Chris Deal

The Break Up

One of the hardest times of my life was the day my metabolism broke up with me. We’d been together for about thirty years, and I gotta say, it was a magical relationship. I loved that metabolism with all my stomach, and it loved me. Together we had purpose. We had direction. I wanted to eat whatever I wanted to eat, and my metabolism wanted to metabolise whatever things were around that could be metabolised.

Stuffing all sorts of junk down my pie hole every day was like an investment banker relentlessly bringing home designer clothes for his desperate housewife. “Oh darling, another Double Down? Why you shouldn’t have! Come here you burning hunk of fat you!” It was erotic, symbiotic, and most of all, gastronomic. And despite today’s ominous crystal ball of divorce, the cake-eyed optimist in me honestly thought we’d be together, forever. Fat chance.

Like clockwork, as the sun set on my twenties, so did the relationship with my one true love, and my ability to effortlessly break down organic matter and transfer it into useful expendable energy. No goodbyes. No notes. No regretful text messages at one in the morning begging for me to take it back. Nothing. It was just gone. Gone from my life, leaving nothing but suspicious deposits of adipose tissue around my waist.

For years I never understood what belly button lint was. Now I not only get it, but I amass it like a frigging tumble dryer. For years I would be able to run for a bus and emit just a few puffs as I shelled out a fistful of coins. Now if I can even be bothered to run at all, I can feel parts of my body responding to gravity and anatomically pissing themselves. For years I thought skinny jeans and fitted shirts enhanced my wimpy frame. Now I’ve started fantasising about drawstring pants and never breathing out again. I even considered the possibility that I felt “bloated” the other day. Man alive.

Sure, I’ve tried to get back into the game. I dated exercising for a while, went out with low-fat a couple of times. Had a few low-carb one-night stands. It was ok I guess, but it’s never the same. I’m forever haunted by those intimate memories of pure metabolic ecstasy. Those late nights we’d stay up together, me scoffing Oreos and necking bottles of full cream milk, it setting off a series of chemical reactions and organising them into metabolic pathways. The way I used to play with its hair, while it would couple enzymes together to allow for spontaneous reactions of energy release. The way we’d get loved up and listen to Kenny G’s Songbird without any sense of irony, while carbohydrates and nucleotides and amino acids processed sensuously and automatically inside our young, digesting, nubile bodies.

The way we’d… uh. I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can do this.

I planned to make this a cautionary tale for all those skinny thirty something guys out there who think they can keep inhaling whoppers and schooners and zingers and I’m Entering Crust Pizza Fridays #crustpizzafridays, and think they’re set for life because their metabolism said it would never leave them. I want to cast off the Beelzebub of the belly, preach from the Mount Franklin and tell them to turn away from the darkness of stomach stuffing sin, and powerwalk in the low fat light. But I, I can’t.

I don’t care if it makes me sound like a hopeless romantic, or some sort of pathetic loser who can’t get over that one high-school home-wrecker who ripped out his heart and drowned it in the deep fryer of despair. I don’t care what my friends say. The fact is, I miss you metabolism. I miss you so god damn much. I want to be with you, and I’ll do anything I can to win you back in my heart and biochemistry.

And if there’s anything I can do to prove my love that doesn’t involve working out or understanding nutrition or changing my lifestyle habits in any way at all, I just want you to know I’ll do whatever it takes to make you McHappy. And most importantly, I need you to know that I ain’t too proud to beg. Especially not for seconds.

First published November 2012, Smith Journal Issue 1. Way up the back past all the fucking Benjamin Law articles.

(Source: smithjournal.com.au)

A dangerously unhinged lesson in office etiquette

By now you may be aware of the offensively Draconian nanny state mandate handed down this week to the fine employees of BHP Billiton.

The memo entitled, Mine Kampf: BHP’s Office Environment Standard And Glorious Five Year Plan, outlines a thousand and one workplace bugbears that the BHP politburo have declared no longer negotiable, punishable presumably, by pain of performance review.

It’s a grossly heavy-handed document, undermining the worth of the employees who deserve respect not only for making BHP the success story it is, but also just for being humble and honourable members of the human race. And it would be an indefensibly deplorable document of foolscap fascism, if it were not for one tiny problem: as a rule, you people are f#$king disgusting.

I’ve seen how you work. Matter of fact, I’m working with some of you right now. And your hate crimes against cleanliness make my skin not so much crawl, as yearn to evolve tiny little mouths just so it can vomit away the badness.

Have you people even been to the kitchen lately? Have you seen the way you treat the “communal space”? It’s not so much a fridge but a frigging Smithsonian exhibition, that scientists are currently examining so we can understand what Kraft Singles really were like in 1983.

And when some poor world weary soul posts a note saying, “Hey do you guys think you could not leave a f#$king Hazmat scene in the sink some of us would like to not pass on AIDS to our clients anymore”, suddenly that’s called being “passive aggressive” and the solitary dissenter is cast out as some sort of workplace pariah, never to be invited to Friday drinks ever again.

Then you’ve got the desk. The workstation. Grime zero. The little corner of the room that for some reason the entitlement generation think is their very own episode of The Renovators, to “personalise” as if they’re fifteen again where the single goal occupied by their single brain cell is to plaster every inch of their bedroom walls with pictures of that dude from Twilight, lest their very identity be dragged listlessly into the recycle bin and trashed for eternity.

Now I’m all for people expressing themselves, but at what point did you think this was your house? When did you think it was your coffee table to lump your dogshit-soaked loafers on, brush Cheezel remnants from the remote and stick your diseased hand down your pants just so you can “get comfy”? Make yourself at home at other people’s places much, asshole?

Do you think I’m going to call up Rupert Murdoch and say, “Listen Rupe, the logo on my business card, it’s just… it’s just not me. It’s way too, I dunno, newsy. If it’s ok with you I’m going to make it bright pink. And I’m changing the font to Comic Sans. You know, make it fun. Like me! Oh and “News Ltd”? Booooring. I’m going to tell everyone I work for “Hot Sauce Banana Party OMG Harry Potter rulezzz! Ltd”. I just need to express myself, you know?”

Are you shitting me? I would happily fire me forever and lock away the CV.

But it’s not just tactile terrorism. There’s also the matter of your incessant audio atrocities. No I’m not talking about Kevin from accounts payable and his annoying snorty laugh, or the I.T guy who breathes so loud I feel like I have to call a sex pest every time I have trouble logging in to my Mac.

I’m talking about you and your rubbish music pumping through your rubbish little iPod dock, or leaking like sonic puss from the gaping wound of your “noise cancelling headphones”. Noise cancelling my right testicle.

Oh, I’m sure it sounds just great FOR YOU in your dreamy utopian pop world where Christina Aguilera sings about how beautiful you are in every single way (but conveniently not how shit you are at Excel), but for the rest of us, all we can hear are the tinny bleatings of something that sounds like it’s about to die and hopefully will before you find a filing cabinet lodged in your spinal column.

Exactly when did you think you were attending your own personal rave party?

My favourite is when I need to ask a BUSINESS question of my WORKMATE about how we can help the company earn MONEY so we can all get PAID to LIVE, and I have to get up from my desk, walk across the entire office, put on a neon yellow chicken costume, stand on his desk, drop my pants and wiggle my junk right in his face just so he can do me the honour of removing the Marshall stack from his stupid little sound holes.

Sod all that. You crazed cubicle hippies have had a pretty good run over the decades with your collaborative office love-in, and quite frankly I’m glad BHP are manning up and putting you truculent little upstarts in your place.

I know you all want to sit around in a circle, hold hands, and get to the emotional crux as to why Debbie just couldn’t be f#$ked getting rid of the empty printer cartridges everyone keeps tripping over, but this isn’t a God damned citizen’s assembly.

It’s a job, and if you don’t like the fat wads of cash being bestowed upon you by your benevolent dictators, maybe it’s time you pissed off and worked for a not-for-profit. Or worse still, advertising.

I’m not here to win friends. I’m here to draw a line, lest we allow ourselves to fall helplessly down the slippery slope to complete office anarchy. Because one day you’re allowing people to put post-its wherever they please, the next you’re turning a blind eye to people getting raped at the photocopier.

It’s called “taking responsibility”, like how Penny Wong’s gay baby is indicative of the fatherless society which is directly responsible for causing the London riots. Cause and effect. Do I really have to spell this out to you?

Wake up to yourselves people. Open your eyes. Maybe if you did you’d be able to see the blood all over your hands, if there wasn’t so much ink on them from the dodgy fax machine that you couldn’t be arsed doing anything about.

(Source: thepunch.com.au)

ICB: Coghlan’s full of it saying Tory’s full of it

Welcome to the first ever I Call Bullshit on I Call Bullshit, inspired by Shane Coghlan’s critique inspired by Tory Shepherd’s critique of the soundtrack to the music of the book of the film of the TV adaptation of Chris Lilley’s Angry Boys. 

The piece was undoubtedly conspired in Shane Coglhan’s irony tower where there is a complete ban on any form of criticism of something so highly anticipated and loved unblinkingly to within an inch of its life.

It’s probably the most painful humourless critique of a critique I have ever read, and is so tiresome it’s made me question not only my opinion of Lilley’s latest masterwork, but also my gender, sexuality, stance on asylum seekers, and even whether I still love my sister anymore. And if you met her you would know how offensive that last statement is. She is absolutely wonderful, but right now, after reading this humourless blackhole of a piece, I just don’t know.

Shane brushes Tory’s critique of Lilley’s new series aside with strokes of absolutely nothing. He makes gigantic assumptions about her character, her sense of humour, and whether or not the woman has any appreciation for bum and poo gags.

Well Mr Coghlan, full disclosure, I once attended a karaoke night with our fair writer, and I can personally vouch for her gutter-ridden foul-mouthed Philistine-loving cess-pool of a mind.

Three times I did the eternal “pull my finger” gag, and each time the laughter from Ms Shepherd was so intense I felt like the ghost of Rodney Dangerfield had taken control of my entire person. Took three days for my eyes to return to their natural state and for me to stop wanting to bang cocktail waitresses. True story.

In a world with little to laugh about, pissweak critiques of critiques such as this make life somehow worth sticking around for, if only to see how far down the pissweak rabbithole we can go. As I read Coghlan’s Whinefest 2011, for a moment life’s little problems went to the back of my mind, like “Should I be worried about running over that kid if I’m fairly sure there were no witnesses?”, and “Do you think that rumour about not getting pregnant the first time you have sex is true and if so how can I fake a DNA test?”, and I just had a good old fashioned wholesome laugh at someone else’s expense. 

I won’t go into the details (there are none), but Coghlan rattles off a bunch of inconsequential palava before making the life-changing analogy that the Kings Of Leon only attracted criticism because they started becoming successful, thus the tall poppy syndrome has now contaminated the god among men that is Chris Lilley in a similar fashion.

For anyone who knows anything about music, the Kings Of Leon had a moderately ok first album, then nailed a balltearer on their second, then started to disappear up their own stovepipe covered arseholes to become the new Foo Fighters (who in turn disappeared up their respective poop chutes to become the new Bon Jovi, who in turn disappeared up their own back passages to become the new new Bon Jovi).

What I’m saying is, the Kings Of Leon are shit now, and that the adoration of a billion Sex On Fire loving bogans is purely happenstance, and is not only merely a signpost on their way to the bargain bin of music history, but has nothing to do with the artistic output of arguably Australia’s finest comedic talent.

You know Shane, maybe Angry Boys just isn’t as crash hot as it could be. Or maybe it is his best yet. Or maybe it’s going to grow on us. Or maybe the Emperor has no clothes. Or maybe he’s wearing a mad Snuggie. Or maybe it doesn’t matter. Who can say.

But one thing’s for sure, there is nothing funnier than someone taking themselves so seriously denouncing someone else taking themselves so seriously. I mean, you just can’t write irony like that anymore. Not unless you’re Chris Lilley that is. Oh no, I can feel the event horizon of meta starting to rip apart the fabric of space and time.

All I can hope for now is for someone to write a critique of my critique on Shane’s critique of Tory’s critique and so on and so on and so on which turns this into the opinion equivalent of the Jackson 5’s Blame It On The Boogie video. At least that will be a laugh.

An open letter to gay people (and Barry Cohen)

Hi, gay people! How’s it going? Don’t tell me… just super, right? That’s what you people say isn’t it? Not that I would know, not being gay and all.

I’m sorry if that sounded like an odd thing to say. I don’t normally declare my sexual persuasion so abruptly. But I’ve heard you like to convert normal people with your gay agendas and your corrupting lifestyle choices, and since I’m being so open and friendly I didn’t want you getting any funny ideas about recruiting me.

I also heard that gays are pretty upfront and brash most of the time, so I’m pretty sure you’ll appreciate the candour. Just so long as you promise not to get turned on by it. Unless of course you happen to be lesbians. But only the hot ones that look like normal women.

Anyway, I just wanted to write to you because it seems your cunning plan to get accepted and respected and have “rights” is starting to get a bit of media attention. I don’t know if gay people read the news - you’re all probably still out clubbing and being immoral, but hopefully one of your straight friends will send you this and give you the heads up.

Now look, I’m totally up for you guys doing some of the things normal people do, like voting, cutting hair, and eating in the same restaurants as straight people, but I think you may have gone a bit too far with this whole gay marriage thing.

I mean seriously. Marriage? Could you have picked a more beloved heterosexual institution? I know you’re not doing it on purpose, and I know you all have kind hearts and are very good at “being there” for a lot of our straight women when we break up with them, but there’s a few subtle things about marriage that your gay brains probably aren’t able to understand, a few of which I will now attempt to decode for you, hopefully without being infected by your gayness.

Firstly, for not-gay people, marriage is a sacred institution. It’s probably the most sacred heterosexual institution outside of the Bathurst 24hr. And it goes back a long long way, even back before the seventies when being gay was invented.

Since the dawn of time, when straight men realised if they didn’t force women into legally binding social contracts they may never get to have sex again, straight people have upheld the act of marriage as the sacred defining moment of not being gay. In fact it’s so sacred that we virtually allow any two people to do it, so long as one has a penis and the other has a vagina, and so long as they can pool enough money to pay a second-rate Elvis impersonator.

Secondly, marriage is unique. A wedding between two straight people who may or may not love each other is an amazing and rare ceremony, performed by merely millions of people across the entire globe, every minute of every day. It’s sort of like the ceremonial equivalent of Halley’s Comet, if Halley’s Comet were a million comets that never ever stopped flying past Earth pumping Nelly songs out of stretch Hummers.

Thirdly, as raised so eloquently by modern day hetero-Nostradamus Barry Cohen, it is a question of maintaining the cornerstone of our entire civilisation. If a man is allowed to marry another man, or a woman another woman, where will it all end? Men marrying dogs? Dogs marrying chairs? Chairs marrying tables and cushions to form a disgusting six piece dining suite of incestual depravity, that straight people may one day sit on and become unknowingly impregnated with gay furniture babies? As Mr Cohen quite rightly states, to even entertain the thought goes quite beyond the pale.

Finally, and this may be the nail in the gay marriage coffin, God pretty much said it’s not okay. I hate to break it to you, but a lot of the books religious people read don’t give you guys a very good write up. I think there’s some stuff about living in sin, and being an abomination in the eyes of the Lord, and if we’re going to try and give you marriage, you could at least meet us halfway and try to not be gay.

Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve seen one press release even hinting that you’ve started working on a cure. Seriously. We’ve extended the olive branch pretty far what with buying all those KD Lang albums and letting you have that big street parade every year, don’t you think it’s time you gave a little back?

And look, we’re totally willing to help. Straight people are great at responding to quirky charity campaigns like Movember, and I reckon we’d be pretty happy to chip in to help you conquer this terrible affliction. Maybe, and I’m just spitballin’, you could hold one called “Not-be-gay-vember”, where for the whole month everyone just walks around not being gay. Sit with it for a few days. Talk it over at your next gay board meeting. If you like it, it’s yours. Gratis.

So look, I know it’s a lot to take in, but I just felt it needed to be said honestly, respectfully, and compassionately.

And most importantly, the sooner you get it into your heads that marriage isn’t about a deep and joyful expression of love and commitment by two people who want to spend the rest of their lives caring for each other, and more about making sure insecure straight people not think their world will collapse if everyone suddenly cuts the crap and just is who they are, the happier I’m sure all of us will be.

(Source: thepunch.com.au)