First Blog on the Moon

Firstdogonthemoon presents the Animal of the Day

How I became a Professional AFL Player and won a premiership

June 25, 2009 – 4:55 pm, by Firstdog

Alright I didn’t. But on Tuesday I had a glorious insight into the inner workings of an AFL Club. And not just any AFL club, the Western Bulldogs.

But first some background. Ben Hudson plays in the ruck for the Western Bulldogs, he has recently grown a marvelous beard! So marvelous in fact that some of the lovely people at woof.net.au (a Western Bulldogs internet forum) started the Ben Hudson’s Beard Appreciation Society. Why wouldn’t you! We all joined and shared beard photos and much jollity.

It went (like the beard) from strength to strength, there is a t-shirt, it got a mention in the footy record, there is a facebook group you are required to join - quick go now, it’s right here.

So a couple of weeks back I received a call from a fellow member of the BHBAS who we will call “Barry”. “Barry” said “call Rocket, he wants you to do a presentation to Huddo”. Ohmygod. (Rocket is Rodney Eade the Western Bulldogs coach and a fine fellow indeed. Huddo is obviously Ben Hudson)

I called Rocket and it was true. I was to turn up to an actual Opposition Review meeting, make a presentation in front of the entire team of a BHBAS t-shirt to Mr Huddo. And if I wanted I could stay for the meeting. STAY FOR THE MEETING!!

Apparently the idea was put together by Mr Murphy and Mr Minson who are good mates of Mr Hudson. I was advised that while he is a popular fellow, he has a tendency to make fun of his team mates and is generally a good natured scoundrel.

I arrived at 9.30, met Rocket, and then Mr Murphy and Mr Gilbee and showed them the Powerpoint presentation I had put together. They loved it. The plan was for the meeting to start, Murph to introduce me as someone who had a proposition about fundraising for the end of year trip and then I was away.

Before the meeting I spent a pleasant few minutes talking with Rocket. He is a lovely bloke. He was quietly upbeat about the team’s prospects this year but also realistic. I didn’t hear anything I didn’t want to hear. I also met Brad Johnson (BRAD JOHNSON). He said “Hi I’m Brad” And I wanted to say “well der, of course you are, you’re BRAD JOHNSON|!!) But I didn’t. I feigned an air of calm.

I went into the meeting which was in this lovely theaterette sort of thing, sat down and was promptly told “That’s Aker’s seat, you don’t want to sit there”. I ended up between Aker and Gia who was having a rub down on the massage table. Ahem.

Rocket opened the meeting, and asked Murph to say a few words. Murph got up and introduced me as someone who was here to talk to them about a fundraising proposal for the end of year. I stood up and they started the first slide - everyone laughed! (thank god) and we went from there.

The first slide which you can see below welcomed everyone to the Annual General Meeting of the Ben Hudson’s Beard Appreciation Society.

I had a pretty tense 48 hours putting the slides together, but it paid off as the players thought it was hilarious. Thank goodness!

The presentation went better than expected. At the end, I called Mr Hudson down gave him a t-shirt and presented a certificate of appreciation to his beard.

The presentation is attached below - the biggest laughs were for the “this is a beard” photo and the “how we will win a flag photo”.

I got many laughs and clapping and hand shakes afterwards and frankly I am so impressed with myself I don’t know what to do.

The opposition review meeting was fascinating. The dogs are very professional, very focused.

Later, Rocket gave me a tour of the Elite Training Centre and then I watched training for an hour or so. I had a lovely time and invited myself back but I’m not sure Rocket was listening at that point.

Here is the Certificate that I presented to the beard.

Ola!

Certificate of Appreciation...

And this is a movie version of the powerpoint presentation - unfortunately it takes out the nice transitions and effects but you get the idea.

YouTube Preview Image
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What I didn’t do on my holiday

June 11, 2009 – 8:45 am, by Firstdog

Here I am in beautiful tropical Mt Martha for a couple days. Just me and my hot water bottle. Sitting in front of the fire and looking out the window a lot. I didn’t even bring the laptop! Just the iphone with it’s adorable little wordpress app. My main concern is that even though I have taken the occasional walk, I have seen not a single beast. Not one. Zero. I have been serenaded by crows ( I am very fond of crows), saw a pigeon or two and some dogs. But no beasts that I would describe as Animals You See While On Holiday. No possums, bunnies, rats or marsupials of any kind. There was a cockroach on a log destined for the fire so I put it out the door (the cockroach, not the log - it was one of those charming native bush roaches not one from the telly). But you wouldn’t even bother blogging about a cockroach unless you were desperate. I know Mt Martha is not the proper bush but there are trees everywhere and the beach and stuff. I mean really, it’s a bit like The Road except it isn’t because there weren’t pigeons in The Road. And I reckon the coffee they got in their post-apocalyptic nightmare was better than the chalky warmish fluid they serve in Mt Martha. However, I digress. The score so far: Concealed Beasts 1, Holidaying Cartoonists 0

I have included some photos including one of the Temple of the Fat Gecko which must have been drawn from memory as there are no geckos of any size in Mt Martha because they do not like the coffee.

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Oh my goodness

June 3, 2009 – 2:25 pm, by Firstdog

It took me ages to see it.

What a clever beast.

tawny-frogmouth_oct-06_mfc

I am not hiding, I am merely treating you with disdain.

This photo was taken by some lovely people at La Trobe University.

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Crikey’s Deputy Editor has sent me this important photo.

May 22, 2009 – 10:26 am, by Firstdog

Am I not beautiful? See my eyelashes, are they not beguiling?

What was god thinking?

What was god thinking?

Thank you Sophie. I don’t think anything else needs to be said.

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The true truth about #lovelyoptus

May 19, 2009 – 6:47 pm, by Firstdog

I have created some hoohah. (Although it is only Twitter hoohah so I mean really, huh?) But anyway, here is how I hoohahed.

In this post here, I complained bitterly about how awful Optus customer service is. And their network. And their billing system. ALL TRUE!

I also drew an hilarious cartoon about it. Ha ha. You can even see some of it here at #badoptus.

Before I drew the cartoon I called Optus to speak to their Media section to tell them about the cartoon and to complain in general about how crap they were. 

Of course I called to speak to the Media section but I got put through to something called “customer relations”. This only became apparent later. I suggested that I was a kind of journalist *ahem*, or at least that Crikey was a reputable media outlet and that the benefit of being a cartoonist was that i could just MAKE STUFF UP and that optus were so awful that I DIDN’T HAVE TO.

The lovely Optus guy said someone would have to call me back. Of course they didn’t, not until the cartoon was published.

When they did get back to me they offered me an “account manager” because I have six (SIX ) 6 services with Optus. They said that I should have had an account manager all along but the system did not flag me as eligible because it is made out of dried goat poop and dental floss which has been fished out of a dumpster.

THEY DID NOT KNOW ABOUT THE CARTOON WHEN THEY CALLED TO OFFER ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT. This is the key point. Also, they were not the media department, or marketing, just the poor customer service hacks.

Of course they may be fibbing, but I doubt it. That would require cunning and organisation and Optus lacks anything even vaguely resembling these things. So it was a coincidence. Ooooohhhh a coooiiiinnncciiiddeeeeeennnnccee. Yes, a coincidence thank you very much and I don’t appreciate your tone at all.

Anyway….. I now have an account manager, her name is Michelle and she is A TOTAL LEGEND. She has consolidated my mobile accounts, made recommendations about my landline, apologised for the 3g network and laughed at my jokes. GOLD! If I want to speak to her I just have to sms or email and she will call me back GUARANTEED within 48 hours! True. ZOMG!

It makes all the difference when you have someone dedicated to speak to you, someone who knows the systems and can navigate them for you. This is in fact the job of EVERY customer service person at optus but they are incapable of doing this because the systems are made of sticks and dirt and I think occasionally they hire Bighorn Sheep or yoghurt instead of people but I cannot prove that.

Michelle is none of these things, she is competent and fixes things. So it should really be #lovelymichellefromcustomerrelationsatoptus but no.

Of course it could all change tomorrow. But in the mean time….

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An absolute disgrace…

May 19, 2009 – 1:23 pm, by Firstdog

Now when I find stupid and hilarious things on the internet, I have to POST THEM MYSELF rather than have a member of Crikey’s Crack Editorial Web Unit post them for me.

Accordingly, I have posted something over here…

It is simply not good enough and Eric Beecher needs to take a long hard look at himself!

We need to make some changes around here!

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How the wondrous new t-shirt shop works…

May 13, 2009 – 2:57 pm, by Firstdog

This is exciting. Well, I am excited. You might not be. You might be indifferent or even reading this while you are asleep.

 

OMG IT'S SO CUTE!!!

Its little tongue is sticking out!!!

We have opened our firstdogonthemoon @ the house of crikey via redbubble, shop.

It is here:

http://crikeyshop.redbubble.com/

There are only a few images in there at the moment, lovely though they are. However, what you can expect in the future is that any ANY firstdogonthemoon cartoon EVER DRAWN can be lovingly placed on a t-shirt by the magical shirt ponies at redbubble and purchased by you.

A grateful nation weeps.

Obviously, as there are 15 billion firstdogonthemoon cartoons in existence we cannot put them all in the shop at once.

But it works this way……If there is a particular cartoon you would like on a shirt, and of course you do, you can email me (firstdog@crikey.com.au) and I will bung it in the shop. I can even do individual frames from cartoons as I am both flexible, talented and a generous soul.

Over time all of the various popular cartoons will go in there, but that could take a long time as I am busy helping orphaned baby elephants like the one above having a nap in my garden shed. (That is not true, but wouldn’t that be a nice way to be busy).

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I wrote a poem…

May 5, 2009 – 1:13 pm, by Firstdog

in today’s editorial meeting while everyone was talking about the ETS. So when I was talking about the ETS cartoon I was going to draw, I had to ask everyone to repeat themselves. I thought this was quite funny but I am not sure everyone else did.

Here is the poem.

I was a happy rubber band
but nobody would hold my hand
and so I was a little sad
and I became a rubber bad

the end

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How entirely excellent is our new website?

May 1, 2009 – 10:51 pm, by Firstdog

A multiple choice questionnaire:

Entirely

Totally

Totally Entirely

Mostly Totally

Mostly sort of Entirely

Sandwich

I don’t like it (and expect to get my comment to be edited accordingly).

 

Just you wait until the new all singing all dancing all t-shirts all the time First Dog On The Moon interactive multimedia gallery arrives as well!

Just you wait.

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Death to Optus!

April 30, 2009 – 9:10 am, by Firstdog

 

After my anti-Optus cartoon rant a bunch of people started whinging about to me about Optus just like I did (except without the biting satire and raccoons of course). The funniest thing is that before I drew this cartoon I called Optus PR and pretended to be a journalist ( I said I was a cartoonist) and I told them about the cartoon and they flapped about and all sounded lovely and said they would look into all my concerns and flippity flappity floppity get back to me.

 

So we publish the email and minutes later POING! I get an email from one of the people I spoke to at Optus, “Gwyneth” in which she refers to my various concerns and spells my name wrong. Twice.

So they can’t even deal with the media without buggering it up. Admittedly using “media” to refer to myself is bit of a long bow but I still work at Crikey so I mean really WTF.

A number of folk have suggested the TIO which is a marvellous notion if you are unable to get complex things like incorrect billing that Optus won’t resolve and so on. But it is dealing with the vast majority of stuff that doesn’t warrant the TIO but simply takes for ever that makes me want to claw out my own eyes.

And then there is the IVR at the front which seems to randomly deliver you to whoever it feels like. I never use the IVR anymore I just hit the # key every second or so until it says “I don’t understand you, so I will have to put you through to someone who will be the wrong person and it will probably take longer than if you did things properly and I aren’t I a pompous twat, we have purposely made this sentence really long to deter you from pushing the buttons the way you just did next time you call because you will probably think you would get through to the right person faster by going through the IVR properly”. However, I invariably end up with someone who can help (or at least says they can) or I get someone who sounds like an actual switchboard operator who puts me through to the “correct” department swiftly.

So this is a “we hate Optus and Telstra are beneath contempt” free for all. Bastards.

 

 

I have become so bitter

I have become so bitter

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