What's With All The Damn Photo's?!

Should I be alarmed that my son has come home from school with the words to an R Kelly song that they’re having to sing at assembly?

It’s not so much the song but if any of those poor kids was to type his name into Google they might get an education far beyond their years. Perhaps I’ll teach my boy how to spell ‘paedophilia’ and let him Google that instead...

Why is it that teenagers feel the urge to take hundreds of photos whilst doing the most ordinary of things? I spent the better part of my Sunday at the beach the other day which allowed me to partake in one of my favourite pastimes; people watching.

Unfortunately places like the beach are a Mecca for the young and desperate to be noticed, so it’s hard for a fella to sit there with his blu-blockers on trying hard not to look like a perv. I need not have worried though because they were far more obvious dirty old men than I on show but even that didn’t dissuade those gagging for attention from doing their thing.

I was watching a bunch of young teenage girls in bikini’s capturing each other’s every move on their phones and cameras. I wasn’t watching them in a ‘keep looking so I can have a wank about it at home’ kind of way, I did look at other things, but inevitably every time I looked back the cameras were a flashin.

Undoubtedly those photos would have been uploaded to the owners Bebo pages later that evening and everybody who was there on the day, tagged, so those that weren’t there could identify who was...just in case there was any doubt 275 photos later who had actually been there and who hadn’t.

Closer to me were two other similarly aged and clad young ladies who did the same with their cell phones, in between numerous, desperate calls to young men begging them to come join them. The fellas never showed and I wasn’t surprised, they were probably at home prowling through Bebo pages checking out photo’s of other young girls at the beach.

Nobody took photos like that back in my day. If you were lucky enough to have a camera – one with a film and a winder that you could never quite tell had worked or not – then it was unlikely you carried it with you on account of it being about the same size and weight as a brick. If you did take photos the chances were it would be several months before you saw them anyway because it took that long to take the 25 pictures you needed to in order to complete the film.

Once you got them back from the camera shop (where developing took days, not minutes) you would relive the memories the badly exposed shots would bring and curse the ones where you had had your finger over the shutter. And there was always two or three photos less than the 25 the bloody thing had said you’d taken...

Back then it was all about living in and experiencing the moment. Now it’s more about getting dozens of great photos that show you were there and fuck the moment. In a way it’s all about the self promotion that the youth of today seem to think they have to make of themselves in order to get anywhere with anyone.

Girls, who I’ve already discussed my theory on how they do things primarily to impress other girls, not fellas, treat every photo as if it was some raunchy magazine shoot. Look through any online album and there will be young women pouting, giving it their ‘best side’ and slutting it up as if their lives depended on it.

Not that making a tit of yourself is an all exclusive sheila’s club because the young men that they inevitably attract do a pretty good job too, doing their best to look right hard by doing the finger or tensing every muscle from the neck up every time a camera is pointed in their direction. Being surrounded by drunk, loose young women it would seem, is not enough for a fella to sit back with a smile as wide as his stiffie is tall.

There was one other highlight to be seen at the beach; the foreign bird who stripped down to her bra and undies did a spot of topless sun bathing too. Or so my wife tells me. I missed it because I had gone to get the family lunch from New World where, unfortunately, no one had their Scandinavian nungas out.

What a pity my wife didn’t take a photo...

Now this is a photo...

Shane Bond & Cheque Book Loyalty

Tosser’s are a lot like buses; sometimes one comes along every now and then and other times a whole bunch arrives at once. We used to do a ‘Wanker of the Week’ column here at ClubDes which proved the aforementioned theory and we didn’t stop because all the wankers went away, no far from it.

Shane Bond is one of our Wanker of the Week alumni. We did a bit on him when several months ago he decided that it was money, rather than playing for his country that mattered most and accordingly he turned his back on NZ cricket and headed off to ruddy India as a sporting mercenary loyal only to the chequebook.

We made the point that his departure was a nice kick in the balls for anyone that had coached or supported him from a junior level onwards, all for free and none of whom would get to see a cent of the many hundreds of thousands dollars he would make playing in front of crowds who would see him only as the big Caucasian from somewhere other than Bombay.

But now the Judas has returned and NZ cricket, so desperate for talent, have welcomed him back with open arms thus proving that they’re all keen to get down his members end and face a few balls. The memories at NZ cricket it would seem, are shorter than one of his bouncers.

To top it all off now the hero worship has started again after his taking a few wickets against the Paki’s last week who must be loving a 10 degree NZ summer. It didn’t take long for the media to start gushing over the guy and rolling out the James Bond references ad nauseam. Photos of him and team mates (who must be relieved to have just won a test) are popping up like pics on a 14 year old's Bebo page.

I wonder if NZ cricket would be so welcoming of them if they were to break the rules and piss off overseas for thirty pieces of silver, thus turning their back on their country. Probably, because desperate needs call for desperate measures when you’re struggling for credibility in a sport played by a handful of countries.

Sometimes that means even welcoming back a Judas back with open arms.

Bond on Bebo

Today's Idol, Tomorrow's News

I see another Idol winner has been found and again I find myself asking myself ‘does anyone really give a shit?!’

Obviously someone does because they keep churning out Aussie Idol to an audience that just seems to lap it up. They obviously make money out of it too, quite possibly by selling the show to nice but dim countries like us.

The latest winner is a Kiwi which makes me laugh, because if there’s one thing sure to piss the Aussies off it’s a New Zealander winning anything.

Admittedly Stan Walker’s back story is impressive in its adversity; he was fiddled by his uncle (Peter File) at an early age and raised – in his own words – by Jake the Muss. Grim stuff. But yet I can’t help but feel the world needs another Idol winner like it needs another Hitler and so despite Stan the Man’s emotional victory, you and I both know that come this time next year, he will be yesterday’s news.

The list of former world wide Idol winners who have ‘made it’ is considerably shorter than those that haven’t. Actually, apart from Kelly Clarkson can you name any past winner who still has songs played on the wireless / TV / car full of silly teenage girls? No. No you can’t.

Sure, they all go on to record an album or two but then that’s part of their prize package. They’ll murder even more decent songs with their ridiculous covers and perform on stage with the likes of Michael Buble, the man with a tit in his name. But after all the contractual palaver is completed they go back to doing whatever it was they were doing before winning Idol; sweet fuck all.

And the reason is simple – because the same folk who got their panties in a twist during the competition this year will be doing the same again next year, only for some other try hard with a sob story. It’s rent-a-crowd in its purest form.

So does anyone really give a shit? Possibly, but only for a few weeks so you better laugh it up while you can Stan, because this time next year you’ll just be another Maori living in Brisbane and Michael Tit-lay won’t be answering your calls.

Who Violated Who Facebook?!

I suffered the infamy this week of having Facebook remove my profile picture. I feel so dirty and violated.

Apparently a man can’t even show some back, crack and sack these days without someone taking an offence. Whether it was that someone complained or that Facebook simply came across it I shall never know. I suppose they have searches running for these things but I cringe at what they must have had as the search definitions if that was the case.

Maybe it was a spurned ‘friend’ that dobbed me in. I tried to think about the last one I declined and I’m pretty sure it was the request from Jesus. Damn him and his omnipresence.

So now I’m torn between wanting to push the envelope and post another dodgy pic, or just post nothing in protest. It might be a complete waste of space and serve no real purpose in the grand scheme of things, but I wouldn’t want to be the only guy you’ve even known to be kicked off Facebook. My mate Veins was but to be honest, if any one individual was likely to be kicked off a social networking site then Vinnie is that guy.

Our Lillian has just discovered the pros and cons of the ‘ol FB and was quite possibly the last person on earth to do so. Apart from George Clooney that is, who has declared that he will never ever have a page. What a guy. I bet he’s on their every night under some pseudonym perving at young girls along with the rest of us.

But unlike George, Lillian is suffering from that inability to say ‘no’ to every bugger who asks to be his friend just as we all did when we first signed up. Now he’s torn between not wanting to piss off work colleagues he hardly even talks to during the day and long lost buddies who some 500 plus ‘friends’ later seem to have just been waiting for the day he signed up.

Maybe it was he that dobbed me in, or maybe it was my angelic, twenty something, Greek goddess of a mate who laughed when I told her what had happened and declared that her profile would no longer look like she had some dodgy old guy stalking her. Well...the thumbnail may change but the truth will still be the truth XTina!

So now I’m putting Facebook on notice, because from here on in I’ll be wasting their time by flagging anything I find as only even slightly dodge as offensive. Babies in the bath? Paedophilia. Booze hags bearing their under carriage because they’ve fallen over in a drunken stupor? Porn. Munters doing the finger in every single photo trying to look ‘right hard’? Hate incitement. My mate breast feeding? Well, that one’s okay. I might have to check it again a couple of times just to make sure though...

Oh well. What do I give a fark, it wasn’t a real picture of me anyway. But it was bloody funny...

Does my mullet look big in this...?

Beyonce, Bikies & The ACC

I’ve just watched possibly one of the worst music video’s ever. It’s Beyonce doing a remake of a Beyonce song (for reasons I don’t know) and features two very strange things; Lady Gaga and guns.

Only you almost won’t recognise Ms Gaga because instead of wearing her usual array of kooky costumes, she wears none. Yep it’s just plain ‘ol Lady Gaga in a one piece and if there’s any truth to the rumours that she’s a lady man lady then she’s doing some major puppetry of the penis in this vid.

Personally I find Lady Gaga strangely attractive and I’m not entirely sure why. It probably doesn’t help that I know somebody who is a dead ringer for her too and if I was 19 and single I would probably start obsessing about just how much she resembles her and start harassing her about it in the misguided believe she’ll be flattered by it. Then, when completely freaked out by my actions, she rejects me completely I’d get all angry and start stalking the bitch. Not that I’ve ever done that of course.

Thankfully I’m a happily married thirty something and these days I can direct such obsessive compulsive compulsions to young girls who leave their Facebook pages unlocked. 316 personal photos? Don’t mind if I do...

There’s also the strange matter of the two wielding guns in the video which I don’t quite get but they were vaguely more interesting than the two singers. I’ve said it once but I’ll say it again; if you’re turned on by guns you’re not interested in sheilas and vice versa, so putting the two together is a weird combo.

It’ll do fantastically well in the charts though, despite the acid trip of a video and yet probably because of the acid trip of the video. Once upon a time a song was a hit because it sound good and folk liked to hear it played on the wireless. Now a day how the song sounds is almost irrelevant to how much vulva you can squeeze into the video.

Beyonce cracks me up too. Here is an influential young woman who professes strength, independence and intelligence yet always inevitable sluts up in her videos. Perhaps she’ll do a perfume soon and call it something just as empowering to young ladies everywhere, like Steel Vagina.

Speaking of which, is there some rule that says when you get a motorbike you have to start looking like a right hard mofo? Watching the footage of the motorbike protest at Parliament the other day I couldn’t help but chuckle at just how many of the participants that were interviewed on the various news programs fitted the stereotype.

The leather they wear is a big part of it, of course. Chicks dig the leather, like Batman said. But that doesn’t account for the anvil beards and far off stares of someone whose father never gave them the time of day that they all have.

I emphasise with the bikies and the large ACC levies that they face but only to a point. For every law abiding, never-had-an-accident-in-my-life motor bike rider there is at least several maniacs who push the limit and it’s those clowns I couldn’t give a flying fuck about. But then of course munters on the road are not confined to just two wheels either.

ACC to me should be like insurance; everyone contributes a little and if you never use it then you get rewarded by contributing even less. If you’re a waster of a student who toboggans down Dunedin’s steepest street in a chilly bin and you arse it, then, on account of your stupidity in doing something that no sane bugger would ever do, you are automatically exempt from claiming ACC. Likewise criminals.

But then what do I know aye? I wonder if I can claim ACC for Facebook wrist...

Steel Vagina & Lady GaGa

Time For We Footballers To Move On

I was going to write something really profound about the All Whites but every man and his dog – and I mean literally every man – has already beaten me too it.

Even the nation’s rugby writers who spend their days trying hard not to say the thing as each other have written about it and yep, they’ve all said the same thing as each other. Which has lead to the inevitable conjecture as to which is now bigger in this country; ruggers or football? Its short shorts verse long shorts again, just like it was back at school. Stubbies verse grippers, those that shower with their undies on and those that didn’t.

Which reminds me of my playing days at College when the long shorts that are common place today, started to make a comeback to football fields across the country. Not in my house though. My parents, the bastards that they were, never bought me anything longer than teste depth when it came to shorts and remained blissfully unaware of my desire to encase my pasty thighs in satin.

So I took matters into my own hands and made a pair of knee length shorts out of my rain proof track pants. Man did that shit them right up. Before then I had made do by making bike shorts out my old adidas trackies, the ones with the stirrups on the feet, so needless to say they were completely bricking it over the slaughter of two perfectly good pairs of pants.

In their anger they decreed that they would never buy me any new soccer gear ever again, which was hardly a punishment as far as I could see because they never had anyway!

But back to the All Whites vs. The All Blacks. Sounds like an interracial gang bang doesn’t it? It’s a futile argument really and a lot like trying to prove your point with the devoutly religious, so why even bother. Football, right at this very moment, is bigger than rugby in Godzone and that’s a fact. If you really want to get anal and hey, I’ll try anything once, let’s talk big picture.

There are over 200 countries in the FIFA world rankings and less than 100 in the IRB’s (which is a very generous count given how many of those countries are actually competitive). There might be a ‘world’ of rugby playing nations, but the world’s sport is football. It’s a World Cup Final tournament where 32 foot balling nations compete compared to rugby’s 20, so I don’t care how tight you like your shorts, football is bigger in every which way.

Anyhoo, I digress. Saturday night was a marvellous spectacle regardless of code and one that will live long in the memory but not if the team performs abysmally at the Finals that we’ve all gotten so excited about them making.

A few months ago I was very critical of the All Whites and their performance in the Confederations Cup where they were hammered by the best team in the World (Spain), brushed aside by South Africa and eventually drew with Saudi Arabia, a team not too dissimilar to Saturday nights opponents, Bahrain. Despite the euphoria of this week I haven’t forgotten that they were boys in a man’s world at that particular tournament.

At the World Cup they will in all likelihood, find themselves playing even tougher opposition and they will have to work very, very hard to try and avoid the kind of results that the last NZ team to make it to the Finals had, conceding 12 goals in three games.

If they do well (and nobody expects them to win the bloody thing or nuffink) then they will do more for football in this country than they did on an epic night in Wellington. If they crash and burn as so many footballing minnows in their position have in recent years then, just as they did at the Confed Cup, they will have wound the credibility clock back to pre November 14.

I hope they do well; really I do. Because I don’t want my boy to ever have to wear short shorts, or shower with his undies on.

Boring Sports #1: Cricket

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Talk Derby To Me

Now I don't usually get excited about much.

Even the other night, when an attractive young thing appeared at my door trying to sell me movie tickets and it dawned on me that I had seen porno's that had started like that, I didn't get excited.

Because too much excitement ultimately leads to dissapointment when shit doesn't get half as exciting as you thought it was going to be. However if you treat everything with pessimissim then you will always be excited when shit isn't half as bad as you thought it was going to be. See, easy isn't it?

One thing that I have come to get quite turned on about though is Roller Derby and if you can you should get yourself down to the TSB Bank Arena tomorrow night around 7pm.

Trust me, it'll be the best $15 you spend that night and you won't even have to get shitfaced like you usually do on a Saturday to get over the fact that the night out isn't half as exciting as you thought it would be.

But enough about you. Roller Derby is more fun than a strap on and unless you're there tomorrow night you'll just have to take my word on that.

Goldie Scorn; she can shoulder barge me into the suicide seats anytime..

Don't Text And Drive

Have you spotted anyone using their cellphone whilst driving yet?

Better yet, if you have did you dob the buggers in? I have and did so today and what made it even the more sweeter was that it was one of those a-typical pricks who think they are the authority on everything and therefore above the law; a middle aged balding dude in a desperately dated BMW. Tosser.

Apparently the first few days have been reasonably offence free which is a good thing, but lets be honest, it won't be long before old habits return and the cellphones in cars start a ringing. I've been waiting for mine to ring because my lovely wife has a habit of texting me when she knows I'm driving and then ringing two minutes later to see why it is exactly I haven't replied to her text.

Sadly, it will be around this point that the Five-O will start getting bad press for ticketing cellphone user drivers and undoubtedly, one of the best laws passed in ages will become, in the eyes of the lawbreakers only, a money making exercise. Middle aged balding dudes in desperate dated European cars will be the most vociferous of the lawbreakers, making outlandish statements when faced with a ticket and demerit like "Why don't you jokers go and catch some real criminals and stop wasting my time".

Of course the irony of the situation will be lost on the man who hasn't actually seen his own penis for some time...

The thing I like about this law is that it's proof that if we really want to, we can change things to protect ourselves. Despite what the knockers say, making it illegal to chat on the trouser phone whilst driving is a damn good thing and it's such a simple step to have taken you have to wonder why the fuck we didn't do it sooner.

Now we can start on the other stuff that puckers a few sphincters; like banning alcohol advertising that glorifies getting pissed - which is most of it. Have you ever noticed how advertising for alcohol made overseas is seldom about getting comatose like ours, but more about an attitude or way of life?

While we're at it we can reinstate the legal drinking age back to twenty, given now that most of seem to be prepared to admit lowering it was a mistake. That particular exercise was a bit like lighting your own fart wasn't it? Great in theory, but one scalded, blistered gooch later and suddenly it's not so cool.

Then we can start on shitty food advertising which is aimed at making our kids of today tomorrows Biggest Loser. Am I the only one who can't help but think that the rise in popularity of cooking shows (so much so that we even now have dedicated cooking channels) has helped influence not only waist lines, but an entire industry and series of TV shows around - wait for it - losing weight. It's a conspiracy I tell you.

And hey, if you haven't spotted anyone using their cellphone whilst driving yet then don't despair, there will be a middle aged, balding guy in a BMW just around the corner.