As One Sydney YouTube gathering November 24th

Well, when we announced the As One Melbourne gathering for YouTube users, viewers, aficionados and people who just wanted to look at the freakshow, a common reaction was “Why not in Sydney?”  Simple really, we don’t live in Sydney.  This sort of thing is hard enough to organise where you live.  Trying to set something up in a city 900km away is bloody impossible.

So we put the call out: does anyone in Sydney want to step up and organise a gathering?  And Sydney came through!

Me, I’m doing a road trip.  The East coast may not survive.

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Unnecessary instructions

I believe I’ve made my views known before regarding people with OCD-like tendencies about cleanliness.  The short version is: they’re freaks.  The slightly longer version is you can be arguably correct about a topic (e.g. many surfaces are covered in germs) and still be a weirdo freak about it.

I bring this up because someone at work has seen fit to put up a sign in the toilets about washing your hands.  To call the instructions “a little elaborate” is on par with calling the ocean “a little bit wet”.  I could understand having detailed hand-washing instructions at a “special needs” school but do adults really need six illustrations to show them how to do it?

I think I know who put the sign there.  I suspect it’s the guy who not only obsessively washes his hands (I usually see him doing it about eight times a day) but who actually wears gloves all day so his skin doesn’t touch any surfaces.  Besides having six illustrations showing you how to complete such onerous tasks as put water on your hands, the sign also has these suggestions of when to wash your hands:

Before eating

I know this one gets mentioned pretty widely but I honestly never do this unless my hands are actually dirty.  And by dirty I mean “have dirt on them” rather than being covered in untold legions of invisible microbes.  I wash my hands before preparing food but not before eating it.

After going to the toilet.  Some people wash their hands both before and after.

Yes.  Those people are called freaks.

After touching dirt or any other substance.

What the fuck does this even mean?  Isn’t everything a “substance”?  When I see Mr OCD washing his hands continually it leads me to believe he takes this quite literally.

After coming into contact with any surface that might have germs.

Ha!  That’s open slather for the OCD crew!  EVERYTHING has germs on it, just ask them.  And yes, you could test swabs from pretty much any non-sterile environment and they would reveal germs.  But so fucking what?  Humanity has survived for millennia without bathing everything in antiseptic.  Besides which, there are studies suggesting that this explosion of anti-bacterial cleansing is doing nothing more than breeding super bugs.

I’m tempted to let things run their course and eventually have the anti-germ nazis killed by their own obsessions.  But the bastards are taking us with them.  I say, purely in the name of self-preservation, we kill all the clean freaks.

It’s us or them.

Fun ways to break a drought

Things are looking pretty shit in Australia, drought-wise.  We’re supposed to get most of our rain in Spring (which is now).  It didn’t happen at all last year and it’s looking disturbingly like it isn’t going to happen this year.  Most of the country has been facing drought conditions for more than 10 years now making it the worst drought on record.  With no Spring rain things would move way beyond critical.

Right now it seems the most moisture on farmlands is coming from farmers cutting their wrists.  The current dire situation has made it clear sitting around waiting for it to rain is not a viable solution.  It would be nice if some action had been taken BEFORE things got critical but some people apparently need to be kicked in the balls repeatedly until they get the point.  Steps like essentially re-routing rivers, desalination plants and the politically unpalatable option of water recycling are underway now.

People’s reaction to recycled water confounds me.  They let their psychological problems with the concept (we’re essentially taking about treated sewage) trump the fact that they’ll have no fucking water without it.  The water treatment facilities used in recycling mean the water they produce is as clean as, as safe as and tastes the same as water that comes straight from a reservoir.  I can’t help thinking that people who can’t get past the mental image of this being poopy water deserve to die of thirst.

So there are a few ideas being followed to at least alleviate drought conditions.  But after reading a story about China’s efforts to deal with their own drought problems, I think Australia is on the wrong track.  Sure, China is building massive reservoirs and following other traditional approaches.  But they’re also firing Big Fucking Guns.  They have been aggressively pursuing cloud seeding for years by (among other things) firing artillery shells into clouds.

For any female readers who don’t get why this is so cool, it’s a guy thing.  Big guns that make loud bangs are cool.  I suspect being a farmer in an impoverished, drought stricken rural area of China is pretty damn hard.  But hey, they’re being given rocket launchers and anti-aircraft guns to fire into the sky.

I think the Chinese authorities are on a huge winner here.  First, it might actually work.  Second, even if it doesn’t work, the farmers will be having so much fun firing the big guns they won’t mind so much.  Actually, maybe too much fun.  I can imagine a situation where after a lot of rain someone from the Party comes to check on the crops and find nothing was ever planted.  When the Party official confronts the farmer he gets a blank look and the farmer says:

“I’m a what now?  A farmer?  Oh wow, sorry, I totally spaced on the whole farming thing.  Firing this Big Fucking Gun is so cool I forgot I was meant to be doing anything else.”

Ways you can tell I’m leaving my current job #1

In a meeting discussing some technical issues about database integration one cow-orker said to another cow-orker:

“You’re trying to force things into the back end.”

I couldn’t resist and responded:

“That’s what your mum said,” and burst out laughing.

Memo to a filthy beast

I’m really glad nobody at work reads my blog.  Even if I managed to avoid getting fired for it, nobody would talk to me for fear of appearing in a blog post.  If my blog was circulated around work, I’d particularly like it to reach a particular individual whose identity I don’t know.  I’ll explain in the form of an office memo.

MEMO TO: The filthy fucking beast who had a shit explosion in the middle toilet cubicle

FROM: All the decent humans in this workplace

RE: Well, the “TO” line pretty much says it all

BODY:

Hello.  You disgusting fucking animal.  So it seems you have a case of explosive diarrhoea.  I don’t hold this against you.  We’ve all had unhappy visits to Arse Explosion Town.  But why in the hell would you not clean up after yourself?

I’m not saying you have to clean every skid mark off the bowl every time.  But is it too much to ask that you don’t leave liquefied shit sprayed all over the place?  It is simply impossible that you did not realise this had happened.  I am not a forensic specialist but the spectacular spray patterns speak to a particularly forceful bowel eruption.  There’s no way you didn’t feel it.

It is among the less pleasant experiences a human can suffer to walk into a toilet cubicle and be confronted with such a mess.  It’s bad enough when this shit happens in a public toilet but at work?  We’re supposed to be professionals.  We’re supposed to be adults.  We’re supposed to be fucking human ferchrissake!  Last I looked there were no shit-slinging howler monkeys employed here.

I’m guessing that you saw the unholy fecal fresco you created and thought “That’s gross, I’m not going near that.”  Poor, sensitive you.  How the fuck do you think I felt when it confronted me?  The level of contempt this action displays for your co-workers leads me to suspect you’re the same prick that stole my piece of chocolate cake out of the fridge. 

I can almost see how that played out too.  You saw it and wondered whose it was.  You may have even asked a few people if it was theirs.  When nobody claimed it you decided you would eat it.  Because you didn’t know who owned it.  Well you knew fucking well you didn’t own the fucking cake didn’t you, you thieving fucking bastard!

Anyway, in summary: you’re a disgusting vile animal.  I hope you stay anonymous because I’m not sure I could resist punching you in the face if I knew who you were.  Oh, and I cleaned you mess up.  You know how?  There was a scrubbing brush, right there in the cubicle.  You might try learning how to use one someday.

World Record Group LiveBlogging – December 1st

So another brainwave from SeanBedlam for the Melbourne As One YouTube gathering is aiming for a world record for the largest number of people liveblogging from the same event.  There is some finetuning to be done, like defining how to measure the record.  I’ve never heard of anyone claiming this record before so I think we have a bit of leeway.

My biggest concern is not with the record but with Sean’s insistence on referring to video blogging as vlogging.  Attentive long-term readers/video viewers will know that I prefer the term yologging for reasons that are to obvious to require repeating here.  Although I will explain it in the following video.

A bit of background for the video.  The key organisers of the Melbourne As One gathering are Sean, Adrian Calear and me.  We decided to record some of our planning sessions for posterity.  Because the future will want to see our genius at work.  The framing and sound in this video are kind of crap but I think it’s worth watching.  And even though we play up to the camera occasionally, none of this is scripted.

You see the sort of disrespect I have to put up with?

Australian YouTube Gathering – As One Melbourne December 1st

So I can finally go public with my other big news.  Along with notorious YouTuber SeanBedlam (AKA Sean Burke) and my good friend Adrian Calear, I have been involved in organising the first big YouTube gathering in Australia.  We are having a gathering in Melbourne on Saturday, December 1st.

Our original plan (and the one I still want to happen) was to have a gathering in Sydney on the previous weekend.  This was mainly so we could have a road trip between the two gatherings.  The problem has been that we couldn’t find someone on the ground in Sydney to commit to organise things.  But it isn’t too late!  Anyone who lives in Sydney who fancies themselves as an organiser should contact us and we’ll do everything we can to support an event in Sydney.

The gathering in Melbourne will be at Federation Square, right next to Flinders Street Station in the city.  This is going to be far more than a bunch of people gathering in the same place to meet each other (although that alone would be good).  We’re partnering with the people who run Fed Square and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI – which is right in Fed Square) to make it a great event.  There are some fantastic facilities at Federation Square and ACMI and I’m looking forward to showing some of them off in the lead-up.

It looks like the launch has gone off with a bang on YouTube with one of the highest profile Australians on YouTube, Blunty3000, putting up a video celebrating us finally having a gathering in Australia.

Cory Williams (AKA MR Safety of SMP Films) will also be helping promote the event.  Cory ran the first successful large scale YouTube gatherings in Hollywood and San Francisco under the banner “As One”.  The San Francisco As One gathering in particular has been described by attendees as “life changing”.  So with Cory’s help (and hopefully the whole YouTube community’s help) As One Melbourne will be even better.  Cosmos changing maybe.

Anyway, here’s my launch video:

And here’s Cory’s As One videos from Hollywood:

And San Francisco:

Give me a straight answer!

In case you thought I’d gone all soft from getting such good news about the New York deal:

I CAN’T FUCKING STAND IT WHEN PEOPLE WON’T GIVE A STRAIGHT ANSWER!

The same shit happens in personal relationships and work relationships.  You ask a straight question and you don’t get a straight answer.  Or you ask a simple yes/no question and get a vague answer that isn’t yes or no.  Or you ask an open question and the person answers with a yes or no that doesn’t make any sense.  Sometimes it seems clear the person is doing it deliberately to be evasive.  Sometimes they don’t seem to realise they’re doing it.  And sometimes they do it because they don’t give a shit about you.

Politicians are, of course, past masters at this.  That’s because most of them are pathological liars who are scared to commit to anything.  They’re driven by polls rather than any actual commitment to an ideal.  And I’m NOT talking about politicians who change their minds.  I get so angry when somebody who’s actually willing to think about an issue is called a “flip-flopper”.

Yeah, being willing to consider that circumstances can change is a serious fucking character flaw.  The idiocy of associating intelligence and open-mindedness with weakness was best summed up by Steven Colbert when he ripped George W Bush apart at the 2006 Whitehouse Correspondent’s Dinner.  His description of W:

“The greatest thing about this man is he’s steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday, that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change, this man’s beliefs never will.”

That sums him up perfectly.  That sort of attitude isn’t resolute and clear.  It’s fucking stupid.

I actually wandered a bit of the topic there.  What got me in this mood was a little “issue” at work recently.  Part of my job is defining the requirements for the project we’re working on.  I don’t agree with the attitude some people have about requirements being carved in stone, but once they get signed off you need a pretty clear reason to change them. 

Changing requirements doesn’t necessarily mean a project is in trouble.  In fact it’s often a positive sign – people are thinking and finding ways to improve things.  But when someone won’t give straight answers about their motivations it drives me fucking crazy.  Here’s a little discussion that happened at work recently.  I’ve broken it up into what “he” said, what I said and in brackets what I was saying in my head.

HE SAID: We need the integration function between the systems to bring across these extra fields

I SAID: Where did this requirement come from?

(Hey, I did this one, what are you trying to pin on me?)

HE: There are some fields that will be needed in this report that the integration

I: What are you basing that on?

(Seriously, what the fuck are you up to?)

HE: We don’t want to have to add these fields manually, that’s too much extra work.

I: But why is this coming up now?  Everyone involved agreed we had everything we needed covered.

(Don’t fuck with me over this, I’m not in the mood.)

HE: Looking at this report, I see some fields that are missing.

I: But what was the source of this requirement?

(Why won’t you answer the question I’m asking?)

HE:  There are these fields…

I: What conversation with what person triggered this?  What makes you bring this up now?  I went over these requirements in fine detail with everyone involved and what you are saying was never mentioned as a requirement.

(I mean it, six fucking meetings with 20 fucking people.  Don’t try and make it look like I’m not doing my job.)

HE:  We’re going to need to add these fields…

I: Shut the fuck up!  You’re making this shit up!  I’m not taking your crap, I’m out of here.

(Maybe we should schedule another meeting with all the stakeholders to work out what’s really required.)

The moral of this story is: Don’t have conversations in your head while you’re talking to someone because you might get them confused.

Mr Angry to take Manhattan?

The New York deal is looking good.

I want to take a moment to thank everyone for all the positive responses to my post from yesterday.  It’s obviously exciting to me that I might get to go on US network TV but it’s also really gratifying to get such a show of support from everyone.  And not just for this specific incident; the support and feedback I’ve received from readers over the last 18 months is what keeps me going.

The story so far: I got the expected call from the TV guy last night and it went well.  This is for a show that will be produced by the news/current affairs department at this network in New York.  Apparently they are doing a show all about anger and they want to interview me for it.

The guy asked me a whole bunch of questions about my blog, my character, why I’m angry, all that sort of thing.  He’s going to take his notes to his producer where I guess the final decision on whether or not to use me is made.  He said I should hear in the next week or so.

I don’t actually know if they plan to do more than one show or whether they might use me for 5 seconds or 5 minutes.  I guess I’ll find out more as I go along.  Still.  T fucking V!  Me!  And it ain’t cable, baby! (No disrespect to the fine folks at The Fizz on DirecTV who have been very good to me over the last year)

I’ll hold off actually giving identifying details regarding the network until things get verified.  I’m not sure if that’s important but it feels like the right thing to do at the moment.  Plus it adds an element of suspense.  Which network will debut Mr Angry?  It’s sure to be the talk of tinsel town.  Or possibly not.

As for people suggesting some sort of get-together if I get there: FUCK YES!  I’d love that!  I’ve never been to New York so I’m going to be a bit of a goggle-eyed tourist.  Some local help would be appreciated.  My only regret is I’m unlikely to have an opportunity to do any sort of a road trip.  I’d love to explore some more of the country and meet a few more people but I don’t think I’ll have the time.

Obviously when I get my own series or make a feature film I’ll make the time to get around a bit more 😉

Here’s how I announced the news on YouTube:

I have to add, I’m really pleased this possible break has come from the blog, not YouTube.  The TV guy in question found me via my famous alli diet pill post from a few months back.  It just goes to show, kids: writing about pooping your pants is the path to success.

I’ve mentioned on several occasions in the past how not being featured on YouTube has pissed me off.  That’s the easy path to lots of recognition and I’ll be honest; it frustrates me that they feature some real shit and haven’t featured me.  I’ve been more philosophical about it recently.  As I approach the twin milestones of 1000 subscribers and one million views I actually feel good that I accomplished that without the help of being featured.  That’s an achievement I can own.

I almost wrote that I’d done it alone but that isn’t true.  I’ve had great support from a couple of people, most notably Cory Williams (Mr Safety) of SMP Films.  People in the community have been great to me – it’s the YouTube editors who haven’t done me any favours.

But this potential New York gig is all about the blog.  That belongs to me and you, dear readers.  And that feels damn good!

Holy Fucking Shit

It looks like I might be going to New York.

I mentioned in a previous post that although some negative things had happened to me recently I wasn’t sinking into depression because of the good things happening in my life.  I woke up to an email this morning that blew me away. 

It seems that somebody working for a US television network read my alli diet pill post and liked it.  A lot.  They think they can use me on a show.  On a major US network.  This would involve me flying to New York in October.

Holy.  Fucking.  Shit.

OK, to allay anyone’s fears about my potential naivety:  my first reaction was “This is bullshit”.  Some bastard was winding me up so they could make fun of me for being excited by the prospect.  There was a phone number included in the email for me to call.  My suspicion was that any call I made would go through to voicemail.  There would be a recording of me getting all excited and maybe giving away some personal details that would later be used to humiliate me.

Not this little black duck!  You don’t get me that easy.  The return email address was from a TV network’s domain but it’s easy enough to fake a return email address.  BUT it’s easy enough for me to send an email directly to the TV station to find out if this guy is real.  Then I get to do a blog post and video saying how I outsmarted the prick that wanted to prank me.

Ummmmm, it appears not.  It’s for real.  He replies with an email saying “haha I understand your caution, how do I prove I’m real?  Here’s the number for the switchboard – call them and ask to be put through to me.”  Yeah, that’s a pretty good way to prove this isn’t a prank.

Holy.  Fucking.  Shit.

So I called the switchboard.  By the way, the switch operator lived up to every Australian’s stereotype (good and bad) of an American telephone operator.  She had a syrupy sweet voice and used all the “how may I direct your call” lines to perfection.  Her intonation was so friendly and perfect it seemed creepily unrealistic.  But that’s probably just me.

Right now I’m on my lunch break at work and I haven’t been able to form a single fucking coherent thought all day.  And they’re kinda expecting me to do a few things today.  Sucks to be them.  I’ve actually given four weeks notice at this job so I can work on another big project.  So right now, this job doesn’t seem like the most important thing in the world to me.  I’m sure my professionalism will win out though and I’ll do the boring, non-life-changing stuff that’s expected of me.

Once I have some solid details I’ll be letting anyone interested (and doubtless quite a few people who aren’t interested) know all about it.  My other big project is in its last stages of stealth mode so I should be shouting that from the rooftops this week as well.

The big project I’ve been working on with others has been in planning for months.  We’re just about to lock in the final critical details (basically, a date) and then we’ll be going public.  Which is just as well because my brain has been on the edge of exploding having to keep this stuff secret.  The big project and the possible TV thing feel like the culmination of what I’ve been doing online for the last 18 months, even if I didn’t realise what it is I’ve been doing.  Now I have to go back to work… I’ll have to find some way to disguise the fact I don’t give a shit about it right now.

Holy.  Fucking.  Shit.