Standoutlouds Cat

Once upon a time scientists made great discoveries and inventions. These are the people of history that we all look up to. Their names live on as true geniuses. Einstien, Curie, Newton, Tesla, Galileo, Darwin, Edison etc.

The scientists of today just give me the shits. It seems every week I hear about some new study that proves something we all already knew, usually at a cost of millions to us tax payers.

What exactly is the problem, has everything been discovered and invented already? What a load of pish. Now I am no scientific genius but even I can do better than that. I believe that my experiments deserve just as much funding as all those hacks out there. Take this brilliance of mine for example.

Firstly take a cat and tape magnets to its side. Then tape a buttered piece of toast to its back. Now push it off the table. We will see the effect of two scientific laws at work. Namely “cats always land on their feet” and “toast will always land butter side down”. These two scientific laws will act against each other forcing the cat/toast combo to spin continuously in mid air.

Just place a coils of copper wire wrapped around an iron core around this spinning mass. The spinning magnets and the wire will produce alternating current electricity, much like the alternator in your car. This will single handedly solve the worlds power and air pollution problems. No more reliance on fossil fuels.

Now I just need to create a breed of cats that don’t need feeding or suffer from nausea. I think 20 million dollars in government funding should cover it.

Forget Schrodingers cat, welcome to the world of Standoutlouds cat.

Welcome To The Jungle

I will be the first to admit that I am not a keen gardener. What makes it worse is living in suburban Australia. You see until fairly recently a standard block of land here was a quarter acre. When you have an average 3 bedroom house stuck in the middle of that you are left with a whole lot of garden to take care of. The truth is I don’t take care of it.

There are a few reasons for this. I have been working 6 days a week at my job plus trying to be a graphic artist / designer online. That really leaves little time for anything else. Also I am a world renowned, first class procrastinator. Any excuse is a good excuse. As a result over winter my garden went from unkempt (I like to refer to this look as shabby chic) to a meadow and finally a wilderness that could be hiding anything.

So I made a pact with myself that I would spend today gardening. So after waking up, having a shower, breakfast, checking my emails, facebook, online store and screwing around on twitter I pulled myself into action and approached the back door.

I have one of those glass slidey back doors that let you see just what you are in for. Looking at the backyard I was expecting to see Indiana Jones leap out while being chased by a family of tigers. It was not a good feeling. I braced myself and whoosh - the glass door slid aside for the first time in months. Unnaturally fresh air rushed into my man cave, dispelling the lingering funky smell. So far so good. I grabbed the flyscreen and ........... nothing. It seems the gazillion ants that live in my garden had excavated 10 tonnes of sand that the rains had then washed against the door. Grass had then grown in that sand rendering the door immobile.

After fighting with it for a while I had to go all MacGyver on it with a screwdriver. Lifting it up on its tracks and giving it a fantastic Chuck Norris kick it went sailing out onto the paving. It was alright though. All the weeds cushioned its fall. The door wasn’t damaged at all.

Grabbing a rubbish bag I attacked. Pulling out with weeds with great gusto unearthed the ecosystem at my back door. David Attenborough would have loved it. Angry ants, colourful caterpillars, milling millipedes, spiders and a frog. The frog just sat there staring at me. I named him Fernando and told him to hop along. He didn’t. I think he was trying to guilt trip me into stopping with his hypno stare, but it wasn’t going to work.

Like an archaeological dig the area of pavers came into sight. I should of been feeling pretty good but Fernando was still staring at me. I thought I would give him a piece of his own medicine and started a staring competition. Even though I cheated, he clearly won. He is that good. Stepping things up a notch I went and got my camera. Flash flash flash. He didn’t even blink. Not sure if I have a retarded frog or if he is a paparazzi whore. No wait, they are the same thing.

Eventually the bin was totally full so I took that as proof that I had done enough gardening for this week. (plus Fernando was freaking me out) Let me tell you, those 2 square meters of paving outside look great. At this frenetic pace I should have the whole garden done by 2247.

The Hair Conundrum

I have been thinking a lot about hair recently. That is a strange way to open my first blog post in some time I know, but bear with me.

As a whole, we love hair. It gets washed, primped and pampered every day. We run our fingers through it and love the smell of our partners hair. Vain people spend every minute looking into reflective surfaces to check that it is still in place. Balding men are secretly jealous of all those with a full head of it. Heck we even wrote a musical about it.

We spend billions of dollars every year on hair cuts and products to make our hair look the best it can be. We judge others by their hair and are equally judged in return.

There is a big but in all this though. As soon as that hair is no longer connected to a human body it instantly becomes the most reviled, disgusting thing in the entire known universe.

I cannot figure out how this happens. Does the strand of hair change at a molecular level to such an extent that it instantly renders food completely inedible upon contact? Will soap cause your skin to melt off once a stray hair has stuck on there?

We need a government funded study to figure all this out. I need to know what is happening and if I will implode if I try to unblock the drain in the bathroom.

It seems that our hair is the original love hate relationship.

Fear And Loathing In Art Class

This may come as a surprise considering what I am doing with my life these days but I hated art class at school. So much so that at age 14, when you get to choose your subjects, art was immediately crossed off the list. I spent my time doing woodwork, metalwork, mechanical workshops and various other classes instead.

Art at school, for me, completely missed the point. It should be about creativity, exploration and self expression. Instead it was do this and do it this way, exactly the same as everyone else is doing it. Days of boring history lectures about the lives of dead artists. Craft projects I had no interest in whatsoever. I just wanted to draw what I wanted to draw. Not carve a given pattern into a piece of lino or make a pot out of clay. The end result was a loathing for art teachers.

I bring this up because of a recent incident. My 12 year old nephew was talking about art at school the other day. They had been learning about Van Gogh. (Yep I remember nearly falling asleep during that) Nephew wasn’t too interested in him either. However the teacher had asked the students if there was an artist that they would like to talk about, so he came to me. After some discussion and looking at pictures online, Salvidor Dali’s surreal artworks got the nod.

In my mind this was a good choice. At worst the kids would have some thought provoking images to look at. Yet it should be so much more than that. There is so many things a teacher could do with that material, from discussions of meaning, creative writing, what do you find surreal, paint a surreal picture - the list goes on.

I was not expecting what actually happened though. When nephew brought up Dali, the art teacher had never heard of him. This is a person that went through 12 years of school, then another 4 of university, specialising in art. I was flabbergasted. In fact it was such a surreal experience that I thought it was a joke at first. Sadly it wasn't.

My loathing of art teachers has hit an all time high.

10 Fresh New Ways To Promote Your Business

As technology progresses people progress along with it. The same applies to forms of advertising. If you are struggling to promote your business, especially an online one, you know just how hard it is to get noticed and get yourself some customers.

There is a condition that I have termed advertising blindness. We are so constantly bombarded with ads that we subconsciously block them out. So the question is, just how do you get your advertising noticed ?

I have come up with 10 fresh new ways to advertise your business. These are all offline ideas and budget conscious.

* Flyer Dogging - This one involves some stealth. You sneak up on a blind person out walking with their guide dog. Tape a flyer to each side of the dog. They will walk around unaware that they are promoting your business. The best part is they tend to walk slowly so other pedestrians have a good chance to see your brilliant advertising. Don’t worry, the owner won’t know it is there.

*Boomgating - Getting the attention of motorists without causing an accident can be very tricky. That is where boomgating comes in. You tape a banner to a boomgate. The motorist is stuck there with your ad right in front of them. Works especially well at train crossings and other places where motorists are stuck for some time.

*The Running Man - So you have a tshirt with your company info on it, yet no one pays it any attention. Time to do the running man. Go into the city and walk into a shop, turn around and run. Thinking you have stolen something everyone will be looking at you, guaranteed. The more astute among them will memorise what is written on your tee.

*Fake Celebrity - For this one you or one of your friends need to resemble a celebrity. People will talk about it if they think the Mythbusters are at the local laundromat to see if (insert your product) explodes in a washing machine or Gail is buying a heap of boxes to hold all the (insert your product) Oprah is going to give away on her next show.

*Subliminal Religion - You need to be an atheist for this one. Approach your local churches and offer to print out the services for them. You then add some subliminal messages into the readings or hymns. “And God said unto Moses, Thou needest to stand out loud, Yay much like a good photo manipulation.”

*Paper Round - This one is great for more reason than one. It gets you away from your computer for awhile, some much needed exercise and you get paid for it. All you have to do is get a paper round. You insert one of your flyers into each paper before you deliver it. It is that simple.

*The Argument - Get one of your friends and head out to a cafe, pub or similar. Then start a heated debate about which is better - your brand or a well known brand. No one else around will have heard of your brand but they will have heard of the well known one. Make sure you mention that your brand is cheaper. They are bound to google it.

*Vantastic - We have all been stuck behind a caravan on a long trip. By hanging around the right service station you can tape a banner to the back of a lot of these monstrosities. Now all the lucky motorists will have something to look at as the traffic builds up. This tactic also works for long haul trucks.

*Photo Bombing - This is where you get yourself in the background of someones photo. Make sure that your promotional tshirt can be easily seen. The best places for this are weddings. Those shots will be around for ever, sitting on a mantlepiece and if you are really good they might even turn up on a photo bombing site. Double win.

*What The Doctor Ordered - For this one you need to print out some nice, glossy, full page ads. Now go steal your Nans month old Womens Weekly and New Idea magazines. Flick through each one and find an ad space opposite an engaging story in each one. Carefully glue your ad in on top of the original. Once the glue is dry you can drop them off at the waiting rooms of doctors, dentists etc. They will be there for years.

Zazzle Prostitution

Why zazzling is like prostitution

You tend to work mainly at night

You are rewarded for fulfilling a customers dreams

When people ask you about your job you have trouble explaining it

The customer pays a lot of money but the employer keeps most of it

Friendships fall apart and you end up only talking to people in the same profession

You have to do untastefull things to get customers

Solving Global Problems

I must apologise to my readers as it has been some time since my last blog post. The reason for this is that I have been thinking of ways to solve all the worlds problems. After careful deliberation I believe that it all begins with war.

It seems that all the wars these days are in hot, arid, desert countries. Not really surprising, I get cranky in the heat too. So the first thing we need to do is replace all the guns with water pistols. Everybody has fun in a water fight when it is hot.

Imagine all the soldiers running around squirting each other, throwing water balloon grenades. Planes and helicopters flying overhead waterbombing everyone like they do to forrest fires. We could have the best fun at World War Three. Everyone would want to go. Nobody gets killed and everyone goes home smiling.

However there are other advantages to this. All that water would turn what is now a desert into a water filled, muddy oasis. The poor people of that country would have lots of land to grow crops to feed themselves and boost their economy. A perfect solution for a struggling third world country.

The second world countries don’t miss out either. They are our number one producers of plastic toys. The demand for water weapons would boost their economy as well.

Now I know there are going to be some die hards that maintain that it just isn’t war without pain and suffering. Well just for you we can have wars at the arctic and antarctic. All the water would freeze replenishing the melting polar ice caps.

This is such a genius solution to a whole plethora of problems that I would not be surprised to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. (hint hint)