Articles

A good friend is hard to find

In Friends, Lessons, Life on May 16, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , ,

When I left Scotland I left behind a whole bunch of amazing people. I left behind a group of guys who I would gladly give my life so any one of them could live. The last time I was in Scotland (about three years ago) I dropped in on my mate Stew and although we hadn’t seen each other in three years we had a beer, sat on the sofa and spoke and laughed and ripped the piss out of each other as if we had only been hanging about the day before.

Frienship is a very rare gift. They are the people who are there for you when you are down and who make you smile and laugh. They give you advice. They help you through your life and without them your life is not near as full as it should be.

There are times in life when I have pissed off or upset my friends. There are times when I have probably driven them to tearing their hair out. And there are times when I have been on the verge of losing friends.

I feel like right now that is happening.

There is one friend out there who I hold in an incredibly high-regard.

He is incredibly intelligent and great fun to talk to but on the flip side he a worrier and sometimes far too deadly serious for his own good. He is a lovely person and has helped me through a lot while living in Australia and I like to think that if we had met in another country we would still be friends.

I have, I’m afraid to say, been sadly missing as a friend lately and I’m gonna change that. I’ve already emailed him to say that I’ve been a crap friend lately and that I intend to change that.

Hopefully he understands and accepts the olive branch/white flag/big bit of haggis I’m putting out there.

The richest person in the world is the person who is surrounded by good friends…

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Articles

Selfish Undertakers

In Lessons, Life on May 16, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , , ,

I have a rant that has been building up inside of me for a long time.

A long, long time. So much it feels like a galaxy far, far away.

I fucking hate selfish undertakers…no not the people who bury the dead. Those people have a dead tough job…groan.

I hate it when I am sitting in my car in a queue not really moving too fast when some tosser decided that THEY are too good to queue up and decide to ram down the left hand side of the road then force their way in.

Same thing happens when you are heading towards the tunnels in Sydney in your car. More than half the shitty traffic is caused by fuckers undertaking then trying to cut in just to save them five more minutes as the queues start to build up.

I don’t do it and everytime I see someone do it I just want to drop some kind of laser from the sky to vaporise them. This is a good note for future governments NEVER give me access to some kind of super-weapon. I will use it to destroy these people.

I want to try and get to the root of the problem and I believe it is people’s fundamental belief that they are better than other people. They think they have the right to cut in front of people because they deserve to be in front of others. These same people would never think of doing this kind of thing in a queue for tickets or a queue for a cab because people would probably just ending up smacking the utter fuck out of them.

Only recently I was involved in an incident when I was waiting in a taxi queue and one of these selfish undertakers just decided to walk in front of the queue. Two girls were at the start of the queue and he just stared at them obviously daring them to say something. I’m not known for being quiet at the best of times so I called him up on it. He was a shocked and stunned that someone would dare to.

Now I’m Scottish, which means I’m a short-arse. This guy was about six foot one.

But when we Scots get angry. We sound FUCKING ANGRY.

I was damned angry. How dare this guy intimidate the two women and how dare he think he was better than the other eight people standing in the queue. I fucking lost it. I used words that would make Billy Connolly blush. I went ballistic. I think I even called him an ass-munching felch burger.

He backed off and said he would get a taxi somewhere else and that I was mad. The girls thanked me for getting rid of them.

Obviously the situation could have gotten ugly but sometimes you have to risk those things to stand up for what is right. But when you put people in their little metal boxes what is risked is lives. These greedy, selfish people cause problems and cost lives all to get to their destination one minute earlier.

They fucking disgust me.

So, please, please, please don’t undertake. Wait in the queue and don’t think you are better than anyone else.

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Articles

Religious Brainwashing

In Life, Religion on May 15, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , , ,

Yup…you had to know that at some point I would bring this topic up…

Since I was young I have always believed that no-one should be educated in religion until they are old enough to decide which path they want to chose. And yes this includes by their parents. And if you are going to educate them – whether in schools or at home then I believe that you should teach them EVERY single religion and let them choose.

Woah woah woah calm down. I can already feel a whole bunch of religious people getting ready to call me heretic and burn me at the stake. Hear me out.

If you are raised by Catholic parents the chances of you being a catholic and believing in a catholic god is incredibly high.

If you are raised by Islamic parents the chances of you being a muslim and believing in the muslim god is incredibly high.

And so on and so on and so on.

I live in a world that is brainwashed and believe in a creature, an entity, a something. They have faith in something because chances are they were told by their parents or teachers or the minister or the imam that this is what they have to believe in.

My mother and father are christians. They believe in a god. I don’t. I’m an athiest. I have been since I was 7 years old and the minister at my local Sunday School couldn’t answer my question: “Where does god come from?”. He told me he has always been there. I told him that was a cop out. He told my parents never to bring me back.

I then spent a lot of time reading about many religions and I came to a moment of blinding truth.

There is no god and I live in a world where the majority of people I know believe in something that I can never do…have faith.

Sometimes it feels like I like in a world where they have left the asylum doors open. If I ran around telling people that a giant octopus with the head of a giraffe built the world, gave us life, watched everything we do while craning his awesome neck and then when we died we snuggled up to his feet I would be locked up.

Yet we live in a world where make conscious decisions based on their entity belief.

We live in a world where people judge others based on their entity belief.

We live in a world where people actually make political decisions for the good of the masses based on their belief (with no proof) of a god.

And we live in a world where people kill others for their entity belief.

And the majority of these people are following the path of their parents or what they were taught. Chances are if they were brought up in another country with different parents who believe in a different religion then they too would follow a different religion. That’s brainwashing. Dress it up in any fashion you want but that’s exactly what that is.

Yet every religion teaches tolerance and love. It’s just a shame that some people don’t take the time to read and understand what that actually means.

Instead they use it as a tool for hate. To control. To destroy. As an excuse for power. And that’s a shame because most of the people I know who are religious are wonderful people – but it always makes me wonder who they would be if they were given the choice at a young age to discover religion on their own or learn later in life when they are mature enough to understand.

I know many amazing people who believe in god and in religion. Some of the best and closest people in my life believe and have faith.

I’ll never have it. I’ll never feel that. But I will talk to you about your religion and try to understand why you believe.

Ultimately it’s a person’s choice but I believe the choice is made harder when it is conditioned into you at a young age.

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Articles

Scotland

In Friends, Life on May 6, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , ,

I can’t have a blog called Kilt For Hire and not mention Scotland.

Although I now live in Australia I will always call Scotland my home. It is my country of birth and where I lived till I was 29.

But it is much more than just a country. It is much more than just a small piece of land filled with heather and hills and grumpy people sick of the rain.

It is a part of who I am. It defines my spirit, my passion and my fire.

It blessed me with an accent (which I don’t think I have) and one that people (for some bizarre reason) enjoy listening to. I’m one of the rare Scots I know who are quite open with their feelings – past generations of Scots would simply grunt or nod rather than say ‘I love you’ but since my uncle was murdered in Scotland and I was in Australia I vowed to always tell my parents, my sisters and my friends that I love them and how much they mean to me.

I am also blessed with a history as rich and as deep as Loch Ness (yes I do believe in Nessie and Haggis are real) and much of that history has bled into who we are as a nation.

Scotland is a wet country. It rains all the bloody time. It’s also a hard culture. You don’t grow up in a wet and miserable land being constantly attacked without ending up with a chip on your shoulder. So the Scots have grown into an angry race they will defend its own but to combat the anger they also developed what I can only describe the best sense of humour in the world.

We spend a lot of time in pubs drinking hard and when you drink through the dark winter months with others you learn to have a fast wit. You learn to riposte barbs and insults with speed and learn to make people joke and smile. Some are better than others and if you’ve read my blog post about my dad you’ll know what I’m talking about.

I’m currently reading/listening to the audiobook of Craig Ferguson’s story called “American On Purpose”. It’s remarkable story about his life and rise to fame as a chat show host in the US. My book would be called “Australian By Accident” if I ever get round to writing it! I never realised it before but he and I have a few things in common including being born in Stobhill Hospital where both my mum and gran were nurses.

Every few days I speak to my mum and dad and listening to @craigyferg (yes he is on Twitter) lately has made me miss the old country a lot. I miss it’s rolling hills, I miss the cold mornings, the dark winters where the sun sets at what seems like 2pm and the light summers where at 11pm it’s still so bright. I miss the heather and the brachen. I miss the smell. The taste of real water out of the tap.

I miss my friends.

I miss my family.

I miss home and one day I’ll return … maybe for good.

If you haven’t heard of or listened to Craig Ferguson before I suggest you do – here’s a very unusual piece of television from him, especially as it was on US TV.

At the end he says: “”The relationship I have with my father is not unlike the relationship I have with the old country, you know with Scotland, I grumble about it, I complain about it, I can even be mean about it, but I love it beyond reason it’s where I’m from, it’s what I am.” Never a truer thing has been said.

Which makes me think about one last thing that we Scots are and that’s honest and straight to the point.

Awrabest!

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Articles

The Gatherer

In Digital, Poetry on April 21, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , ,

Jacked. Wired. Flowing.
Beige guardians stand proudly,
defending the ether abundance of information.

Glyphs dance evocatively,
across their tawny connection,
leaping to their world caressed by others,
but never fully entered.

The archway basks in a kaleidoscopic glow,
daring neophyte’s to enter it’s realm.
A kingdom of data surrounded by nodal suburbia,
ready to be taken by the virtual crusaders.

Paladins of freedom scouring the digital domain,
in seach of enlightenment and understanding,
of where this new world in it’s luminous state,
will take them today.

They bound over continents in a flicker,
gathering untold hidden treasures,
downloading themselves through chromatic glow,
leaving processed trails in their wake.

They are the knights of truth.
Constructs of their flesh.
Fed by desire to uncover knowledge,
and to execute deception and disinformation.

They are jacked, wired and they flow.

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Articles

Role-Playing

In Friends, Life, RPG on April 20, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , , ,

I’ve lived thousands of lives.

I’ve battled Demons and Death Stars.

I’ve seen nebulas explode and races made extinct .

I’ve controlled people with only my thoughts and seen armoured warriors fight to the end.

I’ve flown spaceships through dying stars and seen my children grow old.

I’m a role-player and proud.

You know role-playing gets a bad rap.

Really it does.

For some bizarre reason the cool kids in primary school used to mock the role-playing kids…and some religious organisations seem to think it’s full of satanic worshipers in robes n shit.

Well do you know what? I’ve role-played since I was 12 years old. It’s the single greatest hobby I have ever had. It teaches you to think fast, work as a team, use your imagination, engage with others on different levels, put yourself in someone else’s shoes and to grow and learn.

I first began role-playing with my mate Stew. He introduced me to Traveler. A stunning sci-fi game set in the past filled with aliens and new worlds. I’ll never forget that first game being stuck on a roof having only a big handled six-shooter and rolling dice to see if my shots took down the two strange creatures attacking me. It opened up a whole new world.

Following that we created a team myself, Stew, Tommy, Sav, Bidge and Dougie. We used to meet at one of our houses on a Sunday morning at around 8am and play. Over the years other people got involved Louise, Dave, Ross, Garry to name but a few.

Sometimes the campaigns lasted months and other times a fatal mistake would wipe out the team in seconds.

I guess I should explain what it is? Role-playing is like acting and video games and movies all rolled into one and uses your imagination. The GM is the games master, your eyes and ears of the world you are in. He is every character you meet and is the storyteller of that world.

You the players, create characters based on the rules of the game. For instance in Dungeons & Dragons you can choose between a human bard or an elven archer or a dwarven warrior. In Star Wars you can become a Jedi of a smuggler. In Mechwarrior you could become a mech pilot and control 10 metre tall fighting machines.

Anyone can play. All you need is a pad, a pen, two or more people, the game rules and imagination. It’s the ultimate game.

I still play occasionally in Australia but I find it tough to play without my mates from the UK. It kinda feels like I’m cheating on them when I team up with people where I am now.

Every Sunday from 8.30am till about 5pm. From aged 12 till I came to Australia aged 29.

I miss those Sundays every single day.

I miss the feeling of camaraderie.

The in-jokes ‘it’s empteeeeee’.

I miss the exhilaration of an amazing campaign.

But most of all I miss you guys. I miss you Stew with your amazingly rich campaigns, I miss you Sav and your devious schemes, I miss you Tommy and your no-nonsense characters, I miss you Dougie and your moments of sanity and I miss you Bidge and your batshit mental characters.

I know we have grown up and many of you have families now but I know you still play. Most Sundays.

And there isn’t a Sunday goes by where I don’t wish I was sitting on the floor next to you guys rolling dice, eating crap food, carrying on, rubbing out stats on character sheets and laughing. So much laughter.

I miss you role-players. I miss my mates…

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Articles

Paul: A review

In Life, Movies on April 20, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , , ,

Paul

I wasn’t expecting much going in to see Paul – the new movie from Simon Pegg and Nick Frost – mainly because of some lacklustre reviews and some people claiming that it just didn’t have the get up and go of both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

Plus director Edgar Wright was nowhere to be seen.

Now I love Spaced. I mean I love it. It’s probably in my top five TV shows of all time and that includes Buck Rogers (although that may have been because of Command Wilma Deering played by Erin Gray and because I was at a very impressionable time in my life).

Spaced to me says it all about my generation. It’s packed with classic TV show and movie references. It’s incredibly intelligent and doesn’t play down to the audience. And finally it is about the closeness of friendships and the fact that you just don’t know who someone is till you get to know them. Wright directed and honed his geek-style in the series which would benefit him later with Scott Pilgrim V the rest of the World.

Shaun of the Dead was an instant classic. A Rom Zom Com filled with brilliant British actors and nods to so many classic zombie movies.

Hot Fuzz followed with Pegg, Frost and Wright teaming up once more for a buddy cop movie that paid homage to so many classics action movies from the 80s and 90s. I was lucky enough to work on the PR for this movie for Paramount Pictures in Australia and even got to sit down and chat with Pegg for a while discussing movies, games and his love of brilliant Glasgow pubs (his wife is Scottish).

When I first moved to Australia I brought four DVDs and that was two copies of Spaced DVDs just in case one got damaged. The guys signed them for me. One of my prize possessions!

So the build up for a buddy-road movie with Pegg and Frost heading to the fabled Comic-Con (one day I shall attend!!!!) and then visiting some of the America’s favourite UFO hotspots.

However, on their travels they stumble into an alien. Called Paul. Voiced by Seth Rogen.

I had grave reservations for this film. I was sure it would bomb. I was sure that I’d watch it and think that the glory days we over for these guys.

Wooooo, I was wrong!

It was superb. I laughed more times during this movie than any other in the last few years. It’s got so many brilliant uses of awesome sic-fi classic one-liners, great use of the cast, a solid script filled with excellent quotable lines and it has Paul.

Paul rocks. I figured a CGi alien would be a bit poo but I was wrong. Wrong on so many levels. The little guy makes the movie. You can’t help but like how awesome and laid back he is.

I’m so glad I saw this as the next film in the cinema after Sucker Punch as it has restored my faith in the movies.
Thank you Simon and Nick for once more confirming that you guys deserve a special place in the comedy hall of fame.

Oh and remind me some time to tell you about the time I saw a UFO in the UK…

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Articles

The love of celebrity

In Lessons, Life, Media on April 17, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , , , ,

There are many things I don’t understand and and I’m happy to admit this but something I really don’t get is the obsession with celebrity that has taken over the world in the last x number of years.

Maybe many people have always been obsessed but with the proliferation of modern forms of media this, for me, has become seriously unhealthy.

But what freaks me out the most is the fact that people continue to follow and like people they know full well have done bad things.

Take Chris Brown for instance. Now before he beat up some singer called Rhianna I hadn’t heard of him. Then he beat her up showed little sign of remorse and moved on with his his life. I just saw an advert on television saying he is playing shows in Australia.

Yup, people are paying to go see someone who beat up a defenseless woman.

What should happen, in a sane world, is that he would turn up on stage and the only people in the crowd are victims of spousal abuse who throw eggs and rotten fruit at him. What actually happens is that thousands of teenagers and younger all head along and watch him sing and dance and look up to him.

What kind of an example is that for youngsters today that men who beat up women are still idolized simply because they can sing or dance or play sports or something.

These people should be vilified.

They should be hounded out of their industry.

But they don’t they continue to make money and keep doing what they are doing. Why, as a species, do we not all turn our back on these people? Until they actually feel remorse for what they have done.

It’s weird I feel like the examples being set by a lot of adults these days are sending some crazy messages to the next generation. Even looking at Lady Gaga’s shows and many others. They are highly sexualised but filled with kids under 10.

Anyone under the public eye needs to realize that kids look up to them and that the things they do will get reported and be seen my millions.

It’s a sad state of affairs when those in positions of power don’t realize the power they wield.

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Articles

SHTBOX

In Life, SHTBOX, Social Media on April 15, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , , ,

Surry Hills Twitter Beer O'Clock Exchange Superhero Party

The SHTBOX Superheroes

It stands for Surry Hills Twitter Beer O’Clock Exchange.

It stands for fun and good times.

It’s an informal meet of awesome people who use Twitter.

Thanks to SHTBOX I have met so many fucking superb people – you all know who you are 😉

Myself and two legendary characters Mal Damkar aka @maldamkar and Mitch Malone aka @mitchmalone met on Twitter nearly two years ago and decided to catch up in the real world – SHOCK HORROR!! For all I knew both of them could have been killers/stalkers/nerds thankfully it turned out they were just cool motherfuckers. On that first night a few other people turned up including the lovely Emily Wearmouth aka @EmVicW and Mandi Bateson aka @mab397. The first time we all met was so awesome we did it again the next week and more people came…and more people came.

In fact I believe Emily, who met her fiance at SHTBOX, is marrying him this weekend in London!! How cool is that!?

Some weeks we had thirty to forty people turn up at the same location – The Clock Bar in Surry Hills in Sydney (see how Surry Hills fits in to the name. Mal came up with the whole name. He’s a genius that lad).

Sometimes we organised crazy nights of fancy dress. The last one we did was superheroes. Last count there was six Superman. It was amazing. We’re in that picture up there.

Everyone is invited and we only have two rules:
1 – No name badges
2 – No cunts

Simple huh!

Alas I have been sadly remiss in not attending this year. In fact just close to its two year anniversary I seem to have stopped going and I think that this has to change. Starting in May I’m going to revitalise this awesome event with gusto!

It’s time to bring the SHTBOX back. It’s time to round up all the old faces and invite so many new ones.

Let’s get SHTBOX back on the map after Easter!

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Articles

What the hell does UnAustralian mean?

In Lessons, Life on April 15, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , ,

I noticed my friend Jaya Myler (@jayamyler) on Twitter saying she thinks the term UnAustralian is being bandied around too much this week.

In fact this ad came out this week:

And it made me realise that having lived in Australia for the last seven years I have no idea what UnAustralian means.

It only seems to be used by people who want to have a go at other people when they have no basis for attacking them or when they don’t want to be as honest as they should.

People have tried to explain UnAustralian as being all about mateship, a bond between people etc etc and yet I don’t see that happening a lot. At least no more than in any other country I have been in.

Now I realise this blog post may upset some of my Australian friends but to be honest I don’t think I’ve heard any of them ever utter the phrase except in jest – the problem is that politicians, advertisers and a whole bunch of others seem to use it as a way of getting at people they don’t like or don’t agree with and I personally think that’s damned rude. If you have something to say to someone then say it and don’t hide behind a phrase that doesn’t seem to exist in modern day.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m UnAustralian for writing this blog post but to be honest the bond I have with my friends in the UK is the same bond I have with my friends in Australia.

I’m proud of my Scottish heritage. I swell with pride when I hear the Flower of Scotland sung and I have no doubt Australians do exactly the same when they hear someone sing their national anthem.

So yeah I guess I’m calling out the phrase UnAustralian. Maybe I just don’t understand it but then I guess I’d like to ask people…do you understand it?

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