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In defence of gym grunters
A recent NZ TV ad for TSB Bank attacks gym grunters. It suggests we shouldn’t tell gym grunters about TSB’s latest amazing offer because they are such annoying bastards, universally hated.
I couldn’t disagree more.
Insane point #1
Gym grunters are by far the best thing about the gym, nay the universe. I wish that everyone at the gym grunted as loudly as possible all the time.
How awesome would that be? Finally a world I could believe in again.
Imagine a world where skinny people lifting tiny weights grunted as if they had taken as many steroids as this guy:
Gregg Valentino. Holy Shit. Google about how his arms 'exploded'.
It is my heartfelt opinion that if you don’t intend to look exactly like Gregg Valentino or Arnold (Peace be upon Him), then you have no business engaging in any form of physical exercise whatsover, let alone weight-lifting.
The people who hate gym grunters are women and effeminate male hipsters, both lacking the necessary testosterone to develop tremendous guns or maintain an erection.
Arnie has few boundaries
Insane point #2
Gym grunting is really nothing other than breathing for professionals.
And people who are highly proficient at breathing are less likely to suffer massive brain aneurysms while lifting weights than someone like me who apparently lacks proper breathing technique.
How did it happen?
I was lifting weights and forgot to breath while straining – as if to knock out a great big fat one – and all of a sudden three things happened simultaneously:
- I got an awful shooting pain in the back of my skull exactly like an ad for aspirin
- I felt like I was going to puke
- I felt dizzy and nearly passed out
I quickly harnessed my fear of public humiliation and fought the urge to faint, and five minutes rest + lots of water later I seemed ‘fine’.
I went to the doctor a couple of days later to inform her that I’d used the Internet to self-diagnose a massive brain aneurysm, and did she know any cheap neurologists.
She immediately embarrassed herself and revealed her lack of expertise by disagreeing with my wikidiagnosis and telling me I definitely hadn’t experienced an aneurysm.
Leaving the quack’s office I set out to tell as many grunters as I could about TSB’s sensational offering.
Don’t read on the toilet, you idiot
Alfred Nobel was a twat for not inventing the brush container lid/splash guard
Having been away from office life for a blessed sweet while, I have recently returned in order to once again afford the luxuries of life such as 2-ply toilet paper and toilet brushes with fancy plastic splash guards.
Which allows me to segue neatly into ‘office outrage #1′, in which I will rant pointlessly about something at work that annoys me, but that nobody else on earth cares about at all.
Man-bitch topic #1 – Magazines in the loo
The men’s loo at work has a pile of magazines on the window ledge above the cistern traditionally reserved for air fresheners and dead moths.
I’ve never understood this nonsense.
It makes me livid.
I want to chuck the magazines into the bowl and do a big sloppy dump all over them.
Firstly, any object entering a man toilet is immediately contaminated and unfit for handling thereafter.
Secondly, who has the time or inclination to read while taking a shit? Just focus on the jobbie at hand, get it done, and move on. Ooh, but wait, I could delay the act of defecation by reading an article on growth in the real estate sector!
Cock.
At what point do you think, ‘Now I’m really glad to be having a shit, but I feel like something’s missing – Of course, Dan Brown’s latest page turner!’
And if you are a grubby little loo-reader:
- Do you sit, bowels straining, sphincter clenched, reading debt reduction tips?
- Or do you let rip, evacuate, and then sit poring over Danish furniture design with filthy unwiped ass?
- Or do you shit, wipe, then read? And if so, why not just entirely divorce shitting from reading and flick through your mag while leaning with dignity against the wash basin?
Furthermore, I had a curry last night and need the dunny now. Oh, wait, my brilliant coworker is leisurely reading about how Tom is unsure how he should tell his new girlfriend about his genital warts. Don’t mind that I am feeling more discomfort than this man.
Moreover, why, in the name of all things Holy, would anyone allowed to move freely in the general population want to handle a magazine previously handled by any number of shit-stained fingers?
Have they not experienced or heard of the human tragedy known as Tear Through? This is when your inferior brand bog roll fails in essentially its only responsibility and your digits plunge through into the inner circle of Hell that is your dirty bumhole.
Finally, if you are going to insist on being a total cunt, how about at least having a little more literary variety than 7 back issues of Top Gear Magazine.
Nobody fucking cares about cars. And anyone who does has a deformed penis.
We all watch Top Gear because the show’s writers are funny, and in the hopes that Clarkson will yet again get in massive trouble by going the blacks or the gypsies, not because of the cars.
Conclusion: The only acceptable use for literature inside a toilet is when you’re out of paper.
Confessions of a web fiend
Remember this great Simpsons moment?
Ad Agency Chief: You know those radio ads where two people with annoying voices yammer back and forth? I invented those.
[Homer immediately punches ad agency chief in the face]
Ad Agency Chief [unperturbed]: Happens all the time.
I have a similarly shameful admission to make. Something so awful that I think I’ve only ever told a handful of people, small weedy people with no chance of being able to physically best me.
I created gambling popup ads.
There, phew… That felt good.
It was a long time ago, a time when innocents still noticed and clicked on gaudy ridiculous ads.
What feels even better though, is when you meet someone who did something just as shameful. The other day I met a guy who created pop-ups for herbal supplements. He had a look of genuine embarrassment when he said it.
I nearly cried.
I’m not alone.
So what did my ads look like? They included lots of things you immediately associate with urine-stained slot machines: Mermaids, treasure chests, palm trees. Here, see for yourself (the mermaid doesn’t have a beard, her spray-on tan has yet again badly failed her).
If there is a Hell (and there most certainly isn’t)Â I would go straight there to take my place in the section between the fiddlers and the people who produced How I Met Your Mother.
The man with the bulldog tattoo
Fugitives with unbelievably distinctive tattoos have few options for disguise
Hamilton police have set a new world record for understatement, describing a fugitive gunman’s striking facial tattoo merely as ‘distinctive’.
Hamilton city area Police spokesman Bent Mischievously has been typically humble in acknowledging the achievement.
“At first we were tempted by the adjectives ‘unthinkable’ and ‘unprecedented’ but we held our ground and trusted our audience, and in the end they rewarded us.”
Initial public safety posters warning carney folk (clowns specifically) about likely muggings were proved redundant when it was revealed that all Hamiltonians carry thick clown facepaint due to the prevalence of transvestism amongst males and hideousness amongst females.
Notes on a scoundrel
In case you’ve been living under a rock, America’s ABC network has remade Outrageous Fortune and called it Scoundrels. It’s more or less exactly the same and apparently barely deviates from the original screenplay (at least the first episode anyway).
I’ve watched all the promo trailers on the ABC site and realised that it’s impossible to truly know what I think of the remake.
As a huge OF fan (true fans abbreviate), it’s so jarring and awful seeing it in a new context, that it’s impossible to know how I’d feel about it if it had been an ABC original.
It reminded me of when I watched the first episode of the American ‘Office’. I couldn’t watch more than one episode, I hated it so much. I missed Brent. It annoyed me.
Which isn’t to say it wasn’t a great remake. Just that attachment is such a powerful thing.
Nowadays if I catch a US episode of The Office I don’t mind so much, I’ve gotten used to it. It’s so divorced from the Brit version it is really an unrelated show in my mind (especially since it has essentially become its own show due to the demands of a much longer life span).
Back to Scoundrels. I loved Virginia Madsen in Sideways, and I think I’ve seen her since a couple of times. She’s undeniably a great actor and an inspired pick for Cheryl.
Wolfgang and Wayne Judd’s equivalent seem a bit cookie-cutter and all American but again that’s just a natural reaction to a different context.
Calvin West’s dumb and dumber haircut initially annoyed me but I’m beginning to think it might just be inspired.
Pascalle West (now Heather) seems dull and lifeless and Loretta (now Hope) only slightly less so.
But again all of these are unfair comparisons. I wish the show all the best and hope as many people as possible get to see it, it’s been such a joy for me.
Fresh Up Ad – Thirst is Creepy
While I’m on the subject of great ads, here’s videos of the excellent ‘Thirst is Creepy’ ad series from Fresh Up.
It’s the creepy mouth noises that make it perfect.
As I recall, the men’s tailor one came out first:
Followed by the massage one:
Instant Kiwi Ad – Believe it or not
It’s about time to post some great ads again.
And the folk at the DDB New Zealand agency have done it again with another sensational Instant Kiwi ad for the ‘all new instant kiwi’ campaign.
This must be the most perfect ad of all time, great dancing by an awkward praying mantis of a man, and the sublime moment when the elderly lawn bowlers become human fireworks – it makes me want to jump up and clap and fist pump and shout all at the same time, amazing.
If Simon Pegg and Nick Frost made an ad, this would be it.
The dancing reminds me of another great white man dance of recent times, here’s the Napoleon Dynamite Dance Scene. Oh man I’d forgotten how much I love this film:
The All Whites are making me racist
Football Hooligans
Remember that great Conchords moment when Bret muses about his female coworker: ‘she’s so hot she’s making me sexist’?
Now the All Whites (appropriately) are doing the same to me. They’re so hot right now, on the eve of their huge game against Paraguay, that I have found that I almost uncontrollably racially abuse their opponents, such is my inflamed passion for our team’s successes at this world cup.
I have shamefully turned the beautiful game of nations of all colours into a red-neck celebration. But I can’t help it.
I have long suspected that I am almost too non-racist to be true. That underneath the veneer of perfect respect for different cultures and ethnicities to my own lurks an aggressive racist, a closeted English football supporter.
I’m desperately middle-class, went to university and had I guess what you would call a liberal arts education, had Asian, Islander and even an Iranian best mate during formative school years.
But I’ve always had my suspicions.
And now it would seem that all along my subconscious was luring me into a false sense of self-righteousness. And all the while planning a major racist break out.
Admittedly the Slovakian game saw a slow start to my burgeoning racism. There just wasn’t an obvious in, I didn’t know anything about the Slovaks but didn’t want to resort to obvious generic Eastern European cliches.
Quite a few of their players had awful matching short haircuts. This gave me a little something to work with, but while I flailed around for some sort of cutting neo-fascist comparison my brother got in before me: ‘they look like a bunch of romper-stompers’.
Simple, effective, perfect.
The end of the NZ vs Slovakia game left me hungry for less obscure targets.
The NZ vs Italian game really brought my inner-racist out. I eventually settled on ‘Eye-tie’ as my preferred racial slur which seemed sadly 1950s but pleasing to say nonetheless. You can really roll it out of your mouth like a big fat Texan.
I stopped short of ‘Wog’, too effectively-reclaimed as it is.
Poor decisions against us even saw the referee become a target. Again, my brother outshone me with an immaculately-timed ‘dirty povo little Mexican’ (he was Guatemalan). I kept missing my stride.
Maybe I will peak at 2am this morning when we take on Paraguay? I can certainly go the South Americans for their poverty and drugs.
Also, one of their best players got shot in the head in a Mexican bar before the world cup. This is all rich material.
I’m really going to miss being an ignorant English football yobo after the cup.
Ban the Vuvuzela and recycle those sons of bitches
Top 3 better uses for the vuvuzela
I am easily the world’s number 1 ranked vuvuzela hater, but I don’t just want to be just another hater.
I prefer to see myself as the friendly face of vuvuzela haters.
Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t advocate leniency or mercy in any form. I’m no bleeding heart hippie peacenik.
I do want every face bearing a set of lips that has ever touched that infernal device slapped lustily several times.
(BTW, I am a long-time believer in the efficacy of a well-executed back handed slap)
Take that ass-suck!
But there’s no reason to contribute to the earth’s already bloated and stinky landfills with millions of plastic trumpets.
So here’s some constructive recycling ideas – My top 3 better ways to use them than ear-raping the world.
#1. Medical Aid: The Vuvuzela Colonic
Problem: You feel a pressing urge to cleanse your colon but object to the indignity of having a tube stuck up your arse.
Solution: Vuvuzela!
Nurse, I'm ready for my morning coffee, tee hee!
#2. Yard Glass Substitute
Problem: Your 21st birthday piss-up is fast approaching but your useless pot-smoking flatmate has smashed the incumbent yard glass.
Solution: Vuvuzela!
Go Smythsie! Go Smythsie! Go Smythsie!
#3. Fashion Accessory
Problem: You need to make an impact, be more dynamic, be about something.
Solution: Vuvuzela!
With these bad boys no one will notice the early signs of my veiny old lady arms
Try playing your vuvuzela after I shove it up your arse
Well that’s just great, the Football World Cup has already been completely ruined for me.
I tried watching some of the Argentina vs Nigeria game and nearly had a stoke after just 5 minutes of that god-awful vuvuzela drone.
The vuvuzela is a small plastic trumpet designed by Satan himself to turn mentally-healthy people into gibbering fly-eating lunatics after about 12 seconds.
It is the worst thing that has ever happened to sport. Thanks a lot South African football fans, you stupid fucking cunts.
While I realise that the illusion of an apocalyptic swarm of killer bees is all blissful serenity compared to the impoverished crime-steeped misery that is your actual lives, I would still appreciate if you killed yourselves asap.
I’m getting chest pains just thinking about it.