IN government television campaigns, just saying no to drugs is a simple business, an easy decision made by well-fed, well-clothed young people who just want to have a good time.
“Hmmm. Friday night again. It’s tempting to try ice, but picking imaginary scabs in nightclub toilets doesn’t really go with my new flamingo zippered leggings (heroin [...]
Archive > February 2009
The Oasis an oasis from simplistic junkie stereotypes
Apply anti-skeptic and save the ice caps
CLIMATE change sceptics are getting really bloody annoying. It’s not because they have the audacity to question over-the-top environmental doomsday scenarios in which the earth is engulfed by a tsunami of bovine flatulence and only bunker-dwelling survivalists, cockroaches and maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger survive.
Questioning is good. Questioning is Socratic. Everyone should question everything all the time, [...]
Too posh to push?
THE world is full of wacky urban myths. Richard Gere rushing to hospital for a gerbilectomy. The average human swallowing eight spiders a year. A reflective George W. Bush smiling wryly as he admits: “I think I was unprepared for war. In other words I didn’t campaign and say, ‘Please vote for me, I’ll be [...]
Who’s a pretty pollie?
CELEBRITIES, for the most part, aren’t allowed to be ugly. Hirsute warts, sniff-round-corner snozzes, complexions that fester and belch: all these imperfections are screened out by the fame machine so our deified red-carpet dwellers remain easy on the eye and pleasing to the lens.
Even beautiful people aren’t permitted to be celebrities unless they strive to [...]
The dangers of the digilantes
A NEW generation of guerilla fighters is stalking the planet. These brutal underground warriors are vastly outnumbered by their enemies but still they battle on, armed only with their wits, their supportive websites and their ability to make Nigerians they’ve never met photograph themselves with “sheep shagger” signs and toilet seats on their heads.
They are [...]
Good hoaxkeeping
Have dinner ready … Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking … Greet him with a warm smile [and] … let him talk first — remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours … A good wife always knows her place.
THE above comes from what looks like [...]
Barackitsch and Mount Crapmore
AS the US convulses in the throes of economic holocaust and political revolution, it’s reassuring to know that some things remain exactly the same. I speak, of course, of Western capitalism’s unshakable ability to transform the sublime into retail ridiculousness.
If you’re thrilled by the election of America’s first black president and are desperate to express [...]
Slug sex and the steam-o-sphere
HUMANKIND, as the internet makes so pumpingly clear, has an unholy obsession with sex. Drawn partly by ancient biological urges and partly by uncloseable XXX pop-up windows, our appetite for the salacious sights, sounds and smut-cams of the steam-o-sphere is insatiable.
This seems reasonable enough given the crucial role sex plays in keeping the human race, [...]
Sun, sand and desexing stray street dogs
SOME people are truly excellent at being on holiday. They gradually unwind rather than frantically burning out in the final weeks of work and never fall hideously ill the moment they turn the key in the beach-house door.
These well-adjusted individuals ignore pressure to maximise their annual break by commencing triathlon training or translating Proust. Instead, [...]
What a lot of people forget is that fish don’t have eyelids
ALEX Bellissimo isn’t religious but he reckons that if God came to earth, the big guy would eat whiting. “You don’t have to dress them up because they have no flavour or disguise them because they taste too strong,” he says. “They’re a sweet, sweet fish just as they are.”
This paragon of fishy perfection is [...]
