Meanwhile, In Paradise

Mother Teresa: Oooo. Look, it’s lovely. Look at those fluffy clou... ahhhrr. Bugger.
Howard Florey: Yes, I know what you mean, it’s absolutely glorious it’s like a aaahhhhr fuck, are they biting?
Albert Einstein: No. There would be no biting. It would mess with the aaaarghh fuck. I think they are. Bugger.

Lower.

Ve cum back as ze mosquito. Ya?

The Wire

Buncha ya'll be watchin the nu series on channel too bout the crime an shit
I'z 2 steps aheda ya an i can gi you da skinny
Shit duz not pay
Evry polise on dis show duz 1/2 the da work o' da crims
Da crims is sum hard workin muddas

Judges Agree With Sailor

It’s not often that my little breast swells with nationalistic pride, but I found myself getting a little misty and turning towards the flag while I was listening to the news last night.

One of the great joys of living here is that we have a constitution. We can put that document in front of learned minds, and test the legal validity of our institutions and the decisions of our leaders.

We have recently ripped down the entire edifice of our military justice system, based on the challenge of one badly behaved Naval seaman and ratified by our High Court.

That’s all well and good. That shows we're still not beyond 'taking on the man'.

But what I like more is, that the honourable, esteemed and blustery institutions of this wide, brown land, were brought undone by a tea-bagging.

Australia: Where you can stuff the government, just by lofting your nads onto the forehead of a workmate.

They Are Out There

Earlier in “Close, But No Bamboo” one of my specialist roving correspondents saw through a vile conspiracy to dress up certain non-panda animals as pandas.

Another from the crack roving team has uncovered further developments in this insidious game. There’s more to this than just pandas, though.

I thoroughly recommend visiting and laughing at the poodle shaved to look like a buffalo.

A big thank you to Field Specialist Sarah for the tip off.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/howaboutthat/6087174/Poodle-power-dogs-creatively-groomed-to-look-like-pandas-and-camels.html

Status Update In A Self Referential Universe

Time for some blog housekeeping.

So, the first thing I hope you may have noticed, is the search field top right of the page (been there a little while now). It will first give you results from A Grey Area and then some choices.

You might be thinking to yourself, “I wonder what that wise, kind and modest fellow at AGA thinks about this particular subject?" Or you might be thinking, "I wonder what I can sue him for?"

Enter your search term in the field, it pulls out the blobs where the subject has been mentioned. If you click on “More Results” it takes you into a nifty little personalised Google search where you can choose “Search Blogs” or “Search the Net”. So, you can see what your uncle Nick (me) has been saying about things, and then check if he’s even close to being right about it. Bags I know the answer to that little chestnut.

Got what you wanted? Click on the subtle little “X” to the left of the search field to fold the search results back up - you’re back in the standard view.

Another addition I like is the widget that takes you into the Goodreads site. It has a nice picture of the book I‘m currently dribbling on when I fall asleep after two pages. I have only recently joined the site and think it’s suitable social networking for me. It’s not about updating your status and trying to have heaps of friends. It’s about sharing good books and in my case, I am doing reviews where I feel I can be helpful because I am very sensible and you should listen to me. The bummer is, now I have to be a bit careful about what I actually admit to reading. That Neal Asher book on my bedside table is just resting on the Proust so the literature doesn’t get a tea-ring on the cover. Yeah… that’s it.

Next month, I’m putting in a water slide, just over there next to the “Themes” list, and maybe a bug-zapper.

Heidi Called. She Wants Her House Back

With this sort of house design, you’re shooting yourself in the foot while accidentally banging your head.

Its attraction must be that it's a cheap method of construction, because you’re only really paying for two thirds of a normal house.

Instructions: Put up two walls. While cement is wet, let walls fall towards each other. Return unused roof and nails for full refund.

The thing that keeps looming large in my mind is the crap that must collect behind the furniture that can't be pushed any closer the wall.

When I first met Emergency Contact, she was living in an attic and throwing cats at passing school children. (One of those things is not actually true.) The pitch of the roof meant there was only a two foot stripe down the middle of the room where I could actually stand up. The rest of the room was essentially unusable.

This is where the house design above seems like a false economy. Look at how much space is actually wasted - all the floor area you can't really use because you can't walk up to it. I reckon you'd have to measure in about six foot from any floor/roof join before you found enough useful airspace to stand... and you haven't even got the furniture in yet.

In the snow fields of Nordic countries and Switzerland, maybe there's a call for it. The terror of tonnes of snow busting through the shallow pitch of your roof might be a real thing.

But this place is just up the road from me. Sydney’s land prices are steeper than that roof. It's the middle of winter and it was 25 degrees C yesterday. Global climate meltdown and economic warming (what - ever) lead me to ask, “Come now, chalet you can’t be serious?”

Thank you and good night.

Bitter and Twist Tops

Had a birthday yesterday. Not just any old birthday, either. Mine.

The thing about going over the hill is, you start to pick up speed.

I just want to have a go at all those people who say, "Better than the alternative," when I complain about getting old. I think that shows a lack of imagination. What about remaining eternally youthful? What about becoming a cyber Grey Area. What about being uploaded into a vast alternate reality where no-one gets dodgy hips and old lady knees?

I'm just saying, is all.

Nature: That's Just Species We Haven't Eaten Yet

On the same day that I was laughing at the uproar caused by a Tongan family eating their dog, I heard an environmentalist complaining that the flying fox was moving south.

To both these things, I have to ask, “so what?” (This is not existential angst driven by another approaching birthday, either.)

First of all, and I reckon we can knock this one on the head pretty quickly, some people ate their dog and the New Zealand SPCA got their knickers in a knot about it. The Chief Exec had this to say:

"Over the next few days, we hope to talk to Tongan community leaders and enlist their involvement in making the community more aware that slaughtering and eating pets is unacceptable,"

This racist goes by the name of Robyn Kippenberger. Her family were obviously famous for slaughtering kippens for their meals, so she needs to pull her head in. I bet she’s a vegan, so, you know, she’s undernourished and in a bad temper. I hope the Tongan community leaders answer the front door to her while thoughtfully chewing on terrier leg.

She’s a speciesist, as well. The last time I met a cow, it had the biggest brown eyes, and the cutest eyelashes, and it knew when to go in to be milked and definitely recognised its name. I also had the yummiest steak for dinner. Robyn hasn’t ear-bashed my community leaders yet.

Why does this relate to flying foxes moving south? Well, yet again, I feel there’s some one-eyed self importance going on, but this one is harder to justify.

The flying fox is moving south, reportedly because of climate change and there is a significant risk that more cases of Hendra virus will occur because bats are excellent carriers of it.

Apparently, the virus is particularly rough on horses. If the horses are stupid enough to be kissing bats, they get what they deserve. But, with the equine flu epidemic fresh in my mind, I have to ask again - what the hell do we use horses for anyway? They are not useful for anything other than gambling and I bet Aristocrat could fill that gaping chasm if it appeared.

Ok, I’ve gone off track here a bit, but the same person who was bleating on about bats migrating, was also telling me how bad species extinction is in general. Like it’s never happened before. On any other day, I would probably basically agree with them, but the holier-than-thou tone stuck in my craw, so I started thinking of how I would argue with them if I was doing the interview.

First of all – preservation of species. Really. For what reason? We haven’t been able to do it in the past. In fact, we’ve only been here for ten minutes and before us there were mass extinctions all the time. The Cambrian explosion saw the beginning of most types of complex life, but almost none of it survives today. What nostalgic yearning makes us believe we can halt the process? There’s epochism going on as well. Suspending evolution maintains things in their niche. Where are the niche fillers of the future going to go if we’ve stopped everything? (Like we could.)

If the answer is that we are the cause of the die-off and therefore should stop it, that’s sort of like saying we’re operating outside nature and shouldn’t really be here. In the grand scheme of things, we should also legislate against big meteors slamming into the earth.

If the argument comes from flat-out self-preservation, I can respect it. We need the Amazon because of all of the likely cures for stuff we will find in there, but don’t get all misty eyed about the spiky haired, six toed marmoset, he’s done nothing for you lately, except look cute.

The next time some sandal wearer marches into an area and announces that it’s of environmental importance, they should only be allowed to stop people from farming there if their own family is willing to live on exactly the same income as the locals.

I want to hear an environmentalist get righteous about the extinction (or near extinction) of polio and smallpox. If they don’t, they’re just being hypocritical. The bio-diversity argument is only attractive while you’re defending charismatic mega-fauna. As soon as the kids are put at risk, all bets are off.

The mosquito is the deadliest animal on earth. If you could drive into extinction the mosquito that carries malaria and save a million human lives a year, I reckon you’d be mad not to give it a go. (And possibly immoral. I’m not sure. I find ethics confusing.)

As for those panda breeding programs that are finally starting to become successful… well, there we are just fooling around with the forces of evolution in ways that will come back and bite us on the bum anyway.