We all know finding the right child care for your kid can be tough. And then there’s the costs involved! But what if we told you there’s some easy options open to everybody, that won’t break the bank?
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We all know finding the right child care for your kid can be tough. And then there’s the costs involved! But what if we told you there’s some easy options open to everybody, that won’t break the bank?
Jacob Rosicky’s well-meaning father has imparted to him an intense dislike for all forms of recreational angling, as well as a general antipathy for what Jacob calls “the not-so-great outdoors”. Now 31, the chartered accountant need only think of fishing to bring back clear memories of freezing, pre-dawn mornings spent fiddling with a snag.
“It must be almost twenty-years ago now – but I can see my dad casting against the pre-dawn light like it was yesterday,” says Rosicky, his reminiscence flowing freely. “Even then I remember thinking ‘it’s 5AM – what the fuck are we doing here? I wish I was in bed.'”
The inner-city resident can clearly recall images of whole, seemingly endless days spent on the fish-free waters of a lake, the silence broken only by a bickering argument.
“It’s a bit unfair to say that I hate fishing, because to be honest we spent so little time with a line in the water I’m not sure how I feel about it. I just know that someone explaining to me in remedial terms how to thread a prawn onto a hook isn’t my idea of a fun five hours. Especially on the weekend.”
It was only years later, long after he’d first refused to go on a planned outing, that Rosicky recognized the emotionally complex role that fishing trips played in his father’s life. “I always knew that in a way it was an excuse for him to spend time with me, and to get half-drunk,” he said.
“But after we’d stopped going together, I realized his knot-tying lessons, weren’t about lines and lures at all, but about something much more than that. They were about patronizing me,” he said. “And reaching a special place where his thwarted middle-management ambitions could be played out in a pathetic power trip over his own son. For the first time I felt I really knew him as a man. A small, petty man.”
Rosicky is sure he won’t make the same mistake with his own son. “I’m going to let my boy find his own interests. And he’s crazy about car shows, just like his old man. Isn’t that right, son?”
America has more Nobel Prize laureates than Britain, more Baldwin brothers than China and slightly fewer shootings than Somalia. It’s a melting pot. Inside the pot you’ll find the Empire State Building, Moby Dick, orange cheese, the Lingerie Football League and that Beach Boy linked to the Manson murders. Also, outside the pot someone is holding up a ‘God Hates Fags’ poster. It’s not hard to see why American culture has often been successfully employed as a form of ‘soft diplomacy’. In fact, the US won the Gulf War purely with episodes of Roseanne.
MUSIC
America has produced many of the world’s greatest musicians like Bob Dylan, Miles Davis and Aretha Franklin. They also produced Skrillex.
Blues
Blues music originated in the cotton fields of America’s deep south, used as a form of entertainment during manual labour, before the invention of the podcast. Blues music eventually made its way out of the fields and onto the stage, developing signature blues chord progressions and scales. With this musical backing, black performers like B.B. King and Howlin’ Wolf would express their sorrow about the oppression of their people, while white performers likeBill Haley would express their anxiety about rocking around the clock.
Every Monday night, Woody Allen plays the clarinet in an exclusive New York jazz bar. Free entry for minors.
Jazz
Jazz was invented by Ryan Gosling in late 2016, or by African-Americans in early 20th century New Orleans. No one knows for sure.
Hip Hop
There are five distinct elements to hip hop: rapping, DJing,break dancing, graffiti writing and getting shot. While groups like Public Enemy use their songs to spread awareness of racial inequality, rappers like Drake and Future spread awareness of needing some really big rings.
Broadway Musicals
Broadway is a place for out-of-work film actors to ‘go back to their first love’. Contrary to popular belief, Broadway isn’t just filled with homosexuals. It also has Jews!
FILM & TELEVISION
Hollywood
All movies that don’t have subtitles are made here. Hollywood produces over 500 films each year, yet only half of them star Nicolas Cage. California is ethnically diverse, home to a large Hispanic and Latino population. This diversity is reflected in the variety of roles open to actors from these backgrounds, such as drug dealer, drug runner and drug kingpin.
Did You Know?
US President Donald Trump has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which means you don’t need to be a Russian prostitute to piss on him.
America’s longest running prime-time sitcom is The Simpsons. It aired groundbreaking comedy for a whopping nine seasons. It is currently in its 30th season.
Television
According to Nielsen, 96.7 percent of American households own a television. So while over 28 million Americans don’t have health insurance anymore, they do have Dr. Phil. So it’s not all bad. In 1844, Karl Marx presciently described television as the opiate of the masses, nearly a century before it was even invented. Following the election of Donald Trump, television is now considered the crystal meth of the masses. With the rise of stream services such as Netflix, Amazon andHulu, and cable offerings such as AMC and HBO, American television drama is currently in the midst of a renaissance that has been dubbed the ‘Golden Age of Television’. Never before have so many high quality productions showed so many bare breasts. But even while drama thrives, factual news and current affairs networks such as CNN and MSNBC struggle against fierce competition from fiction-based rivals such as Fox News.
This article originally appeared in the Chaser’s Guide to America (CQ#6): buy it here.
National hero and part time Nazi egger “Eggboy” has today celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ by doing gods work and smashing a chocolate egg on the head of a white supremacist.
The incident has met with both praise and condemnation, with many public figures voicing concerned about the use of egging as a response to racists, stating that it was a waste of good chocolate, and instead we should probably be surplus unwanted confectionary like candy bananas, musk sticks and black jellybeans on Nazis, as it is all they deserve.
Asked what he thought of the matter, senior Catholic, Father John Diddler, said that he had mixed feelings. “Look, on the one hand this in no way reflects how Jesus would have wanted to celebrate Easter.” said Father Diddler. “But then lets be honest, a bunch of people eating chocolate eggs in some mock pagan fertility festival isn’t any better or worse. In fact, I’d say egging a Nazi is much more in line with what Jesus would have done, the dude once caused a riot in a bank for Christ’s sake, the guy wasn’t above throwing a punch or two.”
“Frankly we’re glad he took the news’s focus off of the Church this easter,” continued Father Diddler. “With one of our most senior figures sitting in jail and people trying to expose how many billions of dollars we squirreled away while refusing to upkeep one of our most famous Churches until it caught on fire, frankly the less attention we pay to the Church this easter the better.”
Journalists across the country have been placed on suicide watch this week, following the conclusion of channel Nine’s smash hit ‘Married at First Sight’. The end of the popular dating show format has meant that for the first time in months many journalists have been forced to go back to reporting on much less important things, like politics, crime, the war in the middle east, and corporate corruption – a situation that is predicted to completely decimate the online news business as we know it, if a new season doesn’t come soon.
The Daily Mail is reported to be particularly hard struck, with the end of the unusual dating show format meaning the publication was forced to lay off its entire reporting staff, leaving only a single intern, and a keyboard with only the ‘ctrl’, ‘c’ and ‘v’ keys left.
“This drought of braindead reality TV based reportage is a real issue for our nation’s hard working journalists,” said nationals MP Barnaby Joyce at a press conference to address the day’s scandals. “Its the bread and butter for any newsroom these days that relies on lowest common denominator reporting in order to generate the millions of clicksthat mastheads now rely on to drive online ad revenue. That’s why today we’re announcing a goverment backed $30 million MAFS drought relief fund. I hope these millions of dollars will help keep its recipient, Rupert Murdoch, in business until the election, sorry MAFS drought, is over.”
However the relief fund may be too little too late, with many of the country’s journalists have been forced out onto the street, wandering aimlessly in search for purpose and content.
“We were just at the self check-out and this woman started interviewing my son,” said one North Shore local Andrew Gates.
“Said she was with news.com.au. she wanted to know if he’d cheated on his new wife yet. The kid’s only 7!”
Some were seen trying to constantly walk through walls, while others were trying to get locals to decipher international news for them.
“I was asleep, and I heard this thunderous knock on the door,” said nursing home resident Jan Summers. “I flew out of bed thinking the place was on fire. It was just some sweaty man in a suit asking me if I knew what a black hole was.”
A Melbourne businessman claims his recent purchase of the “Big Issue” was due to his interest in the magazine’s editorial content.
“It looked like an interesting issue,” said the man, who adamantly denied the purchase was an attempt to assuage guilt about his relative wealth.
The 38-year-old man, who purchased the magazine in Collins Street’s financial district, also denied he was just trying to appear altruistic in front of clients who were with him.
“The purchase was completely innocent,” the man said. “I have a genuine interest in the independent street press. But can you believe that vendor bum not writing me a receipt for my tax?”
The man said he is still yet to open the magazine.
JUST weeks before the launch of digital adaptations of ‘The Lion King’ and ‘Aladdin’, the Walt Disney Company has again left fans divided after beginning their promotional campaign for an updated edition of ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ by burning down the building in question.
“It’s all part of our brand new corporate strategy,” said outgoing CEO Robert Iger.
“We’ve acquired Star Wars, we’ve acquired Marvel, we got Fox, now we’re moving from media franchises and agencies into historical landmarks. If banks and telcos can get naming rights for sporting arenas, ‘Walt Disney’s Notre Dame Cathedral’ is a natural progression.”
“People are always reluctant to embrace change – just ask Will Smith – but our Imagineers have got some great concepts; a rotating spire with a restaurant at the top, a lazy river and automated bells that play Top 40 hits to name a few – and our writers have been hard at work modernising Victor Hugo’s classic tale into something more progressive and politically correct. ‘The Singing Scoliosis Man’ has a nice ring to it.”
“This isn’t just going to be a movie, or a ride. It’s going to be a movie ON a ride. Why bore the kids with history when we can entertain them with historical inaccuracies and a few musical numbers? The church has had trouble enticing children and parents lately, so we’re here to help.”
While the incineration of the long-standing structure has been met with sadness and grief worldwide, Iger knows the change will ultimately be remembered as the right thing to do.
“People said Disneyland Paris would never work either, but now look at it. In a few years Notre Dame will be just another over-crowded, over-priced shithole that people seem to romanticise for no apparent reason.”
Syria, Sunday: The second coming has ended prematurely this week after Jesus Christ become the latest casualty of fighting in the Middle East. Witnesses on the ground are reporting that a man claiming to be the son of God was killed after his message of peace failed to deter an American carpet bombing campaign against Syrian anti-anti-pro-Assad supporters.
Jesus’s father, God, and close relative, the Holy Spirit, have both expressed grief at the death.
“I told him that the middle east was too dangerous nowadays,” said God. “I’m never wrong about things like this, or anything in fact. But do you think he would listen to his father? Course not.”
Though originally reincarnated in his original birthplace in Bethlehem, the messiah reportedly moved on quickly after finding the area had lost “all its 1st century charm” from when he grew up there, having been “ruined by all these bloody tourists”.
Leaving Israel, Jesus instead reportedly moved on to neighboring Syria, where he felt his message of peace and unity was more urgently needed. However, this decision proved to be short sighted, with the son of god quickly becoming overwhelmed with the sheer complexity of the dispute. “I thought I could just waltz in there, turn some water into Mountain Dew and before you know it everyone would be getting along,” said Jesus three days after being bombed to death. “Boy if I’d known how difficult it would be to get two opposing sides to even talk to each other I probably would have stayed in Israel and just try to solve the whole Palestine thing instead.”
A version of this story first appeared in Edition 50 of the Chaser Newspaper, 2002
QUESTION: What would you say is the very best evidence for creationism?
ANSWER: Creation is one of two possible origin explanations. Both life and everything we see was either created or it evolved by some sort of crazy random process. Any evidence against evolution is very good evidence for creationism. Conversely, evidence against creationism fails to take into account all the evidence in favour of it, and is probably biased. To dispassionately study this area we need to look at both the best indirect evidence (against evolution) and the best direct evidence for creationism. That is all we need to look at.
QUESTION: What is the evidence against evolution?
ANSWER: Some of Darwin’s evidence that was used to support evolution is now refuted and new evidence has emerged over the past 150 years, which means the whole theory must be called into question. One fact is that body parts or entities could not have evolved gradually. Cells are irreducibly complex. They need every single chemical and part to function. Consequently, they could not have gradually evolved and must have all sprung into place at the same time. I can’t think of any other way they got to be like that through some sort of gradual process. I can’t even think of a name for it. Other evidence is the huge gaps in fossil records. When archeologists can’t find transitional forms in the fossil record, they must not exist.
Another big strike against evolution is that scientists have been unable to create life from non-life regardless of how hard they tried. They think they’re pretty smart, but if they can’t even create a simple, say, meerkat in a lab, then that’s a pretty damning indictment of their process. Not as smart as they make out. The best evidence against evolution and hence the very best evidence for creationism, is the unimaginable complexity of a single cell including DNA, RNA, and the manufacture of proteins.
None of this was known during Darwin’s time. They thought the cell was a simple blob of protoplasm. The human genome contains so much information it would fill libraries if contained in books. The machine-like workings of a cell have been related to our most sophisticated factories. This favours creationism, since only something really intelligent could build a factory. If you left some iron and coal lying around for billions of years, it wouldn’t evolve into a factory, so the same must be true for organic compounds.
Question: What is the direct evidence for Creation?
Answer: The Big Bang theory is the current scientific explanation of our origin. It places the origin of our universe at a specific time in the past. So whether we believe in science, or we believe in creation or both, we believe we came from nothing at a specific time in the past. The difference is that the Big Bang theory states that everything was created from nothing, without a cause or a purpose.
Alternatively, if we believe in creation, we believe that everything came from nothing by the will of an omnipotent, transcendent Creator that is not limited to time and space and we were created for a purpose. This completely explains how apparent design and complexity could have come into existence. However, the very best evidence for creationism is the claim by God Himself that He created light, the universe, the earth and all life.
You might question whether that argument holds up under scientific scrutiny. We all know the creation story in Genesis, but how can we know directly through scientific rationale that it is true. We can show that it was written in the Old Testament, but how can we show direct evidence that it is true? We only need to accept the most thoroughly documented history in existence and examine the evidence for who Jesus was. Our calendar is based upon the birth of Jesus. How historical is that? Jesus stated, “For in those days there will be tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of creation which God created until this time, nor ever shall be.”
Could Jesus have been anything other than what He claimed to be, the God of creation? So, on the one hand, you have a theory that’s been around for 150 years, and on the other hand, you’ve got proof that’s been documented for thousands of years that someone who claimed to be the son of God reckoned that creationism was true. I know which one I’d trust.
This article originally appeared in The Chaser’s Anti-Experts Guide To Everything: buy it here.