So despite think­ing that blog­ging every day of April would be a fun and easy thing to do, turn’s out, it is not. I didn’t blog yes­ter­day and I don’t have two posts in my head today to make up for it. But that’s not to say I’ve got noth­ing left to say. And I will def­i­nitely not let the con­tent on my blog wear thin. Any­ways, today’s post is a photo of the giant jar of oil that we keep in our kitchen for when we use our deep fryer. It looks like urine don’t you think?

Record Store Day is a good thing. It gets lotsa peo­ple into lit­tle record shops when lotsa peo­ple swing in and out of JB Hi-Fi too often these days. So it is with bemuse­ment that I see  www.recordstoreday.com.au fea­tur­ing in-store apper­ances at JB Hi-Fis, Vir­gin Mega­s­tores, San­i­tys and HMV. Surely this is not the point of Record Store Day? So what’s the story?

It turns out that AMRA (who rep­re­sent those big music chains) was told it couldn’t par­tic­i­pate in Record Store Day because the day is sup­posed to be an excer­cise in pro­mot­ing inde­pen­dent shops. But of course AMRA and the big chains pushed on any­way and are pro­mot­ing their ‘unof­fi­cial’ involve­ment in Record Store Day. And guess who owns and runs www.recordstoreday.com.au? Yep, AMRA. Sticky Car­pet in the Age touched on this today but con­tin­ued to pro­mote both the indie shop events and the AMRA shop events (#AMRAfail, #HMV­fail, #JBHi­Fi­fail, #Vir­gin­Mega­S­tore­fail, #San­i­ty­fail, #TheAgefail).

So please visit www.recordstoreday.com/Australia for the com­plete, authen­tic list of inde­pen­dent record stores to sup­port tomor­row. After all, the lit­tle guys only get one day. The chains get Christmas.

Firstly, I have fallen a day behind in the Blog-Every-Day-of-April-Or-You-Shan’t-Have-Achieved-Anything-This-April quest. But I shall work my way back, by blog­ging twice in one day.

And sec­ondly, I vis­ited the lovely and polite peo­ple at Hardie Grant Egmont yes­ter­day. Among other things, they gave me the final pages of Great­est Blog­ger to proof­read. When I got home I dis­cov­ered that once again (it has hap­pened before as well) the proof was held together by a YELLOW bull clip.

Being the nerd (and office-supply enthu­si­ast) I am, I was over­whelmed by the con­sid­er­ate nature of the edi­tors at Hardie Grant. And I have updated the descrip­tion of Hardie Grant Egmont in the spiel about my book to include ‘con­sid­er­ate’. Cos I’m just feel­ing that way.

1. Tell them every­one is say­ing KFC not GFC. It’s all about some chicken shops going out of business.
2. Give them a game of monop­oly, let them play for an hour, then take all the cash away and ask them how it feels to live in Iceland.
3. Tell them a ‘stim­u­lus pack­age’ is exactly what the other kids at school say it is (Sex is eas­ier to explain that finan­cial systems).
4. Tell them the $900 hand­out hap­pened because Labor is in gov­ern­ment and there’s no such thing as a GFC.
5. Tell them the $900 hand­out is saved from money we didn’t give to the ABC for ten years.
6. Tell them the $900 hand­out is to encour­age peo­ple to buy chicken.
7. Tell them China took away all our money. You might as well start the fear mon­ger­ing when they’re young.
8. Tell them that the GFC is just clever viral mar­ket­ing by the Gee­long Foot­ball Club to boost mem­ber­ship numbers.
9. Tell them that ‘injec­tion’ means ‘baster’ and ‘econ­omy’ means ‘chook’.
10. Tell them Han­nah Mon­tana is on TV. That’ll dis­tract ‘em.

Dear White Chocolate,

I would like to thank you for a won­der­ful Easter 2009. It was plea­sure to receive you. Despite many peo­ple say­ing to me ‘White choco­late is not real choco­late’ I am never more thrilled than when I put your pasty, pale self in my mouth.

I know there are some dis­be­liev­ers out there who say that you only exist because the Swiss needed some­thing to do with the left over cocoa but­ter they had from mak­ing milk choco­late. But to those peo­ple I point out that Aus­tralian rules foot­ball was only dis­cov­ered when crick­eters made up a ball game to pass the win­ter months with. Or pos­si­bly they stole the game from the indige­nous peo­ple who had been play­ing it for cen­turies before that. But the point here is that brown choco­late is like cricket — digestible, cer­tainly pleas­ant, but a bit bor­ing. Whereas white choco­late is like AFL — racy, spec­tac­u­lar and an obses­sion for those obsessed.

In sum­mary, white choco­late I pledge to reject any lover whom ever gives me brown choco­late, legally divorce from any grand­par­ent who tries the same and/or cam­paign against any gov­ern­ment that doesn’t give me $900 to buy white choco­late. Rudd, con­sider your­self lucky.

Yours in lov­ing regard,

Andrew

PS. White power!