Just To Be The Man Who Wrote One Thousand Blobs And Fall Down At Your Door

Fun facts about 500

• Romans prefer D
• Computers think of 111110100 when you mention it
• If prime factorisation turns you on, then two squared, multiplied by five cubed will get you the answer, but not a dinner invitation
• It's a card game and a car race
• It's not an odd number. It's not even strange

... and this is the 500th post on A Grey Area... and quite frankly, it amply demonstrates the slipshod way in which I produce content for the blob. Sorry. I just had to get it in before 2011 came around. It's an even-number-symmetry thing.

I'm all over the shop like a mad-person's poop over the next couple of weeks, so if I don't post before then:

Happy New Year, everyone. Thanks for reading.

Nick

Break Time

During the non-ratings season, Emergency Contact and I like to get into self-funded TV series festivals. We hire or buy a series that we’ve heard good things about and then watch the entire thing in a few sittings.

At the moment we are serving a Prison Break Stretch and this leads me to an observation. I’m sure I’m not surprising anyone when I say that some prisons in the United States have “conjugal visits”. Your EC turns up for some ‘hide the file in the cake’ and it’s sanctioned by the correctional institution you are the guest of.

That just about tips it. Seriously, what are the down sides of prison?

Some of the activities we find most onerous in day-to-day living are all about acting like an adult and maintaining our freedom. Paying the bills and feeding yourself require you to go to work. At work, you are required to think about things that do not interest you, and quite often for other people who couldn’t be bothered thinking about them on their own. Parking is always hard to find, the cost of real estate is a joke, the need to think of something for dinner comes around far more often than it should and even though in theory you can sleep in on a Saturday, when was the last time you actually did? Knowing that you can have all that removed from the daily equation and still get a federally mandated regular bonk, sounds like the answer.

Look, I know there are some downsides - and getting a new girlfriend called Vince is not the worst of them - but just for a minute there...

Anyway, as I said, we’re in the middle of a Prison Break Stretch (fancy names for the 'binge watching' makes it sound better) and it’s a bit of fun. There are holes in the plot bigger than the underground tunnel system the heroes run through, but I can’t fault the pace of Season One. You’ve got to be careful not to let the binge viewing affect your mind, though. I don’t want to go stir, know what I mean? After the West Wing Incumbency  I could only talk while I was walking, but I can’t worry about that now. I’ve got to go sharpen my toothbrush.

Self Help

There are many challenges and choices presented by the Christmas season. For instance, with Christmas carols in shops, should one sing along loudly and add rude words, or simply burn the place to the ground as one leaves? Is the appropriate Christmas drink a longneck of beer on the couch in front of the telly or a stubby of beer on the couch in front of a computer game? And finally, To self-serve or not self-serve?

Emergency Contact and I had to go to K-Mart for under-chunders. We weren’t actually Christmas shopping, but if you are at the shops at this time of year, you are inevitably part of the insanity. We were lined up waiting for a checkout chick, and got bullied into the self-service lane. We obediently, if reluctantly, trudged over and served ourselves. I don’t like the idea of staff losing jobs but that’s not the real reason I don’t like self-service. It just feels like shoplifting. What adds to the sensation of an unending crime spree, is when Emergency Contact starts setting the beepers off in every shop we walk out of afterwards.

(Actually, it’s not just the guilt of petty larceny. I have discovered there is a big difference between the least user-friendly and most user-friendly of self-service checkouts. I’m fairly hard to bamboozle with this kind of stuff but I was at a supermarket recently where the spoken instructions from the machine were inaudible and the visible, semi-animated instructions on the screen appeared to be happening out of sequence with what I was doing. The good ones give you a subtotal and then ask for the money. I‘ll be really impressed when the machine can count it back into your hand like the little Greek ladies in corner shops, “… and 15 makes 85, 22 makes lizard and ten should be fifty. Tank you!”)

Here’s the thing - if you are going to buy stuff that has those impossible to remove radio tags on them, don’t let the staff bully you into a self-service line. You either won’t be able to remove the tags, won’t think of removing them, or won’t find them all to remove.

Also, as handy as I am with matters practical, I will ruin your Bonds T-Shirt Bra getting the radio tag off with normal domestic tools.

Sassy

I watched a documentary on the SAS selection trials on SBS the other night*. It’s called The Search for Warriors and follows the process an already hardened soldier goes through in the hope to join “The Regiment”.  

For those of you not of the military mindset – let’s face it, for the women who read this blob – to say that SAS soldiers are expected to be tough is almost a libellous understatement.

Allow me to illustrate:

In the non-fiction book, subtly entitled Operation Certain Death, two SAS members had to get behind enemy lines to act as reconnaissance for the main assault that was to happen later. Because of an intelligence blunder, they were forced to stay perfectly still for three days, under a small bush, which happened to be on a fire-ant nest. On day four, they had to spring into action and go and kill the baddies with all of their mates as though they were fresh off the farm. They did and reported that it was part of the job. No problem.

As Friedrich Nietzsche not-so-famously said of the SAS, “There’s tough. There’s bloody tough. There’s too tough... and then there’s the Chicken Stranglers”. (He loved a bit of Australian military slang, did Freddy.)

Of all the contestants in the show, I’ve got a soft spot for Candidate 42. Being 35 years old, he is ancient for the selection and he’s a charmless, simultaneous mix of hang-dog and dogged. He had a bit of a setback – breaking his neck running head-first into a ditch while carrying a 30 kilo pack – but he showed a bit of grit and was back the next day when he felt better.

My own internal smartarse commentary was running as I watched (largely in relief that I wasn’t there, doing any of that) and decided it was time for the laziest style of blob - a list.

Sixteen phrases not heard in the SAS selection trials:

1. But it looks like there are bindis in it.
2. I think the daybed would look better next to the chaise.
3. This is heavy.
4. This is smelly.
5. You’re smelly.
6. You’re heavy.
7. Khaki brings out your eyes.
8. Vampires are cool and sexy and so hot right now.
9. You’re not the boss of me.
10. He was mean and he looked at me funny.
11. You can have the business lift-out, I just want the crosswords.
12. I know you are but what am I?
13. I said one sugar.
14. Stop. Collaborate and listen.
15. Do you think having a woman Prime Minister is going to stretch John Clarke’s impersonation range?
16. ... and that’s why you should always wear rubber underwear when approaching an untamed goldfish.

I’ll be tuning in next week:

“Tonight, on The Toughest Loser Killers, will Candidate 153 successfully beat the crocodile to death using its own leg, or will he wimp out again and just head-butt it into a coma? Candidate 12 is told to get over his childish fear of sky diving without a parachute and is asked if he really is made of the right stuff for The Regiment, or just a big girl’s blouse with spikes on it.”

*Coincidentally, SBS is also the acronym for the water version of the SAS. You don’t want to get those two mixed up, though. Trying to watch Anton Penis read the news on the wrong SBS is only going to get you shot in the ASS.

The Road Worrier

I feel I have joined a select group. Traditionally, rego time is a period of great angst and financial battering for me. I have owned old and, how should I put this politely... idiosyncratic cars for most of my driving life due to either a misguided sense of style or outright poverty. But this year marked a real turning point. Total cost for repairs and rego check for 2010? Thirty Three Doll Hairs, baby!

I do have some suspicions as to how this came about though, and my first port of call would not be the flawless mechanical nature of my ride.

Emergency Contact and I went away for a three day weekend and I dropped the car in to the mechanics for said period with the intention of picking it up the day after my return. Phone numbers were noted with the promise of contact if anything cataclysmic needed doing to get my car through the inspection.

Four days later I came back, sauntered into the mechanic’s office (seriously, how do you get grease on an overhead fan that is four feet out of your reach?) and girded my loins for the news. There had been no phone call, but that doesn’t guarantee a thing.

They could say anything at this point: “Yeah mate, we just went ahead with it ‘cause it’d be a write-off if you didn’t get it done. Three thousand is pretty good for a new big end,” or “Yeah mate, I was just about to call you actually, all the tappets are rooted and we’ve gotta get the head off. You still wanna go ahead with it?”

But no! “Thirty three, thanks pal,” said my mechanic, handing me the keys.

I played it really cool at this point. My jaw dropped and I yelled, “You’re kidding?”

He paused and said, “Damn. I should have stung you for more.”

I paid the bill, and walked out to find the car. It was exactly where I had left it four days earlier, covered in rotting flower blossoms, driver’s seat in my position (not the position a five-foot-tall mechanic can drive it in) and to really put the seal on my suspicions, a spider web between the steering wheel and indicator...

And to all those who would accuse me of being a potential menace on the road due to mechanical neglect - Thirty three schmackos!

Spanish No Fly

The Spanish air-traffic controllers have given up controlling traffic. They all had a sick day at the end of last week and that left some people stuck in airports. I know how a bug can rip through a workplace come flu season, so I’m not going to say it’s impossible that every single one of them felt a bit crook... across the country... all at once.

From the ABC News Website:

The government declared a state of emergency for the first time since 1975, putting controllers under military command with the threat of jail terms for refusing orders.

Air traffic controllers claimed that Spanish troops forced them to work at gunpoint, but the local press and people were unmoved, given that the average controller earns close to $300,000 a year.

I have found that people who are in a position to hold a lot of other people to ransom in order to secure a pay rise can engender a bit of resentment. I was a bus driver in a town where clearing your throat close to a union rep’s loudhailer would bring politicians running with cheque books. It felt nice to be wanted but even I could see that some of the boys were 'swinging the lead'.

But, if there’s a group of people I wouldn’t want working at gun-point; if there was a team that I would want to arrive to work with a certain enthusiasm for their task and a relaxed and competent outlook, it would be air-traffic controllers.

Sudden About Face

Come the start of December, it’s a hell of a lot more trustworthy around here. All of a sudden I breathe a little easier and don’t have the panicky feeling of being surrounded by a bunch of historically displaced Wing Commanders, used car salesmen and child molesters. The start of December marks the end of Movember and I, for one, am glad to see the back of it.

Next year – Nomovember.

Classy-Fication

I watched a documentary last night called Race and Intelligence: Science’s Last Taboo. It did alright in rounding up a big, fraught subject and it reminded me of something quaint. In the scientific context, the words idiot, moron and imbecile used to mean specific ranges of IQ (or lack thereof).

This illustrates the sloppy science in the field of human intelligence that has been tolerated for far too long. The appalling consequences of such wilfully inhumane categorisation are hard to stomach. There are huge gaps to be filled in on that spectrum, and refinement with sub-categories ranging from spazimodo to fucktard and weaponhead to knucklescraper would make it a far more useful as a classification system.

The Upside To Being Down

"Do these grasses make my head rook fat?"

I’m glad I’m not in Korea right now. I am happy to be accused of being hopelessly unadventurous but I am pleased I am not all alone in a hotel somewhere near the DMZ, not being able to understand the local news readers and worrying myself a new ailment.

I was supposed to leave for South Korea on business last Sunday and be there for eight or nine days. Just between you and me, this is a damning indictment on the sanity of my seniors and betters. Not that they misread international politics, more that they insist on sending me places to do stuff. If they had any idea how woefully poorly equipped I am to achieve their ends, they wouldn’t be sending me off with quite such glee or regularity. The phrase, ‘wind in my hair, hope in my heart and nothing on my mind’ feels apt. Now add the corporate credit card and you’ve got the Keystone Cops do South East Asia.

Anyway, as I may have mentioned, my international career as a Tim Carey face-double is on temporary hold while I get over a case of Bell’s Palsy. I decided that trying to communicate across a De-Linguicised Zone in Korea was going to be doubly difficult when I couldn’t even speak my native tongue without dribbling or swearing. I also didn’t feel like being in a really foreign place while I wasn’t totally well. The idea of checking myself into a Korean hospital and half-mumbling, “No, not a stroke, but can I have more steroids, please? Oh, don’t worry about them. I’m sure you can just walk off an artillery bruise,” just didn’t bear considering. So, I’m not there.

Screw you, Hanz Brix.

Every Grey Area has a silver lining.

When The AGA Hits The Fan

Anyone who gives consumerism a nanosecond’s thought will be aware of the importance of freshly invented needs that give freshly invented products niches to fill.

I like to sum it up as, ‘Answering the questions no-one was asking.’

I want to get three invented needs off my chest and while I’m at it offer some friendly advice to a famous domestic appliance manufacturer.

I’ll start with proximity-sensing-liquid-soap-dispensers: Obviously for those of us who are using too few batteries around the house. The justification for this ‘invention’ is that a normal pump that you might (shiver) come into contact with harbours killer germs and bacteria. First of all, I haven’t died much yet and I don’t think it’s just the luck of having only ever used clean soap dispenser buttons that has kept me alive. This product is so pointless its existence actually cancels itself out. Essentially, it is admitting that it doesn’t work, “This soap is so crap it won’t help remove the germs you get on your thumb after pressing the top of the pump-pack.”

Next, Glade and Ambi Pur and any other manufacturers of whiffy things. This niche reaches its moronic apotheosis in the motion-tracking-air-freshener department. A real bubble came off the top of the think-tank that day. Plus their ads are unforgivably American. The badly lip-synced Australian voices over the top are not fooling anyone, and I have never seen a house of that interior design in Australia. I have never seen four women, one of them an African-American who’s not Marcia Hines, dressed like that in Australia. Even the film/video quality is instantly recognisable as American. Go away you stinky Americans. Ponginess is not a national problem of ours.

Lastly, one that’s in a slightly different category. It’s the one that makes me a bit sad as well as angry. This product could have a place in our lives if it was just properly defined: The Dyson fan. (Pictured) It makes me angry because someone thought that rather than calling it a “fan”, they should call it an “Air Multiplier”. I want to meet this person and introduce them to a cricket bat or, as the Grey Area Marketing Department call it, a “Bruise Multiplier”.

It makes me angry because they have invented a need that is so ridiculous, it’s kind of post-ironic. Apparently, the Dyson Air Multiplier is saving us from the ‘buffeting’ our normal fans put us through. I want to meet the person who has suffered buffeting from a standard fan and take them out to a buffet lunch. Or as the Grey Area Marketing Dept call it, “Surf and Turf You Off Something High”.

It also makes me sad because I will stand by our Dyson vacuum cleaner and say that it is a really good bit of kit, but they have tarnished the brand by being so spectacularly stupid.

I reckon if they’d been more honest about it, I know that a few of us would have had a completely different reaction.

Why not this approach:

Look, it’s a fan! It doesn’t do anything much more than a normal fan does, but just look at it! It’s the kind of industrial design that gets remembered. You know the Alessi lemon squeezer and the VW Beetle? Of course you do. Well, neither of them were spectacularly good at their stated tasks but they were the kind of thing that it was a pleasure to be around. They were fun for your eyes. It’s the kind of thing that says, “Not everything has to be the most efficient or powerful or the best way to get there. How about beauty for beauty’s sake? Oh, and it sort of does the job in a magical, invisible kind of way.”

I like a bit of whimsical stuff around the house. In fact, I take the safety guards completely off fans I own because it looks a whole lot better, it makes them quieter, they stay cleaner and I like the sense of daring. Emergency Contact looked on in horror the first time she saw me do this and predicted mayhem. I was breaking some sacred domestic covenant. But I think if you’re silly enough to insert yourself into a spinning blade, you don’t deserve the limbs you were issued with. (I should also point out that up to a certain size and power, domestic fans cannot take your finger off, no matter how inventively you stick them in. Don’t ask me how I know that.) But, my point is that the fan looks good and basically does the job – and there is a genuine need for a fan in our little flat, come a Sydney summer.

So Dyson, pick your game up, call it what it is – a bit of good looking industrial design for the desperately fashionable – and watch your sales go through the roof... or the Rain Diffuser... whatever. Don’t pretend it was answering any crushing need other than aesthetic.

Major Contributions To The Australian Music Industry

Powderfinger announced their retirement this week. After twenty scandal-free years they have decided to stop. I think this is a bit of a poor effort. For famous pop rockers, a properly disreputable exit is not just expected, it's required. They are supposed to burst into flames dressed only in their own vomit or drown horribly in a motel room wrapped around a telegraph pole.

But, they're not going to do that. You'll probably meet them down at the library fairly soon, promoting their books on cheese making and plugging themselves back into their own respirators. Powderfinger were an entirely professional moneymaking outfit. In fact an old mate of mine, The Right Dishonourable Loaded Dog, and I are probably responsible for their worst piece of public behaviour.

Loaded Dog is among the last of a dying breed. Not because times were better then and they don't breed them like that anymore, no, because most of them have died due to poverty and poor personal hygiene. He wouldn't mind me saying that. He only very loosely fits into that category now because he's got a job these days and that, for him, borders on personal tragedy and major artistic failing. He's a bone-deep pub-rocker.
So, as I said, he's an old mate, part time broadcasting partner and, by coincidence, a dead-ringer for Bernard Fanning, the lead singer of Powderfinger. (Emergency Contact thinks Loaded is much better looking, but I am never going to tell him that.)

Loaded Dog and I don't live close to each other anymore. Not because of any court decisions, just by the luck of the draw. When we get together, we tend to pick a pub halfway between us and they're rarely proper 'local' style establishments. They are usually something you'd classify as 'touristy'. So, one day we were in one and it's here that I need to round out the picture a bit.

Loaded D looks like a rock star the morning after, all the time. His "indefinable it" apparently depends on what kind of girl you are (and I ain't no kind of girl) but I am reliably told that he has 'it' in spades. He certainly wears the clothes to suit and has a certain presence. I used to call it BO, but again, I am reliably told that's probably me being jealous and uncharitable.

He is flamboyant and thinks nothing of wearing a tropical shirt tied at the waist set off with a sombrero that could double as a beach umbrella. I am peeved when I only get 15 years out of a black t-shirt and when those years are up, I replace the back T-shirt with a black t-shirt. He is the height and weight of a grumpy woman with a pint in her hand. I weigh 115 kilos, am 190cm tall and often have his pint and mine in one hand as I drag him away from a grumpy woman. I have short hair and have never tried to apply CPR to life-size but deflated Santa decoration "in the spirit of rescue and entertainment." As you may surmise, he usually has longish hair and has tried to resuscitate a sagging Santa while screaming, "Live dammit. Live. Come on Santy, don't go towards the light!"

We are very different, but have a lot in common.

So, there we were, giggling away at each other about important things in a pretty touristy sort of pub and three guys keep on trying to insinuate themselves into our conversation. On the way past they'd say something, or comment on the game on the telly, obviously trying to get us involved. They were looking at us way too much and it was getting on my wick, so I placed myself to block their view of us and put the physical barrier up.

I leaned into Loaded and said, "What's with this bunch of winners?"

 "It's happening again. They think I'm him and I'm 'out with my muscle'," whispers Loaded.

Oh goody. We were giggling even more.

Then the mood from the guys started to change. It got stroppy in only the way an Australian can get righteously stroppy if he thinks that another Australian is being a bit up himself and needs to be taken down a few pegs. LD and I had them pegged as Brisbane boys as well, so it was even worse. Imagine the gall of Bernard Fanning, a Brisbane boy himself, bunging it on and being all un-proletarian. Actually, Sydneysiders are snobs compared to Brisbanites and I wouldn't have it any other way. Who gives a fat rat's arse what a Queenslander wants and we certainly weren't going to start handing out fake Bernard Fanning signatures just to keep those yobbos happy.

So I stood up, moved over and said, "Lads, give him a bit of peace, alright? It's been a long, tough tour and he just wants to have a quiet one without being bothered. Right?"

Loaded backs it up by putting his flat hand up against the side of his face to protect from prying eyes and says into the air, "There aren't any cameras or film crews, are there Nicky?"

"No mate."

At this, the three sneer and sigh all at the same time, finish their drinks and get up. On the way out, one says unnecessarily loudly, "I always said I thought he was a wanker!"

Baby, You Can't Drive My Car

If you thought that the world of insurance was a bizarre and unfathomable nest of fear-mongering leeches, well, you’d be right. I’m not here to make you feel better about that, though. I’m here to add to the confusion and doubt.

I rang my insurer to pay the insurance on the ute, and noticed that Emergency Contact is listed as the other regular driver. I can see that there might have been a time, in the past, where I had romantic visions of teaching her how to drive a manual car and maintaining a healthy, loving relationship. I’m all grown up now.

So, I asked the lady on the phone how much cheaper my policy would be if I was the only named driver. She took EC off the policy – and it came back $35 more expensive.

This just goes to show what gross miscarriages of justice there can be when a piece of software gets to run an algorithm on real life variables, like, “Who would you rather be driven around by: This guy with 15 years professional driving experience with no tickets or at-fault accidents, who has driven anything from motorbikes to articulated trucks; or Doctor Cloth-Eyes over there, throwing her coffee into her lap for the umpteenth time while driving on a freeway she swears she has never seen before in her life, but just happens to be the one that goes to her work?” (Yes. Emergency Contact has a PhD. Yes, her eyes are only painted on.)

What was trebly galling was it appeared while we had been talking, Emergency Contact was deemed to be getting safer. I asked the insurance lady to be put EC back on the policy and it came out two dollars cheaper than the initial quote.

Somebody needs a good kick in the actuaries.

Blind Faith Healing

I was standing at the counter of the Chinese medical centre after having been pin-cushioned and had one of those conversations with the ‘health care professional’, otherwise known as an acupuncturist, that always give me pause with this end of the industry.

He started the exchange with,

“Look at me. I am trying to remember your face.” Not three minutes before, he’d been driving pins into it for an hour. What had he forgotten?

So I looked at him. He then said,

“Ok. Now, this bottle of anti-inflammatory herb pills would normally last two weeks but I want you to take four of these four times a day. So it’s not going to last two weeks, it’s only going to last one week.”

I looked down at the bottle and saw that it contained 78 pills.

“It’s not going to even last that long, if you want me to take 16 a day. I’d need a bottle with 112 in it.”

He paused, assessing either my maths or his diagnostic skills.

“Ok. You take three pills, four times a day if you like.”

If I like? It can’t be that exact a science if it can be based on how many are in the bottle, divided by a week, rather than my overwhelming medical needs, but in the spirit of getting into the new modality, I relented.

“Ok. I’ll take three pills four times a day.”

“No. You take four pills, three times a day.”

“But… ok. Fine. Oh, and do you want this back?” I said, and pulled a needle he’d missed removing, out from behind my ear and handed it to him.

He laughed and said, “Oh yes. Sometimes I miss them. Especially in the scalp of ladies with the long hair. Sometimes they don’t find them until they are at home, washing their hair. I didn’t see that one because it was behind your ear.”

So at least I now had a reason for him to try and remember my face.

Eyes – check. Haven’t left any needles in them.

Nose – check. Does he have any needles in it? No, I don’t think so.

Yep. That’s it. Oh damn. He has ears. I always forget about the ears.

But here’s the thing that really gives the game away. If he can’t remember that he’s put a needle somewhere because he can’t see it, that implies there is no system to start with - that there is no end-goal in his actions, as he would be able to work backwards through the cause and effect to count off the needles he’d placed. The pretence that there is a carefully mapped out response to various ailments is kind of undone if he leaves needles in you. Either it’s a fairly random set of perforations, or he’s forgotten why I’m there and is just doing pin-placement-set-piece-number-28-with-fried-rice.

Go Away. You're Lowering My Property Value

Yesterday, I was witness to one of those interactions that really let you know you’re in a classy part of town.

I was at the counter of the local inconvenience shop, when an over-made-up slapper in a poor choice of boob-tube pushed past me and said,

“Gimme a packet of (brand) cigarettes and gimme one with a nice picture on it will ya, or he’ll send me back?”

Twenty one words that say it all.

And If Symptoms Persist, Consult Your Comedian

As I may have mentioned, my international career as a Marcel Marceau impersonator (that’s quite different from actually being a mime artist) is on hold at the moment, due to slight case of Frozen Face - or as the witchdoctors down at the hospital call it, Bell’s Palsy.

When I went to see them the first time, they got quite insistent about me coming back and visiting their neurology department a little bit after the initial consult - just to make sure I wasn’t doing something else spectacular in the brain-box. So, in a turn up for the books, I did what I was told.

After the initial questioning and testing and poking and prodding and the lights and the lenses and the balancing and the pointing and the singing and the back-flipping while walking and reciting while balancing with eyes shut please, the initial doctor said,

“I just want to go and get the head specialist. When he comes in, don’t say anything, I want to see how quickly he picks it.”

The very cheery and quite charming head neuro specialist came in and said,

“Smile. Grimace. Show me your teeth. Look surprised. Look angry. Look like a bear. Look like a frog. Look like Joan Rivers walking into a stiff breeze. Look like Joan Rivers ordering a stiff drink…” and so on.
After a beat, he said, “Well, in this case, laughter really is the best medicine. Do you like Monty Python?”
I said, “Not when it’s being re-enacted by Neurologists,” and he laughed.

I didn’t. I was deadly serious. He went on.

“No, Really. What you have to do is go and get as many funny DVDs as you can and keep yourself laughing. Oh, and you can do acupuncture too, if you want.”

This intrigued me. I said, “Really? A real doctor is telling me to go and get acupuncture?”

He said, “Yep. There are no head-to-head trials to compare with other therapies, but we do think there are benefits.”

I said, “I guess a double-blind study with placebos is a bit hard to do with acupuncture,” and they laughed again.

I didn’t. I was deadly serious, but the thought does amuse me in hindsight.

So speaking of amusing, I have to go to the DVD store and stock up on therapy.

Ray Guns Down & Up Against The Wall, You Alien Scum

Doctor What’s-On

My international modelling career is on hold at the moment due to a slight case of facial paralysis, so I’ve got a bit of free time on my hands. Telly, in the right amount, can be good for what ails you and this brings me to the modern Sherlock. It’s not the right amount.


I don’t know if they turned six episodes into three by banging doubles together and saying, “Here. Three movie-length episodes” but the shows were not the right length. A bit too long and with a double bump, if you know what I mean. They then left us at the end of the third one with a cliff-hanger and a promise to return, maybe, next year. I’ve got a pinhead. I’m not going to remember! This is just another case of free-to-air broadcasters treating us like dirt and I’m sick of it.


But, maybe I don’t need to go back. There’s something inherently wrong with the modern Sherlock and I can only work through it, detective stylee, by metaphorically talking out loud.


In a break with tradition, I’ll start with the good stuff. The nods to all the devices and character habits that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (or Sac-Dee as he would be known now) are really good.


For those not familiar, the Sherlock I’m writing about is set NOW. Not Holmes blasted forward in time to the 1970s in a Hounds of the Baskervilles Chase Life on Mars mash up - but defiantly now. There are text additions to the screen like augmented reality. It uses a baroque instrument, the harpsichord, a la Dexter. That’s how NOW it is. There wasn’t any explanation for this, or if there was I missed it but the point is that the fun, or at least the novelty of the show, is predicated on Sherlock being modernised.


Many of the character’s devices and habits have been modernised. Instead of Sherlock’s minute scouring of the papers each morning, he’s joined at the fingertips to his smart-phone. Instead of a ragingly unfashionable morphine addiction, we’ve seen him abuse nicotine patches. The living arrangements between Dr John and Sherlock have come under semi-comic questioning (as they stake out a place of interest from a restaurant, a candle is brought to their table by a kindly restaurateur - to improve the ambience.) Sherlock, instead of generously tipping urchins as a source of street gossip, makes sizable donations to homeless women - and so on. I found these really fun and enjoyed putting the pieces together from my memories of the stories.


However, it is not sustainable and Sherlock Holmes would be complete crap these days - the world is at the same time too big and too small and we‘ve put too much stuff in it for him to work.


One of the major faculties that the traditional Sherlock would bring to the art of detection was a vast knowledge of stuff. He knew who brewed what brand of port. He knew where the tobacco was grown, packaged and who shipped it. All ladies perfumes were identifiable. Jewellers’ individual stamps, watermarks, addresses and opening hours were all stored away in his head. London was known to the last backstreet. These things were believable for a deeply brilliant sociopath with an eidetic memory in 19th Century London.


Let’s put this in the modern context. Sherlock does his trick of divining from a client that he’s just been around the world twice by looking at the client’s watch. The watch’s date display is out by two days, but it’s a brand new Breitling. In fact, one of the tell-tales was that it was a newly (that week) released model.


This is not possible to say about a Breitling having glanced at it from a distance of eight feet. They release new models all the freakin’ time, at different times depending on the sales territory, some of them never to be seen in certain markets at all. This is true of all large commodity manufacturers. Imagine trying to get across all women’s fragrances on the market and staying abreast of the changes. I reckon you’d be challenged to just stay ahead of perfumes released on Rodeo Drive in a week by actresses or pop divas with flagging careers.


Imagine trying to work out what the hell Nokia is up to. Imagine trying to stay ahead of all developments in the major tool of modern crime - the computer. Even given an unfillable and infallible memory, there still isn’t the time to get across the stuff. You can’t know the market. It is global and changes daily and this leads to the next problem.


London isn’t the London it used to be. Sure, it was and is a transport hub, a money nexus and an all around gravitational well for business, culture and crime, but the interconnectedness, the inescapable globalisation that you experience in a proper metropolis means that just being an expert on London is almost pointless when you are talking about anything other than the most petty crime… which Sherlock isn’t interested in. He likes the big, juicy stuff - and that’s international - and again, one person could not have the time to get across all of it and still have time to smash away on a Yamaha violin and solve a couple of crimes.


So, I have some conceptual difficulties with the likelihood of Sherlock Holmes actually working in the modern context - so let’s put my belief in suspenders and get to some other elements of the show.


How about the moral angle. I never thought I’d write this, but I don’t like the morals of the character, Sherlock Holmes. In the traditional setting, his sociopathy and ruthlessness seemed less evil. His consideration for “the game” over the players in it seemed a much less odious character trait. I don’t know if a couple of world wars, a few genocides and a general awakening of the need for us to treat each other better and more ethically since the 19th Century is what’s underlying my concern, but I find the modern Sherlock’s disdain for the innocent humans caught up in the strategising, deeply unpleasant. I sort of find it impossible to really root for him. I feel more for the slightly angry copper who calls him ‘Freak’ and wants to bang him up. At least her heart is in the right place. But, that’s the kind of concern that gets me called a wanker in polite society, so let’s just pretend I didn’t write that bit.


What about the acting? As I was tucking my dickey-shirt into my cumberbatch, I was trying to put my finger on what was annoying me - not least of all the lead actor’s name. Common! What kind of name is Benedict Cumberbatch? I feel like flying to the UK to bully him, just on principle. He’s alright, but he’s not great. Every time I see him getting a bit to self serious, I think of how much I probably would’ve liked Richard E. Grant in the role. There are times when I just see a bit of Withnail poking through in the performance.


The guy who plays Moriarty is atrocious. Serious boo-boo there.


I tell you who’s the revelation, though, Martin Freeman as Dr John. He is just terrific. I read that he is supposed to be Bilbo in The Hobbit. He will be perfect. If they screw that up by taking it away from New Zealand or going into some pre-production meltdown (as of writing, it looks like it is) that will be a fucking crime worth investigating.


So, yeah it’s got ups and downs and I’d like to think that I’ll remember to come back to it, just to see the wind-up, next year… but I don’t know. There’s just so much stuff I’ve got to watch and remember.

Sirius Cybernetics Corporation - Safe For Now

A surprising number of people say to me, “What’s your take on domestic robots?”

They do this because I outed myself as a robot-vacuum-cleaner owner a while ago and people want to know how it‘s going.

Owning a robot vacuum has almost nothing to do with an obsessive cleaning compulsion, but a lot more to do with me being disappointed that I don’t take holidays on the moon or go to work riding a jetpack. My science fiction future just never eventuated and I eke these little bits of future-joy from wherever possible. (Also, if you are proper OCD about cleaning, a little robot vacuum is going to suck at sucking.)

Rather than giving advice on which model to buy based on electronic room-mapping or randomised, bump-turns to room volumes, I like to illustrate the state of the art with the following:

One day, I came home and was startled to see the balcony door open. I quickly went through the house to check if all the important stuff was still there. Telly. Check. Phew. Computer. Check. Sigh. Emergency Contact. Not there. Let’s put that on the backburner for now. Stay focused and frosty. Laptop. Check. Phew.

I couldn’t see anything amiss and just put it down to one of us absentmindedly stepping out and leaving the balcony door ajar and the wind did the rest.

Several days later, I was emptying the robot vacuum and it had sticks and leaves in the hopper. Pieces fell into place and I realised that robot had pushed the door open and gone out onto the balcony to loyally go about his cleaning business, vacuuming a cement, outdoor surface.

I was impressed. It showed that the sensors supposed to stop him from throwing himself down a flight of stairs, really work. The bottom of the railing on the balcony is way too high to have stopped him from going over the edge, so it was only his little, downward-pointing, electronic eyes that gave him vertigo. I do like to imagine what the suicide note would say if did chuck himself off, though. “Don’t blame yourself. I just wasn’t cut out for the domestic life.”

Anyway, he dragged himself back inside, over the door-snake and took himself back to his little dock to charge up and doubtlessly get a little indigestion from the surprising meal he’d had - And this is really where we are at with domestic robots.

He left the door open. He spent time vacuuming something he shouldn’t. He can’t reach up and do the cobwebs between the bookcases. He drags a sock around for a while, gets it hooked on the telephone lead, pulls the telephone off the shelf and then pushes it under the telly. Then, with a triumphant whistle, scoots off and gets baffled by a rug with tassels.

And most importantly, robot vacuums don’t save any time whatsoever. If you’re like me, you have to follow and watch the little thing doing his stuff ‘cause it’s so damn cute.

You Are Aware We Can Hear You, Yes?

The Churches have reacted angrily to the proposal that ethics classes should be offered to students as an alternative to scripture classes in NSW schools.

They (Church Leaders) argue that holding the classes at the same time as scripture classes would disadvantage scripture students, who would not be able to attend. 
SMH. 20-10-10, P1.

In religion’s overweening struggle for relevancy and as a buttress to why they think they have any moral authority at all, the Church keeps saying that morals and ethics flow from scripture. But here, by their own admission, the student is at a disadvantage in the scripture class. 

I couldn’t agree more (unless the lesson was for atheists and called “Know Thine Enemy”) but it’s nice to hear the Church come out and say it for me.

In the statement, the Church blithely throws out, “…students, who would not be able to attend”. 

Why can’t the student attend? Weren’t they allowed to change to something they felt was more enlightened? Could this type of dictatorial meddling in the mind of a young adult be ethical at all? Never mind - it’s the church! It has the authority handed down to it from these here old books called scripture… that don’t really say very much conclusive or sensible about anything… so you’re just going to have to apply your own personal set of morals to them to try and sort out anything of value. Oh, you didn’t go to that lesson? Ahem.

So, as some kids go back to their scripture classes to be earbashed about the impossible requirements from a fictional sadist in the sky, and the other kids go back to classes on the nature of personhood and how to navigate a way to moral outcomes in an ethical way - that must really set up a tension. It gets even worse as they toddle off to their next lessons - evolutionary biology for one lot, and “Why the heliocentric view of the solar system is a godless lie” for the others.  

They're Just Teasing

On the cover of the Sydney Morning Herald this weekend, I was dead excited to see that they had an article in the Spectrum lift-out on, “How to tell a child they’re fat.”

I have a technical interest in this and couldn’t wait to get to the juicy script guidelines I expected to find in the article. Do you make it a ‘tight five’? Do you harangue over a period of years? Surreal humour or simple insulting rhymes? So many choices. So much scope. You need articles like this to point the way and there was the joy of the Sydney Morning Herald seeing the light and fighting its way back to modern relevancy.

“Honey, clean your teeth and get gently into your giant, specially reinforced bed.”

“Goodnight. Sleep tight. The bedbugs won’t bite. They’re frightened.”

“… and no you can’t have your floaties, you don’t need them. In fact, I can’t get them on. And, swim between the flags. We don’t want the Japanese whaling fleet getting any ideas.”

“You’re not a morning kid, are you? You sort of wake up in sections.”

“Of course you’re special to me. I’ve always wanted a kid with her own postcode.”

“Not everyone’s bellybutton comes with it’s own echo, you know Billy?”

"While I'm paying for petrol, can you check Timmy's oil, please? And for God's sake don't put anymore air in his tyres."

And so on.

But no. Stupid SMH had a reasoned piece that said the same old sensible predictable things. Lead by example. Limit the portions. Get some freakin’ exercise. Total let down.

For Whom The Bell Tolls

I’ve been in two minds as to whether I should post this blob. I don’t want AGA just to become a litany of personal mishaps. I want to talk to larger set of topics than what would normally be housed in the diary of a sixteen-year-old girl. But, I also know that misery loves company and we all quietly revel in the misfortunes and failures of good friends, so this one goes out to all those who want to hear about another one of my sterling efforts. (Oh, and as they do say, “Write what you know.”)

I have an informal and mutually satisfying competition going on with Pink Patent Mary Janes. She tells the story of watching a bug fly into her own eye, I sympathise and escalate – on a long bike ride in the summer heat, far from home, I poured my entire drink bottle into my own eye to try and wash the insect out. Bug still in eye and no water in drink bottle.

I mention the time I tried to rip off the top of my ear on the corner of a car door, she shows me scars on her ear where she’s done it, adding that it bled on an expensive dress.

We also like to break up our lightly amusing stories of misadventure with some real doozies that we don’t actually laugh at. Broken ribs (me) and busted anterior cruciate ligaments (her) are just not funny. In people you know, humour is directly related to recovery time. In people you don’t know – it’s geographical distance.

Today’s story sits nicely in between. Odd, scary, but with any luck, not of lasting consequence.

Over the last two days, my face fell off my skull. It was mixed in with a couple of other symptoms so I didn’t immediately twig to what was going on, but when I got up this morning, the left side of my face didn’t work. This is a frightening characteristic to manifest as you plod towards your middle age.

I could get my hands above my head. I could speak. I knew where I was. My left pupil was dilating and contracting when EC shone my Kindle light into it.

But I couldn’t smile, blink, frown, display my teeth, taste, purse my lips or wiggle my left ear. (Normally, I can wiggle my ears and I was trying to map how far the effect was being seen around the globe of my head.) I had lost the crease from my left nostril to the corner of my mouth and I had the appearance of someone who’d got cold feet about botox halfway through their treatment.

Off to the hospital.

Not a stroke.

Bell’s Palsy.

There are a number of annoying things about Bell’s Palsy, not least of which is the amount of tea you spit down your front from not being able to make a proper seal with your lips. But the most annoying thing is not being able to find a dashing eye-patch with a skull and crossbone on it.

The doctors recommend you patch the affected eye, because you lose your blink reflex. This means you don’t protect the eye and you can do all sorts of damage. Picking up the required gear from the chemist this morning, I was bitter to find they only had “flesh coloured” eye-patches.

Firstly, if your flesh is that colour you’ve got bigger problems than the need for an eye-patch. Secondly, I’ve always wanted the excuse to wear an eye-patch and the let-down of not finding a cool one is hard to convey.

It is also not the sort of thing that you should be admitting to – but I’ve got stroke-face for the next couple of weeks and I’m going to be looked at strangely for more than just a daggy desire for a cool eye-patch.

Floriade - Tick Tock, Tick Tock... Bloom!

Many of the pieces here at A Grey Area are designed to help you avoid modern pitfalls. You are welcome to learn from my mistakes. I am out there, losing my mops, swamping my ute with wet mattresses, taking my own temperature with meat thermometers and many other hazardous activities, all in the name of investigative blogging so that you don’t have to.

Today I have two handy tourist tips for when you visit Canberra to see the Floriade exhibition.

Number one. Don’t instantly assume that everywhere charges for parking quite the way Sydney charges for parking. I pulled into a car park exactly outside where we wanted to go, walked over to the Pay-and-Display ticket machine, dropped my money in and got a ticket out that said it was good till 9.30, Monday morning. Seeing as it was Saturday afternoon, I thought that was pretty good value. I thought I was paying for an hour and here I was getting closer to 40 hours for a paltry dollar fifty.

Emergency Contact said, “I don’t think you need to pay on the weekend.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

She said, “See, I think you paid for an hour like you thought you needed to, but that hour doesn’t start till 8.30 on Monday morning.”

I said, “Are you saying that this parking, here, in the middle of the so-called CBD, right where we need to go, is free?”

“Yes,” she said, laughing a little.

“I simply don’t understand.” I said, flustered. I realised that some locals were looking at me with a look that said, “Oh, bless. Look at that poor out-of-towner thinking he had to put his money in the machines on a weekend.”

What we had parked outside of, was Floriade, which leads me to tip number two.

If you want to see it next year, get there at the start. It is a spring celebration that goes for a month and largely consists of flowers. We arrived on the second-last day. The second last day of an exhibition that goes for a month and is made of flowers. See where I’m going with this?

I’m sure that in week one, maybe even week two of an exhibition of glorious, exotic, delicate flowers planted out in the Australian climate, it looked fabulous. End of week four? Not so much.

So, a little underwhelmed, we went back to our Formula 1 hotel. Now, I’m not even going to go into this experience as a tourist tip. You know everything you need to know about Formula 1 hotels already. The pixilated light board on the outside of the hotel that advertises the double-digit price per room is all the indication you need. We just didn’t have any choice. Buggered if I know why, but Canberra was full.

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For... A New Tune

I can understand how it is that Mr Whippy might be reluctant to change his tune - but the time has come when he has to or he is a dead man.

The one in my neighbourhood can be heard for hours at a time. He is within earshot for so long because of the numbers of ovals and fields in my area. There’s also something about the topography that guarantees that for the entire time that he’s out there noisily and repetitively begging, I get to hear it.

In some things, tradition is important. I can’t actually think of any of those things right off the top of my head, but I am reliably informed that this is true and I will yield to wiser minds than mine. But if tradition is the argument for keeping the tune, let’s look at the sense of sticking with Greensleeves as the anthem of Mr Whippy.

Mr Whippy’s target demograph is not a hidebound bunch. I reckon a good proportion of kids who want an ice-cream (when they find out what all the noise is about) are hearing Greensleeves for the first time. Also, as I have illustrated before, kids are idiots. I don’t think it’s Greensleeves that elicits the Pavlovian badgering of mum and dad the next time they hear it. It’ll be a far simpler stimulus response, like, “Noisy, jangly truck equals choc-top.”

It’d be an improvement for the older group as well. A change is as good as a holiday and if I heard another tune out there, I’d be more inclined to go have a look, just to see what it was. If the truck came around playing “Ready to Rock” by Pianosaurus, I’d be hoping it sold beef jerky and cold beer. I’d then probably buy a sorbet anyway, simply to make pulling on my pants and running out into street worthwhile.

Imagine the cross promotional opportunity young, up-and-coming bands and Mr Whippy could get into.  He plays their music and every time they’re on telly, they slip in some endorsement like, “Yeah, thanks for that Fuzzy, now we’re gonna rock out with our choc out.”

At the outset, Greensleeves is a strange choice. It’s a teeny bit depressing. I had to learn the song at school and here’s the first verse:

Alas my love you do me wrong
To cast me off discourteously
For I have loved you well and long (cor)
Delighting in your company

It’s a she done me wrong song - unrequited love and all the fun that that entails. To me, that doesn’t scream “gimme a frozen yoghurt with sprinkles!”

There is also some speculation that sleeves are made green by having a little rumpy pumpy in grassy fields. Apparently, a green dress was code for promiscuity. Now, when it comes to ancient ideas of prudery and prurience I am not a traditionalist. In fact, more power to you if you like to put out, but that’s not really an integral part of unloading dairy whip in a sugary cone and probably not an appropriate message for the kiddies. Why not “Ice Cream” by Muscles? This features the undeniably catchy hook “Ice cream, is gonna save the day… again.”

For the foreseeable future, I think that Mr Whippy is going to keep the infernal tune, and this does make him easier to identify and deal with. Future Mums and Dads, the first time your little cherub asks what the noise is, explain, "Why darling, it's Mr Whippy. He plays his music when he's run out of ice cream."

Hung, Drawn and Thwarted

Australia now has splinters in its unmentionables from so much fence sitting.

- As good as a hung parliament
- Drawn AFL Grand Final
- Aspiring models who get crowned and uncrowned between ad-breaks.

For chrissake, make a decision will ya?

The Horror

If you watched Top Gear this week you would have seen the Australian presenters being put to a test of nerves by driving slow, disreputable little cars made of plastic and wishful thinking, through an African Lion Safari. I know how they feel.

Here, I have managed to catch on film the moment I have foolishly slowed enough for the beast to clamber onto the back of the ute and start to make its fearsome approach.

The second shot is of the brute mercilessly changing position to look at me with the “hunting eye”. This is where they get a sighting on you by using the other eye to engage both halves of its predator brain. It can also serve to confuse the prey with the sudden shift of position.

The images are testimony to the quality of 'image-stablizer' technology in modern cameras. They are remarkably clear considering how much I was shaking.

A Grey Area - Where Seagulls Dare

High Seas Hijack - Fail

I was pleased when I read my ticket, so I stormed the doorway of the bridge, holding it out as evidence and I shouted, "Take this boat up to ramming speed!" And they said, "Piss off, idiot." And I said, "How dare you countermand my authority, I am your new Captain, as illustrated by this six dollar ticket that says My Ferry!" And they shut the door and kept sailing at what we in the piracy business call 'boring speed'.