Every once in a while, an internet phenomenon creeps up behind you, and gives you a reach-around. Only it isn’t a reach around, it’s lava. That’s right, you just got lava all over your bits. Burns, doesn’t it? You might want to get that looked at.

Date to Save is one such phenomenon. Started by a well-meaning hottie (read: maniac), the general idea is that by dangling sex in front of hot young heathen guys, you can convert the everloving shit out of them. Here’s how Tamara, the instigator of this incredible movement, introduces herself:

Hello, my name is Tamara! As you can probably tell, I’m a Christian woman who loves Jesus Christ and cares for all humans, even the wicked. What you probably don’t know is that I’m hot. My picture below isn’t really that good. I want to use my beauty for GOD, and want to encourage Christian women (my sisters in Christ) to do the same, according to the Great Commission.

I’m not entirely certain what ‘the great commission’ is, but I’m fairly certain it’s largely centered around her vagina.

She continues:

So, I created this web page for information regarding the calling of Missionary Dating. First of all, it helps that you’re good looking. Romans 12:1 says “to offer your bodies as living sacrifices.” Since our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19), it makes sense that we should use our beautiful bodies to glorify HIS name, the Holy Spirit will work the strongest since He’s in our body, right? That’s the best position to be in!

YES IT IS, YOU ENORMOUS SLUT.

Part of what Luke, myself, and many of our friends found so insanely enthralling about this, is that we cannot for the life of us tell if she’s joking or not. Does Tamara geniunely carpet-bomb penises with her sexual depth-charges (I know, I know, awful imagery. I’m knee-deep in a morass of painkillers and mi goreng right now), or is she, as Luke suspects, a brilliant character crafted by a brilliant mind? Let’s take a quick look at her equally committed twitter stream, shall we?

if ke$ha can have a dollar sign in her name, then i can change the t in tamara to a cross to bless God. wait, it already is a cross! neato.

Or how about this nugget of surreal shit:

Watched The Cove tonight and wished I could save dolphins as well I can save hot heathen men…

…Yeah, I don’t care whether she’s for real or not. She’s a fuckin’ genius, and I want to buy her a large sandwich. A large sandwich and some zoloft.

/Paul

Did you know that crime used to be the reserve of the chic and fashion conscious? That criminals used to hang around in whiskey bars, lounging on crisp leather settees while discussing the hip new trends in cat burglary? Did you? Me neither!… Or at least such is what I have been able to deduce from this collection of early 20th century mugshots from Sydney. Looking at them, one gets the feeling that the term “polite society” may have held a little more content back then than it does now. For example, look at this fellow:

If he held me up, I’d probably give him my money wilfully. With an outfit like that he almost certainly deserves to eat more than I do. And then, on the other hand, we have this:

For whom the word “funky” was beginning to seem all too appropriate. Ah, James, it didn’t have to be like that you know. A bit of dramatic lighting, some sepia tones, a variety of poses – you could have made the mugshot work for you! I certainly know what I’ll be insisting on when I get arrested.

At least I think that’s how it works.

/Luke

[via A Time To Get]

Trope was one of those words you discovered in your first year of Uni and then abused to within an inch of its life in every piece of assessable writing you had to churn out over the next two years. Why use technique when you can use trope? Why use method when you can use trope? Why use and when you can use trope? I think it goes without saying that my academic essays were torturous literary beings. From Wiktionary:

1. A figure of speech, such as a metaphor, in which a word or phrase is used other than in a literal manner.
5. (literature) Something recurring across a genre or type of literature, such as the ‘mad scientist’ of horror or ‘once upon a time’ as introduction to fairytales. Similar to a cliché, but not necessarily pejorative.

TV Tropes is an – as they always are – terrifyingly detailed wiki that sets out in a very readable, highly interlinked manner all the tropes its various authors have identified in TV, cinema, fiction, games, everyday life and more. Shit be extensive. I’m not going to spend all that long talking about it though, because unless you have the self-discipline of Li-Mu Bai from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (well, that analogy just derailed the sentence) this website will destroy whatever hope you may have had for a productive day. Unless you planned on having an unproductive day, like me. In which case I may as well start running you through my favourite lines from Everybody Loves Raymond, in chronological order. Oh, sorry, that’s right. There weren’t any funny lines in Everybody Loves Raymond. You know what its trope was? Shitness. In my honest and obviously educated opinion, Ray Romano could charitably be described as a tax on the world’s natural resources. Don’t even get me started on Deborah. That paragon of blandness, that succubus of…

Oh. Um. TV Tropes. Enjoy.

/Luke

Michael Jackson’s memorial has barely finished, and already the awesomely batshit mental cavalcade of news has begun rolling in. I’m sure you’re all rather sick of hearing about Jackson, and I’m even more certain that your minds are made up already about him. Off The Wall and Thriller are awesome albums, his work with the Jacksons was adorable, his dad was a douchebag, Pepsi destroyed him, blah blah blah. Let’s just all agree the whole thing was a grotesque prologned shame sandwich and be done with it. The real nub of my gist is this: the aftermath is proving to be a pure metric pantload of crazycakes. Observe.

During the leadup to the memorial, there were people on Craigslist soliciting and/or offering up sexual favors in exchange for a final audience with the King of Pop. Meaning there are people out there who would fuck a stranger to wave at a corpse. Which might sound odd, but exactly the same thing happened with Mussolini. Granted, if you were attending that particular decay soiree, you were probably only doing so in the hopes that you could spit in his brainhole. With Jackson, I can understand wanting to go and pay your respects. But surely there’d be a moment, mid-coitus in a shirt embalzoned with bedazzled letters spelling out the word “BAD”, when you’d accidentally glipse your pallid, sweaty reflection in a mirror, your ghastly visage hunched over a stubby hispanic woman like some kind of pale, flabby toad. At this point, it would be your duty as a sentient human being to hurl yourself onto the nearest trident.

/Paul

Shortly, you’ll be able to read all about Nerds of a Feather from this morning. But first, some housekeeping. Today, Luke turns 24! Yes, almost a quarter of a century ago, the lab where Luke was assembled had a surprise in store for the world. Not content to have created the worlds first sentient robot, they’d decided to imbue said robot with the one thing the world needed.

Funk.

Yes, Luke Ryan was the worlds first sentient “Negrodroid”. Imbued with raw funk, as well as an inate desire to help his fellow brothers and sisters fight ‘The Man’, Negrodroid Ryan cut a swathe of cocoa justice across the planet. Sadly, after failing to save Gary Coleman from Captain Yankee one fateful day around 1992, he succumbed to his more human qualities, and overindulged in drink, drugs and watermelons.

Years later, after regaining a tenuous foothold back in society, he has taken up residence in Melbourne, and for some reason has shed his funky roots to become THE WHITEST MAN ALIVE. Nevertheless, I salute you, Negrodroid (aka Fagulon). May your cogs never grow rusty. Oh, and if the preceeding story offended you, it’s pretty much the exact plot of Undercover Brother, a film in which (this is not a joke) the lead character has to be brainwashed repeatedly before he can eat mayonaise without throwing up. They also give him a watch which sprays hot sauce, just in case his conditioning fails.

Onto Nerds of a Feather! On today’s show, I discussed the following:

- The new robo-ferret, which will sniff out drugs at airports! Nowhere near as effectively as Negrodriod could in his prime, but still.

- Does your dad like to cut shit in half? The Pizza Boss is probably what he’s after, provided he likes Pizza made of trees.

- I talked to the guys about my recent trip to the Yarra. And by “to”, I mean “in”. On Saturday, Luke kicked me into it. Stay tuned for the footage, it’s being edited together this week!

- Sick of having to touch toilet paper? Sick of toilet technology that hasn’t been updated since the 1880’s? Try THE COMFORT WIPE! But don’t. Seriously. Your dignity isn’t worth it.

- We chatted about the advent of the Cat Cafe, specifically one in Osaka, Japan. The majority of cats are profound douchebags. Why would I pay to get hissed at and ignored?

- The chief scientist at SETI (the search for Intelligent Life in space), Dan Werthimer, gave a talk about projects which failed to recieve federal funding, and which of them actually went ahead.

Make sure to check back later today for the podcast. And remember to wish Luke a happy birthday. His circuits need emotional lube.

/Paul

Well, I guess I sort of asked for it. Today, Luke kicked me into the Yarra. The premise of this weeks punishment (for the loser of No Fuck Friday 3) was to be “baptised in the Yarra”. The water was teetering around the six to seven degree mark, and I wasn’t so much baptised as I was kicked. Everyone was very nice about the whole thing. My reproductive system, on the other hand, has been rendered useless by the toxic slurry that I spazzed around in for fifteen seconds, before being hauled out and changing behind a towel in front of baffled tourists. They probably saw my clothing dissolving off my body, so at least they won’t try and go for a swim.

UPDATE: This is from the Wikipedia entry on the Yarra River:

Pollution

Levels of bacteria, particularly E-coli and substances like grease, oils and heavy metals in the Yarra River and its tributaries are a major problem.

High levels of E-coli, some up to 200 times the safe limit in its tributaries, are caused primarily by poorly maintained septic systems.

Up to 350,000 cigarette butts enter the Yarra catchment storm water runoff every day,[6] these serve as just a small representation of the rubbish and litter that are disposed of in storm water runoff areas that eventually make their way into the river.

Some industrial companies continue to use the Yarra as a dumping ground. For example in recent years paper company Amcor has been fined several times by EPA Victoria for polluting the Yarra and environs. In 2007 it was fined AUD $5,000 for discharging paper pulp into the Yarra from its Alphington plant and in 2008 the company was convicted for releasing oil into the Yarra from its Alphington plant and fined AUD $80,000.

Fuck.

Stay tuned for the video, and keep voting on No Fuck Friday 4!

/Paul

Photos courtesy of TJ!

This is a treat for you all on your Tuesday afternoon. Not only do these guys use math to solve crimes (eat a dick, Numbers. Eat a dick.) but one half of Mathnet is Monday, the nerd girl responsible for making me crush on nerd girls ever since. If you never saw Mathnet, basically it was a thinly veiled… you know what? I’m not going to cloud this with commentary. Go away and do some digging, you can thank me later. Sufficed to say, childrens television rarely reached such dizzying geek heights.

Seriously though. Numbers can eat my ass.

/Paul

Now, I like to think I am never, ever, ever at any time ever prone to hyperbole, so you can trust me when I say that this blog post will in all likelihood change everything you thought you knew about the world.

When you were young, everybody basically dreamed of having the same four things when they grew up: a personal space rocket, a palace/castle/chateau made from solid gold, a personal helper chimp and a car that could be driven on water. Well I’m here to tell you that the last of those things actually, truly exists. Say hello to the Amphicar. Yes, that is a car being driven down a river. But wait, those fellows look positively aged. What are they doing in such a hip new piece of technology? What? This thing was created back in 1963? How in God’s name have I been ignorant of such a miracle until this afternoon? A horrible brain injury from the time I tried to base jump using a set of home-made duck wings? But… that’s impossible. I hate ducks. Who are you? Don’t touch me! You’re not a real doctor! In fact I don’t think you even really exist. God knows you haven’t responded to a single one of my questions so far.

No, wait, don’t leave…

The Amphicar! Apparently these bad boys started production in 1963 with the anticipation that soon 20 000 Amphicars would be sold per year. The company ceased production in 1965 and only 3878 Amphicars were ever produced. Which raises the question, how could people actually resist a car that could DRIVE ON THE FUCKING WATER?! Well, it seems that it wasn’t necessarily great at performing either of its primary functions. As one owner has said ” We like to think of it as the fastest car on the water and fastest boat on the road”. High praise indeed. Nonetheless the Amphicar has crossed the English Channel and most of the ones produced back in the early 60s are still in operation. Which either speaks to their profound durability or to the nigh on insane dedication of the early adopters who picked up one of the originals. Given the existence of a number of ’swim-ins’ (Amphicar meet ups), I’d tend toward the latter. Check out this video and see if your inner child doesn’t just go straight ahead and blow a load. Chubsy-wubsy style:

And just to finish up, here’s a photo of a man in a sailor’s hat driving an Amphicar down the Grand Canal in Venice. Arsey bastard.

Although I’d say the only fitting way for that particular joy ride to finish up would be for it to be wiped out by a squad of commandos riding around in a FUCKING HUMDINGA!

Yeah. That’s right. Watch yourself ocean. Watch yourself river. Watch yourself aquarium. Cars are coming for you. Next up, we’re going to do a hit’n'run on a beluga.

So… Uh, everybody else is this excited by floating cars, right?

[via Eternally Cool]

/Luke

My girlfriend TJ is over in Shanghai, and whipped up this popart wallpaper of sorts, for The Somewhat Ambitious. I’m very chuffed. It’s a pretty fair representation of how we both behave with a camera on us. Luke is calm, collected, and charming. I turn into an utter goon.

If you missed Nerds of a Feather this morning, here’s what you… uh… missed.

- The rather rambling discussion regarding a tribe of 200 who populated the entire world. Apparently Voltron is going to save us from the rapture.

- The 24 year old who is changing his name to James T. Kirk, by deed poll. To be honest, I wish I had the cajones to do this.

- We chatted about Zachary Quinto, who plays Spock in the new Star Trek feature, and his inability to do the Vulcan salute!

- Can glass harness the raw might of lightning? Probably!

- We talked about the advent of Indonesian Hobbits, and new evidence which suggests they’re something rather more remarkable than previously thought.

- And finally, with the help of Manchux I wreaked my horrible revenge on Marieke Hardy, by dumping loads of crappy Harry Potter slash fiction onto Eroticmarieke.com, which isn’t sexy. It’s just weird. And it’s also the last time I’m leaving my Facebook open at the studios.

Keep your eyes glued to the site, because along with the podcast from todays show, you’ll soon also be getting loads of new (read: rushed and irrational) content. And you might also get some news on the next upcoming Somewhat Ambitious podcast with Luke and myself, which is being recorded this week. I think. Talk to Luke, he’s the brains of the outfit.

/Paul

Hi everyone,

Many apologies for the eerie silence that has settled upon The Somewhat Ambitious over the past five or so days! If you’re wondering why things were quiet, Luke had just finished a month of doing his comedy festival show, Luke’s Got Cancer, and partying his everloving tits off. I’ve been sick recently with what can conservatively described as the bubonic plague (Read: the flu). This week, however, has already been a big one; the Nerds of a Feather podcast from yesterday can be listened to here, and Luke won the coveted “Golden Negro Cyborg” award for his show on Sunday night.

Although given the amount of medication I’m on, I can’t really back that up.

Anyway, it’s going to be a big week, so stay tuned for more of the usual shits and giggles, including a feature on seventeenth century Italian architecture. By which I mean… not sure what I mean, actually.

/Paul