Oh my god its HIDEOUS

Impressions of Sydney

Andrew Lees — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:54:00 GMT

I sit on the bus. I do this a lot. I do this too much. I just buy a ticket and ride until I get back to my stop. Sometimes I keep going even after that, staring through the window, hands in my lap. Watching. That’s all. It’s not nearly enough. I watch at the city as she moves and breathes and, sometimes, while she turns fitfully in her sleep. I see her nightmares even when she doesn’t.

And this is how I hold my relationship. I’m a voyeur. I stare at her imperfect skin and feel the words to make her mine sticking in my throat and dying stillborn. I desperately want to seduce her but I just can’t. My charms are cheap and broken, not nearly enough for a glamour girl of golden jewelry and long black evening dresses. So here I sit, held aloft on a single ray of light, a dust mote in a cathedral, sometimes gritting my teeth and sometimes crying to myself, silently. The city’s sleeping and I’d be loathe to wake her.

I think I love her. I don’t know if she loves me. I don’t think so. I don’t think she loves anyone. She’s arrogant and capricious, insincere and cruel. Her hunger is endless. I think she just eats without ever stopping to think how it tastes, or if she should save something for later. It’s compelling to watch. It’s like jackals feeding.

But then, when the feeding stops and she’s wiped her mouth, she seems to pause for a moment. I can see her smiling. Alive with her own culture and breathing her own perfume she’s savagely beautiful, like an old, battle scarred lion. I decide I really do love her and as the bus stops at traffic lights, her heart paused between beats, I can sense the stillness and terrible gnawing sadness just below the surface. It bubbles up when the clamour stops and the heart is still. That’s when she’s beautiful. When she has time to reflect. Next to the bus, a young couple in a car take a moment to embrace.

It begins to rain. The city churns and melts. My stop is next and as I rise to wait for the doors to open, head down, I sense a presence watching me. She’s young, like me, and I feel I recognise her. She sits next to me, silently. I suddenly realise what it is I recognise. She has the same look I have. She drinks from the same chalice - she rides the bus too. We nod in understanding and I decide not to take the stop. We disappear together in to the city’s guts and, just for a moment, I think I hear her chuckle.

MOCK NEWS - The IMF gets some TLC with IOUs

Andrew Lees — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:50:00 GMT

The International Monetary Fund has expanded beyond world domination and has finally moved into the dog-eat-dog breakfast cereal industry.

Their debut offering, Global Credit Crunch, contains bite-size pieces of actual repossessed houses, giving them, ‘the solid crunch consumers crave,’ according to IMF spokesperson Lars Orphanblood.

“You’ll eat it and like it,’ he indicated, drawing pie-charts at random and sniping baby pandas from the balcony of his villa. “During the testing phase, thirteen third-world countries agreed to sign over their entire GDP to us in return for consignments of Global Credit Crunch. Some say they just wanted to get their houses back piecemeal so as to rebuild their shattered lives but as you can see from this scatter plot I just drew on this ammunition box, it actually means something else entirely that you’ll never understand and hence doesn’t require credible explanation of any kind whatsoever.”

Mr Orphanblood went on to claim Global Credit Crunch will provide the faceless masses with more than 100% of their daily requirements of disempowerment and fear, and that the IMF will continue to export Global Credit Crunch for ‘as long as is needed to teach you bastards to like it.’

“The IMF has spent trillion on the formula for Global Credit Crunch, and we’re confident that once we convince consumers they deserve it, Credit Crunch will become an ever-present part of our daily lives.

“YOUR daily lives,” he corrected himself.

Other, less power-crazed people aren’t so sure.

“Global Credit Crunch tastes kinda manufactured and artificial,” claimed John Everyman, a recently-homeless father of three. “It says it’s produced using natural processes but it seems to me it was cooked up by a bunch of economists in a back room someplace in the Hague.”

Chips, change & brown paper scrotums - how our chips make us an international disgrace

Andrew Lees — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:41:00 GMT

Hot chips. Mmmmm yeah.

From the time you begin scraping up your change, right up until the point your flatmate busts you on all fours looking for that chip that fell under the couch, hot chips are a champion feed guaranteed to impress the gang. But they offer so much more than a quick hit of bachelor chow. Hot chips provide, surprisingly, a barometer of overall social health so exact it goes to the seventh place after the decimal point and as we shriek in delight while our planet careens out-of-control into something pretty fucking hard, our chip rations have shrunk to the point it’s just not worth it any more. It’s a national disgrace and if we rise as one to overthrow our masters for better chip rations, well, every society has to end somewhere I guess.

Bear with me. When I was a kid, the world was pretty cool. Sure, you had your Craig MacLachlans and your Marky Marks, but you also had your It’s a Knockout and your hot pink happy pants. Hang on. The world sucked when I was a kid. But a mere $2 would get you a sack of chips so big you felt bad dragging it backwards out of the chip shop door. Once, my dad went for $4 worth and it was a family event. He kind of announced it to dead silence – we tagged along just to see if he would really do it. He did, and it was the single most heroic act ever witnessed by anyone ever. I though that kind of bravery was gunned down on the beaches at Normandy, and it was formative indeed to see him storm the cholesterol trenches on our behalf. The resulting mound of chips was so huge it became sentient by virtue of raw mass. At one point, it began attacking the cat and we were all too full to do anything about it. I miss Puss.

Clearly, the world at that point had much to learn about mass entertainment and fashion sense, but had a lot to teach about feeding the population, and feeding them like you gave a shit. My, how things change. The world is now shifty and uneasy, greedy and more than a bit underhanded. So, what’s changed on the chip front? Well, spuds are still basically free. So is cooking oil, especially in commercial quantities. The chip shop attendants are still on a Dickensean junior wage and the place still looks and smells as slipshod as it always did. But the chips are now so goddamn expensive you might as well chop up some spuds and fry them yourself. Sauce in a sachet, battery farmed chicken salt, what’s happened to the Wide Brown Land, I ask you.

I’m so angry right now.

This attack on our national character has taken many forms and worn many masks, but probably the most insidious development has been the ‘bag’ of chips. All a bag is, is a proper chip pack missing one end so they can fit less in. Gone are the swathes of spotted, off white paper. In is the untrustworthy brown paper scrotum that looks like you’re hiding a mini bottle of top shelf. Without exception, your $2.50 minimum spend will get you one of these highfalutin ‘bag’ contraptions. You’re lucky if they fill it and heaven help you if you ask for sauce. Back when the world sucked less, minimum spend was a relative thing and the lady would just hand you the Heinz with a grin and a wink.

At times like this, I remember that incident with dad, how proud I felt of him and me and the heroic men who manned the fryers. My children will never feel the same joy and it’s nothing short of a national disgrace. We must reclaim the chip; seize it back from the petty bourgeoisie and stiff necked kulaks who smother the fruits of our toil with oily dreams and beady eyes. Together, we can dissolve the state and deliver the means of chip production back in the glorious, work stained hands of their rightful owners.

It’s high time, because I know I’m fast running out of ideas for the side dish option.

Father O'Leary's Irish Cream cheap booze review

Andrew Lees — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:39:00 GMT

Let’s get one thing straight. Father O’Leary’s Irish Cream is nasty.

The first thing to alert the wary is price. This costs $7.00. However you, the trembling lurching parody of a human being you are, need some loose change to buy something token at the supermarket while you steal steak and a Continental packet mix so your girlfriend will keep thinking you have a job. So you purchase it with jerky, harrassed movements. Top value.

The next thing to power up the radar is the plastic coating on the bottle. The pleasant milky brown colour is this brown shrink wrapped layer that blocks all possible light and thus reders the foul content’s true appearance secret. But you only have ten minutes before she starts to get sus and you need something to face the stark, bitter lies, so checking it is out of the question in the windswept park near your house. Points deducted here.

The mixture is surprisingly milky, in a watery kind of way. The overriding flavour is that of coffee. The milky nature means the liquid is less prone to splash and thus keeps time with your jerking gullet admirably. However the bottle has this weird bottom heavy shape and sometimes you have a bit of trouble really chugging the shit like it deserves. Finally you place your lips over the entire end, sucking it out like an animal as you check for onlookers in the rapidly falling gloom. Excellent drinkability.

The inert, bland nature of the liquid leaves your struggling stomach free of excess gasses and as you debate if you should leap the fence like you used to then decide you’ve become too fat and use the gate, the alcohol begins it’s drip into your system just like the whole exercise was meant to do.

In all, Father O’Leary’s Irish Cream is a tolerable medium for the ingestion of alcohol.

5/10

Cooper's Sparkling Ale hangover review

Andrew Lees — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:37:00 GMT

Sparkling Ale

Sparkling Ale is a cruel temptress indeed. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve forgiven her abuses and welcomed her back, only to be left a broken, mumbling shell of a man once more. She’s a good-time girl; I always believe she’ll change but inevitably wake up in the morning wrapped in a mate’s curtain, without even so much as a note, feeling cheap and used. And very, very ill. With that in mind, I decided to go out on one last bender to review for you all the miracle of toxicity that is the Sparkling Ale hangover. Enjoy.

I remembered very little of the night before. When I woke up, I was under a hedge. I raised my head and bits of dry leaf and bark clung momentarily to my cheek before dropping off, leaving a distinct imprint. I rolled my tongue in my mouth, and noted with satisfaction the furriness of it; fine in texture yet robust in construct. I took a few experimental puffs through my nose and caught the delightful bouquet of garlic sauce and digestive juices. Too many hangovers are heavy handed in their scent and cover the memory of burgers consumed the night before while swaying on a Pultney St Hungry Jack’s table. Not this time. Top notch.

I moved my limbs one at a time, and my head exploded quite satisfactorily with every twitch of my muscles. I was getting the leaden thump we all expect from today’s advanced production processes, but the hand-brewed Sparkling still retained some of the classic charm of electric stabs behind the eyeballs. I employed the Hansaard-Quimby method of attempting to get up immediately, and Sparkling Ale came out with full marks as my body got a mere three inches from the leaf litter before crashing down once more. Perhaps you will memember my scathing review of the Cougar Bourbon hangover, where I managed to not only get up, but remain upright long enough to promise I’d ring her. Sparkling leaves that worthless piece of shit waaay back.

The critical test of the first eye opening was a pleasant surprise, with my eyelids glued shut by a gritty crust of mucus and bile. I finally cracked the left eye first and a shaft of late morning sunlight penetrated my retina with the most exquisite burst of pain I have felt in a long time. I was getting saddle leather and tannin, with just a hint of mulberry.

Then I moved to the recollection stage, whch is where many lower quality hangovers fall down. The icy feeling of regret was definitely there, and I did feel the initial waves of depression far back in my cerebral cortex. However, the Sparkling was just too high voltage for me to get the flashes of idiotic behaviour that really gets the piecing-together phase going. I was somewhat disappointed by this; the Ale quite cruelly left me with the conviction that things were said and and done I should be able to capitalise on, without the blurry recollections you need to truly wallow in self pity.

Fast forward to the stumbling into McDonalds, and the first sip of orange juice made my stomach turn in a manner reminiscent of the fearsome El Toro. I successfully swayed at the counter for a full five minutes while deciding my order, which was surprising given the fact I was reviewing an Ale rather than cheap spirit hangover. The screaming kids made me shudder like any good hangover should.

I had decided earlier in the review that Ale had failed the belch test, but directly after my first mouthful of Bacon&Egg a belch reared up like a rampaging stallion and flooded my sinus with the most wonderful scent. It was rendolent of curry, sulphur and oxidised iron, rounding off a most pleasant hangover experience.

In all, the Sparkling hangover is a miracle of modern technology, while still managing to hint at the hangovers Grandad used to have. I fully recommend them, but I would caution that it is not for the uninitiated, nor those from the US where their Budweiser hangovers are the most insipid pieces of crap I have ever had the misfortune to review. 9/10