Completely Unnecessary

And by ‘questionable,’ I, of course, mean ‘awesome’!

Violeta got me to watch Eurovision last night. I was a bit truculent about it (surprise!) since I’m not that down with pop music competitions. Or Europe.

May I just say that my cherry has been popped and eyes opened to the incredibleness that is horrible Europop mixed with xenophobic British commentary.

Much of the voting appears clustered around regional blocks, a fact not lost on the English commentator speaking over the hosts. As the tallies from each country came in, his wonderful, vaguely racist running commentary became more and more hilarious.

Presumably drinking, he commented on the outfits of country representatives (’I see you dressed for the occasion,’ ‘Would you wear that for a bet?’), and lambasted them if they didn’t move quickly enough to their results (’YES?!’).

He could not get over the fact that the Azerbaijani act was getting points. Every time someone voted for them he was like, ‘Recall that this was the one with the angels and demons,’ sometimes just outright expressing disdain for the number. He was similarly repulsed by the Spanish act (which, seriously, touche - it was bad.)

The most amazing commentary, however, came during voting of former-Soviet block countries, which - to be fair - did tend to vote for their one-time ruler. He criticized them each in turn, his voice tinged with ennui:

You see? Latvia, Estonia – they know which way their bread is buttered.

By far the most best was his comment about the Ukraine’s 12 points to Russia, which literally made me laugh until I thought I was going to throw up:

You vote for Russia, and the oil flows through.

Some of the comments were a little more questionable, such as the results from Switzerland (whose votes went to Turkey, I think):

That must be the result of guest workers…

But, oh my god, the apparent lack of any control by the station over this man’s commentary was amazing. Basically, it was like watching a xenophobic Europop MST3K.

(I actually like Europe quite a bit. And I think the French act should have won - it was the only song I actually liked.)

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Say that five times fast.

A kind of throwaway news item about the Western Australia opposition leader sniffing a woman’s chair - yes, le sigh - is made wonderful through the joys of spirited storytelling.

Here are the last three paragraphs:

Local media said Buswell has previously admitted to snapping a Labor party staff member’s bra as a drunken party trick and has been accused of sexist remarks by a retiring Liberal politician.

The deputy Liberal leader, Kim Hames, said he stood by Buswell, describing him as a “rough diamond with a robust sense of humor”, but adding he needed to change his behavior.

Hames also said there was no one to replace Buswell.

That’s not much of a party trick. I mean, if you’ve ever seen a woman topless, you kind of know whereabouts to grab.

But I really love the last paragraph. I sometimes wish news stories came with the ba-bum-ching! with which they were clearly written.

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He just can’t seem to find any.

During his charming (and possibly media/democracy-destroying) appearance on Deal or No Deal the other night, Bush quipped:

I’m thrilled to be on ‘Deal or No Deal’ with you tonight. Come to think of it, I’m thrilled to be anywhere with high ratings these days.

Hilarity ensued, no doubt, across the nation he’s taken to the woodshed.

Or maybe not.

The episode on which Bush appeared had the lowest ratings in the show’s history.

That poor guy just can’t catch a break. Keep strivin’!

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The Onion’s AV Club, consistently one of the best reads the interwebs has to offer, has apparently had some time on its hands.

To wit, they came up with a list of ‘12 surprisingly controversial Wikipedia pages‘. We probably shouldn’t think too hard about the Wikitrail that led this endeavor (or the number of hours ‘wasted’) because it’s hilarious.

My favorite is #4: Rotary International.

As users AndyJones, Aldux, and Bridesmill try to repair the damage, M. Larcin starts sections called “CONTROVERSY OR SEGREGATION? vote here!” and “The blanking of Rotarian Conferencemakers by BridesMill- Polemic,” while accusing his opponents of being “pro-Episcopalian theists” and “racist against French.”

My brief perusal of the ‘talk’ section yielded the comment in the title. Another random grab below:

I am a democrat, I mean a French socialist. I mean that I am then a traitor, a cynical, a pervert and a *foul language removed* communist.

Priceless.

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I was way too hungover to blog today. [Ed. Note: Why, why do I never learn not to mix wine and beer? It is like this every single time. It's not rude to reject a beer on the grounds that you've been drinking wine all night...]

Yeah, so it was great. I spent most of the day at State Library doing newspaper research. The Canberra Times is a broadsheet, which means I had to turn it sideways to scan the articles I needed. Being lazy (and be-headached), it was just far too much effort to right the pages each time, especially as I was generally scanning every other page.

Now I haven’t tested this theory empirically, but I think fast-scrolling is far more nausea-inducing when it’s scrolling up, rather than to the left. Trying to read words coming from below as they whizzed past me did not help the pounding in my skull.

Five and a half hours I did that today. Pleasant. Which is probably why I just looked blankly at the sushi lady when she informed me that my only non-mayonnaise-containing choices were kimchi or seasoned squid. I didn’t say anything - just turned and walked out the door.

So I give Slut Machine a lot of credit for making me laugh hysterically in her attempts to make a chocolate cast of her own vagina. I feel that I shouldn’t need to add that this is highly unsafe for work.

Also, my friend gave me a link to Garfield Minus Garfield, which I have been checking nearly obsessively since yesterday.

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I’ve never really felt like a grad student. Until this morning…

I’m finishing up my work in the archives when I get a text from Sara complaining about the myriad of first years with their orientation balloons. I emerge from the basement and look around in horror as the solace of my previous empty library is shattered by the mewling and puking of new students on their library tours. I glance with scorn at the noisy groups taking the exact tour that Sara and I took just one year ago.

I walk over to the loans desk to put a hold on a book I really have no right putting a hold on. There’s a weekly loan copy available, but I mention the word ‘thesis’ and the hold is placed. Sorry, other person probably also working on a thesis. See you in three weeks when you pull the same maneuver.

I leave the library, skirting the throngs of new students and the inevitable Socialist pamphleteers that the students’ presence has engendered. (New students are like standing water, should I be willing to compare MelbUni Socialists to mosquitoes, which I am.)

I ride to John Medley, expertly avoiding people on the too narrow path. Parking my bike, I listen to an enthusiastic American uni guide cheerfully mispronounce the names of her charges. One girl looks in my direction. I’m far overdressed for the weather, wearing both a long-sleeved shirt and a scarf. ‘It’s incredibly cold in the archives,’ I hope my bored glance communicates. ‘I’m willing to suffer the slings and arrows of uni fashionistas like yourself for the importance of my incredibly important research. It’s important.’

Scarf = grad student

I realize finally how I look as I enter the bathroom on the fifth floor. That bored look is really just exhaustion from staying up last night to type notes from a book into my bibliography database.

Exhaustion + Scarf = grad student.

The person I’m looking for isn’t around, so I head back downstairs, cursing my inability to get a mobile signal in John Medley. I have to ask the girl whose name was being mispronounced to move so I can wheel my bike and its tiger-striped handlebars past her. The corking is kind of coming off; I look like I’m living on a ’student’ budget.

Poor + Exhaustion + Scarf = Grad Student

Anyway, after that I wisely head away from campus, avoiding ‘O’ week. The emails and texts I get over the next 30 minutes indicate that pretty much everyone else is doing the same.

We are so cool now that we’ve been here a year. We don’t need orientation, though there are still times when I wind up stuck inexplicably in the Engineering section and not near the ERC as I’d planned. Whatever, my scarf says it’s just because I’m overtired.

ps - Despite what my handlebar corking might imply, I actually have some money coming in with a research job. I spent yesterday and part of today looking through 1949 newspapers during a coal mining strike. I was looking for government-sponsored ads, which were amazing enough, but some of the ads and stories they were running are hilarious.

For instance, did you know that ’scalp starvation’ is the cause of 9 out of 10 cases of baldness? Silvikrin has ‘14 organic elements’ to prevent this totally crap explanation…

Watson and Crick, 1953…

I’ll post some of them when I get a chance.

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Please understand how tempted I was to write ‘pop(e)’.

Anyway, a word of advice to Vatican event planners - when choosing a girl to represent the a life-size Virgin Mary in your Nativity Scene, try not to have her look quite so much like one of the Spears sisters. That might be sending the wrong message…

Photo via The Age

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays everyone (both).

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From the Age:

Australians are gaining weight even faster than people in the US, a notoriously fat nation.

Why, you vegemite-eating, koala-coddling bastards…

Alright, fair enough. Proceed.

ps - aside from a couple edits - I’m done with school until March! Would it be entirely out of line for me to do a PhD on Transformers? That’s what I’ve been thinking about all day.

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The AV Club has posted Night Of The Killer Lamp: 23 Ridiculous Horror-Movie Adversaries for Halloween. I suggest watching at least the first clip and the one with the bunnies on the second page. Awesome.

Happy Halloween! You wouldn’t even know it that special day here in Melb. The country has some problems, sure, but American Halloween is the best.

I would like some candy corn. I would not like to continue reading about Conservative branding since the 1980s.

Question: how many copy editing errors do you have to find before you question the reputability of a work?

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Are you a girl? Is it Halloween?

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