So go visit the RSSS for the summer already.
I don't think any Aussie chicks read this site, do they?
Dya mind if we call ya Bruce?
Unfunny stream-of-consciousness nonsense is not redeemed by referencing "Achewood" at the end.
She hasn't been around for ages, but Mary, who commented a couple of times (occasionally about being very tall) is, I think, an Australian woman.
Mary? You around? Shoot any goats lately?
Aw, Ogged, why you gotta be like that?
6: Somehow it always comes back to killing cats, doesn't it?
I'm pretty sure it's my job around here.
Here's an odd piece of biographical data: I once participated in the exact process described - helped dig a hole and helped carry the sick goat there, where my farmer friend (a vegetarian near-pacifist) was compelled to pull the trigger. It was pretty traumatic at the time, but necessary.
(Unlike some of you, I would not kill a goat in Reno just to watch it die.)
So while I'm inclined to agree with Ned in No. 4, that piece was weirdly resonant for me. Such is the mystery of art.
10: No, really. You can come down into the mosh pit, we won't hurt you, and the world won't crumble around your ears.
When Buck moved to a new town at the age of eight, he met the little boy who lived next door, and went over with him to his grandfather's barn. The grandfather handed him a .22 and told him to 'Shoot this pig'. So he did.
13:
ah, the good old days.
but actually, this sort of thing still happens in northern jersey, just more often say in newark. young kids with guns shooting things? all the time.
Also, dude, chicks is not the preferred nomenclature. "Sheilas", please.
15. Still true, or nostalgia? The aussies I work with as well as my aussie neighbors have never said sheilas, though 3 of the 4 like a good laugh. They all know about a nostalgically named dessert they call Pavlova, pronounced Pavllverr.
16: i've only ever heard it said to or by gullible brits, who merely think it's still true.
Joe Orton: Some of these people are, well, having sexual intercourse.
Kenneth Halliwell: Fucking, you mean? Well, what do you expect? Many of them are from Australia.
17: you aren't the snuh I know, are you?
Back on topic: everything Ray says about Australian women is 100% true based on my limited data set.
19: i don't think so. certainly i don't know you personally, altho i have commented a few times at thepoorman.net.
I'm the tall Aussie chick LB noted at5. I actually lurk all the time. Keeping an eye out for goats and whatnot.
The USA sounds like a nice place to visit and all, but a bit lacking in long course swimming pools and, if Achewood is any guide, could probably do with importing the idea of the Bachelor and Spinster Ball. It's basically a rural party at which everyone gets so drunk that you can make up stories about sharp shooting goats and no one can give a first hand account either way.
The cult of achewood has got to go.
The cult of Achewood will go when Achewood stops being funny. Hasn't happened yet.
I know it was written by an imaginery cat, but is there any part of the article which anyone here thinks could be even remotely true? Even on the most tenuous level.
Being a lifelong resident of Oz I am continually amazed at the completely bizzare misconceptions foreigners have about Australia.
I once met an American tourist who told me that he honestly expected every Aussie girl to be a 6 foot nordic blonde with big norgs. He was sorely disappointed.
So what are your bizzare misconceptions?
This was posted not out of sheer achewood fandom, but because it seems a surprising place for achewood to manifest itself.
24: how would we know they're misconceptions if we're currently holding them?
My conceptions: Australian children drink a lot of shandys, eat a lot of meat pies, and have a festive picnic on the beach for Christmas. Also: Kangaroos can rap and the Syndney Harbor Bridge was built single-handedly by Paul Hogan. Also: the outback is full of murderous gangs of gasoline thieves who wear outrageous spiky outfits and drive retrofitted dune buggies. Also: there is a rogue scientist living somewhere in that outback developing machines that can display people's dreams for mind-erasingly tedious lengths of time. Sometimes he drives to fight World War I in a big pink bus.
See? I know that country like the back of my hand.
My impression has been that Aussie guys think that you're queer if you pay any attention to women, and that Aussie women are good natured and grateful for any attention at all. A good place for Raoul, Fernando, et al.
Most of my research on Australia is based on old episodes of the Maxx. Seemed like a pretty reliable source.
I think they have kangaroos there. And all the men really aren't sexist assholes.
So what are your bizzare misconceptions?
Q: What's Australian foreplay?
A: "You awake?"
Not having been to Australia, I'm not sure if that's really a bizarre misconception.
Yes...norgs. Moofies, hoo-hoos and fun-bags are equally acceptable here.
Norgs? Here in the UK it's "norks".
I've never heard 'norgs' as such. But I can imagine it's an acceptable variant of 'norks'. We tend to have some latitude wrt slang.
26: No, no, you've got it all wrong. In Australia, there are two kinds of white people: regular people and skinheads. The skinheads are constantly pursued by Vietnamese restaurant workers, until they finally expire in a paroxysm of self-loathing and betrayal. The regular people have to go into the Outback, where they are either bizarrely murdered, or, if they're lucky, they meet wise Aboriginal people who are close to Nature. The Aboriginal people are always pursued by evil bureaucrats, but luckily they are able to channel the vast, unknowable forces of Nature in order to prevail.
This all contrasts with New Zealand, whose only inhabitants are Maori people and Peter Jackson.
Australian = The people from "A Town Called Alice" + assorted deadly life-forms lurking everywhere.
New Zealand = Warrior Princesses + Maori Warriors
TBH, chucking it all and moving to Oz has been a thought lurking in the back of my head since I was a kid. It's been one of those reserve parachute thoughts that keep one sane during prolonged shitstorms.
Australian children drink a lot of shandys, eat a lot of meat pies, and have a festive picnic on the beach for Christmas.
This is true.
Australians make me a little jumpy, because I lived for a year with a truly insane Australian woman in Samoa (I'm not using this lightly. She'd sleep all day and prowl around the house all night, interspersed with occasional furious bouts of 4 am typing on a very loud electric typewriter, could not be convinced to end a conversation by any means whatsoever (I once stayed in the bathroom for forty minutes while she talked at me through the door, in the hopes that she'd give up and go away. She didn't.) and was bizarre and disturbing in a host of other ways.) and I have a little trouble separating harmless Aussie characteristics from things that remind me of freaky Rhys.
I have some German-born friends who emigrated to Australia back when it was pretty progressive. Australia's rightward move really depresses them.
I'd say that it's reasonable to assume that most Australians are much like LB's acquaintance. Imagine 21 million electric typewriters all rattling at 4 am. Imagine 21 million speed freaks talking for six hours straight. That's Australia.
And don't give me any PC bullshit about "sample bias" or "no culture is better or worse than any other culture" or "Australia has many good qualities", bla bla bla. Face it, that's what Australia is all about.
She'd also come out with odd, but very strong, opinions about stuff: "The reason all Americans have attractive teeth is their Slavic heritage"; "'Watch me do this!" is ungrammatical, and should only properly be said "Watch my doing of this!"; and "Zamfir, master of the pan flute, is highly respected as a musician in Australia. He has truly amazing breath control."
The next year, she'd moved back to Australia, and I was discussing her with a sane Aussie acquaintance. The mockery was going fine ("Yeah, it was bizarre. She's sitting in a roomful of attractively-toothed Americans telling her that they, personally, have no Slavic heritage, it's all cosmetic dentistry. But she just kept on saying it.") until I got to the bit about Zamfir. Apparently (at least according to the sane Aussie) he is highly respected as a musician in Australia. It's something about the breath control.
TBH, chucking it all and moving to Oz has been a thought lurking in the back of my head since I was a kid.
A colleague anf his (Fijian) wife sold up and moved to Australia a couple of years ago, but they were back inside six months because they couldn't deal with the level of racism. Just saying.
44: I just checked, it's "A Town Like Alice" not "Called". My brain has been sludged up by too many variations of "X Called Y" books and movies.
Anyway, moving to the real Oz is not on and never really was. However, moving to my fantasy of Oz as portrayed in 1950 is something I don't want to give up.
So what are your bizare misconceptions?
Lots of Australians are named "Kath" or "Kim." They're frequently drunk, eating shrimp on the barbie, or "waltzing matilda" (IYKWIMAITYD). Australians love ABBA and Kylie; they hate Robert Hughes and poms.
Everything I know about Australia I learned from "Town with No Cheer".
"Town with No Cheer" s/b "Welcome to Woop Woop"
that column was fairly realistic about the whole 'meet some australian guys, get ridiculously drunk and then they wake everyone up with a cold fosters' thing. I actually had the worst hangover of my entire life in australia. my boyfriend and I were in tasmania visiting a friend of his, and we drank up everything decent in the house, and then we had a taxi driver deliver beer and cigarettes at 2 or so, and then around 4 the three of us polished off that old 3/4 full bottle of ouzo that was kicking around. holy fuck, I was hungover all day, just vilely, and woke up the following morning still hungover. two days hungover, it was ridiculous. worse than the time I OD'ed on methadone. I couldn't drink ouzo for like...several months. but australia is awesome and beautiful and I'd really like to go there soon; I know my family would love it. it's like america in many ways, actually. its only flaw is that they use finely ground white pepper in all the salt and pepper shakers in restaurants and stuff, which drives me nuts. if you're trying to make a perfect-looking bechamel or something, OK, maybe, but just shaking on some french fries? nooo, that's wrong. white pepper has a curious medicinal/floral sub-flavor that is not remotely appropriate. I'll have to stash one of those disposable pepper grinder bottles in my purse.
Who the fuck is Zamfir?
Americans don't have such great teeth.
But the 4 a.m. typing is a national characteristic, I have to say. Only 11 hours to go. I'm excited!
Nakku, he's the master of the pan flute. You mean you didn't know?
White pepper? We have wankers wandering around with pepper grinders plaintively calling 'Cracked pepper? Cracked pepper? For the love of god have some cracked pepper!'
I ignore pan flutes and expect them to do the same to me.
aside from that kind of restaurant (and I haven't been in a long time, so maybe everyone's gone stupid with the pepper grinders (like the ones with the fucking light)). I mean on the table at some place where you could get a burger with an egg and beetroot on it. I have the same problem in Bali. there's a long beans with white pepper dish that's quite nice, but I find it a very inadequate substitute for black pepper in most situations.
perhaps in some cases this fine, greyish product is actually too-finely ground black pepper, but I don't think so. gah.
well, maybe you're right. I'm far too important to eat at places where they expect you to put your own pepper on your food, so what would I know?
Comity!
I ignore pan flutes and expect them to do the same to me.
Then you should be OK in Oz. AFAIK Australia and Portobello Market are the only places in the world where pan flutes are generally substituted by digeridoos.
I'd much rather put my own pepper on my food than have the waiter waving one of those things that look like a bassoon and spraying pepper in my hair. Personally, I try to go to places where they season the food correctly in the kitchen.
I know it was written by an imaginery cat, but is there any part of the article which anyone here thinks could be even remotely true? Even on the most tenuous level.
Part the first: it's not merely written by an imaginary cat, but by an imaginary cat who's a fool. The article is not meant to convey what the author thinks Australia is like, but the character's sense of Australia, which is, I think, a fairly good gloss on the stereotypical American view of Australians.
Part the second: ignoring the rhetorical flights of fancy, the description of Australians Ray presents does ring fairly true to the various Australians I met in hostels when traveling in Europe. I assume that this is a particular, unrepresentative group of Australians, but it's also probably the kind of Australians most likely to be met by Americans.