Archives for "Real Life"
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.
I never liked bacon anyway
According to the Bible, Cognitive Dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously.
I have cognitive dissonance when it comes to the Pigs, I mean the Police, I mean the Pigs…
On the one hand, I respect the Pigs immensely and demand that they risk their own lives to save mine whenever danger threatens in the slightest.
Whenever rowdy minorities drinking woodies walk past my parked car and I carefully push down the lock while clutching my mobile with white-knuckled panic.
Whenever the elderly leer aggressively at me from their bus shelter.
On the other hand, Fuck tha Police. (correctly said Poe-lease, see The Wire)
There are three reasons for Fuck tha Police.
- They’re all corrupt, evidence-tampering half-wits.
- A few years back I got a ticket for having dirty licence plates by a complete pig of a Pig who talked down to me like I was an infant.
- I just got my first speeding ticket, $80 of pain.
Perhaps, for me, it should really be Fuck tha Traffic Po-lice.
Splitting hairs.
Territory marker scent packing
Why I oughta!
Two nights ago I heard a noise outside and, investigating, disturbed a stranger lurking in my back yard.
It was around one o’clock and I’d been deep in the middle of Buffy Series 3.
Peering out at the intruder, I wondered ‘would this be the beginning of a soulless vamp eternity, or just another kill?’
Such is the life of a slayer.
Buffy never had the night vision of Mr Magoo though…
With no optical aids at hand, or conveniently broken chair legs, I realised it would be both irresponsible and difficult to brutally slay what was likely an escaped mentalist.
I challenged Stranger McBlurry.
“You been drinking mate?”
He had indeed been drinking and enquired about the whereabouts of the female tenant that I’d replaced, helpfully providing a height estimate of her (quite short). Clearly he’d been her 1am man-whore booty call.
I told him she’d just moved out, and that he should probably leave in case ‘some other more uptight person’ called the cops on him.
He obliged and I stalked around for a bit like Batman to make sure my kingdom was secure.
Heading to my trusty backyard piss spot for a victory wazz, I was horrified to smell fresh stranger wizz all over my spot.
My senses reeling, tail between legs, I meekly choose a new spot.
You may have won this time wifebeater-clad stranger, but you just don’t bogart another man’s leak zone.
Next time there’ll be hell to pay.
Or a piper to pay.
One of those.
An important health & safety warning
When Axl Rose sung about the cold November rain, he was thinking of a weather system heading toward winter (and, it would seem, an emotionally-distant lover, the groupie with the great ass who got her hooks in way too deep).
In the southern hemisphere it’s a different story. Rain in November is just a momentary hiccup in a full-throttle charge toward sun-drenched summer bliss.
But a great danger lies in a weather pattern flip-flopping between ‘spank-me-it’s-hot!’ and ‘where-did-summer-go?’
So I’m sitting in the fish and chip shop on one of those overcast, drizzly evenings. The bell rings and a big guy strides in.
He’s wearing white socks and jandals (flip-flops, thongs, etc) and I instinctively think ‘fuck yeah’. He’s about 6′ 4” and 120 kgs so I figure he’s pretty much worn whatever he wants from about the age of 15.
Behind every sock+jandal combo is a story of immense personal angst and soul-searching. It is an unspoken statement of intent to the world: ‘okay, I’m willing to accept that it’s turned bloody cold again, but I’ll be fucked if I’m going to postpone summer any longer, the jandals are staying.’
Come hell or high water, and small deadly puddles, the jandal wearer almost without exception will boldly take nature on and stay the course.
The big guy’s inside now and stepping from the wet pavement to the vinyl interior I hear that awful squeaking sound of impending doom as one of his jandals shoots forward.
This is immediately followed by the small distressed grunt as he stabilises and feels the discomfort of slight tearing in his groin.
But today is fish and chip day and he’ll be damned if he’s gonna be stopped so close to the prize. He recovers expertly as only a veteran jandal-wearer can and, with great poise and dignity, orders his 3 fish and half scoop of chips.
So be careful Antipodeans, don’t just blindly dive headlong into summer without respecting the obligatory crap weather here and there.
Be patient, you’ll get your sunburn and barbies all in good time.
Chinese peasants are laughing at me
As far as I know, the Chinese are still using chopsticks.
I remember smugly laughing along with Seinfeld’s audience. ‘Ha! Stupid Chinese’.
But at dinner time yesterday, the joke was on me.
Who would have thought that one would bite down so forcefully upon soft poached eggs on toast? Total overkill.
And why didn’t I remove the fork from my mouth before biting down, as is the custom of our age?
The eggs were literally on my face as I spluttered and cursed and fished tooth fragments from my mouth.
So it turns out teeth are no match for hardy stainless steel, and now I’m too scared to eat. I may just have to purée all my food from now on.
On the plus side, I now look more like the greatest character in motion picture history.
Scary Cat
This is exactly what it looked like, I swear
At approximately 4.30am this morning I was awakened to a crashing sound from the spare bedroom. Regretting that I hadn’t more seriously investigated the purchase of a handgun from my local gun dealer, I staggered into the hallway.
A demon cat took flight at my approach and shot back into the bedroom. It jingled as it dashed, with some sort of infernal bell mechanism around its neck.
This scared the shit out of me because I don’t own a demon cat, and creepy bells would strongly indicate some sort of ghost cat. And if a ghost cat, then it would undoubtedly be Comet, who tragically died in my care and was returning to smother me while I slept.
Also, there’s no possible way the cat could have gotten inside, so as far as I could tell it was a powerful warlock that had cast a walk-through-walls spell on itself.
I opened the back door and walked into the bedroom to scare it back down the hallway and outside.
I heard an evil hissing sound and realised that my knowledge of cornered phantom cats is limited at best and how could I know that it wouldn’t instinctively sick balls when cornered?
I crept back out.
Spying an empty tomato sauce bottle I lobbed it into the room like a grenade and the demon cat shot out down the hallway and out the back door. I am a genius.
I then checked all the windows which were closed. This means that I must have a trapdoor or secret helical staircase behind an valuable impressionist oil painting that I don’t know about (assuming of course that the cat didn’t teleport itself in).
Going back to bed I realised that it must have jumped in through a window before I closed them at tea time. Which means the little bastard was hiding in there for at least 10 hours.
10 hours.
Can a demon cat go 10 hours without needing to empty its evil little bladder or worse?
I still haven’t checked. I think I’m going to put it off forever.
I might just seal off the room.
Half-cut workout: an exercise physiology experiment
Yes
A few months back I did a work out at the gym having just come straight from downing 3 pints at the pub in fairly quick succession.
I hadn’t been long on the cycle when I realised that working out under the influence was quite a different kettle of fish altogether, and that this was the perfect opportunity to do a scientificish observation: comparing working out while sober vs. part-cut.
A simple experiment, I compared the usual number of calories I would ‘burn’ for a given duration with the number I did while a little drunk.
The result? 7% more energy expended. Only the biggest revelation to hit the fitness world since Tony Little’s Gazelle Glider.
The reason: alcohol masked the usual pain of working out, I forgot what a lazy bastard I really am and actually pushed myself for once.
Working out drunk works on the same principle as spotting knife-fighting monkeys on the pavement outside. It’s all about distraction to forget the suffering that is not being sedentary.
The main drawback was that I had to piss 4 times throughout, which broke up the flow of the workout somewhat. Still, personal trainers should be very, very interested in my findings.
I just found a dormant Transformer
I would drape myself in velvet if it were socially acceptable. Bollocks, I'll do it anyway.
Oscar Wilde, famous Victorian-era playwright and dandy, on a visit to the USA not long after the American Civil War, was asked why he thought America was so violent:
“I can tell you exactly why,†he said. “It’s because your wallpaper is so ugly.â€
Stephen Fry explores this remark in his excellent podcast series, conjecturing that perhaps Wilde wasn’t just being a bitch:
“If you’re someone who is surrounded by badly made, ugly things, then you think ugly thoughts of yourself and the world; you think ugly thoughts of your whole species. There is nothing for you to do to but to crap in your own nest. It’s what we do when we don’t believe in ourselves.â€
I couldn’t agree more with Fry’s interpretation. Walking around Christchurch, checking that the guy who just fell off his own front fence into a fetal position on the pavement in front of me is still breathing, I often reflect on the truth of this sentiment.
I fume at the ugliness of virtually every new building that I see going up in the central city. If something’s being made to be lived in and worked in, at the very least it should be beautiful. We are proud of the buildings of the cultural precinct for a reason, and it isn’t because of their handy proximity to the bus depot.
Why should building gorgeous, impressive buildings be an activity of a bygone era, an extravagance of the past? Why can’t we use great-looking materials and designs for buildings that will occupy important public spaces today? Continue Reading
The most obvious tinny house in New Zealand
Scored these from Jase
There’s a tinny house on my street that couldn’t be more obvious if it was Casa de Cannabis in Dope Crescent.
I walk past it at least a couple of times a day. Every time I do, there’s always a couple of guys pulling up in their skylines and trying to look all nonchalont as they head up the most heavily-trafficked pathway in New Zealand.
In my fantasy-world I yell at them: ‘Hey, Ray Liotta! Everyone knows what’s going on here. Just get it over with and move to Miami where you could grow a little moustache and start a moderately-successful boat cleaning business.
It makes me wonder if the cops even care. I think they might just surveil the place to have a good laugh at the wannabe gangsters of Christchurch.
One of the detectives does up a best-of video for the end of year party which has the guy who is so busy looking over his shoulder he trips over the front gate, and the big guy so nervous he bolts when startled by a toddler on his trike.
There’s probably a pinboard at the Chch police station with the title of ‘Presently too lame to bust’, with the tinny house on my street the house of the month.
Jason wouldn’t tolerate that sort of mediocrity at his tinny house.
My entire family are closet white supremacists
What you lookin' at boy?
Last night at my grandmother’s 90th birthday party, an innocent game of Celebrity Head revealed most of my extended family to be closet white supremacists.
Celebrity Head is the game where everyone has the name of a famous person attached to their forehead so they can’t see it. They have to ask yes/no questions to work out who they are.
It all started when Roger Federer asked if he was white. His European tan caused minor hesitation before a resounding ‘yes’ swept the room. Then it caught on, and all my relatives over the age of 50 started asking if they were white. JFK, Neil Armstrong, Peter Jackson, all wanting to make sure they weren’t black.
The funniest moment of the evening was when my aunty, having established that she was indeed white, promptly forgot and asked if she was Martin Luther King. I nearly ruptured my spleen. Continue Reading