Motor Ace is still the shiz

So I used to love Motor Ace. You remember Motor Ace? With their angsty pop-rock they were the perfect band for the melancholic early-twenty-something. I remember going to a gig (ok several gigs) at the Metro in Sydney where I clutched my BFF's [sero] hand and we screamed the lyrics of 'Budge' as Patrick Roberston, in all his diminutive loveliness, sang them just for us (we were so sure).

Anyhoo, so a recent wave of the nostalgias has inspired me to dig out Five Star Laundry, and sitting here listening to it and wondering what the shit happened to Motor Ace, I came across this on Wikipedia:

The individual members remain on amicable terms. Robertson now professionally scores for film and television, while Ong still occasionally performs around Melbourne with his Joni Lightning project. Costin continues to work in the music industry. Matt Balfe is currently a freelance lion tamer.

Matt Balfe is currently a freelance lion tamer? This is not so much what I expected as not what I expected? Can anyone verify this?

Survey this

A long time ago (January?) I started a series of posts called 'Things I Don't Understand (But Wish I Did)' on another blog. It was meant to be an occasional series, and I must confess I have taken such liberties with it that I have not added to it since its inception in January (although there have been things, multitudes actually, and daily, that I have not understood).

So in an effort to address this terrible neglect I decided this morning to post the very next thing that mystified me, so here it is:

Not the easiest thing to read, is it? Sorry. I'll see if I can fix it.

Ok so apparently I can't fix it. Sorry about that (Alex help!).

Anyhoo, it's a survey that arrived today, one of those 'Tell us what it's like to live where you live, chump!' surveys. Now I love filling in a good survey, in fact I love filling in forms of all types (formgasmic), so imagine my delight when this giant 10-pager arrived.

I rattled through the pages, ticking boxes, strongly agreeing and mildly disagreeing everywhere. Then I got to the last two questions, above:

Question 42: How satisfied are you with the way democracy works in Australia?

and

Question 43: What is your favourite retail shop in your local area?

What the fuck? Seriously? Your thoughts on the effectiveness of Australia's political system, and oh, while we've got you, where do you buy your Tampax?

I'm guessing this is a State government effort.

Yeah I mean you, shitty business

So here's the thing with Facebook: If you're a business and you have a Facebook page and you post things on it and people respond, unless those responses are unforgivably lewd (and you're not, ahem, a publisher of adult 'books'), THEN YOU SHOULDN'T DELETE THEM BECAUSE IT MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A CENSORIOUS DICK of a business.

Just saying.