Hobbits

Ugh. Are we doing this again? Really? REALLY?

New Zealanders in the UK

Here at UUJM, if there's one thing we hate, it's people doing boring things. But if there's one thing we hate even more, it's people doing boring things under the auspices of them being interesting. If you're in the mid to late twenties age bracket then a profound case in point is the "great Kiwi OE", which is painfully shoved in our face every time we log onto Facebook. The "great Kiwi OE", which for those lucky enough to be unfamiliar typically involves a 2 year trip to live in the United Kingdom, is unfortunately neither great nor much of an overseas experience. Much like New Zealand migration to Australia, the "great Kiwi OE" seems to primarily be a way for New Zealand to export its idiots to a country with some general sympathy towards us based on historical ties and the desire for an underclass of cheap labour.

For those taking the trip, our point here is: isn't there a sharp irony about seeking to experience the immense cultural diversity the world has to offer by travelling to the single most culturally and politically similar country to New Zealand in the whole world? You know, the one from whom we inherited our language, political system, social structure and, yes, even our national sport? And isn't there a similar irony about treating a Facebook photo of yourself in a different European destination (usually drunk and on a Top Deck tour) as proof that you have engaged with the history, culture and people of a particular country in a meaningful way?

Predictably, things only get worse once said idiot arrives at Heathrow (wearing their All Blacks jersey). Although undoubtedly one of the world's greatest cities, most ex-patriate New Zealander's first port of call in London is the Shepherds Bush Walkabout, where they can experience all the diversity the city has to offer by getting blindly drunk most days of the week with a rowdy mob of similarly minded people from Australia and South Africa. Going there has the added bonus of providing a great opporunity to catch up with heaps of people from home who you haven't seen in years! Which, after all, was the point of the exercise wasn't it? Then there was the epic drunken haka that we all performed at 2am- I mean being here makes you appreciate how truely multicultural us Nu Zillanders are!

Having shaken off the hangover, it must now be time to experience the many sights and rich cultural and historical heritage of London. First stop, Buckingham Palace. Better get a photo for Facebook, because no-one will have seen a photo of that before. Second stop, the London Eye. Better get a photo here too. Tower Bridge? The Gherkin? The River Thames? Brighton Pier? Why not. There I was on the whole other side of the world, but I was like totally representing Nu Zilland becuase I was wearing my All Blacks jersey!  Yeah, great move wearing your All Blacks jersey by the way, after all, everyone loves a tourist who blends in seamlessly with their surroundings. We love it when American tourists in New Zealand wear Hawaiian shirts and bum bags and make a point of telling everyone where they are from.

Right, London, tick. I'm pretty sure we've covered everything this grand city of culture and history has to offer. Definitely time to get out of England. I've booked a trip to France and Italy over the weekend, will definitely have to have the All Blacks jersey ready for that one. Pretty keen to get a photo of me wearing it in front of the Eiffel tower for Facebook, and maybe even a hilarious one of me looking like I am holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa! And my brilliance won't be lost on all the French and Italian locals who hang out at the souvenir shops because they'll recognise I'm from Nu Zilland!  It's so sad that I only could get a long weekend here, I really felt like I was immersing myself in the local culture in an organic way. I think I was even picking up a bit of the local language! I'm pretty sure "ca va" means choice.

Still, time is short, Sunday is a huge night back in Shepherds Bush!

The Eagles (band)

I've said before that I don't like taking down easy targets but fuck it, I haven't blogged in ages and I wanna warm my fingers up again by writing on a subject about which I care deeply. I hate The Eagles. I want you to hate them too.

Don Henley once got fired from a job at a post office because he couldn't push an envelope. If he hadn't become a fuckwit acting as a musician he would've made a lot of money painting lines in the MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING ROAD! Seriously, is there a bore MORing band in the world? I doubt it.

The Eagles took the country rock amalgamation that Neil Young had perfected and slaughtered it. I won't defend everything Neil Young has released but at his best, the emotion he can put into one note is enough to stop time. His raw style of production offers an honesty that should be a blueprint for any band to follow. The Eagles offer the world's most boring voices singing the world's most formulaic songs, produced and arranged to well and truly round off any sharp edges to leave only a blunt instrument that can be used to bash any idiot listener into further idiocy.

The tour de farce in their embarrassing back catalogue is surely Hotel California. Apparently this song lasts for just over six minutes. It feels like six years. Six years of nothing happening. Six years of lyrics that are just mystical enough to make you think you're getting into something real deep if you're a fucking moron. This monstrosity was only ever Stairway to Heaven's bastard cousin and STH lost all appeal when I HIT ADULTHOOD and (a) realised life is too short for self indulgent nonsense; and (b) stopped being impressed by guitarists with fast fingers. At least STH develops and - I can't believe I'm saying this - takes the listener on a journey from folk to hard rock. Fuck Hotel California. It's six years of fuckwit paedophiles holding instruments and masquerading as musicians without creating any tension to release and thereby proving they're oblivious to the tools of musicianship.

Perhaps the shade of grey The Eagles paint their sound is most visible when you have the misfortune of hearing an Eagles covers band. I imagine it goes like this: "Hi, we're Life in the Fast Lane. Let's rock and roll with our first tune, Take it Easy. We're gonna follow that with Peaceful, Easy Feeling."

Yep, that's quite some range you've got there. Slow and slower. Boring and more boring. Just enough formula to make the shitheads that lap up your bullshit think they're real clever for getting the gist. Well fuck them and fuck you.

The Eagles. You know they're on John Key's iPod.

The Eagles. They gave us Don Henley's solo career AND Joe Walsh's solo career.

The Eagles. They should be hunted until they're extinct.

F.R.I.E.N.D.S.

Friends. The one that could have been Joey if it had kept going long enough. As much as this grossly overrated zit on the face of the ‘90s was popular, it was also terrible. It has drawn criticism for being too white, too heterosexual, and too unbelievably good looking but my main beef is that it’s really fucking dumb.

Let’s look at the characters. Much like The Breakfast Club, the Friends crew have been type-cast into extremely limited boxes so any shithead watching at home can feel like they “get” it. Joey is simple. Phoebe is ditsy. Ross is a geek. Monica is clean. Chandler is sarcastic. Rachel makes up the numbers. Do you realise how easy it becomes to make jokes when everything is this stupid?

Most '90s sitcoms focused on banal, everyday, everyperson themes. But many of them have aged much more gracefully than Friends. Why is Seinfeld still marginally funny even though both it and Friends were products of the same era? It might have something to do with the fact that the situations Seinfeld's characters got tangled up in were absurd but just within the bounds of believability, and hence funny. Friends never travelled anywhere near the absurd, staying so far inside the bounds of believability that about the most interesting thing that happened in the average Friends episode is some joke about laundry, or those oh-so-annoying repetitive gags, like that one about the naked guy across the street. Other '90s shows had repetitive gags but they had the good sense to stop using them after a while. Friends revelled in the predictability of doing the opposite. Any time writers have an incentive to reach for those hacky tropes of sit-com-dom, you know you're watching a braodcast-quality turd.

Friends. The show that opened the door for Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place. (And Two and a Half Men after that!)

Friends. One time they went to see Hootie and the Blowfish.

Friends. Seriously, David fucking Schwimmer?

Friends. People wearing paisley-fronted vests and getting away with it, not to mention those God-awful John Lennon sunglasses.

Friends. The last show on TV to have a serious actor wear a moustache (can you think of any more recent?) .

Friends. It guest-starred Bruce Willis for a time in a non-action role. But his character was always threatening to turn in to McClane!

Friends. Justifiably typecasting actors who have done absolutely nothing since.

Friends. I’m not writing those stupid dots between the letters again.

Queen (The Band)

Everyone in the world seems to like Queen except me. My friends like Queen. The guys I play music with like Queen. My co-editor, Shaun probably likes Queen. That’s fine. After all, I’m used to having the best taste in the room, not to mention being a real dick in suggesting my dust-collecting degree in classical music shows I know best about pop.

But, c’mon. Queen are shit. Their ubiquitous “Best Of” collections are the epitome of thoughtless normtrooperism. You might think you’re having a shared spiritual experience when singing ‘We Are the Champions’ after someone wins a rugby game but really you’ve just fallen into the trap of the thoughtlessly unoriginal and, frankly, you’re circling the drain at the bottom of the barrel. You’re probably one of those awful people who like, “anything with a good beat, really” and I hate those people.

I don’t doubt the technique or the pop sensibilities. Brian May has fast fingers. That'll always impress the easily impressed. Freddie Mercury had pipes, sure. Some of the lyrics are clever and most of the songs use, sarcastic OMFG, more than three chords. They’re catchy but so are herpes. So are the Fergie-inclusive Black Eyed Peas. So is all sorts of dreadful shit. The problem with Queen is that they are tasteless.

Mercury belonged on Broadway and someone should burn Broadway to the ground. That road is a place for rich people to waste money on tasteless, cheesy indulgences and act like Muppets while being slapped in the face by prima donnas holding a no-subtlety-exaggerate-everything stick. Mercury’s larger-than-life lifestyle fits perfectly into that mould, as does his awful no-subtlety-exaggerate-everything strutting and awful no-subtlety-exaggerate-everything singing.

Brian May is just as bad. He takes the raw sexual energy and magnificent technique of Jimmy Page and covers it in five awful layers of 80s production gloss. Not only is that not rock and roll – it’s ANTI-ROCK-AND-ROLL! Stop calling these guys a rock band. They are the musical equivalent of smearing lipstick all over your face – just a big, coked up, tastelessly presented mess and their self-indulgent shite is as over-produced as it is over-played.

No doubt by now someone has accused me of homophobia. To that I’d like to reply that not only am I an Amnesty International member (and frequent letter writer, email sender and petition signer) but also a former employee. You should all be AI members but no one likes a preacher so I’ll move on. I’m also a fan of REM, David Bowie, The Smiths and Cowboy Machine. I don’t give a shit if the people in my ears are gay, straight, bi or confused.

My problem with Queen is entirely one of musical taste. To reiterate, they are tasteless. Bohemian Rhapsody might have been funny when you were watching Wayne’s World as a twelve year old but it’s clearly time to stop pissing in the shallow end of music and move on.

Paul Holmes

Paul Holmes is shit. Shauny and I would tell you that ourselves but we have a policy of never writing anything we can "borrow". With that in mind, we're delighted to have Diane Revoluta on board to put the Jurassic journalist in his place after he wrote this awful piece of nonsense about Waitangi Day. What follows below is taken directly from Di's blog.

My rewrite of Paul Holmes’ article entitled ‘Waitangi Day a complete waste: It’s time to cancel our repugnant national holiday’, featured on the New Zealand Herald website, 11th February 2012.

Waitangi Day produced its usual hatred, rudeness, and violence against a clearly elected Prime Minister from a group of hateful, hate-fuelled weirdos who seem to exist in a perfect world of benefit provision. This enables them to blissfully continue to believe that New Zealand is the centre of the world, no one has to have a job and the Treaty is all that matters.

In one small part of the country, people protested in a largely peaceful manner during a speech from the leader of a party that seeks to progress the economy in the short-term at the expense of our future generations’ interests in our land and assets – a man whose entire public persona is geared towards appeasing the white, middle-class New Zealander; and protested the fact we live in a country where the indigenous group of a nation can be labelled a group of ‘hateful, hate-fuelled weirdos’ in our leading newspaper. Also, I don’t know how to use the thesaurus function in Microsoft Word so I have used both hateful and hate-fuelled in immediate succession. Elsewhere, Waitangi Day produced its usual scattering of picnics, sleep-ins and celebrations of the birth of a nation, 172 years ago.

I’m over Waitangi Day. It is repugnant. It’s a ghastly affair. As I lie in bed on Waitangi morning, I know that later that evening, the news will show us irrational Maori ghastliness with spitting, smugness, self-righteousness and the usual neurotic Maori politics, in which some bizarre new wrong we’ve never thought about will be lying on the table.

I am a washed up, former TV presenter who was fired almost ten years ago but tries to cling to my D-grade celebrity status by writing a column for an even lower-brow news website. I use long strings of adjectives to reach my word count.

This, we will have to address and somehow apply these never-defined principles of the Treaty of Waitangi because it is, apparently, the next big resentment. There’ll be lengthy discussion, we’ll end up paying the usual millions into the hands of the Maori aristocracy and God knows where it’ll go from there. Well, it’s a bullshit day, Waitangi. It’s a day of lies. It is loony Maori fringe self-denial day. It’s a day when everything is addressed, except the real stuff.

As well as writing boring columns that no one would bother to read were it not for the curiosity of seeing just how low I will go in an attempt to make a comeback, I also consider myself quite the legal beagle. I have read the Court of Appeal judgement of New Zealand Māori Council v. Attorney-General but I consider myself to be a greater legal mind than former President of the Court of Appeal, Sir Robin Cooke, and therefore reject his widely-accepted interpretation of the Principles of the Treaty and will continue to refer to them as ‘never-defined’. Also, sometimes I swear in the hope cool kids will like me.

Never mind the child stats, never mind the national truancy stats, never mind the hopeless failure of Maori to educate their children and stop them bashing their babies. No, it’s all the Pakeha’s fault. It’s all about hating whitey. Believe me, that’s what it looked like the other day.

Māori can be blamed for all of society’s problems. Māori parents are especially at fault. They should follow the example of exemplary parents like myself. The children of perfect, white parents like ME never develop $1000-a-day P habits.

John Key speaks bravely about going there again. He should not go there again. It’s over. Forget it. It is too awful and nasty and common. It is no more New Zealand day than Halloween.

I am orgasming over John Key so must write in short sentences.

Our national day is now Anzac Day. Anzac Day is a day of honour, and struggle, bravery and sacrifice. A day on which we celebrate the periods when our country embraced great efforts for international freedom and on which we weep for those who served and for those who died. I wouldn’t take my three great uncles who died at Gallipoli and in France - Reuben, Mathew and Leonard - to Waitangi Day and expect them to believe this was our national day. I wouldn’t take my father, veteran of El Alamein and Cassino, there. Nor would I take my Uncle Ken who died in a Wellington bomber, then try and tell him Waitangi Day was anything but filth.

I am related to white men with noble sounding names. I am will now go about dragging their names through the mud by association to me.

No, if Maori want Waitangi Day for themselves, let them have it. Let them go and raid a bit more kai moana than they need for the big, and feed themselves silly, speak of the injustices heaped upon them by the greedy Pakeha and work out new ways of bamboozling the Pakeha to come up with a few more millions. When you start doing talkback or any kind of opinion broadcasting in New Zealand you learn that certain groups are loony, highly vocal, highly organised and they never rest. The second looniest are the anti-fluoride crowd. But leave them aside for today.

Isn’t it funny how I use te reo Māori here? How ridiculous – an indigenous culture having a unique language. In addition to heaping offensive stereotype upon offensive stereotype about Māori being ‘big’ and only good for gorging themselves like the savages that they are, I will also use words like ‘loony’ because the only thing funnier than racial minorities is people with mental illnesses.

The row actually started with Piri Weepu filming a public health commercial in which he’s seen bottle-feeding his daughter who has an allergy to dairy and the message is that she will grow up in a non-smoking house. That was the message, for God’s sake. And it’s a nice image. Dad, an All Black hero, Maori of the Year, bottle-feeding his little girl.

Please ignore the obvious irony of me holding up Piri Weepu as some great, iconic Kiwi father when I have just spent the past 500ish words either explicitly or implicitly stating that all Māori are – among other things – weirdos, lazy, greedy, hateful, ‘loony’, abusive, ‘silly’, self-righteous and manipulative. It is an irrelevant point.

Many mothers would have appreciated seeing a baby being bottle-fed. Others appreciated that it showed a man involved in an intense part of nurturing baby. One or two mothers came forward this week and spoke about how they’ve been monstered by bullying women in supermarkets who berated them for buying formula.

HE’S FEEDING A BABY. HE’S TAKING AN ACTIVE ROLE IN PARENTING. He’s also part of the group of Māori parents that is wholly responsible for all of the child abuse and educational failures in this country, but ignore that because HE’S A MAN AND HE’S HOLDING THE BABY. Women, bow your heads.

Most mothers want to breast feed, I’m sure. No one disputes this. Some simply can’t. And in the case of Piri’s little girl, she can’t handle dairy. But the hysterics saw a man, a bottle and a baby and were about to erupt. Never mind the positives, the non-smoking household, the All Black tenderly feeding his little girl. There was man and a baby and a bottle and it was the crime of the century.

I have felt the need to refer to Piri’s daughter as his ‘little girl’ three times in this article. This is to emphasise the tenderness of a man feeding his child. Also, please take special note of how progressive and open-minded I am in realising that not all women can breast-feed.

Take it off, screamed La Leche, obviously. And suddenly the segment disappeared. The chief executive of the Health Sponsorship Council, which made the ad, is Iain Potter. Mr Potter says the council received overwhelming opposition to the bottle-feeding clip. I bet it did. And I bet I know who from. Iain Potter should show some common sense, grow some balls, and learn to stand up to a highly organised band of intolerant people.

Obviously, this group were screaming. They’re hysterical women! Poor old Iain Potter was subject to so much screaming from these harping harpies that, being the ball-less, senseless man that it is, he listened to them! Outrageous. Oh, also, me having the audacity to call anyone else on this planet intolerant? Just put that in for some lols.

Overseas, just to change the subject and keep an elegant internationalism in the column, can you believe Russia’s and China’s intransigence at the United Nations Security Council on the matter of Syria?

I am tiring of attacking Māori and hysterical women, let’s move overseas and find new groups of people about which I can make offensive comments!

So now Syria will grind on in broken, abject misery for the rest of the year until they shoot the despot. I can’t figure old rat-face Bashir. He must know that he’s going the way of Gaddafi, with a refuge in a filthy sewer pipe for a while before the bullet in the head, being towed backwards through the streets to public display in a meat locker.

People from countries like Syria and Libya are lower beings than even Māori so I am going to talk about them as less than human and instead make analogies to rodents. I will just sit here waxing lyrically about the situation in a country where hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed and amuse myself by being grotesque. Cool?

He’s married to a very beautiful British woman, Bashir, a real English rose. One report suggested she and her family had tried to leave Syria last week but the convoy had been seen and turned back. She must know what’s coming. Armageddon is what’s coming. One dreads to imagine what they’ll do to her pretty face.

I am going to end this article with a completely irrelevant mention of Bashir’s wife, who – like Piri Weepu’s daughter, but unlike my male ancestors who fought in wars – is not worthy of an actual name. I then will reassert my journalistic prowess by ending this vitriolic rant with the one concern we all have about the unrest in Syria: the fate of the white woman’s pretty face.

Di, we thank you for your insightful translation.

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is shit. Here's why.

First, how many of you omit the possessive apostrophe and write "Valentines Day?" You know it's the day of St Valentine, right? Following from that, how many of you write "Valentines Day" after posting an annoying meme on Facebook to show the world you know how to use some form(s) of punctuation? Well Captain Awesome, now that you can demonstrate the difference between:

(i) "A woman, without her man, is nothing" and;

(ii) "A woman: without her, man is nothing,"

maybe you could learn to use a fucking apostrophe.

Of course I'm only using one form of smarm to criticise another but the message of this blog is that everything is shit and that includes me. Naturally, I'm single and unlovable and VD is another slap in the face but that's not the motivation for this post.

The greater problem with VD (yep, that's the joke, you got it, well done) is that it's yet another conduit for those without their own thoughts to blindly do as they're told by external entities, not just with the lubby-dubby crap but with our gender roles. Men, buy a tacky card cos Hallmark told you to. Men, spend thirty times the regular price on a single bloody rose which will die in a week cos the florist told you to. Ladies, don't be so fucking frigid and put out for once, even though we all know it's only men who enjoy sex. This is the one day a year that men NEED to show their women (obviously) that they appreciate them by following the well prescribed "idiot's-guide-to-stuff-girls-like" you've seen on every bullshit TV show and movie. Dontcha go stepping out of your gender roles or anything. This is a time warp. The 1950s ended over half a century ago but not on February 14. Every other day of the year, blokes can be a complete tools cos there's always/only Valentine's Day when we can show we care by doing the things society has told us that we can do to show we care. Men, we've put it into a window and institutionalised it so we won't look like sissies.

Well fuck that.

My heart is well and truly broken on VD because I've got to watch normally thinking adults be dictated to without regard for logic.

Here's some Harry Nilsson, not for any of my ex-girlfriends but for everyone who fell into the quagmire of VD.

Money Bill Williams

Readers have been getting frustrated with the low calibre of writing on this blog so Shaun and I drafted in Craig Thornley to sort things out. Here's what Craiggy has to say about Money Bill Williams....

Some would say that taking a shot at $BW is aiming for an easy target, but given that his five defeated pro-boxing opponents haven’t managed that task, I think he is fair game. Then again, I’m not a grossly overweight sickness beneficiary or facing methamphetamine charges, so compared to his previous opponents I think I have a fairly good chance.

Many of you will leap to his defence, citing that he is a ‘superstar’ who has achieved a number of impressive feats in the sporting arena. I can’t argue with that. He is a natural athlete and he has achieved highly in numerous sporting endeavours. There are others who will simply say, “don’t be a hater, bro”. To those people, go crawl back into the primordial ooze from whence you came, once you are done packing my groceries of course. Secondly, I remind you that anonymous hate on the internet is what the 21st century man does best.

There are any number of fronts you could attack SBW from. Some would start by attacking the fact that he has won a national boxing title despite having never fought someone who has seen inside a gym. Others would question the fact that he only has strong rugby performances against minnow teams and he got himself sent off for a ridiculous no-arm tackle in the first serious RWC game he played in. Some would take the easy road and point out that he is a terrible person because he is a convicted drunk driver – or has everyone forgotten that?

But wait, there’s more. While there are plenty of athletes who milk every dollar out of their contracts and sponsorship deals, my issue with SBW is that he steadfastly refuses to admit that he is just in it for himself. He claims he does it for a higher purpose and that it’s best for everyone. I call bullshit.

He’s not the first to walk out of a sporting contract, but rather than just come out and say that he got a better offer, he walked out on the Bulldogs without even notifying team management that he was doing so, and then claimed that it was a protest against the NRL salary cap. Bullshit, Sonny. If you ditch your team mates mid- season, don’t try and tell the world it was some kind of noble self sacrifice for the good of the players, don’t guiltily scuttle off in the night like that time you got caught cheating on your Mrs in a hotel toilet, and especially don’t pass up the opportunity to apologise to the fans of the team you have disadvantaged by your actions, even when given the chance to do so on national TV.

People were shocked when he bailed from the Bulldogs and were surprised when he bailed from Toulon, but at least that was so he could pursue “his All Black dream”, like every good kiwi kid should. I got that too, until he refused to sign on with the NZRFU for more than a year so he can “keep his options open”. If you were handed a contract to sign on to ‘living the dream’, surely you’d sign it, right? If you want a short contract so you can shift back to league when your ban runs out, just come out and say it. But in the mean time, stop appearing in the All Blacks ads that talk about the legacy of the jersey and what it means to you.

No matter which side of the fence you view it from, SBW is an affront to disciples of both the amateur and professional eras of sport. Those brought up on the sporting cornerstones of ‘team before self’, loyalty to the jersey and seeing things through to the bitter end find his inability to commit to a code, let alone a team, to be appalling. Those brought up in the modern era where players are tradable commodities should be equally outraged that he has defied the rules of the professional era by walking out on contracts and breaching sponsorship conditions - if you are going to build your brand by signing contracts, at least have the decency to hold up your end.

For me, SBW has trodden the well worn path of those who started with some credibility, but now are residing in a certain circle of hell reserved for those who have lost it all by selling a brand, an ideal version of themselves that can’t be backed up. At least he could probably catch a U2 concert while he’s there.

Diary of a Les Mills Person

This week, we had the misfortune of meeting an Auckland-based Les Mills Person and hearing about their week. We wrote it down to preserve the timeless wisdom.

Monday: 6am Body Pump. Great session, feeling energised. Go to job at law firm/advertising agency/radio station. Eat low carb, high protein lunch.

Tuesday: 6am Body Kombat. I love this class but I wish the boxing gloves weren’t so hard on my hands. Go to job at law firm/advertising agency/radio station. Eat low carb, high protein lunch.

Wednesday: 6:30am Weights Session to add tone to problem areas. Go to job at law firm/advertising agency/radio station. Pick up takeaway lunch at Revive. Treat myself to wheatgrass shake even though I know it’s actually packed with sugar.

Thursday: Day off. Stay late at law firm/advertising agency/radio station. Sometimes I get the feeling that my boss doesn’t respect me as a person. I don’t know why that is. I mean, he’s so flirtatious with me at work drinks.

Friday: Kickstart day with Body Pump. Go to job at law firm/advertising agency/radio station. Meet other Les Mills people for drink at BCC. Conduct superficial conversation. Midnight: go for dance in Ponsonby. Wear clothes that show off my body. Meet hot guy from another law firm/advertising agency/radio station. Exchange numbers. Resist temptation to eat takeaways on way home despite being drunk.

Saturday: Hungover. Address hangover with high protein, low carb breakfast. Attend 11am body pump. Wooahh yeah feeling energised! Nothing like a great session to blow out the cobwebs. 2pm: go to Ponsonby beauty salon for spray tan and IPL treatment. After treatment browse Ponsonby shops for expensive clothes. 8pm: have a few relaxed wines with the girls. End up going out for a dance again. Meet 31 year old small business owner on again-off again boyfriend at the Long Room. Stay the night at his house and have some really great sex. Man I love my Les Mills body- it's so empowering being this fit and hot. He loves it too.

Sunday: Wake up late and find 31 year old small business owner on again-off again boyfriend has cooked me breakfast. Older guys are the complete package. If only I was the sort of person who could be tied down. I know he’d love that. Finally roll out of bed and go to Freemans Bay New World to stock up supplies of pro-biotic yoghurt, spirulina and organic fresh fruit. Catch an episode of Geordie Shore on MTV. Oh my god it cracks me up how superficial those people are. I could never be like that. Wow, I deserve an early night tonight, big week ahead. Smother face with bio-oil and turn in.

Monday: Repeat.

Dr. Keith Ablow

I was incensed when I read this, which some of you may already have seen on my Facebook page. This blog doesn't aim to take down easy targets and everybody knows Jon Stewart does a better job than we ever could of making Fox News look ridiculous but I couldn't let this one pass.

Republican Presidential hopeful, Newt Gingrich is married to his third wife. He cheated on his first two wives and he admits to that. He has also been accused of lobbying his second wife for an open relationship - a claim which he denies. UUJM takes no position on open relationships between consenting adults. UUJM is also open to the idea that a leader could still be very good at their job whilst having a sordid private life. We do not condone cheating but this blog isn't really about that. That would be too easy. This blog is about the rubbish logic Dr Keith Ablow uses to suggest Gingrich's weak moral fabric reveals personality traits that are desirable in a president. Hmmm....

Ablow starts by positioning him self as the unfairly battered defence lawyer, laying out a case for a client who deserves a fair trial in the face of the media who, "can’t seem to help itself from trying to castrate candidates for the prurient pleasure of the public." Well, well, well. Thank goodness you're here, Ablow. We need someone who is concerned about the economy, employment, promoting freedom and protecting the world from the threat of Iran. Game on.

Ablow makes a point of being "coldly analytical" rather than moralising. He'd have to really, wouldn't he? He's defending a cheat who hurt innocent people. He's also defending a hypocrite: Gingrich lead the charge against Bill Clinton's infidelity in the 1990s and has spent much of his career reciting tired tory cliches about "defending the institution of the traditional marriage."

The first point made by our Republican quack hack is this:

"Three women have met Mr. Gingrich and been so moved by his emotional energy and intellect that they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with him."

Whoop-dee-doo. Steve Earle has been married seven times. He's had six wives including one he moved with his "emotional energy and intellect" so much that she agreed to marry him twice. Steve Earle has "moved" more women than Newt Gingrich so he must be a better candidate for president, right? What's that Ablow? You don't think someone who is a vocal opponent of the death penalty and the Iraq War should be president? Didn't think so, dick.

On to A-blowhard's second point then. He notes that "two of these women felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married." Wow. Convincing women to be the other partner in a homewrecking affair. What a guy.

Ablow suggests that the former freaker of the house must be so attractive that voters might try and give him a third term. I suggest that Gingrich is a dispicable human being.

The doctor's fourth point is this:

"Two women—Mr. Gingrich’s first two wives—have sat down with him while he delivered to them incredibly painful truths: that he no longer loved them as he did before, that he had fallen in love with other women and that he needed to follow his heart, despite the great price he would pay financially and the risk he would be taking with his reputation."

To Ablow, this suggests Gingrich is unsparing, direct and follows his heart. What this actually shows is that he follows his cock. He lacks the mental fortitude to do basic things like remain faithful and, here's some jargon from that free market you folks love, keep the contract he agrees to that says "to death do us part." It also says "in sickness and in health" but Gingrich wasn't the least bit disturbed about cheating on his first wife when she had cancer or his second when she had multiple sclerosis. What a prick.

Gingrich is probably charming. He'd have to be given his looks have earned him comparisons to the Marshmellow Man and Dwight Schrute. The problem is, he doesn't have a single moral fibre to sew with. How anyone can argue that that is desirable in a leader is beyond me. Machiavelli argued that leaders might have to be cruel to be kind. He never argued they should cheat on their extremely sick wives while preaching the opposite.

So how is Ablow a doctor? Does he have a PhD in shitheadery or a medical qualification in Republican hackery from the school of Fox News? I've heard more logical arguments on the intersection of politics and morality from Doctor Dre, Doctor J and Doctor Pepper.

We welcome your comments.

Crime and Punishment

Crime totally sucks for the direct victims, and for society. It leaves us feeling violated and vulnerable, makes us weary of investing in economically productive activities, and keeps communities chained to a vicious cycle of unemployment and poor parenting (see above). But punishment also sucks. "Lock 'em up and throw away the key" say the talk radio masses. Do you have any idea how much that actually costs? A report from 2009 noted that each prison cell built under the Labour Government (which got tough on crime to keep voters happy) cost taxpayers $643,000. Even under the new government's 'no-frills' plan, they're only dropping the cost by half (which we know won't happen in the end as costs invariably blow out with these sorts of things). So for every 100 extra people you chuck in jail, we have to pay between $32 and $64 million, not to mention the year-on-year expenses! To house another 100 crims! The talk radio trope then quickly moves to 'well if its so expensive, shoot them' which is a hilarious proposal. I mean, no industrialized democracy could possibly let the state kill people, right?

Maybe, just maybe, we need to revisit the whole 'crime' thing and find some better answers both as to causes and treatment. Hey, they might even be a hell of a lot cheaper! I'm not talking hiring people to hug rapists because their mummy didn't hug them enough, I'm talking about serious ways to reduce the burden on society of low-grade crims. If we take the easy way out and admit that all or most criminals are 'evil by nature and unreformable', we're pretty much fucked. Crime breeds more crime, and by the way the New Zealand's prison population in growing, before long we'll be exporting the stuff. (We’re probably already exporting it to Australia).

Sadly, if there is one thing that electorates can't resist, it's a good old 'I mean, society's going to the dogs, we need to get tough on law and order' appeal by a politician. Can nobody see this is a hackish trope calculated to produce exactly the response that you then provide? Are you that trusting of politicians' intentions? Surely not. Surely you realize that economic change of the sort our country has experienced over the past four decades, increasing rapidly over the past two, is always accompanied by new pressures in society? Do you really want to go back to the 1950s when there was 'no crime' (false), 'everyone was well behaved' (also false, it's just that you were mates with the local cop), 'people left their doors unlocked' (so what) and 'kids respected their elders' (if by that you mean quietly followed their example of binge drinking, domestic violence and drunk driving)? It's inevitable that times past acquire a rosy patina as memories fade, that's natural and human. But you also forget how regimented that society was, how the government had it's hand right up the arse of every sphere of economic life, taxing the shit out everything while preventing you from buying decent Japanese cars and drinking lattes.

To believe that we can a) turn back the clock and b) retain only everything 'good' that the ticking clock has given us is just bullshit pure and simple. We're in new times with new pressures and new challenges to overcome. Let's have a scrap of new thinking to go with it please.

Oh, and The Sensible Sentencing Trust is poorly named. Very poorly named. On an unrelated note, the novel 'Crime and Punishment' is probably very good. I haven't read it though.

Happy Birthday to Us!

Kia ora koutou,

This is the second post for 2012. I was too busy ripping out Simon Doull, so I forgot to wish you all a crappy new year last time. Crappy new year. 2011 was mighty shit with the Thugby World Cup, Alasdair Thompson's outdated outbursts, snow in Wellington, Black Swan, honours, EARTHQUAKES, songs about earthquakes, and all sorts of other awfulness. If the rubbish line up at Bug Diy Oet is anything to go by, 2012 promises to be just as much of an abomination.

We're not here today to celebrate the end of a terrible year. Shauny and myself would like to pat ourselves on the back for turning one! Over the past twelve months, our blog has been viewed nearly 5,500 times. Only, like, half of those have come from us refreshing the screen. Even though most of you only tune in to tell us we're shit, we would like to thank you for your readership. We'd especially like to thank those that spread the wise words of UUJM through social media or word of mouth. That view count is a direct line to my self-esteem and I can never get too much of that.... We'd also like to thank our guest columnists, Richard 'Mayer Slayer' Flanagan and Helena from Seatoun. It's cos of you guys that people sometimes accidentally read something written by me or Shaun.

To mark our first birthday, me and Shauny would like to post a list of things that aren't shit. Don't worry, we'll be back to hating next week.

We like:

- The 'h' in Whanganui.

- The two 'h's' in MicHael LHaws.

- Gavin Larsen, Nathan Astle and Chris Harris - New Zealand cricket offered kids heroes at one point.

- Steve Braunias - This is funny. So is this. I think he spelled 'Lhaws' wrong though, see above.

- Gay soldiers.

- Starting the national anthem with Māori.

- Putting the macron on the 'ā' in 'Māori.'

- New Zealand micro-breweries - once upon a time, Macs and Monteiths were impressive brews but as time goes on, they're increasingly guilty of dropping the ball. Thank goodness for the latest generation of craft brewers. Three Boys, Emersons, Croucher, Epic and Tuatara all make good piss. Good on you team! Sorry Tui, you didn't make the cut.

- Speed limits.

- Sweetman hating your favourite band. Fat Froggy's Dip are bad. Sucks Sucksty are worse.

- Feminism

- Helen Clark's pantsuit

- Kiwi beaches that are at least great for walking on even if the weather is rubbish.

- Slower drivers pulling over at safe moments.

- Alton Worthington.

Feel free to add to our list, give props to your favourite brewery or tell us we're wrong. Whatever your response, thanks for reading!

Simon Doull

Simon Doull is shit. How is this loser equipped to commentate international cricket matches? He has an unspectacular test bowling average of 29.3 but at least he has an underwhelming number of wickets with 98. This unimpressive record continues into his ODI figures: 36 wickets at 40.52 with an economy rate over 5 runs an over. He wasn't particularly fast or particularly accurate or particularly economical. Why would I turn to him for "expert" insight on Sachin Tendulkar or Shane Warne? (Warne can commentate while playing better than Doull can from the commentary box!) The Greek Finance Minister might be a player on the world stage in his field but he's clearly not fit to hawk his wares as a consultant. Oh, and he didn't start hitting on Possum Bourne's widow as soon as the driver died, nor is he associated with that horrifying entity known as The Rock radio station. Come to think of it, the Greek Finance Minister probably knows more about women, music and international cricket.

I mean, let's compare "Doully" with Mark Richardson. "Rigger" is easily New Zealand's best test batsman since Martin Crowe. His average would've been better than Crowe's if he'd had an Andrew Jones or a John Wright or whoever to bat with him for lengthy periods of time. He's also a favourite of the beige brigade having embraced his nickname (a nod to his slowness in scoring and running) and partaken in the running races in the skin tight suit against members of the opposite team. He's also consistent funny in a self-deprecating fashion on The Crowd Goes Wild. All of this means Rigger is a guy I'm willing to take insight from. Doully doesn't share any of these characteristics desirable in a commentator.

In saying that, while Rigger may be qualified, he is rarely illuminating. More than can be said for Doully though. Sheesh. All Simon Fool offers is greasy haircuts, tasteless beards, open collars revealing trashy gold chains and earrings that scream, "I'm a wanker." He looks like he should be on Outrageous Fortune but given everything about the guy is shit, we wouldn't dare give him the opportunity. Yes, he may have lead the New Zealand bowling attack but he did so when our cricket team was at its worst with a combination of wides and half volleys delivered at a donkey drop medium pace. Rubbish.

So what do you think? Are we being too harsh on Doully or are we on the money, as usual? Have we taken down the wrong guy? Does Simon Drool annoy you less than some of the other commentators?

Christmas Part III

Well thank God that’s over. Actually, thank humans that’s over. Christmas is very much a human-made invention.

We’ve already touched on how exasperating Christmas is and questioned whether the immense effort the season involves is worth it. To reiterate our suggestion, it’s not. Not even a little bit. The stress that pertains to driving, food preparation, decorating, obligatory church attendance, and present buying, not to mention the family functions that involve so much tongue-biting and tooth grinding that you’d prefer a mouthful of ulcers, is immense.

Is this significant cost made worthwhile by the benefits of seeing “loved” ones peel open the wrapping paper to lay sight on the sweater they’ll never wear? No, not one bit.*

But the problems with Christmas are deeper than this. Let me explain.

Those that partake in Christmas all-too-frequently confuse their obligatory duties with genuine generosity. They’re so busy patting themselves on the back that they manage to ignore the fact that Christmas is compartmentalised into a small portion of the year known, for good reason, as the silly season. If you’re rushing around, convincing yourself that you’re generous for two weeks a year, maybe stop and think about (a) the other 50 weeks in the year that you’re a selfish cunt and (b) entertain the notion that you might not really be that much of a legend if everyone else is doing it and you’re just buying shit to keep up appearances.

Really, Christmas is only a chance for western greed to manifest at its worst and convince itself that it’s healthy. All that shit you bought in a stressful state that the recipients don’t want or need is made from a combination of exploited labour and enviro-rape. Your body can’t handle any of that crap you’re eating. Do you see how this works? Western living is built on unsustainable practices and at Christmas we take all of this to a higher level and convince ourselves we’re wonderful people because of it!

Well fuck that.

Meri kirihimete from Shaun and Andy. See you at the Boxing Day sales.

*As a footnote, it is really shit when Americans don't realise their Office is an inferior version of the British original. If you're one of those people, you're a cock.

Christmas Part II

One of the major problems with Christmas is the need to give presents.

For a start, you might need to shop for these bundles of stress at a mall. It’s pretty obvious that malls are horrible all year round but Christmas takes every mall annoyance to a heightened level of shit. For a start, you might need to find a park. Fuck that. Do I really want to manoeuvre my vehicle in between three SUV’s that have never seen dirt and probably can’t handle the gentle turning arc required to get into the spot they’re all jockeying for? Doubt it - especially when my vehicle is a push bike.

Then, if I’ve survived the war zone that is the mall parking lot, I go inside the complex. What is this, a prison? They’re invariably playing Christmas music. We’ve already covered the problems with that. There will invariably be a mall Santa. Well, I guess we haven’t lied to the kids enough yet. No doubt there will be a fucking department store with a fucking Christmas sale.

Under no circumstances should you approach this horrid specimen of “first world” living. The staff of high school students and high school drop outs will being getting thrashed by senior management who decided to launch a Christmas sale the store lacked the space, expertise, intelligence and maturity to handle, not to mention middle management who will be hell bent on whipping the poor bastards in the firing line into shape to deliver the “deliverables” or “key performance indicators” to senior management. Of course, the customers will have shit for brains and will form an angry mob disguised as a queue, press the button on the fish that sings ‘Grandma Got Run Over By the (Motherfucking) Reindeer’ and tell you stuff “must be free” when it doesn’t scan the first time and say helpful things like, “smile mate - it’s Christmas” when you look at them, clearly unable t comprehend just what exactly is so fucking funny. Make no mistake about it: working in a department store is like being caught in the ultimate pincer movement.

If you choose to ignore common sense and enter this lion’s den of awfulness and manage to avoid being literally trampled to death you may come away with a shitty gift that was made in a shitty country with shitty labour laws and shitty standards of manufacturing that your shitty child/partner/parent/cousin/boss/neighbour/friend/etc might pretend they like for five minutes before forgetting about or might have need of three times a decade.

More on this next week....

PS: Don’t forget to buy a Christmas tree. Not only will you be allergic to it but you’ll have to clean up the needles it sheds and contribute to global warming in the process. Trifecta!

Christmas Part I

They say this is the season to be jolly. Hardly. Everything about Christmas is shit and this is the first of a series of posts explaining why. We’ve been playing grinch all year - did you really think we were going to stop now? Of course not - I have years of pent up Christmas retail rage to vanquish.

Without further adieu, let’s tear down the wreaths, spit in the cakes and examine the first bane of my yuletide existence: Christmas carols.

Snoopy’s Christmas

Let me get this straight - Christmas resolved World War I?! The Great War?! The war to end all wars?! Hmmmm. What seems more likely to me is that once the sun rose on Boxing Day the opponents started trying to blow the shit out of each other again.

I shouldn’t be surprised people go for this nonsense. Snoopy’s Christmas embodies yet another series of Christmas related lies adults tell children. For a start, we’re celebrating the birth of a man who was born to a virgin and apparently turned water into wine after walking on it before dying and coming back to life. Hmmmm. We know all this for a fact cos it’s written down in a book with talking snakes and parting seas and God knows what else. Said book was written 2,000 years ago when said man was alive and somehow we've worked out his birthday was on December 25. Forget Obama, I want to see that birth certificate.

Then there’s the lie about Santa. What exactly are we teaching kids here? Nag your parents for shit you don’t need and probably don’t even want and somehow they’ll communicate your wishes to a fat guy in a stupid suit who lives at the North Pole but hangs out at every bloody shopping mall (more on those abominations later) and he’ll visit you and every other kid in the world in a 24 hour period in a flying sled powered by obliging reindeer and no one will see him doing this even though he’d have to go so fast as to create a sonic boom? Yep, sounds legit, right?

So I guess if you’re gonna believe all that you’ll swallow the idea that grown men trained and ordered to kill each other will stop once they hear Christmas bells and peace will break out and rainbows will appear and the sky will rain chocolate and honey will pour from the taps and the streets will turn to gold. Hate to burst your bubble but World War I did not end on December 25, 1914....

I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

Firstly, what the hell is “Mommy?” That’s not even a word. Secondly, if she’s supposed to be in loving a relationship with Daddy or Steve the plumber or your other Mommy, you’d better ask her why she’s such a tart. Maybe Santa’s not giving her a chance to say “no.” You should probably be a good kid and break it up. After all, Santa’s only here cos you’re greedy and demanding. He probably just wants something in return for giving up his precious time to visit the house of a spoilt little shit.

Of course, if Mommy isn’t involved with anyone else she can do what she wants. Probably shouldn’t go too far with you watching though. Regardless, as we established above, Santa Claus is NOT coming to town.

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Most times I hear this monstrosity I’m in a ghastly shopping mall (there's a tautology) and it’s blaring from the store speakers. As this post and the ones that will follow will show, the writers of this “song” could quite reasonably be sued for subterfuge.

Winter Wonderland

It’s not winter. It’s summer and as we’ve established, you can barely tell from the weather. Still, what is wondrous about winter? We’ve already established that snow is shit. Winter is cold and miserable. Advocates of Christmas need to stop lying.

Silent Night

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Wake me up when it's over....

Jokes I Never Want to Hear Again

1. That’s what she said.

2. Your Mum....

3. Must be free then. (Heard from old people in stores when something doesn’t scan. More on shopping another time....)

4. Any Amy Winehouse joke involving the word, “rehab.”

5. Your Arnold Schwarzenegger impression.

6. Any Scribe joke involving the words, “not many, if any.”

7. Any joke trading on tired gender cliches, e.g.: women can’t drive, men don’t listen, etc.

8. So’s your face. (Scrubs looks pretty tired now, huh? It’s the Friends of the 00’s - funny and sexy in its day but incredibly dated a decade on. Now we’ve got Two and a Half Men. We’d blog about that but it would be easier to tear strips off than an Adidas rugby jersey. It’s below us.)

9. Nek minute.

10. Flight of the Conchords. I was sick of the references to "business socks" halfway through 2008. Why do you insist on ruining (a) FOTC and (b) my impression of you by pushing the same lines? Look, Bret and Jemaine aren't completely shit. All credit to them for success. Let's give some context though. North Americans, would they be as funny if they weren't from New Zealand? Kiwis, would they be as funny if America hadn't told you it was OK to like them? Are their lines really so great that they're still funny even though 2012 is fast approaching? Is Bret McKenzie's Muppets' theme not a piss-poor excuse for a song?

11. Any reference to Spinal Tap. Don’t tell me about turning things up to 11. That was funny when I was 16. A decade later, not so much. The fact that we’re the same age and you still find it funny says one of two things:

(a) when I was a teenager I had the sense of humour of someone in their mid-twenties; or

(b) in your mid-twenties, you have the sense of humour of a teenager.

Me and Shauny don’t like ambiguity so we’ll spell it out for you. You haven’t developed.

Dear readers, is there anything we've missed?

Getting a Haircut

I’ll qualify this statement first. Getting haircuts in Korea was actually quite pleasant. Sure, the staff at the salon would jockey to try and avoid cutting my hair cos they figured that I wouldn’t speak any Korean and that would make it awkward but eventually the poor unfortunate would be chosen and they’d get the job done. They were always efficient and accurate and they could follow my simple instruction: “베컴 머리를 주세요.” I don’t care what shitty Google translate tells you, that basically means, “please give me Beckham hair” (referring to the iconic faux-hawk) and that is what they’d do. We’d make small talk in Korean (read: I’d do my best to practice/flirt) and I’d get a great haircut from a pretty woman for a laughably cheap price.

All of this begs the question, why is getting my haircut in New Zealand so damn unpleasant? Let’s start with the store atmosphere. Why the fuck are you playing Gin Wigmore? Why are The Cardinals (her backing band) such suckers for punishment? I thought working with Ryan bloody Adams would be insufferable enough. Wah wah wah, New York street corners, roses, drugs, girls I used to know, girls called Rose I used to know, Mandy freaking Moore, wah wah wah. That’s Ryan but at least when he got it right (note the past tense) he was world class. What the fuck does Gin fucking Wigmore offer? My ears aren’t cheese so there’s no reason to be so grating. At least in Korea the music was excruciating in a language I couldn't understand.

Then again, I should’ve known the interior would be as tasteless as the sign on your exterior. Why is it hairdressers cannot resist pigeonholing themselves with vocational puns in the names of their stores? Here are some excruciating examples:

-Hair's to you!

-Hairport Salon

-Headquarters

-Getting Ahead

-British Hairways

-Shear Excitement

-Fringe Benefits

-Comb One Comb All

-Locks of Fun

-Mane Man

-Julius Scissor

-Barber Blacksheep

-The Brady Scrunch

-Curl Up and Dye

Really, the first cut is the cheapest? Shoot me now.

Secondly, my aforementioned faux hawk is a pretty straightforward style. Beckham had one which meant half of the All Blacks had one which means every male in New Zealand has had one or thought about having one. Every hairdresser in the country must have styled one before so how come when I ask for “short on the sides, a bit longer on top and at the back” I get a blank stare? Why do you want to know what setting the razor should be on and what style of scissor technique to use? Why can’t I just say “make my hair 8 weeks shorter than it is now? Why can’t you understand that I want it as short as you can possibly get it with some semblance of my preferred style so as to maximise the time between insufferable haircuts?

Thirdly, must we talk to each other? You’ve already suggested you have nothing to offer by playing Gin fucking Wigmore in your establishment which should never have been called 'Hair, Thair and Everywair.' All conversing with me will do is prove it. I don’t want to make small talk about my studies. “Oh political science, do you want to be a politician?” No. None of us do, at least in the foreseeable future. I don’t want to talk about Christchurch. My family are fine, thank you very much for asking, but I swear to God, if you ask me which school I went to I’ll stab you in the cock with your own scissors. I also don’t want to talk about the rugby. No one ever talks about rugby, they just recycle a string of meaningless cliches and newspaper headlines. Do us both a favour and forget the small talk.

Look, hairdressers, I know you’re removing an unsightly growth from my head but this isn’t brain surgery. It really shouldn’t be this hard. I want a hairCUT, not a re-style, not a perm, not a colouring, not a treatment, not dreads, not scalp waxing, not a word shaved into my head, not a head massage and not a million bloody questions on how to do your job. Give me a shorter version of what I’ve got. Sheesh, imagine what I’d say if I actually received a bad haircut....

So what do you think? Is going to hairdresser more stressful than it should be and is this entirely their fault?

Movember.

Let's get something straight from the outset: at this blog we are firmly against cancer in all its forms. Really.

Furthermore, it is laudable that some gentlemen take it on themselves to raise money and awareness of prostate cancer. But must it be for a WHOLE month? Must it be done SO obnoxiously? Must it be used as a sneaky excuse for those who cannot grow or wear a decent beard (ourselves included) to commit crimes of facial dis-organisation? Must it be used by consummate normtroopers as a chance to think they're wild when they're not?

NO! ENOUGH! If you care about mens' health, that's great. Just give the damn money directly!

And for the love of Zeus, spare us the sight of your bumfluff bleeding to death on your face.


Photo credit: Mike Halvorsen.

People who think they're all whack and shit for doing thoroughly normal things that heaps of other people do.

You fall into this category if you think you're totally-off-the-wall-Charlie-Sheen-earlier-in-2011-bat-shit-crazy for...

• wearing a costume at a costume party, an event in which everyone else wears a costume.
• playing the ukulele, an instrument whose rise in popularity is so meteoric that every shithead in New Zealand has one and thinks they're in Fly My Pretties.
• smoking flavoured tobacco through some unusual contraption.
• getting sunburned.
• being white and walking through a brown neighbourhood.
• riding the Trans-Siberian.
• watching back-to-back TED talks for 7 hours.
• dancing for a long time at a bar.
• going anywhere in Africa.
• exchanging a message with a celebrity on Twitter. When Ross Taylor says, “cheers” after you send him a “happy birthday” tweet you’re still not his best mate.
• this just in...growing a beard during Movember! Wear one all the time you sissy!
  

Any other suggestions?