The art of eyebrow sculpture

I'm not going to pretend to be a fashion expert, but today I want to share with you my recently discovered talent of eyebrow sculpture. You would be forgiven to think that I have taken to making tiny sculptures of eyebrows, like this one:

But no. Courtesy of Whitney, I had the pleasure of encountering a Nads Facial Wand. Now typically, a masculine manly man like me would not have the opportunity to encounter such a product. Why? Because this is in fact a woman's hair removal product. It is a well known fact that men have an inbuilt phobia for any form of cosmetic product aimed at women. But I'm also no typical man- I am brave enough to experience all that life has to offer and that includes hair removal products.
So Nads and I have had mostly a hate-hate relationship. The history of this is well documented, yet such documentation is strictly withheld from the public domain (although I'm sure it'll find its way out soon). It basically involved a night in Sydney where I completely set my sights on removing my stomach and chest hair (which is possibly upwards of 76% of the entire world's hair content), and the product of choice was Nads. It didn't need heating, which to me at first sounded amazing: no heat AND hair removal? Could one ask for more?
It turns out, the answer was yes, and it was exactly heat that I would have asked for. The thick viscous gel, along with the plastic nub of an applicator caused me intense pain which, to put in perspective, made me look forward to the hair-ripping strip removal to distract from that applicator. It's a long story with many photos in storage documenting every blood-curdling scream of hair-ripping pain and it's not important to go into too much detail. Needless to say, Nads and I were not on speaking terms.

It turns out however, that the face is much less of a push-over when compared to my stomach. The applicator was one which, if it were a person, I would invite over for lunch and treat to a few city outings. The tiny little waxing strips would also be treated to, say, some fruit loaf at a cafe. For those who know me, this kind of treatment is quite difficult to extract from me. But the number one winner out of all of this was my ego. To be frank, I am an eyebrow sculpting genius:

If that's not a fashion success, I don't know what is.

Note: Please contact my agent if you require eyebrow waxing - it is EXPENSIVE if you get me to do it because I'm quite probably the best eyebrown sculpter out there. :)

The Economic Crisis Solved: Economics of Happiness

Almost everything that goes wrong today can be attributed to the Economic Crisis that the world is in presently. In fact, I'd say absolutely everything can. Anything from inflation to clogged toilets and the prevalence of annoying seagulls that eat your chips. Now, I've thought about this long and hard. An incredibly large number of hours have gone into a hand-crafted, utterly beautiful economic strategy that I believe if polished up a bit by some qualified people WILL SOLVE the financial problems (and all associated problems) that the world faces today. I call it the Economics of Happiness.

The basic premise of my solution hinges around the quantisation of happiness and gratitude, and then using it as a currency in place of the traditional money that most people use today. "This guy's crazy", you're all probably thinking. I thought I was too, but then the more I thought about it, the more sense it actually made. In order to first understand how this theory can be applied, I will make it clear exactly what I mean by quantisation of happiness and gratitude. Suppose there were some way of attaching a number on how happy someone was, or what you needed to achieve in order to satisfy a particular level of happiness. Let us for one moment suppose that a happiness amount of 4 (let's call these units 'Happies') was attributed to a smile and raised eyebrows. In order to achieve this one may need to provide a number of compliments such as "you really do have nice eyes". This would be an example of an exchange of 'money' in the Happiness and Gratitude model. It is okay if you're still confused as it will make more sense as I go on.

Let's now focus on everyday exchange of money, such as going to the convenience store. You want some chewing gum, so you pick up the packet of Extra and take it to the counter. You find that it costs 5 Happies to buy this item. So you say to the cashier "your hair is really beautiful, and also your voice is so romantic sounding AND I honestly believe that if someone could possibly smell any better, they would physically assume the shape and other characteristics of a rose". She says "do you have anything smaller?" ... "sorry, that's the smallest I've got", you reply. So she gives you change: "I think you are very kindly spoken and would be pleasant to meet in a bar". Now how much easier is that? No fumbling around in your wallet for loose change, and you both feel pretty good when you leave. I suspect I know what you're thinking right now.. "Sure that transaction would be fine if the person were hot." So I put it to you: Assuming the person were not hot, this would be exactly the same as if the man handed over traditional cash with awful sweaty hands and a bad smell. No different and I'm sure that in the current economic climate the smelly traditional exchange of money happens all the time, so we're all used to it by now.

Next, you're at work and having a crap day doing filing. But luckily for you it's pay day! So the boss comes up to you and says "Man, those files are being filed so damn well! You're a champ! Seriously, if I could do anything to be more like you, I would because you're such an indescribably super amazing employee!" Hopefully you're left with a warm fuzzy feeling and go home nice any happy. That would be for a cash-in-hand, otherwise your boss would be saying this to the bank.

BANKS! They suddenly become the best places on earth. ATMs just tell you how great you are, unless they've run out of a particular kind of compliment. Think of all the times you've wanted $50, and it's told you that you can either have $40 or $60. This would be the same as saying "well I can't tell you that your eyebrows are nicely plucked, but I CAN say that you're a productive employee or that if I were a human, I'd want to have sex with you here and now". Going in to the bank would be an experience in itself; making deposits would be a pleasure and withdrawals just as nice. Need I say more? As for bank robberies and and theft in general, things would be much less threatening overall since people yelling "I really dislike your ideas and think you would be better off spending your time writing letters to a magazine opinions column that nobody reads" would be the equivalent of having your handbag stolen.

The big purchases of life would be quite demanding, but entertaining nonetheless. You want a house so you go to an auction. "Do we have anyone who thinks the current owner has nice feet? ... going once... going twice ... Yes! The person up the back in the frilly hat! ... Nice feet and sexually stimulating physique? ... Going once.. twice.. third and final call... (your back hair is seriously something to be treasured!, someone from the crowded auction calls)" and on it goes.

All this sounds really good now, doesn't it! But let us assume the worst. Another economic crisis. How could it possibly have happened? It's clearly impossible if everyone is just saying how great everyone else is... but for the sake of argument, it happened. K-Rudd stimulus package to the rescue! Each household is allocated one tax office issue clown and a therapist, including for deceased estates.