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.

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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?"

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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....

And It's 'BMX Bandits', By A Nose.

Australia just won a gold medal in men's sailing at the Olympics.
The winning team has, apparently, always made a habit of naming their boats after Nicole Kidman movies.
The boat that won them the medal was named after the upcoming movie 'Australia'.

That was fucking lucky, wasn't it?


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Lights. Camera. Handset.

In olden times, there were no mobile phones. For serious!
These were halcyon days, before Bindi Irwin was born, when you had to walk into a bank to get money out for the weekend, and when having a Down's Syndrome baby was a surprise every time. Everyone was high on Liquid Paper and high jeans, and Kathleen Turner wasn't an overweight man. Good times.

Movies and television shows were still made back then, although downloading them meant tipping your television out of a wheelbarrow. Lots and lots of movies were made that didn't have mobile phones in them (although unfortunately some of them did include Kathleen Turner). If mobile phones had been around, a lot of movies would be entirely different:


Picnic At Hanging Rock

Exterior: Hanging Rock and surrounds. Ringtone (Madonna's "Like A Virgin") is heard. Miranda answers.

Miranda: 'up.

Edith: Hi, Miranda. It's Edith. Where are you? What are you doing?

Miranda: Oh, me and the girls are just going to drop some acid, throw our corsets off the cliff, turn into lizards and crawl into a crevice. Come with?

Edith: Wait… you're dropping out.

Miranda: Yeah, no kidding.



The Graduate

Interior: Big ugly church. Ringtone (Simon & Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair") is heard. Elaine answers.

Benjamin: Hi, it's Ben. Don't marry that twat.

Elaine: Stop bonking my mother.

Benjamin: Deal.

Elaine: Awesome. See you on the bus.



Scarface

Interior: Room decorated with red velvet and palm trees. Ringtone ("I'm Dreaming Of A White Christmas") is heard. Tony answers.

Tony: Ola.

Gina: Hi, Tony. I'm gonna marry Manny, 'kay? So don't shoot him or nothin'.

Tony: Thass okay. Say hello to my leedle friend.

Gina: Sure! Put him on.

Wait... What Were We Talking About?

A conversation with a workmate that started on the topic of different-coloured post-it notes just finished with the phrase "a car-shaped pile of dead wild dogs".

Awesome.