Friday, November 28, 2008

A Rose by any other name...would still be bit of a tool...

So Axl Rose has finally released the next Guns N'Roses album - Chinese Democracy.
Although the album has been causing problems in China for some reason, it's been causing even more problems in the Greatest Democracy on Earth.
Seems that the good people at Dr Pepper, amused at the amount of time it was taking Axl to release said album, issued a challenge back in March this year, offering to provide everyone in America with a cool can of Dr Pepper if the album was released before the end of 2008.
Because he actually did it, Dr Pepper provided people with an opportunity to download a voucher to get access to one of these prized cans, for a limited time. Seems fair enough in this modern age.
However, according to the New York Times ("Dr Pepper and Rocker in a War of Hype"):
"The arrangement irked fans, who took to the Internet with stories of being blocked for hours from the site and a related customer-service phone line. And that irked Mr. Rose."

So, "Mr. Rose" (if that IS your real name...which it's kinda not but kinda is) then took the logical next step:
"On Tuesday his lawyers sent a harshly worded letter to the soft drink maker complaining of its “appalling failure to make good on a promise it made to the American public,” and demanding a public apology, more time for thirsty fans, and payment for piggybacking on the “Chinese Democracy” publicity."

The lawyers also asked that Dr Pepper run apologetic full-page ads in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and other papers, giving customers more time to receive their free soda.
Apparently, similar sentiments spread across Guns N’ Roses message boards:
“If they said they’d give a free can to everyone in America,” one fan wrote, “can they really put a one-day time limit on it? Seems like it’s something that if someone took to court they’d win.”

PLEASE!! I don't normally get legal on anyone's ass on this blog, but I feel I must take my glasses off this once (i.e., like Superman - he was a lawyer, wasn't he?): What cause of action would you bring, sirrah? Breach of contract? Sorry, buddy, for a contract, you’ve got to give something in return. About the only person who MIGHT be able to sue would be Axl Rose himself, and that’s assuming he accepted Dr Pepper’s offer and in return brought the album out by the end of the year in order to meet his end of the bargain. And there’s no indication that he did accept the offer. Certainly, he had no corresponding obligations if he hadn’t brought out the album in time, and it’s going to be tough to prove he’s done anything he wasn’t already going to do.
PLUS, what’s a can of Dr Pepper cost? A dollar?!? Go and buy one yourself, Dr Cheapskate!
That said, you should really drink Mr Pibb, because, when combined with Red Vines, it is indeed Crazy Delicious.
As an aside, I LOVED the Gunners in the 80's, and even a little bit into the 90's, though we all know things started to go south when Izzy left the band. I would still put Appetite for Destruction in my Top Ten Albums of all time. I even participated in the Calder Park debacle in 1993. However, I do not have high hopes for this album. No Slash and no Duff and no Izzy and no Steven Adler makes Axl something-something. But I doubt it's a good something-something.
Anyhoo, now that someone's raised the topic of Top Ten albums, here's mine, as at November 28th, 2008. These are albums that just work, from go to woah.

My Top Ten Albums Of All Time (in no particular order, and subject to change)
Appetite for Destruction – Guns’N’Roses
Chocolate and Cheese – Ween
Either/Or – Elliott Smith
Master of Puppets – Metallica
The Colour and the Shape – Foo Fighters
Odyssey Number Five – Powderfinger (what? Seriously, what?)
Surfer Rosa/Come on Pilgrim – Pixies (it was one album in Australia)
OK Computer – Radiohead
Going Blank Again – Ride
Superunknown – Soundgarden (I know Badmotorfinger is probably cooler, but Superunknown is a great album, cover to cover).

I know all of these albums were recorded between, like 1986 and 1996 (except Odyssey Number Five), but that’s just coincidence, plus the music of my X-Generation was like totally the best.
That said, I’m happy to hear any other suggestions…
As for anyone who wants to diss my selection of "Odyssey Number Five", here's a clip of my fave Powderfinger song, which also happens to be my fave Powderfinger clip, and which also happens to be from "Odyssey Number Five"…

(PS If you want the totally approved version, it's here)

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Democracy inaction in action

A few of my clowny mates have decided to run in the Council elections sweeping Melbourne this weekend, so I thought it was time to give them a plug.
Disclaimer: I can neither confirm nor deny the rumour that the one with the highest number of primary votes will win the noble prize of a slab.
First I'll plug Garpy, running in Maribyrnong, because he has the very easy platform to sell of: "A vote for Garth is a vote for fun!" And that's it!
Check it out
here.
The fact that he's done a preference deal with the former mayor seems to have got a few Maribyrnong noses out of joint: "Preference deal a joke". Surprisingly, on finding out Garth's position on fun, the former mayor was reportedly embarassed.
Speaking of embarassed, the other plug is for Joey Jo Jo, running in Richmond, and who seems to be taking it a little more seriously than is healthy. Without such a punchy campaign slogan, he hasn't been getting as much press as Garp, though he sent us this appearance in the Melbourne Times, when he actually turned up to a debate (possibly about mancans, I'm not sure about the specifics):

I might be helping hand out some how-to-vote cards for him Saturday, if I can't otherwise get out of it...
As suggested by a friend of the Rant, Mr Wendt, I will explain Joey's policies as "A vote for Joey is a vote for not Garth".
So there we go.
I nominate Garth as the Barack Obama of these elections, and Joey as the John McCain. Just because Joey is taking things as seriously as a hundred-year old man.
Get out, or stay at home, and vote, or don't.
PS I should point out there is no ranting in this post, so this could well be my first anti-rant...

Friday, November 14, 2008

Facebook, Shmacebook

Never really been a fan of Facebook - seems to demand an incredible amount of time just to receive imaginary drinks and get bitten by imaginary zombies, and I've got better things to do with that time.

Such as drink real drinks and get bitten by real zombies. Not to mention updating my blog - whew, now that's time-wasting!

A friend recently sent me this video, which highlights some of the other dangers that Facebook presents.

(I should perhaps mention he sent it to me on Facebook...)


Anyhoo, I'm currently working on getting my blog onto my Facebook page.
That would be sweet.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

I don't want to say "I told ya so". But I just can't help myself.

A quick mini-rant: a while ago, I suggested that the State Labor Governments around Australia could be in trouble, especially that of my home state of Victoria.
Well, it looks like others are now adding to the chorus: Brumby and his crew face testing times.
Plus the NSW Labor Government is looking even more dodgy than usual, and their latest mini-budget is, with all due respect, an absolute shocker. As Ross Gittins recently said in the Sydney Morning Herald:
"THIS mini-budget is a sham. It purports to be about responding to the severe downturn in the NSW economy, but will in fact make things worse."
Assuming they all go down in the next set of elections, well, let's just say it couldn't happen to nicer clowns...

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Ye of little to no faith

Went to an Atheist Society meeting last night.
I'd never been to one before, but it sounds fun, right? As the guest speaker, Catherine Deveny of The Age, said (and I paraphrase), since atheists have, like, no morals, an Atheist Society meeting should be Debauchery Central.

Alas, it was a sedate affair, and I actually went on my lonesome because I am a lonely heathen.
Catherine was speaking about her "Conversion to Atheism" though she remarked that it wasn't so much of a conversion as a very gradual process - an evolution, if you will - with an eventual realisation that she was simply an atheist. She's a very good speaker by the by, and though I disagree with some of her columns, I can't fault her convictions.
One of the questions asked of her, in response to her stated reliance on rational thought, was "What about faith, then?", which prompted the query "Can someone please explain to me what "faith" is?" to much laughter.

Having thought about it, though, here's my definition: "Faith" is the stubborn willingness to believe in nonsense despite all evidence (especially new and emerging evidence) to the contrary.
Whaddaya think? Dictionary material?

Also, speaking of complete lunacy, some more religious nuts have come out of the woodwork lately, claiming they don't have to obey Australia's laws: Defiant cult 'above the law'. I don't know what they base this on, but to throw a bit of scripture* their way, they should check out Luke 20:25:
"21 And they asked him, saying, Master, we know that thou sayest and teachest rightly, neither acceptest thou the person of any, but teachest the way of God truly: 22 Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar, or no? 23 But he perceived their craftiness, and said unto them, Why tempt ye me? 24 Shew me a penny. Whose image and superscription hath it? They answered and said, Caesar's. 25 And he said unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's."
That's right, Jesus says "Pay your bloody taxes!"

* For those who don't know, "scripture" is a reference to the collected writings of other, and older, unsophisticated religious nuts, generally of Middle Eastern extraction, mostly written to justify their beliefs and their place in society, often for political purposes. The Onion did it best:
Mistranslated Myths Of Nomadic Desert Shepherd Tribe Taken At Face Value

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Wrong slide of the tracks

Had another bike accident Friday - ho hum - this time I slid out on some wet tram tracks on St Kilda Road. Not a great idea when it's raining at 5:30pm on a Friday evening, especially in light of what happened to that poor girl in the city a couple of months ago, but luckily there were no cars...or trams...in my immediate vicinity when I crashed into and then slid across the bitumen.

Hurt, though. And the fact that I was only 500 metres from work, and had a long ride home ahead of me, didn't help matters. Check out the colourful after-effects in this risque shot of my leg:


Anyhoo, it got me thinking about the similarities between me and Tour de France legend Cadel Evans - no surprises there, really.

Not that I've been the Tour runner-up two years in a row (yet), but the similarities with the grazes on our arzes. He had a crash early in the 2008 Tour, and though he recovered well, he commented that it affected his performance throughout the race and possibly cost him the Tour. Lying on my couch every night throughout the Tour, I struggled to empathise with him, but this has now changed after my relatively minor crash on Friday. It actually hurts! Who would thunk it?!?


Good on Cadel for keeping second place, I say (again, but This Time With Feeling).

Speaking of cycling, when I was watching the 2008 Vuelta highlights on SBS, I really liked the Spanish song used for the intro, but there was no indication what it was or who sung it. Rising to the challenge and using my very limited Spanish and a search engine by the name of Google (I'm a maverick), I tracked it down. For those who are interested - it's Pretendo Hablarte by Beatriz Luengo (note that this is a (good) weird clip, and the song doesn't actually start until around 2:10 in):

Veeerry nice.

PS I'll admit the version of the song above is a little choppy, so you can see the official version here, too (couldn't embed it here, but...)

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Now, back to the wa(r)ll

Had a little too much alkeehol last night, celebrating The Win. It was a glorious thing to watch. But now reality must once again stick its rude nose into our lives.

I've finished travelling around the country for work, at least for now, so it's good to be back home and rant a little. One thing which almost got by me was Paul Keating's comments regarding Gallipoli, which led to an outpouring of criticism of our beloved ex-PM (although I'll admit that I didn't truly belove him until he was an "ex"...). One of his most vociferous critics was not yet ex-PM Kevin Rudd, who also admitted that he didn't know exactly what Keating had said, but nevertheless disagreed with the gist of what he meant, no doubt.

While I understand what Keating was getting at - which I think was basically a rejection of the idea that Australia needed something like a Gallipoli to find its own identity - I still think visiting Gallipoli can be a profoundly moving experience.

Not to mention cheap.

I was fortunate enough to hit Gallipoli on Anzac Day in 2002, and waiting with thousands of Aussies and Kiwis in the cold pre-dawn during April on a Turkish beach, with the cliffs rising above
and behind us, really drove home how forbidding and scary the whole situation must have been for our boys. And that was without being shot at which, I imagine, could only worsen the situation.

Yes, it's true that Winston Churchill, responsible for the Gallipoli plan, bollocksed it up and wasted many Australian lives in a conflict that had more to with Imperial ambitions than defence of Australian (or even British) lives, but that doesn't mean that visiting Gallipoli is a wasted exercise. Should we only visit war sites where the Australians won? Or perhaps sites where we achieved something like peace?

BORING!

Gallipoli is an excellent movie with a pre-anti-semitic Mel Gibson, and we should be proud of our links to it.

Plus, Turkey is a really cheap country to visit.

PS The title of this post is an homage to Moe Szyslak's famous line from "Krusty Gets Kancelled", as if you didn't already know.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

I rant. You (if you're American) decide!

It's ironic that, whilst the US has so much influence over the rest of the world (and is likely to continue to do so for at least another year or so), that same rest of the world has no say over the US's leadership, YET the American people themselves can be fairly apathetic about voting, with voter turnout under 50% not being uncommon, and even those who do vote seem to know less about the issues than we foreigners do. As merely one example, and as George Monbiot pointed out on the weekend, two-thirds of young Americans can't find Iraq on a map, one adult in five believes the Sun revolves around the Earth, and only 26% accept that evolution takes place by natural selection. Exclamation point, exclamation point.

Nonetheless! Today's the day (at least, in Australia, being on the other side of the International Date Line) that America will finally decide on it's future. Change, or more of the same. Actually, as Nobel Prize winning economist and writer for the New York Times, Paul Krugman, wrote a little while ago:
"(N)ow the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country?

What it says, I’d argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney.

If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse. "

Yes, McCain used to be OK, and it's a real shame that he wasn't chosen over Dubya in 2000, but it's now 8 years later...and he's a clown.

It's now Obama O'Clock.

Barack, I kindly ask that you Bring It.

Do us proud, our Septic cousins!