It Doesn't Really Change Who I Am

Last night I had a conversation with Emergency Contact that I prefaced with, “Don’t tell anyone, but…” and after having told her the news, I felt much better. She didn’t react so well at first, but I think she’ll get used to it in the long run and I had shed a burden I've been carrying for years.

Having experienced the joy of revealing myself in a supportive and private atmosphere, I want the thrill and liberation of ‘coming out’, publicly.

But first; context: The TV hard-drive has hundreds of hours of films that I’ve recorded for wet Sunday afternoons and non-ratings periods. The quality control on this collection is almost non-existent. This explains how we ended up watching Hollywood Homicide. It was quite literally just sitting there.

So, after a particularly clunky scene which elicited a, “Who does that?” from EC, I turned to her and said, “Don’t tell anyone, but I think Harrison Ford is a crap actor. There. I’ve said it.”

Speaking as someone who, as a kid, had his mind broken by Star Wars, had it reset by Raiders of the Lost Ark and then re-broken by Blade Runner, Harrison Ford occupies a special place in my heart. But, it’s the characters and the situations I love. I’ve never revered the work of the actor. In fact, I’ve always felt great unease about Ford’s work. This discomfort has felt like a disloyal, almost treasonous thing to have living inside me but a burden shared is a burden lightened.

I want to shout it from the roof tops. I want to parade down the street wearing a fedora while swinging a whip, singing,

He’s Ford

I’m bored

Get used to it

Bossypants

I just want to get in there and say that I’ve always liked Tina Fey. I liked her before the whole Sarah Palin thing: I was aware of her from Saturday Night Live; and she was the teacher in Mean Girls who was hotter (and definitely better company) than the mean girls. When I saw she’d written the film, I liked her all the more. Her turn in Date Night is the strong point of the film.

In fact, if Emergency Contact was to accidentally fall down those badly tiled and sometimes very slippery stairs on the front landing and die, I would take a crack at getting Tina Fey to be the next Mrs Grey Area. I have a feeling there’d be the use of ether and restraints if we were going to make it work, but while there’s breath there’s hope.

I’ve just finished reading her book, Bossypants. It is the type of book that appeals directly to me. She’s got a really nice turn of phrase, I like her sense of humour (I’m aware that’s not a universal thing) and she’s no dummy.

I am left perplexed and a little disappointed, though. I’m hoping I can get over it so that our relationship can continue without my nagging feeling of doubt. See, the book has just a few too many references to God and matters religious to make me think she was being purely ironic.

Her Mother's Prayer for Its Daughter is funny. A non-believer would write it that way, as a sketch. It is the correct vehicle for that monologue, but still the doubt remains.

The phrases God given and Intelligent Design appear. Admittedly, on the latter she says that’s why she likes Ikea, so if it's for the sake of a joke, fine. As I mentioned, she's no dummy and I'm one of those weirdos who has quite the thing for smart women, but it's hard to truly admire someone who believes in a being who can listen to all our thoughts and is content with the amount of human suffering they can hear. I suspect that Tina Fey truly believes.

The following assertion is not scientific, but I base it on the material (often anti-dogma) and the intelligence (manifest): There aren’t many religious comedians.

From the ancient Greek observation that a thinking man views the world and is forced to laugh, a feeling man must cry: comics and comedians tend to fall into the first category and being in that category requires scepticism and smarts. Religion usually doesn’t sit well with those two qualities. I think Fey must be a very rare thing if she really is a theistic comic writer.

But, here’s the value of her book. I laughed out loud several times. I will even take on board some of her management tips and I will try and look past her possible religiosity as I go about hosing down those tiles on the front landing.

Dirty

Shannon Lush, judging by her book sales, has very good tips on cleaning. Using nothing but a blend of white spirits and black magic, she tells you how to get blood out of stone, donkey entrails out of a donkey and a gay midget out of a cupboard. She throws in advice on getting red wine out of mum and dad’s shag-pile carpet as well.

Shannon Lush sets a bad example, though. It’s too much pressure for normal folk. She thinks that all things should be hospital white; that you should be a best-selling author simply for shits and giggles; and she also happens to be as nutty as a snickers bar hidden in a man-squirrel’s underwear.

Today, I accidentally hit on the antidote to Shannon.

Get home late.

If you get home after the sun has gone down, you just can’t see most of that crap. I had to work from home today… and I literally saw the place in a (new) light. No good.

My first reaction was to go into a Lush-like frenzy - followed a nano-second later by the realisation that that shit had always been there and the answer was not to fix it, but get home in the dark and ignore it.

Fuck off, Shannon Lush. If it’s that bad, I’ll buy a new one.

A Word Of Warning

If you find yourself looking at these and thinking, "Yes, indeed. And a pipe, too," you are done. You are finished. Your time here is up. You have marked yourself as being worthy of retrospective abortion.

And you know what? As if the whole stupid brand and bunny and that idiot Hefner weren't enough, I find myself being creeped-out in a whole new way. I've always hated the word 'panties' and the people who say it even more, but I reckon 'lounge pant' is taking a shot at the title. I need to go and have a shower now.

Ibis - The Other Other White Meat. Maybe

I wonder if ibis are tasty. I wonder because I think I may have the answer to a couple of persistent problems.

I drive to work through a street that is entirely made up of flats. I reckon they’ve got to be largely housing commission. There are just too many adults, with not quite the right number of teeth, hanging around during working hours for it to be anything else. I’m trying not to come off sounding like a snob here (kept a straight face for one second, typing that) but it’s chockers with the type of people you see over represented on A Current Affair because of a neighbourhood feud involving a car, a fence and a large dog.

These flats have rubbish-bin areas that resemble something you see Indian orphans sifting through in documentaries. Since the arrival in Sydney of what I like to call The Ibis Plague or TIP, the bins are now topped by off-white feathers and thousands of emergent long, black necks topped by bald, wrinkly black heads. Those ibis just stand around on those bins, communing with each other in a way that reminds me of long distance shots of the crowd at Haj.

Here’s the answer: why not start ibis farming? We’ve obviously got the appropriate environment. We’ve got local labour on tap. At first it could be a subsistence effort for the unemployed while they get the tastiness sorted out through selective breeding, then they could go to market once the ibis crop is tender and delicious. Iburger, anyone?

(Had my first flu shot ever, today. Think that’s why I’m so thoughfully considering issues around feathers.)

Raw Hide

There are certain areas, particularly in the treatment of obesity, where the United States still leads the world.

I came to The Biggest Loser because of the American first series. While that series remains the high-watermark of Western Civilisation, I have subsequently become an admirer of the work of Michelle, the senior female trainer from the Australian Biggest Loser franchise.

Michelle climbs up on the backs of those fatties and rides them around like the big, unfit beasts of burden that they are. But, as any scientist knows, this is a very dangerous thing to do. Tubbiness is well known to be contagious and being in such close physical contact is putting her at risk of catching fatness. She might even get fallen on, rubbed up against a wall, backed under a low hanging tree branch or something equally unpleasant.

After a bit of a break, I’m watching American Biggest Loser again and I see how much further us Aussies have to go in advanced fattie-torture-for-amusement. Jillian, the American trainer I assume to be a personal guru of Michelle's, has taken fattie riding to the next level.

She’s eliminated personal risk and upped the amusement value so it is 100% unalloyed joy. Rather than having to climb up on them, come in to contact, and risk all those nasty outcomes I mention above; Jillian ropes them and skis behind them.

OM fucking G. Skiing behind crying lard-arses as they lean into the wind and scramble across the gym floor. Five stars, gold thumbs up, elephant stamp and the Congressional Medal of Honour to you, Jillian.

Mrs Kennedy’s Little Boy

A friend of mine told me a nice story about her family the other day. She mentioned that she and her sister were very like her mother. Fair skin, freckles, blonde hair. Their little brother was pure dad, though. Olive skin, dark hair.

The first time the little brother was considered big enough to run an errand, he was sent down to the butcher. This was a time when you would send a primary-school kid down the street without thinking about it. In fact, this was a time when you could send someone down the street to a butcher.

Anyway, the little brother walked in and said, “Hello. I am here for Mrs Kennedy’s meat.”

The butcher leaned over the counter, peered downwards and asked, “And who are you, little fella?”

 “I’m Mrs Kennedy’s son.”

The butcher, amazed, exclaimed, “You’re not Mrs Kennedy’s little boy!”

The little boy, bottom lip quivering and eyes starting to moisten, looked up and asked, “Whose little boy am I?”

Important Lessons Learnt From Recent Events

People who live in Sydney are obsessed with property prices. If conversation falls a bit flat at a social gathering, the ‘get out of jail’ topic is real estate. The rest of Australia holds us in contempt for our shallow obsession, but can I just say in our defence – when something eats that much of your income, it’s perfectly reasonable that it would occupy your thoughts. We can’t talk about other things because we don’t do them. We can’t afford it.

So, the next observation comes from that context and will probably reveal more about me than it does about international politics.

I keep seeing footage of that “Million Dollar Compound, just outside Islamabad,” where Osama was shot and thinking,

“You know, even if you allow for the blood stains (And they will wash out. You’ve just got to visualise what your furniture will look like, once it’s in.) a million schmackos doesn’t get you much in the Pakistani real estate game, does it?”

Osama - Are We Doing Ourselves Any Favours?

There’s nothing like an internationally hated dead guy to push Skinny and Baldy’s honeymoon out of the news cycle - and that’s a good thing.

But, because you expect nothing less (or more) of me, I have some things to say about dead terrorists.

One of the things that sickened us in the West at the time of 9/11, was certain groups getting out and celebrating in the streets at the destruction of the Twin Towers. I can understand why Americans are happy at the symbolic importance of getting the bad-guy, but it would’ve been so much classier if they’d just been cool about it and not behaved in exactly the same way.

Much better would be, “Yep. Got him. Took a while, but we knew we would. We used seals in helicopters. Should have seen it. Balancing the balls on their noses, clapping their flippers, killin’ bad guys. Cool.”

That’s how we’re really going to beat extremism and religious fanaticism, by being classier and not taking ourselves too seriously. Have you ever noticed how heavy religious types, the ones who can talk poorly educated people into blowing themselves up, are always such wowsers? They take themselves too seriously. You have to, if you’re going to kill in the name of your invisible sky fairy. We shouldn’t do it too.

So Americans, while you’re out there yelling “Oo Ess Aye” like that, be aware that you’re drawing attention to the score-line, which would so far have to be in the bad guy’s favour. How many military casualties - six thousand or so? How many civilian casualties? I hate to think. I don’t even know if there’s a reliable number. At the same time, while prosecuting the War on Terror, the West has resorted to nastier and nastier tactics. No one has been improved by any of this.

Burial at sea: A fancy way of saying chucking stuff overboard. It also means that we are going to have sightings of “the real Osama” for the rest of our lives. I read yesterday this was done because there wasn’t any country that’d take him for burial. How many countries did they ask? What’s wrong with taking him back to the US and allowing anyone who’s not convinced to come and have a look? While you’re at it, charge admission. Nothing would annoy the type of people who blow up civilians to make a religious point more, than turning their martyr into a C-grade theme park. Then, when you’re all done, rubberize him and turn him into a hatstand for the Oval Office. Or, then take him back out to sea and chuck him overboard.

I can’t see that killing Osama will do anything to Al Qaeda. It’s like trying to get rid of all professional gardeners by killing Jim of Jim’s Mowers. I’m pretty certain Jim isn’t driving all those trucks and trailers around by himself. (If you were to believe the press on the subject, Jim and Osama occupy similar positions in the Pantheon of Evil, too.)

Finally, I would like to castigate a few of our local media types in person, if I got the chance. Channel 9’s News for last night airing a photo of the dead Osama -  that has been circulating on the net for the last two years (excellent research) - and the Telegraph for today’s cover, front and back. The headline on page one “Evil Dead” is topped by the gloating, fake obituary on the back surrounded in black ink.

You have the right, within reason, to do whatever you want, that’s one of the cool things about our culture. But please, try and make us proud of what we’ve won when we do actually prevail.