What Kind of Facebook Annoyance are you?

Remember back before Facebook was a thing? 2006 was weird, right? How did people know what other people they knew were doing all day every day? It was a rough time. 

I remember when I first got on Facebook. We had a stormy 1 month relationship where we couldn’t spend enough time together. Then the ardour cooled.

In time I realized the quintessential truth about Facebook: It’s a great way for annoying people to be even more annoying. Facebook’s a magnifying glass, focusing the beams of annoying from every annoying person you’ve ‘friended’ right onto your tiny metaphorical ant body.

Think about it. Right now, you’re kind of annoyed at me because every week or so I link you to undeniable proof that I am amazing. That’s got to eat away at a person. I don’t even blame you.

The weird thing about Facebook is that it’s completely narcissistic and yet the people who use it still fit into specific cliques. Facebook is like digital High School, with all the pesky learning replaced by bitchiness.

I have perfected a method of determining what category your friends fit into, utilizing the Glee theory: everyone adheres to one specific clique with the exception of the main character (you), who can multi-clique. In other words, don’t worry: you’re perfect.

You jocknerd, you.

If you came across something like this on Facebook it would be as a quiz written by a Tanzanian special needs student and it would have sixteen instances of the word ‘LOLZ’ and zero instances of punctuation. Lucky for you this is a blog, not Facebook. So that means you have a slim chance of understanding:

What Kind of Facebook Annoyance are you? (Not a quiz)

The Jock

Wanted for constantly posting: Blah blah alcohol, blah blah, sex, blah, blah, partying, blah.

If your life is a never ending party and you have time to post it all over Facebook, while intoxicated, then you may be a Jock.

The Emo

Wanted for constantly posting: Lamentations about how horrible the world is. (But only for them and they’re going to tell you all about it.)

When I was in High School Emos hadn’t even been invented yet. That’s one of the clues that let me know that they’re completely unnecessary. Darwinian Theory suggests that something that cuts itself has missed the memo about survival of the fittest.

You are a Facebook Emo if you think your cold is really that much worse than everyone else’s (Man flu is an exception because that shit takes you to the brink), if your job sucks more than everyone else’s or if your ugliness is uglier than everyone else’s (even though that one’s true)

The Hippy

Wanted for constantly posting: Status updates demanding urgent action against a myriad of issues you have no hope of influencing.

The pesky thing about charity is that it’s always after your money or your time or it wants you to do something.

Piss. Off.

I spend my whole life trying to get money, and spend my spare time by avoiding doing things. I really feel like charity doesn’t understand me.

But Facebook does. Facebook knows that if you make your profile picture pink that someone, somewhere is going to be so inspired that they will just cure cancer. Just like that.

"I want to dedicate my Nobel Prize to that guy on Facebook. If only everyone cared like you, man. 

You are a Facebook hippy if you post anything to your status that says ‘93% of people won’t post this. Will you?’ P.S I’ll assume that question is rhetorical and you already know my answer is 'fuck no, I won’t!'

I am not even making this up, but one of my Facebook friends once posted a status asking for urgent action to stop the Lithuanian army from using dogs for target practice. Is Lithuania even a place?! Let’s imagine this incredibly potent issue is resolved by your status update. Do you know what the Lithuanian Army will practice on then? Peasants. Good job, Hippy.

Would you repost that? You’d be doing the world a bigger favour.

The Princess

Wanted for constantly posting: Glamorous pictures of themselves.

Do you have a friend who is pretty sure she (usually, but could be a he in this egalitarian age) is almost too beautiful? The sort of beautiful that would make a Greek God turn them into a crane, if Greek Gods were still doing that sort of thing. (If they are, could someone let me know because I have a list) This person thinks they are beautiful like the world couldn’t survive without regular glimpses of their beautiful beautifulness?

You are a Facebook Princess if your profile pictures were ever taken yourself in a mirror because you are looking sixteen kinds of gorgeous right now and there’s no one around to appreciate it.

CAUTION: Don’t tell this person they’re pretty! You’re just encouraging them if you do. And they probably still won’t have sex with you.

The Attention Seeker

Wanted for constantly posting: Cryptic messages that require people to respond for further elucidation.

Facebook simultaneously makes it harder and easier for attention seekers. It’s easier because all they have to do is type a message and boom everyone can give them attention. It’s harder because no one cares anymore. They have 835 other people doing the exact same thing. So then attention seekers realize they need to think more like Nickelback.

But not in terms of hair.

They need a hook. They need something that people will not be able to resist posting back to. They need something that is so damn intriguing and mysterious that people would rather kill themselves than not find out what your messages refers to. And so we end up with posts like this:

“Oh my God!” attentions seeker’s friends will reply. “Are you okay?” “What’s wrong?” “Do you need a casserole?” or in my case “you should probably just kill yourself” because I hate being Facebook manipulated so amateurishly.

The above is my fantasy post. Because I work for an organization that asks each participant to make the agonizing re-contract/don't re-contract decision each and every year around January, I am fortifying myself for 120 of these, instead:

Do you want to know what their decision is? They know you want to know. But nothing is free in this world. You’ve got to ask for it. Unless you’re a total a-hole, like me. Then you can just say, “Okay! See you!” It’s particularly effective because then even if they had decided to stay they might go home anyway. Then you don’t have to worry about them pulling the same shit next year. 

I’ve already done more to change the world than one of those goddamn hippies.

Look guys, I made it worse!

The God Botherer

Wanted for constantly posting: Jesus’ incredible influence on their life.

Have you ever read someone’s post on Facebook and it’s made you want to go to church and give thanks? Me neither. Points for trying though.

All I’m saying is, if you and the Big Man are so tight, wouldn’t he have accepted your friend request by now?

Friend Request: Ignored!

The Socialite

Wanted for constantly posting: Posts that are relevant to only a tiny percentage of their astronomical number of friends.

Let’s get something straight right off the bat: having 836 friends is impossible. Let’s say you were to go to each of your friends’ houses for dinner just one time. It would take you almost three years to get to them all.

Most people have, like, 4 friends. So aside from screwing up the definition of the word friend for us, (thanks Facebook) it has also created the Socialite.

You are a Socialite if your number of Facebook friends equals the number of people you have met in your entire life. The Socialite will friend you for accidentally elbowing them on the street.

As far as Facebook annoyances go the Socialite is pretty minor, because their friend count is just a number I never have to look at unless I want to (I don’t want to).

But it gets worse. To be a really effective (read: annoying) Socialite, you must constantly remind your friends how many friends you have and that you are doing awesome stuff all the time.

Make sure you tag all those people so they can see too. Otherwise they might forget that you’re friends.

The Kid that either Should have Studied Harder or has Gone Off Their Meds.

Wanted for constantly posting: Status updates that aren’t even in a human language.

What?! Is this some kind of code cracking puzzle?

Listen, buddy. If I wanted to do something intelligent like code cracking, I wouldn’t be on Facebook, now, would I?

The ‘Deep’ One

Wanted for constantly posting: Someone else’s philosophy/quotes/life.

 

Right now you’re thinking I’m a genius. And while you are completely correct, let me just tell you six words that may alter your opinion: Sun Tzu, T.S Elliot and Jessica Simpson. There’s already about six phrases in this blog that you could put as your status update and your friends would think you’re spreading your toast with amazing each morning.

If you want to do that then be my guest, but at least have the goddamn human decency to put my name at the end of it.

Some people on Facebook spend their entire daily status update allotment on quoting other people’s brilliance.

Wait, what?

There isn’t a daily status update allotment?

Well I guess I just pulled Facebook’s ass out of the fire. Many of these… unsavoury Facebook types could be minimized by imposing a 5 times a day limit on Facebook status updates. Facebook, if you do this, for God’s sake give me a credit. I’m trying to make a point here!

JAM!

My friend Sarah, who possess talent enough to fill a large talentless room, was kind enough to give me my first 'commission' recently. I put commission in quotes because you are apparently supposed to be paid for this sort of thing, but Sarah and I have never worked that way and see no reason to start now. She even gave me credit for the writing, so in the spirit of mutual back-patting I am posting it here so that you can:
A) Read it, then
B) Go and check out her sites:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Just-Add-Music-Photography-NZ/184206350662?v=info
http://www.flickr.com/photos/justaddmusicnz/


Thank you, please.

JAM Photography NZ.

The word 'Jam" probably calls to mind the image of a sweet, fruity treat, heavy on the sugar. Or maybe you think of the magical sound that comes when skilled musicians get together to ‘jam’. Or I suppose you could think of, like, your finger getting jammed in the door. I hate when that happens.

Meet Sarah. 

Sarah loves music and photography. And that’s all. But Sarah’s clever, see, because she’s managed to jam her two obsessions into one giant-sized obsession:

JAM Photography NZ.

(Oh, actually, Sarah also loves cats. But that’s not really relevant to this bio.)

'JAM' is short for Just Add Music Photography, an amazingly pure representation of what Sarah does.
Here’s the maths for if you’re that way inclined:

Photography + Music = Sarah

Sarah takes photographs. She takes photographs of music. This is a tricky endeavour, because it’s very hard to get music to stay still and look this way. But Sarah makes it look easy. I think it has something to do with her fanatical love of what she does. But another 1000 words wouldn’t depict one fifth of the beauty you can see in just one of her pictures (there I go with the Maths again. Sorry.) So what are you doing still reading this? Look at the photos!

For musical photography jam-packed with action, intensity and talent, check out Just Add Music Photography NZ. If your band’s worth snapping, let Sarah know and she'll get the shots worth seeing.

[- bio written by Sarah's highly talented writer friend BigMrJosh, check out his blog http://www.peeweethekiwi.blogspot.com/ ]

Daihatsu!

For many years my stepfather has owned a 1992 Daihatsu Rocky SE. The SE stands for suicide engine. The Rocky is roundly considered to be the unsafest vehicle on the road.

I don’t know where Daihatsu is headquartered, but whatever Asian country houses these terrorist engineering mavericks is having a good laugh at the expense of all the other countries foolish enough to import their vehicles. Translated to English, Daihatsu means ‘suspension and accurate steering are for girls. And we drown our girls in the river.’

If the Rocky was a Transformer, its name would be DeathTrap (as it is often named anyway). Its two forms would be a precariously balanced 4-wheel-drive and a dirty pile of scrap. The pile of scrap would actually be the more useful of the two forms. At least then the other transformers could chuck it at enemy robots.

The Daihatsu Rocky draws inspiration from Rocky Balboa, the Sylvester Stallone character you may remember from such films as Rocky, Rocky 2, Rocky 3 and Rocky 4. I could go on... but won’t. You know how in the beginning Rocky is an out-of-shape nobody who trains hard and ends up a champion? The Rocky is kind of like that, but only the out-of-shape bit.

Pictured here: what people don't do when they realise the full capability of their Daihatsu Rocky.

In a way, the Rocky is the manliest car in existence. It takes every corner like it’s being driven by Jason Bourne and he’s late for work. On a completely straight, completely flat road it bounces around  as though the San Andreas fault line has a personal vendetta against it. The simple act of accelerating – or any kind of incline – will cause the Rocky to bellow like a wounded bison. These features combine in a wonderfully retarded way to make the Rocky seem more than the sum of its parts. I was filled with an almost irrepressible desire to scream “Yeeeeee-ha!” as I drove it. The psychological toll of driving The DeathTrap was staggering; it was almost as though I had lost the will to live. I certainly lost the will to drive safely. My wife will tell you that after a week of driving the Rocky I began to think of myself as something of a stunt driver. My driving conscience had devolved to the point where I treated other vehicles as nothing more than obstacles to my long-distance reversing. I have heard it said that you should avoid getting your ultimate car too soon in life, because then you have nothing left to look forward to. The Rocky works in a similar way. You should never drive the Rocky until you’re absolutely ready to give up the misconception that road safety is anything more than a tragic oxymoron.

Another thing the Rocky doesn't care about: No Parking signs

Despite all this, my stepfather steadfastly refuses to sell the Rocky. He also refuses to clean it, which may actually play in my favour. Because one day it will have enough dust and crap on it to make a better bonfire than vehicle. And on that day I will be there with marshmallows. 

The End

Violent Video Games made me a Lunatic... I Guess.

Video games get a bad rap because some people believe that they promote antisocial behaviour. I’m not antisocial. Look, I’m typing this for you right now. Do you want my perspective? Of course you do. Blaming people being morons on videogames is like blaming geese for playing silly buggers around the oil pipes in the Gulf of Mexico. Did watching 80s cartoon Mask make you want to put on a helmet and pilot a car that is also a plane? Actually, that may be a bad example because I have never wanted anything more!

A.K.A What Bigmrjosh saw himself doing as a job, circa age 8. (There's still time.)

I’ve never really played much Grand Theft Auto because I tried it once and it was hard. My friend told me you can hit someone in the face with a shovel, but only if they’re a hooker. I don’t have any desire to do this, but even if I did I don’t own a spade. Or some hookers. If I was in a hooker spading mood, I would probably fire up the Playstation and spade some hookers on there. I would do that instead of giving it a shot in real life for two reasons. Firstly, I am not a moron. And secondly, I am far too pretty for prison.

“Yo lady, you got a spade?”

Role playing games take this stuff to a whole ‘nother level. For example, RPG logic dictates that whenever anyone leaves something inside a shiny chest they mean for you to have it. And that doesn’t matter if you are on a mission from God or the village goat boy. It’s first in, first served. I have pinched enough stuff playing RPGs to open up an antiques store, but that doesn’t mean when I come to your house you need to count the cutlery afterward.

Another thing that you should only do in video games: Chicken abuse. Besides, anyone who has played Zelda: Link to the Past will know there are some pretty goddamn serious consequences for this act.

Video games are without a doubt inspirational. Some guy was inspired to propose to his girlfriend through hacking Chrono Trigger. I think that’s a good thing (but I haven’t seen his girlfriend). Mostly they inspire me to stay indoors but, hey, that keeps me out of trouble! I can't understand how some dude can play Modern Warfare 2, then decide he wants to replicate it in the real world. That takes actual effort.

I think it's more likely that some people are just predisposed to putting on a leather jacket and shooting up a lunch room, and they would probably do that whether you gave them a turn on the PS3, a copy of Mein Kampf or blindfolded them, spun them around 16 times and put an M16 in their hands. The people who are calling this the fault of video games are probably the same ones who called those guys ‘fag’ every day of their high school career.

There. Now that we've dealt with that, shall we discuss whether video games are art...?

Farewelling a Friend

If you are a regular reader of my blogs – especially during what will come to be known as the ‘China Period’ – you will recognise my plucky, clucky friend, Chicky.

Chicky’s origins are shrouded in secrecy. Some say he was a government experiment gone horribly right, some say he was plucked at random from a bargain bin in a department store, some say his owner has a sieve-like memory and is really grasping at straws since he forgot long ago where Chicky came from...

Anyway, Chicky has had an exciting life (for a soft toy). He has been to Australia, the UK, China, Fiji, Hawaii, Dubai and Paeroa. He has had countless adventures such as going down the hydroslide, and being dropped.

Initially, Chicky had a sound chip in his yellow squishy body that could be used to elicit a proud crow. After too much adventuring, it now sounds like in this book I read where a demon called the main character on the telephone. There’s still a little bit of chicken sound in there, but it’s mostly kind of scratchy and garbled and evil.

After much discussion and a fortuitous gift (which we’ll get to soon), it has been decided to retire Chicky. It is a sad day but a necessary one for the advancement of the travelling soft toy species. When my wife finished up at her school, Corbin, one of her students, gifted her with a stuffed kiwi he had made his very self. Peewee the kiwi will be taking over Chicky’s travel responsibilities. He has the advantage of being quite ‘New Zealandy’ which will be useful in our roles as ambassadors for NZ, of sorts. He has no voice chip, which means he can not be used as an instrument of corruption by The Devil. He also has an actual, rememberable origin (although I will probably just make up a new one anyway, as I am wont to do.)

So thank you for your service, Chicky. The blog at www.chicketychinathechinesechicken.blogspot.com will remain a testament to all the good work you did in your travels. And long may Peewee continue your good works. Check out my new travel blog at www.peeweethekiwi.blogspot.com. This is where Cush and I will report our magnificent findings as we stumble our way through life in Japan. It'll be getting underway in August, so get your follow on!
As always, my own random thoughts will continue to be haphazardly filtered through the lens of The Itchy Barn.

Chicky   2006-2010

Introducing Peewee

Likes: Worms, Travelling to exotic places, Rap battling, The thrill of being endangered, Afternoon naps.

Dislikes: Flying, Weasels, Flying weasels, Peanuts (he has an allergy). 

BigMrJosh's Guide to being an Outstanding Relief Teacher

If you’re a teacher, you’re probably used to using the internet to find helpful websites that tell you the important parts of a speech or how to teach fractions or why Trinidad and Tobago has two names. (I suggest the classy blend of Trinibago).

But what about those teachers who are thinking of stepping back from the teacher rat race of reports, meetings, using the internet and generally being responsible for children’s learning? What about those teachers who want to become relievers? Where are the helpful websites for them?

Actually, those sites are available too. This one seems pretty reasonable. This lady has some great practical ideas for relieving equipment. Then there’s this one, who thinks a good reliever is someone who tidies the teacher’s desk for them. But none of these sites really tell it like it is. Even google doesn’t understand, because I did a search for ‘good relief teacher’ and all I could find was pictures of happy children. That’s not what relief teaching is about.

 I’m going to write all those sites a cheque, and I’m going to make it out to ‘reality’, because I would hate to think that all that I have learnt in the last 3 terms could go to waste.

Bask in my wisdom!

Be the Boss

I have heard that in prison (I have never been to prison. Generally, prison and working with children don’t mix) the first day you arrive you should identify the biggest toughest guy (or, you know, lesbian, if it’s a womens prison) in the whole joint. Then you should file your toothbrush down to a fine point and stab them in the exercise yard. This analogy is as good a starting place as any when you are a reliever.

A good reliever will look like this.

A good reliever will develop almost a radar sense that lets them know which children are going to make you want to pull your hair or their hair out. The first thing you must then do is catch that kid being sufficiently bad that you can justify making an example of them. If that means you have to plant marijuana in their pencil case then I’m sure nobody would hold that against you. Once you have thrown out the ringleader, the rest of the class is in the palm of your hands for at least 13 minutes. Then you’ll probably have to throw another kid out. Actually, if you can stick to that pace you will end the day with a class of 4 and they will all be girls who just want to read books about horses or impress you with their acrostic poetry about how cool you are.

Remuneration

Instead of using money, the government likes to pay teachers with the satisfaction of a job well done and a side serving of telling the entire profession that they could be doing better. (You know, you teachers could also be feeding and clothing these kids and maintaining their emotional security, while you’re at it.)

So why do teachers do all this? I don’t remember, because being a reliever has destroyed my brain’s ability to remember good times. But there’s some good news! You will get paid better than a regular classroom teacher.  That’s because you don’t get any holiday pay and there is a chance that on a given day no local teacher will require a mental health recharge, so there is some uncertainty about your income. Certainty of income is for wage slaves and sissies; relievers learn how to hunt and kill their own meals during those lean times like the start of term and long weekends.

Attitude to Children

I’ve already discussed how teachers get to do everything short of wiping a kid’s butt for a mid-level salary. Why do teachers do this? I asked my wife who, against all odds, cares about children still. She told me it’s because they actually care about children and want to ensure they don’t all suck at everything they do. There’s also some stuff about the look of joy on kids’ faces when they master a new piece of learning.( I personally think that’s a myth. I’ve never seen that.)

It’s tricky, though, because when you make the move to reliever you need to do the exact opposite. That look of joy thing, you still get that as a reliever. But it’s more like the look of joy that you would see on the face of a child who has just been given a piñata in the shape of a teacher. As far as they are concerned, you are their bitch for the day. In Star Wars, the Jedi are generally friendly chaps who do the right thing and ask themselves WWYD (What Would Yoda Do). Then Darth Vader comes along. He was a Jedi, but then he spent a day as a relieving teacher and turned to the Dark Side.

KEESH. Turn to page 17, children. KEESH. You! Zip it! KEESH.

The point I’m trying to make here is that relieving teachers are the dark side of teaching. We have to not care about children. That’s our job. Kids can smell caring, and it makes them savage. Plus, how can you care about kids whose names you don’t even know? That’s why I usually refer to kids as ‘blue t-shirt’ or ‘Spongebob’ or ‘Elf-ears’ or ‘Gingivitis’. Really any distinguishing feature is fair game.

Hours

When you meet a teacher, you may be inclined to say, “Wow, I bet you love working 6 hours a day and being on holiday all the time!”  My stock response to that aspersion when I was a regular teacher was, “Wow, you must love getting punched in the face!”

However, as a reliever I get to perpetuate this myth by actually leaving when the kids do! What I like to do is have them pack everything up a little bit early, then race them out the gate when the bell goes. My record so far is leaving 6 minutes before the bell that marks the end the day.

I should also mention that relievers get to have all those fancy holidays everyone talks about, but since you don’t get paid to take them are they really holidays? I just call them being unemployed.

Punishment

Inevitably you will have to deal with misbehaving children as a relief teacher. Personally, I like to take it back to the old school. After all, I’m usually the only male teacher half of the kids I get will have before high school, so I might as well also be the only teacher who hands out draconian punishments the likes of which they will never see again.

Here are a smattering of my favourites.

Ironic Lines

The teacher writes this on the board:

God, I hate writing lines. Why do I do this to myself. Every. Single. Time? The teacher said quite clearly to stop throwing that pencil around, and what did I do? Damn it. I feel such a sense of remorse and failure right now...

Copy anywhere from 1-20,000 times, depending on how much caffeine you’ve had. When they hand them to you upon completion, make sure to scrutinize them carefully for exactly one second before savagely screwing them into a paper ball and tossing their agonising work straight into the paper bin.

Sit Outside

Always put them by a window where you can see them. This one works best when it’s lightly raining. I do give the kid a chair though. I’m not a monster.

Dictionary Time!

The dictionary is such a rich and versatile source of punishment. Try all of these and pick your favourite.

Tell S to start at a word like ‘nuisance’ or ‘disruption’ or some other such significant word and keep copying until you tell them to stop. This has the bonus of improving their vocabulary.

Give them a page number (I like page 56) and tell them to write all the digraphs. If, like me you don’t know what a digraph is, that just makes it more interesting.

Give them a list of words that epitomise their behaviour and tell them to find their page numbers in the dictionary. Then get them to write a story using all of those words correctly, on pain of death.

Student Archetypes

There are some common elements in most classrooms, and early recognition is the key to prevention. Memorise this information, lest you meet these students one dark day.

The Chair Chucker – As a relief teacher you will need to be adept at defusing tense situations. A staple in New Zealand schools is the chair chucker. I suggest this course of action for dealing with them.

S: (chucks a chair.)

T: I see you are good at chucking chairs. But catching is really key, because I’m good at chucking chairs too. How are you at catching chairs?

Nameless Student – Ever been unsure of a student’s name, but you're pretty sure it’s not Justin Bieber, like they keep telling you? I will call a child whatever name they give me for the entire day, even when the novelty has worn off for them. I will try to work a sneer in with it each time though.

Even better is when two kids decide to swap names for a day. This makes them feel invincible. This doesn’t bother me either, because I will call James - whose real name is Luke – James for the whole day. And if James should incense me enough to get his name on the detention list, imagine how Luke - whose real name is James – will feel when I pass that name onto the teacher? They have unwittingly shackled themselves together chain gang style!

The Helper – Almost every class has that one student who knows in their heart that you are a gibbering moron and that their teacher would never rely on you alone to run their class. They will correct you on every nuance of the daily programme that you have missed.

It will start something like this:

T: Nicola. Is Nicola here?

The Helper: Nicola usually comes late.

T: I don’t care.

Helper: When Miss is here she waits for a few minutes, and then marks the roll again when Nicola arrives. And it’s Ni-CO-la, not NI-cola.

T: Right, so today we are going to do some maths and some writing and some other cool stuff. (Sees helper with hand desperately reaching for the sky.) Sigh. Yes?

Helper: You forgot to change today’s helper name on the board.

T: I will kill you.

As you will see in the above example, there is only one course of action when dealing with the helper. You must do the exact opposite of whatever they suggest. Eventually they will recognise the futility of their actions.

The Stupid Kid – This is the kid sitting in the corner trying to use their left nostril as a pencil sharpener and their right nostril for a gold mine. Then realising they can't breathe. If this kid is in your class all year they are a constant source of anguish and bemusing horror for their teacher. But for a reliever the stupid kid just provides a day of light-hearted slapstick hilarity. Enjoy!

Questions and Answers

Here I will provide some typical questions that you will be asked as a reliever and some possible answers you may want to use.  Please note that not all of these questions are questions and not all of these answers are appropriate. In this section, S stands for student and T stands for teacher, and if you were unable to crack that code without reading this bit then you need to be working in the fine professions of chemical testing or medical science. As a test case.

S: This is booooooring.

T1: You know what’s boring? Your face.

T2: I’m sorry, your teacher actually arranged for a clown to come and entertain you, but I assassinated him and took his place.

T3: Can you even spell boring? Good, find it in the dictionary and write out the definition 80 times, once for every decibel of annoying you just fired into my ear holes.

S: Where’s ooooour teacheeeeeer?

T1: Passed out blind drunk on the couch if your behaviour today is any indication.
T2:The Principal received a phone call from your teacher this morning that consisted of four minutes  of screaming before the line went dead. Then they called me.

S: Annoying student stole my rubber/pencil/thunder/lunch/soul/rugby cards/mojo/ruler!

T1: And?

T2: I would break their jaw. But you probably shouldn’t.

T3: Your class stole the pigmentation from my hair. Do you see me complaining?

S: Our teacher aaaaalways lets us do this.

T1: If I did everything your teacher did I wouldn’t be here right now and would subsequently be much  

happier.

T2: Either your teacher is an idiot or you think I am an idiot. Which is it? By the way, if you tell me your

teacher is an idiot I am lawfully bound to report it to the Principal. If you tell me I am an idiot. Well... we’ll see what happens, won’t we. Go.

The Nintendo Seal of Parenting

Some people say that divorce is damaging to children, but I consider myself lucky. It meant that I was raised by three parents: a mother, a father and a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).

There are literally tens of books about parenting as a Mum or Dad, if you are interested in that sort of thing. (A few parents of kids I teach could stand to maybe pick one of these up some time.) But not much attention is paid to the important lessons children learn from that third, some would say ‘completely inappropriate’ parent. But what those stuffy blowhards don’t realise is that the NES taught many valuable life lessons to my brother and I, its willing disciples.

Sure, we learnt practical stuff, like if you run into a tree hard enough a fairy might fall out, or the benefits of plumbing as a means of cutting down on your transport time.

But we also learnt a lot of abstract concepts. Nintendo helped us become better people. Well, helped me.

Lesson #1: Be a Goddamn Man

Nowadays every second Nintendo game is about grooming your horse or getting your hamster from the vet to the mall before the timer counts down to homework. But 20 years ago the only reason a horse would be in a Nintendo game was because you would be riding it into the middle of a massive battle against a 12-foot Pig-god; a hamster even less likely, unless maybe it had been mutated into a fierce warrior. Back then, games were made for men, and by men I mean pre-teen boys. In a very-hard-to-find game entitled Earthbound (or Mother, if you’re Japanese. No, I don’t know why) you learnt that when aliens invade the Earth with the help of local gangsters, it’s up to a bunch of cap-wearing kids wielding baseball bats and yoyos to protect the populace. That’s called responsibility, bitches.

A-well, better grab ourselves some baseball bats and yo-yos, mosey on down to that there meteorite and beat the tar outta whatever comes out.

Lesson #2: If at First You Don’t Succeed

Remember the Virtual Boy? No, but with good reason. It was terrible. What if Nintendo had thrown their toys out of the cot after the resounding failure of the Virtual Boy? We never would have seen the likes of the Nintendo 64, the Gamecube or the Wii! Remember that time, I wrote that blog that sucked? Me neither, they’re all solid gold. But in the event that that happened would I give up? No way! Because another thing Nintendo has shown me is that persistence is key.

Lesson #3: Modify your Expectations

The first game I chose to buy myself for my NES was Legend of Zelda, which pretty much set my life on its present course. I was taken by the gold box, by the gold case and I was also intrigued by the little gold ‘Nintendo Seal of Quality’ starburst. ‘This seal is your assurance that NINTENDO has approved and guaranteed the quality of this product,’ it said reassuringly. That’s nice.

I think it was about 2006 that Nintendo realised that consumers don’t want quality interactive entertainment. What they want is to spend all their disposable income on games developed poorly by Korean developers. Hold on though! What about the Nintendo Seal of Quality, guaranteeing the quality of the games released for Nintendo systems? It turns out that employing that clairvoyant division was a great idea, because 14 years earlier Nintendo removed the words ‘approved and guaranteed’ from its seal (which had since also been renamed simply Nintendo Official Seal) And replaced them with ‘evaluated and approved.’ In all honesty, that is still a little bit optimistic for some of the stuff coming out nowadays. It’s only a matter of time until the Nintendo Seal will represent that ‘Nintendo has recorded on the back of a napkin that this game exists and will be unable to look you in the eyes while they sell it to you.’ Even though it’s not always for the best, Change is constant.

Lesson #4: A Hundred Bucks!

Have you ever paid $150 for a video game? It’s getting a little excessive, in my opinion. I’m no economist, but if games keep going up in price by $20-$25 every generation, I may have to revise my cryogenic head-freezing life insurance plan. Because who wants to be revived in 3027 just to find that Final Fantasy 607 is going to cost $28000?

Games have always been expensive though. Back in the NES days it used to cost me $100 for a new game. That’s $100 Australian. This is how much I paid for the Addams Family back in 1991. I don’t know how I got such a sum of money at the ripe old age of 9, probably through a combination of plaintive begging and the mowing of 1100 lawns. I put my money down and took my new game home, reading the instruction book from cover to cover in the car (because you had to read the instructions back then). At home, I put the game in the machine and fired it up. Then I turned it off, ejected the game, blew into the end of it, put it back in and turned the machine back on.

The amount of time it took me to do all of this is pretty much equivalent to how long it took me to ‘clock’ (win) the game. That’s right; I dropped the GDP of Micronesia on about an hour’s entertainment. I could have played the game again, but since replay value wasn’t invented until 1996, there wasn’t much point.

From this I learned... um... that hard work is its own reward? The value of a dollar? Truth be told, I’m still pretty dark on the whole thing.

You can see in this screenshot that the player has no money and only three lives, which means they have only just started and, paradoxically, have nearly finished the game.

Freckles, Part 4

I have had one request for me to continue Freckles. Which, by the way, is all I need! So here it is, the fourth installment in a planned series of 3. Sigh.

So, not a bull fighter. In fact my calling was something entirely new. In 2010 it’s hard to find anything new; most things are third generation at least. And more than that, I was unique. Blazing a trail, a modern day Lewis. Or Clark. Whichever was better. But early on we were still finding our way. And as a 9 year-old boy I could never have imagined the strange path my life would take.

My suspicions were confirmed: we had picked up a trail. With a hard copy of Mr Tonkin’s face, it was a simple matter to draw and decode his freckle map. As Cory’s freckles had led us to Mr Tonkin, so did Mr Tonkin’s freckles lead us to Jessie Masterson, eventually. Our difficulty once again was in the fact that the freckles provided us with a location, not a person. A high school girl who worked behind the counter at the Kilgore street corner dairy Fridays after school and all day Sunday, Jessie was a hard one to pin down. Several fruitless afternoons were spent lurking around the dairy awaiting signs of freckles. By the third day the elderly owner had convinced himself that Cory and I were trying to rob him and he chased us out with vague threats to call the police and/or our parents, interspersed with healthy doses of profanity. Undeterred, we mustered our courage and returned, luckily just in time to catch Jessie about to begin her shift.

I could tell within moments of speaking to her that she saw us as just two goofy kids, playing around. But she was prepared to humour us, so that suited our purpose fine. Our experience with Mr Tonkin had proven that the disposable camera was an indispensible piece of equipment for our task, probably even more so than the permanent marker. To think that complete strangers would happily let us ‘join the dots’ on their faces was rather naive. To have a photo taken by two strangers wasn’t exactly normal either, but our chances of success were upped considerably. Jessie was old enough for her features to have begun their bloom into a beautiful adulthood and young enough to luxuriate in the attention. Her wavy red hair stretched halfway down her back and framed her face like one of those rings of fire that lions jump through. But there was nothing leonine about her face. Her lips were soft and prone to curling up in a quick, cheeky grin as she spoke to us.  Thinking us nothing more than young admirers, she was more than happy to not only provide us with a photograph but to pose stylishly for it. I still have the photo of Jessie Masterson, one leg tucked demurely behind the other as she leaned against the dirty white walls of the Kilgore street corner dairy. Starting with her, I began to print two copies of each photo, one to mark the freckles and one to keep. What happened to her I do not know.

Nowadays we keep a database so we can maintain contact with all of our ‘freckles’, which has become both a name for the group as a whole and the feature that makes them of interest to us. 

Together, Cory and I collected 46 more pieces of the puzzle before the day when the inevitable happened. You can only photograph strangers for so long before you get on someone’s bad side. A young mother took offense at Cory and I trying to surreptitiously photograph her stroller-bound toddler. And she called the police on us. For some reason they did not believe that our motives were pure. With the agreement of our parents, who had been putting up with our freckles obsession for many years now, we spent a night in the cells. That was where Cory told me that he was done. He no longer wanted to catalogue the freckles of the world with me. I begged. I pleaded too, but to no avail. By the time my Mum came to pick me up the following morning, Cory was already gone. 

Our friendship would not recover.

BigMrJosh’s Guide to How Not to Name your Band

Every 8 minutes, I have a great idea for a name for a band. I retain that great idea for about 3 minutes. As yet, I have been unable to form a band within that time frame. But when I do, I want to be ready.

Coming up with the right name for your band is absolutely crucial. After all, most listeners will hear the name of your band before they see how awesome your beard is. First we need to be aware of the don’t dos.

Spelingmistayks and other assorted grammatical no-nos.

No matter what Facebook, Twitter and every rapper on the planet are trying to tell you, don’t be fooled: bad spelling is not cool. Removing vowels from a word is equally not cool, and if you think it is, try reading this: nqvcl. That’s right, it says unequivocal. Don’t know what unequivocal means? That’s cos you’re spending all your time writing texts like ‘OMG, mi m8s r so awsum!!!!’ (Actually, I put a comma in there, so it’s not as bad as it could be.) What was my point again? Oh yeah, read a goddamn book!

There used to be this band, right, and they were called Limp Biscuit. No one knew what that name meant, but that was okay, ‘cause it didn’t stop there. In an effort to make it even more incomprehensible, they decided everything should be in lower case (limp biscuit) and then maybe just misspell the whole thing (limp bizkit). Finally, to really ram it home, let’s remove that pesky space in the middle. That gives us the utterly perfect name limpbizkit. My understanding has always been that ‘biz’ is short for business. So a ‘biz kit’ would have maybe a notebook, a stapler, some pens, that sort of thing. They may as well have called their band floppysuitcase.

Dishonourable Mentions: Linkin Park, lostprophets

Numbas 6000!

15 years ago, all you had to do was add some kind of number to the end of your band’s name and you were automatically 1.5 times more awesome - What the hell, 311’s whole band name was just a number! But this is no longer the case. Adding numbers to the end of your band name is now just recognised for what it really is: a desperate attempt to add mystique and possibly length to your band’s name.

Dishonourable Mentions: Blink 182, Sum 41, Powerman 5000)

What The?

What about if we add ‘The’ to the name? That’s a word that’s definitely underutilised in English. What do you notice about the following band names when you take the 'the' away? That's right, they suck. When 'the' is the most important part of your band's name, you have not hit on a winner.

Dishonourable mentions: The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Killers, The List Goes On... (Not a band name. But it totally could be.)

Rude!

You can get out of a limousine with no panties on all you like, but if you decide to call your band something like Da Cunnilinguists 6000, expect 17 U.S States to set your billboards on fire.

Okay, enough theory, let’s get real.

Some Real Life Naming Mistakes for you to Learn From!

Lady Antebellum – Classic bad naming. This is a two-part name, one word of which is clearly made up. So I’m going to focus on the lady part. First, let us consider the 1:2 ladies to beards ratio. Clearly beards are more prominent in this band. I get that they wanted to emphasise that there is a lady in the band, because everyone loves ladies, but perhaps a more appropriate name would be ‘Lady Beardface’ or ‘The Bearded Ladies.’ Both those names, I think you’ll agree, are still sexy, whilst being more representational of the overall image of the band.

Even after a totally democratic vote, the one in the middle refused to grow a beard.

Eve6 – Naming your band after an episode of the X Files is cool. Until the X Files starts to suck and you’re still putting out records. And then the X Files finishes and you’re just three guys making music who gave their band a girl’s name and a goddamn number.

"So guys, what happened to the other three ‘Eves’?"

Funeral for a Friend – Why a super awesome Welsh Alternative band would name themselves after an Elton John song I will never know. I mean, that’s not even close to the same as Radiohead naming themselves after a Talking Heads song. What I do know is, whenever you look up Funeral for a Friend on the internet, Google decides that you’re gay.

I’d wear black and look all morose too if guys kept posting photos of themselves in frilly pink g-strings on my fan page.

Name it!

This is all well and good, you say, but it doesn’t help me name my band! Salvation is impending! When I was younger, Marvel comics used to be made of paper, and at least one page per issue was devoted to Stan Lee rambling on about whatever he felt like. Kind of like this blog, actually. (Mental note: find and emulate Stan Lee’s blog) But in one issue, his innermost thoughts took a hiatus and instead my young brain was rocked by the superhero name generator!

Its methodology was simple: two columns, one column made up entirely of adjectives and verbs, the other of sweet animals or other awesome nouns like ‘volcano’.

The same principle can be applied to naming your band. Just choose one word from the first column and one word from the second column.

Column One Column Two

Lady Beardface

Sweet Volcano

Smashing Leopard

Terrific Dandelion

Dynamite Pumpkins

Cincinnati Bowtie

Tiny Monster

Extreme Phallus

Spider Man

Total Fat

Thrashing Butterfly

Some of these combine to make actual band names, which is as close to proof as I am interested in having in this blog.