#263 – Saying So Themselves

30 03 2015

The bogan is a leading authority in many fields. If this is difficult to believe, please refer to the bogan’s job title of Executive Consultant Account Coordination Manager. See, authority. In fact by the time this article is published, the bogan will likely have floated listlessly on the currents of job title inflation to have been meaninglessly ordained Lead Executive Consultant Account Coordination Manager. More-thority!

This is a job ad

 

Advanced trend modelling carried out here at TBL headquarters suggests that, should the bogan manage to avoid a repeat of last year’s office Christmas party ‘unpleasantness’ and rein in its habit of chucking sickies on days following major sporting events, another ‘promotion’/buzzword is likely by the end of the fiscal year. PHWOAR-THORITY!!!1!

Irregardless, the bogan as it currently stands has more than enough corporate-sounding words on its email signature to be able to confidently issue summary adjudications on the virtues of just about anything. And when it does so, something curious happens. The bogan appears to make a rare attempt at humility by adding the phrase: ‘if I do say so myself.’

“Your new Affliction fight-branded t-shirt really accentuates your vascularity, if I do say so myself.”

“I was at that new club, Platinum Lounge, last night. Pretty bangin’ if I do say so myself.”

“That new Nikki Minaj video is hawwwwt, if I do say so myself.”

But wait. Did the bogan design the tourniquet t-shirt? Did it have creative input into Platinum Lounge? Surely the bogan did not direct the new Nikki Minaj video!? How could there be time for any of this, what with all the leading, executing, consulting, coordinating and managing???

No, the bogan did none of this. Which means that the addition of ‘if I do say so myself’ is not humility at all. It’s, like, the opposite. By ‘saying so itself,’ the bogan is elevating its shitty opinion to seem as if it carries some sort of authority. It doesn’t.





#262 – Padlocks

28 10 2014

Adrift in an endless galactic sea, the bogan can sometimes feel so small. Not even bicep curls and a gigantic house can lend the bogan a sufficient sense of scale. Then there’s the minor problem of eternity. 24 months interest free is baaasically forever, but what about after that? What about month 25, bogan?

I mean… sure, the bogan can go and get another wrist tattoo. Sweet, sweet permanency. Even the Chinese symbol for “eternity” is an option. The tattoo could also represent the bogan being tribal for eternity, or in love with its current mating partner for eternity. But, despite the best efforts of the Australian and Thai health systems, the bogan will eventually die, and its skin wither.

“How can I leave my mark forever?”, mused the female bogan as it shuffled down the BBQ aisle at Bunnings, intending to replace the other giant BBQ which it had not used in the previous three years. Lost in its thoughts, its nose collided with a vertical display of brass padlocks hung from one of the shelves. The flash of snout-pain was also a flash of inspiration.

“I’m totally going to uninstall Tinder. Promise.”

Some years earlier, on the bogan’s repeat Contiki tours of Europe, it had seen bridge railings covered in padlocks. Pure romance. Dutifully, the bogan placed  padlocks on the ironwork to symbolise the undying nature of its love for bus companions Jackson (’07), Troy (’12), and Jakcson (’12 – week two), respectively. It was European, it was classic. Just like the chic sophistication of the wok burner on the $899 barbecue. $906 later, the bogan had purchased its new padlock, and was fully equipped to confront its own mortality.

On the drive home, Twitter was informed that “I’ve dumped 3 loser guys this month, but @Trizzzztan69 is the one #yolo”.

While Tristan was somewhat surprised to hear his new fuck buddy speak so emphatically, his reluctance to burn his sexual bridges resulted in him consenting to the visit to the nearby physical bridge. Hopefully for sex. Following a thirty second recital of Taylor Swift lyrics, the padlock was snapped closed around the bridge’s railing, and Tristan’s future was sealed. Tears were shed. Tristan feared that the tears would delay sex. He was right to fear this.

Quick, what’s the Twitter handle for the United Nations War Crimes Commission?!

Although the bogan has generally negative feelings about China, the padlocking craze can actually be traced back to here, before rearing its head in Europe in the 1980s. So it’s European. It’s a trend that appeals strongly to the bogan, because of its drama and exhibitionism. Nothing can exist for the bogan unless it is acted out in public.

But by bringing this craze to Australia, the bogan has delivered a new challenge to local councils nationwide. Spooked by reports of European bridges collapsing under the weight of thousands of steel padlocks, council workers with boltcutters are tasked with routinely depriving the bogan of its constitutional rights AND its one big shot at transcending all of existence.

But that’s ok, it stops the bogan from needing to find a new bridge railing next month. And Bunnings doesn’t mind.





#261 – The Business Class Boast

23 06 2014

It was a simpler time. Back in the good old days, it was enough for the bogan to scuttle onto a cheap flight to Bali or Thailand, get its hair braided, drink Bintang or Chang, and become exceptionally sunburnt. Which is not to say that the bogan can’t still enjoy those things. Instagram now groans under the weight of filtered photos of new tattoos and scooter accidents.

But that ubiquity has become problematic for the bogan. With everyone crashing scooters and “totes tripping balls” on watered down magic mushroom shakes, the bogan no longer feels like the special petal that it so craves being. As it stood in the Jetstar cattle pen one day, the bogan’s beady eyes spotted a velvet rope far up a hallway. The bogan knew that it was on the wrong side of the velvet rope, and was displeased.

The door behind the rope lacked maxtreme signage, but rumours persisted that it was a portal to a world of unlimited booze, “happy ending” massages, and celebrities. The bogan wanted in. Into the world of special gold tags on luggage, exclusive lounges, and seats behind that super VIP curtain at the front of the plane. Acting on another rumour, the bogan marched up to the customer service counter and declared that it wished to receive a free upgrade to the business class lounge, and a business class seat on the plane.

The request was not granted.

The bogan's promised land, which resembles a hybrid of an RSL and a Harvey Norman

The bogan’s promised land, which resembles a hybrid of an RSL and a Harvey Norman

The bogan returned to the clammy huddle inside its holding pen, vowing vengeance on a world that didn’t understand the bogan’s VIP requirements. Revenge came quickly, with Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram being informed that Qantas Club is a pack of cunts. The bogan’s crimson rage was as intense as it was fleeting. It mutated into a beige paste of shame and unrequited longing, for the bogan wanted desperately to be behind that velvet rope. $485 later, the bogan became Qantas Club’s newest member, and hurriedly deleted its cunt tweets.

The lounge itself was pleasant, though altogether too sedate for such a glorious velvet rope triumph. The bogan, normally swift to complain about a lack of maxtremity, seemed strangely unbothered. It set itself up on a couch, and held aloft its Qantas Club card, along with a glass of 12 year old whisky with coke. Then a selfie. And another selfie. A third selfie. Then 10 minutes searching for an Instagram filter named “$wag”. All of its friends were commanded to be totes jelly of the amazing lounge. The $485 of value thus secured, the bogan waited for its plane.

Astonishingly, the cabin crew led the bogan to the economy seat specified on its ticket. “I’m a fucking Qantas Club member; I demand to see your boss!”

The request was not granted.

The bogan gulped from its massive can, and contemplated the catch 22 irony of its plight. Its job as an Executive Account Coordinator Manager Consultant Specialist did not pay well enough for the bogan to afford the 400% price premium of sitting at the front of the plane, yet the real managers at the company sometimes got to fly business class for free.

To ward off these thoughts, the bogan placed its Qantas Club card on the fold-out tray table, and commenced searching for a camera angle that gave the illusion of expansive space. It was time to gloat to social media about its free business class seat upgrade.





#260 – Marilyn Monroe

16 04 2014

We have been harsh on the bogan, in the sincere belief that we were also being fair. We told you that the bogan is an empty vessel, a gaping maw just begging to have celebrity-of-the-month gossip regurgitated into it. We dared to suggest that the bogan stands for nothing, falls for everything, and possesses no enduring convictions beyond the urge to demonstrate its own loathsomeness.

Lies. All of these were lies. The bogan is actually a classicist; a person of timeless taste. The bogan is a… candle in the wind. Because the bogan likes Marilyn Monroe.

Monroe, born as someone else 90 years ago, turned a string of “dumb blonde” movie appearances into a brief tenure atop a subway air vent, a few better movies, three husbands, and an overdose death at age 36. But to the bogan, Marilyn is not a 1950s actress. She is evidence of how the bogan is a good person.

 

The 53.5kg Monroe, who represents a mandate to become overweight

The 53.5kg Monroe, who represents a mandate to become overweight

Firstly, Marilyn Monroe embodies the myth of the “real woman”. The female bogan will confidently inform you that Monroe’s size 16 frame represents “real beauty” in the “real world”, and that it justifies the bogan’s unwillingness to exercise its restraint at the dinner table, or regularly exercise its body away from it. Sadly for the bogan’s excuse-mongering, a British fashion journalist who had the chance to try on some of Monroe’s clothing confirmed that Monroe blew out from a size 8 early in her career, to size 10 at her biggest. Using Marilyn Monroe as validation of being size 16 is like using Oscar Pistorius as validation of wearing socks and sandals together.

But it gets better. Not only does the bogan use Monroe’s 23 inch waist as permission to let itself go, it also uses her as a philosophical mandate to be a shit human in a general sense. Monroe has numerous well-known quotes to her name, but one of them has been embraced with far more fervour than the others, infecting Facebook walls, Tinder profiles, and anything else with a text box that stays still long enough for the female bogan to mash the quote into its keyboard.

“I’m selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I’m out of control, and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.” When recited to a non-bogan, it might be interpreted as a message encouraging humility, pragmatism, and loyalty. But to a bogan, it’s a massive green light for any and every pig-headed thought, utterance, or action that can possibly be imagined.

Unfortunately, the bogan will rarely exhibit the “best” which lends some sort of balance to the quote, but why should it have to… the Marilyn Monroe in the bogan’s mind has already commanded it to eat another burger, start another fight, and cut to the front of another queue. The bogan likes Marilyn Monroe.





#259 – Necks

30 01 2014

The neck has spent years out on the bogan frontier. It was only after sweet tribal sleeves, some mad calf tatts, and some sick chest and back pieces of dragons that the bogan would start nominating its neck as  prime real estate for the newest visual representation of its soul. Similarly, it has been willing to have any number of its orifices (orifii?) violated in preference to turning up somewhere with a plum-coloured hickey bruise on its neck. Yes, the bogan’s neck has always been sacred, save for being used as an occasional hanging place for shark teeth and Tiffany logos. Even Pandora and Livestrong were unable to colonise the space from their stronghold on the bogan’s wrist.

But that was then. In 2014, the bogan has mutated once more. It is currently unable to open either a liquor bottle or a social media platform without contemplating its neck, and nominating it. Like a smug giraffe, the bogan will marvel at its own neck, and declare that none of its friends have a neck quite so splendid. Which is to say: bogan is filmed swiftly consuming alcoholic beverage, and then nominates someone to do likewise. Being the creature of excellence that it is, the boganic spiral towards disaster commences.

Neck being used to full potentialJust as the bogan giddily embraced planking in 2011, a fad that led to an unfortunate death from a 7th floor Brisbane balcony, so it will presumably be with neknominating. In the case of planking, the slower mobile data speeds and smaller data caps of three years ago meant that the bogan was generally limited to merely posting a photo of itself planking on Facebook. But the arrival of 4G has allowed the bogan’s creativity to flourish. It’s not simply about consuming the beverage, the twenty seconds of footage is also a thrilling platform for a talent/stupidity contest. Can the bogan think of something fucking idiotic to do before/during/after having a drink? Yes it can.

Careful scriptwriting is now required, with intense pre-video deliberations occurring to determine the more theatrical components of the video. New footage from the field reveals an audacious neknominate effort that involves hanging off the bottom off an airborne helicopter without a harness, and smashing down a delicious 375ml of Victoria Bitter. In another, a bogan nails its scrotum to a wooden board, then consumes its drink. No female bogan has yet had the balls to emulate that feat, but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that one will choose to give a bit of lip in return. And the Mexican wave of boganity continues.

Just as Australia’s rampant prosperity creates ever more bogans, it also taketh them away. Darwin is not only a city where bogans ride crocodiles and make the NT News Australia’s finest newspaper, it is also an –ism that will spare no corner of the continent. The Abbott Government’s plan to water down the National Broadband Network stands out as a beacon of hope to save the bogan from itself. With excessive data speed comes an uncontrollable deluge of bogan exhibitionist daredevil idiocy, which has the capacity send the bogan the way of the Tasmanian devil. So, next time you see the bogan risking its nek, nominate Tony Abbott to strangle its interwebs for its own good.





#258 – Knowing the Future

16 07 2013

“The future is a foreign country,” says the bogan wisely as it looks up from The Daily Telegraph, comfortable that it pulled that quote that it heard on A Current Affair that one time. Quotes always make you sound wise.

Bogan whispererBut deep down, it knows that actually the future is terrifying; a dystopian nightmare without royal babies, without taurine-fuelled drinks in infinite varieties, without Kyle Sandilands doing flips onto a shooting star.

The bogan is afraid. Always has been. The massive guns, the melanin, the colourful attire, the carefully rehearsed poses for those weird photos they take at the nightclub; they’re all a hastily constructed veneer to show the world that everything’s cool. But rather, the bogan is terrified; thirsting for knowledge. For understanding what comes next.

It’s no longer worried about its children now that they’re baptised and Ray Hadley tells it that climate change is rubbish. But what about its own future? Its job security? Its plans to retire at 53 without actually having saved anything, but chucked a few quid into Apple shares?

First, it turns to Ross Greenwood on Channel 9, who has some feelpinions about the future, then tells the bogan to stop spending so much on flatscreens and save some money. Disgusted, the bogan looks elsewhere.

Housing. The bogan knows there has never been a safer bet than throwing all of its money into a rental property, negatively gearing this shit out of it/renovating and ‘turning it over’, then counting the dollars.

But where to look? Who could provide that needed certainty? The hot tip on where to buy a house in that suburb that is a dead-set certainty to be the next boomtown but the bogan would never live in?

Enter: News Limited.

Enter: News Limited’s resident Australian Real Estate Psychic, Elisabeth Jensen.

In further incontrovertible evidence that no individual, organisation or business has its finger as firmly pressed to the bogan pulse as Rupert’s Australian outpost, the stable of tabloids and websites that fall under the News Corp banner have employed ‘2010 Australian Psychic of the Year’ Ms Jensen to provide a regular column answering readers’ (bogans’) questions about all things real estate.

“I was guided to the home I live in, I saw it in a vision, I went there to have a look at one I really wanted but couldn’t buy the unit.

“A month later another unit came up in the same block and that was much better because the other one had problems at a later date,” said the bogan whisperer Jensen.

News Limited feel confident in her ability to assist bogans in finding out the sweet place to buy, or whether “there’s a problem with any property.”

“People come to me to see me for a psychic reading, asking what’s wrong with a particular house, that it feels very strange, asking ‘are there spirits in this house’,” Ms Jensen says.

“I’ve sent away bad energy or difficult spirits, sometimes they’re lost souls, people who don’t know they’re dead.”

After consulting with the property medium, the bogan will then be consulted on the likelihood via binary online poll.

Looking up from its copy of the Tele, the bogan exhales, relieved. It has certainty again.

 





#257 – Just asking questions

14 06 2013

The bogan is perpetually curious. As the world rockets from dial-up porn to broadband porn to live-streaming HD NBN porn, from Carlisle to Gaga to Skrillex, from real politicians to ‘female’ politicians, it can all get a bit much, and the bogan periodically needs to take stock and assess the state of the universe.

So it Asks Questions.

Powered by an overwhelming desire to know The Truth, the bogan will diligently Ask Questions about the things that are troubling it in this crazy ol’ world.

“Oh, so you’re coming back from maternity leave?”

“What even are male hairdressers?”

Something something slush fund?”

“Ashby inquiry now?”

“This criminal government?”

The bogan embarks on a one-eyed pursuit of truth

The bogan will also, being the generous, community-minded soul that it is, Ask Questions on behalf of other bogans. It understands that not everyone has the ability to take their Important Questions That Need Answering to the proper forums, so will shoulder the monumental burden themselves.

Sometimes these bogans are, of course, Shock Jocks.

In pursuing Answers to these important Questions, perhaps then the bogan can clairify – even confirm – what it knew all along, shortly after it stopped pretending to have elected Australia’s first female Prime Minister, that she’s actually a misandrist bitch who stands against everything the bogan represents. Clearly, if the Questions are True, and her partner is a (sotto voce) ‘homosexual’, then all of this is proven, no?

These kindly, caring bogans will fearlessly pursue The Truth with their Questions. A voracious reader of Derrida and Foucault, the bogan knows that it cannot simply make assertions, as there are many forms of truth. But it needs to search.

“Tim’s gay. that’s not me saying it. But you hear it. He must be gay, he’s a hairdresser. It’s not me saying it. It’s what people…”

And now, having Asked Questions on behalf of people (bogans) the bogan can take a brief holiday, before resuming its job with higher ratings than before.