Letting The Truth Get In The Way

One morning this week, my phone reported that a Latvian man had been arrested for shooting dead a fellow moviegoer for eating his popcorn too noisily during a screening of Black Swan.

I hoped it was misreported or mistranslated and that the guy hadn’t been arrested, he’d been honoured with a tickertape parade. Turns out I was sort of right.

It was mistranslated. Later that day, the news piece reappeared with the correction that the noisy popcorn eater had shot dead the guy who’d told him to eat more quietly. This completely ruined a perfectly good blob and therefore I will not mention it.

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.

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.

Australia Has Spoken

And they've given it a resounding, "Meh."

With my limited understanding of these things, I am amazed.

I am amazed that a voting population of that size can turn in a dead-heat.

To me, this does not speak of the stunning closeness of the competition. This does not put in mind a great battle between two equally impressive and opposing forces. To me, this is Australians desperately casting about for the lesser of two evils and being squarely divided down the middle on which is most offensive. That’s not agreement, that’s semi-mutual disgust.

Imagine what would have happened if someone with some bravery and vision had stood up. They would have swept to power on a wave of relief and gratitude. And by the way, this isn't me passing the buck. I wouldn't flatter myself with being able to do the job. I'm too fragile and full of doubt to be able to stand up in front of bunch of hecklers and insist I knew what was best.

Besides, power should be kept out of the hands of those who desire it and I would be a nightmare. The first thing I'd try and legislate for would be that every house gets a government sponsered pillow-room. Nothing but pillows. The only way you're allowed to enter the room is at a run and by throwing yourself as far as you can into the room. Yeah. Next I'd fix the environment. Cushions, I reckon. Cushions everywhere. Then the stupid environment can't hurt us. Yeah. Next? Dodgem cars will replace real cars in a staggered, and therefore entertaining, replacement scheme…

Anyway, we'll get to do the voting thing again soon, so let's really shock them. Everybody, let's just agree to vote for that weird little Communist Party dude down the bottom of the ticket. Just for the helluvit.

Elevators Doing Art Projects For Their HSC

Whistling Tunes We Hide In The Dunes By The Seaside

Smurfy and I had to oversee an international operation recently.

These things aren’t easy. As you know, the best laid plans never survive first contact with the enemy. I decided to provision for the worst. I asked if pizza was going to be ok.

"I can never be disappointed by meals without corners," he answered.

And I knew we were fine. I think it was Peter Gabriel who sang, "Meals without corners, war without tears."

I Prefer Turnbull

I’ve just been trying to estimate the chances of me uttering that phrase. There was a period, around the referendum on the republic, where it was possible... but unlikely.

At the moment, though, the chances have increased from ‘a snowflake in the deeper recesses of hell’ to ‘your chances of survival when standing between Joe Hockey and a TV camera’. Slim, but not impossible.

I have had the rare pleasure of telling Tony Abbott that, if he didn’t leave my table, I was going to insert “that” (pointing at chair) into him. I have done my bit. Wherever possible, you must resist as well.

But I want to take the long view on this.

The way the Liberal Party is burning through its ‘talent’, I think it’s probably good timing to have Abbott take a swing at the leadership. It means we wouldn’t have to suffer him leading the country. He’ll be chewed up and spat out before we get to an election he can win.

I just want to remind you what the odious, sanctimonious slime-ball is about, just in case you’ve been thinking of nicer things. Like fatal shark attacks.

If he had the chance, he would tell women what they can do with their bodies. He’s pro-censorship, which means he thinks he can know things that you shouldn’t know. He’s anti-euthanasia because he doesn’t trust us not to off our parents for the money. He would insert his religion into Australian politics and while he’s playing at being such a principled, moral beacon, let’s look at one policy position of his.

In the middle of this year he was pro-emissions trading scheme. Last week he flipped, citing no other reason than the reaction of the business world… because the business world is where we should be taking our guidance from on this issue, for sure.

At least, with Turnbull, you know you’re dealing with a straight up and down, self aggrandising, power-hungry mutt. He doesn't try and dress up what he's about as something honourable.

Don’t Make A Spectacle Of Yourself

It may interest you to know that we in Australia cannot have 20-20 hindsight, foresight or even a 20-20 plebiscite. Not because we’re stupid; because we’re metric. It’s not measured over 20 feet, but 6 meters. Doesn’t that ruin some song lyrics?

Last week, I found myself at the optometrist. It wasn’t an accidental thing, like wandering around with my arms out and lucking on the right door, but it did have the feeling of coming on suddenly, and without my permission. Apparently, this happens precisely at a point when you hit your very, very (extremely) late twenties.

So, we do the testing and it turns out that, beyond a certain distance, I have better than nominal sight. I get 6.5 out of 6. In semi-practical terms, this means you can move the contract 7 metres away from me and I can still read the fine-print. But it’s inside that distance that led me to the optometrist in the first place.

After the test (and the distinctly odd experience of having my eyeballs anaesthetised and the Optometrist rest a piece of equipment on them to measure their pressure) I received her quirky analysis and prescription.

“As you age, the eye muscles are less able to refocus the lens for the close in, reading-type activities. You can buy standard, non-prescription glasses from the service station and it won’t harm you and it won’t change the strength of the prescription that you will eventually need. But if you can muddle through, you might as well…”

And then she said the thing that tickled me.

“… and you might as well muddle through, because you’re tall.”

“Oh, and why does that matter?” I ask. I just don’t see the connection.

“Because you can hold the book a long way away from yourself, and it won’t look too odd.”

Why You Get Up

It’s been a good day. Thirty chimpanzees escaped and a ginger midget came to work.

The chimps escaped from a zoo in Cheshire and reportedly went in search of food. I told this to the canteen lady who over-boils the milk in my morning coffee, and she gave me a blank look.

I suggested that chimps in search of food at a zoo would probably end up at the canteen.

Another blank look.

“Chimps”, I said. “In line at the canteen. Searching through their non-existent pockets that are not attached to their furry legs in the vain hope of giving you the exact change they don’t have… for a cup of crap coffee and toast with too much vegemite on it.”

Blank look.

So I threw poo at her.

Well… maybe; but let’s move on.

Last month, I was forced to stop a colleague (Sticky) in the middle of a complex explanation to correct her understanding of ongoing events.

She was saying, “The testing timetable is going to be rigorous, consideri…”

“I’m going to have to stop you there.”

“Why?”

“Because a ginger midget in a pin-stripe suit is about to walk past the window in… three… two… one!” and then everybody looked where I was pointing.

And there he was. It was one of the finest moments of my professional life. (He has a long red beard as well. I know... too good!)

After we’d put Sticky back in her seat and removed the oxygen mask, we all agreed that it would be so excellent if he “got the job and came to work here… but not with us.”

He started work today and it was so cool. He was even eating lunch in the canteen. He's so cute. He thinks he's people!

EC to the ECU, STAT!

Emergency Contact is really the Emergency Contact now.

She went off for a St John’s First Aid course this week and came back all empowered with the ability to save lives, raise the dead and walk on water… wait, no that wasn’t it. Something like that, anyway.

She avoided some pitfalls that others haven’t. For instance she got 100% in her exam, which my mother didn’t manage. When my mother was asked in her exam “How would you sterilise your hands?” She answered, “Boil them for 10 minutes.” The St John’s people take this sort of thing seriously and that just doesn’t cut the mustard (another way not to sterilise your hands).

She’s a funny little thing my Emergency Contact. She’s not that fond of crowds, question time after lectures, role playing and… well… people really, but she genuinely enjoyed the course. She said to me after day one, “They pulled out the defibrillator and I said, ‘Oh no you don’t! I don’t even drive a manual car, let alone start yelling CLEAR and doing that kind of thing’, but it’s really cool. It talks to you and walks you through what you’ve got to do and doesn't even send the charge to the paddles if it's not required.”

That really is pretty cool.

She also mentioned that if someone is flat-lining on the heart monitor, that's it. They don't even try. There has to be something there blipping away, but that doesn't make for good telly.

I remembered in my course that one of the most complicated bits of advice was where to put your hands to do heart massage. If I remember correctly, you had to take the line from between their eyebrows, line it up with something on the horizon, count three ribs and two nostrils up from the solar plexus, recite the Julian Calendar in reverse and apply one hand-width of pressure with two hands and start massaging. No happy endings. Or at least there weren’t whenever I did it.

So, with this fading in my mind, I asked EC how she’d gone with the heart massage after her second day. She said, “Easy, you just put your hands between their nipples.” Now that is a helluva lot easier than the description I remember carrying around in my head. I bet that some post-Victorian prudishness is behind that awful set of instructions - just so they didn’t have to say the word nipple. I wonder how many people have died or had their sternums cracked because people were embarrassed about saying ‘nipple’, in public.

S-bending Spree

Money is evil. I can prove it.

I could go into some elaborate diatribe on the nature of Third World debt, the destructive rise of mono-culture-agri-business and the extreme plots being perpetrated by the race of giant lizards that run the World Bank… but instead, I’m going to bring it closer to home.

A couple of days ago, I was in the bathroom standing with my hands in my pockets (I like the way it makes me look more innocent) and I pulled out a tissue that I wanted to throw away. (I know! How much more interesting can a blob get?! I mean, reading that last sentence back, I’m tempted to just leave it there. Had my hands in my pocket, found a tissue, wanted to throw it away. Dusts palms, declares his work done and posts the blob.)

So, as I pulled the tissue out, a five cent piece came out with it, did nice little arc and plopped into the toilet where it settled to the bottom and glinted prettily at me.

It is now starting to taint the porcelain, and really quickly. The toilet needs cleaning every ten minutes. The toilet is being tainted by the money. You can see what I am oh-so-subtly pointing at here, can’t you?

I said to Emergency Contact that she could keep it if she fished it out, but she just snorted at me. Honestly.

Money Saving Tips For The Hypochondriac

In the petri-dish that I call work, all the sickies (or as I call them, “Typhoid Marys”) did the expected thing and soldiered on, only to spread their vile diseases and thereby load me up with a case of the Wombat Flu.

I suspected that I might have been getting crook when my back ached uncontrollably for two weeks. When one of my neck glands went up and I started shivering and sweating, I went for the medicine cabinet to find a thermometer and an excuse not to leave the house.

Delirium set in at about the same time I found the old style chemical-strip thermometer. Remember them? The ones that you put on your forehead and wait for the strip to change colour. What you are then supposed to do is compare that colour to a handy chart to derive your temperature.

I must have mixed up my medicine cabinet chart collection at some point because, in my delirious state, I discovered that my temperature was ‘happy romantic tending towards nervous and anxious’.

After throwing the mood-ring instruction book away, I staggered round the house looking for an alternative. I decided that a trip to the quack was in order when I discovered that my condition was also rated nearly ‘rare beef’.

The doctor disagreed with my diagnoses but congratulated me on my resourcefulness.

Caution: For people looking to save a little money on household implements, be aware that meat thermometers are usually very sharp on the sensing end. When resting it under your tongue for three minutes, be sure not to walk around or bump into things. This results in needing to tell the doctor that there are two things wrong with you.

Tattoo Top Twenty

In a moment that made me feel like a tourist in my own society, I recently read a top 20 list of the most popular tattoos that are corporate logos. (Sun Herald felt it sound enough to run with. Smurf voted it suspect. I like the story...)

The list was compiled by a legal company, so I’m looking forward to seeing the opportunity they’re building themselves - in the form of infringement cases.

So here we go, slightly out of order, for the sake of dramatic delivery.

Number 1, and not hard to predict - Harley Davidson. That’s the market that traditionally gets the tough-stickers and is unlikely to suddenly wake up one day and think, “Bloody hell! I like Kawasakis, now.”

Number 2, and I felt a good contender for the top spot – Nike. It’s a symbol that is so symbolically iconic in its symbolicnessitude, that it’s lost its connection to poorly made, sweatshop sports shoes.

Number 3 - AFL Team logos. (Survey done in Melbourne) I can almost understand that. Loyalties run deep about footy. Hands up all those with a Super League Tat… come on, it’s not that embarrassing.

Numbers 4 and 5 - I need to come back to them.

From 6 to 10, Disney characters, Holden, Ford, Fox/Alpinestars and Triple J Radio. Not much to say about those. My head doesn’t spin with the brain-bending oddness of wanting those symbols permanently emblazoned on your flesh. It only aches a little.

11 to 20 defy explanation.

Louis Vuitton - Because fashion brands will never go out of… wait.

Chanel - just wear it on your wrist, not on your sleeve.

Playboy - your mother is soooo proud.

Coca-Cola - cool refreshing drink. Symbol of free West. That’s not white-trash at all!

Jack Daniels - shows a real commitment to unemployment.

Jim Beam - gotta keep up with Joneses, who got the Jack Daniels tat last year when he got the Judge Judy court summons.

Mountain Dew – Topping the white-trash quotient.

QANTAS – wha’?

Back to the motors for Triumph cycles and finishing the list with;

Fender/Gibson – which almost makes sense, in comparison to the preceding 8.

But back to 4 and 5. Coming in at number 5, and the only tattoo in history to actually drop a credit rating as the needle does its work… VB.

Number 4. Vegemite. This is so inexplicable, it’s almost cute. It is, however, considered unpatriotic in trailer-park circles, to place the vegemite tattoo above the bum-crack.

Caution: When choosing your corporate logo tattoo, think about what you liked and how smart you were ten years ago. Still like the same stuff? Learnt anything between then and now? 

Now, put yourself ten years forward.

And Pigs Might Flu

It’s a trope of philosophy that the Ancient Greeks have asked all the big questions about the human condition.

I used to be a bit sceptical about that. I used to suspect there must be questions being raised in modernity that they could not have predicted or comprehended. We are fresh and we are smart. We make our own, new problems.

But the latest world-panic-thingy makes me think that they might have actually had it covered.

Let me draw the strings together on the macramé hand-basket that we’re all going to hell in.

The Greeks had many tales of part man, part beast characters that terrorised their populations – I’m naming and shaming some repeat offenders below.

The Minotaur: Part man. Part bull. Not allowed to drink in pubs until it become a Majortaur.
Harpies: Part winged demon, part sexually transmitted disease.
Echidna: Part porcupine, part spiny ant-eater.

These malignant archetypes reared their hideous heads again this morning when the radio reported the new flu about town is a genetic mix of avian, porcine and human influenza.

So if you’re sitting on public transport and see a bird-pig-man, don’t immediately panic. If his little beaksnout is running, though, then it’s time to panic.

Every snotty cloud should have a silvery mucous lining, though. Fashion designers could exploit these pandemics. If Collette Dinnigan pulls her finger out and designs face-masks that women want to wear…

One Year In And Still Bitching

Wun Year Auld Blog. I Haz One!

Yup, the blob turns one today. Happy Birthday blob!

Hard to believe that this time, one year and one day ago, I didn’t have a hobby. Oh, I had pastimes, distractions, work-life balance, all that. But something was missing. Something that would take a good deal of waking attention. Something that I could really worry away at like a well-formed scab. Something that was free. (I mean, how lucky am I that I actually enjoy this and Google provide it for nothing?)

I like to think I’ve achieved a lot in that year‘s worth of blobbing, too. I also like to think that I am the correct weight, am devilishly charming and in no way contributing to global warming.

So, let’s have a quick wander down memory lane and see how this blob has made the world a better place.

You are now aware of how NASA thought it could fake a Mars landing.

You are now aware of how the church fakes the existence of god.

You are now aware of how pandas are faking their own innocence and uselessness and are really on a path to world domination.

Cane Toad control is back on the national agenda.

You are now aware of my untrammelled talent as an insomniac, OCDish, ADHDish poet about town (now that’s worth the price of admission alone. Shut up).

Some of the serial point-missers that live among us have been exposed.

Emergency Contact has had some good practise at saying, “No, that just doesn’t work.”

A detective agency has come into being and the case remains, as yet, unsolved. (Honestly though, that’s kicking my arse a little. Bird Flew Press are not paying up until I find Fruitnose.)

And that’s just to name a few of my incredibly well thought out and highly researched points of view and “ideas”.

So, patient readers, I hope that in among the atrocious spelling (nope, still not getting any better. It seems to be terminal) and the challenging grammar, you’ve had a bit of fun along the way. Yeah?

Onwards and upwards.

Yours,

Nick (Grey Area)

Good Times

It's good to mark the important milestones in your life. You all remember your twentyfirsts and graduations. I would like to mark some of the smaller moments as well.

So, as an insomniac, I would like to present a selection of great times in my life and what they brought to mind when I was there.

I wonder why I'm so hungry, I musn't have had enough dinner. I keep thinking of Pi.

I wonder if those crazy Jacksons will get back together. I mean, Michael's going back out onto the road. They must be jealous.

Fibonacci time. I wonder if they'll make Tom Hanks wear that wig in The Da Vinci Code Part II?

Collect the whole set, and you have witnessed what I like to call "Goldilocks and the Three Mazdas."

Brute Boy Has His Uses

If my fairy godmother were to land on my shoulder and grant me three wishes, my first wish would probably be the ability to change my own size. (That is, if she survived the experience… I am Australian and therefore tend to reflexively swat at things that land on me. I made myself really popular once at a Buddhist retreat by arriving, sitting down, and then loudly saying to Emergency Contact, “Kill it, kill it, kill it!”. I was referring to a mosquito the size of a mouse that had landed on a part of my shoulder I couldn’t reach. They all looked at me in horror, but seriously, if that thing had started sucking, I would‘ve been a desiccated husk within three minutes). 

I would ask to be able to reduce my size because, at this stage in life, there are few advantages in being large. Not none, few.

I am not obscenely large, and when I stand among ‘the kids’ these days, I’m probably closer to an average height than I‘ve ever been. The kids are tall but they have this lean, thin, flexible thing going on, whereas I am, well, broad and deep and inflexible. The type of broad and deep that can only come with age (and food and beer).

You may be saying to yourself, “ah, stop your whinging”, but listen up.

Depending on nationality of the make, I take between a size 13 - 15 shoe… or I would if there were ever any left in the shop. I think the averages have moved and the shops haven’t twigged.

Also, XXL is so hard to find. You can find the crap, boring shirts easily because no one wants them, but the amount of nice stuff I see in Medium and Large that just hangs there untouched is galling. It only takes two other guys to like the same stuff that I do and be roughly the same shape, and there goes an entire season’s wardrobe. And I live in a city of five million people, so there’s always two other guys ahead of me.

I don’t find many genuinely comfortable cars. 

For a while there, I used to work hard at getting the bulkhead seat for international flights. They are typically between row 48 and 52 on a Boeing 747-400 and I liked seat A or J. 

I tell you this because I don’t guard that information jealously, any more. 

Whilst it was good to get the legroom, every other big bloke had worked this out as well. You invariably ended up sitting three abreast with two other guys whose shoulders were also wider than their seat. At dinner time we’d have to coordinate who was going to lean forward to have a bite. Middle first, then the two outsides, then middle, then outsides. 

Talking of international travel; when I’m in Asian countries it just becomes ridiculous. My workmates in Hong Kong actually called me Mr Incredible or Buzz Lightyear. They thought it was funny to see how many of them they could hang off me. Sort of like some amenable, semi-intelligent beast of burden.

I’m expensive to feed and water, and I am regularly at private dinner parties where the portions are dainty and I end up scrounging in the kitchen when I should be swapping witty bon mots.

I can’t turn around in my own bathroom without cracking something and even supposedly “high” cupboards are at head cracking height when I stand up under an open door. (Emergency Contact finds there is nothing more amusing than watching me stand up underneath something and hearing the crack, followed by the swearing). Kitchen benches are too low and couches are rarely deep enough for me to lounge in.

When exercising, training partners tend to go flying if there is a sudden release or application of my mass. 

Actually, I’m not complaining about that one. That’s usually hilarious. There’s this thing called a “three man pull-up“. When you’re out in the wild and you’re doing your running and stuff and it comes time to do pull-ups, two of you hold a hand each of the person lying down. The two standing brace themselves and the puller lifts themselves into the air, like a lying down chin-up without a bar. My trainer likes us to go till failure, so when you are the puller-upper, you get to your last possible one and then suddenly let go. My old training partner was about 60% of my weight. I’d let go and, in the periphery of my vision, I’d watch him fly off like a champagne cork. It never got old.

Three times a week I hear someone say, “Get Nick to help you. He can carry that.” It’s nice for the simple male ego, it’s not so good for the aging back or work priorities.

I’ve lost count of the number of times an evening’s been ruined by an idiot with a keenly honed short-guy-complex who has decided that I’m the bunny he’s going to use to prove the world wrong. There’s no good way out of this one. You either become a bully, or beaten up. 

But, little guys are like this for good reason.

Real, heterosexual women don’t care about little guys. They’re polite about it, but they just don’t trust or like them. It must really get up little guy’s noses (If you can get the angle right. It’s quite difficult to do, all the way down there. Oh, stop, my sides.). If you are a smaller bloke reading this, I apologise, but it’s got nothing to do with any of us. 

You didn’t choose to be little (and deformed and angry) and I’m not bragging because it’s nothing I’ve got control over either (In my world, you can only brag about things you‘ve got some control over). But if she’s told you, “no, I like you that way. You’re more efficient and like a teddy-bear”, you’ve just been handed the consolation prize. 

She is not looking at you and sub-consciously registering, “when angry hordes come over the hill for my children and my food, I’m safe because I have brute-boy over there”. 

She has to consciously dig around for modern reasons why you are useful, like, “He‘s got an excellent head of hair. His stand-up comedy is very well-timed.“ 

Having to appeal to rational thought is a serious handicap in the mating game.  

Another upside to being large is that if you are used to carrying yourself around, you are usually, incidentally, quite strong. It came in handy yesterday in one of those one-in-a-million incidents.

I was driving through an area that is not filled with the crème-de-la-crème of society. A good way to illustrate this, and I’m not kidding, is the fact the local pub was advertising “Bogan Bingo.” A little way up the road I saw an angry, angry conversation between what I guessed was mother and daughter. Daughter was gesticulating in such a way as to suggest, “I know it’s a ridiculous situation, but you are not helping!” and pointing at her small son. 

Her five-ish-year-old was bent over at right-angles with his head wedged in a fence designed to keep school kids from throwing themselves into the street and under your wheels. It was the type of area where it’s not so surprising to see people with their heads wedged in things.

This was a job for Super Grey Area. (Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a guy with an appreciation for the subtleties in an argument. We‘re saved!) 

I was going to help. 

At worst, I could protect the kid’s head from being knocked off by passing traffic by positioning my car sensibly and calling the fire brigade. Or, I could use my jack to part the bars and grease up his ears with oil to facilitate his escape. 

Or, I could walk up to the bars, pull them apart with my bare hands, push the child’s head down into the gap and back into his grateful mother’s arms. 

Which is what I did. 

I then dusted my hands off, said something along the lines of, “Nothing to it ma’am, all in a days work,” strode back to my car and drove off… giggling like a huge, self-satisfied 14-year-old girl.

Movie Reviews And Considered Thoughts On Cinema

Recently, while I was in a helpless state, Emergency Contact super-glued me to the couch and pinned my eyeballs open. She then, in revenge for some foul deed I must have committed, ordered Mama Mia through the cable movie thingy.

I should show my hand and admit that I was not a fan of Abba the first time round; but holy fuckin’ tone deaf geriatrics, Batman! What a disaster of a film that is.

It’s a nasty little immoral plot, focusing on a charmless, self-obsessed brat who feels that everyone is there for the simple task of pleasing her. It smelled a bit like opera.

All the leading women, who should know better, employ an acting style I shall now coin as ‘high times require high volume’. Honestly, I haven’t seen so many old hags yelling at each other since last year’s over 80s quidditch grand final.

The island it is filmed on should be one of the stars of the show, but somehow the cinematography failed there as well. You see more alluring shots of the Med in a five minute segment on Getaway.

You can’t relax and let it wash over you either. At any moment, one of the aging stars could break a hip, an arm, or into song. That is extremely nerve wracking with Pierce Brosnan deciding to add his tonsils to the line-up. 

What. Was. He. Thinking? 

I thought his people were supposed to be naturally musical. I can’t look at him the same way ever again. I have seen the karaoke/Gong Show/Red Faces moment, where all dignity is carefully bundled up and chucked out the nearest window. He’s farted at the dinner table and it will add to the gaping void in my life. 

I give it two technicoloured-Bjorns, out of ten. 

Some of you will have been aware of another gaping void and been able to put a name to it. Others will have simply been feeling that certain something, akin to an itch in a phantom limb. What’s been keeping you up at night, or adding to the Sunday afternoon depression, has been the absence of a third Underworld film in your lives. 

No, really.

Well thankfully, thoughtful film producers have sought to fill that aching chasm. But they have missed a marketing opportunity too, I think. 

It should be called, Underworld - I’m Lycan It!

And no, I won't be seeing or reviewing it. I just needed to get that off my chest.

Midlife Crisis? Me?

Sometimes, important life facts are pointed out to me in such a way, they cannot help but goad my contrarian nature, and thereby elicit a completely inappropriate response.

I recently celebrated a birthday that , by the old rules, would have me in the middle of my term here.

To which I internally said, “Pah!”

Mother Nature heard me and laid out a glaring hint or two.

A few days ago, I managed to throw myself out of the shower in such a way that I broke the shower curtain, the wall mount for the shower rose, electric hair clippers, the top of the toilet and very nearly my ribs.

Nature continued to give me the hint by gently suggesting throughout the week (with red hot pokers) that maybe I hadn’t just bruised myself a little, maybe there was some more going on with my torso than what you used to bargain for when you came off the footy field.

So I scheduled a day off work. I could live without the stress of going from doctor's waiting room, to x-ray clinic, back again etc, whilst fielding calls and generally clock watching.

The leave day arrived. 

And I went out and bought a ute.

In your face, Father Time. 

Obama-rama or Baracknaphobia

In no particular order, my observations on the election in the States.

Economics

The US has the right to be hopeful about Obama’s economic sense. As we learned yesterday, he promised his girls a puppy if he won.

That is really sensible considering he could have said ‘pony’ or 'Pennsylvania’.

Social Stability

It used to be said that whenever Mohamed Ali won a fight, crime rates in black ghettos would plummet. The disaffected felt that they had a voice and visibility.

Now, if winning a fist fight against one opponent can do that, becoming the most powerful man in the world should make Los Angeles, Shangri-L.A.

Respeck to Your Fathers, MF

He didn’t get there on his own, though. In an uncharacteristic fit of churlishness, Obama is yet to thank all that have helped pave the way, or as we say in the business, “Softened up the crowd.”

Dennis Haysbert, Sammy Davis Jr, Danny Glover and Morgan Freeman. They have all played black US Presidents (or are playing them).

The Rudd = Dud Effect

You can be as happy as you like tonight America, what with your well mannered, diplomatic, youthful, intelligent, socially progressive leader. We had one of them for a while. What’s that sound? Yup, that’s the sound of soggy rhetoric hitting the floor.

The Speech

I got a little misty when I was listening to the tail-end of his victory speech on the evening of his win. He introduced the final theme that underpins the big idea, thus:

“This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight's about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons -- because she was a woman and because of the colour of her skin. And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America -- the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.”

He used the refrain: “Yes we can,” as he named the challenges to overcome, and related them to historic events that had occurred during Ann Cooper’s life.

Not to seem like a daft whitey foreigner, but the rhythms and the cadences put me in mind of Martin Luther King, particular with the anticipated return to the chorus. “Yes we can.” The crowd obliged by ‘giving witness’ and chanting back the chorus as he went. There wasn’t the operatic soaring of the voice and tremulous dramatic tones that MLK would hit, but there was something to it that smacked of the delivery style. There wouldn’t have been a dry seat in the house.

The content of the speech was pretty bloody good too, if you adjust for the usual amount of American patriotism. I can only imagine how many times Toby Zeigler’s rubber ball must have bounced off that dividing wall, as Sam Seaborne laboured away at the finer points.