Gadget Hounded

Thanks to those clever people we affectionately call “nerds”, technology is getting smaller, faster and cheaper every day. Except for televisions, which will soon be measured in square kilometres.
Unfortunately it also means by the time you get your new gadget home it’s already obsolete.
This is great for the nerds, who keep adding millions to their bank account but nothing to their wardrobe. But for the rest of us, it poses two major questions:

How can we afford to keep buying new gadgets?

What do we do with the old ones?

The answer to the first one is simple. We keep using our credit card until the numbers on the front resemble our monthly repayments.

Unfortunately, answering the second one isn’t so straightforward.

In the good old days we could simply offload… sorry, “pass them down” to our children, who were happy to receive anything they could break and not get in trouble for. But these days kids are more tech-savvy than we’ll ever be, and wouldn’t touch anything we’ve owned with a laser pointer.

You could try selling it online, but it’s probably too old to attract any buyers and too new to catch the interest of your local museum. And by the time you factor in the seller fees, the hassles of posting it, and the public humiliation of ever owning such a thing, it probably isn’t worth it anyway.

Another option is to take it to the local dump. But along with the hassles of actually taking it there, you also risk your gear contaminating the ground, or even being re-programmed by cockroaches to destroy mankind.

Fortunately, Brizzy Rubbish Removals can help. Not only will they collect your old television for you, they’ll take it to one of Brisbane’s premier recycling stations, where it will be disposed of properly. No worries about contaminating the ground, and no chance of it falling into the hands of evil cockroach overlords.

That means you can relax and get on with more important issues. Like trying to understand the manual that came with your latest gadget.

Trashed Again

You made it through another year. Well done.

And let’s face it: it was tough, particularly towards the end. You had to survive not only the Christmas cavalcade of visitors, gifts and meals, but also New Year’s Eve. But you got through it all, although you’ve vowed once again to give up alcohol. (You now consider it one of your ‘traditions’.) 

Unfortunately it now means you’ve got one hell of a mess to clean up. And that’s after you wake up everyone in your lounge room and tell them to go home.


First there’s the wrapping paper and packaging left behind from all those presents. The wrapping paper you can handle, but the packaging almost feels like a conspiracy. The boxes are huge, but when you open them you realise it’s 90% Styrofoam. (The manufacturers got the idea after opening a packet of chips that was 90% air.)


Then there’s the leftover food that, despite having leftovers three nights in a row, still hasn’t disappeared. Even the dog takes one look and walks away thinking, “No thanks. I’d rather eat grass”.


Then there’s the evidence of what was supposed to be a quiet New Year’s Eve celebration. You’ve probably got enough bottles, cans and wine bladders for an Arts graduate to create an award-winning sculpture. Well, maybe when the yard stops spinning.


And like any other New Year’s Eve party, you probably have the odd piece of garden furniture that didn’t quite make it through the night. (We won’t mention the clothesline leaning at a weird angle, as if you’re trying to pick up radio transmissions from outer space.)


Fortunately Brizzy Rubbish Removals can help. They can collect all your rubbish and take it away for you. (Unfortunately you’ll have to deal with the guy sleeping on your couch on your own.) And the only time you’ll need to lift a finger is to block your ears when the bottles start clinking together.


Which is good, because the way your head is at the moment, the less you have to move the better.

Taking the Next Step

Congratulations! You’ve just bought a house.

It wasn’t easy. It took ages to find, and then you had to fight tooth and nail with the owners over the price. (Things were going quite smoothly until you realised they were talking dollars and not yen.)

But after countless bids, counter-bids, counter-counter-bids (and the odd prayer), you finally settled on a price. The paperwork is signed, you’ve been handed the keys, and now you’re about to take your first step into your new home.

Unfortunately, that first step may be the only one you want to take.

You pretty much knew the house wouldn’t be clean when you moved in. After all, there’s no “This place must be spotless before you leave or we’ll take your children” clause in a sale contract. (There was, but it was removed after too many parents took advantage of it.)

But you didn’t expect it to look this bad.

The carpet looks like it hasn’t been vacuumed in years, let alone cleaned. It’s as if the owners rented it out to a fraternity. Cigarette burns and a multitude of stains and spills have come together to create an image Jackson Pollock would be proud of. (At least you hope it’s tomato sauce.)

And there aren’t just indentations where the furniture once sat. There are actual holes, as if it was nailed down to stop poltergeists rearranging it in the middle of the night.

There’s no point even thinking of getting a carpet cleaner in. (Once news of the poltergeists gets around they won’t come near the place.) You’ll have to rip it all up, take it outside, and somehow get rid of it before the police cordon off your yard as a possible murder scene.

The good news is Brizzy Rubbish Removals can help. No, they won’t solve the crime or find the killer (I don’t think they even watch CSI). But they will help you get rid of your old carpet so you can get new flooring installed and finally move in.

And don’t worry about unpacking all those boxes. Just open them up and let the poltergeists arrange everything for you.

Nothing to sneeze at

 If you flick to the right page on your desktop calendar you’ll see it’s actually September, not March. The good news is any Easter eggs you see will be really cheap. The bad news is the stores will have already put up their Christmas decorations.

It also means it’s spring, unless you had an incredible buck’s night and woke up on the other side of the world.

There’s something special about spring, isn’t there? Everything seems to come alive, and there’s something in the air—anticipation, hope, even love.

Unfortunately for many of you that ‘something’ in the air is pollen, and so you’ll spend the entire month blowing your nose. And even if you do own shares in Kleenex it’s still a bummer—especially if you’ve only just shaken off that winter cold.

(

And on behalf of everyone who uses public transport or sits in an office all day, please blow your nose. Don’t just sit constantly sniffing until someone beats you to death with a WyteBord marker. Thank you.)

So what can you do? Well, you could propose to your partner, get your rich friend to throw a buck’s party and hope he throws you on a plane when you pass out. Or you could try eliminating as much of the pollen as you can.

Pollen comes from plants, which makes you wonder if vegetarians are such bad people after all. (“No, I’m not an animal lover, really. I just hate plants.”) It travels through the air and into your nose, where it quickly turns on all the taps and makes you sneeze every five minutes.

As you can imagine, finding love at this point would be a miracle.

Getting rid of the air is not only difficult (there’s an awful lot of it), but also has nasty side-effects, such as death. So it’s time to fire up your gardening tool of choice—hedge trimmer, whipper snipper, bazooka, etc.—and clear away any plants that look suspicious.

It won’t be an easy fight. Some plants can be incredibly resilient. But with the right attitude (and the optional flamethrower attachment), you’ll eventually have a yard devoid of any living thing. (Including your partner, who’s suddenly decided to stay with their parents for a few months.)

But don’t worry. Brizzy Rubbish Removals can help. No, they won’t try to convince the parents you haven’t gone crazy. (They’re not miracle workers.) But they can quickly come around and get rid of the “evidence” for you, leaving you to celebrate/commiserate with a few… dozen cleansing ales.

Just make sure you have your passport on you before you pass out. You may get lucky.

Time for an Olympics update

As you’re no doubt aware, The 2012 Olympic Games are in full swing.

This event gives people around the world a chance to show everyone how well they can jump over hurdles, fight each other with foils (“pretend swords”) and put their horses into reverse.

But as much as we all love the chance to cheer on our teams and listen to the commentators struggle with everyone’s names, I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking, “Why are they still doing that?”

Think about it. When was the last time you tried hurdling something instead of either slowly stepping over it or grabbing a foot ladder? Have you fought anyone with a pretend sword since your eighth birthday? And when was the last time you were even on a horse, let alone trying to make it go backwards?

(For the record, I have actually been on a horse while it was reversing. Just before it lodged me in the branches of a tree.)

We need to scrap some of these events and replace them with modern-day equivalents. Not only will we get more people taking part in the Games, but the athletes will be able to use their abilities for more than two weeks every four years.

Here are just a few ideas:

Hurdles: Drag a wheelie bin across the yard, jumping over kids toys and garden implements, in a race to the garbage truck that is about to drive away. Points deducted for swearing as you stub your toe on a Tonka truck.

Fencing: Find a long stick, and fend off cobwebs and spiders as you gather rubbish from under a house.  Bonus points for dragging out the cardboard boxes without them falling apart. Points deducted for screaming when a spider lands on your shoulder.

Dressage: Manoeuvre your car and trailer around a rubbish dump, before finally reversing into position to shovel out your load. Points deducted for not recycling and passing out from the stench.

And they should definitely be cooking some sausages and onions on that Olympic flame.

Of course, to people living in Brisbane these “new” events will still look ridiculous. “Why are they doing it all themselves?” they’ll be asking each other. “Why don’t they just call Brizzy Rubbish Removals and get them to do it all?”

And that’s exactly what you should do as well. Let them collect your rubbish and take it away so you can sit back, relax, and watch the athletes in action.


Because some of their names sound really funny.

The Tipping Point

With the school holidays here (along with half the kids in your neighbourhood), now is the perfect time to get rid of all your household rubbish.

Of course, your partner thinks it’s always the perfect time, threatening you with everything from divorce to cancelling the sports package on your cable TV if you don’t do it. But now that the kids have effectively taken over your house, it’s probably as good a time as any.  So how will you get rid of it? You’ve got a few options:

• Hide it in the garage/shed/bushes and hope to God your partner doesn’t find out.
• 
  
• Hire a skip (a large metal bin designed to instantly lower the value of your house).
• 
  
• Take it to the local rubbish tip/transfer station/whatever-they’re-calling-them-this-week and get rid of it yourself.
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• Arrange for Brizzy Rubbish Removals to pick it all up for you and take it away.

Forget about the first option. Women can spot a mote of dust from across the room. Do you really think you’ll be able to hide a pile of rubbish from them?

We’ve already talked the perils of hiring a skip, so you should probably forget about that option as well. Besides, as soon as it’s delivered the kids will turn it into a cubby house.

So that leaves you with two options— get rid of it yourself or let Brizzy Rubbish Removals get rid of it for you. (There is another option, but the kids won’t let you play with their flamethrower.)

You might think doing it yourself is the better option, especially if you’ve been listening to video games at a hundred decibels all day. But before you don the protective gloves and grab the waste vouchers off the fridge, let’s see if you’re right.

First, you need to get all that rubbish into your car. Now even if what you’re throwing away isn’t too messy and won’t spill on the way, do you really want your car smelling like a dumpster? Okay, do you want it smelling even more like a dumpster?

That’s assuming you can fit it all in anyway. Like your partner’s shoe collection, rubbish expands to fill the space provided. And that would be fine if you didn’t have to get in the front seat to drive.
If your car has a towbar (the accessory that lets you take three layers of skin off your shin when you walk past it), you may be able to use a trailer instead. Providing you have a trailer. And a tarpaulin to cover your load. And enough rope to tie everything down. And a boy scout to tie the knots for you.
Now it’s time to take it all to the nearest rubbish tip, which shouldn’t be any more than an hour away by commercial jet. Unfortunately it’s a lot longer by road, especially when you’re driving the Junkmobile.

When you finally get there you’ll probably have to queue up behind every other person who’s taking a break from their kids. And once you’ve paid/handed over your waste vouchers it’s time to find a spot to dump it all. This is where you discover:

• you left your protective gloves at home
• 
  
• a shovel would come in very handy right about now (or maybe that flamethrower)
• 
  
• it might be easier to just dump the car and walk home.

After what seems like hours (but is probably much longer), it’s time to head home again. You may have left the rubbish tip, but it hasn’t left you and you get to experience the heady aroma all the way to the service station where you buy an entire forest of Alpine air fresheners to hang from the rear-view mirror.

Now, does that seem like the easier option to you?

How about you let Brizzy Rubbish Removals do it instead? They’ll pick up all the rubbish for you, load it into their truck, and take it all away. No messy car, no queuing up at the rubbish tip, and no being belted repeatedly in the head from swinging air fresheners.

Instead, you can spend some quality time with all the kids.

Asking if they have a TV at their house you can watch.

Weeding Out The Enemy

As you probably know, Brizzy Rubbish Removals can take away all your garden waste.

Unfortunately, a lot of people get confused about what ‘garden waste’ actually means. Especially when one person does the planting and the other cleans up the yard.

Now I could resort to stereotypes here, so I will. Women generally do the planting because they actually plan out what goes where instead of just burying the pots in a hole and heading off to the pub.

(Some plan their gardens out so well they spell out messages, such as “You’re sleeping in the doghouse again”.)

Men generally clean up the yard, not because they’re physically stronger but because they’re being punished for spending so much time drinking with their mates.

And this is where the problems start. The men have no idea what’s been planted, and they have no idea what’s a plant and what’s a weed. So rather than risk being accused of “just standing around like an idiot”, they do what they know best: grab as much as they can with both hands and pull.

Of course, when they see their metre-high pile of garden waste they think they’ve done a fantastic job. At least until they get hit over the head with a garden trowel.

Now we don’t like this happening any more than the men do, mostly because the lawyers always park their BMWs where we want to park our truck. So to avoid this, and the dog having to share its kennel again, we’ve compiled the essential information they need in a handy Q&A format.

Q. How can I tell the difference between a plant and a weed.
A. If you can pull it out easily, it’s a plant. If you try pulling it out with a tractor and it still won’t budge, it’s a weed.

Q. How much trouble will I be in for pulling out the plant?
A. Nowadays the tags on plants tell you not only how to care for the plant, but also how to file for divorce.

Q. What exactly are weeds?
A. Weeds are a kind of supergrass, genetically engineered to evade lawn mowers. While a blade of grass will happily have its head chopped, weeds will protect themselves by any means necessary (bending over, burying themselves, disguise themselves as letterboxes, etc.)

Q. Where did they come from?
A. Another planet, or possibly Hell.

Q. Why are they so hard to pull out?
A. A weed is like an iceberg—most of it is beneath the surface.

Q. So how far do they go down?
A. We’re not sure. We sent an excavation team down to find out, and they still haven’t reported back.

Q. Why not?
A. We believe they’re being held by Chinese immigration officials.

Q. So how do I get rid of the weeds?
A. Napalm works well. We’ve also heard of people getting good results from flame throwers.

Q. But what about the plants?
A. Um… what time does the pub open again?