http://www.thepunch.com.au/author-bios/bert-maverick/ Bert Maverick is a Melbourne-based writer, voice-over guy, stand-up comedian and nerd with a boundless passion for comedy. He has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe festival, and is a presenter for Vision Australia radio. Bert voraciously devours pop-culture, and usually only does things because a book, TV show, video game, comic or movie told him to, like the time he learned to shear because of his love of ‘The Shiralee’. And yes, that’s a Phantom tattoo. Slow to jump on the new-thing bandwagon, once on Bert becomes one of those annoying people that will try to convert you too. He tweets as @BertMaverick but be warned: hashtag games are his favourite thing in the whole world. en Copyright 2012 The Punch penberthyd@newsltd.com.au penberthyd@newsltd.com.au Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:49 +0000 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:49 +0000 Politics, opinion, world news, sports news, latest news, views, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Nathan Rees, Malcolm Turnbull, Peter Garrett, Barnaby Joyce, Australian, federal politics, opinion polls, election, The Punch, thepunch, punch ExpressionEngine 1.6.7 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 15 http://www.thepunch.com.au/images/punch-logo-rss.png http://www.thepunch.com.au/ 144 70 Politics, political opinion, world news, sports news and the latest news and views updated live, daily on The Punch - Australia's best conversation. Search The Punch keywords http://www.thepunch.com.au/search/ http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/happy-guilted-into-romance-day/ Roses are dead/Violets are dead/Sugar is made from a different dead plant… This poetry form is actually pretty sadistic. If you over-think it. That’s my first attempt at a Valentine’s Day poem but I’m proud of it. It actually tells you how I feel about Valentine’s Day. I’m pretty much against the over-commercialisation of everything and I know I’m definitely fighting a losing battle on this. This is my own personal Gallipoli.  There is no winning this battle. Unlike Gallipoli, though, there is no retreat from the marketing of the “next big event” in the year, whether it’s Easter stuff being sold from the first few days of January or Christmas decorations going up in August to “celebrations” of things that don’t belong in Australia at all (like Halloween), not to mention the selling of cheap and nasty “Australia Day” junk that has clearly been made in China, I just don’t think it needs to be like this. I won’t be overly surprised to see Thanksgiving make headway in the next few years because of the glut of things to market in October. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Bert Maverick) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/happy-guilted-into-romance-day/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/happy-guilted-into-romance-day/#item7740 Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:45:08 +0000 Bert Maverick | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/coastal-holidays-of-your-dreams-blairgowrie/ When you think of the perfect place to take a relaxing sea-side holiday, I think it would be fair to say that the first place that comes to mind is rarely Blairgowrie, Victoria. With its scenic Post Office (opened in 1947), wheelchair accessible public toilet (open 24 hours) and its exceptionally high blowfly-to-person ratio (no stats available), Blairgowrie is not far from Rosebud. Known for being the death-place of Nobel Prize winner Rhys Isaac, Blairgowrie is also close to Sorrento. In the heart of Victoria’s “Budget Coast” section of the Mornington Peninsula, Blairgowrie is just 87 km from cosmopolitan Melbourne on what may be the longest stretch of foreshore caravan parks in the world (no stats available). There are more caravans camped on the not-really-very-scenic foreshore here than there are caravans in the rest of the world (maybe). feedback@thepunch.com.au (Bert Maverick) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/coastal-holidays-of-your-dreams-blairgowrie/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/coastal-holidays-of-your-dreams-blairgowrie/#item7364 Mon, 19 Dec 2011 19:40:51 +0000 Bert Maverick | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/for-kryin-out-loud-kris-kringle-is-a-kolossal-kringe/ I recently started a new job and at my very first team meeting, I was informed that I would be included in my new team’s Kris Kringle for the impending enforced Christmas “celebrations”. As you would expect, yay. Is it possible to yay in an even lower case? yay. There you go. Now, I know that this groan-inducing ritual must happen in offices all around the world (well, except for maybe the Middle East, India and most of Asia but lets not get pedantic) at this time of year – the exchanging of unwanted, thoughtless gifts between team-members who haven’t gotten to know each other well enough over the course of the year to know what to get each other. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Bert Maverick) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/for-kryin-out-loud-kris-kringle-is-a-kolossal-kringe/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/for-kryin-out-loud-kris-kringle-is-a-kolossal-kringe/#item7308 Mon, 05 Dec 2011 19:50:02 +0000 Bert Maverick | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/i-dont-actually-lol-or-lmao-i-just-say-did/ We don’t just type LOL to our mates when we Laugh Out Loud at something anymore. Actually sometimes I don’t even LOL, I just say I did (OMG does that mean I’m LOTI?). Sometimes I LOL so hard, I ROFL or LMAO and laughing even harder than that means I’m ROFLMAO! I know! These are the new acronyms of our lives and we use them so often they have turned into words, peeps, ACTUAL WORDS that we say with our face. Out-loud, phonetically and un-ironically, like the way we say CHOGM. I know, Double-You Tee Eff? There are lots of these now and they come from texting and the interwebs, especially places like Twitter because it’s all about character limits. With SMSes (160 characters) and tweets (140 characters), you have to say as much as possible in the shortest possible space, so when you only have so many characters to work with, you learn to abbrv rly quickly. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Bert Maverick) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/i-dont-actually-lol-or-lmao-i-just-say-did/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/i-dont-actually-lol-or-lmao-i-just-say-did/#item7164 Sun, 27 Nov 2011 19:45:15 +0000 Bert Maverick | Author bios | The Punch