The world adores matt hayward

With this wikipedia article on the bogan, a new colloquialism is born. It’s about time that people recognised they’re not bogans, they’re not metros, they’re bogäns. The Stupid fuckers. Anyway, read it, comment on it, add to it.  Be proud to be a bogän!

Yesterday I saw your typical shock horror of muslims going crazy, rioting in the streets on the TV yesterday because of cartoon depictions of Muhammad. Anyway, me mate Wayne forwards me this article this morning. In the article she publishes the images that caused all the ruckus in the first place. The following is a quick excerpt:

Last October, I blogged about a Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, and its cartoonists being threatened by Muslim extremists for publishing cartoons about the prophet Muhammad deemed offensive by Islamist p.c. bulllies. See here and here.

For the past four months, The Brussels Journal has relentlessly covered the ensuing uproar from the Muslim world and the battle over the newspaper’s freedom to publish provocative speech.

Knowing full well that politics makes for strange bedfellows, i’m still not totally sure I want this woman on the side of freedom of speech. Michelle Malkin claims that for posterity and solidarity with the Danish, she’s publishing the toons for all to see. So that ‘the west’ doesn’t cave into muslims apparently quite happy to parodise Jewish and Christian figures, but is fundamentally opposed to any caricature of Muhammad.  That all seems good and patriotic, she even calls her effort, an act of solidarity. But look around her blog. This woman evidently doesn’t believe in freedom of speech in her own country!

Check out the site. There’s a big old banner ad for the GOP, or the Republicans. I’ve been back a few times and it appears to be a permanent feature. if this isn’t ringing any bells, it’s George W Bush’s party. I can’t think of any one administration that has overseen more attacks on freedom of speech than the Bush family. Just off of the top of my head:

• changing media ownership rules so that the Clearchannel Network own virtually everything. Driving Howard Stern amongst others onto uncensored satellite radio.
• further relaxing media ownership laws so that Ruppert Murdoch to have a reach of three quarters of the worlds’ population.
• strengthening the FCC (headed by Colin Powell’s brother) after something as pathetic as a nipple in the Superbowl. So yeah there’s freedom of speech, so long as the conservative right agree with it. You can’t even say penis on TV any more in the US.
• implementing the Patriot Act and Patriot Act II which inadvertantly make any critic of the war effort a threat to national security.
• keeping tight lipped on the actual number of war casualties in Iraq. Especially considering so many of them are National Guard troops, that should be taking care of stuff like, you know, Cyclone Katrina. And that’s where they’d be if the Republicans didn’t decide that the best defence was attack. Try telling that to to anyone in Louisiana.
• not allowing the coffins of US war casualties being flown home to be photographed or published.

Then you look at her book references. So I always work on the parable that Democracy is two wolves and a sheep arguing over what’s for dinner.  She doesn’t seem to agree with me on this one. Makin’s In Defense of Internment the blurb tells of imprisonment of Japanese citizens in camps during WW2, who volunteered to be imprisoned. You don’t really have to see the book to judge for yourself that the parable applies here. Soldiers come to your door and say that you’re a threat to national security and suddenly you’re the sheep and they’re the wolves. There’s no premise of honest journalism here. So she writes this book because she’s pro racial profiling. Yeah even better, you can say anything you want so long as you fit our profile. I’m sure you’d be saying that if you were a second generation Japanese American in 1942.

Malkin pulls no bones about being conservative. She has her mugshot on every page and admitedly she’s freaking hot. But what journalist puts their profile shot on the page except one that wants to bias you to an uber conservative, Republican, cute Asian chick? Check out the business suit. She has a full fledged glamour shot on another page. It’s that typical, ‘I’m clean cut so how can I be evil? I am the American dream!’ look that means your unbiased discourse is completely out the window. And so is your credibility.

Malkin, if you’re so big on freedom of speech, why don’t you go talk to the ex-Fox journos that couldn’t get their expose on Monsanto aired, covered in explicit detail in documentary The Corporation? It’s a lot easier to stand up for freedom of speech when the enemy is brown isn’t it! Especially when you’re a minority yourself. It’s so much easier to get acceptance.

Now that i’ve finished the rant about Republicans and how they’re America’s own, self installed worst enemy to freedom of speech, how can a conservative US journalist claim to be a saviour of it. Who gives a rat’s arse anyway? So they show a few people in a riot which was probably ramped up for the cameras, how many muslims SERIOUSLY COULDN’T GIVE A RAT’S ARSE. I’ve had a few mates who are secular muslims who would be laughing and joking about it. So why should a few fundamentalist going off chops, discredit the majority of those who don’t?

In the words of Johnny Rotten ‘if it looks like an arsehole, and smells like an arsehole, it probably is an arsehole’. Miss Malkin, i’m with Johnny on this one. Oops, I am probably going to get charged with sedition for writing this. But at least I don’t curtail to false prophets of free speech.

This email came from some bloke calling himself ‘gully gti-r’. Perhaps he should call himself Ali G?

"yo homeboy dem pics of dat gtir r fukin mad,coz gtir r me dream car i lov dem 2 bitz,me uncle ad 1 in birmingham wat was runnin 300bhp"

What the hell am I meant to do with this? Should I tell him that the GTI-R never had any success ever because of its woeful transsion? He must be referring to some car on matthayward.com but for the life of me I don’t know which one. If nothing else, all these crap emails have taught me a lesson in usability: that you always need to know which page referred your user. But this useless information is the pitts. I think I am going to tear down all those old car pictures and turn the page! This shit is just the dregs of humanity.

Here’s some more to prove the point.

"oi do u have ne other pics of gemini wagons if so could u send em to us thanks dude"
"hey omg i love that car i want 1 just like it but in blue or black or pink.u got a nice ride.well betta go write bac"~Rheana
"that van is sic ive got a td panel van and i dont see meny of them now can you send me some more pics of it some of the inside to."~RONNIE

I give up on the mentality of the car scene.

OK so everyone that looked a little bit olive skinned was getting attacked? So OK, if I was in Cronulla, I think I would’ve been screwed. I am of English descent, but quite olive skinned. By default because I have very Celtish features, a combination of both English and French Celt descent. Not something I am proud or unproud of, just am that way. Maybe I could’ve been attacked by a bunch of stubby throwing bogans?

For most of us, nationality doesn’t mean shit really. My girlfriend is Asian (most have been) and most of my mates are in many ways foreign. Primarily because most suburban ‘Aussie’ types hang amongst themselves and don’t really do anything that interests me. It really doesn’t compel me where people are from. In some instances, sure it does, but why make a big deal of it? Some people are just sick to death of being asked where they’re from and I can at least at a simplistic level, understand why.

One possible reason why it doesn’t concern me is because I went to a primary school that was about 99% Anglo Australian (we had one Italian and a Jordanian) and was always seen as a wog, even through high school. And well up until about the 9th grade when I got to go overseas, I was bigoted, fag hating racist of the worst order. But I was for the most part a product of the environment. It doesn’t mean you can’t escape the environment! A trip to Japan probably saved me at that age.

So in effect, I could’ve ended up one of the yobbos at Cronulla beach. I am an ‘Aussie’ sans blue eyes and blonde hair. I am from the suburbs, never went to private school and have shit tin of AC/DC in my CD collection. Unfortunately I am not disgusted by what happened, you pretty much learn to expect it.

It scares me that Aussies who really don’t have a clue what’s going on might one day start a brawl at Frankston Beach or St Kilda beach because there’s nothing else to do.

Make no mistake, this is a rant. As if the current Mitsubishi Magna isn’t a bad enough example or corporate turd polishing to make an outdated square fit into a round market peg hole, now Audi are doing it too! Enough of the corporate rhinoplasty already!

Cars for years have had similar elements without having the same front across the range and have done well for it. In the early nineties, put a Bluebird next to an R33 sedan and you see a resemblance. Or the BMW range all had their distinctive kidney grille without having the same everything across the range. Their was a family resemblance, but no ghastly hand me downs.

Mitsubishi, Audi and GM are by far the worst corporate nose job offenders. WHY did Mitsu’ feel the need to made EVO 8 have such a god damned ugly nose the same as their Pajero 4WD? Sure some of this is subjective but cars are not about a corporate ethos, they are about reflecting the attidude of the individual. Frankly I think the Evo 6 and 7 are far better, butcher looking rides than the Evo 8 which looks like a lopsided plaster paris experiment gone wrong. The Pajero and Evo are strengths to the badge but disparate and exclusive; symbiotic but siblings that don’t need (or want) to share the same limelight.

GM are becoming offenders with their Saab grille on the Saabaru and their new Saab SUV. Audi have this atrocious grille, albeit subjective, I loathe the bastard.

Loathed to admit to it as I am, perhaps Honda and BMW do it best and everyone else is just trying too hard. An S2000 and an Accord go together. So too a Z4 and the X5. You look at these cars and you know who makes them. They’re subtle and the rest are overt. And subtlety speaks volumes in enduring style.

After moving house recently, it’s become patently obvious how useless CDs really are. Why can’t most bands get off of their high horse and realise how much their major labels are screwing them and realise how much MP3 is doing for them.

Ladies and gentleman of the jury, the first exhibit is goth metal band Cradle of Filth. Now albeit this is a very niche market for goth metal, they were for a very short tenure signed to Sony. On a recent JJJ Radio interview, the guitarist from the ‘Filth whined how fans were putting up music pre-released for music journos to review onto the internet.

Well Mr Filth boy, if it wasn’t for MP3 and file sharing, I wouldn’t have even heard of your stinking band! Do you really think that we all have $30 burning a hole in our pocket, to risk on your album because some emo prettyboy walks past with a Cradle of Filth T-Shirt on? You know the truth. Not everyone is going to buy your music, and I don’t think it’s theft or fraud if they don’t. Because unfortunately popular music is a very stilted platform. On one end you’ve got shelf life pop stars that get where they are from pre-pubescent teenagers with their digits on their parents’ mobile phones. In the other corner you’ve got you guys trying to earn an honest quid in a crowded, stagnant metal market.

Something tells me that Mr Sony Spin Doctor man is going to spend money on disposable pop star that will piss right off as soon as the ratings season ends. And hey guess what? Not every shopkeeper wants to put your lurid posters up and have a bunch of Emo cunts hanging around, crowding up the place with doom and gloom.

That leaves you with very few avenues to promote yourself. So a few kids ‘rip’ your CD into MP3 format and load it, and share it with their friends online. Before you realise it, Filth boy, at least one of those kids isn’t just going to download all your music, he might actually (god forbid!) BUY your next album. But if it wasn’t for the file sharing, they never would’ve!

Suffice it to say, stop whining. Because these so called fans weren’t going to buy your album in the first place. If they’re anything like I was in my teens, buying a $30 CD meant no social life for a week. So it still to this day is a pretty big thing for me to buy ANY CD.

Dave Mustaine, in another JJJ radio interview, he had the right attitude. He sees the connect between tape trading in the 80s and file sharing in the noughties. And ultimately, it’s the best way to get turned onto a band is by referral and trade. Also a good point he made was that “in business, you have to prepare for losses”. And well, let’s face it, file sharing is in part a loss. But from a publicity perspective, a bit of a gain.

Now, rock stars aside, CDs are just fucking stupid. Their ‘tangible benefits’ these days are next to none. They have none of the nostalgia of vynil. They get scratched to buggery. They take up heaps of space in your car and shelf space at home. Once you put them on MP3, you never even look at the stupid arsed covers again, unless it’s some fancypants Digi-pack or some shit - which let’s face it aren’t that collectable and loose their charm real quick.

And the distribution sucks. I have never bought a CD from eBay that actually arrived. I really can’t be arsed ordering something from some shitty record store that will take weeks to arrive that I can download anyway. Besides, just like in Tim Roger’s song, ‘Letter to Gene’, [Gene Simmons of Kiss] some fat dude is smoking in a cigar at his desk, while the band freezes outside in the cold on a tour bus.

Your rock band might get a nice fat advance to record their rekurds from the label, but they sure as hell don’t get that much out of CD sales - if infact they sell any. Therefore, i’ve got no beef buying a CD at a gig or from the artist himself. Let the fat man in his office starve.

I now have boxes of CDs at my parents place in musical pergatory. They do absolutely nothing. But one sweet day, I really hope my kids find an old hard drive, dust it off and plug it in, and start rockin’ out to my MP3 collection.

I’ve had this phone for about 2-3 weeks now and it’s the most wretched, ill executed piece of shit ever to hit the GSM phone market. I’m pretty sure you could use two turds connected with a piece of string for a phone and end up with a better phone than this crap. At least you’d know you were about to put shit in your hands before you made a call.

First of all it doesn’t charge properly. When you plug the charger into the phone socket, that should be enough. Oh no, this is like finding the clitoris on a very disinterested girl for the very first team. But unlike clit finding, it doesn’t get any easier with practice. It’s simply impossible to charge. Knock it slightly and it will stop charging. Leave it for 2 hours thinking it’s fully charged and it hasn’t even started yet.

So it’s not reliable, but what’s the quality like. Well if you like CB radios, then you’ll be happy with the loudspeaker. If not, then it’s the big 10 4 for you rubber ducky! It’s squelchy and terrible.

Then there’s the real let down: it comes with RealPlayer. So cool! It can play MP3s and shit right?! Well don’t get too excited. For some reason, the two MP3s I uploaded (took rougly 4 mins per song over a Bluetooth connection) are about as loud as a librarian live on stage at Madison Square Garden. Radio is at least 3 times louder than your loudest MP3. And I was going to use this as an MP3 player. Screw that to buggery.

Now the ‘good’ stuff. The camera: useless for anything by MMS. Upload them to your PC and you’ll see how useless they really are. Visual radio? WHY THE FUCK DO I WANT TO LOOK AT THE RADIO? It’s a great concept but somehow I don’t want to be walking down the street staring at my phone because it’s ‘visual’ AND it’s ‘radio’. Movie editing? Totally and completely stupid.

Battery life. It chews through. Charging roughly every 1.5 days. IF you can get it to charge.

Forget this piece of crap. I’m tempted to ask Nokia to swap it for something that actually works properly.

King John, fearless leader of corporate-feudal, imperial national Australia yesterday announced that he intends to ditch the unfair dismissal laws for companies with under 100 employees.

This also is according to Channel 9 and SBS’ TV news coverage, has these impacts:
- your probationary period on a new job will be increased from 3 to 6 months. So that’s 3 months again where you can be totally dismissed without the penance and rights of a full fledged employed. You might as well be casual staff!
- redundancy packages may no longer be required. Does this have anything to do with selling the rest of Telstra off (T3 share offer coming out shortly) John?
- a review of all workplace awards. I’m sure it won’t be the last. Sure it may be good for now, but by this man’s record, the future looks grim.

Now that we are indeed a feudal system, with Howard running the house of reps and the senate, these will come through no worries. So say goodbye to your job security.

Frankly Mr Howard, a few extra dollars in my pocket is nothing compared to my rights and security. I’d much rather know that I won’t be kicked out on the street unfairly on a seconds notice than buy an extra bottle of wine a week. Thanks yet again for looking out for big corporations and upper-middle class Aussies that are sooooo struggling under your ‘democracy’.

Rest assured, this is probably only the tip of the iceberg. Howard will eat away at every workers’ right in every socio economic or vocational group except his own. It makes me want to join a union.

It’s becoming patently obvious in Fitzroy that offspring are no longer the bi-product of a man and woman, they’re a fashion accessory.

Who gave these parents the right to push us, the non-reproducing masses off of the foot path with these massive prams? Besides do you think you’re really cool when your baby is screaming in the middle of Babka’s after you’ve just pushed everyone out of your path with a pram like the drinks cart on an Economy flight?

If you’ve bought designer Osh Kosh Begosh or Guess clothes for an infant, or if you’ve spent more than $2000 on a pram, you’re not a good parent, you’re an arsehole. Your insecurity about your own fashion is being taken out on your kids. You’re depriving your kids of a childhood free of branding and consumer politics. The last thing your runt little shit needs is a complex because he’s not wearing the latest toddler Nikes.

Although i’ve never had children, I was one once. Here’s some salient fucking facts from my childhood, you yuppie bastards:
- I got carted around in a STANDARD sized pram. It fitted on the bus and train and no one ever had to move off the pavement on my behalf or clear a path in a restaurant or cafe
- If my parents wanted to go somewhere cool, I went to Nanna’s and that was just fine with me. Because I didn’t want to eat tofu burgers and drink chai latte then anyway. Your kids don’t want to go where you want to go. So don’t subject them to your frivolous search for coffee shop meaning and precious, scintilating conversation
- I didn’t know what Nike runners were until the 6th grade and it therefore never worried me
- Designer labels didn’t have childrens’ wear AND WE DID JUST FINE WITHOUT IT. Unless you could get it from Target, my parent’s weren’t gonna waste money on the shit, and god bless them for it. It was only gonna be unwearable in two months anyway.
- My everyday clothes were from K-Mart and my ‘going out’ clothes were from Target
- I liked dirt and mucking about on bikes and billy carts, not iPods and bright, shiny objects. Only mysterious and dirty ones.

In the 80’s, you were lucky if you had 5-10 years before you were forced to worship, hands and knees at the temple of bright, shining objects. Sure, we had Ataris, Amigas, Nintendos and crap, but there seems no hope for the kids of the day. Back then your parents bitched and moaned about getting you stuff. Now mummy doesn’t want to been dead without a baby in trendy clothes, an iPod and a climate controlled SUV pram.

So Fitzroy parents of today, die. You sicken me.

Melbourne’s a hypervole of activity at the moment. In the alley normally only known for the eerie RAOBGAB ‘City Temple’, there’s a movie set going for the new Nicolas Cage movie ‘Ghost Rider’. They’ve taken what two weeks ago was a car park and turned it into a Yankee car lot, full of Mustangs and Chevy vans. Wasn’t Shitney always the honey pot that sucked the seppos in, keeping them out of the cooler places?

Down the street there’s the new GPO building, full of $300 metrosexual T shirt shops and a Ben Sherman boutique. And there are now 3 Starbucks I know of in the CBD. Did someone forget to inform them that Melbourne was already a coffee city and we don’t need shitty corporate maccinations unlike ‘Shitney’?

It used to be that Shitneysiders used to come to Melbourne for the shopping. Our ‘excess is everything’ uber yuppie set was restricted to Toorak and it wasn’t hard to find cool, hip stuff without traipsing through endless chain stores. After a recent sojourn to Shitney for the weekend, it’s starting to feel like a little bit of Melbourne is becoming a lot like Shitney. Especially the GPO building is starting to look a lot like a Sydney CBD block.

For those of you who don’t know, Sydney has a 48 hour patronage period. That basically means that after two days, the whole place licks balls and you’re rushing for the airport home. No alcohol could numb you to the amount of wankers and charlatins that will cross your path in the festering shithole. All the wretched chintz and glamour of their prissy little harbour can go and get fucked. Why? Because they serve disgraceful beer, have no cool bars (where people actually drink and not pop pills) and the streets and roads are crowded as. But the worst thing is that coffee and culture wise, the whole city is severely out to lunch. It’s simply Starbucks culture at its finest that you can find anywhere in the world.

Has the world become smaller or are we just loosing our identity? Definitely the latter. Shitney seems to be channeling all the best blandness of the USA into Melbourne. So please, for the love of god people, drink proper coffee from a proper bloody cafe, stop drinking Tooheys and start wearing cool stuff from local stores. Get rid of this globalised, corporate fashion shit. We are Melbourne! We were once better and as sure as VB is wretched cats’ piss, we will remain the coolest. Vive la interstate rivalry.

Please Sydney, die. You’re wrecking my town.