We’re not saying she said them, but we’re not not-saying she said them
Continue reading “very lolstralian things steph said or heard at the footy on the weekend”
Tag: lolstralia
Peter Combe and the climate dystopia agenda.
Peter Combe has prepared a generation of Australians for Our Climate Dystopia.
Climate change is happening, and we are ready.
Is it any wonder Gen Y is so tuned into climate change? We know what’s going on; we’ve always known. The sun is hot and over long; overgrazing is damaging the local ecology, which is leading to erosion and further ecological damage.
Join Official Potato Moya and Steph on an indepth analysis of Peter Combe’s influence on Australians of the 80s and 90s.
Continue reading “Peter Combe and the climate dystopia agenda.”
surfer went for a nom
No Award loves sharks, okay?
Important shark radar: OCEARCH, tracking international sharks. And a Western Australian shark tracker: Shark Smart. Please note that the WA State Government engages in disgusting anti-shark behaviour, and No Award’s linking to the Shark Smart site is only so you can gaze respectfully and lovingly at the sharks in Western Australian waters.
There’s sharks in Monday’s First Dog on the Moon, and it’s a good reminder that even sharks can be right-wing.
Shark survives attack by Australian surfer.
Williams was minding his own business at Jeffreys Bay off the coast of South African, when a chance encounter with professional surfer and full-time Aussie Mick Fanning left him facing a series of potentially lethal blows.
Which is the shark news reporting on this incident reported Monday morning.
Further in shark news: Shark nets planned for Sorrento Beach in Perth and Albany’s Middleton Beach. Shark nets are bad for sharks, WA! Stop using them! And Instructor’s paddle ski attacked by shark while training students in waters off Gold Coast.
If you’re interested in getting angry about our anti-shark Australian media, the shark tag at Our ABC is worth the occasional visit.
And a reminder that if you want to get angry about a misuse of meteorology and sharks at the same time, Sharknado 3 is coming. No Award will not deign to link to it, but might get drunk and watch it.
You could follow the average shark twitter. Steph does.
Why does No Award like sharks so much? They eat both penguins and cephalopods. But we can all live in awesomeness, I guess.
A Pub With No Beer: Australian slang that foreigners* misuse
There are many very important articles floating around about vital Australian slang, such as this listicle at buzzfeed and this listicle at huffpo and and this other huffpo listicle. And they are very critical to any understanding of Australia!
In fact, why don’t you watch this video for 2 minutes before we start this post. No Award and the Friends of No Award have watched this several times and cried with laughter every time.
Okay, good, great work, everyone.
This post was mostly inspired by Mad Max fandom. What Steph loves the very most about Mad Max fandom is that it’s full of grumpy Australians being really grumpy about non-Australians (mostly Americans) Getting Things Wrong. Steph is one of these Australians, all get off my lawn and get out of my car, and definitely get out of my town of 2 million people that doesn’t have a Starbucks. She’s a little bit obsessed with an epic coffee shop AU set in a small town in Australia. It has a Starbucks and a piano bar but no pub. NO PUB. Not gonna link the AU because it’s not about making fun of fanfic, it’s about making fun of Americans in general, and revelling in our own ridiculousness.
And so, for the humour and wtf of all Australians, we present:
A Pub With No Beer: Australian slang that foreigners* misuse
Continue reading “A Pub With No Beer: Australian slang that foreigners* misuse”
An excellent and 1000% appropriate Mad Max: Fury Road fan mix
By two Australians. Because what is Mad Max if not a great Aussie road trip?
- Freak – silverchair
- Mace Spray – The Jezabels
you can’t rely on the common man - Beds Are Burning – Midnight Oil
- Fang It (To Tony’s House) – Geraldine Quinn
- Never Had So Much Fun – Frenzal Rhomb
- Calypso – Spiderbait
- Highway to Hell – AC/DC
- Pace It – Magic Dirt
Someone’s taken over from where you started - Pacifier – Shihad
Smashed up on your own motorway - Cold Hard Bitch – Jet
Don’t wanna hold hands and talk about our little plans - Greg The Stop Sign – TISM
We get to do the driving, don’t choose the direction we travel - Down Again – The Superjesus
Now I’m under the sun, won’t anyone see that I’m alive - Uh Huh – Tkay Maidza
- Some Kind of Bliss – Kylie Minogue
- Where the Boys At – Chelsea Jane
Pretty good for a girl, huh? - Khe Sahn – Cold Chisel
So I worked across the country end to end
You can check out this entire excellent mix (completely out of order!) at YouTube:
Or you can hear it in order, but missing a couple of tracks, via Spotify. And why isn’t AC/DC on Spotify, anyway? What is this un-Australian nonsense?
perth + bertie the giant squid
The 2009 short film ‘This is Perth’ revealed the existence of Bertie the Giant Squid to the world in general, and as an Australian blog, and with Steph a Perthie and Liz a cephalopod admirer, it’s important we chat about this Perth local.
His presence was further revealed when George Jones and the Giant Squid aired at some film festival in the USA in 2012, garnering Bertie an international fanbase.
George Jones and the Giant Squid from Ella Wright on Vimeo.
George Jones and the Giant Squid arguably fictionalises Bertie a little bit, setting His presence off a small island – which Perth is in spirit but not, at this time, in geography – but otherwise remaining true to Him.
Bertie accepts our presence on the Swan and around Perth, but only with offerings and due diligence and respect (we are named ‘sandgropers’, after all, which surely implies a kind of creature harkening back to Him). If you are coming to Perth, please note the courtesies one is expected to pay Him.
Please, Perthies and visitors, share your stories of Bertie in the comments.
People at least as deserving of knighthoods as Prince Philip
On Monday, Invasion Day (though you may know it as Australia Day), we woke to the news that Prime Minister Tony Abbott had looked at all the Australians deserving of recognition for their achievements and contributions to the nation … and bestowed a knighthood on Prince Philip, a one-man-argument for a republic.
Liz said, “Huh.” Then she had breakfast and a cup of tea and checked again, and it was still not a joke.
What’s beautiful about Abbott’s choice is how Australians from all walks of life, across the spectrum of political beliefs and personal backgrounds, have come together to say as one: “What?” And on such a divisive and fraught day as the anniversary of the European invasion and commencement of attempted genocide, that is a great thing. Deserving, you might even say, of a knighthood.
On the other hand, it’s a bit of a joke, right?
Accordingly, No Award brings you a short list of people at least as deserving of knighthoods as Sir Mr The Queen:
- Loki of Asgard
- Mallory Ortberg
- Fire Lord Ozai
- Liz’s cat
President Andrew Jacksonretracted, on the grounds of indigenous genocide- the Sydney seal
- any of the multiple lifesized fibreglass seals we saw in Geelong over the weekend
- a bird
- any bird
- but maybe especially an emu
- Roxane Gay
- First Dog on the Moon
- the Newcastle shark
- the semi-colon
- BLÅHAJ
- That street musician who wore the penguin suit
- Taylor Swift
- your mum
- Laverne Cox
- The entire cast of Orange is the New Black
- Even Taylor Schilling, I guess
- Clive Palmer’s dinosaurs
- the raptors in Jurassic Park
- the ceiling whales at the QLD Museum
- Ruth Brown for getting the word “seppos” into an American paper
![Screencap from Twitter: "I got the word 'seppos' into an American newspaper: [link] Where's my knighthood?](https://noawarddotnet.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/twitter.png)
- Bucky Barnes
- The Triple J Hottest 100
- The East-West Link
- A flat white from Starbucks
- Tatiana Maslany
- Spoilers: everyone on this list is played by Tatiana Maslany
- Weaves’s barista
- Weaves’s other barista who she goes to when she think the first one will judge her
- The 7-11 guy who doesn’t judge Weaves’s caffeine intake
- The Oxford comma
- The current North American blizzard
- Iggy Azalea
- Todd Woodbridge’s Australian Open ad on the trams
- Microsoft Word
- Our bosses
-
Queen Victoria’s Geelong marble statues
-
Tony Abbot’s daughters for the saintly way in which they have not murdered him yet
-
Tony Abbott’s wife, same reason
- Tony Abbott’s queer sister, who has somehow never committed fratricide
-
The ghost of Queen Victoria
-
Can you give a queen a knighthood?
-
Queen Sir Victoria
-
Sir Queen Victoria?
-
I’m into it
-
Ghost Sir Queen Statue Victoria
- That guy who always phones outside office hours and leaves long voicemails whinging about how there’s never anyone around
- The Eastern Regional Library Service (and its amazing ebook collection)
- The KFC Double Down Dog
- The Jimmy Choo ads with John Snow lounging on them on the back of Telstra public pay phones
- Telstra public pay phones
- Telstra public pay phones with Wi-Fi
- Julia Gillard
- Centrelink
- Lee Lin Chin
- Lee Lin Chin’s Twitter account
- Brenda the Civil Disobedience Penguin
- Medicare
People even less deserving of knighthoods than Prince Philip
- #gamergate
gimme another linkspam, oh my baby
Important and relevant to the interests of No Award: at Spoonflower, an Australian cities design contest. There’s some racist poo in there, but mostly it’s hilarious fun.
The 7 Wonders of Reservoir. (Liz is moving in a few months, and has given serious thought to the fact that she can afford a two-bedroom house in Reservoir. Only the fact that she neither owns a car nor drives is keeping her in the inner suburbs.)
At the Guardian, on Boko Haram.
You can submit poetry at The Lifted Brow!
Steph enjoyed this profile of Wayne Denning at BRW – Denning got Australian Indigenous talent onto Sesame Street.
A teaser at Kill Your Darlings, about the absence of cricket in national literature.
This Stormtrooper was saved from a deadly snake bite by his Storm trooper armour. #straya
And multiple Australian men have been arrested for driving motorised eskies. #heroes
The Medicare rebate slash we better not have: Latika Bourke at the Guardian; Sophie Scott at the ABC.
Official No Award stance: Do not sing the National Anthem on Invasion Day (known legally as Australia Day). Can you even. This is beyond even the cultural cringe. (Steph had a moment when she first opened that article where she thought ‘NADC’ said ‘NAIDOC’ and she was like WHY WOULD NAIDOC SUPPORT THIS. Don’t worry. She was wrong.) And a thing at En Passant.
Australia’s ridiculously terrible Human Rights Commissioner thinks the Racial Discrimination Act is essentially censorship.
The horror of a pineapple of clowns descending upon Sydney.
Manus: Security guards attack Manus compounds and are total shits.
‘Indigenous Australian’ was one of the most read Wiki pages of 2014.
Language Tips for Cis Feminists Speaking on Trans Issues: Liz very much wishes she had read this before doing the Ancillary Justice post, and unreservedly apologises to anyone she offended.
NASA has released the world’s largest photograph, a high-definition panoramic view of the Andromeda Galaxy. Warning: may trigger existentialist crisis.
Translating Shakespeare in China:
The other Chinese favorite, perhaps less expected, has been The Merchant of Venice, which debuted as a silent film in Shanghai in 1927. Called The Woman Lawyer, the film highlighted what has particularly interested Chinese audiences about the play, even up to the present: its proto-feminist heroine Portia, who dresses as a man and brilliantly defends Antonio in a gripping courtroom drama. That scene later became, and still remains, a staple of the Chinese middle school curriculum. The Western focus on Jewish-Christian relations means little to Chinese audiences compared with the way that Shakespeare dramatizes a classic battle of Confucian ethics, between li (profit motive) and yi (loyalty to friends).
(Liz would argue against the suggestion that China is unique in using Shakespeare to advance its ideology! But it’s an interesting article nonetheless.)
The free market won’t stop climate change, but its failure is inspiring the people who will. A comic at by Sam Wallman at The Nib.
No Awarding Around:
Steph’s post from last week on Appropriation and Racism in Melbourne Restaurants has been linked eleven trillion times, so you should definitely read that. There will be a follow-up post eventually to tell you all the restaurants she has been told about following that.
Cranky Ladies of History, featuring fiction by Liz and Steph, is up on GoodReads! It’s not available for pre-order yet, but keep an eye out.
art shows australia deserves
An entire building inspired by Lee Lin Chin and her fashions
Portraits of Larry Emdur circa The Price is Right
Kamahl, illustrated with quotes from his songs
Red Hot Rhonda Burchmore and the Channel 9 Dancers; this would be an interactive exhibition in order to properly appreciate her legs
The Gladiators; called ‘Gladiator Ready: the journey of a nation’, and paired with a special mini-exhibition devoted to referee Mike Whitney and Who Dares Wins
David and Margaret. Actual David and Margaret, in chairs, reviewing movies for ever and ever
Play School; includes an ode to Noni Hazlehurst’s potty mouth, and speculation on the absence of Diddle the Cat.
Trams of Australia
Erotic Art inspired by Australian cop shows of the 90s, especially if that art includes Wildside and Water Rats
Gold Logie Award winners in horror movies
Saving Australia: Day Wear of Australian Lifesavers
Failed Christmas Decorations That Narrowly Ate Loved Ones: inspiration from back issues of The Australian’s Women’s Weekly and Better Homes and Gardens
margaret pomeranz and lee lin chin: full grown lesbian FAUNS
Tomorrow When the War: racist art of Australia edited to be less racist and/or feature giant Australian fauna
Waiting Game: lots of different clocks illustrating how late trains in Australia are.
with thanks to Hayley Inch for inspiring and “assisting”
no-award.net 