Here at The Tribune we save money where we can; hence, the printed version comes to you courtesy of a $6000 printer we picked up (and almost dropped off the back of a rental truck) for $150. Hence, we keep buying scanners (that don’t work) for $2, again from our friends at Ebay. And hence, every month when Brad The Genius Cartoonist bangs his tin mug against the bars of his cage and we wander down to the dungeon to collect his latest piece for the Front Cover, we have to go out and get the cartoon scanned, usually at Office Works.

After the teenagers behind the counter have stopped bumping into each other, I hand one of them the original cartoon, and a USB stick.

“Hi, that picture as a JPEG onto this stick please”.

“Okay, awesome, and what was your name today?”

“Do you realise how many things are wrong with what you just said?”

“Um, sorry?”

“That cartoon. As a JPEG. On this stick. I’ll come back in five minutes.”

Stupid people are everywhere, making life difficult and offensive, and very occasionally amusing, for all the rest of us. Difficult? See above, and think of all the geniuses you’ve argued with at a Help Desk.

Offensive? Sandilands. Newman. Fielding. Nuff said.

Amusing? Try Isnack 2.0, the new name for Vegemite. Yes, they actually did it, and apparently no one at Kraft is committing ritual suicide out of shame and dishonour. They didn’t even buy the domain name isnack2.com, so someone else has, and has devoted it, quite rightly, to bagging the shit out of the brand.

There’s already a Hitler finds out about Isnack 2.0 vid up on youtube, and that means it’s all over for Kraft.

There are so many great stoopid stories out there, folks, and we’ve tried to bring you some of the best, so enjoy.

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You may have noticed, as you slump wearily at your desk, trying to look busy, but trying harder to do something other than work, that our website has changed a bit. Since we spend so much time shouting, we’ve started to put Shouts up on the front page every couple of days, if not more. All the regular stuff is still there on the rest of the site, Jane’s just tidied it all up, in line with company vision, going forward.

Eagerly anticipating Itribune3.4.

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Speaking of internet thingies, we’ve spent a lot of time lately trying to raise our online profile, and in the course of this we’ve been talking to and about a whole lot of new media that, quite frankly, makes newspapers and TV pretty much redundant. In our opinion, anyway, and well it’s our magazine, so what we say goes. So November will be The Media Issue (deadline Monday 26th October).

When you think about what’s happened in the meeja this year, it shouldn’t be too hard to put fingertip to keyboard, should it? “Sandliands/Newman – Total Fucksocks? Discuss” springs to mind pretty quickly, for instance, as does “Newspapers – have they dropped the ball? Did they ever really hold the ball?”

Think on these things (but not for too long) then get writing or drawing or haikuing or whatever. Deadline will be toward the end of Rocktober.

Then, in December, we’ll be doing another Retrospective Issue, where we re-visit all the issues we covered during the year, in 2009 that was: Idiots, Money, Children, Jeff, Drinking, Digital Age, Money, Pets, Education and Bodies.

So, all the things that we, or you, thought of after an issue came out, replies to articles, or even a total re-working after it was realised that one of our serious pieces was actually sourced from Zoo Magazine.

That’s probably enough homework assignments. Put your feet up and enjoy the Village Idiot Issue.

Love to those who love us, a seat on the Kraft board for those who don’t.

Justin & Jane Shaw

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