iateawholedog

It has been brought to my attention that there is a commonly used tame and otherwise boring word which, with a single letter, can be transformed into an amazing, awe inspiring word. This new word defines an insanely high energy serving of food in a park, a tremendous and brilliant gathering of people around a hamper full of tasty-ass food, where battles are fought inside mouths and the event is enough to have passers by return home to lock up their daughters and wives.

The word is of course:

e·pic·nic [eh-pik-nik] noun, verb, -nicked, -nick·ing.
–noun
1. an epic excursion or outing in which the participants engange in heroic feats and carry incredibly awesome food and high strength energy drink with them and share a meal in the open air to refuel after doing so many awesome things.
2. the food devoured on such an excursion. Should be treated with care and avoided by persons with a weak heart.
3. Also called epicnic ham, epicnic shoulder. an epic section of pork shoulder, usually boned with a machette, smoked over a burning village, and weighing 564–678 pounds.
4. Informal . an ridiculously insane experience or time, so enjoyable that some people faint at metion of the word, etc.: Being laid up in a hospital is the result of walking past an epicnic.

–verb (used without object)
5. to partake in the journey of life that is an epicnic.

(definitions stolen and hacked from dictionary.com)

The floor I work on at work is pretty quiet during the day. Most of the guys show little to no interest in us poor newbies. Most of the people tend to keep to themselves. There is little banter going on and when you do speak you know it’s well within earshot of at least half a dozen other people who are sitting there in silence, judging your every word. There is however one behaviour that my colleagues intermittently engage in, which completely contradicts the usual sombre office feel. I witnessed this the first day as I sat at my desk trying to settle in. Out of seemingly nowhere a ball whooshed past my head at damn near the speed of sound. Inside the office. What the? What’s going on here I thought? It just missed another guy and bounced off a wall, making a great racket and onto the floor. Then nothing. Everything back to normal. Had I perhaps hallucinated this flying round object? Was the pressure of the new job taking a heavy toll on me? Maybe. But, that ball was real.

If you were to walk around on our floor and take notice of the surroundings, besides the usual office stuff, you would see multiple balls, strewn about on the floor and desks. Some are small like a stress-ball, others are as large as a cantaloupe. A big, soft, sponge filled cantaloupe. You see it turns out there is a game going on (not sure if there is a name for this game or not) whereby, at any time of the day or night, if you wish to hurl a ball at your work mate’s head as they sit unsuspectingly at their desk or perhaps walk past on their way to the photocopier, you can. Yep. Just throw a ball at someone, as long as they don’t sit in your pod or right next to your pod. This means you need to have a good aim, for if you hit a girl, you will instantly face the “firing squad”. The firing squad is exactly that. You stand against a wall while everyone bombards you with the balls, including the girl that was hit. It’s epic.

One morning the office was deadly quiet, when all of the sudden a ball was thrown, accidentally hitting one of the girls. After her shriek, it was on. Firing squad. Half the people around me got up and took position; others just wandered out of their pods to watch the punishment be served. After a few seconds of pummelling, everyone just as quickly went back to his or her desk. Silence again. As quickly as it started, it stopped and it was like nothing had ever happened. My fellow new starter and I just sat looking at each other, half in disbelief, half in delighted happiness. And that is how our office works.

You’re already thinking “Oh noes, Jimmy is about to pollute what would have been a freakin amazing blog with political garbage”. Hold on though, because this is actaully a guide on how to escape politics to the best of ones ability. This is perfect for anyone like me who is only burdened with political thoughts once every three or four years, when an election is held. Eww.

I don’t want you to get too excited when you read this, so try to relax a bit.

I, James, have accidentally stumbled upon a repeatable method to be unenrolled from the electoral roll in Australia.

The story goes that I went to visit Kate at a pre-polling booth, where people can vote before the actaul day if they can’t make it. Kate works for a federal member and I am me, so this is living proof that opposites attract. Anyhoo, I digress. You are meant to have a legit reason to use these pre-polling things. Mine was that I couldn’t be fucked finding a booth and lining up on the day. Seems pretty obvious.

So I didn’t know which electorate I was in and requested this from the nice old man inside. He spent some time looking through a PDAwhich contained details for everyone on the roll in Oz. After a few minutes he told me he couldn’t find me and that I must not be on the roll. Knowing that I was once on the roll and thinking that once you were in you were to be tortured for life, I assumed he must have been technology illiterate, mainly because he was old.

I did not want a fine for not voting, so I thought I’d double check. A nice lady at the AEC confimed old mans words, and that I was not in fact on the roll. How on earth did this happen, and why has noone taught me how to do this before? I will not waste any more of your time.

Step One
Move house. Try to make sure it is in a different electorate. I do not guarantee this method will work if you move just down the road.

Step Two
Apply for mail redirection from Australia Post, so all your mail does not get lost at your old place.

Step Two Point Five
The AEC will send a non-redirectable letter to your old address. This letter will be about how you have moved and need to enroll again else you will be removed (this is only from what I have heard).

Step Three
Do not get the letter because you obviously don’t live in the old house.

Step Four (important)
When they send you the purple form for enrollment in your new electorate, pick in up and walk directly to the bin. Open bin and place purple form in it. Another option is just to burn it. Just somehow get rid of the disgusting little form.

Step Five
Bask in your new found freedom to not have to move from the couch on election day!

And for those unfortunate enough to still have to attend a booth on the day, you should begin practicing you artistic abilities, and learn how to draw the following:

Ok, so I’m an avid user of ye olde FB. I definitely spend more time on it than is necessary, even checking it on my iphone throughout the day whenever I’m bored. It’s great for keeping a presence in your friend’s lives, maintaining contact with people that you don’t see on a regular basis, seeing and posting cool pictures, stalking people, and helping to organise your social life.

With all this in mind, there are some things I despise about Facebook, or more so the ways in which people use it. At the risk of drawing some heavy criticism, here goes…

*****RANT WARNING*****

I’m gonna bullet point these. The bullet points are a metaphor for the bullets that I would like to spray in rapid fire into the people who partake in the following behaviours. Oh, I may have done some of the things below at some stage… but hey, enlightenment is a long winding journey :p

• Posting cryptic/obscure status updates. Eg 1) Bob Jones cannot believe it!!! Eg 2) Polly McGee That was too difficult. These updates are pointless because most or all of the people who read them don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, and after a quick feeling of confusion they lose interest. It’s an attention seeking behaviour, prompting people to enquire further as to why you aren’t happy or what the deal is. Some may respond to humour you, or because they’re so bored they must live vicariously through your dramas. Here’s an idea, just fucking write something explicit in your original status or keep it to yourself if it’s so secret you have to tip-toe around the subject. For fuck’s sake, it’s Facebook, not Guessbook.

• Using Facebook when drunk. This is pretty self-explanatory. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve read someone’s drunken, emotionally over the top, embarrassing status update from 3am the night before, which they usually then delete the next day when they realise what a giant douche they have been, I’d be as rich as Mark Zuckerberg.

• Posting boring, pointless updates that no one gives a shit about. Eg. Danny Jenkins is at work. … Danny, who gives a fuck mate. Unless your pointless update is FUNNY or somehow entertaining, then don’t post it.

• Playing games on FB. Every time you do something, it gets posted in people’s news feed, creating unnecessary spam until they have to go to the effort of changing their news feed settings or removing you from their friend list. I shouldn’t have to expend any effort to block out your Bejewelled updates. If you want a real game, go play Robot Unicorn Attack.

• Posting updates about how awesome your new boyfriend/girlfriend is and how in love you are, then as everyone predicts, two weeks later having a break-up, posting about it, changing your single/relationship status AGAIN, posting pointless updates about how you love single life, then getting a new boyfriend/girlfriend and posting about how awesome they are. Wash, rinse, repeat. Wash, rinse, repeat. Ok, new rule. No comment about your relationship/partner until you’re at least six months in and it’s going well.

• You’re going to hate me for this one… Wishing your friends happy birthday over Facebook. C’mon surely your friend is worth a little more effort than that… perhaps a text? Or private email :p. Here’s the thing, if a good friend of mine wished happy birthday to me via a wall post, I would be pissed they were so impersonal (I would prefer they don’t wish me one at all, or simply just don’t know when my birthday is, then it doesn’t matter when I forget their birthday: Win win baby). And if someone I wasn’t close with wished me happy birthday on my FB wall, it would mean nothing as a) it seems insincere and b) I would have been perfectly happy whether they had done it or not. This isn’t to say I don’t like the person, I just don’t expect it and it can therefore come off as fake. Would you send your friend a blank card and on the inside simply write “happy birthday”? No. Why? Cause it’s LAME. Pick up the phone and call them or go and see them. If you feel awkward doing this, then they are not worth wishing a happy birthday in the first place. Hey look what a good friend I am, I “remembered” your birthday… pfft.

• After receiving token insignificant birthday wishes spammed across your wall, posting your status update as: Thanks everyone for all your kind birthday wishes, I had a great day. Oh… my… fucking… god… why does everyone post this or a close equivalent? Just for once I’d like to see a post birthday status update as: Wasn’t on my computer yesterday so thanks for all the belated birthday wishes you lazy insincere pricks.

• Updating your status every hour. This relates to the above note about boring/pointless posts. I have deleted people from my friend’s list because I was so sick of seeing their multiple and pointless updates littering my news feed. Seriously.

• Having a photo of your baby as your profile picture. Wow. I honestly cannot believe people do this. It’s so LAME. SO LAME. Hey, do you remember before you had a child, how you didn’t really care about other people’s kids… well guess what… no one cares about yours. While we’re on the topic, no one want to hear constant updates about everything your baby or toddler does. This is even worse than constant updates about everything you do. I’ve actually noticed the general degradation of new mums’ status updates. I guess they can’t help not having a life now that they have a kid. But they can help what they write on Facebook…

Now I’m sure there are plenty of other Facebook sins out there… please add to the list… it feels good to get these things of your chest.

It’s been far too long
Since I wrote a good haiku
Let’s give this a whirl

When I was nine years old I was visiting my best mate and it just happened that he had a recent recording of Predator on VHS. Luckily his parents were quite liberal and allowed us to indulge in one of Arnie’s best works. Now after watching the epic action flick, I was a little in shock. Never before had my innocent eyes seen a man’s arm shot off, or a dude’s head explode by an alien’s laser targeted gun. And I certainly hadn’t been exposed to such a scary looking alien before. As much as I liked the film, I was also scared by it, and afterwards I had many a restless night cowering in bed fearing the wrath of Predator. It wasn’t until I saw Predator 2 that any residual fear I had of Predator left, after I realised that his killing was more selective and he left innocent children alone.

Anyway… I have long since watched Predator over and over, and may just happen to own a special box set of the first two movies. How can you not love a movie with such lines as “I ain’t got time to bleed”, “ Knock knock… ”, “If it bleeds we can kill it” and “Dylan, you son of a bitch”.

So you can imagine my excitement when I heard there was a new Predator film in the making. One might say I was as excited as a hobo coming across a fifty-dollar bill in a trash can. However, the proverbial fifty-dollar bill was diminished to a fiver after learning that Adrien Brody was playing the lead. WTF… the scrawny dude from The Pianist? Surely not… But yes, it was true. Eventually I reasoned that if he had been cast, then he must have something good to offer, so I got super excited all over again.

Now I can honestly say that Adrien Brody did a good job in Predators. Happy Jarad. But am I the only one who has noticed the similarities between Man vs Wild with Bear Grylls and Predators, or more specifically, between Bear Grylls and Adrien Brody? Check it:

And the similarities don’t end there. Have you noticed how both of their first names contain the letter “a” but not the letter “c”? hmmm…

So why didn’t they simply cast Bear Grylls in Predators? The role certainly would have come naturally to him. Perhaps he was too busy shooting his 278th season of MVW?

Now as usual I’ve hit my “end of blog entry quandary”: not knowing where this is all leading. So instead of making some wise or philosophical statement, I’m simply going to summarise the above in an ascending numerical order:

1) Predators is a good movie despite the unlikely casting of Adrien Brody
2) Bear Grylls and Adrien Brody have a multitude of similarities which warrants further investigation
3) Future movies in the Predator franchise could include “Man Vs Predator (MVP)”, “Predator vs Wild (PVW)”, and “Bear Grylls And Adrien Brody Go To White Castle and Fight Predator (BGAABGTWCAFP)”

Way too long in fact. But I’m back and have some ‘quality’ articles brewing… but for the time being:

Random musings of the moment:

Japanese curry is so tasty, what exactly is that flavour and can I make it from scratch?

Julia Gillard sounds like a bogan. There is not a chance I will vote for her.

I have a strained back from playing squash: A glimpse at what old age will be like with debilitating injuries but also a good excuse to lie on the couch…

Who’s Gonna Save My Soul by Gnarls Barkley is a great song. This gets me thinking – what’s with his name? Gnarls Barkley? I’ve always thought of the word gnarl in it’s animal context – snarl/growl, however upon consulting the dictionary, I see it’s other meaning is a hard lump, knot, or swelling on a tree trunk or branch. Now his name makes much more sense. GNARLs BARKley. How very clever. It also makes me think of Charles Barkley, a famous NBA player from the 90s.

Oops. Just realised I never completed the diet journal.

I ended up pushing through to the end. The pain must have been a lovely little side effect from getting boozed in the middle of a high intensity diet.

Alcohol Verdict: Not recommended

Rest of that final week was pretty standard compared with the rest of the PSMF. Ramping back to normal intake was a bit of a fail, with probably too much indulgence for the first couple of days off the diet.

First day back at the gym was awesome. Lifted exactly what I did when I went into the PSMF. Zero loss at all in the gym. Probably a little muscle loss overall, as that’s ridiculously hard to avoid, but having retained as much as I did was AWESOME. Overall bodyfat percentage was down around 3.5%. End result was 12.9% but there’s no way I am that low, so I am just using -3.5% as the benchmark.

Bounce back afterwards was about +3kg in water, giving an overall loss of 4kg in 3 weeks. ALL fat. Very happy with the results. Might do another short PSMF again soon