The Very Thirsty Caterpillar

By Sam

 

Not on my watch.

We live in a cynical age; an age of recessions, racial tension and media spin. Once valuable children's books, like The Very Hungry Caterpillar, are being left behind. What sort of lessons are they teaching the nation's children? That caterpillar's become butterflies? Not your caterpillar sonny. Your caterpillar is becoming a chartered accountant with a wife who hates you and four kids with ADHD - and that's only if you're lucky. I think it's time we reimagined these out-dated children's books, and gave them a more realistic snapshot of contemporary society. I think they need to know what life is really like for little caterpillars these days.

The Very Thirsty Caterpillar

In the light of the moon lay a drunk caterpillar.

On Sunday morning - bluuuurg - the caterpillar awoke with a hangover and threw up on his clothes. He started to look for some booze.

The Best of the Best

 By Sam

It was 4:00pm and I was already passed out on the couch in a pool of my own gluttonous vomit. Chunks of partially digested pizza slid across my shirt and down towards my belly, as my body tried desperately to wheeze in enough oxygen to keep my pathetic carcass alive. It was fighting a losing battle against the half-kilo of cheese I had just stuffed down - and on - my face.

The gurgling sound of my snores was punctuated by the shrill ring of the telephone. I awoke with a loud obscenity, hitting the floor like a flesh wrapped sack of cheese, which was exactly what I was. I envied no man.

"What the hell?" I screamed at an unreasonably loud volume. "Who vomited my pizza all over me? And who pooped in my pants?"

The phone continued to ring, its insistent tone cutting through the fetid air.
"Why is there noise?" I shouted. "Jack make the noise stop!"
"No!" came a muffled reply from across the house. "Not until you take a bath, or at least stand out in the rain or something."
"No can do!" I replied seriously. "I need to keep up a certain level of filthiness to drive away Delta Goodrem. Seriously, she just won't take no for an answer."

"Delta Goodrem... the singer."
"Yeah sure!" I replied truculently. "Delta Goodrem has been stalking me because I'm so hot. Anyone who says that it's actually a bus driver named Frank is either lying or mad."

The Stuff of Nightmares

By Sam

I have a lot of pathetic nightmares. It's unclear why. Perhaps it's because I have a terrible diet; perhaps it's because I'm an atheist; perhaps it's because I'm the reincarnation of a Mayan priest. We'll probably never know. Whatever the cause, I've had some fairly weak nightmares in my time. Where some nightmares cause you to bolt awake in the dead of night, drenched in terrified sweat, these ones tend to quietly shake you awake and whisper "what the hell is wrong with you?". To illustrate my point I have decided to list four of the crappier nightmares I've had, along with an interpretation of their meaning by noted dream therapist Dr Velveeta Vandersplat:

Fridgepocalypse

I once had a dream about an evil fridge. It started with this one ominous fridge standing on its own, but as soon as I blinked there were suddenly fridges on either side of it, stretching as far as the eye could see. It slowly dawned on me that I was standing in a gigantic circle of evil sentient fridges. Also, we were in space

What it means (Dr Velveeta Vandersplat):

This dream tells me that Sam harbours a deep seated fear of modern technology. He has carried this sense of mistrust with him ever since a betrayal in his childhood. Most likely he was molested by a cartoon character, or possibly an electrician. Maybe his brain is just telling him it thinks he's really fat.

Animal Love

By Sam

 

If you had to fuck an animal, what animal would you choose? It's an important question that has plagued philosophers for centuries.

Now I know that some moral whingers will get all prudish on me and be all like “wah wah wah, sex with animals is wrong! They're dumber than we are, and they're ugly!” but I submit to you that their protests mask their hypocrisy. Some really ugly people look a lot like animals, and no one seems to protest when they have sex (as long as it's in the dark); and the police don't arrest people for having sex with Lindsay Lohan, even though she clearly has the brain of a parakeet.

It would be shallow of us to deny the pleasures of love to someone with Mickey Rourke's looks and Lindsay Lohan's brain, but the instant you label them with pigeon hole terms like “mountain gorilla” or “chimpanzee” suddenly I'm going too far. Well, I will be silent no longer. If we are to break the shackles of an unjust society it must be through open minded philosophical examination. To that end I present to you a list of five animals that you might consider having sex with, along with the pros and cons of my experience having sex with each:

French Poodle

Voulez-vous coucher avec moi pompoms?

Back to the polls!

MEDIA RELEASE
Monday August 23 2010

FAMILY FIRST CALLS FOR ANOTHER ELECTION

Family First Ex-Leader Ex-Senator Steve Fielding has today called for the election to be re-held.

“Clearly the people of Australia have been brainwashed into thinking they don’t want a government,” Ex-Senator Fielding declared today. “The fact that Family First again received 0.002% of the vote this time around, when last time that was enough to give us a voice in the Senate, but this time we won no seats, means that the system has a screw loose.”

Ex-Senator Fielding will use his remaining time in the Senate to push for a re-vote, so that Australians will have the chance to better express their desire for a Family First member in the parliament.

It's election time.

From the desk of Your-Brain-on-Coffee political reporter Benson Wong comes another two snapshots into the mind of Steve Fielding.

MEDIA RELEASE
Friday August 20 2010

FAMILY FIRST TO LAUNCH CAMPAGNE ON ELECTION EVE

Family First Leader Senator Steve Fielding has announced that Family First’s long-awaited campagne launch will take place tonight, on Election Eve, and will be a dazzling and spectacular effort that will convince voters in the safest seats that Family Fist is the party for them.

“Family First’s strategy is to target safe seats, not marginal ones, because there’s more voters in them,” Senator Fielding explained. “Why do the big parties only campagne in about twenty seats, when there’s a hundred and fifty up for grabs?”

An Involuntary Interview with Taylor Lautner.

By Sam.

It was 10:00am on an otherwise pleasant Monday morning when I was awoken by a strange, clattering, banging noise from my door. I started awake and choked down the stale bile of last night's drinking binge. The left side of my face was still slick with drool that had the sour smell of wine. The banging was becoming more insistent. I could hear the protesting shriek of the hinges of my security door. I went to see what was happening.

Opening the front door I was greeted by a strange sight. There was a tanned, shirtless man with sculpted pecs and rippling abdominals. He appeared to be passionately dry-humping my security door. To be honest I felt a little bad interrupting him. It was an intimate moment.

You look a lot like a door right now.

"Yeah!" he screamed. "Yeah! Take it! Just like that!"

"Uh, can I help you?" I asked.

"You the journalist?" he demanded.

"What?"

"The journalist man, the fucking journalist. I'm meant to be having an interview now. I'm fucking Taylor fucking Lautner. I'm the fucking werewolf from fucking Twilight. My fucking agent told me I was having an interview with a fucking journalist. Fucking fuck journalist wasn't fucking at the last fifteen places I fucking fucked, so I guess it's you."

"My, that was a lot of expletives in one sentence," I observed.

"You speak like some kind of fag," he said. "Can I come in? I'm coming in."

Before I could stop him, Taylor pushed past me into my living room.

Nicknames can be misleading.

If we stop oppressing the oppressed it will render the term meaningless.

Your-Brain-on-Coffee political reporter Benson Wong has been snooping around the office of Family First Senator Steve Fielding again. I'm starting to suspect they may be having an affair. He brought us this exclusive, stolen from the desk of Senator Fielding's media advisor.

MEDIA RELEASE

Wednesday 11 August

GAY RIGHTS UNDER THREAT UNDER LABOR

Family First Leader Senator Steve Fielding today announced that only a Family First government will be qualified to protect the rights of gays and other social minorities. His comments came in the wake of the criticism that was directed at his colleague, Queensland Senate candidate Wendy Francis, over the weekend. Wendy Francis’s comments were taken out of context, and Senator Fielding felt that he needed to speak up to set the record straight.

“Only Family Fist will be able to make laws about gay people without offending not gay people,” he said yesterday. “As a party that is definitely not gay, we are the ones who are best equipped to bring an un-biased approach to gay law-making, especially about things like families.”

Under Family First’s ambitious new pro-gay agenda, gay people will not be allowed to have marriages, de facto (not real) relationships, children, adoptions, tax breaks or divorces. This will bring return the edginess and mystique to the gay community that has been so sorely lacking for such a long time.

The secret lives of daleks.

 

By Gnome.

Australia to be removed from Australia.

Exclusive by Benson Wong, Your-Brain-on-Coffee Political Editor.

MEDIA RELEASE
Monday August 9 2010

FAMILY FIRST TO EXERCISE MAINLAND FROM AUSTRALIA'S MIGRATION ZONE

Today, Family First Leader Senator Steve Fielding announced an ambitious policy to ensure that illegal boat people are not able to reach Australian shores.

"For too long, Australians have endured the endless stream of boats from Afghanistan and other places, and it’s time they were stopped. To do this, Family First has decided that dramatic action needs to be taken. If they won't stop coming here, then we need to change where here is so that it's there. That way, when they're there, they'll realise that it's pointless coming here, because it's there, but a different there from the there their aleady in. I think I make myself clear."

“We will begin by introducing border security laws to remove the mainland of Australia from Australia’s migration zone, thus preventing any boats from reaching our shores and claiming asylum. The only place where the boat seekers will be able to land and claim asylum will be Tasmania, but it will be jolly difficult sailing a rickety boat that far!” Senator Fielding said yesterday.

Dr Wizard tells it like it is.

A letter to that smug guy in all your classes.

By Sam

This is a letter to the smug metrosexual guy in one class of mine, but it's also a letter to that same insufferably smug metrosexual guy that seems to turn up in every class. It's like there's a whole army being cut from the same smug metrosexual cloth, so the same guy keeps turning up in every class for every subject. You know the one I mean. I think it's about time someone told him that he needs to stop acting like a douche, or we're going to tear off his moisturised skin, and use it to make war drums to warn all other smug fools of the fate that awaits them.

*bonk bonk* I hate you. *bonk bonk*

Dear Smug Guy,

It's Sam here, from Your-Brain-on-Coffee. We've been in the same classes for a while now. I'm not sure if you're following me, or I'm following you, or we're both following each other in some strange bird-like mating ritual. Whatever the reason though, I've had a while to observe your behaviour now, and there are a few pointers I have that might help you to act more like a decent human being:

Intelligence is not a moral virtue.

It's not the size, it's how you use it.

Why I fear the word "apples".

It's time to declare war on the sea.

Your-Brain-on-Coffee political reporter Benson Wong recently filed this draft media release from the office of Family First Senator Steve Fielding. It is presented here with original spelling.

When I asked Benson how he found it he laughed heartily, and had his butler give me a "lively thrashing."

    MEDIA RELEASE
    Wednesday August 5 2010

    FAMILY FIRST TO LOWER SEA LEVELS

    Family First Senator Steve Fielding has announced a radical new policy to ensure that Australia is not swamped by rising tides in the next century.

    “It’s so simple,” he said, “I can’t believe Julie Gillard and Tony Abbo haven’t thought of it before.”

    Speaking from his bath, Senator Fielding observed that water levels go up when things are put into the water, thus displacing it. “As a trained and qualified engineer, I feel I can confidently use the word “displacement” without fear of contradiction,” he added. “So if we want the water levels to go down again, shouldn’t we just take more things out of the sea?”

How to win at relationships.

Your-Brain-on-Coffee mocks the 2010 election.

In about two weeks Australians will be going to the polls to vote in the finals of the reality show that's come to be known as "The Federal Election." With that in mind, I'd like to introduce the Your Brain on Coffee political reporter: Benson Wong.

Benson is a mysterious figure, he insists that we can only meet him in darkened motel rooms stinking of broken dreams and hooker vomit. There he gives us the low-down on the real workings of federal politics as he drinks fine cognac from a blue plastic sippy cup. I once asked him a stupid question, and he threatened to hold me down and give me an arabian death mask. I was too scared to google what an arabian death mask was.

As a poltical insider Benson is privy to things that mere mortals would never be allowed to see, but he allowed Your Brain on Coffee to publish some of his secrets. He was recently snooping around the office of Family First Senator Steve Fielding.

Note: for those of you in the UK, Family First is a little like the British National Party, but not really. For those of you in the US, Family First is like the Republican Party, but not really.

    MEDIA RELEASE
    Friday July 30 2010

    PRIVATE ARMIES FOR ALL AUSTRALIAN STATES

    ‪Family First Leader Senater Steve Fielding has called for individual armed forces for all Australian states and territories.

    “For too long, the states have had to endure the constant military threat posed by each other, and it’s about time that was fixed,” the Senator said yesterday.

    Family First’s policy would be to fortify all the borders in Australia, with guard towers every 20 metres and electric fences along their full length. The electricity would be generated by a system of bicycle-powered generators operated by imprisoned boat seekers, who would work in 12 hour shifts.

   

How much would I have to pay you to do what I did?

When I was eighteen there was a brief period when poker was all the rage among people I knew. It was one of those strange phenomena which seemed to cross all social boundaries without rhyme or reason, like skateboards or tazos.

Remember these?

As far as games go, you can do a lot worse than poker. I enjoyed it. The rules were easy enough to pick up, and the game became relatively interesting once you knew a few tricks. It was also an excuse to drink. That was the bit that got me in trouble.

It was a cold winter night. I was getting over an infection around one of my wisdom teeth, with the help of some antibiotics. I had an invitation to hang out with my friends. They'd recently acquired a poker set, complete with casino chips, and they were keen to have a few games. It sounded fun to me, and my teeth were feeling okay, so I went.

It was already quite late when I got there, but none of us had eaten dinner. We decided to make the best dinner a group of eighteen year-old boys could think of: fuck-tons of potato wedges. We filled the oven with tray after tray of frozen wedges and gorged ourselves on their delicious, oily goodness. We washed it all down with beer, and a good lot of wine. I held off at first, I remembered hearing somewhere that alcohol and anti-biotics didn't mix, but the siren call of alochol was too tempting. I had one glass, then two, then three. After that I stopped counting. At the point that none of us could stand to eat another starchy wedge of potato we sat down to play some poker. While we were playing we decided to have some more wine. After all, you can't play poker without booze, that would be like turning up to your sister's wedding without your gimp mask.

Hey, look over there. Uncle Dave forgot his mask too.

Buy me a pony.

So funny I think I might kill myself.

Jokes and humour are the sort of thing that are always going to be subjective. Where one person might find something hilarious, another person might react with complete indifference. Where one person might find a comedian vulgar and disgusting, someone else might find them pants-drenchingly hilarious, (probably me. I'm quite juvenile).

The things that you find the most amusing are probably the ones that, for whatever reason, click with your personality. For example, lots of my friends love the film Napoleon Dynamite. I hate it. As far as I can tell, the main character seems to be mentally retarded, and we're supposed to laugh at all the mentally retarded things he does. That seems pretty harsh to me since, you know, he's retarded.

I would guess that I'm in the minority on the Napoleon Dynamite thing, which is fine. The fact that I don't find it funny shouldn't detract from how funny you find it. It's just that the humour clicks with your personality, but it doesn't click with mine. That seems to be one of the side effects of good comedy: it's only funny for a specific subset of the population, which includes you.

Most of the time I can see how other people might find something funny, even if I don't. To return to my Napoleon Dynamite example, I can see how people might find the absurdity of the situation funny, or the strange cast of weirdos that Napoleon calls a family. Not my particular cup of tea, but there you go.

Get rippling muscles of muscles on your muscles!

A few weeks ago the pangs of hunger gave me the brilliant idea of writing for magazines. Magazines like Cosmopolitan and FHM are big business, I figured they'd have some spare money lying around to give me. I was practically salivating at the prospect of the riches that would come raining down on me as soon as I sent them my brilliant, mind blowing, world changing article, "The Softness of Fingers: how you can get rich and lose weight by not using toilet paper." (It's a work in progress).

I can picture you reading this, nodding your head in agreement and saying something like "Wow, that is an amazing article. I can't wait to read it. What a brilliant plan Sam." If you're a woman you may find yourself becoming spontaneously aroused from reading the title. How could this possibly go wrong?

Birthday Surprise.

Thieves must pay!

You know what I'm really afraid of? Idea theft. Though I suspect not in the way most people are afraid of it. My fear is less that someone else will steal my ideas, and more that I will accidentally steal other people's.

Whenever something becomes popular there are legions of people on the internet ready to cry foul, and claim that they've stolen every idea they ever had. While the righteous anger of the internet is quite regularly misplaced, in general I'm in favour of a strong culture of anti-plagiarism. I think credit should always find its way to the people who came up with the idea. It always makes me cringe when I see people praising something that I know was stolen from someone else.

The thing that scares me, though, is the possibility that I might be stealing ideas and not even know it.

Orange you glad I didn't say apple?

The Sin of Pride

When I was six I spent my school holidays at one of those holiday program things. You know, the ones that are sort of like being at school, but not. If you've never heard of a "school holiday program" it's basically a way of making sure that your kids don't run onto the road while you're at work. You pay a company money to hire are a couple of uni students on minimum wage to keep a bunch of bratty kids in a rented hall. If they lose any they get fired.

From time to time there were "fun" activities planned for the kids. This particular day they'd decided to herd the kids off to mini-golf; mostly to stop them screaming for one god-damn second.



As you can imagine, I wasn't the most normal kid. My brain sometimes seemed to make connections that were a little bit odd. For one thing I thought that track-suits were the height of fashion. I refused to wear any other style of clothing. I was also desperately afraid of doing anything embarrasing, which is strange given that when you're wearing a track-suit your whole life automatically becomes a joke.

To an extent I'm still afraid of embarrasement. I spend a lot of my life flinching as I fend off assault after assault of bad memories. You might well ask why, if I'm so uncomfortable with my own humiliation, I choose to publish it on the internet for all to see? I dunno. I guess I'm just stupid.

Anyway, this particular day the temperature outside was around fifty-million-billion degrees. The fierce eye of Ra was hot enough to liquefy the tarmac. Stepping outside was like stepping into an oven that was baking a block of uranium. This wasn't really the optimum temperature for a kid who permenantly dressed in winter clothes.



In all its wisdom, the holiday program had decided that the best activity for a hot day was a vigorous afternoon of mini-golf. Outside.

Pay attention, they bring your food.

Today I was standing in my favourite cafe waiting to order my daily dose of frothy coffee goodness when I saw something that kind of bugged me. One the waiters walked out to a table to deliver some coffees. He walked up to the table and asked, in a loud, clear voice that I could hear from the queue, "Who ordered the latte?"

Blank. Stares.

Seriously. It's was like he'd just asked the question in Icelandic then demanded that they respond in iambic pentametre.

Eventually one of the ladies at the table realised that the drink was hers and there was much rejoicing all around. My question is this: how did that even happen? I mean the waiter was standing right there, holding the coffe you ordered not five minutes ago. Is your attention span so short that you actually forgot doing that?

Of course its much more likely that the woman just wasn't paying attention, but you know what? That bugs me just as much. What the hell was going through her head as she looked at the waiter? Maybe she was falling into his dreamy brown eyes and imagining them as pools of chocolate. Maybe she had a mini-seizure. We'll never know, but the strange thing is that the phenomenon of not paying attention to the serving staff seems to be quite common. I have a couple of friends who will do the same thing as that woman every time we go out, without fail. I've seen waiters start to walk away with their food before they even realise what's going on, it's like they have blind spot for anything carrying a plate. It gets to me every time.

Bonus Comic!

Bonus comic for today! I’m not entirely sure what I was thinking when I drew this, but why should I deprive you of something disgusting?

Winners and Losers

The urinal is my prayer mat.

Today I followed this dude into a public toilet, and I was like, "Holy shit that chick is walking into the male toilets. Wait, wait. That's a girly looking guy."

Watching this girly-man enter the bathroom ahead of me left me with a dilemma. The toilets aren't very big, and I value my privacy whenever I have my wang out. The fact that I'd paid attention to his features meant that, even if he was in a stall, I would have a really clear mental picture of him grunting and straining the entire time I was in there.

I hadn't actually entered the toilets yet, so I figured I could just abort the whole operation and pretend that I needed something nearby. That way I could return when conditions were more favorable.

On the other hand I needed to piss like a racehorse. I'd been holding onto my bladder for so long it felt like there was a little surgeon's scalpel trying for force its way down my urethra.

I went for it.

When the toilets are empty I usually find peeing quite relaxing. It's the one point in the day when no-one can expect you to do any work. You can literally feel your day getting better.

True Love

Why I lose at life.

There are lots of people on earth that I envy. I envy people who can naturally wake up early in the morning. I envy people who actually enjoy exercise. However, there's one set of people that I think I envy more than any other: people people.

You know. the kind of person who says "I'm a people person, I love meeting new people." And then they're all like "Let's go to a party because I have so many friends."

Well, you know what? Fuck you people person. Fuck you right in the pooper.

Children are dicks.

Ah the happy sounds of children playing. Listen to the way their games take them to magical worlds of imagination. Now listen closer. They're taunting the fat kid. Apparently the wonderful world of imagination they're being transported to is one where he hangs himself.

People often say "kids can be mean," but they always say it in that voice that silently inserts the caveat "but you'll be alright in the end." I think that's wrong. Kids are sinister little bastards, and given half a chance they'll do stuff that crosses the line of viscous and keeps going into down-right dangerous. You see, kids aren't just mean, they're also phenomenally stupid. A potent combination. Don't believe me? Then think back to your own childhood. If you can't think of even one pointlessly mean thing you did in your childhood then you're probably still a horrible person now.

Also, if you're reading this and thinking "what a sanctimonious dick!" My answer to you is this:

I know you are, I said you are, but what am I? 

Keeping in mind that children are stupid, stupid dicks I present to you a story about how awful my friends and I were as children, because it's important to recognise when you've done something evil. Also it was kinda funny...


Yeah, I'm probably still a dick.