2013 was a marvellous year for idiocy, medstore
5. Playing the Man
I begin this Countdown of Crap with the news that my personal 2013 was pretty good, fuck you very much. I do this not because I want you to know that my boyfriend is much younger and taller than yours. Although, you know, he is plus he reads books. I do this because I have found that in 2013, argumentum ad hominem became the new crochet. So I had better convince you that I am happy
<img src = “My Boyfriend’s Huge Wang.jpg”>
because unhappy people can’t make good arguments. Nor can immoral or nasty or lazy ones. And I am probably wrong about everything because I don’t volunteer at a vegan soup kitchen.
This year, the substance of one’s argument became secondary to one’s character and real-life actions. In Australian politics, we saw careers and legacies buoyed and busted by this appeal to authority; or its opposite.
Published opinions are now read less like argument than they are a biography; most political careers are understood the same way. It is not policy or principle that is at issue so much as it is personality. Less important than the question ‘Is this argument good?” is ‘Is she a bitch or is he a homo?”
Julia Gillard cannot make good policy because she is a woman. Christopher Pyne makes bad policy because he is somewhat like a woman. Julia Gillard makes good policy because she is a woman. Christopher Pyne makes good policy because the Left said he was somewhat like a woman.
There are one thousand ways to applaud Gillard’s stewardship of the nation. Most of them have to do with a calculator and none of them have to do with her gender. There are a million ways to decry Pyne’s education policy and none of them have to with her gender.
You fucker. You laughed.
4. Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs
Jobs is to The Social Network as my morning stool is to Songs of Innocence and Experience. While it is true that turning a meanie like Jobs into a sympathetic subject for cinema is about as tough as polishing aforesaid turd, no one predicted he could ever be this boring.
We can imagine Demi high-fiving her newest companion as she sees her ex turn to nothing on screen with a numb force that made her own performance in GI Jane seem perky and inspirational.
Apparently not. I dislike the proprietary culture of Apple a good deal but fuck me, couldn’t they sue Ashton for jailbreaking a man’s legacy?
3. Cyrus the Virus
More ‘discourse’ has been written in the service of this modest talent in 2013 than I’ve performed abortions. Why? Because the ‘slut-shaming’ of Miley Cyrus is an important matter We As Women must address lest this noxious ill reproduce itself in real life? No. Because Miley Cyrus keeps taking her dacks off and gets great SEO.
Bitches will try to reform capitalism. Good luck with that. As Jean Baudrillard said to Keanu Reeves at the VMAs, ‘And all the recrimination that replaces revolutionary thought today comes back to incriminate capital for not following the rules of the game.’
2. Prize Winning Literature
Why the piddle are people still writing pretend stories? And, more to the point, why are you still reading them? Surely now that truth is dead, we can do away with fiction.
The nineteenth century is over and so are novels and your refusal to let things with stupid titles like ‘The Gastrointestinal Disorder of Mr Bashir’ or ‘The Memory of Chocolate’ or ‘The Gallery of Compost’ go is embarrassing us both.
If you want some cultural capital, buy a shitload of spelt sourdough. Stop supporting the poison industry of fiction.
1. Food Trucks
Look. I for one am very fucking happy not to have been born in the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free Interpretation of Food Hygiene Standards. In Australia, we like our wages reasonable and our repasts at a table. What the heck we are doing pretending fried things taste better because they come out of a truck is beyond me.
In 2013, every sad little shitter from an Australian innercity burb saw themselves through a Tarantino lens and spent way too much on a soggy taco made by an ‘artisan’ who went to Geelong Grammar and is now using your money to snort Uncle Charlie off a model’s arsehole in Brazil.
Fuck food trucks. Unless they are at a Royal Agricultural Show and sell unironic dagwood dogs. In which case, fuck those, too. I would never eat that shit.
Clearly, this is a hasty list and does not represent my truest fears for the world of human enterprise. If it did, it would include the re-emergence of identity politics re-branded as ‘intersectionality’, the emasculation by white journalists of Mandela and my fondness for carbohydrates.
34 thoughts on “Worst of 2013”
TL;DR me thoroughly enjoying your social commentary/research and wanting to tell you so on three hours sleep. Cheers!
As a fan of media, I respect the novel for what it is (although it would rank low on my preferred media list).
I don’t think the ‘novel’ is as irrelevant as the authors of such pseudo-intellectual garbage.
When storytelling is stripped of its narrative (or uses an all too familiar one), what’s left is the equivalent of far right vs left politics:
Too much intellect vs none at all. See “The Reader” (2008) vs “Battleship” (2013)
Of course, this is just my asshole (edit: opinion) as an inspiring artist who adores the individuality of artists such as Tarantino and Slim Shady.
Also, I’ve had a soft spot for Kutcher since he was hated on for being Ashton Kutcher. I did not like the Jobs biopic, but the poorly (over)done flick is a product of mass consuming these ‘rags to riches’ flicks as if they were written by Stan Lee (another cinematic trend which both intrigues and angers me. See the green lantern vs The Dark Knight trilogy), and not the fact that 70’s show was in the title role.
Now that I’ve spent at least a minute sharing opposing views, I’ll admit that this post is not to argue (rather than comment on) a small part of this list which applies to my life, and also give me something I can oppose in your writing as to not choke on your dick when I write:
You inspire me the way those aforementioned artists do and goddamn if I’m not glad someone has the tolerance level for bullshit that I do.
My anger towards feminism grew as I have been in (and still am) in a Hetero-CIS gendered relationship with someone who is both bi and feminist.
My respect for women in general could have been written off as ignorant until I became immersed into the biased world of leftism and inclusiveness.
That is to say, I would have spent far less time arguing with women over anything ever, because I was more concerned with approval of the sex I’ve admired since ‘before pre-k’.
But I eventually did, starting with the fact that the rape statistics I saw on the cover on ‘bitch’ magazine (1 in 5!!!&@@$) didn’t coincide with the numbers I know in an, albeit, quiet, white rural neighbourhood.
I brought this up and was sentenced to the doghouse for not caring by her and two feminist allies as they blissfully walked around Urban Outfitters sharing the stories they’ve heard of scared, raped women. (because she’s as good of girlfriend as I am boyfriend, and I do love her despite this*** disclaimer for people who will care about my life much more than the intended reader of this comment).
Quick research and uncontrollable ‘silenced-by-feminism-rage’ confirmed that my logic was in fact, logical.
And then I searched for more (I.e. 78%) – and you can fill in the blanks as I’m sure you’ve seen more than your fair share of ‘anti-feminists’ stories out there.
But this isn’t about me, or the fact that I’ve faced inequality as a MAN (something I didn’t even question until people started spitting inequalities in my face and telling me to ‘fucking cook them better’). This was the fact that my female boss scheduled her ‘girls’ for the 8-4 while I worked 8-12, 5-9 for my entire 10th and 11th grade summers. Ultimately, one of her choices got promoted to supervisor over me, and that’s when I fucking quit.
Because I take what I fucking want. She gave me a 1 in ‘cleaning’ because ‘everyone needs to do a better job cleaning’. This, despite the fact that she not once over the entire summer was present at the 9pm closing/cleaning time.
And that sums up my beef with feminism, essentially.
But you’ve heard it all before, and while I have never written to eminem expressing my profound respect for giving me the ability to think for myself, i have bought his CDS.
This dick sucking is my support for you and everything you’ve said. The first article of yours i read last night was talking about feminism and I was eating that shit up like I would ‘JontheOther’ during my particularly angry ‘making sure logic still exists’ google sessions.
But the difference was that for once, you were the person I actually needed to hear.
I want to hear how feminism is wrong because I hate how it’s treated me both in and out of personal relationships, but I began to do this, like others, by denouncing. Logically, statistically, and never emotionally.
The ‘bad taste in my mouth’ like one commenter described is more like a vegetable.
It doesn’t say what I want to hear – because I made it us vs them (although in my efforts to retort feminism I never once identified as an ‘us’, but as an individual thinker).
This comment is too long and convoluted for me to even edit (I’m fucking late and overtired thanks to your blog, good fight 8 hours of my life). But I’ll throw a tl’dr in at the top.
I appreciate your work as an intellectual. Very much so. So much so I am once again willing to revisit feminism as a concept despite my preconceived grudges.
Because maybe all I’ve been waiting for is for someone to shut the fuck up about what the bigger connotations of the rape statistic mean and just readily admit that it’s a construction.
Because that’s all I want – I’m a live-let-liveist until someone starts coming in and making so sense and posting it on my Facebook news feed as revolution.
And if you have a problem with my post fuck you too, I’ll just have to suck harder next time.
Indefinite respect,
Poster who is not yet 20, not nearly as intelligent as you, but still likes to think he is.
For all cock licking purposes, you are my Karl Marx.
“Now give it back to shaggy he was sucking it better”.
“The nineteenth century is over and so are novels and your refusal to let things with stupid titles like ‘The Gastrointestinal Disorder of Mr Bashir’ or ‘The Memory of Chocolate’ or ‘The Gallery of Compost’ go is embarrassing us both”
Just curious about your opinion on what has or should replace novels? Novellas?
Quality Television
Food trucks? You ain’t seen nothing until you’ve been to ‘Brisbane’s newest and only shipping container-based market’ — 50 shipping containers, each with its own half-hour-long line.
Dirty trucks.
ASKING for it.
Wish you ran the country Helen, and I was your amoral lackey.
I am not allowed to run the country until I have finished Keynes’ General Theory. So about 2050.
Helen,
We are of the same age. I remember you from triple J, do you remember Rusty Nails from JJ?
Why not return to the radio in triumph, a la Clive Robertson to Classic FM?
(And Judith Lucy to Austereo)
Radio pays!
May your new duvet smother The Rabbitt by year’s end for a Best Of moment. Or was it a doona? Nothing as prosaic as a bedspread surely – and hopefully more effective.
Mobile food vans are evil – i have long had dred at the sound of green sleeves. Rotating slowly round the suburban landscape like some loud hunting troll.
The images on the side of the trucks is often oddly disturbing featuring red goop on white snow cones with sprinkles..evil.. kill it with fire evil . the vans are almost always musk pink, the colour of fake femininity cloyed with the sticky overbearing sweetness of suburbia. dam now I have to write a post about it..
Well played. Natch. My Mum says I’m a “writer”. You forgot outrage. 2013 has been full of it. As you were.
No chance of that model turning over and putting that blow on his dick? :)
God, Will. It’s been in her bum,.
Razer puts the blowtorch on the audience. As usual, things make more sense after that. T.
I would pay a premium to ensure that both arsehole and blow are certified Fair Trade.
You really Care™
Avaaz, Getup and change.org can’t all be wrong.
OH MY GOD HAVE YOU SEEN UPWORTHY?
Now I needn’t wait for some kind of “human” intervention to get my dose of prog-feels:
http://www.upworthygenerator.com/
But I like food trucks! The dogs have a run in the park and sniff lots of drunk people, whilst I stuff my face with cheap food and don’t have to wash up afterwards! Its perfect bachelor living. Oh wait, I think I just mansplained without checking my privilege.
I will of course now go self-flaggelate in penance whilst reciting the latest top ten countdown on daily life.
Rock on Razer. :)
WE KNOW THEY ARE NOT CHEAP.
SO check your cheap privilege.x
I’m not into sycophancy, but It’s December, so please forgive the corny sentiment.
Thanks for sharing a whole lot of refreshing and original thoughts. Best wishes for 2014.
Naw.
GIVE ME MONEY.
I’d give you money for a taco, all this talk of food trucks has made me hungry.
AS AM I
Not your best…but funny and somewhat alarming
Helen…
Let’s just clarify..my rich hipsters who run those food trucks are Melbourne Grammar people.
Please get your private school cliques correct.
Merry Xmas and Happy New Year!!
Lucky he is a young man….go girl!!
We are in for a bumpy ride…45, 0000 jobs gone Ford/Holden gone
We need a diversified economy.
There will be a new social paradigm.
DAMN.
You’re right.
DAMN MY STATE SCHOOL EDUCATION.
Delightful way to start Monday.
You are clearly an unpleasant person. Diane.
Well yes.
Brilliant! You forgot the invention of RAPE CULTURE , the existstance of mamamia and the Daily, those two churn out shit like nothing else.
Love your work.
Maz.
And the fact of a Coalition government.
Which we choose to fight with awareness ribbons.