Apple reinvent the apple. Inedible, but nice and shiny.

The Professional video and film production world has been rocked by the introduction of Apple’s latest incarnation of it’s World-class editing software, Final Cut Pro.

Final Cut Pro X (FCPX) has been widely criticised for it’s lack of vital post-production features and backwards compatibility. The criticism is so wide-spread that it lead to Conan O’Brien’s editors making fun of it on national television. (Also see here and here and here)

Here at GORSKY.COMedy we applaud Apple’s bravery in alienating an entire market sector, and in return, Apple have given us the details of it’s upcoming products.

• The iKeyboard – Apple are about to revolutionise the typing world by introducing a smaller form factor keyboard. “We’ve done this by removing the letters Z, V, Q and J – our research shows that no-one really uses those letters very much. People will get used to it, and they’ll enjoy having less keys to try and find while typing.” said an unidentified Apple source.
• New iPhotoX – The new iPhotoX will be rebuilt from the ground up. Instead of the old system of facial recognition, the new program will give new names to all the people it identifies in the photos. “We think people are often incorrectly named by their parents and our new algorithm looks at facial features and gives them a more appropriate name – a name you cannot change, because humans make bad naming decisions.” Oh, and none of your old photos will work in it either.
• Logic Audio X – The new incarnation of Apple’s award-winning pro recording/mixing app will be released minus the ability to record from a microphone. “Mics are so 1970. We think people will be happy to use our built in samples for most instruments, and if they really need vocals they can use our new computer voice-synthesis technology”. The new Logic will also only output to iTunes and cannot be burnt to any physical media, such as a CD.
• The Apple Apple – Apple designers have for years worried that the delicious fruit known as an “Apple” has a major flaw. “There’s pips on the inside where you bite into it! What the hell? So we’ve reinvented the apple – removed that oily skin, removed the pips, the flesh is now full uni-body titanium. Not really edible anymore, but definitely more pleasing on the eye – and it doesn’t go off… ever.”
• iWheelX – “Everyone drives around on these extremely inefficient things called ‘wheels’. We’ve taken the wheel, and reinvented it! Rather than a full circle, we’ve made it more triangular so stopping is easier. And we’ve painted it blue! Because people like blue. Our research is very thorough.”

Apples stocks are expected to plunge in the next quarter. Unless Apple reinvents the stock market.

* Chris Tomkins is a professional video editor and user of Final Cut Pro who may be more scathing than usual in this article.

Julian Assange... Public enemy number one? Or ageing member of an 80's pop band? You be the judge!

Wikileaks. It doesn’t sound so scary, but it certainly has US government officials wetting their pants.

The release of these “cablegate” documents has turned many outspoken politicians into cautious diplomats as everyone scrambles to remember what the hell they actually said in those communications.

Some juicy information has already been discovered and what else is yet to be revealed in those secret documents? Have aliens made contact? Could Bill Clinton really play the sax? Was Michael Jackson ever actually black?

So this month The Gorskys will be revealing a series of conspiracies that will make politicians, b-grade celebrities and global brands tremble in their socks.

We present Gorsky-gate (or Leaky.Comedy – whatever)…

• In 2008 it took 3 weeks and 14 economists to explain to George W Bush that you could not actually see a “housing bubble” and the GFC was not caused by “some damn democrat with a pin”.
• Aliens made contact in 2007 but were accidentally put through to an unspecified telecommunications company customer support line, kept on hold for 3 hours and then lost to the accounts department.
• Nickelback were created by the CIA to try to destroy the music industry.
• iPhones were actually developed by large energy companies to keep people using to the power grid regularly.
• James Cameron was witnessed stealing secret documents from the Blue Man group in the time leading up to the production of Avatar.
• Fox news was unbiased for 7 seconds on November 10, 2009. This was quickly rectified with a barrage of hate and misinformation lasting over 12 months until the 2010 midterm elections and beyond.
• North Korea just wants to be loved.

No matter what you do, your Facebook profile pic is always going to be a little threatening when you're a vampire.

Count Dracula, Nosferatu, Twilights “Edward” or Bill Compton from True Blood – wherever they appear, vampires are insanely popular right now.

Maybe it all started with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the charming Billy Idol wannabe, Spike. Or perhaps we all developed a childhood attachment to Sesame Streets’ obsessive-compulsive, “The Count”.

Whatever it is, these shadow-dwelling, blood-sucking undead creatures of the night have been romanticised to within an inch of their (un)life

Sure, there’s the immortality, the brooding, the hot girls desperate for you to give them the worlds most intense hickey, but is being a vampire all it’s cracked up to be?

We took a look at some of the practical drawbacks of vampirism.

(Thanks to James Hazelden for his additional vampiric suggestions)

• They can only drink blood, and blood tastes like… well… it’s no Krispy Kreme donut.
• Vampires are awake when the only thing on TV is infomercials and reruns of old made-for-tv movies.
• There are so many nasty blood-borne diseases, vampires now have to practice “Safe Sucking” using a heavy duty dental dam.
• Vampires sleep in coffins, which makes vampire slumber parties weird and depressing.
• They’re at risk on the road because other drivers can’t see them in their rearview mirrors.
• If you try to baptize a vampire you just end up melting his face off.
• Vampires live forever, which sounds cool but it means they’ve heard every joke 3465 times at least.
• Vampires are constantly being mistaken for members of bad emo bands.
• If a vampire accidentally bites his tongue, his tongue turns into a tiny vampire.
• Crosses kill vampires, so if a vampire is double-crossed, he dies twice.
• If a vampire is exposed to the sun he turns into dust, which means now none of his clothes fit.
• Vampires receive a lot of spam emails convincing them to buy fake tan pills.

Catwoman - every boy's favorite villain.

The world is sadly short of proper superheroes these days.

Batman has gone all weird and teamed up with Catwoman (although the way she’s drawn nowadays, that’s fair enough, frankly).

The world has realised that being bitten by a radio active spider would have given Spiderman cancer, not superpowers.

Superman became a quadriplegic in a horse riding accident.

The Gorskys have turned their mind to this dilemma, and come up with some suggestions for the next wave of comic books.

• Captain Nuclear – uses his amazing fission powers to catch villains by causing a nuclear meltdown in their underpants.
• Nuclear Lass – uses her amazing good looks to catch villains by causing a nuclear meltdown in their underpants.
• The Amazing Expando – that’s not a gun in his pocket.
• The Dynamic Dyslexic – misreading crime by fights.
• Enviroman – uses his hippy powers to fight crime by tying himself to trees until the villains go away.
• Bo, The World’s Tallest Dwarf – Uses his uncanny height to defeat criminals. His battle cry is “I’m not a dwarf, OK. I’m just short!”
• Peter Reith Man – Uses his weird lips to undermine union power at every turn – the world’s evilest hero.
• Mr Millennium – the world’s most overrated superhero.
• The Amazing Flasher – uses his disgusting powers of self-revelation to repulse villains into submission.
• Captain Beans-On-Toast – lights his farts in the name of Justice!
• Mr Muscle – Loves the jobs you hate.
• Beer Gut Man – His aluminium crushing powers scare even the staunchest foe!
• Water Boy – wets himself at the first sign of danger. Young ward of Rubbersheet Man, the world’s kinkiest hero.
• Bureaucracy Man – Will happily save you from a life threatening situation once you’ve filled in the right forms in triplicate. If you’d like this doyen of protocol to save you, call 1-800-bureaucracy and follow the prompts.

Rene Descartes "likes" this article.

“Brad is eating a donut”.

Those five words have just replaced the part of my brain storing Descartes’ sublime existential observation “I think therefore I am”. The more I use Facebook, the more banal information is replacing the interesting stuff stored in my primitive cortex. “Jenny can’t wait for the weekend”. That’s great – suddenly I understand Jenny much more deeply. I feel closer to her: I also can’t wait for the weekend. If only I could remember where I’d met Jenny. Or indeed if I have ever met her. Who the hell is this Jenny, and why is the rest of her week such a write-off? And why do I need to know that?

Luckily, my friends have sent me some weird virtual plants, want me to take a quiz about 80s sitcom stars, and have voted me ‘#9 Most Likely To Go Crazy With a Gun’. Now I feel much more loved.

I should poke someone and remind them that I exist.

But without the Facebook, I am nothing. No one could invite me to their parties, gigs or bar mitzvahs. Noone could write witty insults on my wall. I would cease to exist. Luckily “I Facebook, Therefore I Am”.

Maybe you work in a call centre, or maybe you’re between lectures and can afford to waste a few hours in the zany world of social networking, but what really spooks me is that somewhere out there, there’s a genius with the potential to find a cure for cancer or reverse global warming who’s going to be discovering that “Kylie is a fan of Sleeping” instead.

So before you head off to update your status, here’s some things you could be doing instead of wasting your life on Facebook.

• Sort your CDs by hue.
• Count to a billion-trillion by threes.
• Learn Klingon and teach it to children in Third World countries.
• Start and maintain an amateur porn website for Mormons.
• Write an iPhone application in binary code.
• See how much water you can drink before you dissolve.
• Reflect on the tragic life of Heath Ledger in real time.
• Research a way to bring peace to the Middle East using puppies.
• Give nicknames to every cell in your body.
• Print the internet.
• Call everyone in the world and see how much they liked Barack Obama’s acceptance speech.
• Take a photo of yourself every day for 18 years and upload it to YouTube.
• Calculate how many breaths you have taken since you were born.
• Translate the Bible (Old and New Testament) into Elvish.
• Find a happy financial advisor on Wall Street.
• Document all the factual errors in Wikipedia.
• Learn the names of everyone in China by heart and recite them back.
• Sing every song ever written in the key of G as a country ballad.
• Build a robot out of butter.

The term 'hybrid car' will take on a new meaning in a fuel-poor decade.

Another decade has begun as we say goodbye to the excitingly-named ‘noughties’ and enter the slightly-more-awkward ‘tenties’.

At the start of the noughties, terrorism was something that only happened in the Middle East, black US presidents existed only in the movies and a 1 gb hard drive was really hard to fill up.

The noughties saw the rise of social networking, reality tv and celebrity deaths, and the fall of financial stability, the environment and privacy.

Good times.

So what will befall us over the next 10 years? The first female US president? World peace? Ten more seasons of ‘LOST’?

Here’s our predictions:

• Apple will copyright and trademark the letter ‘i’ and request royalties every time it is used. Mississippi will go bankrupt.
• Old people will complain about young people. Young people will claim they know better than the old people. There will be a war declared between young people and old people. Young people will win. James Cameron will make the movie.
• There will be flying cars. Then flying traffic jams.
• The 1980s will come back in vogue. Again.
• Aliens will finally make contact, then politely excuse themselves and head home at light speed when they realise humans are all self-absorbed idiots who spend too much time on Facebook hoping their friends are interested in what they ate in the last half-hour.
• Some people will get sick of playing Bejeweled.
• There will be a concerning trend among teens of ‘hexting’ in which they send spells via text message.
• Text messaging and Twitter will become the dominant forms of communication. Anything longer than 320 characters will be considered “too wordy”.
• Movies involving vampires and zombies will be considered “so last decade”.
• Justin Bieber will become the biggest name in music – and then that name you can’t quite recall.
• Oprah Winfrey will become the first female US president. Sarah Palin will have her own TV show.
• Humans will set up a new colony on Mars which will be used to house the detritus of human society – serial killers, pedophiles and reality-tv stars.
• George Lucas will re-master and release the entire Star Wars collection in 3D, then Smell-o-vision, then they will all be remade by Peter Jackson.
• TV will go 3D and be projected into mid-air. The programs will still be crap.
• Science will discover that all fruit and vegetables are linked to cancer. Everyone will start eating dirt.
• Secret CIA documents will be released revealing who killed JFK… It was Elvis.
• Humans will abandon the concept of ‘conversation’ and simply communicate in short, snappy status updates.

The Birds - A classic Hitchcock horror, or a terrible premonition of Twitter's 140-character deluge of commentry and trending topics?

Since being burnt when we bought ten Betamax Video Recorders in the 1980s, the good folk of GORSKYS.COMedy have resisted the urge to jump onboard the latest fad.

But we’re also a fan of keeping things short and sweet, so Twitter seems a logical bandwagon to jump on.

But sadly we’ve run out of characters.

Please follow @gorskyscomedy on Twitter and enjoy our erratic updates in 140 characters.

We’ll also inform you when the GORSKYS.COMedy is updated, and maybe become famous for abusing some celebrity. Who knows?

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Follow GORSKYS.COMedy on Twitter.

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Television is getting pretty scary these days, what with all that cursing, sex, violence and overacting, which is why I appreciate a good program-content warning.

I like to know before I settle down in front of the box if the latest episode of American Idol contains “mild sexual references”, or if the latest South Park will contain some “crude and indecent language”, or if the repeat of Everybody Loves Raymond will contain any jokes at all.

But I think the networks should take their rating systems further and really give us a sense of what we can expect in a TV show. I’d like to see the warning “Tonight’s episode of The Biggest Loser may contain images that may not be suitable for people eating their dinner”, or “The following program, So You Think You Can Dance, contains unbridled egos, occasional insincere crocodile tears and numerous tantrums”.

That would be my cue to turn off.

So, for the safety of the viewing public, here are some content warnings for some popular TV shows.

• LOST – The following program is rated “Confusing”. It contains never-ending storylines, convoluted premises, and never-resolving script threads.
• HOUSE MD – This program may induce medical paranoia and is not suitable for hypochondriacs.
• GREYS ANATOMY – The following program contains circular storylines, ridiculous sentimentality, sickly love stories and self-important characters and should not be watched by anyone.
• BIG BROTHER – The following program contains spectacularly-dull examples of humanity.
• DEXTER – This program may encourage vigilante behaviour in rednecks and idiots.
• AMERICAN IDOL – This program contains numerous instances of people who think warbling through multiple octaves somehow makes them a good singer.
• AUSTRALIAN IDOL – This program will contain multiple instances of a self-important obnoxious, talentless commercial-radio hack making judgements based purely on flawed opinion and arrogant assumption.
• 60 MINUTES – May contain traces of truth.
• E! – May contain traces of entertainment (but probably not).
• TWO AND A HALF MEN – This program contains overuse of canned laughter, even though no discernible joke has been delivered.
• THE APPRENTICE – This program contains images of Donald Trump’s hair, which may cause seizures.
• NEIGHBOURS (Aust) – Seriously implausible storylines, appalling dialogue and insipid actors with aspirations to be popstars. (See also HOME AND AWAY).
• THE HILLS – The following program may contain the ridiculous premise that the situations are real and not carefully scripted by cynical network executives.
• 24 – The following program may contain a premise that was a good idea for one series, but has now been completely thrashed to death.
• DANCING WITH THE STARS – May contain people you recognise but cannot put a name to, embarrassing themselves in front of the nation.
• AMERICA’S NEXT TOP MODEL – May reinforce all your worst fears about how dumb pretty people are.

Instead of buying the family an expensive new plasma TV, Mr. Smith settled for a bag of plasma.

Here we are on the verge of recession. Times are tough and they’ll probably only get tougher. It’s all a bit of a shock, and a lot of people are wondering: “How do you survive a recession?”

We think the best place to turn for answers is old people – they lived through a ‘Great Depression’ in the 1930s, which sounds a lot worse than a recession.

What the old people will tell you (after having told you about their various ailments), is that in their day they had to get creative in order to make it through. Playing charades at home instead of going out to the movies, standing around a piano having a sing-a-long rather than going out to a karaoke bar or using earwax, and nose hairs to make makeshift candles.

Yes, the old people were creative and courageous, so we thought we would engage some of that ‘olde-time’ ingenuity to come up with our own ways to live more frugally through the economic downturn.

• Keep your mobile-phone conversations short and sharp – rather than “I have some bad news, Jimmy.. your Aunt Cecilia has passed away” try “Cecilia. Dead. Bye.”
• Make a delightful, long-lasting table arrangement by putting a dead stick into a vase. Makes an excellent conversation piece.
• An old pair of underpants can become a delightful tea-cosy. Makes an excellent conversation piece.
• Belly-button fluff can be saved up over the warmer months and then spun and knitted into a lovely scarf for the winter.
• Always visit your friends around mealtimes.
• Spend a little money having your stomach stapled so you can’t eat as much of your food rations.
• Have your car converted Flintstones-style with a hole in the bottom so you can walk your car to work.
• A thimble of methylated spirits mixed with orange juice makes a refreshing summer beverage. Whatever you do, don’t smoke.
• Buy a good colour photocopier and photocopy your remaining dollars to multiply your savings.
• Save your used Band Aids® to stick posters on your wall.
• To turn toast back into bread, scrape and soak in water.
• Use both sides of the toilet paper.
• Why waste money on a baby sitter? Lock your kids in a cupboard.
• Paint colours on the leaves of your weeds to make them look like flowers.
• No dishwasher? Try popping your dishes in the washing machine.
• Save on power bills by replacing our high-wattage light bulbs with broken ones.

Is your name already "Mark"? Have you considered adding the prefix "Question" for a unique and mysterious nickname?

It’s what the internet is all about: making life easier…

Whether you’re looking for a nickname for yourself or your partner, you want to send your love, or break it off or find out what your x-men mutation is, we’ve got it all here on GORSKYS.COMedy…

Ultimate Nickname Generator (Now on Facebook!)

Find Your Star Wars Name

Discover Your X-Men Mutation

Love-o-matic Love Letter Generator

Love-o-matic Break Up Letter Generator

How Good a Criminal Are You? Tester

How Paranoid Are You? Tester

GORSKYS.COMedy – taking the hard work out of thinking.