Straight From The Horse's Arse

Five steps to a less embarrassing bottom.

· Don't eat lunch from a health food shop on the same day you do a yoga class.

· If you're trying to do a silent fart, don't stand with your back to a wall.

· If he's expecting sex in exchange for dinner and he takes you out for Indian food, he's a masochist or an idiot.

· The drunker you are, the more thoroughly you should check you haven't tucked your skirt into your undies.

· If it's itchy, just scratch it. Don't do that dance.

.

So, What's Noiiiir?

EXCLUSIVE!!

Because of my dozens of well-connected, expertly-groomed contacts, I've managed to get my grubby little hands on an extremely juicy and top-secret document:

I won't name my source, but I can let you know it wasn't Kane Bonke.

.

Urban Decay

Part 1: The Urban Office.

Back in March this year, my mate Russ and I took part in a charity music trivia night, because we're benevolent, knowledgeable, and much, much cooler than you.
As part of the festivities, the MC told us that taped under one chair at each table was a prize in the form of a 'new-release CD'. Naturally, we all scrabbled drunkenly beneath our arses to see if we'd won anything, and Russ let out a small yelp of delight as his probing hand hit pay-dirt.* Delight quickly became drop-shouldered disappointment as he raised his prize into view and discovered that it was, in fact, a Keith Urban Greatest Hits CD.**

Our first instinct was to just use the CD as a coaster, but Russ and I consider ourselves to be constructed of more creative stuff, and figured that would be just a mild insult. Having consumed a lot of music in our lives, and around sixteen jugs of beer in the last hour, we came up with a plan. A great plan. A plan that would take us across the country, across the world, and across the line that signifies that point at which other people get bored and stop.

We decided, since Keith Urban had inflicted so much pain on us throughout his career, that the least we could do was inflict some back. Our plan was to destroy the CD. Little by little. Over the space of a year.

Also, later that night, Russ encouraged me to drink a shot by yelling "JUST TAKE IT, BITCH!!" at the top of his voice. It's not really relevant here, though.

First, we needed to document Keith in his pristine form:

See? Keith even sends Keith to sleep.

That is, before five different people drew all over him:

Now there's an over-achieving silhouette.

Then we thought we'd invite Keith along to our usual Friday after-work drinks on the balcony of our office building. See, if a lesser human than Keith were to jump off this balcony, they'd probably break a bone or two. Not Keith.

Russ does 'goblet of country/western'

He just got a little chipped.

Wanna chup, bro?

After his little fall, we gave Keith a drink (to go with his chips), and asked other workmates to make him feel welcome.

This could totally be in a magazine.

One offered him a cigarette.

Keith was the butt of all jokes.

Another gave him a makeover.

We found it really widened his eyes.

Amanda gave him a tattoo.

Everyone really warmed to him.

It's a disco inferno. Without the disco.

We even bought him dinner.

We got both kinds. Ham and pineapple.

Then we had a break and made a tower out of beer bottles. I think we deserved it.

You wish, Russ.

Stay tuned for further Urban adventures, in which Keith goes interstate, international, and in the water.
This is the start of something special.


* Wow. I should totally look into writing porn.

** Hi, Keith Urban's record company. Keith Urban is great, and people should buy lots and lots of his CDs.

Yeah. You're Pretty Much Fired.

Great advertising mysteries of September 2008:

· Still trying to get a condescending, ginger soccer mum who doesn't iron her shirts, brush her hair, or avoid hitting her "son" in the head with the car-boot door to sell me NRMA insurance. Still. I'm insuring my car against being dented suddenly in the front by a freckly chick.

· Cadbury spending over six million pounds on a gorilla suit and some Phil Collins copyright. Training a real gorilla to play drums would've been cheaper, except most intelligent primates won't go near Phil Collins.

· Telling women with thrush that Canesten Duo will leave you "cool, clear, and feeling yourself again". Awesome. You've had an uncomfortable five-day abstinence, and you're antsy as all get-out.

· Showing women breaking off bits of a chocolate man wearing Lynx and eating him. All I can think about when I watch this ad is sweat, body hair and penis. Granted, all I could think about before seeing this ad was sweat, body hair and penis. Shut up.

Look! A Shiny Thing!

I’ve just walked the twenty minutes home from the train station without my iPod, leaving my thoughts to wander dangerously unfettered through my brain, free from the earphone-delivered influence of popular culture.

Without much coaxing, my thoughts quickly became startlingly cohesive concepts, which soon arranged themselves into one or two deft theories that actually made me stop mid-stride, raise my eyebrows and go “Huh. Wow”. The kind of theories that made me think that perhaps my life might change because of them.

Of course, I can’t remember a single one of them now, because my short-term memory is completely shot from the effects of living in a post-post-modern world full of short-served information and half-baked digital entertainment.

Bugger.

Might see what’s on telly.

.

Karl Stefanovic: He Is An Journalist.

Karl Stefanovic, for those who are unfamiliar, is a co-host of Today, a morning program that delivers news, sport, weather and hyperbole. He comes from a large family of news-men, his parents seemingly scattering their deep-voiced, hair-challenged spawn liberally around the globe.

Every now and then, Karl will deliver a journalistic pearl so full of insight, intelligence and sophistication that its resonant ripples stay with me all day, affecting my world view and critical stance at the deepest level.

This morning's example:

"Ooooooh. How good are beef burritos?"

.

Where Are They Then?

I know.

I know.

I've been a bad, lazy, uninspired blogger.

But, like 80s fashion, New Orleans storms, and Les Hill's career, sometimes I just have a bit of a lull.

So here. Have some long-overdue Australia's Next Top Model bum-shots.

Starvation and low-level literacy never looked so good!

In this case, the word "bum" needs some inverted commas. That's not a torso, Alamela. That's just a wiggly line.

Reblacka told me that this is the fourth pose in her repertoire of four. I couldn't be more proud.

Black is so slimming, don't you think, Alyce?

Taken shortly after Leiden beat me in a beer-swilling competition. Arse? Yes. Class? You decide.

I bullied Demelza into this shot. Also, just because I'm contractually obliged to include it in this post, it doesn't mean I have to put it near the top.

A couple of arseholes.

I was going to dress as Caris for this photo, but I couldn't get the poodle to sit still.

This lady just wouldn't leave me alone until I'd agreed to be photographed with her.

And finally (although not technically a bum-shot), a reminder to Shiny Alex Perry that he should never leave his sunglasses lying around....