» Political Correctness Gone Mad

Cola wars
When we write console games, they get checked over for anything offensive to our target market. Normally this is a good thing.
A few years ago, one of our games comes back from the head testers in the US with a big tick next to "FAILED - Racist/Offensive Content" on the front of the report. We read the details.
"In the subway level, there is a red and white vending machine, with the word 'Cola' written on it. As you may be aware, cola is the plural of colon. Some people may find it offensive to find a mention of such a body part. Please remove this immediately."

It was suggested that perhaps we couldn't hold ourselves repsonsible for someone who must be offended by just about every soft drink machine in the world. We had to remove it anyway. So we spent the next few months asking each other if we wanted a can of colons while we were passing the fridge.
(Fri 23rd Nov 2007, 15:20, More)

» Mobile phone disasters

Dropped in it
Have to say, I've never dropped my phone in shit, but it has dropped me in it.
I avoided the whole phone disease for a while, until me wife handed me one of her old phones and told me to get a SIM card in it, because she was sick of people calling her to ask where I was. So I do this, and drop the thing in my coat pocket where I completely forgot about it since hardly anyone had my number. Now at the time, I was no longer riding horses, but I'd still drop in once in a while to see the horses and people around the place. So one evening a few days later I call in, help with the evening feed for the trotters, then wander down the paddocks to see some of the horses I used to ride. One of the horse I'd known for years lay down while I was there, and I sat down and leaned back against her flank, patting her as it got dark. Pressed up to a warm, friendly horse in the dark, I must have dropped off to sleep.
Beeep-di-di-di-di-di-di!
I just had time to think, "What the fuck?!" when the horse thought the same, and leapt up to her hooves! Now bear in mind, horses are big and strong, so since I was still leaning against her side, I get flipped arse over teakettle and launched at some speed. I was skimming along upside down, with my nose about 6 inches off the ground, I could have been seriously hurt!
If I hadn't been stopped by something soft.
Beeep-di-di-di-di-di-di!
In the space of about 3 seconds, I've gone from being happily asleep, to being face down in a pile of horse shit. At least my mouth was shut, but my eyes are burning. Still, I fumble about in my pocket, feeling about pushing buttons on the fucking thing, until one of the buttons stops the infernal noise.
"What!"
"You're going to miss dinner", says my wife, "I bet you're glad I called you."
(Sat 1st Aug 2009, 12:47, More)

» Bullies

Becoming a legend
Let's see. I devloped a mental illness around age 11, and it wasn't diagnosed until I was about 30, because everyone knows the real cure is to "Smarten yourself up." Or in severe cases, "Pull your head out of your arse!"
So you could consider my high school self to have been a bit of a soft target. The rest of the school certainly did.

One lunchtime though, I managed to tip things into Lord of the Flies territory.

It started with the usual, getting bits of lunch flicked at me as I was walking around the school. (Sitting in one place made me too easy to get hold of.) I dodged one guy, who decided that I needed to be put in my place, and started chasing me, with his friends following for a laugh.
Now I was always good at running, from necessity. Unfortunately, I picked the wrong direction, and picked up another group, who decided to join in. And another. Then, dodging through one of the locker bays, another. Once I was outside the school quadrangle, I looked back, and had over a hundred screaming, jeering boys, all following me, the ones in the lead yelling about what they would do to me.
At this point, I did what anyone would do. Damn near pissed myself and ran like hell. There was one small corner of my brain still functioning, and I realised I had to get back into the quadrangle, because otherwise it would be just me and them. I had to cut across, which let them gain on me, but I'd managed to get just enough of a lead that I got into the doorway by the canteen about a foot in front of the leaders, and the bottleneck slowed them down.
Of course, by now they were picking up followers who had no idea what was up front. So imagine the scene when I ran past the staff room windows, with about 200 boys in hot pursuit. *All* of the teachers poured out of the door, some of them still holding their coffee mugs, and a couple of the male teachers who often played footy with the year 9/10 boys slammed into a couple of the leaders. At that, the entire crowd just evaporated, suddenly looking at terribly interesting things that just happened to be in the other direction.

I ended up in detention for a week. Really, it was protective custody until the teachers were sure it wasn't going to happen again. One of the maths teachers estimated there were 200 boys when I passed the window, and said that he'd never seen anything like it in 40 years of teaching.

And the legend part? Years later, at uni, I was chatting to someone who's younger brother happened to have started at that school. They were worried about him, because he'd been bullied a bit, and there was this story about how once there was a kid who ended up with the whole school of 1000 kids chasing him, who'd been beaten so badly he was never seen at the school again.


(Excuse me for catharting in public, at least this time I didn't follow through.)
(Tue 19th May 2009, 14:08, More)

» School Days

Nudist beach
In Year 11, second last year of high school, most of the serious drop-kicks had left school, and those of us left were actually trying to work. To help with that, the school sent us off on a 'study camp' for a few days, for us to do various bonding things and to learn some studying techniques.

Now the traditional campground we were sent to for this, happened to be just up the hill from a beach. Around the point from that beach, was another which was famous for being a nudist beach, dating back to the time when such places were illegal here. We, of course, made a huge fuss about getting so close to it, until a couple of the male teachers promised us we'd get a look at it, if we behaved!

We got our look. On a 7am jog before breakfast along a totally deserted beach. Bastards.

Anyway, that afternoon, we had one of our little bonding exercises on the beach with the art teacher. She was a little, somewhat ditzy, and totally innocent woman. She was so nice, and totally disconnected from reality, that few people ever played up in her classes, it was too much like kicking a puppy. Her idea was for us to form into groups and make sand sculptures on the beach.
So we looked around us, for inspiration. Well, *one* group made an octopus...
...which was surrounded by several naked sand bodies!

The eight-foot tall woman, with the strategically placed tunnel was enthusiastically humped by one of the builders, while the rest of us shouted about how she wouldnt feel his tiny dick even if she was a midget. Another more realistically proportioned sand woman was somewhat vaguely shaped, execpt for the perfectly formed tits which had taken half an hour of us taking turns at shaping them and trying to get the sand nipples to stay on.

The poor art teacher got more and more upset as she went along the line, at the progression of naked bdies, until she reached the final sand sculpture. The one made by the good girls, the quiet ones who never misbehaved, and always got straight A's.
The neatly shaped naked man was bad enough. I think it was the small white feather sprouting from the end of his erect cock that made her burst into tears though.
(Mon 2nd Feb 2009, 13:48, More)

» Vandalism

But is it art?
Several years ago, on one side of the Yarra river, the Federation Square project was in full swing. The logo for the project was a capital F in a square, and stickers with this were liberally applied to all the fencing, site offices, and so on.

On the other side of the river, the art gallery decided to have a bit of a facelift, and put up temporary fencing around the front, with the slogan for their upgrade project painted all over it. In artistically significant, all lower case, it read "art like never before!"

A veritable wave of stickers crossed the river within days.
(Wed 13th Oct 2010, 12:13, More)