Australia's Next Top Westie Scrag Series Eight #2

Of the following things normally associated with models, which is the odd thing out?

a) A good old-fashioned arse-flashing;

b) A good old-fashioned tongue-piercing;

c) A good old-fashioned mauling of the English language; or

d) Cultural sensitivity.

That’s right.

It are d).

Pack your bags, jump on an obscure budget airline, and touch as many people on the head as possible, it’s the ‘Thai Me Kangaroo Down, Scrag’ episode of Australia’s Next Top Model.

It’s Pratanum Comedy.

Housekeeping.

We now have opening credits, with the scrags’ names and everything! Now we can put names to faces, unlike that little dangly bit at the back of your throat, because WHAT is the name of that thing.

Speaking of things:

It’s been a slow week in the quest to find Australia’s Most Overused Catchphrase, with a lot of the classics scoring zero, just like George Michael in a driving test, or me counting the number of free frocks Alex Perry has given me even though I’ve Photoshopped him with actual laser eyes this year. The current tally leader is ‘expensive’, with only 2 points this week for ‘journey’ which I think might actually be an arrestable offence in this country.

Aaaand we’re off to the exotic Asian destination of Thailand. As Dajana puts it, “When Jen told us that we were going to Thailand I went absolutely beserk, my like, legs were on the ceiling”.

Her legs, right, were on the ceiling. I customarily defer to Lionel Richie at times like this. Thoughts, Lionel?

 I COULDN’T TELL YOU, LIONEL. Let’s ask the legs.

Yes, it's you we're looking for.

A quick Thai montage later, and  we arrive at the Hotel Muse, where Chanique muses “We saw massive billboards everywhere, and it was all written in Thai”, because I have to give you an IQ frame of reference for what she says next.

The modules are greeted at the hotel with complementary drinks, at which point Chanique says, with customary Australian questioning intonation: “I think they said it was butterfly pee?”.

That’s right. And after five almost wasted minutes on Wikipedia, I finally found a picture of a butterfly pee farm.

After squealing at the embroidered pillow cases, the cotton for which was bought with the money they saved on flights on well-known Scoot Airlines, the girls quickly fulfil their mandatory pillow-fight obligations, followed by a quick break so that straight male viewers of the show can clean themselves up a bit. Yes, both of them.

Morning comes, and it’s time for another Thailand montage – Tuk-tuks, policemen, traffic, and this dog.

Just look at this little guy with his world-weary canine ennui. LOOK AT HIM.

Learnment

Whilst frolicking nonchalantly in the pool specifically to make me feel bad about my body, Dajana commentates the situation with “We’re all splashing each other, having some fun, and then this waiter just comes out of nowhere”. NOWHERE.

Because nowhere is a door now.

The waiter passes the girls an envelope.

ERIKA MAIL!

I mean

JODHI MAIL!

I mean

SARAH MAIL!

I mean

JEN MAIL!

I mean really.

The girls arrive at a temple to the sound of flutes and of Dajana saying “We got these weird unflattering white costumes and we had no idea, I thought we were going to see some asylum or some psych ward or something’.

No. Just Charlotte Dawson.

Which is marginally more topical than is perhaps comfortable, but let’s move on.

Shannon’s impression is different to Dajana’s, and she says ‘We ended up at the most beautiful temple that I could ever imagine’.

I dunno, Shannon. I’m sure you can imagine some very nice temples.

And that's where they keep the religions.

Dawso greets them with an excellent hairdo and a far less excellent Thai accent, and explains what they’re doing there: “Modelling is very much about your external beauty, but today we’re going to see how you shine from the inside, because model bookers are always totally swayed by your inner peace and not just by your symmetry and oddly jutting collarbones, shut up we’re making a show here it doesn’t have to always be realistic so you guys on the forums can just SHUT UP”.

That’s exactly what she says.

The modules enter the temple, and Jade says sagely “I studied Buddhism at university, so to finally meet monks was something really special for me. I was surprised they weren’t swinging from the trees eating bananas, though. Weird.”.

That’s exactly what she says.

Everyone sits on the floor and a wise monk raps to them about life.

I did not know that.

 Taylor is deeply affected by the experience, and says “I was thinking about my mum the whole time when the monk was talking. She was the first thing. And then my horse as well. Like, I miss my horse”.

You do look a lot like her, Taylor. YOUR MUM, I MEAN.

The monk then leads the scrags in meditation, and lists the different sorts of meditation.

Sitting meditation.

Standing meditation.

Walking meditation.

Lying meditation.

That awesome dog meditation.

And Dajana totally fell asleep meditation.

Time to exaggerate Dajana’s ethnic background with some well-known stereotypes, you guys!

Gettin' Woggy Wid It

Dawso leads the modules out to the lawn to practice their mad new meditation skillz, but Rhiannon doesn’t take it particularly seriously, because ‘In Australia religion isn’t like, the biggest thing, like, it is here, so at the time it was a little bit funny’. Being different is funny, you guys. You know, like making fun of wogs and stuff. Coughetty-cough.

A few people show their annoyance with Rhiannon by giving her a sideways glance, or ‘pigeon-eye’.*

You. Bitch.

Challenged.

Back at Hotel Muse, Dawso and Diddles come up with a challenge for the scrags by looking around them, seeing a sign, and going “Oh right, ‘muse’, nice one”.

In three teams, the modules must select someone to be their muse, and then style that someone in a Manning Cartell frock with accessories purchased from the local market.

So they must choose a muse, choose some shoes, and neither snooze nor lose.

Wordplay, my friends.

Off to market we go! I hope the girls aren’t looking for any silver or gold at these markets.

Veeeery specific market.

Yes, yes, I know. Take it away, adamant little guy.

We're overseas. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

Brooke mentions that she’s surprised, as the market is different to what she was expecting. “There were stalls everywhere and people everywhere”. WHAT? WHERE IS THIS MARKET? WEIRD CRAZY MARKET WORLD? GET OUT.

Ashley gets upset because her team isn’t listening to her opinions. Lord knows I always take my high-fashion style tips from someone with a pierced tongue, denim cut-offs, and the inability to pronounce the word ‘muse’. It’s like Modigliani taking weight-loss tips from Rubens or, for the lowbrow amongst you, like Miley Cyrus giving anyone advice about anything ever.

Most of the teams have clear-cut, self-appointed leaders, giving me the opportunity to come good on my promise to reference an old-timey TV theme in each recap, with bonus what-Alyssa-Milano-looked-like-in-that-five-minutes-she-was-flat-chested.

And those forty years that Judith Light was.

Arguments are had. Bartering is done. Sequinned shorts are inexplicably bought. Abbie’s arse is given its first outing.

If you missed it, don't worry - you'll see it again.

Taylor flags down the cultural sensitivity bus and buys a ticket by whining that there’s “So many people and so hot. Disgusting”, but Dajana grabs the wheel and drives straight to This Is Actually Considered Quite RudeTown by patting one of the stall-holders on the head.

The power of Christ compels you, fulleee

I guess it’s fine. She didn’t know that's pretty much a no-no here. She may have missed this billboard at the airport.

Once all the shopping and muse-styling has been completed, Dawso and Diddles welcome the modules back to the hotel to judge their elegant and understated HOLY MOTHER OF FUCK WHAT IS THAT.

What was meant to be ‘sophisticated accents’ turns out to be ‘that brat prince guy from Temple Of Doom’.

I just wish you and Short Round could get along.

What was meant to be a ‘bold statement’ turns out to be ‘Pris from BladeRunner’.

Let's flip this turtle on its back, eh?

And what was meant to be ‘sporty chic’ turns out to be ‘Sporty Spice’.

And doesn't she look happy about it.

Also, someone dresses as my year 8 woodwork teacher.

Although admiteddly Mr Murcutt had at least some circulation in his ankles.

Abbie ruins her team’s chances at winning by giggling through the entire thing, and Jade ruins her team’s chances by allowing herself to be styled by her team, so the challenge winner is April. Although of course, the real winner is everyone except Manning Cartell’s marketing team.

Phoy-toys

All of a sudden we’re in a rice paddy with Diddles, an elephant, photographer Kane Skennar (because god forbid they’d use a photographer that I can spell without Googling), and Diddles’ nipples.  Shanali gushes ‘I could not believe we were going to be working with an elephant’, which is ironic because almost immediately, as if on cue, they don’t. The only real look-in the elephant gets is when Abbie auditions it for a part in her new movie Arse-Flash Two: Elephant Harder.

Nobody talk about the arse in the room.

The brief for the photo shoot is ‘rich, lost traveller’, or ‘grubby hot mess’, and the clothes are one hundred percent gorgeous and eighty-five percent held on by bulldog clips.

Maddy Banana Paddy looks frightened of being one of the most beautiful people anybody’s ever seen, which is “understandable”.

The photographer says that Shannon isn’t aware of her body, which will come as a shock next time she’s being fitted for any kind of harness, and that Abbie is very aware of her body, which comes as a shock because you’d think she’d be aware of feeling the breeze on her arse at least once.

Shanali, who is perfect and who I probably think should win, doesn’t do anything wrong and this is the end of this sentence.

Although a push-up wouldn't kill you, doll.

Rhiannon walks like she’s had both a sedative and a Red Bull and they’re fighting for supremacy in her system in the 1990s.

April is as good as any robot from France that I’ve seen. April, if you’re reading this: o1o1o11o1o1o1oo1o1o11o. You’re welcome.

Jade wears a jacket with birds on it that I want right now give it to me right now don't even stop for coffee.

Duckie, Brooke and Taylah are delicious, poor Chanique is stiff and emotionless until she leaves the set and has a blub, Taylor is a bit of an ungrateful whining brat, and I can’t tell which is Ashley’s right leg and which is Ashley’s left leg.

Can we get an ambulance to the rice paddy stat, please.

Eliminationosity

BOOM, and we’re sent screeching back to the Eliminatorium, where Jen Hawkins Mrs Everything decides to deliver her autocue puns from a black and white frock, Dawso winks hello and then has to have a lie down to recover from the muscle strain, Shiny Alex Perry has to speak loudly to be heard over the sound of his shirt seams creaking, and Diddles oooh-wee-ooh, he looks just like Buddy Holly.

Woah-oh, and you're Mary Tyler Moore

Photographs are ummed and aaahed over, and it looks like it’s going to be very difficult to pick a loser.  What do you think, Buddy Holly?

It all just looks like a plane crash to me.

What about you, Amazing Psychic Desk? What do you think?

Well, you're no fucking help at all, Amazing Psychic Desk.

After a bit of zingy Dawso-and-Shiny-Alex-Perry banter like ‘I hate this shot so badly I can hardly contain myself’, ‘Those eyes are burning holes into my botoxed head’, and ‘It looks like you’ve been sitting unsuccessfully on the toilet for about an hour’, I still want that jacket with the birds on it, yet I still don’t have it and I can’t work out why.

Oh, and Shiny Alex Perry uses the word ‘gaping’, which again gets him trophy of the week.

The Gaping Trophy, for people who say 'gaping'.

Deliberation happens, April gets photo of the week and almost shows emotion, and it eventually comes down to Chanique and Shannon.

Shannon says ‘My heart just blew out of my body’.

Yeah, I never wrote a song about that.

Finally, after fifty hours and a nap, the admittedly-adorable-but-not-very-good-at-modelling Chanique is given the ol’ PEW PEW.

KA-WOOMSH

 Bye, Chanique! You're pretty. Any last words?

Exactly.

*Copyright 2011, 'Doik' Simone from Series 7

Australia's Next Top Westie Scrag Series 8 #1

Oh.

My.

God.

It’s been almost two years since the best show ever made has vomited itself, bulimia-stylez, from my television screen, and I can BARELY CONTAIN MYSELF.

But I have to, because I’m a professional.

KIDDING! I’m a lone wolf renegade, and your puny human conduct guidelines cannot hold me.

Unlike the way a jail/gaol can hold convicts, right? Am I right? Because we haven’t overworked the convict motif in this episode yet?

Fashion a shiv and steal a loaf of bread, it’s the ‘Toora-li, Toora-li, Scraggety’ episode of Australia’s Next Top Model.

Oh.

My.

God.

Housekeeping.

First up, some housekeeping.

• ·     There are rules. I will let you know what the rules are as we go along, because I will be making them up as we go along. You want a democracy, go read another satirical reality television recap. God.

• ·        The first rule is that, wherever you’re watching ANTM, if you hear the word ‘journey’ uttered on-screen, you must shout ‘JOURNEY!!!’ in your loudest, most barbaric yawp.

• ·       The second rule is that whenever you hear the ANTM theme music, when the girl says “I wanna be on top-PAAAAAAH’, you must aspirate the ‘PAAAAAH’ along with her. Awkward at first, then you’ll wonder how you ever went without it, just like tampons.

• ·       Each week, I will be tallying up catchphrases to discover WHAT. WILL BE. REALITY TELEVISION’S MOST OVER-USED CATCHPHRASE.  So far ‘I really want this’ is in the lead with 6 points, with surprisingly no points on the board at all for ‘That bitch stole my cigarettes’. Early days, my friends.

Right. So all that’s done then. Let us begin with what the promos have led us to believe is the most important bizzo this year....

·      THERE’S TOTALLY A NEW HOST. As we’re told in the opening voice over while Jen Hawkins struts out in slow-mo, shes had ‘Millions of dollars of endorsements (for vitamin supplements). Ten years at the top of her game (football). She’s Australia’s supermodel (and beauty pageant) sweetheart. And a perfect top model mentor (actually that bit’s probably true)’.  Obviously I have to give our Jen a nickname, but what? I was going to make her ‘Miss (Something) 2013’, but Miss what? She can do everything, as the voice-over just told us. Miss Everything? Then I heard that she got married, so I decided it had to be ‘Mrs’. So there you go. Jen Hawkins Mrs Everything.

·      Also, THERE’S TOTALLY A NEW JUDGE. And it’s Didier Cohen, vegan male model who regards Max Markson as a close personal arsehole. So that’s ANOTHER new nickname I have to hand out, especially considering nobody knows how to pronounce ‘Didier’.  So, just to make sure we’re all up to speed:

Hiiiii, Diddles.

·         So I guess all we’re missing is the modules. Let’s see... what have we got in this opening montage... high speed sunrise, industrial things, cranes, corrugated iron, nuts, bolts...

Scrags! The scrags are here!

Either that or it’s the world’s hungriest and most fashionable walkathon.  It takes the girls roughly twenty minutes to stroll into the warehouse, giving me ample time to form the following opinion:

That cut-out shirts with visible bras and bow-ties never won anything.

Yeah. Bye.

The modules gush and swoon over the perfection that is Jen Hawkins Mrs Everything, who tells them that they’re standing in Cockatoo Island. I bet some of these girls have seen a cockatoo in their time, right? Am I right or what? *high five left hanging until the apocalypse and rightfully so*

Jen Hawkins Mrs Everything starts talking about convicts, which starts three quarters of an hour of terrible convict-related puns and wordplay. It’s like Hieronymus Bosch painting a canvas of bad puns escaping en masse from hell or, for the lowbrow amongst you, like Amanda Bynes throwing a thousand pun-filled bongs out a thousand windows.

Jen announces that “this very building was built by convicts, which is a tenuous enough reason to call what you’re about to go through a ‘convict bootcamp’, effectively nullifying the true meaning of all the words in this sentence”.

Wow, that Jen Hawkins Mrs Everything misses NOTHING.

Then she mentions ‘Good old fashioned punishment’ right before she introduces Shiny Alex Perry.

Then Shiny Alex Perry tells the girls that they’re going to have a ‘good old-fashioned mugshot’.

Then Jen Hawkins Mrs Everything’s voice-over tells us that the girls are about to undergo ‘an old-fashioned convict line-up’.

It’s good. It’s old-fashioned. It’s time to set fire to the script.

Each girl is given an identification card with a number on it, and I make some wry observations as we get to know each of the scrags and their adorable foibles.

• Skye's identification card has her actual IQ score printed on it.

Relax - her IQ is actually 41, she's just holding it backwards.

• ·         A lot of the girls remind me of famous people. Shannon reminds me of Brooke Shields.

• ·         Rhiannon reminds me of Maggie Gyllenhaal.

• ·         Blonde Brooke reminds me of Rachel McAdams.

• Melissa reminds me of Wednesday Addams. 

Source: http://www.carolinevos.com/2308/834263/gallery/wednesday

·          

• ·         Harriet reminds me of Phil Oakey from Human League.

• ·         And Taylor reminds me of how happy I feel when I watch the Ice Age movies.

It would be SO MEAN if you thought I was comparing physical appearance in this one. Shame on you.

• Speaking of Taylor, she has a bit of trouble in good old-fashioned fanning-yourself-with-your-idenification-card class. In fact, she has a bit of trouble in all her classes.

Thunk.

• ·      The phrase ‘denim shorts’ can be interpreted in vastly different ways, such as:

Here is my vagina; and...

...here is a pair of buttocks, thighs and shorts that I borrowed from a much, much smaller man.

In fact, Dawso comments to Jade-of-the-vaginal-cut-offs that ‘those are the highest-cut jeans I have ever seen in my life. They finish in your armpit’. Coincidentally, so does Jade’s boyfriend, so technically she’s still a virgin.

• ·      Somebody accidentally lets a real convict in for a mugshot, which is awkward.

 

I didn't done nuffink.

·         The convict says that ‘they asked me my favourite designer. I didn’t know any designers, so I’m a bit scared ‘. So are we, Monique. So. Are. We.

• ·     The judges ask Georgia how she feels about lingerie modelling, to which she answers ‘Well, my dad’s a police officer’. They ask another model how she feels about the Palestinian conflict, and she answers ‘Asparagus’.

• ·    After her good old fashioned convict line-up, Skye gives the other girls some sage advice: “You don’t know exactly what to say, you kind of are like, stumblin’ a bit, but you just talk until it comes out how you want it to”.  Obviously Skye is a lot smarter than she looks.

Nope.

• ·      I love Madeline. I actually love her. She works on a banana farm, so I will call her Maddy Banana Paddy. Yes I know bananas don’t grow in paddies. Hey Skye, did you know that bananas don’t grow in paddies?

SHUT. UP.

• ·       April is very, very pretty, and seems really French to me. You know – great bone structure, chic haircut, dead eyes, no personality.  C’est si bon! Tour de France!

·         

•     Blonde Brooke was in Miss World Australia last year, and the year before that her ex-boyfriend passed away. So, y’know – swings and roundabouts. C’est la vie! Yoplait!

·         

•      Dajana, pronounced sort of like ‘Diana’, is Bosnian, so while the producers edit in some balalaika in the background, everyone says ‘wog’ a couple of thousand times.  Dajana even calls herself a wog, so let’s all just jump on that stereotype steam train and blow the whistle.

... which gives me the opportunity to welcome back our favourite adamant little guy:

Hiiii, adamant little guy.

Half the girls get chucked. The rest sleep on camp beds in a warehouse. Modelling, you guys.

Challenged

The next morning, Diddles wakes the scrags by banging on a bowl. That’s an actual thing.

Met by Mrs Everything, who is dressed for high tea in space, the modules are told they’ll be walking on a plank across Sydney Harbour, which gives us the opportunity to laugh at the girls who wobble, giggle at Dawso when she calls one of the girls a zombie, wonder at the girls who clearly have a GoPro camera tucked in their cleavage, and cry at the girls who have just ridiculously, throw-my-television-out-the-windowingly incredible bodies. Which is all of them. Shit.

Aside from that, it’s just half-naked scrags on a board, really.

UNTIL.

Until Duckie from South Sudan takes us through the world’s most stressful jet landing via semaphore.

CAUTION FLIGHT QF467, YOU'RE COMING IN TOO FAST

CLEAR THE RUNWAY GROUND CONTROL THE PILOT IS CONSTIPATED REPEAT CONSTIPATED

TELL THE TOWER THAT I HAVE HAD IT WITH THESE MOTHERFUCKING SCRAGS ON THIS MOTHERFUCKING PLANK, OVER

Phoy-Toys

Finally we get to the photo-shoot bit, where the modules don stripy shirts, black jeans and side-swept hair and are asked to be Edie Sedgwick in Jailhouse Rock because mixed 60s references, yo.

The three judges explain the concept to the girls, and Dawso points to the scaffolding behind her and says ‘these are your cells’, which confuses Skye because she’s pretty sure she brought all her cells with her.

Includin' all them cytoplasms and mitochondrians and that.

Every. Single. Girl. Looks spastically beautiful, but it doesn’t matter, and you know why? Because when Diddles introduces photographer Mike Naumoff, it sounds like he’s saying ‘New Muff’. That, coupled with the fact that Mike New Muff has a beard and I’m spastically into guys with beards right now, means it’s reasonable to suggest that I had a stroke at that point.

Goods, bads, and indifferents:

• ·      April claims to be afraid of heights, yet maintains her stoical air of monotone robotics. I think if you cut off her arm with a machete, she’d turn her head slowly to look at you, pause a moment, and then say “ow”.

·         

•     Maddy Banana Paddy is nervously tense, but I still kind of want to marry her and skip down a beach hand in hand.

·      

•          Taylah from Western Austraylah is gorgeous, confident, poses well, and is utterly, utterly terrifying. She’s come a long way from last year, too – it’s like the rejection sent her into an underground bunker where she just stockpiled sexy and hair products.

Before sexy bunker

After sexy bunker

•  New Muff has trouble pronouncing Shanali’s name, but I have no trouble pronouncing her ACHINGLY BEAUTIFUL. Dawso is also impressed. I... I think.

Although she may also have had a stroke at this point.

• Melissa is tiny (except for her forehead, obviously) and compelling and adorable and beautiful, but the judges are worried she’s too short. Shiny Alex Perry suggests that ‘maybe we can fertilise her’, which earns him a very, very special trophy.

Eliminationosity

Suddenly we’re back in a shiny Eliminatorium, where the judges are dressed as the four major food groups – Citrus, Picnic Blanket, Vegan, and Mutton. We’re ready to find out who the final fifteen scrags are as the judges sort through photographs and say things like ‘I don’t think that’s a very memorable head’, which is obviously awesome. Even more/less awesome is when Chanique and Shanali’s names are said together, and I instantly get the Laverne & Shirley theme song in my head.

Chanique! Shanali! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!

Lucky for you, there’s a reasonable chance I’ll include a 70s or 80s sit-com theme reference in the recap each week. You really get your money’s worth here at Jo Blogs. PS: send money.

Jen Hawkins Mrs Everything announces that it’s ‘time to deliver the final sentence’, and the Amazing Psychic Desk has something to say about that.

Hiiii Amazing Psychic Desk

The modules file in, and for some reason the editors see fit to show us how nervous the girls are with a close-up on someone’s vagina. How are you feeling, someone’s vagina?

Delivery of the news is quick and painless. HA! Kidding, this is reality television. Delivery of the news is drawn-out and agonising. Brunette Brooke seems eerily confident.

Let's see how that goes, eh?

Skye is eliminated, and the IQ in the room jumps thirty-eight points. Gorgeous Georgia is eliminated, and the sadness in my heart jumps thirty-eight points. Finally there are two girls left – French Robot April and Brunette Brooke – but only one space in the house.

Eight years pass, and Shiny Alex Perry eliminates Brunette Brooke with lasers shot directly out of his eyes.

PEW PEW GAFLOOMSH

Excitedly, Mrs Everything announces to the remaining girls that “You will all be jetting off to the exotic Asian destination of Thailand!”, and exotic Asian ladies in exotic Asian costumes rush in and chuck exotic Asian petals in the air.

Which is nice.

Uncomfortable Truths

Hi. I like your shoes, are they new?
About a year ago, I wrote this for a truly excellent independent wordy juggernaut called The King's Tribune, which you should definitely pay the pittance they ask for to get it delivered, all quivering and moist, into your inbox every week.
And now I'm reproducing this thing here, because its intention is to make people feel  bad and I'm a bitch who likes that kind of thing.

UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS

People eat dead animals because they are delicious. People do everything they can while they’re eating dead animals, or purchasing parts of dead animals to eat later, to ignore the fact that we know that these animals have been grown and killed and chopped up for us to eat. We ignore that fact because it gets in the way of us enjoying our meal of dead animal parts and crackling.

Bindi Irwin has boobs now.

Generally speaking, women are physically weaker than men. They’re more likely to make decisions based on emotion. Mind you, they’re a lot less likely to make decisions based on what their penises want, so there’s that. Still, there is no good reason that women can’t or shouldn’t serve in the armed forces or go to war or lead countries or run companies or build bridges or control spacecraft. Almost none of those things have jars in them that need opening.

Penis size does matter. Not as much as you think it does. But it matters. There’s such a thing as too small, and there’s such a thing as too big. You are not either of those things.

There’s a reasonable chance that Tony Abbott will be prime minister of Australia. There are people who will vote for Tony Abbott based on his personality alone. There are people who think it’s fine to see the outline of Tony Abbott’s genitals nestled in their Speedo hammock. They think that’s just okey-dokey.

Kyle Sandilands is liked by tens of thousands of people.

People don’t like to look at the physical deformities of others, or at people in wheelchairs. When people pass people with obvious physical deformities in the street, they notice them, but they pretend they haven’t noticed them.

People treat people with disabilities differently. People are nervous and uncomfortable around people with disabilities. They think more carefully about what they say to and around people with disabilities.

Human beings like the smell of their own farts and the smell of their own feet. Human beings are sometimes disappointed when they clean their ears with a cotton bud and it comes out more or less clean. They’re disappointed when they floss their teeth and no chunks of spitty food come out on the string. They like squeezing blackheads. They like getting a big chunk of sleep-crust out of their eyes. They pick their noses. They wee in the shower.

Some nuns are horrible, horrible people.

When we see someone on the street collecting for charity or a homeless person asking for money, sometimes we make up an excuse not to give them anything. We might have a couple of different excuses that we use at different times, but we have one favourite excuse that we use more often than the others.

Elle Macpherson has at least one grey pube now.

We only want to look after the planet if it’s easy, comfortable and convenient. It would be better for the planet if we didn’t use electricity. It would be better for the planet if we didn’t use plastic. It would be better for the planet if we didn’t travel anywhere except by foot. It would be better for the planet if we didn’t use soap or detergent. But for now, let’s separate our rubbish into vegetation, recyclables, and other. Mostly. Sometimes. Do we have to tear the little windows out of envelopes? Because we do not want to have to do that.

We’re racist. At the absolute and very least, we expect to see stereotypical traits or behaviour in people of particular races, including our own. Of course, the best thing to do as highly evolved humans is to rise above our racist impulses and not make any judgements or choices or decisions based on race. But we do. We’re racist.

Children are a pain in the arse.

We become less physically attracted to our partners as time goes on. We have other things to keep us going, like romantic love and support and comfort and reliability and companionship and both digging the shit out of crumpets with butter and honey. But we’re not as jazzed about our partner as we used to be. And sometimes what we thought was forever isn’t. And sometimes we just go along with things anyway, because it’s better than being alone. Either way, those quirky habits that you used to think were borderline adorable are now the main reason you want to stab each other in your sleep. And oh, god. Is that an ear hair? That’s an ear hair.

Genitals are ugly and periods are gross.

We believe that people who believe in things that we don’t believe in are stupider than we are.

Attractive people will be presented with more and better opportunities in life than unattractive people.

Our parents lied to us about things. So many things.

We should get that mole looked at.

We have friends that we don’t really like. We say bad things about them to other people, but we’re nice to their face. Some of our friends don’t really like us.

Parents have a favourite child. Your parents had a favourite child.

People with sun tans look better than people without sun tans. Slim people look better than overweight people. Acne is off-putting.

We judge people based on what they do for a living.

We wonder what our friends look like having sex, and then immediately wish that we hadn’t.

People in cities barely pay any attention to the needs of people who live in the rest of the country, and find it far more comfortable that way.

We will give money to charity, but we’d rather not volunteer.

We like watching extremely famous and rich American celebrities going off the deep end and damaging their careers.

Somebody is still watching Australia’s Funniest Home Videos.

We look into the shopping trolleys of fat people.

We want our exes to go out with people who are uglier than we are. We want them to see us with someone more attractive than they are.

We would rather that our children didn’t turn out to be gay. Being gay is more difficult than not being gay. Gay people are more likely to face prejudice, or be treated differently, or be teased and bullied, or not afforded the same rights as heterosexuals. We don’t want our children to have to deal with that. Life is easier for straight people.

We lie to people about how their haircuts look. They lie to us about how our haircut looks.

There are millions of tiny animals on you, right now. Some of them are feeding on you. They’re eating your dead skin. They’re crawling through your eyelashes. They’re in your intestines.

We don’t know what it’s like to die, but we’re going to find out.

Sometimes, just seeing the word ‘yawn’ in print can make you yawn. Especially if the word ‘yawn’ is in a sentence a lot, or stretched out like this: yaw-haw-haw-haw-hawn.

Once, you sneezed and got some mucus on your hand, and you wiped your hand on your clothes or on the tablecloth or on your friend’s furniture.

When your friends have problems, you don’t always want to hear about them, especially if it’s about the time they found someone’s mucus on their couch. 

When your friends break up with someone, you don’t want them to keep talking and talking and talking about it, even if it makes them feel better.

You pretend you have to get off the phone, even when you don’t.

You washed it in the washing machine even though it said ‘dry clean only’. You opened it at this end even though it said ‘open other end’. You used it after its expiry date. You didn’t wash it before putting it into the salad. You told them there was no garlic in it even though you put garlic in it. You made it from a packet but you told them you made it from scratch. You used one and threw the rest in the bin. You just scraped the mouldy bit off. You can’t be bothered, so they’re having chicken nuggets. When they asked if anyone had any chocolate, you lied even though you had chocolate. You put salt in it. You didn’t check what kind of eggs they were. You tried a grape in the fruit and veg section. You ate it straight out of the jar. You ate it off a knife. It fell on your lap and you picked it up and ate it anyway. It fell on the floor and you picked it up and ate it anyway. You ate a Chiko Roll. You served yourself the biggest one. You’re not always a vegetarian. You ate the whole packet yourself. You ate the whole packet yourself on the way home. You ate other people’s leftovers while you were cleaning up the kitchen.

That is seriously the ugliest baby you have ever seen.

Porn.