Ozzyfrog’s Rants

Something incredible has happened. Something amazing has occurred. For today, Drive’s Car of The Year was announced. Please prepare yourself for a shock. The Commodore didn’t win. At first, it must be a misprint. There’s no way the judges would ever choose a VW run around instead of the beloved Commodore. Since the dawn of time, it has always won COTYcompetitions. Forget the fact that it was dull, thirsty and more common than a fridge, it always took home the trophy with ease. Yes, it’s reliable. Yes, it has enough room in the back to have a game of tennis. For the love of god though, could we at least give the other cars a slight chance at winning something? Well, it seems that they finally do.

Even more surprising was the fact that it didn’t even win in its class. The Nissan Maxima beat it, which seemed rather odd. Then they chose the BMW 135i as being better than the Nissan GTR or Audi S4, and I’m sorry, but have you had a look at the thing? The 1 series looks as if it was designed by Stevie Wonder. It looks like hatch from the back, a sedan from the front and a bread van from the side. The coupe version looks as if it’s been squashed by an angry BMW employee. Yet it still beat the Audi and the mind bending Nissan GTR.  I have however, saved the worst news until last. The Toyota Prius won the people’s choice award and the Green Innovation Award, as if one award wasn’t enough.

I must admit, Toyota have improved the new model. The old one looked like a stunned fish that had just eaten a rather tangy lemon. It had no top speed whatsoever, and in a crash offered the same safety as a paper bag. To top it off, a VW diesel had better economy than it. So why anyone bought it at all remains a mystery to me. The new version looks better than the old one, but is still a dreadful car. It’s still slower than an Ice Age, and is not in any way a good drivers car. It’s also incredibly quiet, which while that may seem like a good thing, no-one will ever hear you coming in a Prius. What happens is people constantly lunge out in front of you, meaning that you stock up an amazing pedestrian hit streak. Prius drivers have no taste in cars, only in the environment. So why is it that car reviewers like them?

Here’s the secret. If you’re a car journalist, you get invited by, let’s say, BMW, on an all paid luxurious visit to Germany, to test their new model. After staying in a 40 star hotel, you get to take their new car out for a spin. After a dinner at a fine restaurant, you get a parting token such as a laptop, and get a business class ticket back home. So, what do you say about their car? That it’s rubbish? Of course not, you want to be invited back into the Elton John lifestyle, so you say it’s brilliant so you get invited back. You see where I’m going here? It could be said that the review of a car is purely a reflection of how good the Champagne in France was that day. Or how pleasant the hotel was in Germany. It would seem that VW put a fine dinner on that day, perhaps some roasted lobster followed up with some Soufle, and Holden bought a Coles Chocolate Cake. So here’s the tip Holden, make whatever car you want. It have no handling, a horrid engine and be called the ‘Roast Penguin’, but follow one simple rule. Fire whoever was in charge of catering that day, and hire the French chef Georges Blanc. Your new Roast Penguin will sell like nothing else.

As no doubt you know, much of my blogging percentage is taken up my rants about public transport. This is because that I catch it often, and because it gives such good writing material. For instance, last week a final report was released from the investigation of the mess up Connex caused last Oaks day. I kid you not, this was its major finding; “Connex mishandled the train services on Oaks Day”. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that why they launched an investigation? They hardly launched it because it all went smoothly.  So what were they investigating? Did they launch an investigation to see if an investigation was needed? Or were they trying to figure out if the foul ups that day were just random acts of the devil?

Of course, I could talk for weeks about Myki. One, the name. I know it’s supposed to be said like ‘My Key’, as in ‘My Key to Melbourne’. It’s obviously a cheap, imitation key, because the lord mayor has the proper one. I always think of it like the name ‘Mikey’. Which is fine, for a pet dog or cat, but it brings across the image of a slightly chubby 38-year-old who lives with his mother Muriel. Not a very good look. Apparently, most of the problems people face with the system have been  when its been  downloading software updates, which it does frequently. They have obviously had a chat will Bill Gates; it sounds like Vista all over again. Even the fact that you ‘touch’ on and off the bus sounds all wrong. ‘Swipe’ or ‘validate’ surely sounds more sophisticated and less inappropriate. The bus lady also still screeches at me ever morning too at Box Hill. I heard her from inside a bus half a kilometer away on Wednesday. She still had nothing more to say than the surprising fact that there were no delays.

You see? I can ramble endlessly on this topic for weeks at a time. However, something has changed the whole outlook on public transport recently. Something very, very evil. I was on my way to a theatre show (don’t ask why, it’s a long story involving many whales and glow in the dark ninjas) on the tram, and all was progressing normally. Although it started getting rather cold, which was odd seeing as it was warm outside just before. Then ice started forming on the windows. Slightly alarmed I got up, and then realised too late what was happening. I ran to the doors, but they were frozen shut, as they were throughout the tram. I saw out the front window the next stop was getting very close, which is when I got very worried. Panicking, I pressed the emergency door release button, but to no avail. The tram started pulling up, but then I saw the emergency exit hammer above the window.

Jumping out of a broken tram window at 50kph is not the most pleasant of experiences, but I escaped with my life. For if I hadn’t gotten out of the tram, I would have seen none other than Ms Austin forcefully wrench open the doors and get on board. I could still hear the cries of distress in the distance as I ran from the doomed tram. Suddenly, I saw the light. After establishing that it was a street lamp, I moved on and realised something I never thought of before. And please, before reading the next phrase, make sure you are sitting down, and remove any shard objects from your pockets, because it may shock you. The people running the public transport system are not imbeciles who can’t run a transport system. They are brilliant people who live in fear of the evil that plagues their transport system. All of the oddities of the system now make sense.

For one, we know why the investigation into Oaks day seemed so flawed. It was an investigation into if it was an act of the devil (although Connex still couldn’t shift the blame on that day). Only people who have the ability to touch can use the new ticket system. It also needs constant updates on the situation of the evil at hand. The Box Hill Lady is a warning system, and as mentioned in an earlier blog, the buses have spoilers to flee an encounter. It all makes beautiful sense. So I sincerely apologise to the transport system, for all the abuse I have shamelessly hurled at them over the years. Except for Brumby. Everyone needs someone they can take out their anger on.

Recently, many neighbouring islands have been gutted by multiple Tsunamis, leaving nothing but a trail of destruction behind. I assure you however, those waves were not even half the size of the wall of water that greeted me as the bus door opened this morning. How do they leak so much water? Yes, I know, you’re thinking “here we go again, more whining from Ozzyfrog about his bus trips’. It got me wondering about this drought we are in though. Forgive me, but it didn’t seem like much of a drought this morning, as a canoed my way up the aisle of the bus into my seat. After tying the canoe down, I found that I had a prime view of the cars floating past my window, and the occasional fruit shop owner being swept away along with his many bananas. As we pulled into the next stop, and seeing an elegantly dressed businesswoman blasted down a drain pipe from the torrential gush of water that our bus produced, it struck me just how much rain we have been having lately.

So, I presume you would expect that our water catchments have had a stable increase in their water levels? Well, no. In fact, they seem to be losing water rather than gaining it. Where is it all going? Are they strategically placed in the driest places on earth? It seems that they would gain more water in the Sahara Desert. Or is Tim Holding drinking all the water? I actually cannot think of many people who I distrust more to run our water system than Tim Holding, partly because he has the IQ of your local letterbox. Who else goes hiking alone in the middle of nowhere, and then goes off the proper trail at night? He then gets treated as a hero because he went back to work after he was rescued after falling down a small hill. This is apparently the man who is best suited to getting us through this drought.

An apparent expert also came on radio this morning, telling us how that if we had stronger pumps in the Yarra, we would save a colossal amount of water. So by draining the Yarra to a small puddle, we would somehow be better off, and have more water. These are the kind of brilliant ideas the people in the government’s water department come up with. They like to think outside the box. “If we pump more water out of the Yarra, then we will use less water from the dams, and so we’ll have more water!’. Yes, but it’s not really solving the problem, is it? Desalination plants help solve the problem, as does stopping Tim from drinking all the water. Not pumping more water out of the Yarra.

Building a huge pipe and pumping the water down from the country doesn’t really achieve much either. This is because crops need water more than we need swimming pools, a concept that Tim is yet to grasp. No matter how many pictures of cute frogs he puts on the outside of his building, the problem is not going away (just like the man himself). There is a way though, to get more water. Nothing on planet earth is more efficient at getting the tiniest amount of water and turning it into a raging waterfall. It has a huge capacity, and can wipe out suburbs at a time. If only Tim caught my bus in the morning.

The High-Tech equipment used at Melbourne Water.

I still remember the first time I opened Windows Movie Maker. Thinking it would be a snazzy program that would allow me to make nice movies on my computer, I was quite excited. Until I opened it. Then it became a puzzle, of trying to figure out what you were actually supposed to do with it. To this day, the puzzle remains unsolved. It’s obviously not a word processor, and it doesn’t seem to be of any use for emailing. The name might suggest some sort of movie making use, but as far as I can tell there is no way you can edit anything. You start to become quite confused as you try to figure out what on earth this program is actually for. Instant messaging? No. Internet Browsing? No. Blogging? No. It could be a banana ripener for all you can figure out, until it dawns on you. It actually is supposed to make movies. You spend a few moments trying to overcome this fact, while impersonating a goldfish, as you try to comprehend how on earth the product ever made it onto the shelves. It looks like something the accountant made, while on her biscuit break.

It is completely useless. There are many things however, that make a good effort of trying to be just as useless as it is. Clickview is one of them. It seems to be a storage device for rejected health videos, but it even fails at that sometimes. Or when Nissan a while back introduced a car with two trip computers. I have been kept awake for hours at night, trying to figure out why a car would need two trip computers. There must have been a reason, or they wouldn’t have put two in, but I can’t figure it out for the life of me. Recently, I added another item to this useless list. On the way to school, the 302 City National Bus drove past in the other direction, probably trying to find its way to the city. Not that unusual, you might say. Well, the spoiler on the back of it was.

As a general rule of thumb, most bus companies don’t see the need for a large spoiler on the back of their buses. This does have something to do with their rather low top speed (or lack of one). So why Ventura find the need for one is a bit baffling. There are, however, a few possible reasons. Mr Ventura Man might have finally gone mad. Or perhaps he thinks it is stylish. He might have even realised that our bus service is not very good, and decided to spice it up a bit. Or it could be something more sinister than that. Switzerland is fully prepared for a war, they have nuclear bunkers and many of their roads can be converted into runways. I like to think we’re dong something like that. “Yes, we know your bridges can be destroyed at a moments notice, but out buses can travel at Mach.2″ Maybe the many other useless things you see have something to do with this.

Like the Box Hill Centro Lady. Every morning, after an incredibly ear-drum bursting squeak, she gets on the intercom system and yells at us about how “there are no known delays on any of our Box Hill services”. Pull the other one. Every single morning she says the same thing, so much so that you would think that it’s a pre-recorded message. I somewhat doubt that none of the buses or trains are ever late. They just are. I think they’re just preparing the intercom system for possible air raid sirens, where you’ll be able to jump into your specially equipped Mach 2 bus and zip away into the distance. It would be like no other evacuation system in the world. It also explains why ClickView has so many safety videos. The Nissan mystery though, is beyond me. Last time I checked, they were making are car with 2 gearboxes.

After a recent incident in Mexico, it would seem that not all airplane hijackers are skilled in the art of hijacking. Or logic, for that matter. Yesterday, an Aeromexico was hijacked by a Bolivian priest and some assistants. Thing is, he decided to hijack the plane after it had landed. Guess what? Everyone evacuated and his team of hijackers were promptly arrested. What a well formed plan. Some people still don’t seem to realise that it actually isn’t possible to hijack an airliner anymore, especially when it’s taxying back to the gate. September 11 obviously had a lot to do with this, but the Americans really did allow it to happen. Back in 2001, the Americans treated airplanes like we treated buses. Baggage did not have to be checked to a passenger before being allowed on board, for instance. I’m surprised the terrorists used Stanley knives to gain access to the cockpit. They could have waltzed on with a bazooka. The rest of the world, however, actually realised the existence of hijackers and so took them slightly seriously. Of course, after September 11, all the airports in America went berserk and forced everyone to follow suit.

The result is that nowadays the security guards look at you suspiciously if you try to get some orange juice to your gate, and it can take so long to get through customs that you are actually classified as a missing person. Security also seems to be quite illogical. I don’t quite see how I’m going to get through a reinforced cockpit door with a spoon, but I guess you can’t take any chances. One time when I was going to Tasmania with my cousin, who works in the multimedia industry, we had to take a special type of camera equipment through security. The thing that worried us, was that it looked exactly like a bomb. I mean, exactly. It was a smallish black box that had wires sticking out of it and a small screen on the front. Was security fussed about it? They didn’t even blink. They did blink, however, at the tube of cream in my backpack. After establishing that my Savlon antiseptic cream was not hiding a gun, we were allowed through with our bomb look-alike in our bags.

Nowadays, though, just saying the word ‘bomb’ will incur a rather nice fine. Not to mention that every few seconds a man will tell you not to leave your bags unattended, but he forgets to tell you what happens if you do. Your bags get blown to smithereens, and I don’t expect that you will be reimbursed. If a bag is left alone, the bomb squad comes charging in and destroys your bag. I would really rather them have some method of checking the bag first, before blasting it into millions of pieces. If you think about it, it is in an airport, where thousands of people have multiple bags. The chances of someone losing their bag is quite high. And usually, it does not contain a bomb. Or Savlon Cream, for that matter.

Another oddity of today’s airports is how you need to arrive at the airport 3-4 hours early. Why? It takes only a moment to check in, and while customs is slow, it’s not that slow. People still somehow manage to be late anyway, and they always seem to be foreigners. If a person is called over the intercom to go to their gate immediately, they will always be called something like Mr. Ombvnishyu or Ms. Grytiliekmes. Never just Mr. Waugh or Ms. Smith. I’ve often thought of booking a flight under the name of ‘Bomb’ or ‘Explosive’, and watch the intercom man dragged out by Federal Police when he calls you to your gate. You would also be able to still board your flight, because it’s guaranteed that Mr. Joliuospts will still be late. Especially with no intercom man to hurry him along. Just remember the trick of customs, if it looks suspicious, it isn’t. General household items however, can see you in negotiations with security for hours. So next time you board a plane, make sure you’re bag looks highly suspicious. You’ll sail through customs, guaranteed.

After Bill Gates decided to retire and leave Microsoft, the general trend I felt was that people began disliking Microsoft more. Vista was not exactly the most welcomed operating system in the world, and many decided to switch to Macs. Apple took advantage of the buggy OS, and attacked it relentlessly with ‘I’m a Mac’ ads. Things were not looking to peachy for Microsoft, especially after they tried to take on Google with the search engine ‘Bing’. That didn’t work either. Clearly, something needed to be done. Fast. But what to do? It seemed that there were very few options for them to choose from, and then they made that dreadful ad that had the lady throwing up everywhere. That was banned in about 5 seconds. On the brink of social collapse (in my mind anyway), the CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, decided to take matters into his own hands. He went completely bananas.

I’m not joking either. After the calm, professional and almost mythical presentations of Bill Gates, Steve’s presentation style must have been a bit of a shock to everyone. Mainly because of his lack of presentation style. He runs around the stage like a lunatic, screaming at the top of his voice and generally acting like a crazed chimp. He is quite obviously, a genius. Never have I seen a CEO of a company as big as Microsoft go bonkers on stage regularly. You cant imagine the bosses of Rio Tinto doing that, can you? Well, you obviously can’t now, because they’re all in some sort of Chinese prison. That’s besides the point though. The point is that few high up respectable people act like that. Obama doesn’t come into a meeting doing the Rhumba (although it would be amusing if he did), and Kevin Rudd rarely rollerskates around Parliament.  My respect has gone up 100% for Microsoft now, just because of how amazingly crazy their public image is becoming due to Steve. I can’t imagine that Bill is overly impressed, in fact I can picture the dinner he was eating taking flight when he first saw Steve’s crazy outbreak.

However, do think about it. If you were to be the next replacement of Bill Gates, you have a fair reputation to live up to. Almost an impossible one in fact. The only way to be remembered as much as him is to of course do something very different. In this case, Steve tries to impersonate an exploding rubber duck. Only with a lot more vigour. This does beg the question though, what is his replacement going to do? Clearly, he will have to try to outdo Steve, and that people, will be a very interesting spectacle. A very interesting one indeed.

At the time of writing, I am sitting at a table in Lorne, with an ocean view in front of me. The weather has sometimes left a bit to be desired, so I’ve played 29 games of solitaire on my laptop. And lost every single one. Either I’m not really getting the gist of the game, or it is actually impossible to win solitaire on Vista. Whatever the truth, it does succeed at keeping you occupied, as you try to finally win a game. It’s a bit like minesweeper. Never in my life have I won a game of minesweeper. This might have something to do with my playing style, which is click the little squares randomly until they explode.  Lots of fun, but it doesn’t hold much of a success rate. Hearts is another Vista default game you can play when you have no internet access (as I do now), and I love it. I felt confident with my playing skills, and was even game enough to call it easy. I saw the scoreboard, and I easily had the highest score out of Frank, Bill and Darren (the opponents I named). However, when I got a score of 99 and Bill only had a score of 2, I got slightly suspicious. I then realised the idea is to get the lowest score, not the highest. After seeing that, I decided to go for a walk on the beach.

However pretty the beach is in the day, I can assure you it isn’t so breathtaking in pitch blackness, so at night I have gotten into the habit of watching TV. A certain person, whose alias begins with a ‘T’ and ends with an ‘amasys’, has unfortunately gotten me very interested in the TV show ‘MasterChef’. It wouldn’t be too bad if the show didn’t seem to be on every single night. However, I found that watching people panic as their pristine salmon burns or sausages explode is actually quite amusing and entertaining. Watching people try to lose weight, however, is not. And Funniest Home videos ran out of steam some time ago, and I think YouTube can be partly blamed for that. I love YouTube, but we must see it for what it is; endless videos of people falling of bicycles or trying to jump of roofs onto trampolines and failing. However, one genre of TV show that has remained constant throughout the years is Game Shows.

I enjoy Deal or No Deal, especially when someone has a bank offer of $30,000 and turns it down, only to end up winning $20. Funny stuff. Of course, there are the classic shows, like ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ and ‘Sale of the Century’. Inevitably, there are bad ones like ‘100 to 1’(or something like that), where as far as I could tell, the producers tried to cram as many people into a room as possible and then try to ask all of them questions. You can imagine the outcome of that. I do think though, that we need some spicing up of Game Shows. I want Deal or No Deal to go into the negatives, so you can end up owing the show money. That would keep the contestants on their toes. ‘Congratulations, you are now $40,000 in debt. Probably shouldn’t have turned down that bank offer, eh?’

Most of all, I want an impersonation TV series. What they will do, is select some contestants and give each of them a job to impersonate. For instance, if the job chosen was an airline pilot, they would put on a Qantas uniform and see how long they last in a commercial cockpit pretending they knew what they were doing. Or a doctor, or even a sports commentator. It would of course cost a fair bit of money to run, because of all the organisation and security clearances involved, but just imagine the ratings. You could have eliminations, and finals, and the scores would be decided on how long the contestants get away with their impersonation. I think it would be an excellent show. With that I will sign off here, for ‘MasterChef’ is on again.

I was watching the ABC news, and they were telling us of how the overbreeding of cats was becoming a major problem in Australia. They of course showed many pictures of cute kittens rolling around and looking cuddly for the cameras. The experts then came on and discussed the issue, and one man came on the screen and said what he thought was causing the overbreeding. Any guesses of what the cause was? Cat owners? Poorly trained vets perhaps? No, not even close. “I believe the overbreeding has been caused by Global Warming”. Seconds later, the TV screen was covered in fried chicken. If I had normally heard such a statement, I would have my hearing checked, or look at the person in a mix of astonishment and perplexity. I probably looked like a goldfish, trying to comprehend the reasoning of how Global Warming causes cats to breed more. As far as I could see, there wasn’t any.

How on earth could Climate Change possibly cause this? I mean, if he can say that on national television, surely we can blame anything on Global Warming. “Damn, my car has a flat tire. Stupid global warming”. “That was a terrible golf shot. Silly Global Warming”. “My toast landed butter side up. Damn climate change”. In fact, I might start trying this. It was interesting that only last week the leader of the ‘Family First’ political party said that Global Warming is fake and there is no proof that it exists. I presume the 7 people who follow that party dropped to 1 after he said that. I admire his boldness, but not his intelligence. Although, he seems to be a right side smarter than many environmentalists. I kid you not, there are people who go out in groups into the forests of America and yell about how sad they are of deforestation to the trees. Not to one another, to the trees. And I mean yell, cry, scream and tell the trees how sorry they are. Wouldn’t they be a fun bunch to have dinner with?

When some people decide to try to save the earth, their sense of humour vanishes. Taking the green bag to the supermarket becomes a life and death struggle. And God help the poor souls who poke fun at the greenhouse effect. I don’t mind people speaking their mind, but some of the protests that they do are so strange. For instance, I absolutely despise the organisation ‘Plane Stupid’, so much that I actually wrote them an angry letter (which was quite amusing, I should post it here sometime). This is partly because I am an aviation enthusiast, but also because of their silly protests and general impossibility of what they are trying to achieve. Ban airplanes? And they try to do this by chaining themselves to a runway fence or throwing green goo on a minister we’ve never heard of before. Do you think a politician would listen to someone who throws goo on someones suit?

You can, of course, always tell who an eco nut is. They will obviously be driving some horrid eco-box, like an old Toyota Prius, which by the way is the most pointless car to ever roam the earth. It is expensive, has two pathetically small engines and still eats 4.4L per 100km. That doesn’t sound to bad, but considering a sporty Peugeot 207 diesel does 4.8L in the real world (Toyota test in factory conditions) it’s not very good. And it’s horrid to the environment when it’s being made in the factory. A Hummer is actually more tulip loving than a Prius driven three times longer than it, because of the polluting way the electric engine is manufactured. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, beardie. I think it is a clever attempt by Toyota, but it’s just not worth the money. And neither are most people who drive them.