Ok, the second and third parts of the drugs rant are up HERE so go read why I think prohibition is doing more harm than good, ANd why I think the government is pushing the wrong barrow when they are witholding information "for our own good".
I have also just found out that in the state of South Australia, there is coming through a new and "draconian" internet censorship law which makes it illegal to even post any material which, if it were on film, going to be rated MA 18+. This makes my drugs rants, my porn rants and, well, nearly everything I say, totally and utterly illegal. Yay.
I told you i was a bad boy.
Now go read, sheep. You have a lot more myths to break before you will truly be as "alternative" and as "free thinking" as you think you are.
I must, however, admit that a lot of people I meet online share the same thoughts as I do. Of course, RPGers at #shadowrun and perverts on the Thinhline BBS are not your everyday AOL sheep, but shit happens.
go on. do it because I told you to.
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 2/20/2001 10:50:05 PM

Sorry, no sunday rant. I was hung over, the place was a complete shitcan after a huge cocktail party and people didn't fuck off till 4 in the afternoon, at which point I went and played counterstrike, OK?
this probably spurred me into the beginnings of a massive rant, one so big, so spectacular and so in-depth it will take me perhaps 4-5 days and 4-5 parts to complete.
Drugs.
Its a big issue at the moment - do we legalise a few drugs, do we provide heroin injecting rooms, and healthcare to addicts, or do we throw them back in the gutter and cover them up with the rug of ignorance and prohivibion again? Prohibition isn't working, its time we abandoned it as a lost cause and found new solutions to one of humanity's oldest and most persistent practises (or problems, if you like).
we have been using drugs for thousands of years, and all of a sudden its illegal, immoral and will see your addiction or habit ruin your life, when all it is doing is crating a physical need. To get that need satiated, you must break the law, and/or buy hideously expensive narcotics of criminals.Why? because there is a lot of useless goddamn pride, tradition and pig-headed morals embedded in the legal position on narcotics. Until the government looks at the problem squarely and openly and rationally, there will always be prohibition, which breeds crime. If its a crime to take it, a crime to buy it and a crime to sell it, then of course it breeds criminals and evil. But if its not a crime, people might seek help easier, have better health and there will be no goddamn organised crims involved in its retail.
that, alone, is a damn good reason to get rid of prohibition.
Read my rant on alcohol to begin this journey of enlightenment.
Rant over, for now.
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 2/19/2001 05:12:50 PM

Yep, so I voted Labor. Big deal. they are all fucked in the head. Politics is crap. Democracy is a fucked system - you elect a bunch of corrupt maniacs and they go wild, screwing you over nine ways to sunday.

Democracy is today's rant. Read it, it might actually turn you from the sheeplike path created by the media. Go. Yo. w3rd.
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 2/18/2001 01:06:46 AM

Hi. so, yeah, I was like, the Chines are, you know, totally fucked up.
China is slugging internet freedom? No, they are just up to their normal human rights violations vs. freedom of speech. Surprise me next time.

I have updated the Pokemon rant's webliography, the Vegetarians webliography, the
Nazi Treatment webliography, the Speed, Smokin' webliographies.

I have also added a new couple of sections, the Weblogs section, of blogs worthy of notice, and the Craplogs which are worthy of death only.

Can you believe that introducing seat belts caused more deaths than it saved, in australia, Ireland, UK, USA and Sweden, and likely elsewhere? Counter-intuitive, but only because you have fallen for the mass propaganda and ad campaigns funded to stop you killing yourself in fun and interesting ways.

I have, you will notice when you click here , enhanced my pupative image mapping skills. Am I cool and sexy, or what?
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 2/16/2001 01:24:05 PM

Heard of Karl Marx? Read any of his works? Think its all bullshit, communist propaganda?
Well, it might be, but he said the capitalist system will bring about its own downfall. I tend to agree.
MARXISM is the topic oftoday's rant.

There wasn't a rant yesterday because I was playing Mechwarrior Vengeance. I played it for so long all I heard in my dreams was "enemy detected." That was when I knew I had to get out more. But its so hard with no friends who are available to do things with you. Everyone else has jobs, except for my brother, and who wants to spend 100% of their time with their family? So, I guess, I at least should be glad to be able to play the game.

Want me to link your blog? I'll be making a list of decent blogs on my site, and since most of the people who hit this portal for my site are bloggers, I feel I may as well offer some ridiculously cheap and pointless advertising opportunity. But hey, last week I got 419 hits, and its on track for a repeat this week so who knows...?
Don't be afraid, I won't bite. Licking and sucking, however, are on the cards...

posted by Heironymous Bosch at 2/15/2001 01:50:34 PM

Its been a big couple of days for Otaku Graveyard.
I've updated the architecture a bit, adding a link up top to my new disclaimer, my bio, and I have also added my new animated iLobotomy banner down below.
I have updated the Environment rant, expanding on it a fair bit. There is a Speeding rant, about how we are being a bunch of fuckwits regarding our speeding legislation. The abortion rant is finally on-stream.
My pictures page is coming along slowly.

Time to imitate a few other weblogs out there, I think. I'll go and steal their damn format and parody a few of the more LF ones out there. (LF = limp faggoty). Maybe I should just pick on Skrillz.net again, but that's perhaps a bit too easy.

Go, herdlings, check out the new stuff. I'll be working on my AD&D cookbook item a lot over the next few weeks as well.
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 2/13/2001 01:19:19 PM

My cat is chucking up furballs. I am so depressed. It is hot and humid. I have no job. My girlfriend just left me (true), I don't know what I want to have for lunch.

Welcome to blog land, munchkins.
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 2/13/2001 01:21:28 PM

Today, you get discrimination. Yes, you (insert racist slur here), I should kick you ass back to the jungle, you (insert sexist slur here). Stop stealing my jobs, stealing my women, stealing my thunder and sitting in your little suburban enclaves. Goddamn, being white, male and middle-class is so hard.
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 2/12/2001 11:28:19 AM

Minor surgery, but, hell, its worth it. My tits and webpage are so bouncy now. 600 hits so far, 409 in the last week. It means someone is reading this, someone somewhere is getting serious brain trauma. I like that idea.
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 2/12/2001 11:33:50 AM

This day's update: SPEED. Bleargh, I'm hung over from a toga pub crawl, excuse the brevity of this message. Or not, I'm too trashed to give a shit.
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 2/11/2001 07:20:14 PM

Well, last night I got kickbanned from an IRC channel by an autocratic hell bitch. I like the fact that I got kicked, it proved to me and a fair few other people that she was pretty much just excercising her power for the hell of it. whoever made her an op must have his reasons, but I can't for the life of me agree with them. Then we got talking about japscat, and she made grumbling noises like "I'll kick the lot of you."
Not my idea of what an op should be. In fact, it was simply the fact that we knew she was a psycho that we stopped chatting about it, and very soon after left the channel. Its psychos like these which turn people off IRC. Freedom of Speech and all, hell, its not even that. Its the right of all present to chat, and if one person and one person only can take offence at you, what you say or what your represent, and they can kick you then its hardly a workable system. Its fucked.
So fuck you DVix. Slut.

Bitchin' rant is fucking over.

Check out my rant on vegans" for your edification and amusement.

Go on, git.
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 2/9/2001 03:34:36 PM

OK it was far too soon to be claiming that Blogger was working.

Its on the Pokemon rant.

Today's rant:

Music

With updated Links and other goodies on the main page.

Run off and enjoy, herdlings.

posted by Heironymous Bosch at 2/8/2001 09:03:19 AM

Wow. Blogger is working fine...again. No more Java null pointer exceptions! Perhaps that little JS editing I did a while ago was the problem. Who knows. Anyway, more updates on their way at Otaku Graveyard. Sorry if the link below didn't work for you, I fucked up. Oh well.

Today's rant:
Pokemon
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 2/7/2001 12:35:58 PM

Oooh. Debugging is fun. Debugging Flogger js code bugs in my template is muchly fun.
var canEdit=0 -- WTF?? This pushes the redesign up the priority roster one last notch. I'm going to work like a webmonkey tomorrow.
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 2/6/2001 12:04:09 AM

My new site, which is in reality just a new format for this site, is ready for its sea trials here.
It promises a shitload better naviation ability, parsing the links and funny shit from the rants, an images index, and upgraded rants, which will all soon have webliographies where needed.
This site is a fucking dud. In fact, if it wasn't for the convenience, and the ability to get going easily it would probably not have started. Blogger is good while you are learning html, but once you know even a basic amount of shit, its becomes easy. I mean, if you could have seen this site at the beginning it would have made you embarrassed that I was a human just like you. No go, check it out my sheep.

Baaa.
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 2/6/2001 02:18:36 PM

I just realised there is a state election on the 17th. This is a bit alarming, really. They sent me no mail, I generally don't buy newspapers. I'm a modern net hermit, really. I couldn't tell you how many kids in Palestine got blown away this week if you paid me. Well, I'd take a guess, but that's because I'm a greedy bitch.
It is interesting how we have all come to rely on the TV, or in my case, the computer for entertainment and information. I guess I could religiously check news.com.au for news, but that takes effort. Without a TV to spoon feed me information (mostly about strange American cultural icons and dysfunctional families) I am cut adrift from the torrent of information. I am a poor member of the global village.
You see, a true global villager is a free marketeer, which means a consumer, which relies on advertising. Advertising is pervasive, but the most effective, all-encompasing and most recognised medium for it is the TV. without one I am unaware of the benefits of Brand A cleaner vs Brand B cleaner. I am unaware how much my middle-class domestic bliss could be enhanced by buying a gel-formulated scrubbing compound, or a cold water detergent. I do not know that my TV is not a Sony and therefore isn't the hippest most-new age piece of electronica, nor that LG is better because its designed "for people".
I am at a loss to explain my fashion sense to strangers, being the odd one out. The best I can do is say that I don't watch the tube and am therefore immune to marketing forces, newest trends and "fashion", the newest, coolest most "rad" or "sick" surfwear, etcetera. When people ask me "Did you watch that episode of Buffy last week?" I always say "No.", and it takes people a few dozen repeats of this procedure to realise, belatedly, thaat I have no idea why they think its funny. Eventually, they ask "Do you watch anything?" and I tell them I own a TV, but its never on.
I don't miss the tentacled beast. Cthulhu can't enter my mind through the interference when I flip over to a channel untuned. I spend my time on the net entertaining myself with gross pictures at stileproject, or reading Geistmag, herdofsheep.com, or Something Awful, or anything you can find up there in the link table. I write my rants, I do some surfing, I find new stuff, and I download heaps of porn. I even insult people on BBS's and talk on IRC.
Why would I watch the TV, just to get brainless, dull and repetitive American cultural anaesthesia?
The news. Yes, the only thing I miss about TV is the sanitised, censored, biased and populist-iconic news delivered by such babes as Sandra Sully (I so want to do her, any Aussie who watches the late night news on channel 10 knows what I'm talking about) and retarded, pap-smear smiling brainwipes like the long lost and unlamented Stan Grant or Derryn Hinch.
TV, I spit on you.

OK, today I take advantage of my server space to bring you, the consumer, several interesting images. Well, one or two.

Finally the Man shows us he's no pussy. Email me if you want the big version twice the dimensions of that one.

Isn't that so true?

Work continues on the webpage, as fast as it can. I'm going to be expanding these rants, to include a webliography of sites I can reference and so on, just to prove I'm not always a complete moron (so there, Mr Boutiller), but of course, a lot are 90% opinion so it might be hard to prove all of them or back them up. But that's what rants are about. Spouting off your inner bullshit in order to amuse, shock, entertain and, perhaps educate. I'd like to think that if anyone reads this site (and about 60 people a week do, at the moment) they at least think a bit more than superficially about what I have said.
Sure, I am probably wrong about a lot of things, at least according to most people's opinions and occasionally due to facts. But that does not obviate the value in reading an extremist opinion. there is a grain of truth in every piece of propaganda, so its worth listening to it if only to get an idea of the place where the other person is coming from. Sometimes that grain of truth strikes a chord, good or bad, and it forces a change of view, or changes your outlook on the subject. It may even reinforce your opinion on the subject or the propagandist.
This si what the American's free speech is about, really. Its not about "letting every crackpot in the States spout off racist drivel", its about letting the people in the middle of the road listen to all sides of the argument and make up their own mind. This is the main bone behind the Jewsish rant, which is slowly becoming infamous. So long have we listened to only one viewpoint about the war, one version of the victor's truth, that we forget that our forebears did inhumane things, and are doing ridiculous and petty things today because there is no one around to bring them back to reality.
So next time your local right wing extremists, mormons or loonies get out and hit you up door-to-door for votes, conversion or support, query them intelligently and listen to their arguments for a while. You might be surprised at their kernel of truth, and justified in your opinions by the pith of lies surrounding it.
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 2/5/2001 01:38:42 PM

euthanasia
The reasons for euthanasia are legion, the reasons against are few, and based in ignorance and religion.
Lets start with the terminally ill, suffering immeasurable, untold pain. Pain that is so pervasive and intense that even opiates and morphine cannot full quash it. Pain which takes even the enjoyment of your family's love out of your life, it reduces you to a drug-dependant cripple with no quality of life. Pain you and I have not experienced, and have no idea about (unless, of course, you have, in which case you know exactly what I'm talking about and may readily agree with me).
People suffering this level of pain may consider it worth ending their lives, especially if there is no obvious way to alleviate it once the high-end analgesics are ineffective. I'm not talking about people shot in the guts with a half dozen 9mm shells - that heals, its a short term injury, and the person will know this. I'm talking brain cancer here, folks, I'm talking advanced necrotic sarcomas on the abdomen, irreparable gangrene, things like this. Truly massive and irreversible harm, which needs long-term debilitating care.
Why can't people decide that it is a waste of time, life and money to keep themselves alive, and be allowed to slip quietly away? If they don' want to, fair enough - I'm not talking about killing people because they are sick. However, if someone wants to die, then I don't see that it is right, humane or sensible to stop them. I have no right to tell a 90 year old brain cancer sufferer to live on for even one more year - what point? Or a twenty year old woman dying of bone cancer, in excruciating pain, with six months left to live - should she be forced to live those six months if she does not want to?
Apparrently, yes. We are the cruellest, most disgusting, cold blooded reptiles sometimes. We cling to life so desperately, unable to measure the pain in others and unable to understand it. Our religion says suicide is evil, that euthanasia is murder and therefore evil. So we pass laws.
I think that, considering the stresses on the world to come, if someone wants to opt out of life, we let them. Sure, we can quiz them and make sure they really want to do it before we administer the lethal injection or prescribe them the deadly Kevorkian / Nitschke cocktail of drugs, but we should not stop them.
I would feel sick to my soul if I was responsible for making someone suffer against their will for years and years. Yet the religious people have an amazing ability to dodge this by saying they have God's will on their side, blah, blah, blah. Others say its against the law, and they don't want to do anything illegal.
My mother pulled the plug on my grandmother when she had a diabetic stroke that wiped out half her brain. The doctor said it would be like flogging a dead horse. My mother decided no life was better than a life as a living vegetable, a packet of meat pumping blood around a network of tubules. She opted for dignity rather than longevity, made a decision about he mother's fate. It was hard, very very hard. Now my aunt doesn't ever forget - she always says "She could have recovered. She could have lived a good life for another five years, or ten years."

Could have. The selfishness of the person saying these things, and the reliance on probability, shows the inherent weakness in the arguments. You probably know I don't put much store in moral, religious or ethical considerations regarding such issues (if not, read my earlier rants). This is just the same.
Let me tell you about that american woman who had breast cancer in Antarctica. She was the only qualified doctor, she had a malignant, terminal cancer. She could have died in Antarctica, leaving therest of her crew stranded without medical aid. She had to operate on herself, which in anyone's book, is a damn difficult thing to do. She had access to top line analgesics (pain killers). Yet it is illegal in the USA to prescribe such medication for your own use or to self-administer such drugs. So she didnt use them, she cut open her tit with a scalpel and fished around in the blood and gore assisted only by headache / period pain tablets. Let me tell you, they would have had fuck all effect.
She did this because of strict, anal and illogical adherence to laws. Her personal situation didn't enter into it, the exigencies of life in Antarctica, of being a vital member of a team and therefore vital to the team's success and irreplaceable, the responsibility to be functional...it all went out the window in the face of a law meant to stop people from getting whacked on anaesthetics, or to stop doctors getting high because of their ready access to such drugs. It was a law which in no way was designed to prevent cancer sufferers in Antarctica from self-operating and preserving their life and potentially the lives of 30 scientists, for another 9 months. She had marriage problems, and martyred herself due to them, under a guise of adhering to the law. In reality, the NOAA and her local jurisdiction had no hold over her - and would not have dared to prosecute her because she was a) a woman dealing with breast cancer and to charge her would invoke feminist wrath b) she was a media celebrity and c) it is logically corrupt to do that.
I think she knew it. She went ahead and sacrificed herself on the law to, I don't know, gain more publicity? Martyr herself more in front of her ex-husband?

the same goes for plenty of people faced with euthanasia. It is a common practise. Stroke, heart attack, accident victims and cancer victims, the elderly or the genetically abnormal are all eased from the world painlessly and gently by doctors. 99% of cases are unreported, as most if not all parties involved are consenting or in agreement (ie; conspiriring). Of the other 1%, nearly 99% are ignored even when it is brought to medical ethics tribunals, or court.
This is sensible. Doctors and midwives have been excercising their privilege of life and death for thousands of years, mostly with the consent of the mothers of deformed babies, the relatives of dying and pain-ridden patients, or the patients themselves.
But the moment we try to enact a law legalising carefully thought out, carefully regulated and guaranteed humane euthanasia, the religious moral crusaders quash it. Take the Northern Territory euthanasia legislation, first in Australia, second in the world after the Netherlands (by weeks). It was enacted by a population who wanted it, supported by millions of people around Australia, if not a clear majority, and quashed by politics in an ethics vote led by the morally strict Prime Minister, John Howard, who has since come out in favour of pro-lifers, taxing vices like alcohol and economic rationalism, anti-welfare and free world trade reforms.
Something like 15 people were eased away in the few months the law was extant and allowed to run. Its still in force, just quarantined behind a federal injunction.
So, next time you have debilitating, incurable and incredibly painful brain cancer...blame your fellow humans and hope to high shit that your doctor is a liberal-thinking, humane person. and get a good argument together to convince him if you want to end your miserable life.
and then blame the selfish, frightened masses of cowards.

Death is natural.

Rant over.
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 2/4/2001 12:00:35 PM

This is on my personal webspace now, so soon I'll be able to cut and paste it and turn it into otakugraveyard. fingers crossed. Soon, I will have graphix up here.
I am also going to put in a frame so I can keep my rants in a list down the side of the screen and have them pop up in the main frame window. This will make it easier for you bastards to navigate around. Is that not nifty?
Here is my handiwork. Its not all come.

posted by Heironymous Bosch at 2/4/2001 12:38:42 PM

You have gone to Download.com. you have got yourself a whole suite of web authoring tools, image editors, shareware, FTP client programs, the whole pretty red plastic shopping basket full.
They are all going to spam the crap out of your life in the next 30 days before the trial period is up, and some will stop functioning.
What are you going to do?
You are going to go to www.astalavista.com, and enter into the search engine the name of your shareware programs, each and every one of them, from ACDsee to Winzip8.0 and you are going to download the crack zips, open them up, cut and paste them into the directory of the programs and register them. No more hassles, and you can even upgrade old versions of Photoshop sequentially until you have a fully optioned version of Photoshop 6.0.

Isn't the web an amazing place? I love the web. It is my friend.
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 2/4/2001 08:28:21 PM

Tards
We shouldn't let them breed amongst themselves. The idea that two people with genetic abnormalities should be allowed to breed because to do otherwise would be akin to eugenics or Nazism, is frankly fucking retarded. Its a liberal-left religious-politically correct brainwipe, that's what it is.
People are so quick to give other people rights, without checking their ability to handle the responsibilities. Lets consider a couple of downs syndrome sufferers wanting to have a baby. They want to because their instincts tell them to, but when queried about their ability to handle the responsibility of a new baby they say they have a job and they will love it dearly. The able-bodied people who help look after the disabled couple came to their defense and provided liberal, loving, peach-blossom reasons for letting them do it - in other words, the mental faculties lacking in the couple were provided yet again by a mentall acute defender or carer.
this in itself should be proof enough that they should not be allowed to breed. Have sex, hell yes, everyone needs to fuck. But not reproduce, not if they are incapable of doing their parental duty all the time, 100%.
But what if the baby is abnormal, too? Parents have to spend inordinate amounts of time with disabled children when they are bringing them up. they are disabled, after all, and this is a deficit in ability the parents must make up. Normal kids are already difficult to deal with, and we expect a disabled couple to cope with even a normal child? Get real.
What if either of the parents gets frustrated, as downs people so easily do, and shakes the baby? Would we put the parent in jail like we would to an able-minded and able-bodied person? I doubt it, because mental disability is diminished responsibility.

Is it not lovely how we coddle the less fortunate when they are not entiely in control of their situation or body or are disabled or deformed. Affirmative action is a great example. It does, I admit, allow them to involve themselves as much as possible with society, the workforce and so on, and that's great. I'm all for that. Its when we go harder on those caught up by poor economic situations, youth or drugs (and other moral no-nos which the middle-class white majority avoids), that the contrast becomes stark. Kids in Australia are being thrown in jail for 12 months for nicking half a bottle of whisky, not because the judges want to, but because white, middle-class security-paranoid bigots in full-time comfortable employment voted in governments which wanted mandatory sentencing.
Yet, they so easily dodge and veer away from issues such as the downs couple and their plan to have a baby. Why? Because, to a morally upright, comfortable person it is disturbing. Seeing a disabled or deformed person on the street is disquieting, it takes getting used to, but its so easy to find a quick one sentence solution to the problem so you can sweep these 'hideous' people back under the rug and forget them.
We put them on the pension for life when they have schizophrenia, then allow them to work and get money while on the pension because it 'builds their morale and integrates them in society'. Meanwhile, normal kids are being kicked off the dole because they cannot apply for enough jobs and aren't being retrained or re-educated because the government has thrown them on a scrap heap. Fair? No.
Young mothers, ill-educated about pregnancy, get pregnant and aren't assisted in caring for their babies (or, more precisely, are often not directed towards the government assistance that is there). Their children are taken away, no questions asked, little chance of reply. Meanwhile, we are too pussy-ffoted and squeamish with the issue of the downs couple to make a sensible decision and say no.

Many people talk about the gene pool. Many people wonder aloud why we should support badly disabled people. Many people say we should rationalise this issue and make decisions. Few are willing to do so.
OK, then. If we are worried about the retarded and handicapped, and worried that we support them and it costs hideous amounts of resources, why don't we euthanise them early (even in the womb) and deal with the problem once and for all. There was big hoo-hah about an American couple who went through 24+ embryos in an IVF program so they could have one normal child free from defects. I applaud them, their heard-hearted devotion to producing a human with as few deadly genetic defects as possible. natural selection is invoked alongside morals to condemn this - I say pooh-pooh on that. They had the social responsibility to excercise their right to have a defect-free child (even if it was to get marrow for a preious defective child, but at least they didn't decide to have more and take pot luck).
If everyone did this, if we recategorised it away from being "abortion", then there would be no problem. There would be generations of healthy people, billions of dollars and thousands of people would be freed up, perhaps to teach kids about pregnancy and educate them not to steal bottles of whisky.

Of course, the nay-sayers frighten us with tales of Nazism, of how we will get carried away with the search for perfection that it will mean we will do...something bad. Its never quite specified, its always "Where will you draw the line?".
Well, it does not matter. Wherever the line is drawn, humanity will strive to keep it. We can eliminate Parkinsons, we can eliminate some congenital diseases and we can do it within 2 generations. As our genetic toolboxes fill up with viral-vectored genetic editing suites and so on, it will become easier.
We don't have to fear it just because we watched Gattaca, or another cloning movie or the Matrix. Our kids will be different, genetically cleaner perhaps, but they are still going to be our kids. Genes cleaned of a defect will not turn on their mothers and fathers or those who did not need modification or editing, and kill them. They will still be as good or evil, as greedy or selfless, as petty or charitable as you or I. They are just going to have one thing more than us - the knowledge that their kids will be able to grow up free from Parkinsons, downs syndrome, cerbral palsy and other diseases.
Isn't that worthwhile? don't you want that for yourself, right now, so that your kids will gorw up just like you. I have sensitive, annoying skin. I'm not going to ask a doctor or geneticist to wipe my skin's genes out and edit in the genes from Claudia Shiffer's skin so my kids will grow up free of my annoyances. The gain isn't worth it. I'm not going to screen my embryo's for the bad skin genes. But I will scan them for parkinsons if I can, and select onw without it, so that my grandkids and great-great grandkids will not have to fear being made invalid at 50 from a disease which we know about, can screen for, and get rid of.

Eugenics is coming, whether Bush and his Christian ilk like it or not. Its up to us to make sure it is used for long-term purposes, not petty things like intelligence , beauty or a fat dick. Do your part- think about it, consider if you would want it, and analyse your decision for greed or religious influences.
Only when its your own mind being made up for you can you possibly say you have an opinion.

Go, herdlings. Just don't breed tards on my planet.
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 2/3/2001 04:05:15 PM

Rant over, for now.
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 1/24/2001 06:06:22 PM

OK, time for today's blog.
Arguments.
Online arguments seem to consist of
AoL UzArr: Justin timberlake is sooo hott!!!
KaOs563: Justin = fagort!
AoL UzArr: No he is not, you fucker!
KaOs563: He is fucking limp, you ass! And he can't sing! Go fucke your sistar!
AoL UzArr: u r a pedofile.
KaOs563: Your a fot hoe!
AoL UzArr: Least I m not a fat slut liek u r!!!1@!! Go fuekc youre mohter.
KaOs563: At leest I put ouet unliek u, fridgid biotch! Choad mastah!
AoL UzArr: I'll haxor your rsse cunt wiep!

What the fuck happened to people being able to debunk each others opinions using logical arguments, without resorting to petty insults at the drop of a hat?
OK, the other flip to this coin is the Mensa style intelligencia battling it out with a thesaurus for world domination, or more brownie points in their elite C++ programming silo. These freaks think that using a massive vocabulary (unlike the previous two) and erudite, sagacious terms indicates a positively astronomic intellectual development. Observe:

Phlebas222: I think that Justin Timberlake is a modern Katzian gestalt for all the hebephilic urges pervading modern society, and he also displays some truly delectable visual attributes, and a skill at churning out mass-market musical pigswill that is truly memorable.
Chaelis: I think you have got it wrong, my oh-so esteemed friend. Your argument is lucid, but I disagree with the statement about hebephilia, as most of his "fans" are in face hebeian themselves, therefore their liking of his androgynous good looks (sic) is only natural and, though deplorable, one can understand their motives when one takes into account the normal hormonal oversurge displayed by hebeian girls. Your description of his muse is quite apt, as it is truly only pigswill and I find nothing original about it whatsoever, especially considering the amount of similarity between Backstreet Boys, 5ive and any other boy pop band you care to name. To quote the low-brow masses "he sucks".
Phlebas222: I find it ironic that you must resort to such uneducated role models as those lesser beings who inhabit the grade schools, using their vernacular terms such as "sucks" to opine upon the masterly Justin Timberlake. Indeed, this displays a singular flaw in your IQ, which I shall be hertowith informing the #mensaclones sysops of in order to remove your contamination of this otherwise intellectually superior channel. Upon phreaking your user account from your ISP in under 2.05 minutes and downloading your financial transactions record from the server and 3 credit reporting agenciesI have found evidence that you subscribe to goatse.cx and are a "fan" of Britney Spears. This disgusting pecadillo is reason enough to have your genes removed from Darwinian circulation forever.
Chaelis: I find your threats to have me kickbanned from this channel invigorating. Having phreaked your user account in 1.245 minutes, you will find yourself subscribed to 342 mailing lists for child pornography, and the FBI will be around in 2.02 minutes to arrest you in connection with a suspicious drug parcel, acting off information which I have secretly injected into the FBI mainframe. I sincerely wish you the best of luck from prison and I hope your rectal mucosa is up to the challenge. Ta-ta.
Phlebas222: You fucking cockswallower!!!!@!!

So, as you can see, a vocabulary is a good thing to have, but where was the argument? Oh, that's right, most people are incapable of laying their points out in logical order. In fact, logic escapes most people, including Misanthropic Bitch.
Yes, even this most learned and hateful of net personages is prone to the odd piece of below-the-belt insulting when she finds her ideals or intellectual position undermined by equally intelligent/argumentative or learned people such as herself. OK, she does tend to get a lot of hate mail from AOL users, and they require nothing more than a half-concocted tissue of an argument to dominate in any argument or flame war. AOL users tend to lack such things as a decent postulate, a rebuttal and any form of hard facts. Let alone mention their insults.
. Its a shame. Her arguments are damn good. I agree with most of them, if not all of them although on a few points of procedure I would differ.
but I don't agree that you can should take the position that you are smarter than everyone else - its ridiculous and essentially tips people off to the fact that you fear you are not. After all, who would argue with AOL users if they were, in fact, the smartest person on the planet? It shows a streak of petty immaturity I wish she did not have.
I'm always happy to grant people their opinions, but these days opinions are put forth as facts and vice versa. This is mainly where people go wrong, especially confronting the bitch. She also gets it quite wrong, from time to time, as she obviously honestly believes she is not only intellectually superior, but that her opinions and intellectual propositions are in fact, the only viable and correct answer and seeks to use published sources to props up unproven propositions such as legalising drugs will not lead to 100% crack addiction. This unwillingness to allow others their POV shows narrowmindedness, which is a distinct flaw shared by 99% of people today, especially those online, who are supposed to be "broadening" their horizons, and who are in reality merely exposing themselves to a lot of outside influences without taking them onboard and treating them as alternative, equally valid points of view or ways of life.
I'm not saying its good to be flat out wrong. When someone says something that is provably wrong, then its fair enough to refute them. What I also find is that the bitch also can't help but put the superiority (inferiority) complex in there, and puts the boot in about how stupid the other person is. Ill informed, OK. Ill educated...probably. Stupid? I don't think I have truly met a great deal of stupid people. Ignorant and ill educated some may be, but few are totally incapable of forming opinions and discussing them.
In the end, it all boils down to restraint. Its so easy to pop up a persona on the net, lets say as a Misanthropic Bitch, and run with it. Its pathetically easy to insult someone - I ought to know. It is second nature for educated, lucid and informed people to smack down those less educated and informed than themselves simply by spouting a few simple insults, and sprinkling your opinions in with it so that it sounds like you know what you're talking about. In fact, I have seen real idiots do this time and again, but there comes a limit to this, it loses its appeal and people begin forming negative opinions about your true intellectual capacity.
It may take you a bit of effort to delete the "you fucking moron!!!!@!" from your post, but you'll feel and look smarter for it. It might take you a bit of effort to swallow your pride and admit the other person's opinion might be right, at least from the direction he's coming at the problem, but you'll seem more gracious and cultured than the flat-out naysayer.
It might be a chore to do some research, to think a few minutes before you reply, but its worth it.
Form your own opinions. Don't take a common media made position on a subject. Think about it yourself, consider what's right and what's wrong with both or all sides and find a position which you feel is as right as it can be. Think about it, consider if it could work and don't be afraid to admit you're wrong.
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 1/23/2001 03:06:36 PM

OK, I have been fucking around with this site's layout and colours. Not that this is the current extent of my HTML skills:

Rip off other people's shit.
Post it up on my site.
Claim nothing except credit for my own nefarious ends. Muahaha muahaha.
If you recognise a colour off your site, well email me. contact my ass
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 1/23/2001 11:10:32 PM

Greetings earthlings
Yes, another blog. I am a great big pile of happy blogness.
Today's installment looks at the Brisbane sunshine. Simple topic you may say, well fear no more for it is more complicated than you may think.

I went to the beach yesterday, and fuck did I get sunburned. Queensland is the skin cancer capital of the world, and I fear if I keep this up I'll only add to the statistics. My 24 y/o girlfriend of sorts got a mole cut off her back last week, and the biopsy showed it to be cancerous and just starting its run towards melanoma.
This is bad news for me, as its a wakeup call about my skin health.
Ok, those of you living in Nevada may be saying "Y'all, he's full of bullshit, he must have stayed out in the sun all day long." but no, it was nly between 11 and 1, and I had SPF 15 sunscreen on. It not my worst case of sunburn ever, but its there, and I have been sunning myself for 15-30 minutes a day for the last month, so I was badly surprised.

How can it be so savage, this Queensland sun? Hmmm? Its the lack of the ozone layer. OK, we've stopped producing those dreaded CFCs, but the damage is not repairing itself as fast as we'd like, and its probably another decade off before the ozone hole closes over...if at all. I believe this is true, because my flaming skin doesn't lie to me with its redness and pain.
Global warming, I'm not so sure about. The signs are there, and the scientists are all agreeing, but I know scientists. It took centuries for Elie de Beaumont's theory about a shrinking, cooling earth to be discarded in favour of the current plate tectonics model.
It took a hundred years for Darwinian evolution to be actually proved. What makes us so sure that global warming is the be-all and end-all of death and armageddon these scientists are proclaiming it to be? Media shock tactics and the unfortunate propensity for scientists to run in a herd just like stocbrokers. Its bizarre, but the so-called best and brightest behave like the lowest form of life on the planet (the stockbrokers).
Fucking insane if you ask me.
Why do I think its not unequivocal that global warming is causing these weather patterns?
A:We only have 200 years of climatic records, and that's only in certain areas of Britain with poorly calibrated thermometers. Given disasters follow a power law (ie; something double as severe happens 1/4 the time) can we say we have experienced the height of weather extremes anywhere in these less-than 200 years?
B:We do not at all understand ocean convection, the Southern Oscillation Index, El Nino/La Nina, the North Atlantic Index and the Indian Ocean Dipole. How can we say what they do and how it all interrelates?
C:The sun is currently in the peak of its 11 year high...and who says the sun doesn't have a longer amplitude cycle too? Remember this when they tell you its been the hottest decade on record and the hottest years were 1998, last year, this year and probably next year.
D: In the jJurassic, world mean temperatures were 5-6 degrees centigrade warmer than currently. Is the current greenhouse effect really going to result in total environmental collapse if we raise the temperature by 2 degrees or so? I doubt it.
E: Are we really going to see a rise in global sea levels. consider that the ocean weighs down the crust and is in isostatic equilibrium. The more water you pile on, the lower the ocean crust sinks and voila, you only get a half as much rise. Still bad for Bangladesh, but not catastrophic.
F:In the 1700's there was a distinct decade long cold snap, a supposed climatological aberration. This happens time and again, who says the current upsurge in temperatures is not a reverse of this? The evidence for cold snaps is increased glaciation, but evidence of heatwaves is not as easy to catalogue, especially since no one is looking.
G: In the last 4000-6000 years we have finally come out of the last ice age. Yes, even 4000 years ago, glaciation was still incredibly more advanced than it is today, even though the ice age ended about 10,000 years ago. It takes a long time for these things to balance. Now, who says we have already reached the peak of the anti-ice age teperatures? People with a mere 200 years of highly spotty meteorological records, that's who.
H: During the Carboniferous, an estimated 5 billion tons of carbon was trapped in coal seams throughout the world. Given the Earth is a closed system, that carbon had to come from plants, which got it from the biosphere. Since we are simply recycling this carbon, how can we know it is "wrong"?
I: Volcanoes and geysers, lakes and oceans are natural carbon dioxide sources. If you have a hot century as far as volcanoes go, this can release millions of tons of carbon dioxide in seconds. Are the scientists taking this into account?

Now, I am not saying that burning metric million tons of carbon dug out of the ground is going to have no effect, but consider the arguments used.
"In the last 150 years the temperature has risen X amount." In the last 150 years, 99% of the world's carbon emissions have occurred in the last two decades. Its a facetious argument on the part of the scientists claiming such a long history of industrialisation and carbon usage/emission. Take the late 1800's. How many people used coal to power anything? Europeans. How much per capita? Fuck all. Net effect - nada. Be real scientists, start focusing on the modern usage and totally forget historical usage as it is merely used for psychological reasons to guilt the voting public into thinking we have a) a larger, longer-term problem and b) reduces the overall value of their own emissions because they think a lot of damage has accumulated before their time. Both are unscientific responses, and the scientists should really try and get people thinking about their daily usage of electricity and petrol.
"Greenhouse gas emissions must be cut because of (all the previous reasons)." No, not technically true. Governments need to cut their voter addiction, the addition to keeping the voting public happy at all costs. We need carbon conservation laws, if for no other reason than it is a non-renewable resource. We need to force car manufacturers to make electric cars, we need to put solar cells on the roof of every house, or make fuel cell generators small enough for the average home. We do NOT need to cut emissions as this only brings hardship which voters will sway away from. We need the alternatives right now or ASAP, so that the government can phase out registrations for petrol-powered cars over a 10 year period, replacing them with electric cars. We need high inputs of research and manufacturing dollars into solar power. It needs to be expended by governments in a thrown-away money style. The government needs to build a solar cell factory and aim to make no money from it ever. Profit and loss are not government concerns, and until a government makes cells for a loss, and explains to the taxpayers why its losing their money (ie; to save their asses) then it won't happen.
If this doesn't happen, alternatives will not be cheap or readily available. Private enterprise is run by power-mad men with small penis syndrome. they have an outlook of 6-12 months, just long enough to get to their next share dividend and annual report. Long term climatic goals do not enter into the increasingly computerised, faceless bean-counting programs. If the government worked ut equations and forced business to factor environmental concerns into everyday business decisions, then we might see progress.

Face it people, we are an organism like any other. We will survive this greenhouse effect in some manner, we will prosper. But if we cannot control ourselves here on Earth, how the fuck can we expect to manage another environment of our own creation out in space, on mars or on Alpha Centauri?
My advice is to think about energy vs utility. Do you need that light on? Can you walk instead of drive, or catch the bus? Its your responsibility to minimise your impact on the planet until the businessmen and policymakers are either frightened by mob action into a decent response, or they magnanimously provide the masses with easily affordable alternatives. The only other option, DIY, is fast approaching impossibility.

That's it from me. My skin's redness has made me write this, even though the ozone hole is unrelated to greenhouse effects. Take care and don't kill each other.
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 1/22/2001 11:36:11 AM

OK, Dink has informed the world that his wonderful project, City eYe, as can be found at www.schoolofass.com is on the back burner till he gets a life, a job and nookie from his fiance.
Fair enough. If anyone reads this, so much the better. Check out schoolofass.com, there are shitloads of other things apart from City eYe. I'll be continuing this semi-unofficial site/blog for my own gratification and amusement, but I'm also going to blog a bit elsewhere.

Some other sites you may find entertaining are:
ouchytheclown.com a very funny man indeed, one for the kiddies.

www.brunching.com , with 3 years of daily jokes, spoofs, funny quizzes and movie reviews.

www.whattheheck.com A few guys with too much time to find the stuff they tend to find.

www.greenfairy.com Like Misanthropic Bitch but not quite as narcy, and British too.

www.crackerjap.com cartoons, links, jokes, inane comments, what you expect from E/N sites but in an interesting format.

www.electronicwhore.com Yummy young cyber-aware women blathering about women's issues of the new millennium. Abortion, test tube babies, cable modems, Britney...go for it!

www.ratatak.com Apparrently he receives 1M hits per month. Advertise with him, or at least visit and check out the bizarre images and perhaps help him make his unfounded propaganda 1/1,000,000th more plausible. Fun, fun, fun!

No more rants for today, except a quick hello to Dink. Oh, and anyone with a high paying beer tasting job, Dink needs it. Hang on, so do I.

Go on, fuck off then.
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 1/22/2001 10:44:30 PM

Viva Brisvegas

When I look around me, I see emerald lawns, swaying palms, hot humid blue skies, lithe young women in halter tops, bikini-clad models, white trash and long-term Asian invaders.
I’m standing in the Brisbane Mall, not fantasy land. This is the seething pulsing heart of the white, middle-class gyprock shitbox breeder-moles and their brainwashed immigrant pseudo-elite. This is the Brisbane you will be exposed to by the multinational conglomerate tour companies if you ever visit.
If you want something else, listen well my itinerant vagabonds…

I am not saying its bad, it’s a damn sight better than Sydney, no matter what those pollution-eating fecile people like to say about the Smog Pit. My retarded friends wanted to go there – not anymore. I have friends in Sydney – they all want to leave. I left Sydney, it was a good choice.
In fact, Brisbane is the Whore of the North. Once you sup from its warm, clammy bosom you don’t want to go away, you keep coming back. This city is a vortex – you know everyone, and if not, you know their friends. It is a big country town with nearly 2.2 million souls. Not huge, but that’s good.
I’ve lived in Sydney, Armidale (don’t worry, I’ll spare you the details), Coffs Harbour (ditto), Canberra (ugh), Nyngan (don’t ask) and Brisbane.
I’m back in Brisbane for the 3rd time. Why? It is according to some boffins, the world’s second most liveable city, after a place in Brazil which has decent public transport, unlike Brisvegas.

I’ll go through the facts in easy-to-digest morsels, so your attention spans don’t suffer.

Physically, Brisbane stretches for over 150kms North-South, and 60 Km East-West. Truly, it is a massive place.
Sure, that includes the Gold Coast in the south, which is apparently a different city but I dare you to pick it, and the Caboolture in the north which suffers the same problem: urban sprawl. Like a pearl necklace on a pornstar’s throat, the more men come, the closer the dots get until they merge. It’s a plague of Victorians and Sydneysiders selling their overpriced yuppy cockboxes and suburban tenements and moving to where the air is clear, warm, full of gorgeous babes and the fuel is cheaper.
Brisbane is BIG. You’ll need to hire a car if you are visiting. Trust me on this. Oh, sure, there’s public transport, but its only at 30 minute intervals, and won’t get you to the Gold Coast easily, which is the nearest beach.

Culturally, Brisbane has benefited from the invasion of the Mexicans (Victorians, not real Mexicans), a fair few of whom were Asian, Lebansese, Greek and Croatian. Don’t ask me why, but Australia likes to grab ahold of people from the Mid-East and the Balkans and then anonymously let them live side by side. If only they knew.
This gives us Lebanese restaurants, where you can have kebabs, yeeros and falafel. Indian restaurants, Thai, Vietnamese, Polish, Russian…it goes on.
The Asians have done their usual trick and formed a little enclave down at Sunnybank, so the white trash know where to throw their insults. You’d think they’d learn from the Lebanese and hide in suburbia like the rest of us.
There are a few decent Asian restaurants, but most are fairly crap. Always go to a restaurant where it is packed with Asians, and they don’t immediately give you a menu in English. This at least means you’ll get nice food, even if you do feel like a dork as you’re the only one who speaks English and you’re in Australia. But this is multiculturalism for you.

Brisvegas got its name from its Casino Explosion! This happened the moment the government figured out it could make shitloads of tax dollars from gambling, and the southern states didn’t have a casino. That and this is the southern land of the sunset strip (refer above to the comments about how spread out this place is). We even have whores galore in the Valley, just like Vegas only skankier.
We now have two casinos – the Treasury in the city, and Jupiters down the Gold Coast, both run by obscenely rich bastards.
Its also the attitude. Brisvegans are laid back. We don’t give a shit about anything. Politics? Nah, too apathetic, they are all corrupt bastards. World peace? You mean there’s war? You mean there’s a world outside Brisbane? This is the sort of person you’ll encounter.
It’s the heat you see, it addles our brains. We don’t care what you look like, as long as you join in the mateship and beer drinking which typifies our culture. This is why a lot of people listened to the hogswash about the so-called Asian Invasion and why some people think we are racist. Its all about joining in – the immigrants bring it on themselves by not joining in the native’s boorish, mongoloid pastimes like football, cricket and giving each other drunken wedgies. Go figure.
Brisvegans are going to be friendly to you tourists – Australians in general will be. I oughta know – like 75% of Queensland, I work in the tourism industry. My little Japanese schoolgirls routinely get lost and get given lifts to their host family’s homes in Council buses by the bus drivers. Now if that isn’t service you are probably too rich and spoilt for your own good.

Brisvegas has things to do. It should be pretty hard to get bored round here, but 13 months of unemployment has a way of bringing out the worst in a city.
If you’re coming here to see Brisbane, slate two weeks. You can see a lot of things round here – the big-ass sandy islands which prevent the city from actually having any beaches of its own, go dive the artificial reef in Moreton Bay. Go to the Gold Coast, but take your sunscreen. Explore the Brisbane Forest Park in the hills. Do some rock climbing in the centre of the city at the Kangaroo Point Cliffs. Head north to check out the ginger plantations, pineapples, the arts and craft, the world-class aquarium at Mooloolaba. More beaches, and skydving. Can’t go wrong. But don’t stay any longer or you’ll never want to leave. The whore will plunge your face between her tits and go “Viva Brisvegas!” and that will be it.

Nightlife is what you raver-head e-popping, Vicks-inhaling L337 HaX0rs want to know about, right? Forget the city unless you’re into hip-hop, so-called Club Dance like eiffel65, and Britney Spears. There be whales in Brisbane and they tend to flock to these inner-city meat markets and strand themselves in rank upon rank of glistening, sweat-soaked piles of blubber upon the dance floor. Its not pretty.
Neither is an anorexic E-girl who can’t stop dancing long enough to let her sweat cool, but at least the music is better and most of the people can dance and aren’t yobs like the guys in at the city clubs. The Valley is where you should go.
Oh sure, there are drug-crazed mofos, knife-wielding bag ladies, whores, pimps, homeboys and bondage-dominated gothgrrrl vampire clones, but that’s probably fairly normal for a night out in any other city. The yobs and fresh-faced yuppy clones who frequent the city and will go to make up middle-class breeder mole society don’t like decent music, and they can’t stand gays. Did I mention gays – there are lots of these hole-punching, pilchard-slipping people in the Valley, but don’t worry. I haven’t been butt-raped yet.
So, these breeders, they have this sort of weird exported British colonial properness about them. The guys wear this uniform of sorts, all nice and proper with collared shirt and so on, and the females are power-dressed uberyuppykin, and they get scared by tattoos, nose piercings and so on. This makes the Valley a friendly nonviolent place to go, because I always find that middle-class breeders tend to be the most uptight of all, struggling as they all are to inhabit the same yuppy cock-boxes in the riverside condos and high rise apartments, earn the same money as their friends and drive the latest model cars. It must be the stress of working for a law firm or maybe the brain damage from their mobile phones or something.

Brisbane is a safe place, as long as you stay out of the alleys in the Valley, and don’t venture into the burbs alone at night. Oh, OK, maybe it isn’t a safe place, but then again, only idiots get rolled. Violent crime is way down on almost anywhere else in the world – only Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and Japan can truthfully claim better violent crime statistics than Brisbane. I’d reference it, but the heat’s made me lazy.
You won’t get shot, either, as the government did a big gun buy-back. Just don’t go insulting people in red-checked shirts out in the country. They bury things out there – their collection of 30mm Spitfire Bofors cannons, incest and nosy tourists’ rotting corpses.

What else is there to say? Oh, yeah, this is the southern pot capitol. You can pick up horrendous hydroponic selectively-bred spleef for cheap. This is why Sydneysiders, who exist on leaf and tip, come to Brisbane. They want to get their hands on the stuff which is so oily it stains the concrete because the oil drips off the leaves. Yeah, that stuff.

Like the real Vegas, we have more dildo shops than a field full of cucumbers. This puzzles me, because women are so frigid, I reckon they’d need to make a vibrating curling iron before “appliance love” could work. Hey, people get laid, just not me, so don’t complain if you come here to stare at the gorgeous babes, and they blow you off like a skanky bug. Its life. I go to the adult toy stores and buy porn, or lately, surf the net.

If you’re a tourist, drop me a line. In my line of work I can tell you shitloads about Brisvegas and anywhere else I’ve been in wacky Oz – and I’ve been fucking everywhere, I shit you not. I could even hook you up with a decent deal on accommodation, I’m just that sort of nice guy. If you’re from O/S and don’t understand something I’ve said, please feel free to contact me. I’m usually bored enough to answer.
If you’re a Mexican, you can tell me how good the shopping is in Melbourne and I’ll mention Geoff Kennet at you and you can suffer trauma. If you’re a smog-breathing Sydney yuppy, I’ll flame your ass back to the beyond, just on principle.
But you’re all welcome to Brisvegas. This whore’s got a lot to give, and there are plenty more teats so suck on in Brisbane.
Sun, sand, killer weed – what more could you want?
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 1/19/2001 10:30:05 PM

Brisvegas Part 2

Welcome to part 2 of the lowdown on Brisbane. Time to get a bit more in-depth here.

Well, Dink said I had to tell you all about the culture that pervades Brisvegas like that pungent dead sock odor invades your runners.
Well, sorry y’all but there’s some good news and bad news. It depends who you ask.
I will start at the beginning, so I can build up a bit of a perspective through time. Australia is only 213 years old, and as a nation, only 100 this year (we’re all having big partays on the 26th Jan. to celebrate this).
Some people (usually British or Japanese) deny Australia has its own culture. This stems from 2 things. The poms think we came here yesterday, still speak English, and eat entirely British food. The Japanese think anything younger than 400 years is “modern”. Hell, they have 1100 year old Bonsai trees, so who’s arguing?
Me. We have culture, you cannot not have culture – it may not look like yours but its here. Especially if you speak English you think “Oh, those Aussies, they’re just like us except for the kangaroos.” Then they turn up and discover we aren’t like them.

When the Japanese invaded half the world in the 40’s and the British screwed us over…oh, sorry, Churchill screwed us over AGAIN (read up on Gallipoli), we looked round this continent and said “Hmmm, 4 million sheep farmers can’t defend this dump.” So we decided to import people. The end of WW2 in Europe saw us take 20% of the homeless refugees – more than the USA, and all in all about 2.1 million in ten years.
We started out with homeless poms in order to keep us white and British, but I guess they whinged too much about the surf, sunshine, cheap beer and lack of pollution because soon enough, we imported Wogs, Dagos and Gikes. Er, sorry; that’s Greeks, Italians and Jewish people. Now, we seem to like importing Asians.
Unfortunately for Brisbane, they all got stuck in Melbourne. I hope the guy doing Melbourne tells you there’s more Greeks there than there is in Athens…but anyway, Brisbane was isolated from cultural change which would happen from this multiculturalism thing.
We maintained our inbred chicken-fucking ways for years and years, up until the end of the 70’s actually. Net migration into Queensland was a couple of dozen Samoans and islander types, and some seagulls washed up on a beach somewhere.

This was the heyday of Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen (don’t worry about pronouncing it). Queenslanders lived in a police state as bad as East Germany…but nice and tropical warm, where beer was cheap and nasty and food was cheap just like the fuel.
For instance, it is still illegal for more than 3 of us to gather in the same place at the same time – we’ll be collaborating to overthrow society. If we bitch too much, out comes the Army (sounds like the US, yah?), the cops can tap your phone, strip search you without warrant or recourse, and imprison you for 7 days without lawyer, trial or questioning. In theory, but not in practise…yet.
Native Queenslanders are, generally, morons. Let me give you a few points on “native” culture;
 Political naivete is enshrined in Law, so you must vote as your daddy done vote;
 Kiddie porn is for teachers, politicians and preachers. You get to watch 17+ year olds.
 Your old-style Christian values are good and will help you weather the modern world
 Women = kitchen. Men = TV.
 Wogs, Dagos, Gikes, Gooks, Japs and such terms are fully acceptable.
 Political Correctness is for pansies (hey, I agree, so not all traditions are bad!)
 The environment is something Tasmania and the Northern Territory has. We just have trees which get in the way of our cows and cars.

Course, that couldn’t last. I think something called the Fitzgerald Inquiry found out that heaps of politicians had been corrupt and taking money. No, really, its true. And the same government stayed in office for 17 years why? Because of Gerrymandering, vote rigging, and the first cultural tradition (see above).

This all came tumbling down when those greasy mexicans from Melbourne discovered tropical sunshine was better than smog clouds, Joan Kirner and the Pyramid Investment scheme.
Some New South Welshmen came too, something like 10,000 a month, escaping Neville Wran and his asbestos-infected offices & navy yards and astronomical rents in Sydney. Biggest mass migration of people since the end of the war in Oz.
These people were smarter, university educated, and voted for different political parties, though usually as their daddy did done vote too.
They also weren’t corrupt bag-taking fat bastards like Lesley Thiess. So, out goes Joh and in comes Goss. More importantly (let me get back ON topic), in comes the wogs, dagos, nips, gooks, gikes, etc, bringing with them their foreign customs, cuisine and, dare I say it, fresh chromosomes. So too, came thousands of Asians.
But like any kindergarten kid knows, you mix the white and the yellow, you get Brisbane.

Hey, I’m all for immigrants. I don’t want to work for $5 an hour (Australian money is worth much less than US money, to put this in perspective for y’all) in a sweat shop, so someone has to do it, and the Asians tend to do better than us because they work hard. Queensland natives were the laziest mofos in existence, and these Asians booted them out because people need to be efficient these days.
Don’t believe me? – go down to a dole queue and spot a bunch of Asian people. They make up 6% of Brisbane, but less than 1% of dole bludgers. QED.

Yet, the cultural icons of yore are still around. We’ve infected the immigrants with our laid-back beer swilling, our veneration of Cricket and Rugby League, our beach-bum lifestyle and our lazy apathy towards fellow man.

The frightening thing is that you get outside Brisbane, which is very cosmopolitan these days, and its bad old Queensland. A Queensland where the Asians have not gone, where the slovenly ill-educated masses of white-trash peanut-farming inbreds still rule their gerrymandered electorates, dictating to the under-represented city what’s what.
But these people are true gems, and don’t prejudge you (as long as you’re not an Asian working in Kingaroy or Cunnamulla), and will always, always help you out if you’re in trouble. I mean, who invites a perfect stranger to stay over when their car’s broken down? Not a New Yorker, that’s for fucking sure! Not like you don’t have reasons for that, of course…

So, the point of this diatribe is to expose you to the history of Brisbane’s culture, and give you a lens through which to view our peculiar little mold-culture.
Founded in the 1870’s as a penal colony, then as a wool brokerage centre (failed, as Sydney always ruled the world’s wool prices and export), then as a wool trans-shipment centre, then a people shipment centre in WWII, and now it aiming to be an IT hub, a conference mecca and a party capital. Too many hats, not enough head if you ask me.

An example of one of our cultural icons is the Gabba.
Formally the Wooloongabba Cricket Ground, the Gabba has seen many and famous cricket sporting triumphs, disasters and…blah, blah….if you care, here are some url’s;
: http://www-aus.cricket.org/link_to_database/NATIONAL/AUS/
The official website of the Australian Cricket Board. Propaganda, info, lies, statistics, idiocy, etc.
: http://www.cricketgames.com/itc/
a shareware computer game which will let you understand the basics, but not what a Square Leg Mid-on is…
On any given day when Australia is playing cricket at the Gabba, 40,000 people (containing 7 different chromosomes between the lot of them) will sit in the 34°C/90°F, 80% relative humidity heat, guzzle $4 cups of icy cold beer, rip their shirts off to expose their flabby guts and scream obscenities and pickup lines at female fans, then do a few Mexican Waves. The testosterone could make hairs grow on Germaine Greer’s chest at 500 paces…but as if this’d make a difference as most feminists are hairy bull-dykes anyway, but you get the point.

If the Gabba is the shrine to Cricket and honorable sportsmanship, then Lang Park caters to the pimp-slapping dark crotch stain of sportsmanship; Rugby League. This is where manly testosterone, beer and private-school anal rape and forced salad tossings combine to create the most disgusting organism on the planet, after Sisquo; the inebriated Australian football fan.
Yes, this creature is endemic here, and very common throughout the rest of Oz.
In Queensland, sport is a religion. Lang Park is the dark temple to Football, a shoddy (nostalgic) shit-arse stadium which, I kid you not, was saved only because the “King” Wally Lewis played most of his disgusting career’s matches there, dry-humping his fellow players and generally trying to worm his thumb into their dates in typical Rugby League fashion.
Queenslanders idolise him, and his protégé Alfie Langer, for some reason. Its perhaps all those blows to the head they received when their Catholic School teachers donkey-punched them for better anal sex, but who knows? It’s a mental aberration whatever way you look at it, and sees twice as much money go to funding school sports as it does to funding actual learning. Kid you not, my old school received a 1.8 million dollar sports shed and at the same time got $5000 for IT, new computers and books combined. Us geeks had to sell chocolates to afford computers for the school, whereas the footy nuts got a mammoth sporting complex. Fucking sport.

If you ever hear of domestic violence…it’s a footy fan. If you ever see a dude with an old ute and a trailer loaded down with crap furniture and beer cartons…it’s a footy fan. If you see a yob picking a fight in the Valley, it’s a footy fan.
I hate you all you fucking tossers, just admit you’re all thumb-fucking gays and paedophiles and leave the decent people alone. Ahhh…rant over.

Next, I’ll go into a bit of detail about what we Brisvegans get up to during our considerable leisure time. I might even hunt up some pics of the topless meter maids on the Gold Coast. Yup, the parking police are all topless. Puts Vegas to shame, really…

Sorry, no naked meter maids yet, but them’s the brakes.

I hosted a porn and prawn night the other night, which allows me to segue into several topics quite conveniently.
P.S. for any Americans, prawns are also known as shrimp, but these were 4-6” long and I don’t call them shrimp.

First off, why the fuck do porn bitches wear shoes? Its baffled me for years. I fully do not understand.
The porn we got ahold of was fairly tame, as far as these things go. I think, out of the 32 sex scenes we saw, eight were lesbian pilchard-eating contests, twelve were simple mano-a-pussy/pussies, four were blowjobs, four involved arse sex, and four involved strap-ons and toys. Not like I counted, right?
OK, we’re eating prawns fresh off the trawler, caught the same morning in the waters of Moreton Bay off Brisbane. Delish, I can tell you! While we’re doing this, the five girls and four guys present at this event are watching the porn.
Its supposed to be arousing you, right? But I wonder, how can you get aroused by women fucking each others pussies with their tits? I’ll grant some sicko the right to a rim job, and I’m sure that some chicks like double-penetration…or perhaps let themselves get paid a lot to do it. But where in the world do chicks get off on tit-fucking each other?

The other thing I noticed, and this grossed me out big time, was that one of the chicks in “Fleshwalker” had implants. I mean, she’s a pimp-slapped porn hoe, and which one doesn’t have implants? But these were gross, and not just because they were an abomination in size. No, when she was getting shafted, her tits were wobbling, and you could see the implant bulbs/sacs because the skin formed these sick little crevasses in her tit. It grossed me out so much I couldn’t watch.
It’s a damn good reason for chicks to watch porn so they can see how gross implants are. My brother is a big tit man, freely admits it. And that’s fine, as are people like me who’ll take what’s offered. But seriously women, don’t do implants, they can go horridly wrong and then its only a short step to being backdoored on a porn flick. Small tits are great, and if you don’t think so, find a man who appreciates them and then you’ll feel a shitload better about yourself, and save five grand.

Yah, so my sermon is over now. I can’t say that everyone in Brisbane does porn and prawn nights, but the response was fairly hefty, so I’ll at least claim the idea is popular. We’re going to a few more of these bad boys in the future, except we might track down dome decent porn. Besides, its how I spend some of my days, which is what this column is about.
All you need are prawns, and porn videos. You Americans call them shrimp, so you could call it a Shrimp N Pimp night if you want to.
Don’t forget the beer, and copious amounts.

Beer is another thing. Australians drink hideous quantities of beer, and not to dispute the fact that Portugese may drink the most alcohol (w/w) in a year, I do know for a fact that out at Mt Isa, the most beer per capita is consumed. Its something like 580 litres of beer per man, woman and child in Mt Isa.
Australia is the beer-making King of the World. German beers are good, don’t get me wrong, nothing can beat a weisenheffen for a lack of hangover, but its damn hard to find a truly international German Beer.
The peculiar thing about Aussie beer is that we export the shit stuff.
Aussies are beer snobs – we only drink good stuff (except for “die-hard” Queenslanders who somehow keep XXXX in business). We import the best, we drink the best domestics, which win most of the international beer awards, and we happily guzzle it all down while our beer companies swiftly export the swill, and even set up breweries offshore.
So, when we go to o/s places, we generally find foreign beers lacking. For instance, Japan’s “best” beer Asahi, is horrid goat urine. Not as bad as XXXX, but close.
Bud, lets not go there. I went to Germany, and my relatives took me to the pub and tried to feed me Fosters, which is a pathetic brew. Same happens in Britain, Japan, and the US.
So, I’ll supply you with a list of beers to avoid, because even if they may compare with your local brews, they aren’t worth it.
XXXX, avoid even if you must drink poofy wine. Fosters, in fact anything at all by Carlton and United, avoid. Hahn, stick to their Ice beer. Tooheys, avoid everthing except the New.
As far as foreign beers go, I’ll grant a few good ones. Guinness, king of the stouts, has few competitors. The Irish seem to be exporting a gazillion types of their beer, such as Beamish & C., but none compare with the old Guinness. The only local beer to come close is Reschs Real, and it does a very good job. I’m at about 50/50 on the choice, and that’s saying something.
German Pils, as a category, does no wrong. Weisen beers, too, kick serious ass and can’t be beat for letting you wake up in the morning with no ill effects. Most of the rest of Germany’s finest is up there.
Heineken, the only good thing to come out of the lowlands, is average. It trades on rep, and the fact it costs a bomb (see below).

Foreign gunk is stuff imported for the exclusive market of yuppy prats who want boutique beers or trendy/expensive foreign stuff which makes them look worldly and sophisticated when engaging in the yobbish activity of getting beered up and anally groping one another in pubs.
Corona may be Mexico’s finest but a beer you need to add lemon to make it taste good, is in my book, a waste of time.
Elephant Beer may be nice over on the Horn, but its expensive as crap and is beer-flavoured softdrink despite its high alcohol percentage.
Kilkenny, a midway stop on the road to Guinness is more expensive and is like a bucket of yeast scraps left in the sun on a long hot summers day. Its crap, and people should be told because they seem to think its good. Beamish Red is so smooth you’d get more friction of Astroglide, and doesn’t have a rancid yeast aftertaste.
Harp Lager, another Irish export, is fine, buts it’s a fruits cider with beer overtones in my opinion. Not bad, but that apple twist gets to you after a pint.
Japanese beer, you can sweep into the trash in one hit. The Japanese may know about scat porn, 14 year old schoolgirls, hentai and making good motorbikes, but they can’t brew to save themselves. Its probably why they lost the war.
I will admit little exposure to American beer, but my one run-in with Bud Premium didn’t impress me in the slightest. Its probably why we export Fosters there – swill is better than bog water I guess.

Beers to look out for when you hit Terra Nullus;
Hahn Ice, a hefty 5.2%, smooth, clear ice filtered bomb. Avoid knock-offs like Carlton Cold as it will give you a mid-session hangover from its chemical overkill.
Cascade beer, its Tasmania’s finest beer and pretty much their only export since those tigers dried up. Their premium light is excellent, and everything else they make rocks. They are gods and can do no wrong.
Anything by James Boag is worth a look. He, too, is a Tasmanian. He can do wrong, but its a good wrong, you know?
Reschs Real, the closest thing to Guinness and the best imitator yet. A bit lighter than the old ash cake, and nicer for it. Reschs Pilsener is good too.
Coopers Premium is magnificent, and most of the rest of their range is good.
Crown Lager, a Carlton Product, comes closest to being drinkable and is worth a look, but it is expensive and only as good as Hahn Ice in the long run.

OK, that’s my take on my one true love. If you come from Germany and you think I’ve done DAB wrong, or slighted the Konigsberger in any way, know this mantra, of which I fully agree with and advocate;
Beer, hallowed be thy name. In sickness and in health, in drought and in flood, in nightclub and in pub, I will drink thee. Let not the sweet vodka, useful as it may be, turn me from the righteous path of beer. Let not the lure of cocktails divert me from the worship of the one true beverage, nor the wine poison mine palate with its sultry lies.
Live thine life by this holy ten commandments;
Thou shalt not drink another drink if beer is available
Love thy beer
Covet not another man’s beer
Thou shalt buy only the best beers
Thou shalt buy any beer if the best beer is not available
Whomsoever is offered free beer will drink such a beer
Thou must drink all your beer, except the dregs which thou mayst expunge
Thou shalt not refuse a beer given in charity
Spill not the holy beer
Thou shalt turn down beer only for sex, and then drink a beer afterwards for atonement
Yes, I have drank all the beers I mentioned, and many, many more. I am obsessed, and I have not yet turned down a beer…well, only to go have sex. If someone offers me a Bud and nothing else is going, I’ll drink it despite how much I may despise it.
These are my opinions and you’re encouraged to disagree, but not by saying XXXX is good. That’s my one exception, my only sin – yes, I turned down a XXXX, and I’m not ashamed at being a sinner!
I suggest you do the same, it’s the only beer I would urge you to avoid at all costs.

Laters.
posted by Heironymous Bosch at 1/19/2001 10:52:16 PM