The Return

You can learn important things from telly.

In the 70s, I used to sit with Mum and Dad and watch The Ascent of Man. The narrator and author, Jacob Bronowski, presented ideas that were mostly beyond my ken. Mostly. (Say it like Newt. It’s more fun that way.) I was in single digits and could only grasp some of the more obvious points. Like silly Leonardo and his heavier-than-lead, air-screws. But I felt important and included, sitting with my parents, watching complicated things being presented.

Recently, I had one of those moments where I was reminded of Bronowski, telly and learning larger truths. (The Bronowski moment is here. And probably better seen after my lightweight idea.)

I heard a sublime rant of Eddie Izzard’s this week, where he describes sawing wood. He impersonates the middle bit of sawing, where you aren’t trying to get it started and you’re not worried about it snapping off and falling on the floor. The bit where you can do big, full length cuts. He does a sound effect of the satisfying bit and says, “Where you feel like your dad. Sundays at my place. Saw some wood and then off to watch The Ascent of Man… snore.” It’s said with genuine affection and I went rushing off to a similar place in my mind where telly could be a major contributor to a profound experience.

In one of the later series of Buffy, she dies. She is then resurrected and she comes back all wrong. It’s not what I would call an entirely successful raising of the dead. She is depressed and then elated. She behaves oddly and the overwhelming impression is that you’re mucking with the essential order of things when you forcefully intervene in the birth/death cycle.

The same thing has happened to Poh on MasterChef.

Ah, Let 'Em in. How Much Damage Can They Do?

China. The Middle Kingdom. Mysterious Orient. Most populous place on Earth. Home of the panda… So I’m going there in October to give them a piece of my mind. Emergency Contact is part of the tour, which will be nice. I expect her to do the holding while I do the kicking.

The Chinese like a visa process. They appear to like a lengthy visa process. In fact, when you are accidentally arriving in the middle of the 60 year anniversary of Communism, they like a visa process that takes a quarter of a year.

EC and I toddled off the shops to get the snaps done that are required to go on the visa applications and the little Chinese man at the photo shop must have thought that we looked like the sort that would bring valuable tourist dollars into the homeland, because he gave us a leg-up with our visa applications.

He left the camera on a macro sort of fish-eye setting and it has given me and EC a particular kind of look. There is absolutely no way that the Chinese authorities are going to look at those photos and think to themselves, “Ahhh, here are the deadly secret agents the west are sending to bring down Communism in our glorious 60th year.”

No, they’re more likely to be wondering why we’re not riding around in a special bus under adult supervision.

Maron Blando

There is unexpected fun to be had everywhere you look. That’s why I like it here. For instance, I don’t expect much from free-to-air telly, but last weekend a little pearl dropped out of the box and rolled across the floor at me.

I found myself accidentally watching Teahouse of the August Moon. This piece of genius gets 4 ½ stars in A Grey Area’s List of Unintentionally Hilarious Films.

You might have thought that Mickey Rooney delivered a deft and subtle performance as Mr Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but I see you and raise you - MARLON FREAKIN’ BRANDO AS A JAPANESE VILLAGER AND TRANSLATOR! (Yup. Look at that picture again.)

I have never seen anything of such breathtaking and insouciant racism in my entire life. I wept laughing.

I know zat is long. Solly Bors.

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!

Just Throw the Empty Husk Away

Sometimes, you gotta use these forums to tackle some of the tougher topics in life. Here we go.

Navels.


Emergency Contact is funny about them, so I have to type quietly. She thinks they’re unnatural and is a bit put out by even having to wear one. Even mentioning them puts her dead off, so there are hours of fun to be had by walking past and giving hers a quick little poke. (Now that Mollie Sugden is dead, I can make statements like that and the studio audience doesn’t react at all.)

During the Renaissance, there was a lot of tension between theological groups as to whether Adam got one. I can understand that. Evolutionary biology, to my mind as solid as anything else we’ve got going on, hadn’t really put its hand up yet. The argument tended to rage around whether God had pushed his pinky into the play-doh in an effort to give the mold some authenticity, or whether it really didn’t come up until the first umbilical cord made its appearance. (That last sentence should have EC squirming.)

Good or bad, insey or outsey, natural or not, I’m normally not so fussed (although a really prominent outsey can make me lose my appetite). But mine is giving me pause. I don’t even know what verb to use when I describe the phenomena.

My level of navel lint production/collection is reaching heights I never thought possible. It must be production. I just don’t wear clothes of that colour, so I can’t be collecting it. I’m worried my stuffing is coming out. I am losing a bit of weight, but I had put that down to exercise. I got in the shower the other day and a small hall-runner rug fell out. I’m going to collapse at work one day like Obi Wan Kenobi and they’re just going to kick through my empty clothes and say, “Yep, all empty. Not much of a surprise though, he was an NLP Grandmaster.

(You thought that stood for Neuro Linguistic Programming didn’t you? Nup. Navel Lint Production.)

Close, But No Bamboo

The knockers are always going to take a shot at you when you are at the top.

As a world reviled naturist* and panda expert, I and my roving assistants are constantly in the firing line of those that would tarnish our good name. But let me say right here and now that we at the Grey Area Institute for Fuzzy Things are not so easily fooled.

Here again, we see an elaborate hoax designed to fool us into producing bogus work. On his travels, some people have attempted to dupe my colleague Gooby, into spending time at their institute, studying the “pandas”. He posted me this revealing photo last night.

But my esteemed workmate and friend saw through the charade almost instantly. He knows damn well that you can’t put two badgers and a skunk on stilts and pass them off as pandas.

*Yes I know. It’s a joke, Joyce.

Have We Learnt Nothing?

I note with alarm that the TerreStar satellite is now in orbit.

It is the largest satellite to have ever lived and is apparently self aware and plotting our downfall as I type.

From the infallible Wikipedia (with a little scientific help from A Grey Area):

TerreStar (aaaahhhhhhh! Who put the terror in TerrorStar? They did. Sing it with me now.) was launched at 17:52 GMT (We’re having a Greenwich Mean Ol’ Time. It’s the only time you can have when TerrorStar’s around) on 1 July 2009, during a two hour launch window that opened at 16:13.

The launch occurred towards the end of the window due to bad weather in the first hour (brought by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as they rode towards the facility), followed by two aborted countdowns for launch attempts (the terrified scientists knew they had created evil, and just as Dr Frankenstein rued his decision the minute the lightening struck the doohickey, they knew they were in some deep poop and tried twice to abort it.) scheduled at 17:12 and 17:34.

The launch was conducted by Arianespace (lotta Frenchies in that organisation. Noticed how well they’re doing with aeroplanes lately?)….After launch, the satellite separated from the carrier rocket (and then ate it) into a geosynchronous transfer orbit.

(Now get ready for the truly worrying bit) It will subsequently raise itself into geostationary orbit by means of its onboard propulsion system (it will then ready, arm and point its onboard megadeath-ray and hold us all to ransom). It will be positioned at 111° West longitude (multiply 111 by 6, people, it’s all there in front of us…), and is expected to operate for 15 years. (A period that shall henceforth be known simply as “The Reign of Terra”) A second satellite, TerreStar-2 (Also known as T2. Son of T or T-Wrecks) is scheduled for launch in 2010. (We won’t be here to witness it.)

So long, it's been aaaaaahhhhhhhhh

Previously Unheard Definition of the Word 'Lucky'

Dr. Phil McGraw is bringing his live show to Australia in August and one lucky Angus & Robertson Rewards member will have their life changed forever.








(Thanks to ICHCB)