The A-Z Of Stupid

Yes, its that time of year again. Some hack compiles a list of what is good and bad for you. (I refer you to http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/wellbeing/our-a-to-z-of-whats-good-for-you--and-when-its-not-20100102-lmj3.html) It always includes such jaw dropping facts as:


‘Red wine: research shows that 1.5 glasses a day may actually be good for the heart!!!’

Wow. Hey guys, tonight do you want to go out and drink 1.5 glasses of red wine??!! Here’s a story: there’s no story until they tell us that 1.5 bottles of the stuff is good for us. And so, I present the A-Z of Stupid. (NB: the following are all bad for you. Very. Bad.)

ARCHERS: Is it really a drink? Or just peach flavoured bullshit? Research shows the latter.

BABE: This, my friends, is a word that needs to be banished from the well of human knowledge. Research shows that calling people babe makes you not only look but actually become more stupid.

CARS WITH THOSE BAD GIRL STICKERS: No one actually thinks you are a bad girl if you sport one of these stickers on your Barina. Research shows they just think you are a bogan.

DICK STICKERS WORN IN AN ATTEMPT TO BE IRONIC: No, see the reason no one under 40 and over 12 used to wear them until a few years ago is cause they are gross. Writing budgy smugglers on the back of them and sporting them on a European holiday makes them no less gross. Research has shown you are a dickhead.

ENGLAND: The weather is shit. The food is shit. Its expensive. Prince Charles lives there. Research indicates if you live in England, you are 90% more likely to suck at life and whinge about it.

FACEBOOK “FRIENDS”: If someone hasn’t seen or spoken to you for 10 years, there’s probably a reason for it. Research has shown that you are not actually friends, and adding the person on face-bok makes no difference.

GIRLS WHO CARRY THEIR BAGS LIKE ‘THAT’: You know what I’m talking about. They’ve read a few too many Who Weekly’s, and all of a sudden they have to perch their bag on the end of their extended arm as if Miuccia Prada is going to see their photo and start sending them free bags as a form of advertising. Research has shown that carrying bag like ‘that’ is one of the first steps into retardville.

HOMOPHOBIA: See, the thing is, who another human being sleeps with is in fact none of your business. Research shows that this fact would be more widely understood if I carried around a sign saying “GOD HATES PEOPLE THAT SLEEP WITH YOU, REV FRED NILE”.

IRAQ WAR, THE: Really. Fucking. Good. Idea. Lets try for regime change in a country with a culture completely different from ours, led by an army headed by George W Bush. Research shows that was one of the dumbest moves in human history.

JUICE BARS: Come on.... When did it become acceptable to charge $6 for freakin orange juice? Research indicates that half a litre of pulverized fruit and ice cream with a “skinny boost” will not, in fact, make you skinnier.

KISSING IN PUBLIC: I’m not talking about a quick peck. I’m talking about those socially inept loser couples that insist on sucking face in the street, in a bar, or on the bus. Research has revealed a direct link between licking someones tonsils in public and my propensity to projectile vomit.

LAW, THE STUDYING OF: Spend 5 years learning what a bunch of old white men have said. Realise sometimes the current crop of old white men make unbelievably stupid decisions. Graduate. Research shows after graduation you have a 90% chance of being a shitkicker for aforementioned men.

MILLIPIYANGO, MY NON WINNING OF IT: Its the local version of Lotto. I never win. Whats with that? Doesn’t need to be a million. Reports out recently suggest that if I won, you guys wouldn’t have to listen to me rant. I’d take the money and run far, far away.

NON VIOLENT PROTEST: Do the math. The arsenal of the state, their police, their army, their security cameras, their prisons vs you and your cardboard sign. Research shows that people who say ‘it worked for Ghandi’ are 100% likely to fail in their attempt to change anything.

OVERATED MOVIES: So help me God, one day I will take sweet sweet revenge on the person who forced me to see Avatar. Latest reports indicate that never in the history of man has such a clichéd, boring, unnecessarily long film made so much money at the box office. Except fucking Titanic. James Cameron, a curse on your many million dollar houses.

PETER GARRETT: also known as OUT, SELL. Just cause Labor is slightly left of the Liberal Party, who are slightly to the left of Gengis Khan, doesn’t mean you will be doing anything to help trees, or Aboriginal land rights, or whales, or anything else you used to sing about. Research indicates you should go join the queue for an iPod advertising campaign behind Bono and The White Stripes – also formerly known as rock stars who thought they had street cred.

QUALIFICATIONS FOR INTERNSHIPS: Just try and find an internship with the freakin UN or Doctors without borders or some other ‘we save the world’ group. You must have 875 degrees, done volunteer work for at least 5 years, and be able to fully support yourself for the duration of the internship. In New York. Research shows this results in high levels of interns from privileged, white, boring backgrounds. Yeah, cause rich white guys have done so well at saving the world in the past.

ROVE MCMANUS: Not funny. Seriously: Not. Funny. I know. He lost his wife. I shouldn’t be so harsh, etc etc. But the fact is, he was on TV for a really long time and research shows that he was not, in fact, funny. May him an Darryl Sommers be sentenced to life watching re-runs of their own programs.

SERIAL KILLERS: Choosing people to kill based on reasons such as sex, or because their house was unlocked, or had different skin colour to you is shithouse. Choose carefully, psychopaths. Research shows that if a serial killer had taken out Slobodan Milosevic, GWB, Pol Pot and the entire military leadership of Burma, he would have been more appreciated by the general public. Loved, even.

TELEVISION, DESCENT INTO HELL OF: Popstars. Australian Idol. The continuing existence of Home and Away. Big Brother. News on channels 2, 7, 9 and 10. Rove Live. Research indicates you don’t even need to watch them to become dumber. Just their presence in the ether is enough.

U, AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR YOU: TXT SPLNG IS BAD 4 UR BREIN. U WIL B STUPIDR. SMRT PEPL SAY L8TR U WIL NOT B RITE IN HED. KTHNXBY.

VICTORIA BECKHAM: Hi. I’m an alien posing as a human. My lips, as if stung by a thousand bees, are frozen for all eternity. Everywhere you look, there I am. Research has shown that I am the most useless entity in all human history.

WALLABIES, THE: Lets choose 15 young, big, fast guys. Then lets pay them heaps and heaps of money and pamper to their every whim. Then lets tell them not to indulge in the favourite hobbies of rich, young, big guys: drinking, taking drugs, and sleeping with young girls. Then lets watch them lose. Research shows that we created these monsters.

X, LACK OF WORDS STARTING WITH: Its time we did away with this most useless of letters. XRay. Xylophone. Xenophobia. Studies show that abolishing this letter would do nothing to lessen the richness of the English language. EksRay. Zylophone. Zenophobia. Did you miss it?

YOPLAIT, ITS FRENCH FOR YUM: Nah, just kidding. Research shows that heaps of bogans now actually think that Yoplait is, in fact, French for yum. That’s awesome.

ZENOPHOBIA, NOTE NEW SPELLING TOTALLY WORKS: OK. Its time we got something straight. We all came from monkeys. Just cause that guys monkey ancestor happened to live closer to Tashkent and your monkey ancestor happened to live closer to Manchester doesn’t make either one of you better or shitter than the other. Research shows that if instead of dividing the people of the world into nationalities or races, and instead divided them into stupid and not stupid, we would all be alot better off.

Hadi, see youse all later.

Kanasız kuşlar, veya, hiç bir fikri olmayan kızlar.

Bu aralar, Dünya Sağlık Örgütü’ne toplumda kadınların konuşma kabiliyetlerini kaybetmiş olabileceklerine dair potansiyel bir salgın hastalık raporu göndermeyi düşünüyorum. Galiba, artık kadınların ses telleri yavaş yavaş yok oluyor  veya Türkiye’de her ne kadar manastır popüler olmasada kadınların bir çoğu yeni bir dini kadınlar birliği oluşturacak ve bunun için sessizlik yemini ettiler.

Yani, demek istediğim, bu sıralarda cafe ve bar sektöründe çalıştığım için, zamanımın çoğu aşşağıdaki şu diyaloğu (veya monoloğu...) duymakla geçiyor. Şöyle ki.....

BEN – Hoşgeldiniz

X KIZI – (Sessizlik)

BEN – Ne içmek istersin?

X KIZI – (Sessizlik ve yanındaki adam ile çok alçak sesle beni görmezlikten gelerek konuşma)

--------- SAHNEYE BİR ADAM GİRER-------

Y ADAMI – Sprite. Bir tane.

---------- SAHNEMİN SONU --------------

Fakat durun! Soruyu kıza yöneltim ve adam cevapladı! (diyorsunuz)

Kesinlikle. Aptal değilsiniz. İnsan vücudunun bazı aksaklıkları yüzünden, binlerce belki milyonlarca kız konuşma yetilerini kaybetmiş. ‘Ne istersin?’ Bu çok zor bir soru mu? Onlara Eski Sümerde çiftcilik ve tarımın nasıl yapıldığını sormuyorum. Onlara  en yakın tuvaletin nerede olduğunu da sormadım. ‘Ne is-ti-yor-sun’ Bu soru bir erkeğin müdahelesini gerektirecek bir soru değil. Sadece sorulan kişiden bana gelecek olan bir cevap yeterli. Yani, konuşma böyle yapılır. İnsanoğlu binelerce yıldır, sorulan sorulara cevap veriyor. Bu sadece soru ve cevap.

Herneyse, asıl nokta... erkerlere karşı sesimizin en güçlü silahımız olduğunu unutmayın. Eğer bunu anladıysanız kulanın. Bir daha ki sefere Sprite istediğinizi siz söyleyin, çünkü aptal erkek arkadaşınıza sormuyorum.

Herkese mutlu yıllar!

(Thanks Gozde Hanim and the monkey for translation help)

Chicks without wings – or, girls that cant talk.

I’m currently considering reporting to the WHO a potential pandemic due to the increasing numbers of females in the community who seem to have lost the power of speech. Perhaps voice box removal if the latest version of female mutilation, or maybe heaps of them are taking an early vow of silence in preparation for entry into the religious sisterhood. Not that Turkey is known for its large number of convents.
OK, let me explain. Having gained employment in the hospitality sector of Ankara, I seemed to have spent my nights involved in the following dialogue. Or monologue, as it may be:

Me: Welcome!

Girl X: (Silence)

Me: What can I get you to drink?

Girl X: (Silence, followed by muffled conversation with boy seated to her right. Or left. Don’t worry too much about the details.)

---------- Enter new character--------

Boy Y: A Sprite please.

[Lights]

But wait! I hear you say. Boy Y wasn’t spoken to! I hear you say. The question was directed to her! I hear you say.

Precisely. You guys aren’t dumb. Through some malfunction of the human body, thousands, perhaps millions of girls in this city have lost the power of speech. “What do you want” isn’t a hard question. It’s not like I asked them for an opinion on the farming and cultivation practices of the ancient Sumerians. It’s not even like I asked them for directions to the nearest toilet. What. Do. You. Want. It doesn’t require translation and interpretation by a male. It just requires an answer, given to me, the asker of the question. Thats how conversation works, see. Question followed by answer, developed by the human race over thousands of years. There’s even a neat acronym type thing for it: Q&A. Simple, hey!? Its like they all turned into Helen Keller overnight for fuck’s sake.

Anyway, the point is sisters, don’t forget that up against men our voice is our most powerful tool. If you’ve got it, use it, cause there are alot of women out there who can’t use it or forgot somewhere along the way. Next time, tell ME you want a Sprite, cause I didn’t ask your goddamn boyfriend.

Happy New Years everybody!

Hi! I pretend to report news, but really I just print bullshit. My name is the Herald.

HELP! There are men in my backyard wielding swords!


So I was gonna write this week on the decision of a Turkish court to dissolve the DTP, a Kurdish political party, and one which has the support of a significant percent of the population. About 5% nationally and almost 50% in areas like Diyarbakir with big Kurd populations. Anyway, having thought about it, I think its fairly self evident that the decision was one made by a big bunch of retards and is a big pile of stinking crap that will bring more violence to a country that has had more than its fair share of bloodshed. So: Constitutional Court: a big fuck you and may you never sleep soundly in your big beds. Harsh, but fair.

THEREFORE: to keep it light at Christmas time, I decided to return to my usual target of the Sydney Morning Herald. That old chestnut. Ole!

I refer you to an article published December 25: ‘Celebrity Stunts and Stuff Ups’.
Opening line:

Celebrities got themselves into trouble by saying and doing stupid things in 2009.

1. If you look in the Oxford Dictionary, the definition of a celebrity reads like this:

Celebrity (n): a person who does and says stupid things.

So the opening line was kind of like writing ‘Dogs found themselves in trouble this year by using four legs to walk and saying ‘woof woof’ alot.’

2. Referring to Home and Away’s wholesome image, reportedly lost after whatshername called the cops after too much rack. Wholesome: Gingerbread. White picket fences. The Brady Bunch. Visiting Nana every Sunday. Home and Away: Stupid. Mindless. Dribble.

The Home and Away mistakes continued: the show is accused of having a culture of drugs and partying. The show is filmed in Sydney. Its actors are “young and hot”. The show is filmed in Sydney. A culture of drugs and partying is news how?

3. Mentioning the name Kyle Sandilands. The guy could stand at the doors of Dachau, doing the Nazi salute and letting off firecrackers while chanting Seig Heil! Seig Heil! And I still wouldn’t give a shit. No more publicity for this moron please. Ignore him and he will go away.

4. Reporting that Hugh Jackman’s twitter thing got the name of the Opera House wrong. Sorry, I was momentarily distracted by a chair.

5. Referring to Merrick and Rosso as a ‘comedy team’. Try ‘two guys who hang out and say nothing of any value, comedic or not, every day. And broadcast it to the world.’

And so on. One day, in a perfect world, we will be rid of this celebrity rubbish. We wait in angst.

Date With Kate

Having recently had the pleasure of visiting Sydney, also known as the place bars go to die, I was overjoyed to note that my complete lack of faith in the journalistic endeavours of Sydney papers is more than justified. Yes, I refer to the newest addition to the Sun Herald’s ‘S’ section known, very wittily I might add, as ‘Date with Kate’. Cause people go on a date. With someone called Kate.

Get it?

I know it more than stinks of shooting fish in a barrel, but I will attempt to provide you, dear readers, with a weekly summary of the interview of Z list celebrities by anoth...... a person called Kate. The first victim: Kevin Federline. For those of you distracted over the past few years by the chemical formula for salt or instructions on how to make instant coffee, KFed spread his seed in such a way that the world now has not one but TWO of Britney Spears’ progeny. Thanks Kev. Here goes.

Kate: Sooo..... liiike.... how’d you get so fat?

KFed: I embarked on a three month program of consuming nothing but deep fried oreos, bacon cheeseburgers and baileys milkshakes. Combined with 18 hours of television a day and a glass of lard before bed, its amazing how the body responds. I have a new song coming out. You should totally check it out.

Kate: Once, when I was five, I visited the zoo.

KFed: (Silence)

Kate: So...... do you look after your kids?

KFed: We have a specially constructed cage. I throw half a chicken in there once a week. Britney comes and feeds them Starbucks intravenously from time to time. Did I mention my new hot track?

Kate: Sometimes, at night, I like to stare in the mirror and empty my mind of all thoughts. It doesn’t take long.

KFed: Buy my music. Look at me. Listen to me.

And so on and so on.

Kate, you have a chance to ask these people hard hitting questions about their descent into the pool of stinking shit that is known as celebrityhood. Next time, something more along the lines of:

So Kevin, does having a giant dick sticking out of your head make life any harder?

Is Britney as dumb in person as she appears to the rest us?

You and our esteemed PM have the same first name. Any relation?

Would you say you were a democrat or do you swing more along the lines of benevolent dictatorship?

More to follow kids.

Dick Straws.

Quite seriously, if I could eliminate one thing from the face of the planet, it would not be AIDS or war or famine or even Hollywood. As you have probably guessed from my unimaginative title, its those freakin dick straws that seem continue to feature at hens parties world wide.

They. Are. Rancid.

What is this, 1952? Yeah, we get it. Marriage = Dick. Surely we can come up with something funner to drink champagne out of. Like a straw with the characters of Monkey Magic on it. That, I can get into.

Next most shithouse thing on Earth

Homelessness and blogging do not mix. But from the comfort of my new köy in a city, I present the next most shithouse thing on Earth, which is in fact so shithouse that it comprises numbers 25-1: military service.

Australia, of course, has no forced military obligation. İf you want to learn how to kill people, you volunteer for the task and they pay you for the privilege. Not that we need a military. China, İndonesia, New Zealand - if you feel the need to occupy what is essentially a big desert with a couple of people clinging to life on the edges - go for it. The keys under the front door mat. But in Turkey, where a very well concealed military dictatorship calls the shots, it is compulsory for all males between the ages of 20 and 41 to spend some time - generally 15 months - learning to walk in straight lines, clean stuff and fire guns.

There is no option for conscientious objection.

How is it possible for a young man to feel loyalty to a military which imprisoned, tortured and killed hundreds of thousands of people following the 1980 coup? How can they follow the orders of a leadership that felt it necessary to hang a thoughtful, sensitive and intelligent 17 year old boy? How can they serve these men who condemned the mother of Erdal Eren to a life of sorrow and anger while Kenan Evren retires to a life on the Mediterranean with his family and his paintbrushes? How can a young Kurdish man take up arms with the military that forced his family out of their house, stamping their filthy boots all over the carpets carefully looked after by his mother?

The answer? İ don't freakin know. They can't, but they must.

Screw them, and their guns, and their uniforms and their demands that my friends must pick up their guns, wear their uniforms and pledge loyalty to a wing of the state that does nothing but kill and teach others to kill. Stop this bullshit now.

Peace out people.