This is my life. This is what I've made for myself. Personally, I'd rather a pony...

A Nada World

A Nada World
The TV Series





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Want future fashion trends? Look no further than A Nada World, your one-stop shop for all things fashion related, and then some.

1. Smart Jeans.
In a first for literary fans and trendsetters alike, Stephen Hawking has signed a deal with a prominent fashion label to reproduce his best-seller "A Brief History ot Time" on jeans. By contorting themselves into knots, jean-wearers and their friends can read up on the exciting theories put forward my Dr Hawking, exploding the myths about the constructs of space and time. Great for appearing smarter than you are.

In response to the announcement of this cross-media deal, several other authors have found themselves bombarded by contract offers with fashion labels. Look out for clothes from Stephen King, Patricia Cornwell and for the racier fashionistas, Jackie Collins.

2. Evolutionary Clothing

In an age where there's a fine line between being a fashion maker and a fashion follower, it's important for people to know that you were there first.

Introducing Evolution, a line of fashions that evolve with time.

Witness the Evolution Business Shirt: Your initial purchase of a crisp off-white shirt with a hairline pinstripe seems extremely orthodox. Surely this can't be the fashion choice of the future? But observe: after a day of wearing the Evolution, in repsonse to body heat, moisture and UV light, extra embellishments appear in the pattern: swirls of design around the collar and cuffs. After a third day of wear, further hairline squiggles appear in the material. As time progresses, and the shirt is worn regularly, the patterns of the shirt increase in conplexity, until what was once an off-white shirt with a hairline pinstripe is now a gloriously patterned, fashionable work of art.

And who could honestly say you follow the fashion pack when the evidence is right there on your fashionably patterned chest. Your Evolved shirt tells the world "I've worked long and hard to get this design, I'm no fly-by-night blow-in, I'm the real thing! I am the Trend-Master!!"


3. Receptive shirts – the “Vegas”

It's amazing what they can do with nanotechnology these days. Witness the next step in individualised fashion: the Vegas.

The fabric of the Vegas contains two types of receivers, designed to accept impulses from certain frequencies. Thus, when the shirt is in close proximity to a source projecting the right frequency, certain receivers turn off, projecting clear, or white, while others turn on, projecting black, colouring in the shirt design. The effect means a constantly updating design on your shirt.

Could be used by shops to alter customer's shirts on the footpath outside, turning people into moving billboards.

With the addition of home projectors, shirts can be custom-designed by the wearer.

Version 2.0 gives you the ability to freeze your favourite design.

4. Penis Pants.
Jeans especially sewed to enhance a visible schlong line.

Or introduce one.

5. Pixels are in.

The pixel look is king, which means that boxy is cool. Spicing up the retro look, the design for the next season works on making the wearer look like they are a pixellated character from a distance: we're talking shoulder pads to block out the shoulder, the "Flock of Seagulls" to square off the head, large ruffs at the extremities and the large blocks of colour on all apparel.

To complete the image, this year's fashionable move is a rapid high-kneed strut rather than walk, emphasising the resemblance to simply-animated pixellated characters in computer games.

6. Thick/Thin Woollen jumpers.

Whereas old style woollen jumpers had the unfortunate effect of making you look several sizes larger, the new range of woollen jumpers are designed to sculpt your body to look its best in the colder months.

The female jumper accentuates the chest, while minimising the stomach, creating a more pronounced curve. The men’s jumper widens the chest and thickens the arms, while reducing the look of the stomach, creating the classic triangular shape.


Finally, a few notes on what's in this season:

Breathing through the nose.
Extending the "ur" sound in the word "purple".
Talking about the Can-Can.
Making associations between totally foreign objects.
Cheese as a promotional item.
The Welsh.
Post-Modernism in Magazines

And what's out:

Breathing foreign objects
Making associations between the Can-Can and Post-Modernism
Purple Nose
Extending the "ur" sound in the word "cheese".
The Welsh in magazines

And a final thought on being a hospitable host or hostess: Don't give people the Plague. It's so 1666.

And with that, you're up to speed...












posted by Chad 1:15 PM

In the hopes of saving people from Christmas heartache, I would like to pass on some information that may be useful to others in this festive time.

People should be made aware that messing with Christmas tradition can be harmful to your health and the health of others.

One tradition that is a very common occurrence these days is the hanging of the Christmas Wreath on the door of your house.

By creating an inviting door, you can create the illusion of an inviting house behind it, and thus the Christmas tradition of sweeping all problems under the rug for the festive season is continued.

The thing about Christmas traditions is that they didn't become Christmas tradition by people just screwing around with it hither and yon. Christmas traditions must be followed to the letter. Muck with them and they will come back to haunt you threefold. Read my words: Don't muck with Christmas traditions.

Several years ago, I was bedecking the halls with dried tinsel moose skins and decided that what my abode really needed was some decorative addition to my front door.

So off to the Christmas shop, the hastily titled Hall's Bells, I go to pick up a dainty Christmas Wreath for my knob.

Snigger if you must.
I must, so give me a sec.

OK, snigger if you must, but little did I know how important my decision to buy a Christmas Wreath really was, and I came unstuck when the Wreath bin was found to be empty, Ms Hubbard-style, and I was forced to make a decision: leave my front knob unwreathed (heh heh) or choose an item as a replacement.

And so instead of decorating my front stoop with a Christmas Wreath, I chose to decorate with what I thought was the next best thing:

A Christmas Wraith.

Well, was that a bad idea? Yes, the answer you are looking for is yes.

While Dickens may find the appearance of ghostly apparitions at Christmas both entertaining and highly metaphorical, the carollers that turned up on my doorstep weren't quite as thrilled to see a ten-foot grusome skeletoid netherbeast, dressed in a tatty cowl and threadbare robes, rattling chains in front of their faces and beckoning them to their doom.

And less said about the postie the better.

And I didn't do very well at all in the Street Decoration Competition: three judges dead and seven onlookers in hospital. And I only came third.

After about a month I'd had enough. Sweeping the inwards of rosy-cheeked children off my stoop is one thing, but risking my life everytime I went down the shop for the paper is another. I had to throw gold rings into the garden and bolt for the door when he went scampering after them.

So in short,
Christmas Wreath: festive decoration for the front door.
Christmas Wraith: ghostly demonic hellspawn that enjoys shrieking and disbowelling. At Christmas.

Just because they are almost spelt the same, doesn't mean they are even remotely similar.

You'd think I would have learned my lesson after that whole fiasco with the Easter Rabbi...



posted by Chad 10:53 AM

Has it really been a year since I told you all the heart-breaking story of the tinsel moose?

Well, I think it's time that we stopped and had a good hard think about the real meaning of Christmas. It's time you thought about someone else instead of yourselves. It's time you thought about Billy.

You see, Billy has had a hard life. He was born in an alleyway, with a stray cat as a midwife, to a drug-addicted prostitute, who then left him in a bin, to be found by a pack of foraging dogs, who took him in and raised him to the age of two. They taught how to raid bins for food, bark at nothing and sniff butts. While marking his territory around a butcher shop, he was found by welfare workers and put into an orphanage, never to see his canine mother again.

The orphanage was a cruel, cold place. Unable to speak, Billy cowered in the corner of the bunkroom at night. Finally, Billy was adopted by a family of sea folk, who put him to work on their boat, struggling with the heavy nets full of smelly fish and pointy crustaceans, sea salt rubbing into his blistered hands, seagulls pooping on his sunburnt head.

After seven years, Billy ran away from the boating family, living in trees for six months, eating nuts and berries and drinking water from a polluted stream. His best friend was a piece of sponge he found in one of the fishing nets, stuffed inside an old boot.

Billy and Spongeboot travelled north into the harsh realm of the outback, with deadly snakes and pointy spinifex, until they came across an open-cut mining project just outside Alice Springs, where Billy took up a job checking odd bits of rock for stuff, using a pickaxe and some sulphuric acid. After 18 months, Billy's arms were nothing more than stumps protruding out of his potato sack shirt.

The final straw for Billy was when Spongeboot ran off with a doctor who promised to make him into a real shoe.

Billy went on a rampage, drinking alcohol-related liquids, knocking things over with his stumps and cursing. He stole a truck and crashed it into a pylon, causing the open-cut mine to explode. Charged with public indecency, he was thrown into jail, where he now resides, serving the remainder of his 212-year sentence for malicious wounding of an open-cut mine.

But it doesn't have to be this way...

At this special time of the year, when everybody's thoughts are about presents and giving and receiving of said presents, and gifts and receipts, and return of gifts you didn't want, and those free gift-wrapping counters at the shopping centre, they never do a good job do they, and how do you get that curl in the end of the ribbons, and so on, it's about time we thought about giving to someone else, rather than the someone else you're giving to already.

It doesn't take much: some spare change, a couple of coins, some folding if you got it, cheques work for me, electronic banking is even better.

With your help, we can make the world a little brighter this Christmas. All of your donations will go into the official A Nada World Charity Drive.

But how will my donation help, I hear you ask?

It's very simple: All money raised in the official A Nada World Charity Drive will be used to ENSURE that no-one will have to listen to the depressing story about Billy again. All the money will go towards stopping anyone from even mentioning that guy's name at all on this website. Forget him completely. No longer will anyone have to listen to his namby-pamby, cry-baby story about his hard life and his stumps-for-arms.

And surely, isn't that what we all want for Christmas? the opportunity to get pissed, rip into some presents, and fall asleep in a kiddie pool in your undies, without having to listen to some sad-sack story about someone who has had it tough.

We're not asking for millions, all we're asking for is enough to stop having to listen to Billy's unfortunate life story.

Please give generously. With your help, we'll never have to listen to stories like Billy's again...

Now wouldn't that make everybody's Christmas just that little bit brighter?





Well, everyone except Billy of course...




posted by Chad 2:34 PM

As many people would know, I'm not impressed by much. I rarely take delight in the minutia of life, or even the word minutia .

To prove my point, I'm going to be completely underwhelmed about my new ice blocks.

You see, in my travels through the supermarket, I came across a new type of bag from Glad, makers of things made of plastic to put over other things.

These new ice bags replace your regular, common or garden ice cube trays. You pour water into them, seal them, then bung them into the freezer. Give it a bit of time and pKow! Ice blocks.

OK, continuing to be underwhelmed so far.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to explain the concept of freezing water in little pockets to produce ice cubes, and anyway, what's a rocket scientist doing wasting their time talking about ice cubes when there are more important things to think about, like where the cool fins go.

So why am I still writing about a plastic bag full of frozen water?

Because of the smarts that have gone into this ice block bag. For example, after you have filled it with water, to seal it, you just turn it over. The bag has a very simple self-sealing mechanism, which works exceptionally well. Basically, when turned over, water fills sacks on either side of the opening, effectively sealing it.

It is a simple idea but it works, and it doesn't require extra parts to be incorporated into the design of the bag.

Another cool idea is once the water is frozen (how you say... it is ice?) you can either snap off each piece separately, in its own little plastic parcel, or, by pulling the sides of the bag, you can snap the partitions between the blocks and come up with a bag full of ice blocks. Very smart.

So in my humble opinion, it's really cool, and since I'm not a rocket scientist (and know nothing about fin placement), I will just give it two thumbs up.

And I like the thought that someone thought it through: how to reinvent/replace the regular icetray, how to design the bag to seal itself, manufacturing the bag to allow for single packets or whole bags. Three cheers for smarts!

That's about all I have to say about frozen ice for the moment.










posted by Chad 8:24 PM

Hey everybody!

My new toothbrush rocks!

No longer the dull uninteresting brush for my toothypegs, no sirree!

These teeth of mine are now tripping the paste fantastic with the coolest of the cool toothbushes.

Think I'm kidding? Check it out!



I'm not mucking about with just one set type of bristle, not even two or three. I'm talking FOUR DIFFERENT TYPES OF BRISTLE!! Some blue ones on the outside, followed by two lines of long white bristles, and in the middle two rows of backward-angled bristles interspersed with two rows of forward-angled bristles. One angle is blue, the other is yellow. I'm not sure which is which, and it doesn't matter. What matters is that I now have FOUR TYPES OF BRISTLES cleaning my teeth.



OK, so the head is looking pretty cool huh? But hold on, check it out: it's got highlighter-green/yellow bits! And they're curvy! There's a grip on the front and the back is the same cool stuff.



Want more? Sadist! Meanwhile, the handle is SEE-THROUGH baby! Blue AND see-through! You can see through it, and whatever you can see is tinted blue in colour! Tasty!

Is that it? Mostly, and no.

On top of all the cool stuff that is on my toothbrush are other little touches and flourishes that make it look more like a particularly long and groovy car and less like a stick for cleaning pieces of food from the mouth.



Like little stripes at the neck, circles on the shoulders, and some little growths on the ankles.

Bring this all together and what do you get? Well, you get my toothbrush, and it rocks.

ROCK N ROLL TOOTHBRUSH!!!

Ok, that's enough then...








posted by Chad 8:06 PM

I have a reputation for putting my foot in it, saying the exact wrong thing at the worst possible time.

All lies, of course, but you need a reputation for something, and it could be worse. I could have a reputation for gargling in social situations. Or being Swiss.

And in the end, it's all about interpretation and context, and usually mine doesn't link up with other peoples. So who's right?

Case in point:

When I was in high school, I played cricket for the school with a guy called Alastair Jones, who was a year above me. Alastair was your standard tall, weedy, red-haired, over-freckled kid, obviously some UK-based genes somewhere in there. Anyway, I couldn't really tell you anything more about Alastair. He was an ordinary guy, he hung in a group of guys who played sports, although he always came across as the guy most likely to "snap in half", rather than "deliver the pain".

A year or two later I was living in Perth, going to university in an ill-advised bid for a journalism degree. I went around to visit some friends at St Thomas More College, a residential college across the road from University of Western Australia, and while I was walking through the grounds with some friends, I came across Alastair. He was recognisably Alastair: same red hair, same over-freckled features. However, in the intervening years, he had stocked up, added beef, something about him seemed more matured, like a cheese, but with beef. A beef-cheese if you will.

Either way, he wasn’t the weedy little bloke I remembered from school, so I said (roughly remembered):

"Jeez, Alastair, you've filled out. How are ya?"

The response was a startled gasp from everyone present and a stunned hand shake from Alastair.

After a short conversation, we went our separate ways and I was told that I can't go around saying that sort of thing to people.

"Why not," I said, "he looked good!"

Despite them explaining something about "etiquette", which I then had to go look up, I still didn't understand.

You see, in my mind, I had given the guy a compliment, yet everyone else (possibly included Alastair) didn't have the same context as I did, so to the untrained eye, I just called a guy a fat fuck.

So who's right?






Well, it's me, innit, you stupid dolts.

Who's blog did you think this was?




The end.



posted by Chad 8:57 AM

It seems that calling the dog Freo is surprisingly apt.

I mean, at first he was a novelty, then he was frustrating. Now, he's a mix of confusing and funny.

Just like the Dockers.

He will look at you when you say his name, but he won't come unless he's interested in what you've got. He knows to poo in the garden, but he'll piss anywhere. We bought him an activity ball that drops treats out of the side when he plays with it, he's running around with the pooper scooper in his mouth, whacking chairs.




I'm sure there's something going on down there in his slightly-too-big-for-his-body head, but I have no idea what it is.

Is this what all puppies do?

It has taken the Dockers several years to get to where they are now: a fair-to-middling football team, and it will probably be a couple more years before they compete for a flag, let alone win one.

Which makes me wonder what our dog is going to be like down the track. What exactly is the dog equivalent of winning a premiership?

I'm really hoping that we're talking dog years, because I don't wanna wait for ten years before Freo starts acting like a fair-to-middling dog.

It's unfortunate for him that he's taken after me: short attention span, attention-seeker, easily swayed by treats.



On the other hand, we're both cute, so that's a plus.



posted by Chad 11:41 AM

Factoid regularly repeated on the net:
"The average human eats eight spiders in their lifetime at night."

Creepy, innit?

Think about it for a second: an average person eats eight spiders in their lifetime at night.

Firstly, I don't even know how they can up with this number. How you do collect the data?

Secondly, if that's an average, then logically there are numbers of people on either side, and I hope for your sake that you are on the lower side.

Which means that for every person under eight spiders a lifetime, there could be someone who eats more than eight spiders in a lifetime.

So, possibly, for every person who only eats two spiders in their lifetime, there is someone who eats 14.

Alternatively, there could be one person who is somnabulistically voracious when it comes to spiders. Thus, there may be twenty people who eat only three spiders at night during their lifetime, but they are balanced out by that one person who eats over a hundred in their lifetime.

Ewwwww...

I take it snorers eat more than non snorers, mouth open and all, although they didn't say anything about spiders entering the nose and accidentally getting eaten.

Heavy sleepers probably fare worse than light sleepers, who would wake at the touch of a spider's bristly legs on the corner of their mouth.

Meanwhile, the results could be skewed by someone eating a female spider that is carrying a brood of baby spiders on her back. Does that count as one spider, or three dozen little soft sticky baby spiders skittering around inside your mouth and down your throat while you sleep?

Are you creeped out yet?

OK, I think I'll stop now, before I start talking about waking up in the middle of the night and feeling something stepping across your tongue...








posted by Chad 9:51 AM

I'm slightly in awe of anyone who can get up early in the morning. Anyone who can constantly wake up with time to spare before work.

Not me.

I am not a morning person. I set my alarm for 7.33am, hit the snooze at 7.33am, 7.42am, 7.51am and occasionally 8.00am, get up, have a shower and get out the door just after 8.30am to arrive at work by 9.00am. Approximately.

Very occasionally, I will get up early for a particular reason. After the sleepiness fades away, there is the stunned displacement of being in the right place in the wrong time. Outside, the air feels wrong, or the the wind isn't working, or something. Usually, everything's colder, but it's a energetic chill, like the lightning bolt of diving into icy water.

There's a blueness about everything, like Romper Stomper without the skinheads.

Could I do it everyday? Not bloody likely. On the occasion I do get up early, I'm usually knackered by about 2pm, vowing to never get up early again. And maybe it's a good thing, because if everyday was unnormal, then what would normal be?

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz......................


posted by Chad 9:50 AM