Man Fills Ice Cube Tray

PERTH: Today a South Perth Man filled his ice cube tray with water. This event was inspired by seeing the item – a white plastic cube tray, approximately 30 cm in length and ten cm in width - sitting in the dishrack. The man, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals from local organised crime figures, was nonetheless pleased with his quick-thinking action. “This way, the next time I need ice in a drink, it will be available,” he said, “I can assure you, nine times out of ten I forget.” Sources close to ice cube tray confirmed the man’s statement and described him variously as ‘forgetful’ and ‘a typical example of the decline of Australian masculinity. Chips Rafferty would be appalled.”

Someday Your Prince Will Come

Zeitgesiters,

Foolishly, I looked to Free-To-Air Television to entertain this afternoon and found the only thing on that wasn't sport, was BARBIE AS THE ISLAND PRINCESS. Now I stoop to comment on the naffness of the animation. The 2D image that accompanies this blog post simply can't deliver the full horror of watching a disgusting 3D elephant (called Tika) emoting. At one point, when Tika was drowning, I wanted her to perish because the top of her head was idiotically high-domed like a Newfoundland hound's (unlike in the above image), her eyes were anthropomorphically forward on her head like a flippin' human and she was puffing her cheeks in and out as she wept with her own tragedy. Pah!

Fortunately the politics were all RIGHT ON, because for awhile it looked as though commoner Ro (Barbie, natch) would be barred from marrying Prince Jerkweed (may have misheard this). Then in the last few momentsit turned out that Ro was, in fact, the long-lost child of a Queen and ergo a Princess herself. Phew!

Elevate the Insignificant,

Mr Trivia

p.s. I have nothing against Newfoundland hounds or Newfoundland per se - although Prince Edward Island is my Canadian Island of choice.

Baby Remember My Name

Zeitgeisters,

I've always thought of the lyrics of the song Fame (from the film of the same name) as particularly asinine. But maybe they're quite accurate for some people. What I don't like about them is the unreasonableness of wanting anything like this:

Baby look at me
And tell me what you see
You ain't seen the best of me yet
Give me time I'll make you forget the rest

I got more in me
And you can set it free
I can catch the moon in my hands
Don't you know who I am

Remember my name
Fame

I'm gonna live forever
I'm gonna learn how to fly
High

I feel it coming together
People will see me and cry

Its the fever-dream of someone who doesn't know who they are.

Gen Xs and particularly Gen Ys are very in tune with the notion of being famous no matter what. We have seven seasons of Big Brother to show us that. But just maybe, there is something fundamentally untenable about wanting to be famous and especially wanting to stay famous. In the first case, you don't know what its like until you get there, but after you've experienced it and you still want it, what excuses do you have?

Looks like Britney Spears needs to stay famous despite everything.

As you probably know by now. Britney appeared at the MTV Video Music Awards yesterday and failed once more at a comeback. Actually she was trying for a comeback from addiction and post-natal depression, but let that not stop the many pundits and disappointed fans for heaping scorn upon her for not being as young, hot and talented as she used to be.

Except she was never THAT talented. (Yes, I know she has a Grammy and co-wrote some of her hits.) The talent she had was for being a good dancer and an okay singer with a modicum of charisma, who had a scary will to succeed. Hers was the type of success that launched 1000 wannabe ‘Idol’ kids . Add to this, the male audience’s projection of jailbait sensuality that went with the whole faux catholic schoolgirl thing and for a while there, she was bigger than the biggest thing ever. But aren’t they all until they’re not?

As an artist with little else to offer other than channelling some okay tunes and some momentary distraction from the white noise, does Britney even need a comeback? She’s not Joni Mitchell, Patty Smyth, or Deborah Harry. She’s not even Pink. She has never for even a moment transcended pop and now she isn’t popular, some people have the temerity to criticise her for it. Maybe her not being famous for a time would be a good thing. Six months ago she was getting off her face regularly in public, shaving her head and attacking a paparazzo with an umbrella, why does she or anyone else expect her to be able to deliver the goods right now?

Many of the formerly famous work towards their second shot at fame. Or they accept a used-to-be famous status that means guest roles on television or worse still, on reality television. Clearly not being famous is a fate worse than death. The famous think so. And apparently many of us in the non-famous community think so, too.

Elevate the Insignificant

Mr Trivia


Text Portrait by Ralph Ueltzhoeffer
Fame written by Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford

Sesqui-Centenary Post

Zeitgeisters,

One hundred and fifty posts! Congratulations to us. Me for writing 'em and you for reading some of them - or in the case of a number of you - all of them.

The first 150th celebration I was ever involved in was a little something called WAY '79 or Western Australian Year 1979, which was a year-long event commemorating the European settlement of W.A. There was a jingle, posters, badges and a really cool logo. I thought it was cool then. I'm older now. Its a late 1970s representation of the black swan which is the emblem of our state. Word.

Check out the Wikipedia for more on WAY '79.

Cheers,

Mr Trivia

What Noise Annoys An Oyster?

Zeitgeisters, I live in a small block of flats because I am somewhat of a psycho and have issues about being alone. I’m dealing with it in therapy at the moment, so who knows, I might get over myself eventually.

Anyway, I like the quiet. And my block of flats is mostly that. One of my neighbours regularly arrives home at 3am-ish., but I’m usually on my computer blogging or at least watching Bart John selling the Time-Life "Singers and Songwriters" 3-CD set in a paid presentation on Network 10. I’m an insomniac. Whenever I hear my neighbour’s keys crunching into the lock of her front door I am reminded of these lines:

When a Broadway baby says "Good night,"
It's early in the morning.
Manhattan babies don't sleep tight until the dawn:
Good night, baby,
Good night, milkman's on his way.
Sleep tight, baby,
Sleep tight, let's call it a day,
Listen to the lullaby of old Broadway

The song Lullaby of Broadway was written by Harry Warren and Al Dubin in the 1930s. I used to think the notion of coming home so late that it was almost dawn sounded ineffably romantic. I was a kid, what can I say? I don’t think my neighbour is a hoofer on the Great White Way, but if I was realistic about the world and how it works I probably wouldn’t do half of what I do.

So yes, I confess that one of my cultural reference points are 20th century musicals. People look at you askance, when you admit to this, but musical haters, it’s your loss.

Countless times (or at least six or seven) someone has send to me, I just don’t find it convincing when the guy opens his mouth to express his emotions in song. Yeah, get that. And I never found it all that convincing when Arnold opened his mouth to deliver an alleged witticism after spraying the Columbian drug lords with multiple rounds from his machine gun. Different strokes for different folks.

So Mabel returning from the Ziegfeld Follies doesn’t disturb me, the noise that is really getting up my nose and into my ear at the moment is my neighbour’s MSN Messenger’s standard-alert tone. It’s three am in the damned morning and I can hear those three notes (musos please correct me if necessary) every few minutes.

He- I think I know who it is - lives two flights up and I know the very moment that someone in his contact list is messaging him back.

I believe I have successfully channelled my neighbour and here is an excerpt of his conversation (He is Loudness Disciple, folks):

URKLE DESTROYER OF WORLDS
And that’s when I told her, no way are we having a dog, Why don’t we start with a houseplant?

LOUDNESS DISCIPLE
Word. What kind of plant?

URKLE DESTROYER OF WORLDS
African Violet. Zinnia. WTF do I know about plants?

LOUDNESS DISCIPLE
OMG could that ho’ be any louder?

URKLE DESTROYER OF WORLDS
Who? Brunette Scarlett Johannsen?

LOUDNESS DISCIPLE
No, my other neighbour. She always comes home at 3 am in the morning!! WTF!!!

URKLE DESTROYER OF WORLDS
3 AM in the morning is a tautology – dumbass!!

LOUDNESS DISCIPLE
Like I give a crap. Great , now the guy downstairs has started bashing on the keys of his computer. What a tool.

URKLE DESTROYER OF WORLDS
Sounds like a blogger. Who else writes at this time of night?

LOUDNESS DISCIPLE
Word.

And…scene. So, yet another thing to annoy us in this irritating miasma of joy that we call life in the 21st century. However to bring it all back to therapy, We all need someone to love and something to complain about. These are essential. Everything else is a bonus.

Elevate the Insignificant

Mr Trivia


P.S.. I was looking up “ineffably” in an online dictionary to research this blog. Yeah, I’m amazed that I do any research, too. And the definition provided one of those examples that makes one wonder about the state of mind of the definer. Check it out.

ineffably, indescribably, unutterably, unspeakably

to an inexpressible degree; "she was looking very young tonight, and, as usual, indescribably beautiful, in a simple strapless dress of a green and white silky cotton"

It just seemed very specific.