hilarious australian beer commercial

http://www.bigad.com.au/

One of the better uses of Carmina Burana I've seen, actually. Uses a farked-up Java program to play the video but I got it to work on Safari okay.

Thanks for the pen.

I was talking to a friend tonight about her crap office job, and thinking that about half the people I read on the elljay have crap office jobs of one kind or another. They all work for neurotic incompetent failures who bully them, are paid badly and screwed on their benefits, and get impossible workloads followed by blame dumped on their heads.

This is because I know lots of people who are around 25, and if you're a smart 25-year-old finding a career you end up being the slavey for 35-year-old failures who've topped out at the supervisor level. They may start out human, but quickly decay into little Napoleons in chinos. There's a pompous, patronizing sadism this sort of toy emperor practices that's just the thing for grinding down younger, smarter employees.

I used technical skills to get out of this mess quickly and only had a couple of jobs this bad. Most of my friends, though, spent the 1990s working in places like this: temp office gigs, entertainment companies, variants on Innotech. Greg worked in a mailroom at a movie company for a while. His supervisor was too old to be the mailroom supervisor and be going anywhere, but had delusions of a future. He dressed for success, combined over his bald spot, and lied to his bosses about his skill at cost-cutting and improving efficiency. He made sure that no one got raises or got to use their vacation time, and never paid overtime, to show that he was made for the corner office. Once, unbidden, he decided to let everyone in his domain know what he was destined to achieve: "I see myself, in ten years or so, in an executive position. Because that's my goal, and I achieve my goals. I am going to have a mistress, and my own jet, and three houses". The young musicians and artists and soon-to-be graduate students sat there as the 35-year-old single mailroom supervisor from Burbank told tales of his future empire.

Greg wrote a song for him that was recorded on the Ferdinand CD Demoted to Greeter, a record that more than any other tells the story of all of us 80s kids getting fucked by the 90s. Here it is:

Thanks for the Pen (mp3, 2.9 MB). It's pretty loud and thrashy.

Let's call it as it is
You don't care
You won't back me up
Thanks for the pen!
I got it right here...
Thanks for the pen
Gonna throw it right back at you

Junkie Nation update

Hurray, the new Microgram report is out! Highlights of this one include:

• Heroin-saturated paper
  
  
• Blotter acid with 5-METHOXY-ALPHA-METHYLTRYPTAMINE instead of LSD in it
  
  
• Cocaine in granola boxes
  
  
• Opium chocolates

Plus of course a dissertation on people who take multistate car trips buying the maximum quantity of Sudafed at each drug store.

It's the bestest government publication ever. Infrequent, but syndicated as microgram so you can see when the next one comes out and click through.

This "jason_bateman" guy on okcupid makes good quizzes.

I hope he at least gets laid once or twice because of it; they're interesting and fun.

( humor. nazis. quizzes. cut. )

Cookie Dough Nation (first attempt)

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 1 Cor 11

Nick and I talked about culture tonight. I was still thinking about the conversation about Chuck Klosterman I'd had with threepunchstuff and we were on a similar topic: what the hell happened to culture in the last 20 years, and why are we assholes for not liking it?

I don't like:

• Junk pop culture
  
  
• "Retro" nostalgia for previous junk pop culture
  
  
• New junk pop culture made by pasting together previous junk pop culture
  
  
• Ironic references to junk pop culture made in order to at once enjoy crap and pretend you're superior to it
  
  
• The last 20 years of culture being in spasm remaking versions of itself, so that junk pop culture is now all slightly worse versions of earlier junk pop culture
  
  
• The glorification of junk pop culture as the new high art

I do like:

• High culture: Mozart, Zen gardens, Dante, Egyptian sculpture, gamelan.
  
  
• Disruptive modernist high culture: Marcel Duchamp, Jorge Luis Borges, Erik Satie, Virginia Woolf, Alfred Jarry.
  
  
• Disruptive pop culture: Bebop, Punk, New Wave film, DIY publishing, psychedelia, culture jamming, hip hop, graphic novels.

I am frustrated by a cultural environment in which many people do not want to grow up. The rallying cry of "we won't eat our vegetables!" is awfully sad. Partly because grown-ups eat their vegetables as a matter of course, but mostly because vegetables taste good if you take the trouble to try them. The Klostermans of this world hate any well-made thing, anything that demands full attention for more than a minute, anything that isn't sweet on the tongue, anything unfamiliar or challenging.

It's fine to drink chocolate milk sometimes, or put a Star Wars figurine on your desk, or listen to the horrible record you bought when you were 10. As your life's entire culture it lacks.

Last night I saw a woman of about 40 purchase cookie dough at the supermarket, eat about half of it in line, and then as we both left get into a bright yellow Tonka truck and drive away listening to A Flock of Seagulls on her car stereo. Chuck Klosterman, the post-modern irony crew, and her friends all think that's cool. I think she could do better and enjoy life more.

Note: I may continue to bore on this topic or even just rewrite this thing a few more times, because I'm not quite there. Sorry in advance.