To Your Good Elf

A Christmas mystery.

Where is Nick?

He's in front of a snow covered Christmas scene, but by the blurring, he appears to be bouncing around.

Are his little feet cold in the snow?

Here he is inside Santa's Helper's secret cave.

A secret cave, complete with beaded seat.

Where could Nick be?

Obviously, riding around in Santa's Helper's cab.

The thing that really charmed me about this lunatic, is that he is an Afghani Muslim.

He was, and I quote, "Trying to show some respect to the Australian culture and religion. I move here, is good, they say to me 'Why you do it' I say to them, 'To show that is easy to respect the other people's religion'."



He asked me what Christmas music I wanted to hear. I wanted to say 'None, it drives me up the wall' but thought better of it.

"Mariah Carey, All I want for Christmas," I said.

"No problem. I got." He pulls out an enormous CD collection, and puts his hand straight on it.

This is the vigour and tenacity that Afghans apply to celebrating a cultural tradition that isn't even theirs...

We are currently prosecuting a war on their home turf over something a few of them are genuinely passionate about.

We don't stand a chance.

Pug Nosed And Overweight

I’ve spent a bit of time around cars and am fairly hard to trick or impress with cabin gadgetry, but I learnt something recently about a feature that I found truly new and remarkable.

Currently in my clutches is a Peugeot 206. Emergency Contact is out of town with the owner of the car, and the keys were left with me to ‘look after’.

I used to be a big fan of the old 306’s and have driven a few of them. This 206 is not old. Just between you and me and the escargot, I’m not in love.

It’s pretty tall, so the body roll is alarming. The understeer is cataclysmic and the pedals are put so close together, I am forced to drive barefoot using only my big toes, leaving my feet flat on the floor.

It is very French: Why? Because things are on the wrong side, it smells pungent and the cigarette lighter is placed on the console as though it still plays an important part in the drivers life. If it was any more French, it would be smoking a Gauloise wrapped in a Gitane.

That’s not always a bad thing, it’s just a thing.

One of my objections to the way we often receive an import from Europe in this country, is that the manufacturers often choose the cheapest possible method for putting the steering wheel on the other side of the car.

They get the pedals and the wheel swapped over, sure, but nothing else is really dealt with. The stems on the steering column remain in the Euro configuration. We become used to having the indicator on the gear-shift hand, but that is not ideal. The left hand is too busy at times. When you are changing lanes or coming in and out of a corner (signalling) is also when you should be changing gears. It’s not insurmountable, but it’s not the best.

It also uses lots of indecipherable little symbols instead of words, all over the place – sign of a car company that did not want to pay for translation and different button manufacture for the EU. I can understand that, and eventually I'll understand the buttons. I can tell that the owner has not bothered to learn the function of some of them, they look unused.

One feature I am rather charmed with though, is the ability to change the pitch of the headlights from a dial in the cabin. You wind it up, and the headlights are stargazing. You wind it down, and it bats its eyes coquettishly. I surmised it might be for reducing light-bounce when it snows. Smurf agreed, but added another reason to the mix.

When you are carrying around a big load in the back of a little car, it makes the nose point up. If that happens you can wind your lights down to where they should be.

I asked how he knew this because it sounds so odd and he doesn't drive. I mean, we don’t have it here, and I would have expected the nanny-state to have made that mandatory by now if it was a genuine safety feature.

He actually said that he’d been pulled over with mates in the back of the Ford Festiva, in Europe.

The copper had told them to turn their lights down.

“But this car doesn’t have that feature.”

“Well, your mates in the back there need to lose weight.”

Panda Update... Thanks to Lolcats For The Pic

As a world reviled expert in pandas, I was delivered an important research document recently. 

Giant Pandas: The Last Refuge. (A DVD that came with my copy of the Sunday Telegraph).

Choice quotes (in an almost un-manipulated order): 

“For nearly a decade, these Chinese scientists have scoured the jungle for these elusive animals.” 

“Black and white on an entirely green background.”

“Eat for 17 hours a day... and then sleep.”

“Eat up to three different parts of the same bamboo patch.”

“… are so experimental in their younger months, that they will even explore small trees. But as they age, will lose their interest in other things, and only eat bamboo.”

“A diet that yields just 17% usefulness to the panda’s digestive tract.”

“… falls instantly asleep where it feeds when it is full.”

“The male, named ‘Lucky‘, is turned in by local villagers who were tired of his barking, was found to have a taste for plastic raincoats, metal b.b.q. utensils, and anything else that would disrupt his digestive tract.” 

"... grown overweight in captivity, so that mating only results in loud barking and an unsuccessful wrestling match."

“... then developed a taste for antibiotics.”

“… blood tests to confirm whether they are entirely first cousins.”

“Enslaved by the need to feed constantly.”

“… and maybe we can learn from them, for ancient armies at war in feudal China, did not wave a white flag of surrender. Instead, as a symbol peace, they waved the image of the panda.”

At the start of the DVD, National Geographic had its old promo where it went through some average lifetime statistics, by way of pointing out what useful things you could be doing with your own - three days looking for the remote, 30 years asleep etc etc. They said, "on average you will laugh 18 times a day." That statistic is obviously not accounting for pandas.

 

Citizen Cane Toad

Scientific bodies in Australia have a rich and comedic history when it comes to dealing with threats to our native flora and fauna. If there’s some exotic species out there, threatening the local ecological balance, never fear, because our forward thinking visionaries in the natural sciences will save the day.

Remember the prickly pear? No, neither do I, but from the 1860s to the 1920s, it was eating 400,000 hectares of Australia a year. The boffins imported a beastie called the Cactoblastis Moth, and in a year it cleared 11 million hectares. I’m sure you do remember what happened next.

It ran out of prickly pear and started taking children and domestic pets. It was eventually controlled by military intervention, when it was driven out to sea. It took up residence on a desert island, just to the east of New Guinea, and there it lurks, biding its time and waiting for the right moment to launch its counter-offensive. The Japanese have immortalised it in several interesting documentaries, battling Godzilla. (Quite a good portion of the above two paragraphs is absolutely true.)

Another backfire in biological warfare we’re all aware of is your chosen method to control a pest called the Cane Beetle. Nobody remembers the Cane Beetle, but everybody knows the cure.

What you do is search other continents for the most hideous, poisonous, feral, fast breeding lump of revulsion you can find, and import a few of the fecund bastards into your untouched wilderness.

What they will then do is rip across your top-end, killing everything that’s ever looked at a toad and thought 'jeez, I’m hungry. I guess it will have to do'.

We here at A Grey Area Institute of Fuzzy Things and Monumental Balls-Ups call it the “Perhaps She’ll Die” method of ecological management. (As in, “I don’t know why she swallowed a fly.”)

They are not content with the fallout from the first attempt at vermin control by introducing something worse, though. It appears that the work experience boy has come bounding up the sandstone stairs at Sydney Uni, tugged on the sleeve of a sleeping professor, and when prof has jolted awake and wiped the dribble from the corner of his mouth, he’s been hit with something he just knows is going to get him back in the papers.

From the news this week:

Professor Shine says researchers are also interested in releasing small sterile cane toads in areas yet to be infiltrated by the invading pest…Professor Shine says if animals eat the smaller "teacher toads" they will become ill and learn that the unfamiliar amphibians are poisonous.

You just know that's going to go well.

What is wrong with these guys? Has the work experience boy noticed that students get nauseous around teacher and thinks that this translates into the wild?

I, for one, wouldn’t trust a Cane Toad to stay sterile. Knowing them, they would be released into an untouched part of the country, look around, notice how much room there was and promptly grow a fresh set of nads. They are the von Neumann device of the natural world and exist only to replicate until there is nothing but them from here to the horizon.

Another thing that worries me is: who gets the job of sterilizing Cane Toads? That’s a killer on your CV, isn’t it? Toad Knackerer.

“So, you're standing here alone at this lovely party, and I thought I’d come over and say hello. What’s your name and what’s your game?”

“My name is Kyle Sandilands, and I sterilize Cane Toads.”

“Wow. I did not see that coming. So, I imagine it’s a pretty specialised field.”

“Yeah it is really. It’s funny how you get into these things.”

“I bet.”

“I can't work out why, but I became one of the most hated people in the Australian media, so I needed a break, because actually I'm absolutely fantastic. So, this guy I know was helping out in the Chinese Panda breeding program. I became a Panda wanker. It was really fulfilling.”

“Really?!”

“Yeah. Artificial insemination is the only way that they can breed, and someone’s got to get the goo. From there I was meeting with the right sorts of people to get into the exciting field of toad snipping.”

“Wow. What an incredible story. Can you just go over there and stand under that grand piano, sitting precariously on that rickety hoist? Thanks.”

Fahreheit 72 Chapter 14 Is Up

Click here or use the Fahrenheit 72 link on the right

I Don't Know From Money, Honey

The world financial crisis has certainly captured the imagination of many. It's a constant on the news and experts have come out of the woodwork to tell us what to do with our dwindling this and inflating that. Many of my colleagues have never been more interested in the topic of money, and it is a constant in conversation around the office. 

It is interesting to most people in some way.

I will admit though, to not being one of them. 

I find it really dull. I'm sure I could understand the more esoteric elelments of the markets if I put my mind to it, but I have never been able to put my mind to anything that I don't care about. In our personal lives, Emergency Contact and I have realised this, and have paid someone else to look after all that stuff. Honestly though, that person could be ripping us off blind, and I wouldn't have a clue.

I think I have hit a new low in wilfull ignorance about the financial state of the world, though.

December's Vanity Fair came into the house yesterday, and after I had torn my eyes off a near naked Kate Winslet, I saw that Niall Ferguson has written an article spruked by the header: Is This The End Of Banks? And I stood there for a while and thought,

"Do you know, as big a fan as I am of Iain's, particularly of the Culture novels, I reckon it could be. His last couple have been really lame, and it has hurt me to say it. I even took Gooby aside recently and said that I hoped that we could still be friends, but I was going to have to say that Banks has turned out some crap lately. Thankfully, Gooby is a forthright fellow, and not only agreed with my premise, but agreed to keep it a secret. But is all of that unfair? I mean, he can still bring it back. He's quite young. He only has to turn out another Espedair Street or Excession and all is forgiven... strange thing for Vanity Fair to put on the cover though... predictions of a literary demise... wait... banks... oh."

You Can't Make A Spare Lady Out Of Me

I might have mentioned recently that in a fit of middle-aged pique, instead of going to the doctor for some banged up ribs, I bought a ute. (Midlife Crisis? Me?)

Now, it should be said that Emergency Contact is not entirely thrilled by the order in which things were done in this particular escapade. She likes the ute, and feels a certain oestrogen-fuelled fruitiness as she’s riding around in the passenger seat. But to be entirely honest about the situation - I didn’t fully follow her instructions when I went base over apex in the bathroom. That has led to a certain, not entirely unjustifiable, anger on her behalf at the latest developments. 

It’s been long enough that I felt I shouldn’t still be getting the amount of pain that I was. The X-rays I went for this weekend show three broken ribs, and one fractured. Fortunately nothing else, like punctured lungs or Homer Simpson Syndrome (although I think EC is willing to argue that one).

I will say this though. Knowing what’s up does make me feel better about some things. I sneezed two weeks ago and almost passed out. I haven’t done it since. Turning over in bed and hearing a grinding noise, accompanied by seeing stars, is no longer so mysterious. I know why push-ups have seemed as onerous as they have been lately. 

Mine is not the most serious injury in all of this, though. The muscles in Emergency Contact’s eyes have been badly sprained from the amount of rolling they’ve had to do.

Some December Housekeeping

It was brought to my attention by a reader that the  “Comments”  fields on this blog had seemingly disappeared. 

I agreed, and pointed out that I had cunningly disguised them by renaming them (it’s an old government trick, that one). Comments is now “_ Bits of proof that I’m not mumbling into the void”. 

She is by no means a silly person, and admitted to reading quickly. But I am very aware that there are certain pieces of etiquette that advise someone posting, not to make navigation difficult or obscure. They should make it all as easily and quickly accessible as possible. 

Sure, but at the same time, I like the sentiment that I had expressed in changing the title. So I will try to hit some midway ground and advertise the fact that it is there.

You can still comment, are more than welcome to comment, just treat the “…bits of proof…” link at the bottom, as the comment field.

On to another topic. I was pleased for Jo Blogs recently, when she picked up a nomination in Cleo’s “Next Top Australian Blogger” competition. Thoroughly deserved. As though maintaining it’s infernal balance, the universe coughed up a hair-ball of recognition in my direction.

A lovely official looking thing with lots of correctly spelt words and phrases like “For immediate release” and  all sorts of self-important gear landed in my inbox.

As a fellow blogger, I was invited to become a key member for this exciting new organisation. I was told about the critical role that I play in gathering, assimilating and disseminating news and commentary (you are already starting to see the hole in their research, I assume.)

The director is going to get in touch with me because of the valuable asset that we can be to each other. 

Adam Bitely, said director - of NetRightNation.com - host address for ‘Americans For Limited Government‘, is obviously in deeper kaka than he has any idea, if he thinks that the Aussie bloke who throws together A Grey Area, should be “an important member of the conservative blogosphere.”

Smurf suggested infiltrate, destroy, rebuild. I think that sounds too much like hard work. I might indulge in a casual bit of white-anting though.

But the alarm bells that sound in my head as I read their sign off, actually drown out the TV. 

“Americans for Limited Government is a non-partisan, nationwide network committed to advancing free market reforms, private property rights and core American liberties.”

Maybe I should join. As they say, "keep your enemas closer."