This doesn’t really deserve to be in the category of “dead celebrity” (because let’s face it, he only qualifies on one of those counts), but news has come through that Corey Haim is carked it.

As always, Wikipedia was quickly updated:

[Citation needed].

Several weeks back I received a letter from the Sheriff’s Office/Department Of Justice/State Government.

“Oh dear!,” I thought. “What trouble am I in now?”* – (see note below)

As it turned out, they were of the opinion that I had a number of unpaid fines. But all was not lost, I could take advantage of the fee waiver currently being offered by the Victorian Government and only pay the base fine plus initial costs. Seems reasonable, but as it happens I was not aware of any outstanding fines against my good name.

Helpfully, the letter and included brochure stated that a special telephone number had been established for those who either wanted to check if they were eligible for or wanted to take up the waiver offer. So, wanting to find out if I did actually have any unpaid fines outstanding, the nature of such and if I could take advantage of the waiver offer, I called the number.

Constantly. For two days straight.

Each time I was told by some pre-recorded slut to fuck right off as they were no longer accepting telephone calls regarding the matter. The only option available was to leave a message on their voicemail service and request a call back – however there was no actual guarantee that you’d receive a follow-up before the fee waiver period ended. If that wasn’t appropriate to your situation, the only other option was to fuck off and work out your options on your own.

Thanks to my intarweb smarts, I eventually figured out that it’s possible to visit the Sheriff’s Office and sort things out there.

In case you’re wondering – yes, I did owe the cunts money. Turns out it was three Citylink fines I didn’t know about that were years old, and had been sent to an old address. For whatever reason the address hadn’t updated for that set of fines on their system.

Eventually the fines were paid off without incident at the Moorabbin branch of the Sheriff’s Office, apart from a small cock-up with the EFTPOS terminal which resulted in a brief wait for another officer to come in with a portable reader.

The whole point of this post is to bitch about how fucked off I am that it’s seemingly so fucking difficult to telephone a fucking department to find out if one actually has unpaid fines or is eligible for the waiver. If the brochure is going to advertise a number as an option then provide the goddam fucking resources in which to effectively manage the number of inbound calls. Even more so if it’s expected to be a popular campaign.

Let’s not forget that this 20-fucking-10. Why isn’t there the option to review this shit online? Saves people tying up phone lines for hours on end and makes the whole process a lot more fucking efficient.

I’d be pretty fucked off if I went out of my way to locate and attend a branch of the Sheriff’s Office and found out I either didn’t have fines or wasn’t eligible – especially if I was told to fuck off by a pre-recorded message on a telephone number I was told to ring in the first fucking place.

Fuck the Government, fuck Civic Compliance Victoria, fuck Citylink and fuck the goddam whore bitch who recorded the message on the advertised hotline. Rant over.

* – Actual thought was closer to “Oh fuck off, what do you fucking cunts want now?”

Well, it’s Tuesday again! I’m also told that yesterday was International Women’s Day.

Here’s the joke:

At World Women’s Conference, the first broad stood up and said “Last year during the conference we spoke about being more assertive with our husbands. Well, after the conference I went home and told my husband I would no longer cook for him, and that he would have to do it himself. After the first day I saw nothing. After the second day I saw nothing. But after the third day I saw that he had cooked a wonderful roast lamb”.

“After last year’s conference I went home and told my man that I wouldn’t do any grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning or washing for him anymore and he’d have to do it all for himself. After the first day I saw nothing. After the second day I saw nothing. But after the third day I could see a little out of my left eye”.

People like it when you’re topical.

The Herald Sun have trotted out another fucking story about public transport – this time about how it’s a death trap and how evil the Labor Government are for underfunding the whole affair:

Danger on the rails

EXCLUSIVE: TENS of thousands of Melbourne commuters are at risk of catastrophic accidents caused by dangerous train lines, Metro Trains has warned.

It said the Pakenham, Frankston, Belgrave and Hurstbridge lines were in the worst condition.

…

Opposition transport spokesman Terry Mulder accused the Government of failing to deal with the crisis.

“People are riding these train lines every day without any knowledge of the potentially catastrophic dangers they are facing,” he said.

“Simply put, this Government is a disgrace.

“They have lost sight of their basic responsibility to protect and care for the safety of Victorians.”

…

Mr Mulder said the myki disaster had sucked up money that could have been spent on repairs and maintenance.

…

I’ve made this point before, but I’m going to go ahead and say it again.

Fuck off, Mulder. You and your party lost any rights to bitch about the state of public transport after the Liberal party privatised it. Fuck off and die in a fire.

It’s also nice to see the Herald Sun are living in some kind of fucking time warp:

Sometime in early 2010, probably January, the two major supermarkets made announcements that both would commence pricing the large majority of their items consistently across the country. Some small exceptions would be made on fresh food products and some remote stores would still incur delivery charges built in to the prices.

Now, this announcement came as a bit of a fucking surprise to me. Mostly because I was of the belief that items were mostly priced the same across all stores throughout the country. I honestly had no fucking idea that a bottle of shampoo might cost more at the Toorak store of a supermarket than it might at Aspendale, for example. While such tactics may have been common knowledge – and while I do give credit to the big two for actually implementing this new pricing policy – it’s still pretty fucked for Coles and Woolworths to come out and say “Yeah, we’ve been price gouging the more affluent suburbs for years, but hey, now we’re making up for it!”. Of course, probably no mention of which products have increased in price to “match” other stores and maintain this new pricing policy. Cunts.

Anyway.

Earlier today I was shopping at the local Coles Elsternwick store and came across this display:

79 cents isn’t too bad a price for a chocolate bar. Problem is that anyone who has ever sampled a Wispa Gold will no doubt be aware that they are fucking disgusting, and it’s this reason alone which explains why they seem to be stockpiled by the billions at every fucking Coles supermarket in the country.

It comes at no shock that the same chocolate bar is also for sale at Coles Balaclava:

What?! 99 cents!?

A check at South Melbourne shows that they too have bountiful supplies:

99 cents as well.

It seems that Coles Tarneit also have these chocolate treats for sale:

Alrighty, so they’re 99 cents here as well. I’m beginning to see that this consistent pricing policy works for the most part.

But wait a moment … if you walk to the back of the store:

The fuck? I have to pay an extra 1 CENT if I get one from the display at the back?

Just to add to the lolz, Coles Online offers a completely different price altogether:

And one more before I finish up, extra hilarity goes to Coles Elsternwick for putting this sign next to the price ticket:

Bravo chaps. Bravo.

Anyone who knows me well will know that I watch about 8/10ths of fuckall television. The only shows I make time for are Family Guy and The Bill.

Being a newer show, it’s easy to score DVDs (or torrents) of Family Guy all the way back to the first season. Unfortunately it’s not that easy with The Bill, as only the first few seasons appeared to have been released on DVD and even then they’re as hard as fuck to come by. Any listings on eBay are asking around $80 a set and are snapped up very fucking quickly.

When I found a DVD outlet shop in Collingwood selling the box sets for $17 a hit, you can probably imagine how hard a load I blew in my pants there and then. First four box sets for $70!

I started watching The Bill back in about 1993 having never seen any of the early episodes, and that I know of they’ve never been shown on Australian TV. But, having watched Series 1, 2 and 3 it’s interesting to see the differences between what was produced in the mid-80’s to what is produced now.

The 2010 version of the show is based around a large fictional police station (or “nick”) called Sun Hill, where the officers contained within dedicate their time to crime fighting activities. The station canteen is seen only from time-to-time and the large majority of screen time revolves around officers performing their duties – with the odd personal storyline thrown in when the ratings need a good swift fucking kick up the arse.

However, The Bill from the very early days is so far fucking removed from what airs now it’s hard to believe that it’s the same fucking show. Bases down something like this:

The show revolves around a group of police officers in a canteen at a small “nick” in Sun Hill who drink a lot of tea. Most plots involve drinking tea, being interrupted to do some form of police work while drinking tea, drinking a cup of tea while doing police work, visiting a victim at their home or workplace and having a cup of tea, asking your guv’nor if it’s alright to go have a cup of tea or making a cup of tea for your guv’nor. Interestingly, in the 1980’s most English criminals would only confess to their crimes after being provided with a cup of tea. A villian could have raped, mutilated and killed a school-bus full of 6yo’s, but everyone would be falling over themselves to have a nice cup o’ tea and a biccy with the bloke.

Now, keep in mind I have absolutely nothing against a good cup of tea. I love the shit. It’s just strange to come across a TV show that dedicates so much fucking time to the consumption of tea.

But old-school The Bill wasn’t just about drinking tea.

It was about drinking tea AND getting your tits out:

It was also about showing tits AND bush (while drinking a cup of tea, of course):

Was she in a bath full of tea?

Unfortunately, modern episodes of The Bill only come about this close to seeing anything tasty, as seen in this example that doesn’t feature anyone drinking a cup of tea:

Come Series 3, most episodes featured less attention given to drinking cups of tea, with more screen time given to showing the viewing public what might actually go down on a day-to-day basis in a real police station. Take these scenes from one such episode relating to a tampon-related sub-plot:

At some point early during production it seems that the creators entered into some sort of deal with the alcoholic beverage industry, and teamed up to produce The Bill Drinking Game. The rules are quite simple: Take a shot of your favourite every time you see a part of a boom mic in frame (2 shots if you see the whole mic), a shot if you can see shadows of a crew member in the scene and a shot if you see a crew member reflected in a window, mirror or other such surface. I played this game the other night and it only took one episode before I was throwing up in next door’s pot plants and passed out in their front garden.

Despite the fact that the modern episodes are more tightly scripted, filmed and produced with more gripping storylines than the old ones (bonus points, however, go to old-school eps for frequent long tracking shots), I’m still giving the thumbs up to the early series for frequent tea consumption, swearing, tits, swearing while drinking tea, cups of tea being poured over tits and cups of tea swearing at tits.

Now that’s written, it’s off to have a cup of tea.

Well, who would’ve thunk it hey? An blog post!

The Herald Sun are running a story that involves police, an emo-bogan teenager and some god-awful crap that supposedly passes for music:

Teen Nathan Wilkie arrested for playing ‘offensive’ rap music from car

A TEEN has been arrested for listening to what police have deemed offensive rap music.

In what could be a legal test case, 19-year-old Nathan Michael Wilkie faces a charge of offensive behaviour after police arrested him when he was listening to music by underground rapper Kid Selzy on his car stereo.

Mr Wilkie was parked outside a Timboon supermarket, waiting for his mother, when he was arrested.

The Warrnambool Magistrates’ Court heard he was listening to lyrics such as “shut your f—— mouth bitch, f—— motherf—–”.

The court was told the arresting officers found the music offensive and derogatory to females.

…

If you read the Herald Sun version of the story, it seems that it’s a fairly simple case of bored police officers with nothing better to do with their time being ridiculously heavy-handed and enforcing obscure laws. It’s interesting to ask why the Herald Sun would back a teenager over the Victoria Police, but then again it is the Herald Sun.

However, Fairfax’s The Standard paints a slightly different – and probably more accurate – picture of the situation in lengthy and more detailed article:

Come listen to the creep show

A WARRNAMBOOL court case could have ramifications on where and when we listen to music, particularly if it contains profanity.

Nathan Michael Wilkie, 19, of Browns Road, Timboon, appeared in the Warrnambool Magistrates Court last month to contest a charge of offensive behaviour.

…

Police prosecutor Sergeant Sandra Skilton told the court that the police officers “found it offensive and derogatory to females”.

…

The court heard that when he was asked to turn the music down, Mr Wilkie allegedly said “I don’t give a shit”.

…

It seems to me that the whole affair comes down to a he-said she-said bruhaha and it’s going to be up to the court to decide who was bullshitting the least.

Now, if you ask me for my opinion (and you should), I’m guessing it played out something like this:

Bogan was waiting the carpark in his fully-sik ride decked out with a shitload of speakers (probably to compensate for a really small knob) for his mother to come out of the supermarket. While said bogan was waiting, he was playing the aforementioned CD at ridiculous fuck-off levels that could be heard for miles around. Police passed by, saw what was going down and asked the bogan to turn it down to a more reasonable level. The bogan refused to do so, telling them to fuck off and do some real police work. The police then took action as necessary.

It is a little hard to know exactly what the fuck went down, but I am kinda leaning towards the above description being fairly fucking accurate version of events.

I did have a look around on teh intarwebs for any music by this Kid Selzy motherfucker, and all I could find was his MySpace page (MySpace? If you want to be taken seriously, you don’t use fucking MySpace. And why the fuck does anyone over the age of 12 even use MySpace?). Several tracks by this so-called “artist” were there for the listen, and I can probably only say this: While they were nowhere near as bad as what I thought they’d be, I’m impressed that he’s been able to produce a CD by recording the pre-programmed beats from a Casio keyboard and saying some words over the top. Bravo. Puts all those real musicians to shame.

For once, I’m torn on the issue. I’m all for not having bogans driving around playing shit fucking music, but at the same time I really don’t see why it’s up to the police to decide what constitutes offensive material. Kinda seems like they’ve charged him with these offences as there was little else they could’ve done him for.

Now I just need to sit back and await the inevitable flood of intelligible comments from mates of the emo-bogan and the so-called artist.

Alrightly, it’s Tuesday. Again. You know what that means.

A little girl was playing in the garden when she spotted two spiders mating.

“Well, we’re not having any of that gay shit in OUR garden!”

Durp.

Alright, so The Age are running a story about some dame who had her handbag stolen from a supermarket in Mildura:

Handbag snatch: woman’s $125,000 in life savings stolen

A Victorian woman has lost up to $125,000 after her handbag was stolen during a shopping trip to a local supermarket, police say.

The 34-year-old woman collapsed when she walked into Mildura police station yesterday afternoon to report the robbery from the car park of the Fishers IGA supermarket.

Detective Senior Constable Paul Hollingworth said the woman, who emigrated from Iraq nine years ago, had loaded her car with her shopping and driven away from the Mildura supermarket about 2pm, not realising she had left her handbag in the trolley.

When she returned minutes later, the bag and trolley were gone.

Police say there was between $100,000 and $125,000 in the woman’s handbag, which she had been carrying with her for quite some time.

Constable Hollingworth said the woman was saving to buy a home.

“Different people have different ideas about how they keep their savings,” he said. “She was very upset.’’

…

First up, let’s get this out of the way:

Is there anyone who didn’t read the first two words of that headline and immediately thought of a fleshlight before giggling uncontrollably?

Anyway, on to the woman.

While I can accept the fact that she’s left her handbag behind accidentally, she’s a dumb fucking cunt for carrying around that amount of cash in her bag all the time. Too bad, so sad, goodbye. There’s really not all that much else to say on the matter.

Sympathy factor = 0.

The most important story of last week was not earthquakes. Nor was it the insulation scandal. Stabbings? Step aisde.

It was about burgers. Not just burgers. It was about the Great Burger Wars of 2010.

In early February, it appears that some hamburger store going by the name of Grill’d decided to be all “oh hi2u uni students, here’s a special offer for u!” and ran a promotion whereby a customer would receive a 2nd burger free of charge upon presentation of a coupon. This coupon was made available in print via a rag called Utimes, a monthly publication aimed at university students.

Utimes, by default, is a printed publication. However, taking a look at their website it appears that recent editions are made available for download in PDF format on a page-by-page basis. Now, it’s a little hard to tell exactly where the fuck-up fairy paid a visit – so either Grill’d fucked up and didn’t expect electronic distribution of their voucher, or Utimes didn’t inform Grill’d that their publication was also available online. Either way, it’s really up to the advertiser to research these things before booking the ad space, amirite?

Anyway, so then the clusterfuck starts: Grill’d finds out that people have obtained the electronic versions of their 2-for-1 coupon and have forwarded them on to all of their friends. Suddenly, the fucking thing has gone around the internet faster than a funny picture of a polar bear raping Elmer Fudd. At this point it appears that Grill’d have shat their pants when they’ve seen the sheer number of people wanting a FREE BURGAR!!!

Now, let’s step back for a moment. Utimes claim they have a distribution of 36,000 printed copies. So that means a potential at-most expectation that 36,000 free burgers would be claimed. That’s a fuckload of burgers already. Of course, being generous, maybe only 30% (or roughly one-third for you bogans who don’t understand percentages) would actually take up the offer. Still gives us about 12,000, which is still a fuckload. Just a slightly smaller fuckload than 36,000.

If we take a look at the electronic version of Utimes, page 14 has a small “editorial” about Grill’d. It mentions that there is a special offer on page 15. It’s interesting to note that the electronic version makes no mention of any offer, so either it was replaced by the artwork now seen once the DRAMA started, or it was some kind of tear-out coupon. Given that Grill’d themselves have stated that they expected people to “cut out” the coupon, I’m going to go with the first and that they seriously fucked up somewhere along the way.

Anyway, to get back to the point: As I said before, Grill’d decided that it doesn’t want to deal with all the bullshit anymore, and makes it clear that the only valid coupon is the printed version:

O Week – Uni Student 2 for 1 Offer

Here at Grill’d we run special offers from time to time, but usually they don’t create as much noise as this one.

…

If you’ve innocently received this offer via email from a friend and tried to redeem it, we are truly sorry.

The voucher in the printed version of the newspaper is still valid (contrary to some reports, it hasn’t been ‘pulled’), so grab a copy of Uni Times and bring it in.

…

Of course, this leads to the inevitable shitstorm on the Grill’d website, leading to comments on the blog entry in question being disabled due to the number of abusive and threatening responses being left by readers.

Then along comes Nando’s.

Being the attention whores of the fast food world, Nando’s have no issue with jumping in and one-upping their competitor. Whoever is in charge over at Portugasm Towers decided not only to honour the Grill’d voucher, but to also provide an electronic voucher for download. This electronic copy is welcome to be shared with friends, further adding to the lolz.

It’s not long after this that the fine gents at Grill’d realise what a complete PR fuckup this has been from the outset, and attempt to salvage what they can:

To the Naughty Corner!

First up we admit this whole Uni Times voucher issue has been a massive debacle. Big time. For that we apologise. Now we’d like to make things better.

…

You’ve since spoken loudly & clearly. You want us to buck up and honour the voucher. So from that’s what we’ll do – at any Grill’d restaurant until 15th March, 2010. All day every day.

…

The above post on their blog made clear they would then honour the vouchers – regardless of the origin. The once-loyal followers are split: some will return, others have defected for good. Nando’s don’t give a toss, as they came out of this unscathed and with no losses.

Score? Nando’s 1. Grill’d 0.

The great Burger Wars of 2010 continue.