Tag: Satire

Fun Articles, Humor

Bah, humbug

It is the season to be jolly, apparently. The jolliest people are, of course, retailers, who are doing their impersonations of Scrooge McDuck swimming. The rest of us are just happy to have some time off work and an excuse to eat until our arteries congeal and drink until the tile floor looks comfy.

Don’t get me wrong, Xmas is a lovely time of year, but I have some issues with it.

1) It’s Xmas not Christmas.
This celebration stopped being about Christ’s birthday when shops started advertising how many shopping days there were left before Xmas. I’m glad we have the holiday but lets stop pretending it is a religious holiday. To the 16% of Australian’s (check your country stats here) who actually attend church, feel free to ignore this point. And yes I’m aware of the irony here.

2) Xmas cards.
I understand the idea of sending correspondence to family and friends and given the “holiday season” it only seems logical to catch up with people. But I’m under 40, so I have Facebook, Twitter, Email, Linkedin, mobile phones, and know how to use them. Sending cards feels like people the world over are taking a vow of technophobia in order to contract hand cramps and level a rain forest.

3) Xmas lights.
I think the goal of Xmas lights, if I am understanding them correctly, is blind people in the space station orbiting Earth. In the day and age of climate change, when we really should be cutting down on energy usage, we decide to set up a whole lot of lights to blind people. It has become a competition between neighbours and streets to see who can have the most gaudy display of flashing eyesores. The winner is usually the person or street who wake up to the electricity bill in January realising they need a second job and to sell a kidney.

4) Caroling.
Why is it that people only remember for the other eleven months of the year that they can’t sing?
Which also brings me to:

5) Xmas songs.
I’m not talking about the traditional carols here, I’m talking about the saccharine odes to love and presents that bombard the airwaves from every pop singer/group the world has to offer. These “artists” were barely tolerable in small doses as it was, but the competition to have the highest selling drink coaster means you can’t even go near a TV or radio for fear of diabetes and the desire to hug a puppy.

6) The celebrity biography.
Speaking of stocking stuffers, every Xmas there must be more celebrity biographies bought for Dads the world over than any other time of year. In fact, it is safe to say that the book reading statistics are built on this Xmas tradition of buying a book no-one wants to read for people who don’t read in the first place. Is it really a surprise that so few people read when the only book they start each year is about the mundane life of somebody with decent hand-eye coordination or a backstabbing politician proposing to tell all, but really just relating the party political line of events. I’d prefer the socks.

With that said, Merry Xmas everyone!

Dear Buddha, please bring me a pony and a plastic rocket.

Fun Articles, Humor

Marketing ideas – Jesus style

We had a knock on the door this morning. A lady was inquiring if we “followed the bible”. My immediate reaction was to say something like, “Inanimate objects don’t really take me places these days.” Of course I was very polite and told her that my dog was hungry. She persisted with, “Do you follow God?” to whit I retorted, “Which one?”

I should point out at this juncture that I’m not against religion or religious people. Religion has done some good things and it has done some bad things. If we were to express their good versus bad as a baseball batting average, then I’d have to learn something about baseball.

Anyway, this got me thinking, which has been known to happen occasionally. Religious people are often very keen to sell their religion door-to-door. They often have pamphlets, invites to their church (or whatever), or even their indoctrination material for sale. I am yet to have a scientist knock on my door of a Sunday morning, “Have you heard the word of Newton?” At least with scientists door knocking they could fix the zero-point anomaly in our laundry; it’s starting to cause a gravity sink.

See, this would be brilliant marketing for any author. Imagine an entire squad of people devoted to spreading the word about your book/s. Unpaid labourers whose goal it was to sell your writing to everyone. Of course this wouldn’t be easy to arrange. I’m not sure I can afford the price of souls these days – what with the economy and all – so getting boots on the ground might either take a lot of  enigmatic persuasion or be the realm of wealthy authors.

There are plenty of examples of this happening. If you do a little digging you can find how L Ron Hubbard got his book Battlefield Earth on the bestseller lists. Every Scientologist was sent out to buy a copy, which they then sent back to the “church” (I use that term loosely) and the books were sent to the stores again to be resold. Brilliant!

Obviously not every author can create their own religion to sell books, but maybe there is something to be made use of here. Maybe your local Jehovah’s Witness may need some extra redemption and would like to sell your book door-to-door if you promise to not set the bear traps on the doorstep. Think about it!

Fun Articles, Humor, Reading

Hard-copy books need to fight

There is a call to arms for all lovers of books. No longer can we stand by and have e-books take our readers. They may take our ink, they may take our paper, but they may never take our reading material!

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0804-books-20110804,0,3970003.story

I think they are right. Books have been derailed by technology. So, to combat this, I have recruited a top advertising agency to help out. They will be promoting the smell, feel, taste and texture of real books. The smell of gold leaf that was painstakingly applied by the hands of a skilled monk. The smell of candle wax that was used for light by the monks. The texture of papyrus and hemp paper. The acrid taste in your mouth from inhaling calligraphy inks. The weight of a clay or stone tablet as it crushes your hands.

Gutenburg was wrong when he brought in mass production print. We must fight back and stop these false books from becoming the norm.

Rally behind the stone tablet and the scroll. Say no to the printing press!

Fun Articles, Humor

Training Masterclass #3

In the previous two Training Masterclass posts (1, 2) I presented my friend Dan and his training videos. We have seen what it takes to train the chest and perfect the chin-up. This post is about the back.

Now back and bicep training is very important. Us desk jockeys spend a lot of time sitting down, a lot of time with internally rotated shoulders – just think of all the time you spend typing. Training the back properly will aid in keeping you healthy by offsetting your poor work posture. Training the biceps is important because everyone wants a nice set of guns.

Superb!

As a bonus feature I am including the Clean & Jerk. This is probably the single best exercise ever invented, next to the exercise in futility.

Fun Articles, Humor

Training Master-class #2

You only have your health, and possibly access to some poor Indian’s kidneys, so we would all be wise to try and keep fit and healthy. Last time I presented the first in a series of training videos to help us desk jockey’s. This is video two in the training master-class, brought to you by my friend Dan/Rocky.

Mighty Pec Blasting Chest Power!!

See you all under a barbell somewhere soon.

Fun Articles, Humor

Training Master-class #1

There is nothing in this life more important than your health. As the adage goes; you only have your health. Yet, in this day and age (what a redundant statement), more of our populous live sedentary lives than ever. So many of us are desk jockeys and the aspiring writer in me is seeking to spend more of my day sitting down.

Fortunately I’ve been a weightlifter since my teens. I love lifting heavy stuff and keeping fit. It also allows me my other passions; involving sitting, lying down, and eating chocolate. It took me years to become good at lifting, even more years to become really good at eating chocolate on a couch.

It is important to learn lifting form to get the most out of training. So I wish to present here my friend Dan’s – also known as Rocky – Training Master-class so that all of us desk jockeys don’t become desk leviathans. This first video is illustrating the chin-up.

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Australian Bookstore Memorabilia Auction

Borders Book Mark for Sale

I am selling my limited edition Borders bookmark for charity. Any and all offers between $40 million and $50 million will be accepted.

As many book fans will have noticed, there are a number of book retailers circling the drain of bankruptcy. Borders in the USA may have found a last minute lifeline, but here in Australia the Redgroup stores (Borders and Angus & Robertson) have gone the way of the honest politician. The superbly managed Redgroup managed to amass $170 million in debts, $44 million of that being owed to publishers (and consequently authors).

The reason for me auctioning off my bookmark is that I hope to be able to not only share a piece of publishing industry history, but to also recoup the money that Redgroup stole from publishers and authors. Redgroup felt that selling millions of dollars worth of books that they didn’t own was really just a creative book-keeping issue. Nobody else did and now all we have to remember them by is this bookmark.

Bid Now!

The bookmark is not laminated, but I can have it laminated. I can also list the board of directors of Redgroup on the back if desired. Please, no time-wasters, this is an auction to save starving authors everywhere.

Book review, Fun Articles, Humor

How to interpret online book reviews

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }My previous post sought to elucidate some of those oft quoted expressions which plague music reviews. Despite the unequivocally superior standard of articulation amongst the literary fraternity, there are, upon occasion, some idioms that have become rather cliché. Thus it has fallen upon me, dear reader, to compile and define some terms and phrases that require proper denotation, in order to provide clarification of book review terminology definitions.

Page-turner: Meets the bare minimum standards for a book.
Gripping: I got this from a library where kids are allowed to play.
Poignant: Something sad happened in this book, most likely a character gets cancer.
Compelling: I spent so much time reading this book I had to finish it despite wanting to hurt myself after every sentence.
Nuanced: I have no idea what this book was about but I liked it.
Lyrical: Should be a poem instead so that it isn’t as long and self-involved.
Tour de force: The book is too long and waffly.
Readable: Boring but better than watching TV.
Haunting: Either used to describe a book that made the reviewer actually think, or, more likely, is meant to make you think but is just pretentious.
Deceptively simple: Could have been written by a 10 year old.
Rollicking: Something actually happens in this book.
Fully realized: The book has a beginning, middle and end.
Timely: Makes passing reference to something that happened 2 years ago.
X meets Y meets Z: The reviewer hasn’t read the book so is quoting the sales blurb.
Sweeping: Long.
That said: I’ve just insulted this entire book but it is popular for some unknown reason (e.g. Twilight).
Riveting: Was able to finish reading it.
Unflinching: Unpleasant.
Powerful: I read the hardcover.
Unputdownable: Reviewer is unfamiliar with English.
Masterfully or Masterful: The author is familiar with English.
Beautifully written: A lot of long words were used.
Startling: Reviewer was surprised the book was published.
Bold: Controversial.
Accessible: Written for kids.
Memorable: Reviewer didn’t have to look up the author or title to write the review.
Epic: Really, really, long.
A tale of loss and redemption: Someone dies, the protagonist gets over it, the end.
Sensuously, seductively, and/or lushly described: Painstakingly boring descriptions of mundane details.
Must read: Bestseller.
What it is to be human: Someone falls in love or someone dies.
Luminous: Has a pretty cover.
Evocative: Not boring or pedantic.
Poetic: Wordy.
Thought provoking: Reviewer is sure the book is cultural or intellectual but didn’t quite get it.
Rollicking roller-coaster: Kids book, or should be.
Provocative: Annoying.
Lends itself to X: Reading the book X was better.
Opinionated: The reviewer disagrees with everything the author has ever written.
Emotional roller-coaster: Nominated for some literary award.
Only minor quibbles: The book sucked.
Stays in your mind long after the last page is turned: Had a bad ending.
Writing at the peak of his/her powers: Much better than the author’s other books.
At once: The reviewer is about to use more than one of these terms in a sentence.
Also, lets not forget the various terms that are used to tell you what the genre of the book is, rather than just say what the genre is:
Explicit, steamy, romp, raunchy: Erotica or has sex in it.
Charged, taut, woven, layered: Political thriller.
Heart-warming, life-affirming: Romantic drama.
Seamy, gritty, underworld: Crime.
Taut, fast-paced, dynamic: Thriller.
Epic: Fantasy.
Hope this clears things up a bit.
Uncategorized

Math Shouldn’t Be Taught In Schools

This of course follows on from earlier interviews about whether schools should teach evolution.

I’m glad that people get such a good education in this day and age. My text book on celestial orbits around the Earth – with calculations of how flat our Earth is – will no doubt be in curriculum’s world wide soon. It is entitled The Science of Flat Earth.