Where’s Wally gets punched in the face, Amy Grant gets fingered, and a dead hooker soaks in an acid bath. It’s business as usual at the Shoddy Blog.

We are deep in the guts of school holidays at my end, a period that almost always fills me with abject fear. It is not so much the younger kids clogging up the shops and streets by day squealing and screaming like the godless bastards that they are, but rather the older students - the teenagers.

Those that patrol the streets at night like restless vampires, high on Alco-pops and intoxicated with the inconsequential recklessness of youth.

There was a small group of us working the graveyard shift on Saturday night, and it was our third and final late shift for the week. Halfway through we felt a little bored, so pulled up a few chairs to the main window to see if there was any action out on the street below.

The street below was North Terrace, one of Adelaide’s busiest CBD streets during the day, but strangely quiet during the wee hours of the morn. We have had a few looks through the window on various nights, and usually the best sight we can muster is that of an animated drunk stumbling home from the Casino, or a group of people leaving a work party.

This particular Saturday night (aka 4am Sunday morning) represented the end of the first day of School holidays, so all bets were off.

There were about half a dozen guys urinating in the shrubs below our window. Hordes of young people stumbling on the footpaths, including a small group who had deiced to casually stroll up the middle of the street with cars angrily blaring their horns behind them. Most of the girls seemed to be wearing skimpy summer dresses, even though the temperature would have been 10 degrees at best. Most noticeably there seemed to be a plethora of drunken arguments going on. Mostly chicks arguing with their boyfriends, but there seemed to be a heated argument between two groups of people across the road from us outside a Hotel – that was slowly getting increasingly aggressive.

The confrontation was eye catching, mainly because the smaller of the two groups (which was trying to back away from the skirmish) was lead by a young guy in a red and white jumper and matching beanie, and looked a dead ringer for Wally of Where’s Wally fame. Now there’s a character you’d never expect to spot in public. Poor old Wally seemed to be copping the lion’s share of the ire, as various guys came up to him yelling and shoving. We thought the fight was going to kick off when somebody ran up and punched Wally square in the face.

(Though to be honest, if I saw this twat on the street I would punch him too)

But then words were exchanged between the two groups, and they both parted ways. The sights we had seen in these short moments had whetted our appetites for more drunken carnage to view, so came up with the simple yet unanimous decision to spend our lunch break (at 4:30am mind you) wandering the streets outside instead of the staff canteen within.

Upon venturing outside, we found the previous sights to be a mere entrée for the main course as we were greeted by a small army of drunken teens waiting for cabs. Despite the freezing weather there were t-shirts and short skirts. The boys were all dressed like they’d just been to Satan’s skate park, the girl’s dressed like they wanted dollar bills stuffed down their tops. There were hair cuts that defied the imagination and even gravity. All present were bleary eyed and babbling.

We turned the corner onto the infinitely more terrifying Hindley Street, and almost got bowled over by a drunkard who had been thrown out of a club and didn’t have the faculties to stop his momentum until he was face down in the middle of the street. Hindley Street is Adelaide’s main pub and club drag, a street full of seedy bars, Tattoo Parlors and strip clubs. It can be quite an experience, and this particular night was one of the very few I had dared venture down it sober. School Holidays had only upped the pandemonium, and I felt a real end of the world vibe as I strolled down the blocks of this squalid cluster-fuck.

There were people passed out in the gutter, lakes of vomit, and I counted no less than three brawls – including one guy who produced a full bottle of beer from his pocket and tried to launch it at a couple of young guys, missing and hitting the wall in a fury of broken glass and wasted beer.

The girls were crying, the boys were fighting. This was our current generation of High Schoolers, the future leaders of our mighty nation. An entire platoon of crazy youths, who had not yet learnt their alcohol consumption limits. The unspoken rule was to keep drinking, until it ended in tears.

By the time we had gotten to the end of the street, I felt like I needed Snake Plisken to fly a helicopter in to save us.

We passed a busker who was sporting a pair of locked hand-cuffs (!), and made the journey back to work to finish our shift. We punched out a couple more hours of labour before heading home. The work-mate who gave me a lift dropped me at my house, and then headed off to the dying embers of a 21st birthday party. I preferred the warm confines of my bed, and drifted off to sleep at about 9am.

My alarm woke me four hours later, sleep had to wait as I was meeting the boys (we’re talking Stranger, Matt, Richo and Prowse) at the pub to watch the biggest match up of the AFL year so far, the undefeated Saint Kilda versus the undefeated Geelong.

I got to the Alma Tavern (our venue of choice) to find the bar staff all wearing school uniforms. Immediately a shiver ran up my spine as I recalled the annihilation of the night before. As it turned out, they were promoting the Alma’s Sunday School Session. A day off nonstop happy hours which included the highly agreeable pricing scheme:

2 pm– 3pm $2 Schooners
3 pm – 4pm $3 Schooners
4 pm – 5pm $4 Pints
5pm – midnight $5 Spirits

We watched the Carlton game after that one, enjoying cheap booze and post game banter. Everybody slowly filtered off due to work/baby/dinner commitments until 7pm when the last stragglers decided to call it a day. Having finished a heavy week of work and having just watched a full day of sport, I was left with a bit of a “thirst on” so decided to head on a solo adventure. I had a pint and played some pokies at the Oriental, before heading off to Finn Macools to sample a few Guinness’s. It was a slow Sunday night, and the chatty bartender struck up a conversation with me regarding all topics from travel to music.

I drank and waxed lyrical until closing time, then ambled home. It was 10pm by this point and it still felt too early to call it a night, so I decided to drink all of the beer I had in my fridge while watching music clips on You-Tube. I somehow managed to string this simple list of activities out until 5am, when I finally hit the sack.

I woke up at lunch time the following day to head off to a chiropractor appointment. The Chiro reckoned I need to drink more water, because my body seemed dehydrated. I was unsurprised.

After that I came home and logged into my Yahoo email account to find out what the plan was for the next Footy match this coming Saturday, even though my splitting head ache and aching body shuddered at the mere mention of future alcohol related activities.

I was surprised to find about a dozen emails from You-Tube users waiting for me in my Inbox regarding comments I had made on various clips in the wee hours of the morn.

I had no idea my You-Tube account was actually linked to my email address. I had first set up my account in 2006 (under the name "El Ganso") when we were putting our tropfest entry Slice Slice Baby onto the site. Until this morning, that had been the last time I had commented on a clip. I have kept the account running, because it allows you to watch the Adults Only stuff on You-Tube (mainly trailers for films that include violence and swearing).

I guess it’s also handy when you’re drunk, bored and feeling more than a little belligerent, and feel the need to let your inner commenter out. In my infinite drunken wisdom I took screen captures of all the comments I made. Retracing my steps from these shots, I found my first comment on the film clip for Amy Grant's Baby Baby



I’m not entirely sure what any of that actually means, but I must have grown bored of the conversation as I went to the Bruce Springsteen page for Born in the USA for a change of topic:



You-Tube user Kruezoraxe somehow finds hidden meaning within my comment:



I continue with



The next commenter is EmMeDv95 with



I reply to him/her with



I was being a smart-ass at this point, knowing that EmMe was writing about something completely different and in Spanish (and I had a Spanish User name) I thought it would be ironic to confuse their post with French and pretend to translate it. Even then I had it all wrong, as declared by sputnikspaynol in a personal message to me:

"EmMeDv95 speaks italian, not french XD"

Christ, I can't even do irony properly.

This line of questioning eventually spilled over on to the Transformers 2 trailer (which is a film I don’t even have any intention of watching):



And finally concluded on the Hannah Montana comments board (Don’t know what brought me to this particular clip, I’m not entirely sure who or what Hannah Montana actually is.)



The twisted thing about this inappropriate comment spree, is that of the dozen emails I received only one was negative:

"WTF is all this shit about dead hookers?"

The rest were either simple LOL or ROFLMAO comments, or people wishing me good luck on my endeavour.

I spent an early morning trolling You-Tube posing as an inept serial killer and get praise for my efforts. Meanwhile, there is probably some poor 14 year old girl who has been brave enough to post a clip of herself singing to get some constructive criticism, and is drowning under a tirade of ”STFU” and ”OMG U SUCK!” commentary. The internet is a sick place. Probably why I like it so much.

All of this nonsense reminded me of that hungover afternoon I spent harassing poor old Father Christmas at SantaBot.com. I was pleased to find the site was still up and running, so decided to get Saint Nick’s advice:



Santa doesn’t have a favourite way of disposing of dead hookers. Meaning what? He likes all ways? But how creepy is his second comment (and up yours Santa, I’m spelling those words like the Queen intended me to):

My favourite colour is transparent

Holy shit. It sounds like something that David Lynch would have engraved on his tomb stone. I’m going to be up all night wondering what the hell it means. Fuck you Santa, you demon.



I’ll leave you with this comment left on Katrina & The Waves - Walking On Sunshine



Notice that no less than six people gave me a thumbs up for crapping on my neighbour’s door step.

God bless You-Tube.




As a side note: Readers from the US of A may be confused as to what Where’s Wally is, and that is because the title of that book series was changed to Where’s Waldo when it hit your shores. Just as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was changed to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. American kids don’t know what a Wally or a Philosopher is, but they are quite comfortable with Sorcerers.


Let's hope they leave the title of the final book in the series (Harry Potter and the Dead Hooker) alone.