket: a paradox...

A week before the wedding in Melbourne, we had a buck’s night in Sydney. The Brotherhood of Geezers is nothing if not flushed with funds for an event of this kind, so it was a lavish affair.
Mr X provided his 44’ Riviera cruiser for the evening, Mr Y supplied 2 cases of French champagne, Mr Z brought along enough drugs to kill a blue whale…and I provided the trouts.
5 guys, 5 trouts, 44’ feet of boat, 24 bottles of Moet, 12 disco-bickies, 10 grams of marching powder…4 hours to party.
And so we did.
The trouts boarded at 8-00pm, we headed away from Darling Harbour Marina and sped off to our mooring over near Shelley Beach. By 9-00pm the trouts (aged 19 to 22) were naked, draped like beach towels all over the rear-lounge, chewing their bickies and washing them down with imported champagne. There was a floorshow during which they all lay down next to each other and did the synchronised leg thing, which to my Moet-and-coke-addled mind looked like a set of X-rated windscreen wipers.
About 10-00pm we re-enacted a few scenes from ‘Scarface’, had our bats thoroughly smoked and sat back to contemplate our good fortune.
With an hour left on the clock and the trouts pre-paid for, we were left with the problem of what to have them do for the remainder of the cruise ?? Full-contact sport had never been offered as an option during negotiations, so I suggested…in keeping with our nautical theme…that they all growl each others’ fisherman’s basket.
And that’s where it all got a bit confusing.
They said they’d be happy to oblige…but it would be an extra $100 per trout per hour.
We were more than willing to pay up…but I had to ask the question…
“So, if we got you to spend the next hour sucking our dicks it would still be included in the original price ??”
‘Yes.”
“But if we want you trouts to eat each other out…it’s extra ??”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s the trade practice.”
“But that’s insane. You’re saying you’d suck Mr X’s dick for what amounts to free, yet it’s extra to eat Mia out ??”
“Yes.”
“Are you delirious ?? I’d gladly spend the rest of eternity munching Mia’s box…but I wouldn’t suck Mr X’s dick if I was Mother Theresa and it was the sole condition of world peace. I mean look at them…she’s all smooth and sleek and neat and fresh. And he’s…well he’s Mr X…he's the antidote to all ofl that.”
So that’s how we spent the last part of the cruise.
We argued, 5 guys and 5 trouts, at a combined hourly rate of $800, over what has simply become known as ‘The Hooker Paradox’…

memoirs of a geezer...pt 2

In years gone by these post-wedding breakfasts had always had a certain sort of Middle Ages-meets-The Vikings charm to them; the barbarous tribesmen returning to their lair to brag of the previous night’s conquests.
We’d swap tales of the various atrocities committed over great lashings of bacon, egg, sausage and toast dripping with salted butter. There were no silent knights at those gatherings.
‘Your sister goes off like milk in the sun !!!’
‘Yeah, well your ex-fiancé has a pouch like a mouse’s ear !!!’
And so forth…
A ‘kill ratio’ of 50% was the norm; higher if you included the occasions when money changed hands…but it suddenly occurred to me that times were different now.
The Middle Ages had been replaced by The Middle Aged.
Leif Eriksson had become Hagar the Horrible.
Where once fatty strips of pig had lain, there was now a fruit plate. The hash potato had morphed into bran, the coffee into juice. The toast was sensibly dry…
Our mighty clan of fearsome hunters was now a harmless group of gatherers. As the only remaining single man, tradition was mine alone to uphold. I knew they were relying on me for a story; I thought about telling them one…
They’d all spent the previous six hours cuddled up next to their wives, undoubtedly drunk, open-mouthed, drooling and snoring. Most would count themselves lucky not to have inhaled the curtains and choked to death in their sleep during the night.
I knew what they wanted to hear.
‘That bridesmaid from Bristol and I went back to the hotel room and drank the mini-bar dry. After that, I did a couple of lines off her bongos, she did a couple off my helmet and then we fucked like rabbits till about 10 minutes ago…’
But that’s not what happened.
And that’s not what I told them…
‘

memoirs of a geezer...pt 1

I’ve just returned from Melbourne after attending the wedding of a very close mate and his utterly, utterly magnificent chick; some of my friends are marrying very well these days.
Lucky cunts.
Anyway…I had the honour of being The Best Man, discharging my responsibilities by getting him to the church on time, making a 35-minute speech (including the 2 encores and 5-minute standing ovation) at the reception before poking a bridesmaid in her whiskers back at my hotel.
As far as weddings go, all the boxes were ticked.
The morning after the wedding, a select ‘Band of Brothers’ gathered in St Kilda for a recovery breakfast. This not-so-secret society comprised the majority of guys I used to hang with in Tokyo from 1994 until 2000; they had made the trip to Melbourne from as far as San Diego, Edinburgh, Stockholm, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Taipei, Dubai and Mumbai…
The Diaspora of the halcyon days of Japan in the 90s’ had reunited for a 3-day festival of drink, drugs and partying to celebrate another wedding; after 48 hours with our feet to floor and our collective pedals to the metal, we held (as we always do following one of these gala weekends) a debriefing.
As I gazed around the table, I noticed something was different this time.
We were not so much a ‘Band of Brothers’ anymore as we were a ‘Brotherhood of Geezers’.
Our once-handsome faces were now lined and creased, our once-chiselled bodies were fat and bloated, our once-flowing locks of shiny hair were receding, disappearing, in some cases vanished forever…
Our ‘get-up-and-go’ had decidedly got up and gone !!!
We resembled computer-enhanced images of ourselves; the sort the FBI use when they have nothing but an old photo of the suspect to work with.
‘We believe the person may currently look something like this…’

To be continued…

don't give me that Turnbullshit...

It takes a lot to outrage me !!!
You can annoy me by simply putting the kitchen knives back in their block with the cutting edge face-down…but it takes a special kind of cunt to outrage me. Malcolm Turnbull may just be that special kind of cunt ??
Now, I have a great deal of respect for Turnbull. He is after all an old Sydney Grammar boy; Shit…he even topped the year on several occasions (whereas I only managed the feat once). He’s a Rhodes Scholar, a brilliant legal advocate, a journalist, a published author and a successful businessman. In short, he’s a very, very clever man.
And now he’s a rising star in Federal politics, which apparently gives him licence to treat me like a fool.
Recently, Turnbull was promoted to the cabinet position of Minister for the newly created portfolio of Environment and Water Resources. Essentially, I suspect to put him in direct opposition to Peter Garrett, the Shadow Minister for Renewable Power and Passion. Good move too; pitting the brilliant Turnbull against the highly credible Garrett should be a wonderful political contest in the run-up to the next election.
Which is why I’m so bitterly disappointed at being ‘handled’ by Turnbull in his maiden press conference yesterday !!!
Standing coatless (presumably to give the impression he was about to roll up his sleeves and get to work immediately) in front of a watery Centennial Park backdrop (presumably to give the further impression that such bountiful liquidity was the inevitable result of this hard work, Turnbull had the following to say:

"There's a lot of work to be done on water."

Now, given Turnbull’s mighty opinion of himself, I wouldn’t be surprised if he meant walking on it then perhaps turning it into wine…but maybe there was more to his grand scheme ??

"The focus in rural areas has to be changing irrigation use, using it more efficiently and restructuring water plans.”

That seems reasonable, considering present usage and water structuring combined with a generational drought has left our dams critically short of wet stuff to drink. Keep going, Mal…

“In urban Australia efficiency is also important but we have to do more to address supply.”

OK…now I understand. It was a supply issue; why couldn’t anyone else see that ?? All we had to do was get some more water.

“That's been made difficult by a lack of investment by the state governments."

Yeah…that figures; it was bound to be the fault of those state Labor fuckers. Still, if anyone can undo the damage they’ve done…it’s you, Mal. What’s your plan…you know…going forward…in a pro-active sense…in terms of providing a world-class solution to this ongoing problem ??

"We should do everything we can but in a manner that's cost-effective."

I couldn’t agree more. Water IS very useful at times but not at the expense of a steady 10% annual increase in market-cap and shareholder dividends.

You utter, utter cunt…

and the geek shall inherit the earth...

The new work-venture is going swimmingly; better than I could have hoped for really however it’s always good to have options. Yesterday was a dull day in the markets, so I spent a good deal of time looking for a Plan B…career-wise.
The problem is, like most 45 year olds, I've discovered that I'm woefully unqualified for most of the good jobs out there in the real world. Of course, when I speak of good jobs, I refer to those which provide the maximum amount of remuneration for a minimum of actual work.
With nothing specific in mind, I recalled how some of my friends had moved into IT, earning obscene sums of money for their minimal output. Not only that but almost to a man they claimed they had bluffed their way into the industry and learned everything they now know on the job.
Well, if I’ve gleaned anything from 15 years in the money-market, I do know how to tell whopping, great porky-pies, so I logged onto the IT section of Seek and went straight to the 'Jobs Vacant' page.
"...$350,000pa.....Senior Applications Developer.....blah, blah, blah....experienced in ASP, HTML, DHTML, WAP........."
Huh??
"...$300,000 plus.....Senior Web Master.....blah, blah, blah......will possess extensive knowledge of SQL server and OLE, DB, ADO, COM/DCOM......."
Huh??
"...$250,000 + bonus.....Software Development Manager......blah, blah, blah.....familiar with PSB, AVS, COBOL, PVC, DILDO......"
Huh??
What the fuck were they talking about??
I'd never felt so acronym-deficient in my entire life.
I thought that perhaps IT was just a bit too slick a game for this practicing Luddite, when suddenly I spotted a potential wormhole into the information/communication revolution.
"...$150,000 base....Dynamic start-up company looking for Java guru....."
Well, I might not know much about lengthy strings of capital letters...but I sure can make a good cup of Java.
Suspiciously good money for a coffee-boy, though.
Then again, compared to what the top guys are getting paid, I figured it was all relative.
Sure, it's conceivable they would pay $150,000 for good coffee; I bet they drink gallons of the stuff in that super-charged atmosphere. I would just have to start at the bottom, learn everything there was to know, then steadily climb the corporate ladder to unimaginable wealth.
I rang the number, spent 5 minutes navigating the company's fearsome 'phone tree' ("..For general enquiries, press 1, followed by the hash, followed by your 43-digit pin #..."), eventually locating the AVP in charge of IT/HR.
In keeping with my perception that this was a brash, confidence-driven industry, I dispensed with the pleasantries and immediately proceeded to state a case.

"I want to be your new Java guru!!"
"OK. Do you have any experience with C++ ??"
(Huh…C++…what the fuck...must be industry jargon?? Of course....double strength caffeine or something. These guys probably pull 20 hour days....they'd need really strong coffee...not just the ordinary stuff the rest of us plebs were living off.....I'll just bluff this cunt.)
"Oh yes, C++......I've been using that for years."
"Great. And when are you able start??"

Too easy…

don't attack your heart and it won't attack you...

Well I’m back…and I’m not happy about it.
Ten days lying on the sand at Sunshine Beach, soaking up the beneficial UV radiation (sans block-out), re-acquainting myself with the art of riding a long board and taking long peeks at the topless chicks from behind my sunglasses has steeled my resolve to become retired as soon as possible.
I will never, ever, ever understand those people who say ‘Oh no…I could never give up working; I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.’ Me…I could give up tomorrow and trade it all for a shack on the beach. Well, maybe not a shack in the strict sense of the word…but certainly for an architect-designed dream-house perched on the headland, 180-degree ocean views, satellite TV with a 300cm projector-screen, infinity pool, ducted air-conditioning and a dune-buggy in the garage.
Like the one I’ve reluctantly just left to come back here and resume my fulfilling career for…
Anyway…mustn’t complain; I’m feeling marvellous for now, all tanned-up, blacker than some of my World Vision Spades and still at least two lousy work days away from wiping the holiday smile from my temporarily crease-ridden face.
AND…and…I’ve lost 4kgs as a result of the punishing exercise programme (a 90-minute walk on the beach every morning) initiated after catching a reflected glimpse of myself in a shop-window on the first day.
Which brings me to the point of this piece; in my entire life, or what has so far passed for it, I have NEVER felt the supposed high that some athletes claim they get from doing exercise.
NEVER !!!
Not once.
Not even close.
I sometimes get a craving for a cigarette during exercise but I never get the dopamine-rush that so many gym-junkies sometimes wank on about.
I walked briskly on the sand every morning, sometimes on hard sand, sometimes on soft sand…never less than 90 minutes, once for nearly 2 hours. I felt pain, cramp, nausea, headache and a weird burning sensation as my soft-tissue disintegrated under the workload BUT NOT ONCE did I experience anything even remotely resembling pleasure from the ordeal.
Sure, I slept like a baby each night and it’s great to lose a notch on my belt but it would be some stretch of the imagination to say that I enjoyed any of it.
And I have a pretty good imagination…

welcome to TWG...don't fucking steal anything while I'm gone...

Thank you for visiting The Whine Guide.
This blog is currently unattended and will continue to be so until Oct 9th.
Your posts are important to me, as they continually reinforce my belief in the intellectual/emotional gulf between us.
So please have a look around, leave a message after the beep and I’ll be sure to insult you in the most revolting, insensitive and personal manner when I return.
In the meantime…enjoy the peace and quiet…

one man's meat is another man's greener grass...

Unlike many of you whining, bitching, moaning minimum-wage-slaves…I actually love my job.
I’m a foreign exchange dealer/broker; I buy and sell very large sums of money against other currencies in the hope they appreciate/depreciate by small amounts, thereby securing a profit for yours truly. Then there are the losing trades; shit happens, eh…if it was that easy, even you cabbages could be doing it.
Anyway, this morning I was going through the pre-work morning ritual at home…strong coffee, cigarette, financial news from Europe/US, another cigarette…
Suddenly the Bloomberg Financial Channel froze, as the digital cable channels do from time to time, although with Bloomberg FC it’s sometimes 5 minutes before you notice any difference…as was the case today.
When the freeze finally dawned on me I flipped over to FoxSports1 and took in a little of the overnight golf from the UK. I love golf; love playing it, love watching it and like every golf-tragic out there I dream of playing it professionally.
All those beautifully manicured fairways, the towering trees, the sculpted waterways …the chance to be a fat white guy dressed like a skinny black pimp for the day.
It’s all so, so good.
Literally, it’s a walk in the park interrupted by the occasional act of hitting a small ball with a stick and picking up your wheelbarrow full of cash at the end.
All so, so good.
But then I got to wondering; does golf become just another tedious job to these guys after a while ?? Do professional golfers ever stand there waiting to tee off and think ‘Fuck this shit…I wish I could sit in an office for 10 hours a day and trade currencies for a living…’

great moments in history...

I had some people over for dinner last Saturday night and despite the filthy weather, we threw a slab of pork onto the BBQ, then retired to the lounge room to watch The Swans smash The Weagles.
The French doors from the balcony were open and within minutes the aroma of singed pig came wafting across our olfactory paths, reaffirming my belief that the BBQ is truly symbolic of man’s most basic right to bare tongs and burn mammals. A vat of ’00 Peter Lehmann Eight Songs Shiraz later and I was waxing lyrical about what I suspect must have been one of the Top 3 moments in human history; the day the first caveman put a piece of raw pig onto an open flame.
One of the popular theories suggests that about 125,000 years ago, Homo Erectus was simply using fire as a means of warming himself/warding off predators. At the time, whatever meat made up part of his diet was consumed raw; this was not only rather disgusting but also very fucking difficult to chew/digest. Anyway, it’s thought that perhaps Gronk and his fellow prototype Carpaccio-gobblers may have thrown a few hunks of their raw meat into the fire as part of a primitive offering to what they considered some sort of benevolent, protective god.
Whatever the reason, can you imagine the sheer, utter delight as the raw pork (I’m making the assumption here…) spluttered and spattered and sizzled in the glowing embers ?? Imagine smelling pork cooking for the first time…it would have been heavenly. Imagine retrieving the crusty brown morsels from the flames, all covered in juicy, moist crackling. Imagine putting the first piece of hot roast pork in your gob, taking a bite and wondering why you hadn’t thought of doing this 300,000 years earlier when you first discovered fire.
Doh…

way to go, henry...

Sorry people...there is/was nothing even remotely funny about 9/11. It was the most dramatic/traumatic event I have ever witnessed or ever hope to witness again.
However, I just couldn't resist this masterpiece of insensitivity/irony, as reported in a piece carrried by The SMH today.
Here is an exact, although concise, reprint of one man's magnificent blunder.


"THE September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States was the most televised event in history. For several days, long after the four hijacked planes had met their ends, television channels across the globe suspended normal programming to bring round-the-clock coverage. Such was the intensity and relentlessness of it that psychologists warned of the potential trauma that exposure to it might cause.
But there was one type of image from that day that was deemed too horrific for public consumption, and remains disturbing on the eve of the fifth anniversary of September 11. It relates to the several hundred people - the exact number is not known and never will be - who jumped or fell from the blasted-out windows of the World Trade Centre.
The American-born filmmaker Henry Singer remembers seeing them as he watched coverage of the attacks from an office in London. "On a shocking day, it was clearly the most shocking part for me and I imagine it would have been for anyone else who was watching television that day," he says. "It was something you couldn't get out of your mind, that people were falling from the sky."
When Britain's Channel 4 approached Singer to make a documentary about those who jumped from the World Trade Centre buildings he was initially reticent.
"My overall instinct," he recalls, "was this photograph brings up so many important issues about the power of stills photography, American culture, aversion to deal with issues around mortality, memory and how we process events. I thought this is going to be a very hard film but this is an unusual opportunity, so I decided to take the leap."

Just magnificent...

a toast to the japanese...

As many of you are aware, I spent quite a long time living in Japan.
Generally I like the Japanese a lot however last week I encountered the lowest form of their culture; the Japanese tour group.
I was staying at The Grand Hyatt in Singapore, which serves a spectacular buffet breakfast every morning, when the trouble began.
You see, the hotel had one of those fabulous conveyor-belt toasters. You load the bread onto the rack, then while it journeys through the machinery, you have time to toddle off to the 'egg-station' and get a couple of freshly-cooked sunny-side-ups and a kilo of bacon from the 'pig-tray' before wandering back to claim your toast.
That's the theory anyway.
However, when I returned to the Toastmaster 5000, my toast had vanished. I peered hopefully into the 'out-basket' for another thirty seconds however in my heart I knew it was hopeless.
I looked around and saw a Japanese chick from a tour group with what was undoubtedly my toast, about two metres away ladling some scrambled egg onto her ill-gotten goodies.
Devastated by the thought of my congealing eggs/bacon but realistic about the chances of recovering my stolen toast, I reloaded with fresh bread, then ventured off to the juice-bar for an orange/apple/pineapple smoothie, only to return and find my toast had been pilfered again.
I was now livid; a quick glance down the counter and I'd identified the thief as yet another Japanese chick from the tour group.
The problem is that the average Tour Jap is so used to having everything done for them; they automatically assume that either there is someone invisibly loading bread into the toaster on their behalf, or that the toaster is a bit magical.
Anyway, I wasn’t really quite up for a round of ‘Listen you dopey, four-foot, slanty-eyed dolphin-basher…you have to put the fucking bread IN the fucking toaster before you can take the fucking toast OUT !!!’.
So, instead I slammed my now hardened eggs/bacon down on a table and stormed off to the hotel pharmacy; where I purchased a small bottle of ‘Stop N Grow’.
You know the stuff; that rancid shit you put on your nails to stop nibbling them.
Returning to the breakfast room, I grabbed six slices of bread, took them over to my table and seasoned them liberally with ‘Stop N Grow’.
I then loaded all six into the magic toaster and sat back to see what happened.
Sure enough, every last piece was hoovered by one or more of the marauding tour Japs.
I hope they choked on it…

i wish i could take you all with me...

Gone fuckin' !!!
Back in a week...

use the right word...

There are some beautiful languages in the world, so it’s with great regret that I can only lay claim to speaking one of them fluently: English (I have a reasonable grasp of Japanese, though not enough to fool a native-speaker over the age of five.)
Each language seems to have a nuance of its own, as though specifically created for one particular aspect of life.
For instance, if one has to speak of love, what better language to do it in than French?? Practically everything sounds more romantic when spoken in French. What trout’s heart wouldn’t melt at the phrase ‘Fous le camps et morte !!!’ ?? So much classier than ‘Fuck off and die !!!’.
On the other hand, Italian is marvellous for angry confrontations, such as road rage incidents or domestic disputes. All those religiously inspired exhortations and all that arm-waving makes for utterly magnificent theatre. You don’t have to be Pavarotti to know that ‘Christo mia…vaffanculo !!!’ doesn’t mean ‘Would you like Pasrmesan with that…’
German would be my choice for discussing things of a mechanically technical nature due to its crisp, heartless pronunciation, combined with an ability to make one splendid word such as ‘honkenbrakenscreecherknockengepingersputtergefixer’ to describe someone who repairs cars.
When one talks of tragedy, other languages can only dream of conveying a sense of it with the sheer misery of Russian.
Haggling over the price of something should be done in Chinese.
English is perfect for addressing your servants.
Showing confusion or a lack of understanding is best done in Indian.
And all mindless threats of violence or bloody revenge should ALWAYS be issued in Arabic…

but what does IT all mean...

So, you’re after a highly paid job in a prestigious, skilled industry but completely lacking in any of the necessary qualifications??
Don’t despair; the industry you’re looking for just might be IT??
IT is just one example of a small group of two-lettered-acronyms that make up what I call ‘The Black Art Professions’. Like its shadowy cousins, PR and HR, IT boasts a huge cast of personnel with seemingly no specific education, and little or no previous relevant employment experience, doing a variety of vague, meaningless tasks in return for wheelbarrows full of cash.
No one except themselves claims to know exactly what these strange people do, and you’d be no clearer after interrogating them on the subject, or reading their mysterious, title-heavy business cards. They are like ninja; some good, some bad, willing to work for any employer prepared to amply reward them for their little-understood talents.
Perhaps I can inspire you with this illustration of how simple it would be to turn yourself into an IT engineer ??
The other day, I was busily working away on my network PC, when the keyboard jammed, the mouse locked up and the screen froze solid with the image of a naked woman in an improbable position, a large dildo embedded firmly in her ass.
I had unknowingly stumbled onto a pornographic website, after accidentally typing www.filthydirtbagswhotakeitineveryorifice.com into my address bar, when I meant to type www.semigovbonds.org.au, and then unwittingly hit the ‘download/save’ button while I was trying to use the escape key….
Anyway, for reasons I don’t even pretend to understand (although I suspect cyber-karma may have something to do with it), my PC ceased to function. All the usual diagnostic keys failed to respond to my deft touch, the system completely ignored repeated, simultaneous bashings of the Control/Alt/Delete buttons with my fists, and the defiant screen continued to display the image of the naked-lady-acrobat, despite my attempts to cave in the monitor with a 5-iron.
Utterly defeated, I made the inevitable, shameful call to our technical department, explained the problem and was told it was a ‘Code Blue’; response time from the IT SWAT team was expected to be under two minutes.
Ninety seconds later, the Senior-Applications-Officer-Currently-On-Call (SAO-COC) arrived at my work-space carrying a clipboard containing a blank ‘Incident Report’ form. He wore jeans, a striped body-fitting rayon shirt I suspect belongs to his 12 year old brother, and cream-coloured, square-toed slip-ons made from some kind of hemp product. I gave him the usual $20 and he threw the ‘IR’ form in the recycle bin.
He stared at the still-frozen image willing it to disappear but the pornographic screen-saver stared right back. He tapped the ‘Esc’ button; nothing. He held down the ‘On/Off’ button for 5 seconds, the IT equivalent of administering a mega-dose of antibiotics; still nothing.
With a knowing frown and nod of the head he reached over and pulled the power plug out of the wall; that did the trick.
Then he plugged it back in, forcing the system to re-boot itself.
I was back working on my PC within a minute and our IT genius disappeared back into the office ether like a phantom…
We pay this cunt $250,000 per year...

WARNING: this post has been recycled...

The weekend vote by the residents of Toowoomba, rejecting a plan to add treated sewage to the town's water supply, has forced me to recycle this post for the betterment of all mankind.


Apparently, Sydneysiders are not prepared to drink recycled sewage, even if it is 'treated to drinking water standard and safe', the Utilities Minister, Frank Sartor said recently as he defended plans for a desalination plant. Mr Sartor based his claim on a telephone survey of 600 people by UMR Research on behalf of the NSW State Government. This was strangely at odds with the results of an online SMH poll on the subject, to which more than 10,000 people responded.
The Greens predictably accused the Government of asking loaded questions in the survey to get the results it wanted.
Judge for yourself.


"Hello, Fingers...this is Sally from UMR Research calling on behalf of the NSW State Government. Do you have a couple of minutes to answer a short survey on Sydney's drinking water?”
"Yes, sure...water is an important issue. How can I help you?”
"We were just wondering if you’d like to drink recycled sewage, including toilet water that is treated to drinking-water quality.”
"I'd rather not."
"May I ask why?”
"Well, because it's sewage."
"Would you feel better about the idea if we told you the drinking quality of our recycled sewage would be assured by the NSW Government, which as you know is also responsible for the state’s magnificent rail network?”
“You mean the same government that keeps redefining the word ‘punctual’, so that a train running 2 hours late is deemed to be on time?”
“Yes.”
“Then no, I wouldn’t, unless you are prepared to redefine the word ‘better’ so that it means much, much worse.”
"What would you say if we told you this approach is taken throughout Europe, where recycled sewage is put back into major rivers and then used further downstream to meet the next city's drinking-water requirements?”
"I would say that if I had to live there, it would be as far upstream as was Europeanly possible."
"Would it sway your opinion if we re-branded and re-marketed our recycled sewage under the name…‘Renewable Water’?”
"No, not even if you called it 'Sparkling Effluescence' and promised to supply it using fluted, cut-crystal pipes."
"So it’s not necessarily the term 'recycled sewage' that causes you concern?”
"No, it's the contents of the 'recycled sewage' that causes me concern."
“Are you aware of the successful campaign in Singapore, which is now adding 1% recycled sewage into its reservoirs, and would you be more open to drinking our recycled sewage if it was mixed with rainwater from Warragamba Dam?"
“You mean like a sewage shandy?”
“Precisely.”
“What sort of mix is the government considering?”
“Well, given the current level of Warragamba Dam, we’d be looking to add 94% recycled sewage to the existing rainwater. Of course this would reduce slightly if we got a good downpour soon.”
“I see.”
"Now, how would you feel about paying a lot more in the future for our recycled sewage than you do presently for fresh, clean drinking water?”
"The same way I feel now about paying a lot more to watch recycled sewage at the movies, than I used to pay to watch fresh, clean ideas."
"And finally, please describe your feelings on the proposal from the following response list: very comfortable, mildly comfortable, mildly uncomfortable or very uncomfortable..."
"Well, if the universe is very big, then I would be very uncomfortable."
"OK. Thanks for your time."
"Cheers."

what a cheap, dirty trick...

I knew it !!!
I fucking well knew it !!!
That hideous anti-smoking advertisement showing the young woman with mouth cancer is a fake; the bastards used special effects, make-up and a prosthetic mouth to create a picture of smoking gone bad.
Now, I’m certainly not going to argue a case in favour of cigarettes; they are disgusting and I realise that with each one I smoke I take liberties with my health. I wish they WERE good for me. If someone could show that smoking cigarettes was actually healthy for me, that the more I smoked the healthier I would get, I would happily puff my way through 300 a day.
That’s how much I enjoy the habit.
Medical fantasy aside however, I’m acutely aware of the seductively dangerous game of Russian roulette I play each time I light up; that’s my choice.
It’s also a choice many of my friends have made over the years, though a significant number have renounced their filthy ways for various reasons.
My point ??
My point is that in the 25 years I’ve been at it, neither I nor anyone I know has ever seen a smoker who has one of those revolting smiles riddled with mouth cancer. Same goes for the gangrenous limbs; I bet those images are actually frostbite victims recently dragged into Everest base camp ??
I’m sure there are cases out there somewhere; awful cases in which the side-effects of cigarette smoking are taken to their most nauseating conclusion…but I still haven’t seen one myself.
Have you…

tough love...

As part of the decision-making process on whether to get a Burmese cat, my lovely ex-girlfriend is letting me ‘adopt’ her two prize-moggies for the upcoming weekend.
She’s also provided a handbook on caring for Burmese cats which I have been reading most assiduously over the past few days.
These cats require a mountain of maintenance as far as I can tell; thrice-weekly brushing of the teeth, daily brushing of the coats, daily playtime, twice-daily feedings, weekly nail-trimming and monthly vinegar baths. And…they must remain indoors at all times apparently to prevent to the risk of getting lost or catching cat-flu from one of the local ferals.
They are the Naomi Campbells of the feline world.
Well, I plan on re-training these pampered pussies while they’re in my care; my ex will thank me if and when she gets them back.
Bright and early Saturday morning, ‘Bollie’ and ‘Merlot’ will be taking a spin on the back of the Vespa; in a milk-crate strapped to the luggage rack. For the 10-minute dash across town they will be without their Cashmere lounge-vests in order to help better acclimatise to the harsh conditions ahead of them. You see, I’ve planned an ‘Orienteering Weekend’ for the two aristocats, whereby I drop them off in Centennial Park and they have 36 hours to find their way back to Cunt Point.
To prevent the possibility of starvation, I will incorporate a food-scavenging programme into their pre-course survival training; before their mission commences they will be shown photos of edible local fauna common to the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney. I will also teach them, by holding their pointy little heads in one, the bush-technique of puddle-drinking to avoid dehydration; the good news for them is that heavy rain is forecast for the rest of the week.
The only real danger lies in their heading south from the park instead of north, a route which would take them directly through the dark-heart of Asian-fusion cuisine in the Randwick area…