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Made of fire and caffeine from the very depths of nature's space - of the future.

Patriot or Traitor: the Tony Abbott Quiz!

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Originally published in Time Out Sydney October 3, 2013. Art by Robert Polmear

Dear the Internet,

Everybody wins!

Everybody wins!

Your Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been in Indonesia assuring president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono that he is “fair dinkum about doing what we can to help Indonesia in every way” in terms of their sovereignty, which is Abbott-speak for “protect our northern oceanic borders for us and we’ll continue to ignore your human rights atrocities in Papua New Guinea.”

And heck, you might see yourself as being a pretty dinkum sort of a cobber – but are yousufficiently dinkum to contribute in a proactively bonza manner in this brave new Abbottscape?

Fortunately, with the help of senior advisors to the Departments of Immigration and Foreign Affairs & Trade (and not Science, obviously, since we don’t have one of those anymore), we have constructed this quiz to establish quickly and definitively whether you are a patriot or a traitor.

Incidentally, this will also form the basis of our citizenship test just as soon as the new Senate takes power in 2014 (after Palmer United senators add the necessary extra questions like “Australia was specifically founded to be mined, the industry for which should therefore never be taxed or subject to environmental regulation: agree, strongly agree, violently agree, threateningly agree”).

Come let us rejoice, Australians All:

1. A neighbour’s child has run into your yard to escape a gang of bullies. Do you:

a) Tow the child into the yard of an entirely different neighbour and insist that the child is now their responsibility,

b) Forcibly hand the child back to the bullies while explaining that the child should have asked for help through more appropriate channels,

c) Lock the child in your shed, insisting all the while that the accommodation is, if anything, too luxurious and that the child should be more grateful about being trapped in there, or

d) All of the above.

2. The wall of your living room is growing increasingly warm and smoke seems to be filling the house. Your family speculate that you’ve left the oven on and now the kitchen is on fire. Do you:

a) Insist that the heat and smoke is part of the natural cycle of temperatures and airbourne particulate content within the house and that it’s premature to take action until further data has come in,

b) Point out that heat and smoke can have a number of entirely natural causes and that allocating resources exclusively toward extinguishing technologies would be both short-sighted and irresponsible,

c) Angrily accuse your family of pursuing some sort of anti-oven agenda which is typical of their attitude toward electrical goods and that you will no longer discuss whether or not the place is ablaze, or

d) All of the above.

3. Birds are occasionally landing in trees within the boundaries of your property. For no clear reason you have told your family that you will Stop the Birds, yet the number of birds landing seem entirely unaffected by your rhetoric. Do you:

a) Insist that it’s now your neighbours’ responsibility to prevent birds flying across their property and into yours,

b)  Keep insisting that there were more birds landing in the backyard during the lease of the previous tenants,

c) Make family discussions of birds punishable and insist that you will provide all necessary information about the number of bird arrivals as and when you deem it appropriate, or

d) All of the above.

4. Two men are hoping to move into a sharehouse across the street. Do you:

a) Accuse them of defiling the sanctity of leases,

b) Consider allowing them to move in, as long as they are called “non-commercial property co-inhabitants” rather than “tenants”,

c) Insist that while your own sibling has shared a house with a same-gendered friend, you feel that leases should be reserved only for people that can cause biological dependents, or

d) All of the above.

5. Respect for women means:

a) Having not killed your non-male offspring on principle,

b) Angrily accusing the previous tenant of not taking care of the place because she didn’t have a husband,

c) Permitting 5 per cent of your colleagues to be penis-free, or

d) All of the above.

6. Prior to having your application for your house accepted, you promised that you’d help one of your neighbours tidy up his yard during the first week of your lease. You’ve now been in the place for over a month and are avoiding this neighbour’s calls. Does this make you:

a) An excellent neighbour

b) A community leader

c) A man who sticks to his word, or

d) All of the above.

RESULTS: If you chose a-c for any answer, you are guilty of treason. ASIO are already making arrangements.

Yours ever,

APS

Dan Savage interview

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Published in Time Out Sydney, 20 September 2013

The acclaimed US advice columnist tells us how to be “monogamish” 

If you’re not familiar with Dan Savage, then… actually, just get your hands on his column and/or podcast, both of which are called Savage Love. It’s the smartest, sharpest, funniest and least-bullshit sex and advice source on the planet and if you’ve had anything to do with humans before, or any plans to in the future, you should acquaint yourself with it right now. Off you go. We’ll wait.

OK: since you’re now a fan of Dan Savage’s work, you’ll feel very sympathetic toward his insane globe-trotting schedule of late.

“I’m in Seattle, and I’m struggling with jetlag,” he sighs. “I went to Berlin and back, then London and back, and now Sydney. I expect to be dead by November.”

The reason he’s coming to Sydney is to appear at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, where he’ll be holding forth on the concept of “monogamish relationships”: the idea that being in a committed relationship can involved outside sexual contact, and that infidelity per se is not something worth destroying a relationship over.

“I’m not against monogamy,” he insists. “I don’t go to monogamous couples and say ‘oh my god, you’re doing it wrong!’ Yet those of us who are not monogamous hear that every day from people: you don’t really love each other, it’s not really a commitment unless you’re strictly monogamous.”

Savage married his long-time boyfriend Terry Miller in Canada in 2005 (until Washington ratified same-sex marriage last year he referred to him as “my husband in Canada, my boyfriend in America”) and the pair have an adopted son, DJ. For someone so often accused of being anti-marriage, he insists he’s a huge supporter of the institution.

“It’s a shame when marriage is constantly framed as this fucking nightmare, like it’s this scorched-earth long slog to the grave. Marriage, when it works, should mean it’s more pleasure to be together than not.”

In fact, Savage argues, if you want to have a successful, long-term monogamous relationship, you first need to acknowledge that it’s genuinely difficult.

“The culture says that if you’re in love, then monogamy is easy and that if you’re in love you won’t want to fuck anybody else. And what’s absolutely and blatantly and blaringly true is that you can be crazy in love with someone, and you’re still going to want to fuck other people – and so is the person who’s in love with you. And if you can just be honest about that, it might be easier not to fuck other people.”

Savage fears that confusing love and desire leads people to throw away a great relationship because they figure that if they find someone else attractive, they mustn’t be in love.

“They’ll interpret the desire to fuck someone else as proof that they’re not in love with their partner anymore, that it’s mutually exclusive: feelings for someone else and for my partner cannot occur concurrently in the same universe. So you’ll see people end relationships, when all they are is horny for something new, or a sexual adventure.”

And that, in essence, is what Savage means by “monogamish”. “If we could define our marriages in such a way that we could still have that adventure – hopefully and preferably together and consensually – without having to drag the marriage out behind the barn and shoot it first, more marriages would survive.”

Can men be as funny as women?

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Originally published at Daily Life, 13 September 2013

Tina Fey & Amy Poehler, yesterday

Tina Fey & Amy Poehler, yesterday

Comedy. It’s an art form that people have strong feelings about, and there is one subject that comes up with tireless regularity. You see it debated in magazine columns and on chat shows, in comment threads and Twitter wars, and it becomes especially prevalent whenever news comes through about a high-profile gig. Like the Golden Globes, for example: rumour has is that last year’s hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are returning to host again, and the predictable “are men funnier than women?” debates have ignited in turn.

And look, I know comedy is a subjective thing and that it seems kind of sexist to argue that one gender is just naturally better than another at comedy – but let’s face it, the data’s pretty unambiguous. I don’t want to be controversial, but seriously? Men vs women? Look, we all know who wears the comedy trousers here.

Fey and Pohler are good examples, in fact: both are writer-performers known for their starring roles in US sitcoms (Fey as 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon, Poehler as Leslie Knope in Parks & Recreation). Much is made of the fact that both come from distinguished comedy backgrounds – Fey as the former head writer of Saturday Night Live, Poehler as co-founder of the groundbreaking improv and sketch troupe the Upright Citizens Brigade.

It’s even more clear when you look at the tightly-contested world of TV, where writer/actors like Lena Dunham (Girls) , Mindy Kaling (The Mindy Project) and Kirsty Fisher & Marieke Hardy (Laid) have brought their own female-centric worldview to the small screen – or, in Hollywood, the likes of Kirstin Wiig, Casey Wilson, June Diane Rapheal and our own Rebel Wilson are creating and starring in their own comedy projects (and don’t even get started on the crop of TV and web series writers like Office staffer Amelie Gillette, or Burning Love creator Erica Oyama.

Stand up comedy’s equally full up: never mind the Margaret Chos or the Katy Griffins, you’ve got the likes of Tig Notaro (who Louis CK has hailed as having given “one of the the greatest standup performances I ever saw” when she walked out on a stage 24 hours after being diagnosed with cancer – the set is on her album Live, which is a verb, not an adjective ), killer Canadian lesbian firebrand DeAnne Smith , or the extraordinary messing-with-form-and-content genius of Maria Bamford. Her line “I never thought of myself as ‘depressed’ so much as ‘paralysed by hope’” is something I want on my gravestone.

Closer to home, Hannah Gadsby and Felicity Ward were getting sell-out audiences in Edinburgh this year, while Kitty Flanagan’s doing theatres on her upcoming run. And there’s no shortage of idiosyncratic Australian performers starting to really hit their stride – arch monologist Lou Sanz , absurdist performance artist Claudia O’Doherty, acerbic singer-songwriter Genevieve Fricker…

And sure, there are also loads of male comics – but seriously, has there ever been a male Joan Rivers? A male French & Saunders? A comic character as perfectly pitched as Ruth Cracknell’s Maggie Beare in Mother & Son? A sitcom as consistently bang-it-out punchline-heavy as The Golden Girls? A more seamless (or successful) transition from stand up to sitcom star to chat show host than Ellen DeGeneres? Hell, what’s the most popular comedy series in this country? A little number called Kath & Kim. What’s a guy got to do in order to break into this total taco fest?

It’s hard to admit, but the facts speak for themselves: there are exceptions, of course, but maybe men just can’t do comedy.

It’s probably because of their hormones or something.

Why An Abbott Election Victory Would Be Good

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Originally published at TheVine, 5 Sept 2013

Look, we can’t all move to New Zealand – but this election might actually be a positive thing…

The nation, September 2013

The nation, September 2013

Dear Fellow Left Wing People,

First up: yes, I know. I feel it too. That desperate confusion, that disappointment, that anger. We’re not a small-minded, petty, terrified people… are we? Really?  At a time when we have the planet’s most robust economy we’re going to ignore the fact and sniffily proclaim that we want more, all the while refusing to help desperate people – in comparatively tiny amounts, by international standards – who are so in love with the idea of Australia/not being persecuted that they risk their lives in the hope of enjoying freedoms that most of us take for granted, and some of us actively resent. Voting? That’s a Saturday morning pissed away. Thank you very much, democracy.

But when I think of an Abbott victory, I think the following:

Good.

Not good because he’ll be a great leader – we’re about to get our own George W Bush, a man who can’t open his mouth without providing the world with a new malapropism and who is prepared to destroy his country rather than entertain the possibility that his political and economic philosophy is flawed, not to say straight-up mistaken.

Not good because it will be a positive time for anyone who’s not a mining magnate or a media baron. If you’re not wealthy, you’re in for a difficult few years – and if you like things like education, healthcare, environmental protection, workers rights, refugee rights, gender equality or any of that kind of thing, you’re going be getting angrier and angrier.

And that’s what’s good. That’s what we need.

Think about it. Even if Rudd sneaks in on Saturday via some mathematically-improbable fluke, what’s the likely scenario?

We’ll get three years of Labor desperately trying to keep the middle ground – no shift on asylum policy, probably some destructive efforts to get an entirely-symbolic budget surplus – with a probably uncooperative Senate and a stronger opposition leader – my money’s on Joe Hockey – with the weight of the Murdoch press behind them hammering home the message that everything would have been better if you’d just voted a Coalition government in. Rudd will be an ineffectual leader in an even weaker position than Gillard was in, there’ll be another election, a Libslide, and we will welcome another Howard-esque conservative dynasty.

But if Abbott wins?

We already know he can’t open his mouth without saying the exact wrong thing. We already know that he’s terrible on policy, can’t think on his feet and dodges responsibility. At the moment he can largely get away with blaming the government; once he’s Prime Minister, that’s not an option anymore. He will look like what he is: a man of narrow views and narrower knowledge woefully out of his depth.

And look at the Abbott front bench: it’s a viper’s nest. They’re not supporting Abbott because they think he’s an inspiring leader, since he’s demonstrated comprehensively that he’s not: they’ve backed him because the greatest strength they have had against Labor over the last 18 months has been in presenting a united front.

Once they’re in power this bunch of smart, ambitious and shrewd politicians are going to be a lot less forgiving of a leader who’s an obvious and embarrassing liability. Hockey isn’t going to fade back into the benches. Neither is Turnbull. Neither is Bishop. Neither is Morrison. Those squabbles have been sublimated for the time being because they had a common enemy: Labor. Once in power, they’ll have a different common enemy: each other.

Abbott will also almost certainly face a hostile Senate, with Greens and most of the sitting independents already indicating an unwillingness to pass many of his tentpole promises. He’s already implied that he’ll ask for a double dissolution if his agenda is not passed, which means that Labor, the Greens and the minor parties now have a chance to buy themselves another year of campaigning ahead of another election. Don’t worry about winning on Saturday, hopefuls: worry about winning after the Libs implode a bit down the track.

If there’s a double dissolution we will see an ineffective leader throwing a tantrum, and the Australian public are not going to thank him for calling us all back to another Saturday at the polls before we absolutely have to (and incidentally, it’s easier for a Senator to get up in a DD scenario as the quotas are halved. Want to get more independents and small parties clogging up your upper house? Call a double dissolution).

Meanwhile Labor in opposition will be stripped back to the MPs and Senators who’ve kept the faith of their electorates. The embarrassments and the dead wood that have made the last two years so difficult for the party will be gone. And those that are likely to survive – Anthony Albanese, Penny Wong et al – are no fools.

So what do we do for the next three years? We fight. We hold on to every asinine headline in the Murdoch press this week, and we use it as a stick to beat them with when the Coalition fail to deliver. We stop bitching on Twitter and start campaigning for the progressive causes we support (hell, it’s an early summer, the weather’s lovely for marching). We give Labor an incentive to move back to the left, because there are enough of us to be worth listening to.

But most importantly, as those depressing numbers come in on Saturday night, we remember that there is one great final secret about the Left, and it is this: in the long run, we always win.

Change never comes as quickly as we want it to, and it’s often in a frustrating two-steps-forward-one-step-back waltz rather than a decisive sprint, but look at the Australia of 2013 compared with ten years back. Or twenty years back. Or forty. There are always new battles to fight, and specific issues like asylum seeker policy or workplace rights or interventions in remote indigenous communities have seen some humiliating retreats in recent times, but eventually things progress.

The Coalition wasn’t at all interested in carbon schemes or marriage equality under Howard; now they know that they have to at least acknowledge these issues, if only to stall movement on them – and stalling only works for so long. These changes are often slow and incremental so we can be forgiven for not noticing at the time, but when you look at the bigger picture it’s clear: Australia progresses. Consensus takes time but ultimately we’re going to win. We always do.

But in the short term we need to stop being lazy, we need to stop being complacent, and we need to start working together. Hell, I’m more guilty than most in thinking a snarky Facebook status or a punchy tweet has fulfilled my community obligations: I need to lift my game, and so do you. It’ll be easier if we all do it together, and then we can totally get a drink afterwards. I’ll get the first round in.

And that is why I look at the forthcoming Abbott government as an emetic: it will make us feel incredibly sick, absolutely, but that’s how we vomit the poison out.

Your comrade,

Andrew P Street

Unfiending: the gentle art of losing jerks on Facebook

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Published in Time Out Sydney on Sept 4 2013. Art by Robert Polmear

When you can no longer be friends with someone on Facebook, but don’t want to be one who cuts ties, there can be a third, wonderful way…

Dear The Internet,

Do you like this person outside Facebook (no/no)?

Do you like this person outside Facebook (no/no)?

The English language is the largest of all of the human word-things – partially because of its playful versatility, partially because we just gank words from other languages whenever we fancy it, and partially because of the Oxford English Dictionary’s new policy of getting headlines by officially adding any word that gets used more than twice in The New York Times.

And yet there are still vast tundras of human experience as yet unmapped by intrepid lexicographers, which is why I so often find myself forced into creating my own words. Like an infant trying to build a cathedral by bashing bits of Lego together, I struggle, cry and often end up wetting myself – but dammit, I shall never waver in my passionate commitment to making our rich and supple language be heaps more awesomer.

With that in mind, English Language, I present the following:

UNFIENDING (verb): Passive social media exorcism; the liberating experience of discovering you’ve been unfriended by someone about whom you were feeling ambiguous.

See, we’ve all got people embedded within our social media networks that we would never put up with if we were sitting at a bar.

Maybe they seemed nice enough at work and you realised too late that they’re a conspiracy theorist. Maybe the subject of whether or not they felt vaccinations were a brilliant and effective population health measure or a way of putting curses and ghosts into babies didn’t come up at that perfectly pleasant dinner party. Or maybe it’s someone who can’t get enough of trolling everyone else you know as part of their ongoing public descent into madness

Either way, the crazy content of their brain is now leaking out into your Facebook feed. Perhaps you’ve already gently suggested that they be a bit more circumspect, or perhaps you’ve just blocked them for your own happiness. Even so, it feels weirdly aggressive to actively de-friend them yourself – why, you’re a Hail Fellow Well Met sort who understands how these social niceties work in 2013 – but you’re thinking that maybe theirs was a friend request you should have left quietly unaccepted.

And then a mutual friend will post on their wall and you will discover – to your surprise and genuine, unfettered delight – that even if you wanted to add a comment of your own, you can’t. They’ve unfriended you! You’re free!

That is the act of being unfiended. You did nothing, but now you never have to bother with them again

Even better, you now have TOTAL MORAL SUPERIORITY. They can’t even get all sulky about what a jerk you are, because they’re the one who dropped the bomb. It’s like coming home and discovering your shittiest housemate has moved their stuff out and left a note on the fridge saying they’ve gone back to their mum’s house: any possible inconvenience is outweighed by the sense that this person’s vast, poisonous tangle of problems is now no longer yours. And you didn’t have to lift a finger.

Unfiending. The greatest gift a jerk can give.

And hopefully, they’ve given it ahead of the election…

Yours ever,

APS

A guide to not giving women ‘the wrong idea’

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First published at Daily Life, 28 August 2013

It’s so difficult these days to know whether or not you’re flirting with someone. You might think that it might be fairly obvious whether you’re sexfully interested in a person, but it transpires that we can’t always control those cues that we’re sending out.

A man in the workplace, yesterday.

A man in the workplace, yesterday.

And in these complicated times, when men and women are working together as equals – equals who aren’t paid the same or anything – we need to be extra conscious of not firing up the loins of our easily mis-cued colleagues.

Fortunately the ladies have had it all explained to them recently in the US by Jhana, an employee training and education service, via their excellent piece “What if a male colleague gets the wrong idea?” (which they sadly and inexplicably took down – but not before Jezebel took some helpful screenshots. The piece explained to the ladies that sometimes chaps get the wrong idea, which is their responsibility and definitely not just the dudes’ problem.

In a perfect world, women would feel free to dress however they want without being stigmatized for it. But know that revealing clothing and certain verbal tics, such as ending statements with an upward inflection in your voice or struggling to accept a compliment, can affect others’ ability to take you seriously.

But ladies, don’t think that you’ve been failing to take responsibility for the actions of your colleagues because you’re some sort of harlot – hey, maybe you’re just an idiot!

Don’t say or do anything you wouldn’t say or do in the presence of your grandmother. If you sense that you could start unconsciously flirting (you’re human, and sometimes it happens), imagine that your grandmother is in the room. If you’d feel embarrassed saying or doing whatever you’re about to say or do in front of Grandma, don’t go there.

And that’s the sort of helpful, not-at-all idiotic advice that helps everyone get along without conflict, let alone challenging any of those statuses or quos. But what about the poor, baffled men out there worried that they’re sending “the wrong signals” when they’re confronted with terrifying women? Don’t worry chaps, I’ve used Jhana’s insights to help construct some similarly helpful tips for the confused Y-chromes.

1. Watch what you wear, whore!

Oh sure, you should be able to wear whatever you like – if this was Shangri-la! Anyway: the point is that you might think that you look quite smart in your suit, but what message are you sending, really? We’ve all seen Mad Men, and thus we know that wearing a suit basically means that you’re totes DTF.

Casual clothes also send the message that you’re easy, and avoid anything that clings to your body and shows off things like arms or legs or necks or hands. Basically, cover your entire body in such a way that makes it appear that you’re not at all sexual, while also ensuring you look hot. But hey, have fun with it!

2. Watch what you say, moron!

We’ve all been in that awkward position where we’ve realised too late that we’ve said something flirtatious in the workplace, like, “Would anyone like a coffee?” or “Is someone trying to use the printer?”  Now use your “common sense” to determine whether you merely think the idea, or yell it out of your mouth like a crazy person. Imagine that your grandmother is watching, except that she’s very, very small, lives in your skull, is entirely under your control, is part of your brain, and isn’t your grandmother. If what you’re about to express is inappropriate, threatening or batshit insane, we say: don’t go there!

3. Nudity? No-dity!

This is connected with the first point about appropriate clothing, but this is more specific to your flirtatiousness and attitude, and whether you’re the sort of guy that is a bit touchy-feely and maybe likes to wander around the office with your junk dangling proudly like a fleshy windsock.

Strangely enough, many people find the sight of naked colleagues to be somewhere between “distracting” and “the very stuff of nightmares”, so it’s best to use your discretion to determine whether or not you genuinely believe that No Pants Thursdays is likely to get enough organisational support to become a regular thing. Rule of thumb: if you need to ask someone if they’re down with seeing your penis, they’re not down with seeing your penis.

Next week: other handy negotiating-the-workplace tips, including “when is it appropriate to start a fire?” and “running through the office screaming and slapping people: faux pas, or faux plus?”

You’re welcome.

A 99 page manual on how to date this guy

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Originally published at Daily Life, 11 August 2013

Dating_wide-620x349

The phrase “too much information” gets thrown around so much that it’s lost all meaning. Knowing your friend has had sex? TMI. Your partner had a nasty bathroom visit after a late night kebab? TMI. Thing your kid did that was actually pretty mundane but you’re terribly excited about because it’s your damn kid? Look, we’re not going to say it to your face, but rest assured: TMI.

And it’s a shame, because it means that it’s impossible to explain just much I of which this one anonymous Perth dater has given TM.

This was first brought to the world’s attention via US gossip site Gawker, who claim that it was forwarded to them from a potential datee of this chap. They had been communicating on a site for a bit and were planning their first meeting. The chap then forwarded her a document in preparation. As you do.

And dear god, it’s comprehensive.

The mere existence of this 99 page document makes it tempting to give an armchair diagnosis of obsessive/compulsive disorder and/or a placement somewhere on the autism spectrum. And there’s nothing obviously malicious in here: at no point in this voluminous screed does he outline what he expects his potential girlfriend – or, as he unfortunately dubs her, “My Woman” (yes, capitalised) – to look like, for example. However, it does make clear that he really doesn’t know how this “courting” thing works.

After the two page introduction (which is headed “Private and Confidential” – sorry, dude), which includes a glossary explaining his preferred terms (“cock”, “boobs”, “pussy”, “spunk”, “My Woman”) and a 10 page table of contents, we learn about his birth, family, education, first sexual experience, popularity (very high, apparently), future interests, diet, how he purchased his house, the renovations done to it, a breakdown of his outgoing costs, his friends, a detailed breakdown of how he splits his time over the 168 hours available to him per week (49 hours for sleep and sex, if you’re wondering), a comparison breakdown of how he would seek to free up some of that time if you were to become his partner, interests, projects (business and personal), position on public displays of affection (pro, within reason) and exercise regime.

With these preliminaries out of the way, we come to Page 27: his “Seeking Criteria”, including his “Imaginary Wakeup Test”:

I have an Imaginary Wakeup Test. Can I imagine waking up next to My Woman each and every morning of my life and smiling as well as nice words and perhaps Kissing or Cuddle. Then not only continue to Respect myself but to also Respect My Woman, and to Respect us as a Couple. It’s great to feel that all around Respect can be there for substantial Times.

From here until page 36 we learn that he values a relationship, and is concerned about STIs. Very concerned. There are those that might think that calculating the risk of contracting a blood-borne disease through skin abrasion is maybe a second-date subject, but he gives a breakdown on the topic along with a list of STIs for which he has never been tested positively, and the two that he has (thrush and Chlamydia, both treated). This is important, because it becomes clear down the track that he’s really not expecting to have to use condoms (except when you’re on your period – but let’s not jump ahead!).

But what of that magical first date itself? Unsurprisingly, he’s given that some thought too.

There’s five pages on the “pre-meeting stage” (pages 37-41), in which he stresses the value of spontaneity and unpredictability among his meticulously collated dot points before explaining among many, many other things the makeup of any sexy pix that might be sent (or, as he puts it, Very Naughty pix):

I also like getting (from you) the following types of Naughty pics, before we even meet up on the night:

a) All these other pics without your Face showing,

b) A Full frontal pics – naked – in front of perhaps a mirror,

c) Your Boobs (preferably in an aroused state),

d) Legs apart looking up,

e) Your vulvae with Vaginal opening – with your Legs open, Aroused.

f) Inside your Vagina,

g) Your Clitoris – right in. Aroused with Clit hood back as needed.

Feel uncomfortable about these details? Don’t worry! This list is followed by reasons a) though f) as to why you should send them to him anyway, which should allay any fears you may have. Oh, and does helpfully note that “The Vagina gets typically one third bigger during sex”, so don’t feel inadequate, ladies. Why this doesn’t come up on page 45 – “Relaxed Dialogue” – is baffling.

He also explains his moisturising and depilatory regime ahead of the date, suggests a dress code (skirt or dress for you, smart casual for him – don’t expect jeans as he only has a couple of pairs he wears when renovating), a list of the likely thoughts you should expect him to have going through his mind, and what you can expect when you turn up:

If I like what I see I will almost certainly greet with a firm Cuddle or two (or 6). I will sense your response but it is an early signal to you:

a) I like what I see,

b) It’s a relief to see you arrive,

c) Let’s Enjoy ourselves.

…and a proposed schedule of how the date will go with several options, including that “After a Coffee or a drink, a walk and a nice meal (if not earlier) we should express our interests in each other.” (emphasis his). Assuming you are amenable to seeing him, he’d like to seal the deal with some “Good quality Sex”. After all, as he points out a few pages later, “if we do not make Love with each other on the first date / night – then we are probably not matched.”

The bit on dating and how the rest of the night will go after that first declaration of intention takes us up to page 57, where we get into the nitty gritty of how exactly the sex is going to work. This is broken down into several sections under the heading “Early Next Stage Toward Love Making”. Here he explains his orgasms (recovery time, semen taste, consistency – watery for first and second, dry for third and subsequent), your orgasms (clitoral, vaginal and G-spot), cock size (“I am just over 11 inches at full throb; and Cock Width or Cock Girth is 2.3 inches”, his methodology for measuring said cock, advantages and disadvantages of his cock size, and why sex is important.

Then, at page 70, we get to foreplay, with particular emphasis on the “Clitorus”.

Like I said, comprehensive.

From 77 we get a breakdown of his exact moves (including the tantalising Concluding Cock Slip and Dip) and positions, which are sadly lacking in detail beyond “more to follow” under a selection of headings. Toys come in on page 83 – he has an impressive collection – and what he enjoys in a mastubatory setting. Page 88-89 explain more about the early stages of the relationship, and then there is the world’s most giggle-inducing index:

Cock, 2, 95

Cock: 

Size 10, 64, 66, 95

Measuring 10, 95

Hygiene 36, 44, 95

Length 40, 64, 66, 80, 95

Width, 64, 66, 95

Girth, 64, 66, 95

Cock Slap 11, 77, 80, 98, 99

Coffee 4, 24, 26, 42, 46, 48, 56, 95

Cote d’Azure 95

The entire thing can be read here, and you’re going to want a coffee (pages 4, 24, 26, 42, 46, 48, 56, 95).

Then again, it makes a change from “a/s/l”? at least?

Mayor blames city for his sexual misconduct

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Originally published in Daily Life, 6 August 2013

You know what? It’s just so gosh-darn hard to be a powerful man in 2013.

There are all these rules about how one should and should not interact with people and it’s a maze that’s near impossible to negotiate. If they followed some sort of rhyme or reason, like common sense, basic respect or literally thousands of very public examples demonstrating the legal and personal consequences of unacceptable treatment of female staff by powerful men, that’d be one thing – but now we’re at a mysterious, opaque point where what appears at first to be perfectly respectable behaviour, like telling your female employees not to wear knickers or putting them in a headlock and dragging them around the office while whispering sexually-themed comments to them, is seen as somehow “inappropriate” conduct for someone in a position of authority.

San Diego mayer Bob Filner, human piece of shit.

San Diego mayer Bob Filner, human piece of shit.

That’s the sorry situation in which San Diego’s mayor Bob Filner has found himself in recent times, with nine women having come forward as being victims of sexual harassment at his hands.

Poor Bob is a 70 year old human adult who spent two decades in Congress before becoming San Diego’s mayor last December, and is undergoing an “intensive therapy” program in order to curb himself of these workplace impulses. He is is also laying blame for his behaviour firmly at the foot of the responsible party: the City of San Diego, who failed to provide him with a training program that educated him as to what was and wasn’t suitable Mayoral behaviour.

It’s an ambitious defence, since the city are countersuing on the grounds that they didattempt to provide him with exactly that sort of course in January, but Filner cancelled it and refused to reschedule. Furthermore, the City of San Diego has also declined to pay Filner’s legal expenses in suing the City of San Diego. Say what you like about Filner: at least he’s consistently brazen.

And heck, we understand that everyone is time-poor and can’t necessarily find the time to work out how to walk that blurred and ambiguous line between “professional respect” and “sexual assault”, and so if there are any other mayors out there looking for guidance, allow us to present some instructive tips and handy memory-jogging mnemonics to help bring clarity to these hard-to-interpret situations.

1. When one’s deputy campaign manager is complimented for having “worked her ass off” for the campaign, should one pat said deputy campaign manager’s behind and say “no, it’s still there?”

Correct answer: no. That’s where Bob went wrong with Lara Fink, who subsequently demanded an apology from Filner over email, cc’ing in his chief of staff (who was subsequently to resign in disgust at Filner’s behaviour). The bottoms of your staff are not considered company property and, much as you might ask before taking an employee’s calculator from their desk, you should always get explicit permission before getting you start playfully pressing bits of it. [http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/23/politics/california-san-diego-mayor/index.html]

Handy mnemonic: “Good rule of thumb / don’t stroke the bum!”

2. Should you demand your director of communications not wear panties to work?

Correct answer: no. It’s reasonable to expect a certain degree of professional dress within a work environment, but this is limited to the visible levels of one’s attire. Underwear preferences are, within office-based places of employment, very much up to the individual, and the use of the term “panties” adds a creepy infantilism to the situation if the addressee is a grown woman like Irene McCormack Jackson. “I had to work and do my job in an atmosphere where women were viewed by Mayor Filner as sexual objects or stupid idiots,” she said in an illustrative statement after becoming the first woman to publicly accuse the mayor of harassment.

Handy mnemonic: “Her dack choice is / Just not your biz.”

3. Is it OK to publicly hit on a woman at a church fundraiser for African refugees while holding her hands and preventing her from leaving?

Correct answer: no. First up, if you’re there as a representative of the people of San Diego it might be considered gauche to also be visibly on the pull, but asking someone who has come up to say a nice professionally-motivated hello “Do you have a husband? Are you married?” might make them a little confused and uncomfortable, especially if you’re holding both their hands at the time. This is what one Renee Estill-Sombright discovered in June at the breakfast event at La Jolla Presbyterian Church, according to her claim.

Handy mnemonic: “For refugees / Quit macking, please.”

4. Headlocks and sexual threats from your employer: playful fun, or terrifying invasion of personal space?

Correct answer: terrifying invasion of personal space. Again, Ms McCormack Jackson’s patience for being dragged around the office while Filner whispered sexual comments in her unwilling ear was not as boundless as her boss assumed it would be. As a rule, unless your office is collpasing in an earthquake or suddenly invaded by swarms of killer ants, it is not considered appropriate to grab your employees in any way without their freely-given consent. A firm handshake is almost always acceptable, although note that this does not include the go-ahead to explain to the recipient what you would like to do to them with your penis.

Handy mnemonic: “Are you a dope? / Headlocks? Nope.”

Keep those handy rhymes in your head and you might be able to not only govern a large municipal area but also create a pleasant and respectful work environment in which the female staff who rely on you for their rent to be paid each week will not be terrified of your presence and/or end up suing you for harassment. Mayor Filner, by taking on these guidelines we are confident that you could sleep easy in the knowledge that you won’t, say, attempt to feel up a Marilyn Monroe impersonator performing at a fundraiser for your campaign while she’s just trying to do her j…

What’s that? Pardon? Emily Gilbert?

Ah. As you were.

You Am I interview

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Published in Time Out Sydney, July 2013

Are You Am I giving up rock for new life as brewing magnates?

You Am IIt seems astonishing, but this year Sydney’s You Am I are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the release of their debut album, Sound as Ever. Hence three quarters of the band – frontman Tim Rogers, drummer Russell Hopkinson and guitarist Davey Lane (absent is bassist Andy Kent) – are sitting in a café discussing their exciting new project.

It’s not the deluxe reissues of their first three discs. It’s not their nearly sold-out tour performing albums two and three (the beloved Hi Fi Way and Hourly, Daily). It’s the release of their first ever beer, naturally called Brew Am I, which is the obvious next step for a band who legendarily know their way around a tipple.

“Oh yeah,” Hopkinson laughs. “We’re beer barons now, man.”

“It’s to make up for our losses on the terrible ticket sales so far,” deadpans Rogers.

“Yeah, it’s awful,” Lane chuckles.

“Actually, the response [to the tour] has really taken us by surprise,” Rogers says, with surprising sincerity. “It’s just the right time to do it. It wasn’t someone asking us to do it – it came from the four of us.”

Each of the albums is being re-released with a bonus disc of rarities from each period, which has involved a lot of going through the archives for material from the band’s formation in 1989 through to 1996.

“Not that I was there,” Lane, who joined in 1999, points out.

“You were spiritually there, though,” Hopkinson retorts.

Well, the story goes that Lane was busily writing up You Am I guitar chords for the internet and obsessing over the band, wasn’t he?

Lane looks affronted. “No!”

Well, that’s what Wikipedia reckons.

Hopkinson laughs. “That’s because he wrote it.”

“I was just doing the guitar tabs for something to do in the school holidays because I had no friends,” Lane counters. “I was just uploading them for my friend who ran the website…”

“Hey, you just said you had no friends!” Rogers interjects.

There’s some work to be done ahead of the tour. Despite the first three albums’ position as bona-die Australian classics, Rogers may be the only person unfamiliar with them. “I was listening to those records on the drive up to Sydney and I was alarmed at how much I had forgotten. I’d forgotten how great my guitar skills were back then.”

“There are all these parts and harmonies that we do differently these days,” Hopkinson nods.

It’s luckily all the tabs have gotten online somehow, then.

“Exactly!” Lane says, laughing.

The band are now completely independent: no record company, no external management, nothing beyond the members themselves. “We felt that with Andy’s experience with management, Russ’s experience releasing records, and my and Davey’s experience with Class As, we could handle everything ourselves,” Rogers smirks. “Everything that we do now, it’s just asking: will this be fun for us? There’s no talk about ‘trajectory’ or ‘momentum’…”

“It’s not like we’re going ‘OK, let’s crack this market or that market’,” Hopkinson nods.

“We’re cracking the beer market instead!” Rogers says. “It’s the natural progression from our music.”

Talk turns to the tour, and what they plan to get up to. “I think it’s Andy’s turn for a-prankin’,” says Rogers, to wide approval. Although it sounds like the laconic bassist is a hard man to unsettle.

“We were on tour in Wolverhampton [England] in this quaint little hotel, all in beds next to each other, and the fire alarm goes off,” Rogers recalls. “So Russ and I jump up and go, ‘Struth! Andy, get up!’ And he rolls over, puts his hand on the floor, goes ‘it’s not hot’, and goes back to sleep.”

Could the fire have not been in the ceiling, though?

They all stare for a second, before Hopkinson breaks the moment. “We’re not physicists, right?”

Word on the P Street: In Defence of Hipsters

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First published Time Out Sydney, 10 Apr 2013

Remember a few years back when “emo” was a pejorative term?

It was the go-to derogatory adjective (or, less often but infinitely more irritatingly, noun) for a certain type of person that no-one would ever admit to being – vaguely moody, self-absorbed and almost certainly wearing black, unless it was a band in which case it was a term that apparently meant “men with guitars” (seriously, I’ve heard “emo” applied to everything from My Chemical Romance through to Something For Kate).

Hipsters, yesterday.

Hipsters, yesterday.

But emo was like pornography: difficult to describe, but you knew it when you saw it. Also, in that it seemed connected with a whole lot of wank.

No-one’s used “emo” outside of inverted commas in years, but since about 2011 the I-hate-the-young-people term of choice has been “hipster”, and again everyone knows what it means while the definition has remained diffuse enough to apply to anyone you wanted to insult without being pinned down to any particular reason why you wanted to insult them. Hatred of hipsters is matched only by hipster hatred of the term “hipster”, which the Atlantic recently voted as one of the worst words of 2012.

That guy in the hat on a bike? Hipster. Those people sitting in the beer garden of that inner suburban pub? Bunch of hipsters. The music playing in the café yesterday morning? One of those hipster bands, no doubt. Though not actually No Doubt, obviously, since hipsters would be listening to something far more cool – unless they were being ironically retro, of course, which would be such a hipster move.

As a bearded, bespectacled man who owns several checked shirts, principally buys albums on vinyl and lives in a suburb replete with cafés, I tick a number of the 600 or so boxes that qualify one for hipsterdom, and even I avoid the term (I prefer the more poetic appellation “aging indiekid”, myself). But now that it’s become fashionable to hate on the word itself, it’s worth asking: um, what’s actually wrong with hipsters?

See, I get what’s complaint-worthy about, say, Nazis. They do stuff to people in an aggressive and racially-unpleasant way. I think we can all understand why folks would have reservations about Nazis, as a rule, but hipsters?

They’re generally what, inner-city folks of a vaguely artistic bent, generally with a degree or so under their belt and a progressive political outlook, doing such not-especially-aggressive things as riding bikes, launching websites, and playing in noise bands. They’re opening small bars and pottering about in community gardens. Seriously, they’re pretty easy to avoid if they irritate you so much, since they all seem to be fairly busy. After all, that organic ale isn’t going to microbrew itself.

While one of the criticisms of emo kids was that they were too self-absorbed to be political, hipsters get stick for having too much of a political outlook – so much so that the Miranda Devines and Alan Joneses love whaling on them as being latte-sipping inner-city types that are everything that’s wrong with Australia, with their fancy book-learnin’ and community action.

Maybe it’s just another version of our rich cultural cringe and our nation’s weird, inexplicable anti-intellectual streak. Or perhaps it’s something more positive: an indication that previous Australian cultural punching bags like non-whites and non-straights are less valid targets in 2013.

Seriously, if the worst subculture we can come up with as an object of contempt is a bunch of well-educated, environmentally-conscious, socially active and culturally aware twenty- and thirtysomethings with a penchant for quality coffee and retro tattoos, our society’s probably in pretty good shape. I mean heck, some of my best friends are hipsters.

Not that I’m one, obviously.