olilolo blog

Whitney Houston performed in Brisbane last night. Although, if you read the reviews or listen to anyone who went to the show, you might be forgiven for thinking that she actually punched everyone right in the kidneys and killed their dog. Vicious, hateful vitriol spewed forth from the internet and talkback radio today at a rate only seen since the last Schoolies Week.

But I think ultimately everyone is being a bit unfair on old Whitney. I think what’s happened here is that everybody went  in to the concert with a certain expectation which is actually wrong to have in the first place. They thought they were going along to see a diva perform some songs. That’s not the show they bought tickets for.

They saw a MASSIVE DRUG ADDICT perform some songs.

Seriously, the mountain of chemical substances between Bodyguard-era Whitney and today would make Hunter S. Thompson whistle and say “that’s a lot of drugs”. Houston was like a specially designed drug hoover for nearly a decade. She went so far off the rails the people she met had never heard of trains.

And therefore, judging her by that criteria, she actually did pretty damn well. Sure she was breathless, couldn’t hit certain notes, and frequently appeared disoriented. But you take some speed freak you find in the Valley and put them up on stage and they’re just going to scream and soil themselves. And while that could be entertaining, it’s no Greatest Love of All.

And yes, she may have forgotten several of her band member’s names. And that was probably embarrassing for them. But most junkies couldn’t remember their own names, let alone the names of their friends or loved ones, and they sure as shit aren’t going to remember the names of several employees they met a week ago for fit-out rehersals.

And, I will grant you, she did take several LONG breaks during the show, ostensibly to change costumes, but more likely to be injected with more of the stuff that prevents her skin from sloughing off in great waves. However most serious drug fiends wouldn’t even bother leaving. They’d just start convulsing and shitting themselves right there under the centre-front spotlight. The audience are complaining about her missing notes when they should be glad the first three rows weren’t covered in excrement stinking of mescaline and fear.

So lay off Whitney. She did her best. And just think- if she’s this bad NOW imagine what she’ll be like by the END of the tour. You’ve actually probably seen her best show of the Australian leg. And you weren’t stabbed for stash money, so you’re a winner out of this deal.

Late last week the internet had a bomb dropped on it courtesy of Apple Inc in the form of a shiny piece of plastic and circuits that had fanboys experiencing Jesus, haters finally popping an embolism, and people who were ambivalent deciding that they really need to get off the damn computer and go for a walk.

And amongst the shit-flinging monkey fight that was the internet’s reaction to the iPad was, of course, the jokes. They started almost immediately- people latched onto the name of the device and made the  obvious connection to feminine hygene products, provoking the brain-scraping mental image of a sanitary pad with some kind of user interface to check RSS feeds. Girl Clumsy, The Wah and I were hanging out when the announcement hit the net, and on hearing the name all three of us made the same joke, at the same time. Apple must have known that was going to happen. The scary thing is, it looks like they just didn’t care. And hey, people thought the Wii was a dumb name, until it turned around and owned the console market like a Chihuahua humping a table leg.

People also made jokes about how it’s basically an oversized iPod touch, how it’s sort of like a computer for special people, how Apple may have their heads so far up their own asses they form some sort of douchebag tesseract. The jokes were flying think and fast.

And then, some one went and did it.

Read more…

What would be  more upsetting to you, your mother dying, or your friend’s mother dying? What about if you’ve never met your friend’s mother? All right, which would be more upsetting to you, your mother dying, or a bus full of children plummeting off a cliff on the other side of the world? The two events happen simultaneously, although they are not connected in any way (that we know of; the dark Lord Dennis has been looking shifty)

I mean, it’s your mother, right? Unless you really hate your mother, and have an unnatural fondness for schoolbuses full of children, in which case the authorities are probably already keeping an eye on you. You’re more upset by events which happen closer to you, that involve you in some way. It’s selfish, but it’s human nature. A really smart guy I know wrote an insightful and funny article about it once. Everyone should read it, because it underlines so perfectly how humans work, and why we react to things the way we do. Plus there’s dick jokes included for free. (Not to mention I paraphrased the above example from it. That’s a nice way of saying I stole it, and me linking it is like leaving a note saying “sorry” after I’ve burgled a house)

“Stu, why are you even mentioning this?” I hear you hypothetical readers ask in your thin, whiny voices. I’m getting to that. But keep that idea in mind, the idea of proximity to tragedy making it effect us more.

Read more…

I was recently talking about how we were all doomed because basic stuff that we need to make things is rapidly running out. From rare elements used to make electrical devices right down to relatively common stuff like Zinc and Copper are dwindling at an alarmingly rapid rate.

I found this awesome chart which shows in simple graphic form all that I was trying to bludgeon you over the head with using clumsy words. Read and be afraid.

(Thanks to MightyGodKing for the link)

A monkey trainer in China received minor injuries when his monkeys, whom he’d trained in the art of Taekwondo, turned on him.

At one point the monkey trainer grabbed a staff to hit the monkeys, only to find himself facing a stick-brandishing monkey that cracked him over the head.

Now obviously that is hilarious, and I wish I could find footage of it. Believe me, I’ve tried. The closest I’ve come is this-

which is awesome in its own way, but not exactly what we’re after.

But the story is also just a little bit worrying. I mean, you train monkeys to fight, okay, I get you, you’re in China and no one’s going to tell you otherwise, fine. Lord knows I’d be knee deep in tapdancing squirrels if I thought the RSPCA would leave me alone for five damn minutes. All “unnatural urges” this and “cruel and unusual” that. What do they know those tree-hugging…

Sorry, I’ve wandered from my point, which is- you teach monkeys to fight, you’d better treat them nicely. You’re already dealing with an animal that can conceivably dart up your pants leg and sink its fangs into your balls, and you’ve also now taught it how to hit the nerve cluster that causes your legs to stop working. You better hope you engender some good-will in your little simian warriors. Unfortunately for the trainer, he hasn’t heard this bit of wisdom.

He was really furious, he made the monkeys kneel on the ground with their hands tied behind their backs to punish them and make them show remorse for their nasty attack.

Oh dear. Yes, public humiliation will do wonders to ensure these animals don’t pick the locks of their cages and cut your throat while you sleep.

I think this stems from some strange part of the human brain which finds dressing animals up as people and making them do people things absolutely endearing, when actually it should terrify you just a little. Seeing a dolphin tap out its name on a voice pad should not provoke sighs of wonder, but make us ask- if the dolphin can do that, exactly what ELSE can it do? Seeing a bear dancing in a little hat should not elicit squeals of glee, but a sense of jealousy that the bear can dance better than you. And seeing a chimp doing roundhouse kicks should not produce delighted laughter , but rather should produce a pile of crap in your pants, as you realise that animal that could already rip your face off now knows how to stun you first.

If humans don’t stop treating animals as furry dolls to prance and jig for our amusement, then one day the animal kingdom is going to get its shit together and END us.

The resulting conflict will be swift, bloody, and adorable.

In the music world there is something known as The 27 Club. Basically there is a group of fairly influential musicians who reached 27 years of age, and, having changed the world in a small way, died of various causes. You might know a few of them.

ROBERT JOHNSON

JANIS JOPLIN

BRIAN JONES

JIM MORRISON

KURT COBAIN

JIMI MOTHERFUCKING HENDRIX

Considering how much I’VE acheived in my last 27 years on the earth, I think I REALLY need to watch my back this year. Given how unbearably awesome I am, I’m gonna get hit by a meteor tomorrow. Hell, there’s probably one already on the way. Don’t cry for me. I lived life to the full, as this internet blog and my complete box sets of the new Doctor Who will attest. No path was left untravelled.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll notice that today is the first of December. And that means that the November Challenge is at an end. And I FUCKING NAILED IT.

Every goddamn day, baby. A couple of days I posted TWICE. Just because I COULD. And because I may have FORGOTTEN WHAT DAY IT WAS.

It got hairy at some points. The first week went all right as I took the 3 or 4 good ideas I still had waiting to be writen and wrote them, and wasn’t embarrassed by what I had writen. The second week was tougher. I went on holidays from work, (that was planned before the challenge by the way; I’m not insane enough to take time off work to do an internet project) but for some reason that made it even harder to get stuff written.

By the time I actually came back to work last week I was dreading getting out of bed every day because I’d have to find time to write the bloody blog for the day. I began seeing the world in article-sized chunks, every single thing that I saw or experienced was assesed for its value as possible material. I would come up with hilarious rants in my head about how grass is basically the most redundant plant, or how some people should be able to be legally killed under a strictly defined set of conditions. I itemised the contents of my wadrobe, before deleting the whole thing, line-by-line, softly crying.

But somehow I posted something every damn day. For that I have to thank you guys.  Blogging can be a lonely business sometimes, the feeling that you’re just throwing words into a great sucking void.

But fortunately you guys posted comments and tweeted about it and posted articles to Facebook and even came up to me personally to say you were enjoying my writing. And let me tell you- to a writer, that shit is like crack cocaine wrapped in bacon. It is a high like you cannot imagine, having someone say they not only read your stuff, but liked your stuff. And then ask for more of your stuff. That is the fucking BEST. So thank you so much to everyone who commented and emailed and everything else. You made the November Challenge go from this-

to this-

Exactly like that.

I’d like to extend a special thanks to olilolo’s other main writer, Doyle. I actually didn’t tell Doyle about the challenge until I posted the first post on Nov 1 explaining what I was going to be doing. I basically hijacked the site for a month, after he’d kept it going for three months while I had a case of “writer’s block” (laziness). So thank you for putting up with me, you sexy, hairy man.

olilolo.com now goes back to its regularly scheduled programming, except we’ve never had regularly scheduled programming, so maybe we’ll go forward to regularly scheduled programming. Doyle’s going to start posting again, and I’m going to keep posting reularly, only not every goddamn day, because seriously, if I had to fart out another olilolo article I was going to put my fist through the screen. You wonder why so many writers have drinking problems? Deadlines is the answer.

So thank you once again, and please keep reading. I can’t promise the quality is going to improve, but if you’re still here you’re a sucker for punishment and you have my respect.

When most people think of comic books they think of superheroes. And it’s true, superheroes are very much a comic book creation. The flying superstrong men in their fluttering capes are a product of the four colour world. But comic books can be so much more than that.

Independent comics have always been more anarchic, dealing with broader themes than mainstream publishers. But with comics booming in the mid 90s, there was room for a lot of  comics titles to find homes at the Big Two that wouldn’t have ordinarily got a run. And so it was that Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan was spewed into the brain-meat of thousands of unsuspecting comics readers.

What the Hell is That?

Set in the future (exactly how far is never stated, but it’s heavily implied to be quit a bit of time indeed) Transmetropolitan follows the exploits of gonzo journalist Spider Jerusalem, a take-no-prisoners wordsmith with a fuck-you attitude and a habit for sicking anything vaguely chemical into any orifice that will accept it.

Hugely successful after publishing several best-selling books, Spider retires to a retreat in the mountains. However, when the cash starts running low, he has to return to The City (implied to be but never staed as Future New York) to take up reporting again.

Constantly causing headaches for long-suffering editor Mitchell Royce, Spider is helped in his debauched escapades by his “filthy assitants” Channon Yarrow (the tall, amazonian one) and Yelena Rossini (the small, angry one)

Spider soons gets involved in the coverage of the latest Presidential election, and after deciding that the candidate who wins, nicknamed The Smiler, is a complete and utter sociopath, sets himself the task of exposing him and getting him thrown out of office.

Along the way, Spider has to stay one step ahead of The Smiler, meet his deadlines, and keep his readers, all of whom he detests, informed about what’s really going on. As Spider himself will tell you, “trust the Fuckhead.”

What Makes Them So Special?

Like how a description of a crazy party can’t do justice to what actually went down, no mere description of Transmet can accurately portray the sheer insanity Ellis manages to pack into every issue. The world of Transmet is a post-cyberpunk fever-dream which would make William Gibson’s head explode, complete with aliens, designer genetics, and flying cars. Importantly though, all the old problems still exist- discrimination, corruption, and people being bastards.

Into all this Ellis drops Spider, a thinly veiled tribute to the original Gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson. Spider is a bastard, and he’ll tell you so. But he also believes in the truth, and telling the truth to as many people as possible, so other bastards can’t step on people’s necks any more.

Or to put it in his words- “Journalism is a gun. It’s only got one bullet, but aim it right and you can shoot a kneecap off the world.”

Running for 65 issues, Transmetropolitan is about what it means to be human, why you should never trust a politician, and the simple pleasure of a brand new bowel disruptor.

Why It’ll Never Work

Ellis was working with an animation company until he realised they weren’t expecting to have to pay him, at which point the relationship soured. That project would have featured Patrick Stewart voicing Spider, although at that point he probably could have played him live action as well.

There is the argument that Transmet is unfilmable. I would argue not necessarily, but that it would work better as a television series rather than a movies or movies. The plot is rambling, but definitely has a beginning, middle and end,  with events at the start of the book paying off as the series builds towards its big climax.

Not to mention, Spider is a thoroughly unlikeable character. We root for him, but we’re ashamed to do so. He is a drug addict, emotionally unstable, self-centred, pathetic little man with a chip on his shoulder and a mean streak a mile wide.

He’s also got his redeeming qualities, of course, which is why he’s so popular. But he’s a hard sell to a movie exec.

Ultimately, any Transmet movie that wanted to stay faithful to the comics would need to be a hard-R rating, and combine that with the fairly high cost of bringing The City to life on the screen makes a film unlikely.

What We’ll Have To Settle For Instead

Transmetropolitan is a hard one to try and emulate, because there’s really nothing else like it. I guess if you want to replicate the experience, get a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Johnny Mnuemonic and All the King’s Men, play them simultaneously on three screens while taking several illegal substances.

It won’t come anywhere near being like a Transmet movie, but it’ll be a hell of a trip.

Up until now I’ve kind of avoided talking about Global Warming in this series, as it’s something which tends to attract fanatical debaters on both sides. People line up like rival armies, and like a war sometimes people’s arms get ripped off.

ABOVE: What each side in the climate change debate looks like to the other side.

But if you can accept the IDEA of global warming, that a fairly small rise in the overall temperature of the globe would result in the end of life as we know it, then we can proceed with today’s article. Okay?

So, scientists are now predicting that the world is on the way to a catastrophic six degree rise in temperature by the end of this century. If that doesn’t sound like much, think of the difference between a 24 degree day and a 30 degree one. Or, consider that many experts say as little as 2 degrees of change in the overall temperature of the world would be enough to permanently change the ecology of the planet.

This is, naturally, a problem. A change that large has impacts on every level of the ecosphere, from the tinest plants to the largest animals. And in between, looking nervous, humans.

A lot of people have the idea in their heads that “global warming” means that the seas will rise and everyone will be living in a world covered in water.

ABOVE: If only we had listened...

Fortunately it probably won’t be like that. Although it could possibly be that way for people living on small islands. But no one cares about those guys anyway.

ABOVE: No one cares.

In reality most of us will actually find it getting drier, as the temperature rises and previously sub-tropical areas become arid, while the tropics because so hot most of the wildlife literally couldn’t live there any more. It’d be like nature was the fat guy who spent too long in the sauna.

Of course there’s a lot of opposition to the idea of climate change. Mostly from people who have a fairly tenuous grasp of the science involved, but still, they have a sort-of point. There’s no actual hard data that backs up the climate change theory.

Having said that, getting rid of all the crap that we’re pumping into the atmosphere probably isn’t a terrible idea in the long run, you know?

Regardless, my bunker is fitted with airconditioning, just in case.

With changing climate, and pressures put on animals by human encroachment into their habitats, times are touch for our critter friends. And not just tough in an “I can’t find food” kind of way. It turns out that all this destruction of the planet is putting a real damper on animals being able to find a mate. Global warming is cock-blocking the animal kingdom.

Scientists have been noticing the emergence of a brand new animal, created solely out of sweet interspecies love- the Grolar bear. Half Polar bear, half Grizzly bear, all Artic killing machine.  Seriously, that’s a hybrid of the two largest land predators in the world. These things are going to sweep down from the Great White North and devour us all. How will they cross the oceans, you ask? They’ll fucking swim, that’s how. The ocean won’t be game to tell these guys they can’t.

Of course, this isn’t a Ways the World Will End column, so put that aside for now (seriously though, you’ve been warned). The intersting thing about the grolar bear is that it occurred completely on its own, in the wild, without human intervention. Until the thing lumbered at a group of hunters and was shot, presumably as the aborted first wave of their eventual killing spree, we had no idea polars and grizzlies were getting their bone on.

"It was screaming 'Death to all humans'. It actually screamed that."

Previous cross-species hybrids have all been created by humans, usually for a drunken bet. Thus we get useful animals like the Mule (a male donkey crossed with a female horse) and awesome animals like the Liger (a male lion crossed with a female tiger)

An awesome abomination of the natural order

Now, scientists are saying that changing conditions across the globe are going to see many species suddenly reconsider their priorities and maybe lower their standards a little. Researchers in Australia say they expect to start seeing hybrid bird species very soon, given the high nature of specialisation in Australia where there are often several sub-species of bird in a single area, all evolved to feed on diferent types of seeds and nuts.

The upshot of all this is don’t be surprised if you see a wallaroo on your next trip to the bush, or a zebraffe on your next safari. Not to mention King Douchbag Kirk Cameron might finally get his wish of seeing a Crocoduck.

This thing ignores the bread you're throwing and goes staight for the fingers.