ITWPT: the exit interview

Now this is pretty self-indulgent, but fuck it, it's a blog, they're self-indulgent by definition. Having just stuck a fork in the final episode of In The Worst Possible Taste - the rambling, swaggering first-person tale of Andy 'Angus' Young, bedraggled 2IC axe/vox of a washed-up Strayan rock band - I figured on telling some of the backstory of writing the ignormous heaving bastard of a thing, which I appear to have been doing since sometime in 2005. The decision to serialize it online was taken about two years ago, and some 111 eps and over 620,000 words later - well over three times the length of my PhD thesis, though just as majority-fiction in content - the end has finally been happened upon and staggered across. For those of you who've been there since the start, or near offer, cheers for taking part. For those who haven't, but want to get onto it, it'll still be up for a bit before I either take it down or (more likely) put it behind a login/registration wall. And probably stop reading this now as there may be spoiler-riffic revelations in the following, which is why we're having this convo here at Bollock World rather than across the way at flangegasket.blogspot.com.



So why did I write ITWPT? Couple of reasons. Boredom, since I was working a dull job at the time. Missing friends, having moved to NZ - since it is, in essence, a story about the nature of friendship, and obliquely, a tribute to mine - some of whom have been readers since the first ep (and long before, of course). Growing up, approaching/surpassing 30 and wanting to transcribe some of the tall tales and true from my youth. ITWPT inspirations are probably fairly self-explanatory. John Birmingham's Felafel/Tassie Babes diptych hit a chord, being the first time the story of every twenty-something sharehouse bunny had been told. Still Crazy, the British movie about another washed up rock band on the comeback trail, was both a trigger and a torment, trying to avoid recapitulating similar plot points re mentally ill former rock stars and potential resurgences thereof. But more than either, co-writing credits have to go to the rock festivals, dishevelled parties, sharehouse stupidity and above all the magnificent bastards who found their way into the story, mildly finessed from reality. I'm not Angus Young, but I think we know a lot of the same people. If you recognise yourself, kids, do take it as a compliment.

The basic idea of Flange Gasket The Band, with all the dubious album covers and song titles came from something I wrote years ago, the final installment in the Captain Stupidity Chronicles, a heroically terrible comic superhero series. In that final ep, the dodgy pub covers band of crimefighting idiot savant (more the former than the latter) and part-time drummer Captain Stupidity and friends (including his long-suffering, heavy-drinking offsider Dr Yobbo) somehow stumbles over international chart success following the accidental Triple J release of a rockabilly-thrash version of Accidentally Kelly Street by Frente. As you do. Reworking that final CS ep into a full novel, placed within an ostensibly recognisable society (rather than the rather Python-munted netherworld of Captain Stupidity) followed later.

But I could go on talking bollocks all evening. Would rather throw it over to the folks who read the series, and ask the question - what did you think? Part of the plan by serialising the thing was to get some honest feedback at the end of the story on how it read and what sort of percussive maintenance it needed to be betterer. In particular would love to hear
(a) questions about stuff in the series that confused or needed clarification
(b) obvious continuity errors or other plot fuck-ups I missed
(c) shit I should have left out for brevity to prevent it being longer than the Wheel of Fucking Time
(d) appropriate plot-points to introduce MOAR EXPLOSHUNS
(e) or MOAR GRATUITOUS ROOTING
(f) and probably most of interest of all, discussion of your fave character/location/song/invented swear word on behalf of Mad Mick 'Cunt my ringhole' Martin etc.

Comments section is below. GO.

Oh by the way... yes there will be Something Else after ITWPT. Not the same bunch of wankers, and not the same Implausible Length - particularly as the next project is tidying up last year's NaNoWriMo piece which topped out well under a tenth of the size of ITWPT. But that won't be too far away, in either leadtime or stylistic considerations.

The Doctor is OUT.

Death and toilets, Pixar style

Aside from the occasional break to stay in hotel rooms and nick shit, Your Correspondent spends much of his time on Planet Parenthood. As such he watches a lot of Disney. Usually unwillingly, given they're fascist culture-vulture bastards, but they're pretty hard to avoid even if you want to - much like trying to dodge Woolies or Coles over their pokie prickery in the Australian market.

Which brings us to Cars 2, which Monster v1.0 was kind enough to take me to this morning. I saw the first Pixar Cars film a couple of years ago - and thanks to the magic of DVD technology, have seen it approximately eleventy billion times since - and thought it was, in a word, a'ight. Nicely woven story, into which was planted a fairly decent parody-tribute of NASCAR, although the treacle-laden small-town-renewal subplot was a bit on the gagworthy side, particularly if your experience is of towns like Bangalow in northern NSW who were effectively saved rather than destroyed by being bypassed by highways. But, a decent kids' flick. Followed up by my personal pick of all of Pixar's output, the short-form cartoons of Mater's Tall Tales, where the Pixar kids were allowed to go just a little bit silly with the characters they'd worked up. It's worth a look, if you're mired on Planet Parenthood on a wet weekend with no immediate chance of rescue. Anyhoo, suffice to say, with a Monster of 4 1/2 years marauding around the place in full Lightning McQueen regalia, the upcoming release of Cars 2 was on the calendar a long way in advance.

So what was it like? In a word... a'ight. Having run the font dry of big-city-vs-small-town narrative, Team Pixar basically decided to chuck a stylistic U'ey and make a Bond genre parody-tribute, based around a nebulous World Grand Prix matchrace series. And it does the job. With one, minor, reservation. Surprisingly, it's actually pretty violent for a Disney cartoon. Guns, explosions, smash-up brawls, death and toilets, the lot. Yes, it fits the genre, and yes, cartoons have been violent since the medium existed - Bugs and Elmer, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, Tom and Jerry - but the point of cartoon violence is that no matter who does what to whom, everyone shakes it off and bounces back, rather than being killed to death - the key disconnect parodied by Itchy and Scratchy on the Simpsons. Also, those sorts of cartoons are generally not found on the family-friendly corporate label of Uncle Walt - either back in the day, or now on Disney Playhouse or the like. Put it this way - the number of torture-execution scenes I can recall from Special Agent Oso can be counted on the fingers of one hand of an exceedingly careless machine lathe operator. (Handy Manny after a few too many Tecates perhaps.) Monster v1.0 was fine with it, largely because it went over his head, but if you're the owner-operator of slightly older, more aware or more sensitive kids, you might have a few awkward questions to field re mortality, even if it's just of cartoon characters. (Kinda inevitably they offed the character of Doc Hudson between movies, but that was more due to the real-life-ejecting-from-twig of voice actor and racing god Paul Newman.)

All that pales into insignificance when faced with the real travesty of this film, which is casting V8 Supercar also-ran Frosty Winterbottom as one of the 'international stars', on a par with F1's Lewis Hamilton and NASCAR's Jeff Gordon. What. The. Very. Fuck. Clearly, a comedy name and an echoingly empty trophy cabinet are enough to have you considered alongside the biggest and brightest in motorsport. That or he had more spare time available than other V8 Supercar drivers, presumably on account of not having to nip off to trophy presentations all the time. It's odd, because Pixar seemed to put a lot of thought into their international stars. Lewis Hamilton's character car, for instance, was a McLaren. And black. See what they did there? It's very subtle.


Still, it's watchable. Which is just as well. As anyone on Planet Parenthood knows, thanks to the magic of DVD technology, I'll be seeing it again approximately eleventy billion times hence, so will have ample opportunity to reassess.

Or I might just hide Mater's Tall Tales in the DVD case.

The Doctor is OUT.

It puts the lotion in the basket

Gruntings. Your Correspondent was in the Suttee of Sails this week, partly because Work told him to be, partly because it was free, which is everyone's favourite price. I would emphasize though that it was NOT a junket. It was a training trip. This is a junket.


All those offended by the low-rent quality of that last joke are welcome to retain their receipts for a full refund on what they paid for this farrago of nonsense and arse.

Anyway, free shit. It's tops. Even when it's shit. Like the free shit to be had in your average big city, corporate-traveller-spec hotel suite. And free shit you must have, because you are on a junket. Not on a junk, because that's one of those boats they have in Hong Kong. Or a 1974 Leyland P76. Or the stuff Keef Richards stuck in his arm, leg and arse for ten years. Or the contents of Anthony Weiner's tighty-whiteys. (Which raises the question, with that precedent, can we now have Tony Abbott booted-out and fucked-off for exposing everyone in Australasia against their will to images of his sausage-and-beans?)

Free shit in hotels is, I will accept, usually pretty grim. In many places, with the onset of tight-arsed management reigning in freebies, the only free shit to be had is here.


However, the powers-that-be have thought it through; if it all becomes too hard to deal with, you can phone a friend. Which is probably more palatable an option than working it out with a pencil.

The etiquette of answering a call whilst answering a call isn't the only issue which faces the corporate hotel guest, of course. There's the question of how much it's appropriate to nick. How much free shit is legit, and how much makes you look like a preselection candidate for the next series of Hoarders? As you may expect, my advice is more is always better, and more than that is even always betterer. Take it all, baby. The coffees, the teas, the nasty powdered hot chocolate shite that looks and tastes like freeze-dried arse, the sugars, even the box they come in if it isn't specifically prohibited, or listed on the mini-bar checklist. The UHT milks, because you never know when you might need to poison @beeso. The crappy little three-sheet notepad and the pen that will last about as long as it takes you to forget which identikit beige palace you nicked it from in the first place. Nick these things. It is your duty as a servant of the firm who pay your wages. It's factored into the room tariff, so if you don't, it's like those hotel chain bastards are getting something for FREE. How the very fuck dare they, I would submit.

The bathroom, of course, is a verdant green paddock of potential free-shit-theftage. Complimentary toiletries? If one must... However, things have advanced a long way since the days when all you got was a paper-wrapped roundel of Lux toilet soap. Hotel toiletries have gone all sophistimacated. Headcount from Auckland: oblong cubes of artisan soap, individually boxed, two units thereof. Shower cap, possibly unused. 'Vanity kit', consisting of three cotton buds in a small cardboard box. I stuck one in each nostril and still didn't look like Prince's ex. It's possible I was doing it wrong, but I reserve the right to sue.


And then the Stuff In Bottles. So much Stuff In Bottles. Teeny-tiny squared-off bottle-ettes of potions and unguents. With just the tiniest bit of mission creep seeping into proceedings. One for shampoo, one for conditioner - yeah, fair enough. One for 'hand and body wash' - OK, but is that not redundant with the two (count 'em) blocks of soap already in the stocktake? And then, most bizarre of all, the 'hand and body lotion.'

Let's stop right there. I would be prepared to lay down cold hard earned cash, in the form of this 10 Euro note I found in a drawer while moving, which will shortly be on parity with a $10 note from an old Monopoly set, that none of the bottles of 'hand and body lotion' (or similar) found in any corporately-minded hotel suite - for there is at least one in every single fucking one of them - has been opened and used for any purpose at all, at any time. Other, I hesitate to suggest, than in the pursuit of executive relief. It's like the fucking Gideon's Bible, except for wankers. Insert joke here that will get me in trouble with the Godbotherers. Pause for editing.

More alarmingly - mostly for Godbotherers - I checked every bedside drawer, cupboard and storage nook - even the minibar fridge - and the particular hotel suite I was inhabiting this week had no Gideon's Bible to be found. Not a fucking sausage. Or a Gideon's Bible either. May have been the odd sighting of a 'fucking sausage' on the soft-porn pay-per-view but I wasn't that keen to check. Now this, I expect, leaves the religiously minded traveller in a quandary. How is it possible for heathen onanists to repent their self-abusive sins of the flesh without the once-ubiquitous word of God close to hand? (After wiping said hand on the curtains, presumably.) These filthy, disgusting hotel chain PERVERTS are enabling, nay ENCOURAGING, godless corporate hand-shandyists to interfere with themselves without any means of finding repentant salvation immediately thereafter, by making it no longer possible to bible-bash after bashing the bishop.

Still, as one might expect, science has the last laugh. The ingredients of aforesaid 'hand and body lotion' lists a range of slightly alarming constituents...

...which the more rational or reserved traveller may consider best kept a respectable distance from his reproductive componentry. In particular, one may note the most prevalent ingredient after water: mineral oil.

Well, look on the bright side. You'll go blind, but at least it won't rust off.

The Doctor is OUT.

I like to move it, move it

In its many years on the Magical Inter-Google, the World of Bollocks has never shirked the burning questions. Particularly if the question relates to being allowed to burn something. Tonight, we take on two, yes TWO, insurmountably arse-baffling quizzicalities which have flummoxed peons and gentry alike for, I dunno, at least as long as it took to read this wanktastic opening para.

The first question, which I shall call 'Question One', and which in this case also serves as the penultimate in this series of imponderables, is as follows:
Is it possible to pack up an entire 3 bedroom house in a day and a half?

To which the answer appears to be yes, if you have to. Wouldn't fucking recommend it as a leisure activity, though.

And indeed yes, we had to. Largely courtesy a sudden and inexplicable attack of koniophobia on behalf of the Qantas Group of airlines, which left us stranded in SE Qld a few extra days. For some reason a layer of volcanic ash which most other airlines could figure out a way to avoid - generally by flying under it - left Qantarse and Deathstar paralysed by fear at the data coming from their forecasts. From their finance department, not so much from the Metservice. Anyway, Air NZ stepped up like the champions they are - notwithstanding a, erm, slightly patchy record with low-altitude flight - and all was well. Eventually.

Which brings us to moving day, which also happened to be settlement day for both properties new and old. Yes once again it's fun times. But, as we, our solicitors, our realos and anyone remotely experienced in residential property transactions accepts, this shit can happen, and often does, and so long as all parties remember to pack their happy pants and their matching tie and handkerchief of patience, understanding and concilatory-dom-ness, everyone goes home (to their new home) happy.

A sentiment lost on the father of the buyer who turned up on the door about two minutes after getting the key - at a frankly implausibly early 10am - and demanded to know why were weren't already out of 'his' place.

Never mind that he (or his young bloke) and his lawyers were well appraised of the situation with both settlement days falling on Friday, and our not getting the keys to the new place until the deal was done on the old. That wasn't his problem. Ash clouds? Not his problem. In the end he stalked off, only to return and hassle the Crown boys (themselves down a man from the off due to illness) on the half hour as to when we'd be the hell out of his house. Clearly, old mate had a desperate compulsion to MOVE STUFF, some sort of deep psychological need to lug boxes of kitchenware into a freshly-emptied house. That, or he was a grumpy old prick.

At midday, when I answered the call to collect the keys to our new Palatial Hilltop Mansion, our solicitors let us know (somewhat apologetically) they'd been in receipt of an Official Dummy Spit (legal jargon) courtesy the Other Side, demanding to know when we'd get the hell off their lawn. Our reply: (a) they were welcome to park the truck out front and lug in whenever they liked, which was my position from the get-go (I was surprised the buyer didn't have a removals truck idling outside ready to disgorge, given it was of such urgent import to have us out); (b) at the current rate of process we'd be clear of the house in an hour, and off the property in two. Which was the height of vainglorious ambition, as I knew at the time, but at least it'd buy us some time before the coppers or bailiffs got dragged into things.

At 1pm, we dragged the last items from the house, kicking and screaming. They put up a damn good fight, and the front yard looked like the world's most epic Hard Rubbish Collection Day, but we'd made good on our pledge. The house was empty. As was the street. Empty of other removals trucks, at least.

At 2pm - or a little after, to tell the truth - the Crown boys triumphantly drew the bolts shut on the tailgate door, while I argued the remaining stragglers - a couple of neglected mountain bikes and a badly rusted wheelbarrow - into Dr Mrs Dr Yobbo's Subie. Any sign of the Other Side's removals truck? Or even of the buyer's old man stalking the premises, doing blockies in his beat-up Jap-import Toyota? No. Nary a fucking sausage, indeed.

At 3pm, the streetscape outside our previous residence was packed to the rafters with badly parked MILF-mobiles, picking up their sprogs from the adjoining primary school. A feature of their new home I wondered if the new owners had been aware of. Certainly weren't there to experience it this afternoon. Carport empty, gates shut. We shut the gates once in two years, I think.

At half six, on the way back from the supermarket (it's not stalking if it's less than two blocks out of your way) - nothing doing. Gates shut. Lights off. Nobody home. And the same today. And tonight. So, the point underlines itself - all that desperate frothing urgency was for what, exactly? Other than the joy of being a massive cunt just because the opportunity avails?

As a great philosopher once said, WHAT THE VERY FUCK.

Yeah, I know. I know they were legally in the right, and I know they were absolutely entitled to act in the way that they did, if not in the manner that they did. But I also know that this is the first time in my experience buying and selling houses down here that anyone's made the call, straight out of the gate, to be an unreasonable fuck for no apparent reason. And I also know that for anyone I talked to yesterday or today - family, friends, solicitors, agents, the Crown lads - that it's been years since they've seen or heard of unreasonable wankerdom of this magnitude.

There are things I don't know, though. Small stuff, but important. All the little bits of knowledge about the place I once had which I can't actually put my finger on at the moment. Little things. Like which of the umpteen apparently identical keys associated with the place actually opens which door, without having to try every single fucking key in every single fucking lock. Or what the deal is with the two different phone lines being wired into apparently random phone jacks all through the place, making it an absolute bastard to get phone connections sorted unless you get an engineer through to check every single jack and identify which are on which line. Or how to defuse the malfunctioning alarm on the oven so it doesn't start screaming its tits off at 3am. All of which, I suddenly don't know anymore. I used to - the previous owners, a lovely couple who were great to work with, much like the vendors on our new place, ran us through all those little bits of hard-won 'house wisdom' when we bought the place. But all of a sudden, it's all gone. Funny thing is, I checked with DMDY, and she's mysteriously forgotten all of that stuff too. Every bit. As of around 10am yesterday, apparently.

And, for the record, the new Palatial Hilltop Mansion is ACE OF FUCKING ACES. And would be even ACERER with a phone line and some interwebs, Vodafail. Chop chop.

Oh yeah, almost forgot that second and final question: is it possible to write a lengthy blog post on the fuck-off-tiny keypad of a Crackberry using fingers squashed flat by dropping boxes on them for three days?

To which the answer appears to be yes, if you have to. Wouldn't fucking recommend it as a leisure activity, though.

The Doctor is OUT.

Badge-engineered like no other car

"Can I have a cupholder?" said the unassuming bloke in the coffee queue ahead of me, as he collected his large takeaway flat white from the hole-in-the-wall at the Fix. He was bespectacled, medium height, thoroughly average. Julian Morrow from the Chaser, if he'd done accountancy at uni instead of faffing about with the law revue types. "My car doesn't have one," he added apologetically.

For a moment, Hipster Barista had a blank look on his face. But I knew what he was talking about. My 1988 R31 Skyline went for years with a cardboard McDonalds drink tray wedged into the centre console. It just needed replacing every few thousand km due to cardboard corrosion. brought on by roll-oversteer-induced Coke spillage. Pro tip: if you ever buy an R31 Skyline, get the rear shocks sorted. (Or you could just stop trying to drift around wet roundabouts, but where's the fun in that?)

Hipster Barista twigged, and his offsider produced a two-cup tray, the sort made out of that mashed-up cardboard pulp beloved by egg carton manufacturers and the makers of budget-grade sausage roll filling. Julian Morrow's dull twin smiled. And then he did something unexpected. He wandered over to to the pristine, rare-as-fuck 1974 Chevrolet Constantia parked next to my Mondeo, which I'd been ogling for the past five minutes while waiting for my big-arse takeaway trim flattie. And got in.

That's yours, bro? Respect. Even if you look like an insurance salesman.

Which brings us to the question of 'What the fuck is a 1974 Chevrolet Constantia when it's at home answering the phone, and furthermore since when did cars answer the fucking phone anyway?' Well I'm glad you asked. Even if you might not be in about two paras time.

Yes, it's a HQ Holden with makeup on. Throughout the '70s, Holden exported badge-engineered Kingswoods and Statesmans to South Africa under an array of dubious-sounding Chevrolet names like Kommando and Constantia. The latter was the Saffer version of the long-wheelbase Statesman, usually with a big V8 under the bonnet for those long cruises across apartheid-era South African highways, in comfort and serenity (not to mention blind pig-fucking racist ignorance.) Ford did a similar thing with their Falcons - in fact there's now a market in repatriating SA-export Falcon GTs and the like to their nation of origin, where prices for even old weatherbeaten dungers are seriously stupid money. Usually, it's only the experts who can pick a Saffer Falcon GT from a Strayan unit, whereas the Chevy-badged Holdens of the same era are pretty obvious. And pretty rare. And not something you expect to see on a Dunedin street corner, iridescent cobalt blue in the winter sunshine, its 350ci V8 burbling and bellowing like an offshore powerboat running through a Marshall stack as Jules, his Chev and his flat white headed off on another adventure in tax accountancy together. Sure, there's plenty of expat South Africans in NZ - most of the population of Auckland's North Shore for instance, as well as every second copper on Motorway Patrol - but pristine classic muscle cars, a long way from either of their homes, not so much.

Being rebadged with mildly fascist sounding Afrikaaner model names, while bizarre, is not quite the strangest export fate which Holdens of the 70s could have found themselves in. How to make a HJ Premier even more shit? Drop a rotary into it - half the torque and twice the fuel economy of Holden's then-ancient 'red' six cylinder mill - and just in time for the '70s fuel crisis. I give you the Mazda Roadpacer AP. Giving them away was about all the poor bastards at Mazda dealerships in Japan could do with them. While swearing under their breath about the geniuses in the engineering department who came up with the idea in the first place. Pack of Wankels.


Most of the few hundred Roadpacers sold went to Japanese government departments, where they were used and then crushed, so ironically they're super-rare and hellishly expensive - but not for any of the sensible-ish reasons old Australian muscle cars like Falcon GTHOs and Chargers are, i.e. they have racing pedigree, cultural relevance and are not completely shit. The rebadged Saffer Holden-Chevs have likewise become collectable as much for their unorthodox badge and backstory as for the qualities of the cars themselves, although mint condition Statesmans and Monaros are fetching fairly silly money as it is. And, at its core, this whole tale illustrates the poetic cyclical nature of life. A generation ago, in the 1970s, Holdens were rebadged with Chevrolet logos in order to appeal to a boorish (Boerish?) group of narrow-minded pig-ignorant bigoted fucks with all the charm of projectile gonorrhoea and all the world view of a child's telescope aimed at an unflushed toilet... Sound familiar?


The Doctor is OUT.