Search for your rights: letter writing campaign July 28, 2010
Posted by Danjamin S. Meow in : northbridge, serious business , add a comment
It’s been a bit quiet on the Western front recently but we need to get ready to make some more noise!
“Search for Your Rights” are mounting a letter-writing campaign to the West Australian. The West only publishes letters if they think it’s a hot issue – we need to make our disapproval of the ‘Stop and Search’ laws a hot issue. (Details of how to send a letter are below). For maximum impact please aim to write in from Friday 6th August until Tuesday 10th August.
State parliament will be sitting from Tuesday, August 10th. While the Legislation Committee has until October to hand down their findings on stop and search, it is very possible that Colin Barnett will try to make them hand their findings down early.
We cannot let the atrocity that is the Criminal Investigation Amendment Act go unnoticed purely because there is a Federal election coming up. This is a piece of legislation that will destroy your ability to walk in freedom in your own city.
Please write your emails and letters and send them all in Friday – Tuesday. This will increase their impact. You can pitch your letter as something you are concerned about during this parliamentary sitting. Even if Barnett doesn’t succeed in pushing the committee to report earlier it is important we keep the pressure on.
ATTENTION HIGHSCHOOL STUDENTS
We particularly encourage highschool students to write in to the West Australian. Your voices are often not heard, and they damn well should be. As these laws stand, there is no lower age limit for the police searches. If you are under eighteen you are not safe.
The Search For Your Rights team is also looking for students willing to help spread the word amongst schools about the importance of protecting your rights. Please message me if you are interested and enthusiastic!
Thank you all, and good luck.
Reprinted by permission of Alex.
HOW DO YOU SUBMIT A LETTER TO THE EDITOR?
All letters must be signed and include the writer’s full name and address and, if applicable, telephone number.
ADDRESSES AND TELEPHONE NUMBERS WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED
Send them to: Letters to the Editor, WA Newspapers, GPO Box N1027, Perth WA, 6843
Fax to: (08) 9482 3830 , or
E-mail: letters@wanews.com.au (include full address and telephone number – WHICH WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED). Keep them short and keep copies. They may be edited for Legal reasons or clarity.
QUICK SMS OPTION You can now send text messages and photos for publication on the letters pages.
Simply SMS to 0434 600 700 and be sure to include your name and suburb.
searchforyourrights.org
Search for Your Rights on facebook
The Serious Business of Being Unfunny July 15, 2010
Posted by Danjamin S. Meow in : humour, serious business , add a comment
When your in-jokes have in-jokes, it might be time for Dad jokes.
If sense of humour is genetic, I’d like to think I’m here I because the sperm cell that won the race to the right Fallopian tube killed the competition with laughter. It certainly wasn’t because he was fast at swimming. But there definitely is an environmental conditioning required to hone your jokabillity, as I like to call it. I also like to make up words for fun and laughs. If your childhood wasn’t spent with wisecracking parents in front of The Simpsons, Seinfeld and The Glass House, surround yourself with funny friends who will give you honest feedback about your jokes. Blank stares may be brutal but they’re a good sign you’re on the wrong track. You might want to try another tack and install a laugh track. That way, when you make a joke and finish with an expectant grin, you don’t hear crickets. Your friends will have their cue to laugh politely then say things like “Too far. But good one about redheads in power. Next time you tell it you can change Julia Gillard to Pauline Hanson so it won’t sound like you’re trying too hard to be topical.”
Your third option is to teach yourself to tell jokes. Late nights watching 30 Rock or Eddie Izzard’s stand up comedy alone will get you started. As will DVDs of Margaret Cho’s or Wil Anderson’s standup if you’d rather nail the “inapropriate” jokes. Once you can remember a whole series’ (or DVD’s) worth of quotes to interject into conversation, you’ll have absorbed enough of your chosen comic’s genius to steer you through most conversations. But it’s important to understand why a joke is funny before trying observational humour. Dissecting jokes often kills them (or that might just be frogs) but it gives a good understanding of how they work. Puns are the foundation of many “Dad” jokes as well as many funny ones. Taking a word (A) that sounds like another word (B) and substituting A for B in a sentence is the first step in many, many jokes. Alternatively, when you mishear what someone says, repeating back what you think you heard is an off-beat way to score cheap laughs without much work. Amongst my circle of friends this is known as a “Cuban Dinosaur.” No one knows why, and attempts to reverse engineer the original term have failed.
Often jokes will be based on an expectation being built up, and then deliberately going against the buildup. The rule of three is a nice example of this type of humour: You set up, confirm and then destroy in the name of humour. Describing a cooking show where the host looks like he’s spent too many years on drugs? His technique might involve being broiling, lightly oiling and then rolling the dish in pure crack. This works on two levels, because both “broiling” and “oiling” are common steps in food preparation, and they both rhyme. Having the host roll a chicken breast in crack after doing the first two breaks the set-up you’ve created for the third. Which might have had to be “soiling” the chicken. Good thing he chose the crack.
Observational requires pointing out how something (a current news topic, deeply-held belief system or Justin Bieber) is already funny, or taking a premise to its logical but absurd conclusion and then speaking as if everybody else believes this conclusion. Not for amateurs is the kind of paranoid schizophrenic conversation based on Jesus watching you from an air vent on the train (God is “everywhere” and sees everything, after all). Another use for generally understood stereotypes or a “pre-existing” buildup is to contradict them. Quite often a joke in my house will involve nothing more than a healthy dose of irony. My housemate and I once left a ridiculously bad painting of a matador up in our lounge, which obviously clashed without our ethical vegetarianism and sense of aesthetics, and told people that came to visit we chose it because it matched our lounge’s colour scheme. Thankfully we didn’t buy the painting, we found it discraded outside a picture framing business. (This housemate and I had progressed to the stage where one-word references to in-jokes and puns would have us in tears from the effort of trying to laugh.)
Once you settle into your funny groove, you can then purposely disregard the rules of funny humour and move into “Dad joke” territory with an audience knowing that you do have a finely-tuned sense of humour and are stepping outside the bounds of taste to make a bad joke. Until then, it’s best to leave bad jokes in the category of things you know better than to try. A category I’m only ever borrowing from the natural hypocrites: Dads.
* For those that have had the great fortune of avoiding jokes like these, he used to say that he’d have to walk backwards into Connections so that everyone would recognise him.
And never failed to bring up the following list when something “gay” entered conversation – things a straight man should never say in a gay bar include:
“Can I bum a fag?”, “Can you push my stool in?”, “Let’s blow this joint!”, “Toss you for the next round.” and “Bottoms up!”
#twittereviewtuesday July 6, 2010
Posted by Danjamin S. Meow in : movies, recommendations, television , 1 comment so farBe a trendsetter. Start a hashtag.
Angus & Julia Stone
Breaking Bad: Struggling high school chemistry teacher is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer at the beginning of the series, breaks down and starts cooking meth in a Winnebago to provide for his wallflower wife and cerebral palsied son.
frankie: Magazine featuring local and international artisans, artists, musicians and writers, DIY projects and plenty of food for thought (although I wouldn’t recommend digesting the pages themselves without first sautéing them a little).
Hommous: More like om-nom-nommous.
Pjur Lube: Lubricant, skin softener, leave-in conditioner; if it lasts for the manufacturer-guaranteed 5 years then you aren’t taking care of your wrinkles (or your creases).
Next week: Birthday cards, golf pants, Lush’s Goth Juice.
Probably not coming any time soon to a vending machine near you June 7, 2010
Posted by Danjamin S. Meow in : Uncategorized , add a comment
From Japan, the land of strange fetishes and robots: the soiled underwear vending machine.
Custom-scented charcoal-filter underpants: So that when you fart, a filter eliminates the smell of your rectum and instead a pleasant waft of morning coffee or freshly-baked bread fills the air.
One scent not enough for you? Why not mix and match? Choose any combination that fully expresses the personality of your bowels, from the range of: menthol, tobacco, patchouli, fish heads, ylang ylang, cinnamon, orange blossom, yeast, chocolate candle, lavender, vanilla latte and rose.
Soon to be available: “Silent Butt Pleasant” muffler underwear. Patents pending.
Excuses I’ve already used. May 31, 2010
Posted by Danjamin S. Meow in : Uncategorized , add a commentUnsuccessfully. Probably because I stole them from a bus ad and the Perth public transportation system was saturated with them at the time.
Feel free to give them a go, though.
- My dog threw up my kid’s homework all over the report I was writing.
- I got up really early but I can’t seem to wake my foot.
I forgot all about my Sunday paper and when I found it on the verandah this morning I thought it was Sunday. - I changed all the locks in my house and I can’t get out.
- My in-laws were here all weekend and I’m feeling a little anti-social.
- When I got my clothes back from the laundromat none of my socks matched.
- My stars told me to avoid office romances.
- Some of the clocks in my house are slow and some are fast. So I’ll be late or early.
- I have a cold so my nose will be the most productive thing about me and I could cost infect everyone and cost the company thousands in down-time.
Let me know how you get on with them.
Things that make you go “hmmm…” May 31, 2010
Posted by Danjamin S. Meow in : Uncategorized , add a commentMy YouTube search history. Because it’s been a slow week.
- “condoms and the pill”
- “birds and the bees”
- “sexy nana dancing”
- “margaret cho fisting”
The first three were to try and find a mid-2000’s ad for using both elements in item 1, and featuring items 2 and 3.
I was unsuccessful but like this result though:
Item 4 was to find a video example of why you should follow @margaretcho on Twitter…
#FF Fornicating with Fibulas. Like fisting? Get @margaretcho into you…r “following” list:
Wank to stop a wanker May 24, 2010
Posted by Danjamin S. Meow in : politics, religion, serious business , 2commentsTony Abbott's Sexface
I’ll be honest with you – not that I haven’t been truthful so far nor just because I like you, but I was raised think that lying made you a bad person as well as to be unnecessarily vulgar – I don’t like Tony Abbott. But this post isn’t really about him. You’ll see why I wish it wasn’t shortly.
This post is actually about the separation between Church and Australian State not being as wide or as deep a cavity as we’d like to think. (And there you thought I would follow that with a naughty joke. I actually want to be serious just for a minute, but kudos for making predictions based upon previous behaviour. That’s what separates you from Tony Abbott… Yeah, I know. I didn’t even last a minute.) In fact there is no Constitutional separation and in order to answer correctly in the government’s citizenship test, immigrants must nominate Australian values as Judeo-Christian, not secular.
Politicians like Abbott are a symptom of a system which allows politicians to skew or misrepresent the facts and use cherry-picked verses from religious texts as moral guidance for how they run our country.
One man shouldn’t have the power to overrule public consensus on how the country is run. And it does seems unlikely that he would. After all, Abbott was Federal Minister for Health and he didn’t revoke access to abortions entirely. But politicians and press alike have a duty to tell the truth when it comes to how the country is being governed. The biggest say the public has in how the country is run is with their vote, and since a party’s policies can’t predict the events which will occur during their reign it’s important to understand the views of the representatives we elect. The U.S. Democrats probably wouldn’t have been elected earlier if they had devised a better terrorism response policy prior to the events of September 11, but whether they too would have started such a flawed War on Terror if they were in power is food for thought.
While the distribution of votes at election time might result in a two-party system here in Australia too, it’s important to allocate your first preference for the party you most want to represent the country – no matter their size. If they don’t come into power it sends a clear message to the winning party that they may have won but public preference was divided, and they only received your vote once the minor parties were eliminated. For the first time in 2008, the Greens received more swing votes than any other WA party. That strongly indicated voter dissatisfaction with the two larger parties, and the growing support for Green policies.
Abbott: centrefold for conservative values
If this sounds annoyingly wanky, self-righteous and annoying, remember this is the man who said publicly that he “feels threatened” by homosexuals. They’re the ones that should feel threatened by the possibility of him running the country unchecked; gay rights are slow enough in coming as it is. And if you still don’t feel right about it, have a wank in the name of personal freedoms and offending fundamentalist values. Unless your religious convictions are stopping you, in which case it’s probably time to join the rest of us in the 21st century and question why.
… But gerbils use the back door, not the gate. May 14, 2010
Posted by Danjamin S. Meow in : idols, serious business, social networking , 2commentsKevin, pictured, got fired when it was revealed that his 'family emergency' was a Halloween party interstate.
The press called it Gerbilgate. The #rogeringgerbils hashtag on twitter is still carrying on. Miranda Devine remains employed, and Catherine Deveny remains unemployed.
I’ve made it no secret that I want Catherine’s children. But she said she’d much rather keep them. At least that way they won’t have to move schools. Even so, I’ll try to remain unbiased on this post. I want to maintain at least the illusion of credibility.
It’s a time in which it’s very unclear exactly what you have to do to be fired for your actions online. A very dear friend of mine was fired for workplace harrassment after she wrote a short-lived status update alluding to a workmate who didn’t have facebook at the time. Word travels fast online and putting yours into what seems like just a sea of facetious statements, sexual innuendo and song lyrics can be deceptively dangerous.
It reinforces the message that employees are often employed by the grace of their employer. WorkChoices might be gone but how we conduct ourselves outside of the workplace can still be cause for termination. Catherine Deveny was hired as an opinion writer for The Age for exactly the same sense of humour and wit she put to use in writing her Logies tweets. In my opinion she was doing no less damage to her employer by posting comments from her own Twitter account about an 11 year old getting laid than Miranda Devine did by publicly implying that Justin Barbour was a zoophilic sexual deviant because he was homosexual. Which isn’t saying a lot. No less than very little damage is still very little damage.
It would appear that Catherine’s tweets cause offence in those unwilling or unable to put them into context or to understand that the remarks were part of a broader social comment. I find it highly offensive that Sam Newman still has a job, but The Footy Show still goes to air each week because apparently his bigoted antics and remarks appeal to a demographic that keeps people watching just long enough to sit through the ad breaks.
Miranda Devine was defending an article she had written for her employer and her right to hold the opinion she expressed for them (after all, she got paid to do it). The fact that she was doing so in an offensive manner damages her own image far more than it does the Sydney Morning Herald’s, because she did so via online social media in a response to a provocation outside of her capacity as a journalist.
While I would like to see equality upheld and Catherine rehired, The Age have the right to dismiss a freelance writer or spike her articles when her work or her words no longer express opinions it endorses or no longer sell papers. They might get web hits but Australia doesn’t have a Free Speech clause in our Constitution and your words can cost you your job now, or employment prospects in the future. The only right it seems we do have is the right to remain silent.
Letters I haven’t had time to post May 9, 2010
Posted by Danjamin S. Meow in : job-seeking, television , add a commentA Current Affair
Dear A Current Affair,
I am writing to you to ask for a job. Not, despite my extensive credentials, to have Tracey Grimshaw fired on my account; The woman does a bang-up job and I would be honoured to work alongside her. Please don’t laugh before hearing me out. I love your show, and choose to ask you over Today Tonight because you are my favourite of the two and frankly, they don’t deserve to be on the air.
I’ve even got a new phrase to add to your list of epithets that the punters seem to love, like “un-Australian” and “Aussie Battler.” Are you ready for it? Brace yourselves: “Consumerism gone mad”.
I think it would be useful for stories on teenagers injured in Supré sales and shoppers panic buying cosmetics products when a company decides to discontinue a line of lipstick. I even have pre-made story formulas for events such as these. I won’t share it with you just yet, because I am a savvy television viewer and I know that big businesses such as television companies like to rip Joe Average off. I would like to arrange an interview to see if I can trust your producers before I make any rash decisions about sharing my ideas. Don’t worry though, I won’t base my trust on whether or not I like them. But I will put some thought into whether they are likely to harrass me sexually or cyber-bully me once I am working for them. Because I am led to believe this is fairly common workplace behaviour and I don’t want to work in an office where this kind of nonsense carries on unchecked by the management.
But I digress. I can discuss the conditions of my employment at the interview you are free to arrange at your convenience.
As you can see, I know lots of big words, like “convenience”, and how to use them. And I can use them sparingly, so as not to confuse your viewers. You will have to trust me that I can pronounce them correctly, because I had to use my school reports as scrap paper when I was drafting stories for practise. Although you could arrange a pronunciation test to administer during the interview, so you aren’t just taking my word for it. You can probably buy them from the Internet, if you aren’t scared of the possibility of accidentally buying pornography featuring children in a simulation of classroom tests. I know that this is possible, because I made that mistake once and had to promise the Federal Police I wouldn’t do it again before they allowed me back on the Internet again.
I think that my experiences would make a good angle for a story on the dangers of the Internet and the wily criminals who promise you goods but actually deliver something else once you’ve given them your credit card details.
For this reason, I will not supply you with my bank account details so I hope that you can pay me in cash or in food vouchers. I am not ashamed to be seen cashing them with honest, down-on-their-luck Australians, and am happy to take a film crew along when I do. I think this would be a good opportunity to discover some human interest stories.
I could also find out when the dole bludgers scamming the system are cashing theirs in, so that I can visit the supermarkets on those days and ask them how they can live with themselves after cheating the Australian taxpayers out of their hard-earned money.
Because I don’t trust the Australian Taxation Office to use my tax money fairly, I would also like for someone from Channel Nine’s Human Resources department to attend the interview so that I can give them a list of charities they can pay my taxes to directly. I am aware that this may not be possible, so I can also provide them with a list of known scam artists and con-men that I would rather pay than the average Centrelink fraudster. I think that welfare fraud is too easy a scam to pull, and I would prefer to reward those that at least put some effort in their grifting.
Please do not hesitate to contact me to discuss an interview time that is convenient for me, as I will have to schedule it around my card-skimming awareness course and volunteer time tending to aged victims of youth violence and cyber robbery.
I await your response eagerly,
Dan
Today Tonight
Dear Today Tonight,
I am writing to you to ask for a job. Not, despite my extensive credentials, to have Monica Kos fired on my account; The woman does a bang-up job and I would be honoured to work alongside her. Please don’t laugh before hearing me out. I love your show, and choose to ask you over A Current Affair because you are my favourite of the two and frankly, they don’t deserve to be on the air…
60 Minutes
Dear 60 Minutes,
Please give me a job. I can emulate the ticking sound of your clock perfectly, thus eliminating the need to employ a real clock each Sunday night.
Please reply promptly as my services are in high demand.
Dan.
My Favourite Late-Night Experience on SBS… April 10, 2010
Posted by Danjamin S. Meow in : idols, recommendations, television , add a comment
The Notorious C.H.O.
… Was with Margaret Cho. I was 17. And she touched me in ways that… Let’s just say that I’ve had a hard time loving anyone else in the same way since.
This is why Margaret Cho is the one that I want.
She says with far more eloquence and with more wit than I possess exactly what I’d love to say:
“So I want a husband but I look at husbands the same way I look at tattoos. Like, I want one but I can’t decide on what. And I don’t want to be stuck with something that I’m gonna grow to hate and have surgically removed later. Why can’t I just have a henna husband?
“I’m not against marriage – at all. You know who should get married, are gays and lesbians. That’s who should get married. Because for gays and lesbians, marriage is not about romance; it’s about equality. And having our relationships regarded in the same way, with the same kind of reverance as straight people’s relationships. It’s such an important political issue. We need to recognise that a government that would deny a gay man the right to bridal registry is a fascist state.
“As for marriage for myself, I don’t know. I continue to love myself until I love another. And I have a lot of self-esteem. Which is amazing, ’cause I’m not someone who would necessarily have a lot of self-esteem as I am considered a minority. And if you are a woman, if you are a person of colour, if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, if you are a person of size, if you are a person of intelligence, if you are a person of integrity; then you are considered a minority in this world. And it’s going to be really hard to find messages of self-love and support anywhere, especially women’s and gay men’s culture. It’s all about how you have to look a certain way or else you’re worthless.
“You know when you look in the mirror and you think ‘Ugh. I’m so ugly, I’m so fat, I’m so old.’ Don’t you know that’s not your authentic self? But that is billions upon bsillions of dollars of advertising, magazines, billboards, movies; all geared to make you feel shitty about yourself so you will take your hard-earned money and spend it at the mall on some turn-around cream that doesn’t turn around shit.
“If you don’t have self-esteem you will hesitate before you do anything in your life. You will hesitate to go for the job you really wanna go for. You will hesitate to ask for a raise. You will hesitate to call yourself an American. You will hesitate to report a rape. You will hesitate to defend yourself when you are discriminated against because of your race, your sexuality, your size, your gender. You will hesitate to vote. You will hesitate to dream.
“For us, to have self-esteem is truly an act of revolution. And our revolution is long overdue.
“I urge you all today, especially today, in these times of terrorism and chaos, to love yourselves without reservation. And to love each other without restraint. Unless you’re into leather. Then by all means, use restraints.”