The beautifully shot videos bond together end-to-end to form a single story involving a damsel in distress, a lumbering giant of a man, and the California desert.

Genius.

But apart from that, the album's packaging is absolutely gorgeous. The cartoonish, disproportionate ship emblazoned on the cover reminds me of an obscure PlayStation game demo I played once or twice around five years ago, which I've long since forgotten. The gameplay involved a God's-eye view of a small cartoon warship skooting around large bodies of water, shooting cannons at other ships. If anyone remembers what it is, you know what you must do.

As a music store, Fist2Face is one of the more in-demand work experience venues in the area, so there is never a shortage of willing young bodies. $5 a day (62.5 cents per hour) gets me all the cheap child labour I need to complete all the mundane, time-consuming tasks that normally distract me from more important persuits, and the kids actually enjoy it!

My favourites tasks for the slaves include:

• Finding the cheapest price they can on rolls of tape, checking every store at Eastland that sells tape, and even some that don't (to keep them on their toes) ¹
• Meticulously alphabetizing and organising the hundreds of CDs and T-shirts we have in the store, to appease my OCD
• Posting MySpace comments and messages advertising OzProg events and promotions - on Fist2Face's dollar 62.5 cents

My favourite single task was the week that one kid - Keiran - was tasked with covering an entire 6-foot-plus cupboard with The Statics stickers. It took him three days.

Currently we are using slave labour to print, burn and package 5000 copies of The Statics' demo CD. By the time they're done, The Statics would have benefitted from countless manhours of cheap, delicious labour.

Work experience: business' best friend.

1. This is also useful for Sharpies. I use fine point Sharpies hundreds of times a day, and replace them as soon as the tip becomes too blunt. Work experience kids save me sometimes up to 10c at a time by checking all of the stores in Eastland that sell stationery. ↩

Mr Hunt said using the Lord's name in vain was a serious sin.

"When someone comes to the point of saying Jesus is the devil or Jesus is 'expletive', the Bible does say be very careful because you're on thin ice."

Evidently priests and the media are cunts too. People being arrested for what could be argued to be religious beliefs - solely because people of other, more prevalent religious beliefs disagree - is bullshit.

But where were these Bible-bashers 10 years ago when there were dozens of exactly the same (and much worse) Cradle of Filth shirts being proudly exhibited at E.V.'s Youth Centre in Croydon every Friday night?

Wherever they were, they should go back there and shut the fuck up.

I see Carlin at the '79 Emmys. I say, "Hey, isn't motherfucker TWO words?" He says, "Wow, that's funny, man. Never heard that one before."

So I say, "Here's two more words for you: sarcastic prick!" We laugh and laugh. Later, I find shit smeared on the windshield of my Caddy.

R.I.P.

Yes, that is a parrot in a spacesuit helmet.

1. It took me a long time to realise that, instead of continually searching the internet for an image of it (unsuccessfully), I could just take a photo myself. ↩

I would love to know what sick bastard at Kellogs came up with this genius idea. I just spent the first three years of my sons life trying to get him not to eat blocks, and now you're telling him they taste like fucking strawberries. Thanks a lot assholes.

Apparently, Metallica's management held a listening party for UK-based bloggers and music journalists with rough mixes of some of their new material. When those bloggers and journalists wrote reviews of the music, they were forced to take them down by Metallica's management, even though they were never asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

"Once we re-surfaced on Tuesday after a few weeks on tour in Europe, we were informed that someone at Q Prime (our managers) had made the error of asking a few publications to take down reviews of the rough mixes from the new record that were posted on their sites," they wrote. "Our response was 'WHY?!!! Why take down mostly positive reviews of the new material and prevent people from getting psyched about the next record... that makes no sense to us!'"

The original story (and to a lesser extent the follow-up) was unfairly reported by most publications involved, especially Ars Technica. Metallica actually embrace the internet far more than most other bands of their size, with an entire website (LiveMetallica.com) devoted to digital downloads of each one of their concerts, in music-snob-pleasing FLAC lossless format. That didn't rate a mention in any stories about this most recent debacle, although the almost-10-year-old Napster lawsuit, which the band have distanced themselves from in recent years, did.

(Incredibly interesting sidenote: the title of this post refers to something my Dad said years ago when ripping into a Metallica fan who thought James Hetfield was a brilliant lyricist. My Dad contends that Hetfield merely sits in a room and tries to find new ways of rhyming with 'death'.)

A lot of savvy marketing wanker types believe that branding is of utmost importance when trying to sell something - whether it's music or toilet cleaner. The AT&T/Cingular debacle in the United States is a good example of branding gone wrong, but House vs. Hurricane themselves are proof of the opposite: you can change your name without putting much of a dent in your reputation.

HVH were known for quite a while as Beyond Mine, and had built quite a following in the local Melbourne hardcore scene under that name. Inexplicably, less than a year ago they changed it to House vs. Hurricane (which, similar to the B-Sharps, is absurd the first time you hear it, but eventually you get used to it), and I remember thinking to myself what a boneheaded move that was.

But clearly, judging by how many people we've had coming into Fist2Face asking for HVH's EP, their popularity hasn't suffered at all. I'd love to speak with them in depth about the name change and its effects, to get a feel for what they did to keep their awareness high. Having good management would be a factor, but there would have to be more to it than just switching to a new MySpace URL and hoping people follow you.