Niggers and Coons in Australia

Inflammatory, who – me?

That’sa actually a strictly factual description of the imortant news story covered in this video.

A totally true story!

I thought YouTube were censoring this at first because of the title but I guess something must have just gone wrong with the first upload. I bet a few people will be surprised to hear of the existence of a “Nigger” Brown stand and Coon cheese in every supermarket.

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This pig needs lipstick

That heading ought to get the Sarah Palin freak squad all wound up.  Relax, you uptight dickheads!  I’m talking about a pig that actually matters today – Bruce the giant pig.

I swear this story is true.  There are even pictures!

The mathematics of anger

I am often asked how I decide what to write and/or do videos on.  Well the thought process is a complex one.  It is executed with mathematical precision.  With that in mind, I present the Angry Venn Diagram:

angry venn diagram

I do like to offend people but I have to offend them just right!

Campaign advice for John McCain

I’ve decided I need to be more even-handed when looking at the US Presidential Election.  With that in mind, John McCain needs some help.  And I’m just the man to give him the advice he so desperately needs.

Never let it be said that I don’t help people out when I get the chance.

This might seem familiar

I’ve been doing my old trick of using blog posts as scripts for YouTube videos.  So these might seem familiar but I hope you enjoy them.  This one is me taking this piss out of a job advertisement (thanks to the readers whose lines I used/adapted):

And this one is me going off about angry disabled people.  This really seemed to touch of some seething resentment against disabled people among YouTube commenters as well.

Angry disabled people

Having a run-in with an angry disabled person is a weird experience.  If an able-bodied person gets up in my face over something it’s rare that I won’t lash out straight back at them.  But with a disable person, that feels kind of… wrong.  Even for me.  A couple of examples:

I was going through a doorway at a shopping mall when two guys were walking out at the same time.  It was a fairly wide doorway so I didn’t see much problem.  You know how when you’re passing someone you do that thing where you turn slightly to the side pulling your shoulder out of the way so there’s more room for each of you?  Well I did that as I passed and everything would have been fine if the other guy had done the same thing.

Except he didn’t.  So we smacked shoulders fairly hard.  And he had the nerve to go off at me and start swearing when he was the one who made no effort to get out of the way.  So I turned and was about to tear into him when I realised why he was so pissed off.  It turns out he’s blind.  The second guy was guiding him by holding his elbow so the blind dud didn’t have to use a cane or a dog to get around.  He was wearing dark glasses but I figure we was a wanker who wore his sunglasses inside.

With the help of his friend the blind guy was able to walk confidently and quickly.  Which was the whole problem.  He was so confident I had no idea he was blind.  So it was all his fault for not being more obviously disabled.  He should have been more blind.

Another case: there’s a guy in a motorised wheelchair in my neighbourhood and he has a very bad attitude.  He also seems to have supercharged his wheelchair because I’ve never seen one as fast as his.  He also drives it on the road a lot – I’m guessing that’s because he wouldn’t be able to open it up full throttle on the footpath.  Plus he gets to vent his frustration at the world.

Again, I’m guessing that’s his motivation.  He’s pissed off at his life and is more or less daring the cars to end it.  He’s faster than pedestrians but slower than cars and he’s also hard to see when you’re driving and he’s zipping in and out all over the place so I don’t think it’s a stretch to say he’s at least passively suicidal. 

At first I thought he was a jerk.  Then I thought about it and realised that given the lot life has dealt him, being pissed off at everyone and everything is a reasonable response.  I know if I ended up in a wheelchair I’d be the angriest motherfucker around. I’d run over people’s toes and if they complained I’d back over their foot just to make a point.

“HEY! What are you complaining about?  I’m in a fucking wheelchair here!  You could drive a fucking truck over my feet and I wouldn’t feel a damn thing!  Count yourself lucky that it hurts when I run over you.  Now leave me a lone you working-leg-having motherfucker!”

Taking the PIS

Looking through job ads sometimes depresses me because of the way they commonly spout mumbo-jumbo jargon as if it actually means something.  It leaves me wanting to grab the next recruiter who uses the phrase “leverage core competencies” and leverage their core competencies straight down their fucking throat.

But sometimes the job ads make me laugh.  Usually because I have a very juvenile sense of humour.  Case in point: today I saw an ad for a Process Improvement Specialist in a government department.  This caught my eye for a few reasons.  First, it’s the type of work I do.  Second, it was a one year contract with the government  that sounded like a complete boondoggle.  Hide away in some massive bureaucracy and charge massive consultant fees for a year.  Payday!

But most importantly, the acronym for the job title was PIS.  Did I mention the part about me being juvenile?  I wondered if I’d be able to resist saying in a job interview that the job sounded like a piece of piss?

But if I was going to interview, I’d need to come up with the right jargon.  Government departments love their jargon.  I considered saying that I thought the role of the Process Improvement Specialist would be to Facilitate the Adoption of Revolutionary Thinking in the department.  But they probably spend all their time PIS-FARTing around already and don’t need my help for that.

I also cogitated that the PIS might promote Widespread Enterprise Application Knowledge.  But that sounded a bit PIS-WEAK.  I’m sure somebody can help me with some other ideas.

Spring is in the air

We had our first nice spring weather this weekend in melbourne so I took full advantage of it.  And I like to share.  Not that I’m gloating but if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, this means your summer is just about done.  And damn I like my new camera.

I also uploaded this video to a site called Vimeo where it looks better.  Check it out:

Last text message from Anne Frank

I’m planning on doing a video of my blog post from yesterday (often they way I do things) and they way I develop my videos is often I play the performance about over and over in my head to get a sense of what delivery will work best.  Now you know one of my secrets.  In fact, my grilfriend can tell when I’m planning something because I walk around gesturing and mouthing words.  I have to be careful not to do that at work.  People already think I’m crazy enough.

Anyway, I was thinking about how to play out my “tips for using the internet effectively” points.  And I was thinking of ways to imagine historical figures using modern technology.  And I imagined Anne Frank’s last text message:

THE NZIS WIL NVR FIND ME! THEY R SO LAME! LOL!

I’m a bad, bad person.

The problem with kids these days

I was just reading an article titled “On Stupidity” which in general terms is one of a long line of essays and books bemoaning the decline of intellectualism.  The article is written by an American Professor of English (I feel for the guy, it must suck being an academic in America these days) and he touches all the usual bases regarding the problems he sees with new students.

It was, however, refreshing how positive his conclusion was.  I was fully expecting this to be another “kids today” moan but he acknowledges that young people for all their perceived shortcomings may actually be better prepared for the rapid changes facing the world.  This was a relief because I hate it when people reflexively blame everything on young people.  I hated it when I was a kid and I hate it now.

If you could find the oldest writings in antiquity, I swear it would be complaining about kids at some point.  Daubed on a cave wall somewhere are marking that were the maker’s way of saying “What the hell is wrong with kids today?  They’ve got no respect, they never listen and don’t even get me started on that noise they call music!”  Every single generation has copped this shit and every generation of adults think they have a harder time with kids than the generation before.

The article provides a handy checklist of the shortcomings the Professor sees with his incoming students:

Primarily focused on their own emotions — on the primacy of their “feelings” — rather than on analysis supported by evidence.

Uncertain what constitutes reliable evidence, thus tending to use the most easily found sources uncritically.

Convinced that no opinion is worth more than another: All views are equal.

Uncertain about academic honesty and what constitutes plagiarism. (I recently had a student defend herself by claiming that her paper was more than 50 percent original, so she should receive that much credit, at least.)

Unable to follow or make a sustained argument.

Uncertain about spelling and punctuation (and skeptical that such skills matter).

Hostile to anything that is not directly relevant to their career goals, which are vaguely understood.

Increasingly interested in the social and athletic above the academic, while “needing” to receive very high grades.

Not really embarrassed at their lack of knowledge and skills.

Certain that any academic failure is the fault of the professor rather than the student.

 

Like I said, his conclusion is very balanced otherwise I’d be kind of pissed off by what looks like a “same old, same old” list of complaints.  But I would make two points about that list.  First, as I look around me, that list isn’t the problem with young people, it’s the problem with people!  Look at the debacle the “debate” going on around the US Presidential elections is descending into if you don’t believe me.  Young people definitely aren’t responsible for that bullshit.

Second, kids don’t exactly have a lot of power over the path they follow to get to university.  Kids don’t run the schools that fail to provide them with a better education.  Kids don’t run the media that is consistently doing a disgustingly effective job of dumbing down public discourse.  And kids definitely don’t run the governments that seem hell bent on fucking up anything and everything that might possibly make things better.

The complaints about digital media and the internet dumbing everything down really shit me to tears.  The powers that be are terrified of the idea of information getting out of their control.  The internet is one of the most powerful tools for the dissemination of knowledge that humanity has seen.  The fact that is can be used to spread trivialities and lies is not the fault of the internet, it’s the fault of people pushing lies and trivia.

Like every generation, kids aren’t failing they are being failed.  Instead of obsessing that the internet is teaching kids to skim and they’re losing their ability to explore ideas in depth, educators and parent need involve the internet in the learning process.  And for that to work, us old people have to work!  It’s pathetic to think in a world that is changing so fast education has to be locked into old ways of learning.  The idea that the internet can’t provide depth is flat out ridiculous.  With one click on a search engine you can find thousands of references for any topic.  It just requires a little creative thinking to come up with ways to explore depth.

Try these:

Use a search engine to research a topic.  You have to use at least three different sources.  You can’t use anything that shows up in the first 50 search results.

Instead of saying you can’t use Wikipedia because it’s unreliable (a common restriction), use Wikipedia but you have to reference the talk page for each topic.  Explore the conflicts/differences of opinion that are creating edits.  Find other sources that back up the conflicting points of view.

Translate a classical text (poem, prose or play) into txt abbreviations and emoticons.  Discuss what bits of meaning get lost in the translation.  Do you think you can bring through the themes more clearly by using txt and/or emoticons?

Write a MySpace/Facebook/blog for a famous historical or fictional character.

Find someone (a journalist/academic/politician/pundit/blogger) you disagree with but you can still respect what they say/write.  Explain why you find yourself able to respect someone’s intelligence and/or honesty while still disagreeing with them.

 

Wow, why am I giving this stuff away?  I should be charging some government department a fortune for saving the future like this.  If you’re a local teacher feel free to invite me in to run a session in your classroom.  Actually, no.  Don’t invite me into a classroom.  I’m sure one or both of us would end up being arrested.  But feel free to use any of these ideas.  I’d love to hear stories of any of them in action.

If you want to see a horrible yet funny vision of a constantly dumbed-down future, watch the movie Idiocracy.  It may well be a documentary that slipped through a crack in space/time caused by the Large Hadron Collider.  But if things turn out that bad, it won’t be the fault of successive younger generations.  It will be the fault of successive older generations who fail their children.