Couch Potato Field

Emergency Contact relaxes on the new couch.

After lounge camping for far too long, Emergency Contact and I took delivery of our new couch… and it’s freakin’ huge. Warehouse tastes on apartment acreage. There’s the couch and the telly and that’s all, now. No cooking, no washing and certainly no dancing. I have to come in through the second story balcony window because I can’t get the front door open. EC has given up trying to get out and works from home now. The Eastern plateau of cushion area 18, just near the fuzzy summit of the North Face is casting shade over the bathroom. The cushion nearest the front door started broadcasting on Sunday night a message that read: ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE.

Comfortable, but.

Hope I Don't Get "Chosen"

Ricky Gervais’ stand-up, Politics was on telly the other night. It features a bit on Hitler misinterpreting Neitzsche. I wouldn’t recommend it to sensitive Jews but by the standards of people who think like me, it’s funny. Don’t get me wrong, genocide is bad. Let me just be plain about that: Genocide - Bad. Also, I don’t have time for racial supremacists. I’ve never wanted to join one of those clubs. But, it did get me thinking.

For a religious Jew, the Holocaust would have to be considered a miracle. If their god is the all seeing, omnipotent being that they claim He is, then something as big as the Holocaust would have to have come to His attention.

In fact, He would have had a hand in it if He is an omniscient hyper-being in charge of daily affairs. Further, He would have to have been quite convinced of His plan. If we consider that this is a super-being that can have his mind changed by chanting and praying, I think it would be safe to say that a lot of Jews at the time would have been appealing to Him to stop the slaughter, but He persisted. Surely this is a miracle. Not a good one, which is usually nuance we see put on miracles, but it’s an event that rivals a natural cataclysm so strays into that category.

This, I think, leaves the Jews in a nasty position as far as being the chosen people. Chosen for what?

It points to another thing that annoys me about religious thinking. You always see people thanking gods for saving their children, landing the plane safely, sparing their houses from the flood and on and on. Not only is it insulting to hardworking surf lifesavers, pilots and emergency service workers, it’s not apportioning blame properly.

I’ll give five bucks to the next person on a news report who says, “Thank God all the rooves in this neighbourhood were ripped off during the storm and that bit of tin flew across the road and decapitated Mrs Wilson. I hated her.”

Sit Up Straight. Elbows Off The Remote. Chew Your Telly Properly

The signs of old age are legion. It’s not just the obvious ones like needing to take your pants off as soon as you get home or preferring a night in, to a night out. There are the really unlikely ones.

Emergency Contact and I recently bought a new couch. This couch has quite a “lead time” before delivery. This is salesperson speak for, “It’ll take fucking ages to be made and delivered.”

We were getting antsy about where it was, so EC rang the shop and asked. We were told, “This week.”

That was last week.

That wouldn’t have mattered so much in the grand scheme of things if I hadn’t immediately given the old couch, armchair and Ottoman to a mate. We’ve been indoor camping for a week now and it’s not nearly as fun as it sounds.

I’ve discovered I would rather spend an entire evening watching TV sitting on an unpadded dining chair, than get down and slum it on a single mattress. There’s something hopelessly old-age and conservative about preferring to watch Breaking Bad in a straight backed chair. I feel like someone presiding over proceedings rather than lying back, being reassured.