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Honesty, shoplifting, and other assorted moral dilemmas

2010
07.26

Dear Mum,

Last week Annik walked past a person who may or may not have been lying dead in a park. She didn’t stop to help, but she thought about it, which was nice. She’s a writer so she wrote about it.  It was an interesting moral dilemma.

I have a confession mum. I bought some roma tomatoes from Coles the other day (four to be precise) and I was using the self-help checkout counter. Roma tomatoes were $4.99 a kilo. On the checkout screen they have a list of favourite items you can pick from and tomatoes were on the list. Not roma tomatoes – the normal ones. They were $2.49 a kilo. Half the price.

I was about to scroll through the A-Z list of fresh produce items to find roma tomatoes, but I didn’t know if they’d be under ‘T’ for ‘Tomatoes: Roma‘ or ‘R’ for ‘Roma Tomatoes‘. I suspected it would have been ‘T’ but I wasn’t sure.

I knew if I scrolled through it would have taken me an extra 10-15 seconds and I was in a hurry to get home. It was at that point a little voice inside my head, let’s call him Satan, said:

“Hey Matt, just pretend they’re normal tomatoes and you’ll save money and time. No one will ever know.”

So I did.

But then I felt really guilty. I was considering explaining my ‘mistake’ to someone in charge, but I decided they’d think I was an idiot. I got in the car and felt really guilty about it, such were the values you impressed upon me mum. I drove home and made a mental note to make atonement.

Next time I was at Coles you know what I did mum? I bought five normal tomatoes and put them through as roma tomatoes. Proud much?

So, although I technically shoplifted the difference between roma tomatoes and normal tomatoes, I paid it back with one tomato interest, which is, like, way more than they would have got if they’d just had the money in the bank. I think that technically anulls my shoplifting record back to zero shoplifting incidents. Apart from the time I wagged school with Luke and stole a steak knife from the op-shop so we could go fishing. But that was his idea. I was just an accomplice. We’ll talk about me wagging school some other time. Sorry about that.

Matt

Category Dear... |

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A PR Lesson: What to do when it’s not a slow news day

2010
06.24

So our client, The Diet Plate (a medical device which shows you how much you should be eating from each food group) has paid a small fortune to bring out the doctor advisor guy from the British version of The Biggest Loser for a PR junket. He’s going to be on virtually every chat show and current affairs program in the country spruiking the virtues of portion control as a weight loss tool, and of course, telling everyone how great The Diet Plate is. They’d been hoping for a slow news week. What they got was quite the opposite. You could blow up the Sydney Harbour Bridge today and no one would notice*. Not quite the way I wanted to launch the first new client of my new agency (memery, more on that later).

Rather than moan about how we were going to get buried, we thought we’d run some ads taking advantage of the situation. It was too late to book anything anywhere, so we thought Google AdWords would do the trick.

Within an hour of the news about Julia Gillard taking the top office breaking we had an ad up targeting anyone who searched Google for her name. Here’s what it looked like (first ad at the top on the right):

While we were on the band-wagon, we also ran ads targeting the other political leaders, the copy was as follows:

Targeting ‘Kevin Rudd‘ searches

The Diet Plate
Lose weight while
eating humble pie

http://www.thedietplate.com.au

—

Targeting ‘Malcolm Turnbull’ searches

The Diet Plate
Revenge isn’t the best
dish served cold

http://www.thedietplate.com.au

—

Targeting  ‘Tony Abbott’ searches

The Diet Plate
Microwave safe. In case
of global warming

http://www.thedietplate.com.au

—

Targeting ‘Bob Brown’ searches

The Diet Plate
When you want to eat
more than greens

http://www.thedietplate.com.au

—

I usually prefer writing longer copy, but it goes to show, you can have a lot of fun with two lines if you try. I’m sure Ernest Hemingway would agree.

*Don’t try this at home

Tags: Category Marketing |

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Killbot Kindergarten

2010
06.09

My friends started a band slash electro neo-soul duo called Killbot Kindergarten. They wanted me to write a bio for them. It was hard because they hadn’t done a whole bunch of stuff yet. They haven’t even played a show. Killbot Kindergarten though, how could you turn a gig like that down. Here’s what I wrote. Check them out at http://www.myspace.com/killbotkindergarten

—

Killbot Kindergarten are electro folks. Two soul children with a glass-bottomed boat and pentatonic sails. Micro Korgs and mellow chords; hearts in Brisbane, ears abroad.

A retro-futurist collaboration of neo-soul tones draped over unashamedly binary bones, Youka Snell and Adam Sait’s project has graduated music college and arrived back at a pre-school for pandas bearing jet packs; Gorillaz in their midst. Like a soy chai latte in a styrofoam cup, the result is both organic and plastic. You won’t recognise the sound on your lips at first, but after a few sips, you’ll never go to Starbucks again.

It’s quirky café music, the kind the cool kids on Neptune are probably listening to right now, but it started in the parlour; in West End. Doornoch Terrace to be precise – about as far from London as it’s possible to get on this planet. And while they’re the polar opposite of Gilbert and Sullivan, elements of Killbot Kindergarten’s sound could have come direct from the overture of an oriental Damon Alban opera.

This isn’t the Mikado though, Youka, a classically trained violinist and Sait, an audio engineering dropout have thrown convention out the window to create a new form of operatic digital soul. Working from the Brisbane studios of dub maestro producer Paulie B (The Beautiful Girls) and the Gold Coast’s Govinda Doyle (Angus and Julia Stone) the duo have produced an epic five-track EP. A year in the making, the disc is a culmination of a six year creative journey for the two songwriters, who have known each other and played in numerous bands together since 2004.

Veteran tourers, the two have been criss-crossing the country with Grassroots Street Orchestra, (insert other band names here) for the latter half of this decade. Now, as Killbot Kindergarten, Sait and Snell are set to take on the world, with an Australian tour planned for the latter half of 2010 and a passport-destroying sojourn around the planet in 2011.

Lovers of digital neo-soul should be on notice. There are two new headmasters in town and school is never going to sound the same again.

Category Uncategorized |

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Notes I made on my iPhone this month whilst drunk

2010
04.29

Lego as world currency

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Potential Band Names: The London Underground, Henry Sugar, The Black Rabbits

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Tattoo Artist, Buy Pants, Car Tyres, Sell Van

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Breathing Golden Stars. Raconteurs song, but with chick from other band

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Sex partners expressed as an interwoven threads graph showing the generational change.

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Rent a Puppy

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‘Monday Leftovers’ you pick a different charity each Monday and get people to donate whatever money they have leftover to that charity online

Category Uncategorized |

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Words I wrote on an iPhone on a plane about a girl about a memory of a moment

2010
04.25

Sometimes there’s a glint in your eyes, a tiny explosion as you take in the world at that moment, oblivious to everything but the unadulterated joy of pure being and you are so beautiful it hurts and I pretend not to notice but that light in your eyes sparks a fire in the part of me that creates things and wants to see the sunrise and wants to stay out all night until my ears are ringing and inside me bells are sounding, heart is pounding, and I’m, in general, an astounding mess and im not going to tell you and you have no idea what is going on. And then you turn your head and find reality for the briefest of moments and smile and exist on the same plane as the rest of us, before you get a glint again and my breath goes missing for another minute.

Category Uncategorized |

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Panel Van Billboard

2010
04.15

I just got this email from a guy called Mark:

Hi, I have a 1981 WB Holden windowless panel van in need of a paint job, I would be open to a proposal for you to use it as a tasteful mobile billboard. I live in Palm Beach on the Gold Coast and frequent most of the popular surf spots including Burleigh Heads, Currumbin Alley, Duranbah and Snapper to enjoy the Breaks as well as driving to Southport daily to attend uni. The deal would be basically you paint, I drive and you get good exposure in a variety of places. The Panel van is rare and attract a lot of attention even in its current state. If you think that you may be interested please contact me, Regards Mark

I think I’m going to say yes. What a champion.

Category Uncategorized |

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Why My Family will Never be Good Marathon Coaches (A brief expose of Tabletop Mountain, Toowoomba)

2010
04.04

Since I didn’t get on Masterchef this year I’ve decided I should instead be the first person in the history of the world to tweet my way through a marathon. Specifically, the Gold Coast Marathon. It’s one of the most logical conclusions I’ve ever drawn to be honest. I didn’t get on a cooking show, therefore I should run a marathon.

I was going to enter the half marathon, but it starts at 6.10am on a Sunday whereas the full marathon starts at 7.10am, so technically I could still adhere to my ‘don’t ever never ever get out of bed before 7am on a Sunday’ policy and still be able to compete. My training has been going well so far but I’m not a morning person, so I always end up running in the middle of the day (or at the end of the day, and in Brisbane it’s just as hot then anyway). I think that strategy will ultimately fare me well anyway because if I’m used to running in 30 degree heat and 95% humidity, carving it up at 7.10am in winter is going to be a breeze. It’s a bit like training to ride the escalators at the airport by climbing Everest.

Anyway, I was in Toowoomba visiting my family the other day for Easter and I figured that it would be a good place to get in some altitude/hill training, because where I live in Brisbane is dead flat and at sea level and the most climbing I ever do on a run near home is the front steps. I don’t know if there are any hills on the Gold Coast Marathon, but I figure it’s best to be prepared. I canvassed opinions in mum and dad’s lounge room the other night and they suggested the best place to go for a hilly run was Tabletop Mountain, on the south side of town. Mum and dad had walked up it the other day and mum vomited and passed out from exhaustion so it seemed ideal.

Me: “OK cool, but I want to run up it, can I run up it? I want to run at least 10km or there’s no point…”

Dad: “It’s a bit rough, there’s lots of shale, It’s pretty steep.”

Brother: “Just start at the lookout in town instead of the actual carpark, then it will be about a five kay round trip and you can run most of it.”

Me: “OK cool, have you got a map.”

Brother: “Here, I’ll show you on my iPhone. You start near the water tower here, which Emily (Brother’s Girlfriend) thinks is a space ship.”

Brother’s Girlfriend Emily: “It’s near the big flag. And I don’t think it’s a spaceship, he made that up.”

Me: “OK, so is it all sign posted and stuff?”

Brother: “No, sort of, it’s a popular track, you’ll be fine.”

Me: “OK. What do you mean by ‘pretty steep’, can I run up it?”

Dad: “It’ll be hard, but…”

Brother: “You’ll be fine. Some guy rode down it on a unicycle the other day.”

Me: “OK. I’ll get up at 7 or something so I can start running at 8.”

Everyone: “OK.”

Naturally I was feeling pumped.

And naturally I slept in a bit so I didn’t get to the start of the run until precisely 10:37am. I know that because the second I started running BFF called. I’m calling him ‘BFF’, as opposed to his real name because, well…

Me: “Hey dude, I’m just about to go for a run, what’s up.”

BFF: “Are you going for a run in the Woomba?”

Me: “Yeah, it’s going to be cool. I’m running up a mountain.”

BFF: “OK, cool, I was just calling to let you know I took too much acid last night and I’m just going to bed now and I’m still freaking out a little bit so I won’t be coming to your place tonight.”

Me: “OK sweet, are you alright?”

BFF: “Yeah, I think so. The green bear left a little while ago, everything has been pretty quiet since.”

Me: “OK cool, well, I’ll give you a buzz tomorrow.”

BFF: “OK dude.”

Me: “Ciao Bella.”

BFF: “Me love.”

Me: “Me love.” (It’s a bromance thing my male BFF’s say which loosely translates to ‘hey man, nice talking to you, you rock, catch you later).

So I set off from Picnic Point in Toowoomba. For anyone who knows Toowoomba, you’ll know it’s one of the higher edges of The Great Dividing Range. To get to Tabletop Mountain you have to run down the side of The Great Dividing Range and then across a little valley, and then up Tabletop Mountain, which, at 700m above sea level, happens to be exactly the same height as Toowoomba. It could be best described as a folly. Smart people just drive to the carpark at the bottom and make the climb from there.

In picture terms, this was my goal:

In fact, it looked like a piece of piss. I’d run in the Swiss Alps before, this thing looked like an anthill. The thing is, it’s only 3km away as the crow flies, but because you have to run down a mountainside the track winds a lot and you end up running 10km as a return trip.

The first bit to the base of the mountain was easy. Because it was basically a road. In fact, it wasn’t ‘basically’ a road, it was a road. I could see why the family had recommended it to run on.

Then it looked like this:

And then it looked like this:

Which was quite a lovely rock climb, but not exactly running terrain.

The view from the top was nice though.

And there was some cactus. On the top of a mountain. Which I thought was strange enough to take a photo of.

Moral to the story: My family are crap marathon coaches, Tabletop Mountain is a nice rock climb and a crap run.

The End.

Oh, and if you’re interested, here’s a Google Map of the route you take. It’s a rough map, but you’ll get the idea.

Tags: , Category Running |

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Notes from my iPhone, volume one

2010
03.25

I’d left her with nothing but a rolled up fifty dollar bill and a saucepan with some Spanish soup made from the sherry I’d drunk and she’d watched me drink the night before. She didn’t like the sherry but she’d finished the bottle of white wine she’d borrowed from her neighbour at 2am all by herself. I was staying at her place because I had a meeting in the city in the morning and she’d insisted I not get a hotel. I’d gone to bed early but she woke me sometime past two thirty after she arrived home. She had a small bag of cocaine in one hand and two glasses in the other. My participation, she had already explained via text message from the cab, was not optional. That was the Tuesday before she flew away. I’d been reading Breakfast at Tiffany’s and had already started calling her Hollie Golightly.

Tags: Category Uncategorized |

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Dear @Telstra

2010
03.03

Dear @Telstra,

I’ve travelled a lot. Asia is one of my favourite places in the world, and even though I’m scared of volcanos, and don’t eat rice anymore, I was really looking forward to going back. Unfortunately, thanks to your inept call centres, I’ve spent more time this morning bouncing around between The Philippines and Australia than General Douglas Macarthur did in the entire Second World War. And unlike the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Pacific, I’m vowing never to return.

Things started to go wrong a week ago when I tweeted for help.

@Telstra My Mobile Broadband account shows 6.1Gig usage over the last 4 months but the bill is waaaay higher. Something is wrong :( Help!

…was my cry. To be honest I wasn’t really expecting a response, but your Twitter profile does clearly say you were there to “provide Telstra customer support” during business hours so I figured what the hell.

I would have had more luck offering @aplusk a million dollars for a night with his wife.

A week later, and with no response, I decided to use the telephone. You are a telephone company after all. I figured if I talked to you on your terms, on your turf, in your natural habitat, you’d be more likely to be more helpful. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Granted, you’ve got a lot of departments but I figured phoning the number on my bill which was listed under both ‘Billing or service enquiries’ and ‘Fault reporting 24 hours’ would have been the right place to get help with my billing enquiry which related to a fault with your system. The first person I spoke to was a robot; she was about the most intelligent person I spoke to during the course of the conversation, and at least she understood what I was saying. The second person was a human, I forget his name but I suspect that within your employee rewards system he has won accolades for being the quickest palmer-offerer in the history of palm-offing. Jesus wasn’t this quick on Palm Sunday, and he had a donkey to do the leg work.

And that’s when my customer service experience really started to turn ugly. Actually, ugly is the wrong word. Ugly Betty is ugly, but she’s hot-ugly. I’d do her and I suspect that, should he find himself in the bathtub of the Cronulla Rydges Hotel one drunken evening with Ugly Betty and a few consenting adults, the first male Telstra worker I spoke to would do her too. Ugly is a term of endearment really. My customer service experience was distorted and inaudible. The second the line was transferred to the overseas faults department it became so fuzzy I swear Angus Young started using it for a lead guitar solo. Or maybe it was thunderstruck – there has been a lot of rain in Brisbane lately.

Unfortunately, the quality of the line wasn’t the worst part of the call. Just like an after hours employee sex-romp, my Telstra experience also ended up involving rather a lot of people. Six to be precise; not counting the robot. After the first chap put me through to the faults department, they put me through to Bigpond; Bigpond put me through to online support, online support put me back through to Bigpond and then Bigpond said it wasn’t their department and said I’d have to call the Billing and service enquiries number found on my bill. By this stage I was artfully dodging ear-splitting reception crackles which were being fired like bowling balls into my cochlea, but I managed to convince the Bigpond employee in downtown Manilla that this was in fact the number I had originally dialled. They apologised and put me through to a voice which sounded vaguely Australian.

And when I say ‘vaguely Australian’, I mean the voice did sound like it was coming from an Australian call centre, but that it was so vague and distant I might as well have been talking to the ghost of General Douglas Macarthur. I asked if he might possibly call me back, handed over my mobile phone number and waited. And waited. And waited some more. Eons came and went. The Presidency of the United States changed hands a number of times and peace was declared in the Middle East, but no call came.

Dear Telstra, I’d send you another tweet for help, but according to your software I’ve now used 6.98GB of data transfers and I’m scared that another 140 characters will push me over the edge and I don’t want another $357 bill on my $89 plan. Do me a favour please, call me on my mobile phone number and sort this out. I know you have it. It is with Optus though, and I do live almost 2km from the Brisbane CBD, so I probably won’t have any reception.

Love always,
Matt

Tags: Category Dear... |

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Dear Rice, it’s been fun, but it’s over…

2010
01.14

Dear Rice,

You’re cheaper than pasta, tastier than bread and when you find yourself in the company of a little avocado salsa and some beans, you go even better with sour cream than a baked potato. Until yesterday I thought you were infallible. You were the food equivalent of the friend who is always there at the end of the night to wait in line for a taxi while everyone else passed out on a footpath. You knew the quickest way home, you knew where the spare key was, you knew who I wasn’t allowed to drunken text at 3am and you never tagged me on Facebook unless I was looking particularly hot.

The humblest of all carbohydrates, no matter what the cuisine you were always content to lie there on the plate and let everyone else have the glory. Your starchy whiteness made you the star. You were the bed that brought coconut milk and chilli together, but like an exclusive Hollywood madam you kept silent, letting dashing ingredients have their way above you without so much as a snap, crackle or pop.

No matter what mood I was in, no matter what was in the fridge, you could be relied upon. If you saw me come home with limes we’d drink a bottle of wine together and make risotto. There was nothing you loved more than seaweed, raw fish and wasabi; a flavour combination no other staple could stomach. If ever you sensed I was losing interest in the relationship you’d stretch yourself into kinky noodles and spice things up with a little laksa. On special occasions you’d put on that see-through Vietnamese number, invite some prawns over and let me dip you in sweet chilli sauce. My God, but those were the days. I thought you were the Queen of all carbohydrates. But you let me down. Big time.

The fact that you got along with just about everyone should have been warning enough. You’d partied your way through every continent on the planet, and like a horny Scandanavian backpacker, I should have realised you’d bring more than a bikini and a pair of cargo pants along for the ride. When I came home late one night and you didn’t mention Bacillus cereus had shacked up in my pantry with you, things were never going to be the same. I know I’d been away for a couple of weeks and you had nothing on your shelf for company other than broken cannelloni tubes and Home Brand iodised table salt, but getting intimate with some beta haemolytic bacteria was a low blow.

Despite drinking dank diuretics in Vietnam and feasting on foul fish tacos in the backblocks of Baja, I’d never had serious food poisoning before. In fact, in 29 years on the planet I’d never even been seriously sick by myself. In my darkest, illest hours, there had always been a mum, or a girlfriend, or at least a concerned band member somewhere nearby to pat my head and tell me it was going to be OK. Kicking me in the guts when I was alone the other night was just plain cruel. Sure, I got to learn a bit about myself as the dizzying fever took hold, in fact I even fancied that like Alfred Russel Wallace the hallucinations might lead my mind to spring forth some dazzling new, undiscovered scientific theory, leaving me with a footnote in history. I spewed forth some dazzling and previously undiscovered matter, that’s for certain. But all I was left with was dysentery and a feeling like I was hiding a missing piece of Evander Hollyfield’s ear in my stomach and he was trying to punch it out of me. It still hurts to laugh. Not that I feel amused.

I’ve got other options you know. You never liked cous cous, but we spent some time together recently in Perth and I think there might be something there. Unlike you, cous cous is all fluffy and warm, almost cuddly, and it doesn’t take forever to get ready. I’ve always liked that about cous cous. Pasta is a blast too. And pasta goes really well with garlic and red wine. I always hated it how you and red wine never got along. Red wine is such an important part of my palette, I can’t believe you didn’t make more of an effort to get to know each other.

Rice, I think it’s time we spent some time apart. In fact, after what you did to me, and after all I’ve been through, I don’t know if I can ever love you again. It’ll be hard knowing that I’m going to see you in all my favourite places, putting smiles on random people’s faces, but I’ll get over that.

It’s been fun rice, but it’s over.

Matt

Tags: Category Dear..., Food |

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