Things i’ve grown to dislike…

I went to bar 120 last night, it’s actually not too bad and I think I’ve finally overcome my dislike of clubs. Had a great time drinking till about 2:30.

It’s a given that in a club guys are going to try and pick up any hot girls that are about, it’s a meat market and we all know that HOWEVER there are some guys that just completely lack in any style of picking up at all. I will never begrudge a guy that tries to pick up one of my female friends with a bit of style, actually saying something to them.

There are a small group of guys that still do the “i’m gonna dance near you thing so that you some how magically will think I am hot and want to jump me!”. At least 3 guys tried this last night, it was so lame that I couldn’t refrain from laughing at a guy to his face on one occasion, he just walked off. Each time the girls just all huddled together to ignore the guy. It’s quite laughable how bad some people are at picking up.

In school and I suppose also in countries colonised by the british, the focus has always been on british history. There is nothing wrong with this of course, I love reading about british history its intruiging to say the least. One can’t complain either as much of the way that our society is today owes alot to what has happened in Britain over history.

However in my regular forays into wikipedia, I found myself led from reading about Robin Hood ( I am currently watching the BBC TV series) to reading about Gunpowder, which then led me to reading about Chinese history. If you think that the British were interesting, they’ve got nothing on the Chinese. I suggest you read it sometime!!

I wish also that they hadn’t skipped over it so much when I was in school.

Solo Lemon Lime Tang (or Solo Tang) as Gav and I like to refer to it, is the greatest soft-drink created since Schweppes came up with Agrum and Ciata which in turn were the greatest soft-drinks since the late Mello Yello (I don’t consider energy drinks soft drinks).

However, despite it’s promotion during the Cricket, Gav and I have struggled to find anywhere that sells it. The other day we cleaned out the local caltex of their remaining bottles of Tang. We then found out to our surprise that the local Kebab store is owned by the people who own the Kebab store at Broadway (where we first discovered tang) and we purchased 4 of their 6 bottles of tang. Then last night Gavin purchased 6 bottles of tang from Ezy plus.

But other than that i’ve not seen it anywhere.

Stop singing about America they don’t care that you are singing about them and sure aren’t going to buy your records.

I’m finally beginning to understand what a good producer can do to a record by finding records in my collection that have bad production qualities.

There is an album I have by a band called GoodShirt, their from New Zealand they have a few really good Pop-Rock songs. However good the songs are, and they are good, I always find myself thinking “I wish they had turned the bass guitar up” or “a little louder distortion on the lead guitar and this would be an awesome song”.

I had another theory the other day about why Perth is so backwards.

We all look on at cities like Melbourne and Sydney and talk about how progressive and fantastically busy they are whilst all the while bagging how dull Perth is. Well you may not have, but I’ve heard many people that have.

I have a theory that Perth remains behind the times because it’s size lends it to being influenced heavily by Industry groups.

We recently had a referendum on extended trading for shopping and have had many referendums for daylight savings that have failed. Politicians have even come out to say that referendums don’t work because people will conservatively vote for the no rather than the yes, people on the whole fear change (or more to the point like to remain in a comfortable state).

It always seems that whenever we have these polls on social issues Industry Groups always come out with some sort of sob story that usually completely disregard simple economic theory.

For the last extended trading referendum we had the “small shop owners” such as dewsons and supa value complaining that they would lose business to the BIG CORPORATIONS such as woolies and coles, despite the fact that simple market economics states that people will shop where it is convenient, there is a good range and it’s cheapest, so if people stop going to your stores it’s because you’re not competing well enough in those key areas. Nonetheless everyone bought the sob story and voted no.

Come 2006, the Government just bypassed public opinion and made a daylight savings trial (huzzah) which i think has already been a great success. They also allowed sunday trading for bottle shops and soon will allow small bar licenses for bars with less than 120 people to emulate more cosmopolitan cities such as Melbourne. But wait… the Associated Hotels Association had to come up with it’s latest sob story saying that “its a sad day for small WA family-owned hotels, many of which relied on the extra bottle shop trade on sundays to stay afloat”.

OH my poor bleeding heart, how I pity those small family owned hotels such as the Queens, the Inglewood, the Hyde Park Hotel, the Herdsman and the Wembley to name but a few. Those poor people who couldn’t possibly be making a profit from actual visitors to their pubs, but are JUST scraping by selling alcohol from their bottle shops and only just staying afloat.

SOMEHOW, I JUST DONT THINK SO.

What about those poor family owned bottle shop forced to close on weekends and lose many of their customers to the rather larger hotels because they are forced to close on Sundays?

Its funny how the focus of the Government is on how to make immigrants integrate into Australian society and accept Australian values such as “Mateship”, “A Fair Go” etc etc. Everyone knows that the implications are for non-english and non-christian immigrants. But what about our English friends, why don’t we ever include them in anything like this.

I walked down Hay St in Subiaco today where a Father and his young sun were walking home after having lost the Ashes to Australia. They were both wearing the England test top HOWEVER the father spoke with a strong English accent and his son had a very strong Australian accent.

To me, that’s a disgrace and it’s been happening for a long time in Australia. I’ve no problem with kids of English parents supporting their dad’s favourite soccer team as is often the case, because that doesnt get in the way of you being an Australian. However I hate when they choose England national teams first over Australian national teams or bad mouth for example the standard of the A-League because the Premier League is better.

It’s unaustralian especially if you were born here and have lived her your entire life. I for one was born in England and I wouldn’t be caught dead buying an England top of any sort, I dont even consider myself English having only lived there for 4 or 5 years of my 29 year existence.

In fact I was as proud as punch when we won the Ashes back (sucked in to the poms) and for someone who has spent a larger proportion of their life in Australia and is lucky enough to be born Australian to pretend they are English cos of their parents, makes me sick, and thats nothing against the english but maybe it’s time we had a test for them as well so they don’t encourage this anti Australian bias in their kids.

Do you remember Fags, the lollies that you could get back in the late 80’s., before political correctness set in.

They were basically fake cigarettes, ie lollies made in the shape of white cigarettes with a red tip on them.

When things like that were no longer PC, not only for the cigarettes but also for the name, they changed.

Gavin bought a packet today and they are not even aluded to as fake cigarettes like they used to be, now they are “fun sticks”.

I’m sorry but this is taking it too far… I grew up with those lollies and I’ve never smoked and I would suggest that no one else has smoked because they ate those lollies. It’s ridiculous, really really really ridiculous.

Fun Sticks indeed.

Todays Sydney Morning Herald website had its major picture headline as

“Break-Up - the real version It’s official - Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn have split.”

When did journalism in this country stoop so low that this becomes breaking news. I couldn’t care less, wow some b-grade actor but a-grade celebrity (anniston) broke up with a b-grade actor and b-grade celebrity (vaughn).

How does that make my day better for knowing that, its an insignificant event in itself because she is the latest in a long line of actresses who break up with actors (J-Lo, Elizabeth Taylor). Is it THAT much of a surprise that it happened? I have no sense of sorrow at all, everyone goes through it so whats the big deal?

I’m actually a fan of Vince Vaughn but am not slightly interested in their break up.

Stop treating celebrities like gods… they are people just like you and me.

I’m slightly miffed cos I expected a big pic of Australia’s win against england to be the major pic and headline.

How many leadership challenges is that now? Latham - Crean, Beazley - Latham, Rudd - Beazley and i’m not entirely certain that Crean didn’t oust Beazley in the first place. The ALP is a disgrace, public image matters as much as policy, lots of people don’t like the Libs or Howard yet vote for them because they look like they have their shit together and the ALP unfortunately don’t.

Consistent leadership challenges aren’t going to help that either.

On to Mr Rudd though, he has a less than inspiring name, Howard, Keating, Hawke were all cool sounding names, even Beazley and Latham were. On the other hand though, at least he doesn’t look soft, I always had a suspicion that voters didnt trust Beazley and Latham cos they were big and a bit pudgy oh and they sound a bit whingy. Howard, even though he kinda odd, also looks mean, stubborn, arrogant… hell he looks like a c*nt who would stick to what he beleives in, even if what he beleives in is wrong. That’s admirable in a way and a sign of strength I suppose.

I’m sorry for Mr Beazley, I really wanted to like him as the ALP leader but I couldn’t, it was too hard to take him seriously. Admittedly he has little to do with actually leading the party as they are led by the factions at the moment which is slighty unfortunate because it no doubt contributed to him seeming rather reactionary to the Libs policies rather than having a hard line policy of their own. But still I don’t think I could have voted for him.

Mr Rudd, I don’t know much about. He promised to bring “a fresh vision and a bucket load of energy”. Well that’s fine and dandy Kevin however I don’t want another right-wing vision for the ALP. What I want you to do is go away and re-invigorate the ALP as a genuine competitor of the Libs, re-assert your Left Wing-ed-ness because if you hadn’t worked it out by now, you’re core supporters from the 80s aren’t, the workers, aren’t voting for you as much as they did because you look like a direct copy of the Liberal party, and they do that better than you. I just wanna see a good opposition to the Libs, I may not vote for you but just give it a go.

Oh and the Greens are ON YOUR SIDE of the political spectrum, you dumb f*cks!