Too Cool For School

I see the radio station The Edge are planning to create another bit of ground breaking entertainment; they're looking for a couple willing to get married in the nude. Choice. I have just the one question: What the fuck for?

The question is of course somewhat rhetorical because I am sure we all know why they're doing it - publicity, money, sexploitation - the usual suspects, but it's shit. They know it and we know it. It's not even funny shit, it's 'drop the kids off at the pool' shit. And here's another poser from the school of rhetoric: Who's going to sign up for it? Wasters, that’s who, we all know there’s one born every minute silly enough to bare their soul (or in this case their junk) for a ridiculously small amount of fame and even smaller amount of money.

Actually this prize is pretty big. The Edge reckon the value of will be around fifty grand, which, let's face it, is a great piss up in any one's book. The service and reception are going to be held on some yacht in the Bay of Islands which will be very romantic, no doubt. But will it be all worth while in 10 years when the happy couple look back at their wedding pics they can't share with anyone because of the shrinkage one gets anywhere near the water and wonder if it really was a good move whoring themselves out on their big day?

It's like the old saying “you don't get anything for free”. But you know who does get shit for free? Car yards and alike who service your car and plaster the thing with their stickers and their plate surrounds. It's so discreet you probably don't even notice; a window sticker here, a bumper sticker there and to top it off a complimentary key ring. Before you know it your passion wagon is a rolling advertisement for the pricks and not only have they not paid you a cent in commission, they've charged you!

Some places do it as a loyalty discount thing; they sticker the car and next time you come in with it on you get 10% off something that has a 100% mark up, brilliant. But others don't even offer that. My missus took her car into a specialist post sale service dealership for a service and they not only stickered the thing they swapped over the plate surrounds too.

When I queried it with them they were pleased to advise, in a smug bastard kind of way, that it was all part of the service. The fuck it was. Now it didn't say so on the bill (surprise, surprise) but I reckoned that it had to have taken at least 20 minutes for a 'technician' to take the old ones off and put new ones on, all of which we paid for. Were they going to give me a credit for the time and labour? Nope, so I wasted their time the next day when I dropped in and asked them to take the lot off.

Car yard dealerships think they're too cool for school, that’s the problem and of more concern is the growing numbers who think so too. Like poofs who think they're too cool to use pedestrian crossings and instead jay walk their sorry asses across a busy road a few meters off the designated crossing. The irony is that they will often spend longing waiting for a gap in the traffic than it would have taken them to use the crossing. But they don't care; they're too cool for school and too cool for crossings.

Then there are those that are too cool for road rules full stop. These are the kind of folk who like to back out into busy traffic thinking that everyone will wait for them, because they’re cool. Or those too cool for centre lines and on a section of road where parked cars mean someone has to cross ‘em they take the view that it’s first in first served as to who gives way, no matter how close it gets, because they’re too cool to give way. Giving way to them is like surrendering.

Maybe one day, just once, I'll ignore the little voice inside of me called 'social responsibility' and be too cool to stop. That’ll shit them right up.

Porno Dad vs The Socially Irresponsible

My son walked in on me checking out naked women on the Internet the other day.

I say women, but really it was only the one and there was not a pink bit to be seen. Not that an eight year old sticks around long enough to note those finer details. I was watching Alicia Silverstone do her bit for the rabbit food eating community in their latest ad, the one where she hops out of a swimming pool supposedly nude. I doubt she was fully nude though, because in this day and age only truly naive celebrities like the chick from High School Musical pose nude in private and are then shocked when it ends up on the interweb. I doubt Alicia would take that risk – although I’m sure I’m not alone in wishing she would. The High School Musical girl was decidedly average by the way, in case you were wondering my opinion.

So although it wasn’t the good stuff I was looking at, it might as well have been. I made matters worse by acting like it was the good stuff when my boy walked in and tried to frantically minimise the full screen playback, only to reveal the picture of her lying nude on her side, the shot that the vegans are using for their banner ads. Needless to say my son acted pretty much as I suspected he would, promptly running off to tell his two mates in the lounge that dad was looking at naked ladies on the computer.

I guess that will make afternoons quieter around here. None of the neighbourhood kids are going to be allowed over to Porno Dad’s house no more. I don’t quite know how I’ll make it up to my son. His school is having a German cultural day soon and I’m guessing that in the aftermath of this incident, the Waffen SS uniform I planned to wear is not going to go down well. Nor I suspect, is my Hitler Youth Bake-A-Cake stall that I had planned to man.

It’s tough being socially responsible sometimes. For some people it’s far easier to be ignorant and a Mongol, than socially apt. I’m not talking about serious stuff like pinching the neighbours lingerie from her clothesline, or whether or not to call in that controlled burn off of yours that just jumped the fence. Doing the right thing with that kind of stuff is a no-brainer for we the majority. But fear not, for the socially irresponsible are all around us and you don’t need to look very far to find them.

Take for example, shopping trolley etiquette. How is it that some folk can’t even manage to control a metre long trolley in a series of straight, flat, three metre wide aisles? These are the pricks that bang and broadside you more than once because they’re oblivious to anyone else around them. Why does that happen? The supermarket is hardly sensory deprivation central and there are no blind spots in the frozen section, so how the fuck does it happen? And these pillars of society are then heading out to a car in a car park near you?! Yeah, nice one.

What about the munter that spends five minutes riding the seventy metre escalator only to then not know where he’s going when he hops off at the end? There are only two choices mate, take a chance at life I say and stop holding every other bugger up behind you, fortune favours the brave after all. This kind of genius likes to stop in doorways and the centre of walkways too, to make other life changing decisions like "shall I dump here at the mall, or wait till I get to the mother-in-laws?". Mention that he / she might be in the way and they’ll look at you as though you just laid a warm steaming cable on the nice white linoleum floor.

The list, quite literally, is endless. How about folk who never return hired DVDs on time? People who make a new queue - that they are then at the front of - when one clearly already exists. Arseholes that dent your car door with theirs. One of my personal faves is when people walk through a busy car park believing that they have the right of way, waltzing in and out of your every blind spot to be right behind or in front of you as you look to plant the pedal. The poindexter who did so to me on the weekend came close to tasting cold hard Hyundai steel, I kid you not. He certainly got a mouthful of language that could only have come from a Porno Dad.

But even he was surpassed in the ‘fuck me right off’ stakes today, by his mate Wayne Kerr, who parked his people mover just far enough away from, or close enough to, the petrol pump at my local servo to mean that no bugger could use it. I enjoyed glaring psychotically at his entire family sitting in the car whilst I stood in the rain pumping my gas.

Yep, social irresponsibility is everywhere alright and unless they allow me to start carrying firearms there’s not much chance of it ending. Maybe I’ll take to wearing my Waffen SS uniform out when I go out shopping….

The Fat Of The Land

Obesity is such a dirty word these days you can almost see the grease dripping off it. Many years ago, when the majority of the population weren’t fatty fatty boom booms, obesity was a clinical word that no one really used because very few of us came close to being obese. Now it’s like saying someone is Caucasian or dark skinned: “Oh you can’t miss Dave, he’s got brown hair, is obese and wears short shorts. The ones with the slits up the side…”

Now there’s more theories on just how people become obese than there are anuses in the world - and that’s a lot. I’m not about to launch into a deep and meaningful essay on the physiology of genetic obesity because I am not qualified to be that boring.

The crux of the problem as I observe it, is that obese people eat too much crap food and do too little quality exercise. Which, if you’re an adult is your prerogative, but when you see it happening to children, then you quite rightly look at their parents and ask “What the hell are you doing to your kids?!”

Incidentally, I have termed a new phrase which I call Parental Vacancy. It is a mindset that is developed easily and in fact, a lot of parents do it so well that they’re now actually over qualified. For those wanting to partake, simply do nothing. Because that’s how it works! NB: I will quite possibly explore this bit of ground breaking philosophy in a later blog, as I need to make up more of the details!

Here is the method of a classic Parental Vacant (PV) when it comes to guarding the calorie intake of their child:

“I work long hours because I get paid so little. I come home so tired that I let my children watch cartoons and play their video games whilst I prepare cheap and easy food that has very little nutrional value.(Repeat for every meal because PV is busy all day either preparing for, or winding down from, work). When we do the weekly grocery shop, I let my kids choose their food because they know what they like and they get the stuff in a green wrapper – because that makes it healthy.”

Which all sounds about as solid as you know that kid's stool is going to be thanks to all the fat and sugar inside the stuff in the green wrapper.

How’s this for a theory? Calories are cheap, exercising is expensive.

Perversely the gym fraternity help aide the obesity issue by making exercise expensive. No really. How much does your gym membership cost per week? Could what you do at the gym not be replicated with a few free circuits around the local park? Could you Roid Ragers who join a gym in order to bench press a small car, not invest in a set of home weights? Surely the initial outlay will recoup itself in the long term? Why do those gyms keep charging so much? Because you lot keep paying it. Being seen at the gym it seems, is far more valuable than what you do there.

This doesn’t help Tubbs sitting at home on the couch watching Cartoon Network. But he’s in the same boat, because playing any sort of organised sport these days is expensive and if Mum, Dad or the chain smoking nanny is too tired to take them outside to a park / playground / pool, what chance do they have? Organisations that run organised events charge the earth because they can. The alternative is free, but enough of us ain’t buying it.

Here in NZ the Government is trying to ban food advertising aimed at children from all after school TV. It’s a good start, but not nearly enough parents are vocally supporting them and we should be because the subliminal message that this advertising implants in a child’s mind is as good as anything McDonalds rustles up with their Paedophile clown. Throw in a parent taking no notice of the nutrional value of what their kids choose at the supermarket and that expensive cartoon advertising campaign that showed the sugar bar in a green wrapper? It just paid for itself.

Parents - engage your children and make the time to keep them active. It will be good for all of you if you do. Take an interest in what they eat and look at the food you shove down their throats as an investment in their future, not a chore. Be alert at the supermarket and put those reading skills of yours to action. Don’t buy stuff simply because it’s a green wrapper. Buy milk, not cheap sugared water. Don't pay for expensive sporting organisations because you think it's the only option, because it isn't. Hey, your parents did it with you and you turned out okay, right?

Unless you’re Dave in the short shorts. But there is no excuse for the slits up the side. You can't blame your parents for that.

Sex Doesn't Always Sell

I once wrote a scathing letter to a sports magazine I used to subscribe too. I had received my latest copy in the mail, had taken one look at the local C grade 'celebrity' on the cover clad in only a bikini and wondered - quite rightly too - what did this have to do with sport? Up till then, recent covers of the mag had been decidedly soft porn, so Eva the Vulgarian was the last straw as far as I was concerned.

I questioned the wisdom of having the magazine look no different to all the other soft core magazines bought by men who are too afraid to buy the mags in the plastic wrappers. Wouldn't it be better to have your magazine stand out on the news stand, rather than be lost in a see of airbrushed titties I asked? If you must stick with the theme I asked, why not have some of NZs champion sportswomen on the cover and promote a positive image of women?

To their credit the magazine printed my letter. The editors satirical reply hinged only on the premise that he suspected I was actually my wife, as both our names appear on our email. I guess he thought that no red blooded male would be complaining about a blonde in a string bikini. But he thought wrong.

To cut a long story short, the editor resigned a few months later (he now writes for a trashy Sunday paper). The new editor at the magazine changed the policy back to having actual sports people on the cover and the magazine seems to sell quite well these days. It is certainly a lot easier to find on the shelf. Proof then, that sex doesn't always sell.

Amusingly some IT magazines are yet to find that out though. Certainly nothing makes me more excited about my latest issue of Poindexter Monthly than a girl in a bikini holding a mother board on the cover.

See, I am a bit of an 'untypical' type of guy when it comes to things like this. But I don't believe I am the only one.

I enjoy rap music as much as the next frightened Caucasian, but the videos are absolutely disgusting. Not that this a phenomenon confined to rap music - soft core titillation is so mainstream these days that we've become numb to it. Yes, I realise that the women in the videos are paid for their time and do so by choice, but that doesn't make it right.

The ultimate irony to me is that rap 'musicians', who are predominantly Afro American, will rap lyrical about racial oppression and just how badly they're treated by the five-0, yet don't hesitate to promote women as being nothing more than possessions. What do their mothers think of all this I wonder?

How about the confused adolescent girl who gets her prompt on how she should act around boys from what she sees on MTV? What of the adolescent boy who does the same? How does he now expect to treat girls do you think? Skip forward down the chain of consequence with me a few steps - and now throw in the world wide web. Is it any wonder we have an ever increasing number of young girls exposing themselves (mentally and physically) online?

Parents should be playing a positive part in this type of scenario, but many don't. I especially applaud the mothers - and lets be honest here, it is the mother - who buys her 10 year old daughter the short skirt, knee high boots and padded bra combo. Allow me to offer some advice (it's free advice too): Your daughter is not a Barbie doll that you can dress provocatively in order to overcome your own self image anxieties! Just because you can't pull the outfit off, doesn't mean she should have to.

Now I don't necessarily believe there are more paedophiles around today than there were, say thirty years ago. Only now we make it more easier for the bastards to get their jollies by sexualising our kids - particularly our daughters.

So don't endorse anything that promotes the fallacy that soft porn is okay. Don't buy the crap the rappers record if their lyrics and videos continue to trash women. Don't buy the sports mag with the bikini on the front. Don't watch the incestuous programmes that portray life (and women) as being one big continuous shag. If enough people did, then the record company doesn't finance the crapper because his records don't sell. The sports mag returns to sports people on the front cover and the programme loses advertisers and eventually it's funding because no one is watching. It's that simple.

Most importantly, protect your kids. Sex doesn't always have to sell, not to your kids anyway. Don't dress your daughters like hookers. Clothes don't maketh the child, their innocence does.