Stilgherrian » satire

Links for 26 June 2008 through 29 June 2008

del.icio.us — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 02:26:36 +0000

Stilgherrian’s links for 26 June 2008 through 29 June 2008:

Creatives grow better in the South West | YouTube: A brilliant 4-minute video explaining how to nurture creativity.
Top 10 reasons to hate the iPhone 3G | APC: A suitably well-researched piece to help counter the Apple fanboy hype. A phone is a tool. Not all tools are for everyone.
LEO Deutsch-Englisches Wörterbuch: A very fine-looking English-German dictionary site.

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Links for 27 April 2008

del.icio.us — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 10:44:07 +0000

I’ve decided to have another go at publishing the links I find online. So, thanks to del.icio.us and some mild semi-automation, here’s today’s batch.

The Newseum: The interactive museum of news, including "today's front pages" for 500+ world newspapers.
TV Fugly Awards: An "alternative" to Australia's Logie awards for TV.
Eurovision Song Contest - Belgrade 2008: Official website of the Eurovision Song Contest.
The Bugle | Times Online: Weekly news satire audio podcast from the UK.
The Paranoid Style in American Politics: Richard Hofstadter's article from Harper's Magazine, November 1964. Paranoia Politics isn't new.
Twitter Rulez! (via Todd Langowski) | Newick: An apt sign spotted in workplace.
Plugger: Australian Business News: A customisable aggregator for Australian business news.
Secondary DNS Service: An inexpensive service which provides secondary domain name servers.
The seriously inconvenient truth on drugs | the Daily Mail: UK Daily Mail columnist Andrew Alexander puts a cogent case for the decriminalisation of recreational drugs.
A second summer of love: 20th anniversary of acid house: The Guardian's retrospective on the acid house Summer of Love of 1988.
The Australian Open Source Industry & Community Report 2008: A 20-page report on the state of the open source software world in Australia. A freely downloadable PDF and is redistributable under a Creative Commons BY-ND license.

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Tory Map of the World

Stilgherrian — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 22:35:28 +0000

I’m a sucker for maps. I’m especially a sucker for satirical maps of our psychopolitical geography. So I reckon this Tory Map of the World from 1982 is pretty special.

I particularly like the entire Indian sub-continent labelled as “Pakis” and the mis-identification of Singapore.

Bonus link: A map of The World according to Ronald Reagan, with Africa divided into “Egypt” and “Negroes”.

Thanks to Strange Maps for the pointer.

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Incarcerex for rapid relief

Stilgherrian — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 06:43:29 +0000

I just stumbled across this cute little video satirizing the War on (Some) Drugs. This Incarcerex stuff seems like just the ticket. I particularly like the fast-talking side effects warning towards the end.

Thanks to information aesthetics for the pointer.

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UK bombing satire

Stilgherrian — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 04:04:03 +0000

Surely it’s not too soon to satirize the half-arsed bombing attempt in the UK? Of course not! Thanks to Richard for the pointer.

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John Winston Howard, DJ

Stilgherrian — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 00:25:18 +0000

This image is a work of genius, I think. Sure, the Daily Telegraph started it with a set of three fine photos of John Howard. But the modifications by our unknown pen-wielding humourist are simply superb.

This was passed to me via too many links to track down the source. So if anyone knows the creator of this piece, please tell me so I can give proper credit.

Yes, the photo has the C-word in it. Grow up, we’ve all heard it before…

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Thanksgiving With the Kranzes

Stilgherrian — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 00:50:11 +0000

Yeah OK, it was mentioned in the comments, but the movie Thanksgiving With the Kranzes deserves its own post. It’s a superb satire on Ron Howard’s Apollo 13. 18 minutes well spent. And it ties in nicely with my posts about the oven crash and failure IS an option. Now back to work…

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The Inaugural Paul Neil Milne Johnstone Award goes to…

Stilgherrian — Fri, 25 May 2007 10:02:54 +0000

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, it is my very great pleasure tonight to announce the recipient of the Inaugural Paul Neil Milne Johnstone Award for Language Mutilation.

This award is named in honour of the late Paul Johnstone of Redbridge in England, who was cited by author Douglas Adams as writing the worst poetry in the entire universe. This award isn’t about poetry, however. It’s about Language. Language — and especially the abuse of language — in all its glory.

Of the many things which make us human, Language is one of the most important. Language binds our society together. Language, some even say, is what allows us to think rational thoughts.

So when people use Language badly, when Language is abused in order to mislead, to corrupt, to baffle or to sell a product, we shouldn’t ignore it. We should stand it on a pedestal, call up the author, point to them and say in a loud voice, “This person is destroying the very meaning of humanity.”

With this in mind, I’ve chosen as the recipient of the Inaugural Paul Neil Milne Johnstone Award a representative of a profession — if I may call it that — which is renown the world over for misleading language, namely, a real estate agent.

Ladies and gentlemen, would you please put your hands together for Claudia Mendez (pictured right), of Laing+Simmons, Newtown.

Now as Claudia is making her way to the stage, I’d like to say a few words about my choice, and take a look at her work…

Satirist John Clarke said almost everything that needs to be said about the language of real estate back in the 1970s. And I admit it’s hard to stand out in a field where a bed-sit has become a “studio apartment”, where something of “good size” means “not exactly tiny, and we make no comment about its condition or layout”.

But Claudia’s work in promoting this flat in Harrington Street, Enmore (pictured left) is outstanding, and not just because she’s chosen the wrong spelling of “canvass”.

Claudia has turned a pedestrian view of inner-west rooftops into “a south-easterly view over terra cotta”. She evokes the serenity of a Tuscan village — cheerfully ignoring the fact that only some of the houses have tile roofs and that few of those would be the quite specific clay which constitutes “terracotta“.

Naturally, she neglects to mention that the south-west view is of the airport, and the bed-sit she’s selling — sorry, “studio apartment” — sits under the approach to the right-hand runway. She neglects to mention the milk and fish delivery trucks parked out front — the early-morning aural assault comes by land as well as sky. No Tuscan serenity here!

Claudia has also told us this apartment is in an “enclave”.

Now as any respectable dictionary will tell you, “enclave” means an area surrounded by some larger territory where the inhabitants are different culturally or ethnically, or where there’s increased security — like the Green Zone in Baghdad — an area somehow different in character from the surrounding area.

Here Claudia is working magic. “Enclave” sounds classy. It almost sounds like “exclusive”. Yet this block of six flats is pretty much like every other block of six flats in Sydney. Harrington Street is pretty much like every other residential street in Sydney’s inner west. But few people, even if they know the meaning of “enclave”, will remember to ask just exactly what is different about this block of flats.

But Claudia’s true genius — and this is what won her the award — is this magic phrase: “Chardonnay cool”.

At one level it’s meaningless. What’s “cool” about Chardonnay? Nothing!

Back in the 1980s when Australians first realised that wine came in varieties other than “red” and “white”, Chardonnay was the first white variety to gain a profile. And it’s still the most-grown grape in Australia, with some 30,000 hectares under cultivation. That’s why cashed-up bogans Kath & Kim drink Chardonnay, and why faded baby-boomer right-wing commentators still obsess over Chardonnay Socialists — it’s the only wine they know by name. In the 21st century, anyone who thinks Chardonnay is “cool” is a good 20 years behind the pace.

So you might think that using “Chardonnay cool” means Claudia Mendez knows sweet fuck all about wine.

No.

As the boys at Freakonomics point out, when real estate agents avoid concrete descriptions of the home they’re selling, it’s usually of lower value. By telling us about “Chardonnay cool”, Claudia is sending a signal to more sophisticated buyers: “Beware, this property is a dog.”

Take a closer look at that sign. The only concrete, positive fact she mentions about this flat is that there’s a new canvas awning — which is what? $200 worth? Everything else is fluff and distortion.

But oh what fluff and distortion!

And so, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to put your hands together one more time for the recipient of the Inaugural Paul Neil Milne Johnstone Award, Claudia Mendez!

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Fred Dagg on Real Estate

Stilgherrian — Fri, 25 May 2007 08:33:46 +0000

I’ve finally found the text for the famous “Real Estate” speech by Fred Dagg, aka John Clarke. Lifted from Eric Lindsay’s blog, where it was shameless plagiarised…

Gidday.

Now the Fred Dagg Careers Advice Bureau has already done more than enough to secure its place in the social history of this once great nation, but I think this report is probably amongst its more lasting achievements.

In essence it outlines how to go about the business of being a real estate agent, and as things stand at the moment if you’re not a real estate agent, then you’re probably being a fool to yourself and a burden to others.

Like so many other jobs in this wonderful society of ours, the basic function of the real estate agent is to increase the price of the article without actually producing anything, and as a result it has a lot to do with communication, terminology, and calling a spade a delightfully bucolic colonial winner facing north and offering a unique opportunity to the handyman.

If you’re going to enter the real estate field you’ll need to acquire a certain physical appearance which I won’t bore you with here, but if you’ve got gold teeth and laugh-lines around your pockets, then you’re through to the semis without dropping a set.

But the main thing to master, of course, is the vernacular, and basically this works as follows:

There are three types of houses:

Glorious commanding split-level ultra-modern dream homes, which are built on cliff faces;
Private bush-clad inglenooks, which are built down holes;
and very affordable solid family houses in much sought after streets, which are old gun-emplacements with awnings.

A cottage is a caravan with the wheels taken off.

A panoramic, breathtaking, or magnificent view is an indication that the house has windows, and if the view is unique, there’s probably only one window.

I have here the perfect advertisement for a house, so we’ll go through it and I’ll point out some of the more interesting features, so here we go, mind the step.

‘Owner transferred reluctantly instructs us to sell’ means the house is for sale.

‘Genuine reason for selling’ means the house is for sale.

‘Rarely can we offer’ means the house is for sale.

‘Superbly presented delightful charmer’ doesn’t mean anything really, but it’s probably still for sale.

‘Most attractive immaculate home of character in prime dress-circle position’ means that the thing that’s for sale is a house.

‘Unusual design with interesting and solidly built stairs’ means that the stairs are in the wrong place.

‘Huge spacious generous lounge commands this well serviced executive residence’ means the rest of the house is a rabbit-warren with rooms like cupboards.

‘Magnificent well-proportioned large convenient block with exquisite garden’ means there’s no view, but one of the trees had a flower on it the day we were up there.

‘Privacy, taste, charm, space, freedom, quiet, away from it all location in much sought-after cul-de-sac situation’ means that it’s not only built down a hole, it’s built at the very far end of the hole.

‘A must for all you artists, sculptors and potters’ means that only a lunatic would consider living in it.

‘2/3 bedrooms with possible in-law accommodation’ means it’s got two bedrooms and a tool shed.

‘Great buy, ring early for this one, inspection a must, priced to sell, new listing, see this one now, all offers considered, good value, be quick, inspection by appointment, view today, this one can’t last, sole agents, today’s best buy’ means the house is for sale, and if ever you see ‘investment opportunity’ turn away very quickly and have a go at the crossword.

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The Pointlessness of Satire

Stilgherrian — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 00:31:44 +0000

That great satirist Peter Cook was once asked if he thought that satire had a political effect. He said:

Absolutely. The greatest satire of the twentieth century was the Weimar cabaret, and they stopped Hitler in his tracks.

Attributed to Stephen Colbert, in a Rolling Stone interview, thanks to Blog Them Out of the Stone Age.

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Two Favourite Satires

Stilgherrian — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 19:42:21 +0000

OK, it’s been ages since I posted something, so to remind everyone that I still exist, here’s two of my current favourite satires.

h3. Panexa: Wonder Drug

Thanks to “_New Scientist_ magazine”:http://www.newscientist.com for news of this “important new wonder-drug”:http://www.panexa.com/:

bq. “PANEXA”:http://www.panexa.com/ is a prescription drug that should only be taken by patients experiencing one of the following disorders: metabolism, binocular vision, digestion (solid and liquid), circulation, menstruation, cognition, osculation, extremes of emotion.

h3. Dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO)

The “Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division”:http://www.dhmo.org/ (DMRD) of Newark, Delaware warns us of “the controvery surrounding this dangerous chemical”:http://www.dhmo.org/.

bq. DHMO is a constituent of many known toxic substances, diseases and disease-causing agents, environmental hazards and can even be lethal to humans in quantities as small as a thimbleful…

bq. Despite the known dangers of DHMO, it continues to be used daily by industry, government, and even in private homes across the U.S. and worldwide.

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PM shuts down satirical website

Stilgherrian — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 09:46:30 +0000

In another triumph of tolerance and freedom of expression, the Prime Minister’s office ordered the shutdown of a spoof John Howard website which featured an “apology” speech for the Iraq war.

Australian futurist and social commentator Richard Neville created johnhowardpm.org on Monday and received 10,500 visits within 24 hours. It was closed down by domain registrar Melbourne IT on Tuesday, but Neville was only told yesterday that this was “on the advice from the Australian Government”.

Mr Neville says the parody was an act of satire, and now has a PDF copy of the speech on his website.