News Bulletin Number #7
Hello!
What a turnaround for my newsletter publishing skills. Late one week, early the next!
What makes this early publish date even more remarkable is that in a disastrous-accidental MacBook drop I’ve managed to break the SHIFT key on my laptop.
So as you read the next 1500 words please bear in mind how I managed to accomplish all this without it.Okay this week’s headlines!
ICE CREAM IN CRISIS
So grim the Taliban are back.I can’t stop looking at the pictures/videos of the Taliban soldiers in the gym and driving dodgem cars. The weirdest one is the Taliban soldiers eating ice cream.
People love ice-cream.Two days ago I was out on my state-sanctioned Sydney exercise time and saw an ice-cream truck driving around the streets, music blaring, stocked-up ready to go.
How can ice-cream trucks be an essential service?!
I didn’t even know ice-cream trucks were still in business before the pandemic, let alone during the biggest extended lockdown period this country has had!
Is ice-cream that important? Maybe it is. Maybe it contributes to the Gross National Happiness rating – you know that weird metric governments use to measure the collective happiness and well-being of a population?
I’m not sure if you remember, but a few years ago there was a big push to use the Gross National Happiness instead of GDP to evaluate a country’s wealth.I think this was off the back of the London Olympics where they worked out the games were a huge financial failure, but their impact on the Gross National Happiness index was so strong that it was worth it overall for the country.
All that talk has definitely disappeared!
No one talks about happiness anymore. Everyone just loves screaming “WHAT ABOUT THE ECONOMY!! PEOPLE ARE LOSING JOBS! GENERATIONS OF DEBT!! CHINA!!”(I’m not really sure about the China one but everyone is always upset with China etc).
There’s a country called Bhutan that actually uses the happiness rating instead of GDP. That’s how they measure whether the country is doing well or not.
Isn’t that cool?! Next Census we should just ask everyone whether they had a nice day instead of what tax bracket they’re in.
It might bring us together as a country after a few ‘less-than-stellar’ years.Though I did read on Wikipedia that:
‘The Gross National Happiness index has been described as a propaganda tool used by the Bhutanese government to distract from ethnic cleansing and the human rights abuses it has committed’
Hmmso maybe it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
ANYWAY.
My point is, yes. Maybe an ice-cream truck moving between locked-down suburbs that are struggling to contain the virus is a bad idea, but also, a little bloody ice cream treat never hurt anyone, did it?!
Play the ice-cream truck song!
LOVE ISLAND
I’ve been spending a lot of my time watching Love Island UK. I don’t say this lightly, but it’s easily the best show on TV.Yes.
You can keep your Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Ted Lasso etc – I want to watch 20 insane British people in a Spanish villa drinking, flirting, fighting and having sex.Honestly, it’s so crazy. There was this guy called Hugo Hammond on the show who had a club foot and none of the girls wanted to fuck him. It was so brutal! Any other TV show they’d reign it in, but instead they just stir up the craziness!
They even encourage them to have sex! Heavens!
There’s this hideaway villa that if a couple is ‘lucky enough to get picked for’ – they can go into and get sexy and steamy for the night.All recorded for international TV!*
I sound like an old grandpa, but back in my day sex was something you did in the dark, felt embarrassed about, then cleaned yourself off and shook hands – never to be mentioned again.
My favourite part is how all the contestants say the same thing:
“Personality is huge for me, honestly looks and attractiveness come second…”
Yet they all happen to be genuine 10s with huge influencer followings and none of them want to fuck the bloke with the club foot. Go figure.
Also everyone on the show goes crazy. They’re only really allowed to talk about their feelings, who they’re flirting with, who has the hots for who, and whether they’re feeling the same attraction.
It’s almost like a weird form of torture.
I think government agencies should use it. Seriously. It would tip their enemies over the edge! Also, torture needs updating. I feel like they’ve been using the same methods for years. Sure waterboarding is one of the most brutal forms of torture there is (I should know, my girlfriend uses it on me when I hide the choc-chip biscuits she likes), but 6 weeks in a villa talking about love and your feelings sounds pretty bad?! It’s worth a shot.
If the CIA are reading this, next time you catch a terrorist, instead of taking them to your torture chambers and doing god-knows-what to them, put them in a Spanish Island villa with no phone, 12 other single people and tell them their only chance of getting released is by finding and falling in love.
They’ll cough up the secrets in a few days!
So yeah, Love Island is awesome. A must watch.
*They don’t actually show the sex. It’s not like the Big Brother Up Late days i.e The golden age of TV.
FAMILIES THAT RIDE BIKES TOGETHER
I saw a mum, dad and three kids doing this on the weekend. Disgusting. Kids and parents all hanging out and having fun? Yuck.
OLD PEOPLE AND EARLY MORNINGS
Sorry about that last headline. Sometimes I get jealous of families that are friends and enjoy each other’s company. I’ll never understand it.The closest my parents have ever come to telling me they enjoy my company was commenting on the brand of chips I bought as snacks to my uncle’s birthday party once.
And that’s not to say there is no love between us, just an understanding of the boundaries between family and friendship.Like girls that say “Oh my mum is my best friend!”
Yeah I’m sure she’s great, but surely you prefer getting stoned with Jessica and talking about the smallest dicks you’ve seen?Can’t do that with mum. What if she says your dad’s dick?! Then you’ve ruined your relationship with both mum and dad.
The basis of my current relationship with my father revolves around these weird political chain emails he decides to send me at 5:30am every morning. That’s pretty much our main form of communication at the moment.
I don’t mind the emails. They’re mainly socialist propaganda and the odd joke about wanting to murder everyone in the Liberal Party (he’s definitely on an ASIO watchlist), but they just fly into my inbox so early!They’re the first thing I see when I wake up. I spend the rest of the day thinking about ways in which I could overthrow the current government. It’s no way to live!
Old people LOVE to wake up early. What’s that all about? They love it! I’ll never understand it. It’s not like they’re getting up and doing anything crazy productive?
There’s people out there like The Rock that wake up at 4:15am and do a 10km run, quick gym workout, fire off a few emails, jump on a zoom meeting AND manage to make the kids breakfast all before 7am.
But old people aren’t doing that?
They still wake up at 4:15am, but instead of getting the day going, they just pop the kettle on, fire up the radio in preparation for Ray Hadley’s radio show and sit there in the dark till the sun comes up.Actually it kinda doesn’t sound too bad.
Maybe like a later-in-life form of mediation?
POP CULTURE
THE ROCK CLOCK
Speaking of The Rock waking up early, there’s an app called THE ROCK CLOCK which has an alarm that goes off each morning at the exact time The Rock wakes up. So you can live your life on the same schedule as The Rock (something I know you’ve all been desperate to do).The alarm is his voice screaming things like:
“WOLVES ARE SCRATCHING AT THE DOOR. LET’S GO!!”
“IT’S ROCK TIME WAKE UP!!”There’s also a feature where he sings a bunch of pleasant songs to wake you up. That part of the app is not for me. I’ve always found muscly men singing to be a little unsettling.
You can’t be jacked and hold a note. Pick a lane.
GOODBYE
Thanks for reading! Much appreciated!It was a bit of a weird newsletter this week but the world is in a crazy place and my thoughts are merely a reflection of the world around us.
I guess if you didn’t like it, maybe it’s not me you don’t like, it’s actually yourself and the world you live in, and you should strive to make it a better place??
Get off your ass and be the change you want to see in the world!
Erghh. I might just start a Patreon like every other art-of-work artist.If you know how to fix my shift key, please get in touch. If not I’ll see you soon!
P.S if you’ve missed any of my other newsletters and want to catch up, you can here. Follow me on Insta, here’s my podcast, and subscribe to my Youtube channel x