Instead, my knee is swollen from an old injury, I’m tired, I’ve been cold all day and I’ve got too much work to do and not enough time to do it in. At one point this afternoon, I toyed with logging on and posting

“If you want to read a blog, go ahead and write one. Let me know how it goes.”

I also thought of going back over my last 99 blogs and giving you a highlight from each one, in the spirit of a best of. But best ofs are lame at…well, at the best of times.

By now you have probably figured out that I’ve got nothing to write about this week. There’s no reason for this to be a surprise, though. I mean, what did I expect, really? I’ve got some Cuban cigars here on the shelf next to my computer, but is 100 blog posts really the right time to spark up one of those bad-boys? Is any event the right time to smoke a Cuban? Cigar, that is. It’s probably never the right time to set an actual Cuban on fire.

I guess what I’m doing now is exploring the myths we build up surrounding special events, and asking just how special they are. Events such as anniversaries and birthdays, for instance. Really, when it comes right down to it, does it make any difference if you’ve been with your partner for nine years and 364 days, or ten years? Shouldn’t every day be the celebration, and the landmarks just another day of celebration among the many?

As it turns out, tomorrow is also exactly six years and fourth months to the day that I met my partner. Perhaps I’ll light a cigar after dinner tomorrow. Or we could crack open a bottle of bubbly and toast the last wonderful six years and four months.

Or why wait for tomorrow. Sorry folks, I’m going to cut my 100^th blog short. Anything could happen between tonight and tomorrow, and I think nothing will make my aches and tiredness disappear like having a glass of something jovial while helping to make dinner. Maybe I’ll light some candles, too. For the table, not the kitchen. Chopping vegies by candle light is only romantic until you chop a finger.

Before I go, I’d like to say a very special thankyou to all of you. When I started this blog, it was really just a chance for me to make sure that I wrote something every week. It was more about the discipline of writing than the content. What it has become is a space for me to share my thoughts, play with new ideas and, every now and then, have a rant. And of course, the discipline factor has not gone away, so that even on the weeks when I have no idea what to say, I somehow manage to say it.

The thing is, without you I wouldn’t be sharing my thoughts with anyone, playing with new ideas would just be playing with myself, and my rants would be pissing into the void.

So, for reading my blog, I thank you.

Carpe wine-um!

MRJ

NB: with regard to setting Cubans on fire, I stated above that it is probably never the right time. I would like to amend that to never the right time. Buenas noches.

Consider a message I received from my daughter: Hey what u up to

Yes, I accept that young women of a certain age like to keep a certain emotional distance from their parents (and their fathers especially); and I also know I should be pleased at any communication from my offspring that doesn’t begin with “Dad can I have/will you do…”. But still, hey what u up to just doesn’t translate as “Hi dad, I haven’t spoken to you for a while, nor have I accepted your many invitations to dinner. Are you well?” Or perhaps that’s exactly what it really says when decoded. I’ll think about it.

At any rate, this is the problem with SMS. It’s even less reliable than face-to-face communication.

I’ve had a couple of recent experiences that are changing my position on texting though. The thing is, texting offers a permanent record of a conversation, which means one can look back over the conversation and discover who was right and who was wrong. And there’s nothing I love more than being right, except perhaps for food, sex, sleep, money, books, theatre, sunny days, music, roller coasters, clean underwear, holidays, health, friends, family, masturbation (don’t ever let anybody try and tell you it’s in the same category as sex), staring out the window, the sound of rain on a tin roof, swimming, children playing and choc-tops at the cinema. Right after all that stuff, I love being right.

Consider this text exchange, or texchange if you will.

Me: Can I interest you in laksa lunch?

Slipklvchovich: Today?

Me: My only day off?

Slipklvchovich: Done. Jimmie’s? 1230pm? Foyer?

Me: See you then.

That’s right. I arranged to meet Slipklvchovich at 12.30 in the foyer of Jimmy’s for a laksa. Can you imagine my surprise when I received a phone call from Slipklvchovich at 12.30 asking me where I was? He was phoning from the foyer of his office buiilding in Bondi Junction while I was waiting in the foyer of Jimmy’s Recipe in the city. A simple review of the texchange made it clear that Slippy had gotten it wrong, which pleased me not quite as much as the laksa I ate for lunch. Good laksa is also better than being right, but the two of them combined make for a very special day.

Then there was this one

L.A.: Hi, are you working this Saturday?

Me: Sure am. Do you want to drop by?

L.A.: Yes I am Neutral Bay until 12 so I could come over after that.

Me: Cool. It will be good to see you.

So, my friend L.A. was going to drop by my work when she finished at Neutral Bay. Except, she phoned me at around 12.40 asking me if I were home. Of course, I wasn’t. I was where I’d said I’d be. At work, waiting for her to come over for a visit. The anticipation of seeing a friend is also better than being right, but if you can manage the both feelings together, life is good.

I’m not sure if there’s anything that can be learned from all of this, but if there is it is probably that if you’re going to take the time to have a text conversation, you might as well read over it to make sure you know what you’ve arranged. Otherwise some jerk will put the conversation on the Internet just so he can boast about being right.

Some people are really petty like that.

MRJ

Rather disingenuously I suspect, the former Howard Minister Peter Reith claimed to have no idea. Meanwhile Sophie Mirabella, the current Shadow Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, seemed to be answering a different question when she suggested the police ought to be accurate in their descriptions of criminals. The question wasn’t about the police or the legal system though; it was about media reporting. In other words, neither of the Liberal Party representatives deigned to answer the question.

The reason the media prints the ethniciity of perpetrators is because the media (as a body) knows the best way to sell papers or gain viewers day after day is by creating a narrative, and the best kind of narrative is one that galvanizes the audience. One of the many ways to do this is to create a them and us narrative. Obviously, it makes the most sense to ensure that the them in question are not your core audience. This is pretty easy to do – just pick on any minority you like and you can demonise them to a tabloid audience.

So if it’s the media, does that mean we can blame those dirt-slinging journalists? Probably not. Let’s not pull any punches here – journalists are a dime and dozen and easily replaced. The best of them may spend their careers trying to uphold the principles of freedom of speech while adhering to their code of ethics, but sadly the majority are neither mentally nor morally equipped to fight the good fight for democracy and just hope to stay employed long enough to get on tv.

But what about Copy Editors? We know not to expect too much from journos, but surely a Copy Editor might be trusted to tone down inflammatory story bias? Wrong again, I’m afraid. Copy Editors are there to pick up the slack when a journalist accidentally hands in an unbiased story. If a story doesn’t have a slant, how are they supposed to sell it? Who are they supposed to sell it to? A story without bias doesn’t subscribe to a narrative, and a story without narrative doesn’t have an audience.

This brings us to the Editor, but as you’ve no doubt realised, he’s in on it too. In fact, you don’t get to be Editor unless you’ve spent your whole career proving again and again that you are a team player. And just like any team, they’re all right behind you right up until the moment when they can supplant you.

The Publisher is next in the chain of command, and he’s even deeper into the game than the Editor, if that’s at all possible. The Publisher is the one who employs the Editor – and will be the one to fire them if they don’t create the right kind of narratives to sell papers.

More often than not, the Publisher is answerable to the Board of Directors who, along with the Chairman, can be replaced at the next shareholders meeting if they perform poorly enough. In this case, performing poorly means loss of revenue, which is caused by loss of advertising income, which is caused by a decline in readership, which is caused by stories that don’t attract readers, which happens when the narrative of the newspaper is out of sync with the audience’s hopes and fears.

So does this mean the market is ultimately to blame for targeting minority groups as a sales strategy? Not quite. An unregulated market is responsible, not the market per se.

Which brings me back to Peter Reith and Sophie Mirabella’s responses to the question. The truth is they both know all of the reasons I’ve just outlined, but they can’t admit to them because of the narrative of the Liberal Party, which demands the market be unregulated. This is based on the idea that an unregulated market is always self-correcting. That unpopular activities will prove unprofitable and thus be phased out.

Which is fine – except it isn’t the market’s responsibility to protect citizens from unscrupulous business strategies. This is at the heart of all arguments to regulate the market. Not so that government can control how businesses make money, but so that businesses aren’t allowed to make money at the expense of citizens. The argument for a regulated market comes down to the assertion that there are some things more important than making money.

Insert pithy comment here

MRJ

Regardless, it isn’t the strangest present I’ve ever received. That honour goes to the aunt of an ex-girlfriend who, upon meeting me for the very first time one Christmas day (the aunt that is, not the girlfriend), promptly gave me a gift-wrapped can of deodorant with a little gift tag attached. I can’t imagine what she may have heard about me, or what her niece’s previous companions had been like, but I solemnly accepted the gift and thanked the strange woman with as straight a face as I could manage.

For the record, I don’t wear Brut 33.

The screwdrivers, interesting though they are, aren’t even the strangest gift my mother’s ever given me. Just last year, she gave me a pumpkin for my birthday. And other things, which of course I don’t remember. Possibly because they were over shadowed by a pumpkin. As it turns out, I’m quite keen on pumpkin and my birthday happens to fall in the middle of winter, which means giving me a pumpkin is almost the same as giving me a pot of pumpkin soup. I wouldn’t be displeased if I got another one this year. But still, it’s a strange gift to give somebody who is as simple to buy for as I am.

The things I traditionally like best are book vouchers and booze. That’s changed in recent times to be iTunes vouchers (for ebooks) and booze. Don’t buy me books, just give me vouchers. I like to choose my own books and when I’m given a voucher I even get a little giddy with joy at the thought of the books I’ll buy with it. Almost as if I’d actually drunk the booze that some other kind person had given me.

So why did my mother give me these strange screwdrivers that have taken up valuable real estate on my key ring for the better part of a decade? I’ve tried using them a handful of times but they are almost always too awkward to be right for the job at hand, whatever that job happens to be.

That is, until last Tuesday.

I probably should have gone to the men’s room before leaving Wollongong – but I didn’t, so by the time we reached Helensburgh (I was getting a lift to Sutherland) I was not only clenching hard but also visualising things like dams, closed faucets and nice, dry deserts. By the time I was dropped off at Sutherland, I was having trouble walking upright and had already made one of those bargains that we make with ourselves at different times, such as I don’t care how many trains I miss or what time I get home, I’m using the men’s room.

I made it. The relief was excruciating. It wasn’t until several long, happy minutes later that I realised I was locked in the men’s room and the window was too small to climb through. Through the frosted glass, I could see a train pulling out (this was the second one I’d missed) but the door was definitely locked, not stuck. I stayed calm and thought about my options. Bang on the door? Call for help? Phone Cityrail? Or reach into my pocket, pull out my keys and remove the lock from the door using the historically useless screwdriver my mother had given me?

Brilliant!

Just a few minutes later, as I deposited the dismantled lock into the stationmaster’s hand, he told me he had requested the lock be repaired two weeks earlier. When I suggested he place a sign on the door to let people know there was a risk to peeing – a risk greater than the one normally associated with public toilets in Sutherland – he looked at me as I’d just given him a can of deodorant for Christmas.

The moral to the story? No matter how crazy they seem, sometimes mothers know what they’re doing. Unfortunately, you can’t ever tell in advance whether they’re being insightful or just channelling their own mothers, so it’s best to err on the side of caution and pay attention. Also, remember to use the bathroom before a long car trip.

Thanks Mum xxx

MRJ

It all started when the new season went to air. Everyone was watching it and talking about it but I refused to be drawn in, opting to wait until the season finishes so I can watch all the episodes across one weekend. This is my preferred way to watch most television shows, even if I have been sucked in to watching the latest season of Mad Men one episode at a time.

At first I decided to read the Game of Thrones books merely as a way of delving into the story at my own pace instead of at the pace set by the networks. Now, I’m well into the third book and, having left the second season far behind, now find I couldn’t care less about seeing it on tv. I’ll almost certainly be finished reading the (currently) five book series well before the second season finishes airing. This is not the first time I’ve declared, nor am I the first to declare it, that the book is better.

The problem is I’ve been letting myself go. I haven’t ridden my bike for a couple of weeks, because if I catch a bus then I can read on the way. My brother kindly offered to give me the books in audio format so I could ride my bike with headphones on, but I rather suspect this was merely a Tyrion-style attempt at murdering me. I’m fairly sure that the correct medical term for people who ride a bike while wearing headphones is ‘a patient’.

I also haven’t gone to the gym in a couple of weeks. Or gone shopping. Or washed my clothes. I have bathed, but I’m more than a little ashamed to admit that I may not have worn underwear as often as I ought.

The lounge now has a permanent depression in the middle, roughly the size and shape of my arse. Or rather, the size and shape that my arse has become after not doing any exercise for several weeks and eating the kind of food that people eat when they are trying to avoid the time it takes to prepare proper meals (this is a verbose way of saying ‘pizza’). Today I ate McDonalds, which is simultaneously a low point and a high-five point.

I fear I am declining rapidly. Game of Thrones has become the only topic I’m able to speak about. Certainly, it’s all I was able to blog about this week.

When I caught a glimpse of a newspaper headline yesterday (some nonsense about the Speaker of the House of Representatives being in trouble for something or other), all I thought was that the Labor Party plays the game of thrones very poorly. As Cersei says in the first book, when you play the game of thrones, you win or you die – and it’s clear that Labor aren’t winning.

See what I mean? I’ve got nothing to say about anything unless it relates to Game of Thrones, or as it should more accurately be called, MRJ’s Getting a Fat Arse. While I struggle to reclaim my life from the fictional world of Westeros, fellow fans might find this amusing.

MRJ

Let’s start with Campbell Newman. We’ll start with him because if I finish with him I’ll end up ranting myself ill. His decision to ditch the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards to save the taxpayers of Queensland a whopping $244, 475, and thus ease ‘the cost of living’ – which has somehow emerged as yet another conservative slogan in place of policy announcements – is not really so surprising. It’s not exactly news that extreme wing politics (of either the right or the left) don’t like writers or artists in general for that matter. Those pesky scribes have a deplorable habit of disseminating things like new ideas, rational criticism and reasoned ethics. As a result, they tend to be classified as liberals, and if there’s one thing the Liberal Party can’t abide, it’s liberals.

Now I don’t care which side of politics you’re on. Pick up a history book – any one of them will do. Now flick through and have a look at what has happened around the world in places whenever governments begin silencing their artists. When the chroniclers of culture are not allowed to speak, it’s because the government doesn’t want things publicised.

I won’t belabour this point. There really isn’t any need. I suspect it’s merely a taste of what we can expect under an Abbot government, though. So strap yourselves in for a kind of Dark Ages Renaissance and don’t be surprised if there are a few book burnings to light the darkness.

This week has also seen the retirement from politics of Bob Brown. I’m sure he has many good reasons for wanting to leave politics. It can’t be pleasant being openly gay yet still be forced to occasionally be in the same room as Bob Katter. I suspect it wouldn’t be pleasant having an IQ above 70 and being in the same room as Bob Katter. I can’t help wondering why he’s leaving now though. Sure, he’s 67 and has been fighting uphill for many years with amazing successes (as the left measures things) along the way. He no doubt would like to spend some quality time with his partner and do things like the washing up, for instance. However, I can’t help this nagging suspicion…could it be that the writing is writ large upon the wall that at the 2013 Federal Election there will be a landslide Coalition win that will see the super mining tax repealed, the forests of Tasmania cut down and the Greens completely disempowered in the next Parliament? At 67, maybe Bob Brown just doesn’t want to commit to leading a voiceless party for what could end up being two or three terms.

And Bob Brown isn’t the only one who can see it coming. This week, John Howard was given an honorary doctorate from Macquarie University. As somebody pointed out in the SMH earlier this week, as Prime Minister John Howard oversaw the most drastic education funding cuts in memory, forcing universities to abandon the task of educating poor and middle class Australians and throw their doors open to high paying overseas students. As much as I love the influx of foreigners and the wonderful things they do for our economy (and much more importantly, our culture and cuisine), I’m less keen on increased class sizes and corresponding decreased student services and access to education for locals.

So why would he be honoured with an honorary doctorate which does little other than devalue the gruelling research work of actual doctoral students?

Perhaps it’s because Macquarie University knows which side their bread is buttered on, and it isn’t the outgoing Australian Labor Party. It’s the incoming Liberal/Liberal National Party of Queensland/Nationals/Country Liberals Coalition (you know, the ones who complain about the Gillard government having too many voices) that they will be asking money from very soon.

Liberals of Australia beware – the Liberal Party is on it’s way (along with the all the other parties they need to form government) and it aint gonna be pretty.

MRJ

One last thing – for the record, the current population of Queensland is 4,640,690. Scrapping the Premier Awards is saving the people of Queensland 5 cents per person per year. I’m sure that is a great relief to the people suffering under the burdens of the cost of living. Maybe now they’ll be able to afford matches to light the bonfires with.

So…

I’ve got this pair of underpants in my drawer that I don’t think are mine. I mean, they should be mine because they’re in my drawer and they look like most of my other underpants. You know, same brand and so on and so forth. This is part of the problem. Because they look like my underpants, it isn’t until I put them on that I realise there’s something different about them. It’s something to do with the waistband. It seems just that bit too narrow on the hips. I’m not talking about girth; I’m talking about the amount of vertical fabric on the hips. It just feels kind of odd, and I never realise that they’re the odd pair until I’m wearing them and by then it just seems silly to take them off again so I leave them on and spend the day feeling as if I’m wearing somebody else’s underpants. Like I’ve felt all day today.

I’m not just writing this to be gross. I think there’s an important metaphor buried in the idea of wearing somebody else’s underpants and feeling uncomfortable in them but I can’t seem to put my finger on what the metaphor is. That’s why I’ve had that previous paragraph sitting around for months just waiting for me to do something ingenious with. Now that I’ve committed to posting it, I will no doubt think of something brutally clever after it’s too late, but at least I’ve cleared one idea out of the filing cabinet.

Another idea I had was imagining that there was, somewhere, some kind of Utopian alternate universe where all of those ideas we have when we’re drunk are acted upon. You know, the ideas where you say “I’ve just had the best idea ever…” and you then go on to outline some scheme for making the world a better place. Such schemes normally involve everybody drinking a lot and not wearing very many clothes. They also normally mean that nobody will cut down any more trees or be mean to each other. So I’ve got this idea where all of these drunken schemes are enacted and it’s a wonderful world, but I don’t know what to do with this idea so I’ve decided to put it out there into the blogoverse and see what happens to it. Who knows, maybe like the underpants, the idea isn’t even my own. I may have just stumbled across it one night when I was drunk and thought it was my own.

I hope that’s not really how I obtained the underwear.

God only knows what I was thinking when I wrote a note to myself saying: “There are times when a txt just won’t do anymore. You have to bite the bullet and actually phone the person.” This was written at 11.25 am on 11 February this year. I’ve checked my diary and phone records and can’t see any reason why I would have thought this was worth recording for posterity. Maybe I was still drunk from the previous night and this was one of those ideas that are being put into practice in an alternate universe. Actually, it doesn’t sound too bad when I put it like that. I wouldn’t mind living in a world where people phone each other instead of sending text messages. Oh, wait a minute. That’s the world I grew up in.

Well, that’s a little disappointing. I was sure when I started that I would find some brilliant way to tie in the underpants dilemma and make use of the unknown metaphor. I thought the act of writing would be like opening up one of my drawers and reaching in with the confidence that what I drew out would naturally belong to me instead of finding I’ve written something that looks like mine but just doesn’t feel quite right.

Hang on a minute…

MRJ

So we chatted for a while, just catching up on the more than twelve years since we last spoke. That was last century, which doesn’t sound as ironic as it did a decade ago. Saying ‘a decade ago’ doesn’t sound as ironic as it did a quarter century ago. That’s enough of that. It’s depressing me.

There have been the usual changes. He got married, I got divorced. His wife is Russian, my partner’s German(ish). He’s now a teacher, I’m now a student. He’s fatter than me, I’m balder than him. He’s going deaf, I’m going blind. The conversation started to sound a bit like a Golden Girls reunion show.

Funny story about his Russian wife, by the way. When they met, she was a US resident. Apparently, you can get anything in America.

Anyway, the whole episode got me wondering about friendships in general. I’m locked into catching up with my new long-lost-friend in a couple of weeks, probably the day after I finally see another friend who I haven’t had time to see for a couple of months. In fairness, she hasn’t had time to see me either.

Then there are the friends who live in Melbourne, who I’m lucky to see once every year or two. Or three. You know how it is. The thing is, I’m not sure I understand why it is I spend so much of my time with acquaintances and struggle to find time to hang out with people with whom I share a deep emotional and/or intellectual bond.

On the other hand, I’m always surprised to have old friends at all – and not just because of my sweet-but-somehow-objectionable nature. It’s just that I long ago accepted it’s in the nature of friendships to end. Nothing is forever and people come and go from our lives, often without any discernible reason.

And speaking of relationships ending, if anyone from Belvoir is reading this then pay attention: you’re on thin ice. Having just seen Every Breath, I’ve realised that four of my five worst theatre experiences have been at the Belvoir. The others were Now That Communism Is Dead My Life Feels Empty, Being Harold Pinter and Buried City.

Yes, I know that was a strange kind of segue but I wrote the first half of this post before seeing Every Breath and it’s depth of paucity has befuddled my train of thought. The thing is, it’s rare to come across a production whose banality is only equalled by its pretentiousness. Considering that this is Benedict Andrews’ first production (as a writer), it seems strange for him to have a character pontificating on how dreary it is to be a world famous author. Regrettably, it wasn’t a lone low point. Every character paraded in front of us in an excruciating final ten minutes, moaning their private thoughts in a kind of faux-losophy to an audience who was still sniggering at the stupidity of the play’s nudity.

This production had no redeeming features. The performances were not so much phoned in as they were morse-coded and the set appears to have been designed by the same kind of visionaries who build two lane highways. With other shows I’ve disliked, I’ve always applauded the efforts of the actors; the only reason I applauded this time was because I couldn’t restrain my excitement that it was over.

And perhaps the reason I’m getting over Belvoir is the same as the reason other friendships wax and wane. My passing acquaintance with another theatre (the Griffin) has developed into something meaningful, while Belvoir seems intent on going down a path I don’t wish to follow.

No hard feelings though, Belvoir. Hit me up on Facebook in a decade or so and we’ll do lunch.

MRJ

The good news is I’ve got a very short (and hopefully amusing) story that I wrote some time ago that I’ll post instead. This is the first time I’ve posted straight fiction, so I hope you all enjoy it.

Daddy’s Girl

“Dad, can you help me with this?’ I asked.

He put his paper down and looked at me over the rim of his glasses. I could almost hear his mind ticking over. Not now. I’ve got work to do. I need to finish this for tomorrow. I pulled one of the earphones out of my ear to show him that he had my full attention. It’s important to let people think you care.

“What is it?”

“Maths.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, code for why me? and then beckoned for me to pass him my text book. My iPhone rang and I pushed the button on my headphones to take the call. It was Sara. Her boyfriend was annoying her again. Sara’s boyfriend is always annoying her. I’d told her she should break up with him but she’s one of those people who just can’t seem to free herself of hangers-on.

I spoke to her for a while but she just wanted to talk about her own problems so I told her that I had to do my homework and when I hung up I rang Bree to tell her that Sara had phoned me, complaining about her boyfriend. Bree didn’t have much to say about it though so when I got a message from Olivia I told Bree that I had to go cause I was doing homework. She told me that I was sucking up to Mr. Jeffreys so I hung up without saying goodbye.

I hacked her Facebook because everyone knows her password and updated her status to I like pussy and phoned Olivia to tell her about Bree’s status.

“OMG,” she said. “I always thought she was a dyke lol.”

I spoke to her for a while but then I got bored ‘cause she just wanted to talk about lesbians. I think she might be one. She seemed way too interested in Bree’s status. I told her I had to go because I was doing homework when I saw that Sara was phoning me again.

“Have you seen Bree’s status?” she asked and I told her that Olivia was a lesbian too.

“OMG we should totally set them up lol,” she said.

We talked for a bit longer about setting them up but I told her I was doing my homework when I saw the incoming call from Bree.

“Did you hack my Facebook?” she asked.

“No – I’m doing my maths homework,” I said.

“Somebody hacked my Facebook and made my status I like pussy.”

“OMG that’s so funny lol.”

“No it’s not – Olivia liked it!”

“Yeah, I’ve been getting a lesbian vibe from her.”

“Should I leave it or delete it?”

“Definitely leave it. It’s already helped Olivia, so you don’t know who else it might help.”

I spoke to her for a bit longer but had to go because Dad had finished my maths homework and I had to talk to him about my science homework.

MRJ

Challenge accepted.

The Rules of Engagement were simple: I look out the window each night and tweet my forecast, then make a note of the forecast from the weather widget on my iMac. The weather widget uses Yahoo Weather, so in a sense it’s MRJ v Yahoo.

Forecast for Monday 12 March

Yahoo – Raining.

MRJ – Mostly fine with a chance of showers. I’d call it bike riding weather

Actual – Sunny for most of the day, moving to overcast in the afternoon. I rode my bike to Central at 7 am wearing shorts and a light shirt, travelled to Wollongong by train and came back the same way in the afternoon. Didn’t get wet or cold.

Score: MRJ – 1/7, Yahoo – 0/7

Forecast for Tuesday 13 March

Yahoo – Cloudy and sunny, whatever that means.

MRJ – I think mostly fine again. Probably some cloud but I don’t think much rain if any. I’m taking a jacket tomorrow but only because it’s a long day.

Actual – Gorgeous weather with clear skies all day. Yahoo and I were both wrong.

Score: MRJ – 1/7, Yahoo – 0/7

Forecast for Wednesday 14 March

Yahoo – Cloudy and sunny again.

MRJ – I think tomorrow’s weather will be almost exactly the same as today’s

Actual – Well, I got it wrong and yahoo got it right this time. Cloudy and sunny. Still no rain, though.

Score: MRJ – 1/7, Yahoo 1/7

Forecast for Thursday 15 March

Yahoo – Overcast.

MRJ – It feels a bit moist out there. I think it will be fine, cloudy and with a chance of showers at different times. No real downpours though.

Actual  – it was mostly fine, a bit of cloud cover and no rain.

Score: MRJ – 2/7, Yahoo – 1/7

Forecast for Friday 16 March

Yahoo – Storms

MRJ – I’m still not convinced it’s ready to rain tomorrow. I think it will be overcast with a chance of showers

Actual – it cleared over night and the morning looked great. Clouds came in during the afternoon and it looked like a storm but it didn’t happen.

Score: MRJ – 3/7, Yahoo 1/7

Forecast for Saturday 17 March

Yahoo – Rain

MRJ – Feels like the southerly’s coming but it wouldn’t surprise me if it blows out to sea overnight. I’m calling it: no storm tomorrow, maybe rain.

Actual –There was a storm at 2.30 in the morning but I’m claiming this as irrelevant because the purpose of the forecast is to predict the weather for the following day, not for during the night when most of us are sleeping. The day was overcast with rain in the morning.

Score: MRJ – 4/7, Yahoo 1/7

Forecast for Sunday 18 March

Yahoo – Sunny and cloudy

MRJ – Final forecast, overcast and showers.

Actual – sunny, cloudy, overcast and showers. Today had it all but I’m penalising Yahoo because they didn’t forecast any rain at all.

MRJ – 5/7, Yahoo 1/7

Wow. When I started this a week ago, I thought it would be pretty even, maybe even with me looking a bit silly at the end. But having scored 71% accuracy compared to Yahoo’s 14%, I think it will be a while before I check a weather forecast again.

If anybody has another challenge, now is the time to tell me. I feel at the peak of my game.

MRJ

For instance, on Wednesday I made the mistake of saying to a gay acquaintance: “If ever there was a man to give a presentation on Feminism, you are that man.” In my defense, I was a little annoyed that he’d just fibbed his way into being assigned a lecture topic I had wanted to do. The jug of beer I’d just finished may also have been a contributing factor.

Then yesterday I put my foot in it again by declaring to a literary theorist “I think the problem with literary theorists is that they are wankers.” There are two things I believe are important as mitigating factors. Firstly, I’m right. Secondly, during the week I’d had to sit through a semiotics lecture that demonstrated how “the boy kicked the cow” is syntagmatically identical to “the girl kissed the ball”, although the two statements are paradigmatically different. Don’t get me started on the inappropriate politics of the examples. I was laughing my politically incorrect butt off in the lecture! However, without going into details, you can take my word for it the difference between the statements is a matter of vertical movement while maintaining the horizontal structure.

Are you still with me?

Anyway, I think I managed to get out of trouble with the theorist by explaining that the things she considers to be of interest are the things I consider to be tools. If you ask a carpenter about hammers, he will probably express a preference for using different hammers for different purposes and possibly a penchant for a specific brand of hammer which will be based as much on price, marketing and peer pressure as it is on quality and performance. It would require a physicist to get excited about the molecular properties of the hammer.

Thankfully, getting around this social blunder was for some reason harder than getting around some of the things I said about the US (she was American) or the things I said about Feminism (she was a she).

As a final example, if you had asked me yesterday morning to name my aunts, I would have said I don’t have any. My mother has a couple of brothers but their wives aren’t really my aunts. Then my father rang me last night to tell me one of his three sisters had passed away and I thought to myself: “Of course – Dad has three sisters. Why have I never thought of this before? From now on, I’ll call him Katoomba.” I’ve since realised it might be in bad taste to call him that now that one of them has passed away, but more importantly I would like to share things that you probably shouldn’t say to your grieving father.

1. When it comes to outliving your siblings, you’re totally winning.
2. One down, two to go.
3. What was her name, again?

Again, there are mitigating circumstances. When my father rang me, he didn’t say: “My dear sister Brenda has gone to the loving embrace of the Almighty and if it weren’t for the love and support of my remaining sisters, I would be inconsolable.” Instead, he said: “Do you remember the cockroach house we stayed in? Well, she’s dead.”

I should explain the cockroach house. In 1982, my father took me on a trip to visit his sister and her family. My grandfather drove up from Melbourne with two of my cousins and their father (my father’s brother-in-law), collected my father and I from Sydney and we continued north to visit my aunt, who happened to live in a little place called The Middle Of Friggin’ Nowhere. My aunt had landed a sweet job working for Telecom, which came with a house. Actually, the job needed a house because there was an entire room set aside with one of those old fashioned telephone switchboards. Aunt Brenda had to manually plug/unplug cables into various sockets when someone from the nearby town (I think it was called Where The Hell Are We?) wanted to make a phone call.

For those too young to remember, you may have seen such devices in old black and white movies from the 1940′s where people phone the operator and say things like: “Operator, get me the police.” Anyway, a couple of days before we arrived at my aunt’s place from our future world of 1982, the three silos across the road (dirt track) had been fumigated, forcing every cockroach you would normally expect to find in three silos into the nearest dwelling – Aunt Brenda’s two bedroom cottage. When it turned out there wasn’t enough space for everyone to sleep in the house, I volunteered to sleep in the car but my father wouldn’t let me. He claimed it was something about my youth but I suspect the infestation had triggered a Vietnam flashback and so he slept in the car while I went into battle each night against the invading hordes. We were supposed to stay for a week but we left after four days, although it seemed longer.

So as you can see, I do remember the cockroach house – and it’s clearly not my fault that it’s the lasting impression Auntie Brenda left on me. As a matter of fact, I don’t think any of this week’s faux pas were my fault.

At this time, I wish to retract my original assertion that I am socially awkward. I’m just fine, it’s the rest of the people on the planet who are flawed.

Speaking of which, I have decided to test myself against the skill of professional weather forecasters. Everyday for the next week, I will be tweeting a weather report. To get these reports, you can follow me on Twitter or just log back into this page and see my Twitter feed up in the top right hand column. I’m curious to see if my technique – looking out the window – will be as effective as the method favoured by professionals, which appears to be eeny meeny miney mo.

MRJ

Same arguments apply all round – more men than women getting the work, maybe we need quotas, all producers are secretly misogynist bastards who would rather see their production budgets go down the drain by giving the jobs to incompetent men rather than give the work to women.

I think I’m a reasonable person, so after being bombarded by claims that our culture is sexist I had to consider that maybe it was true. If enough people say a thing is so, you at least have to consider that it is. Which is how I found myself on Friday night on the verge of capitulation. I was discussing quota systems and suggesting that although I disagree with them in principle, maybe there really is something to the claim that men are holding women back. I don’t see it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Maybe the hardline of quotas is needed to effect cultural change, and one day in the not too distant future we will be able to do away with them because men and women will be living side by side in a Utopian paradise in which all of our sexual organs will be so irrelevant, we won’t even know our partner’s gender until the wedding night. A surprise for some no doubt, but by then it will be unthinkable to complain just because the gender of one’s partner doesn’t suit one’s preferences.

Then a too-young man put his hand on my shoulder, locked eyes with me and said “I’m really glad you’ve changed your mind on this issue” and I had a sudden insight into part of the problem. Not the whole problem, mind you – just a part of it. The part where it’s pretty obvious this problem isn’t being approached with wisdom, but with earnestness, integrity and outsight, the lamentable but popular alternative to insight.

I shook my head and thought of all the women throughout history who hadn’t been held back because of their gender. I thought of all the women in our own time who haven’t been held back because of their gender. I thought of our own Prime Minister, who has just finished fending off an attack by the entire Fourth Estate as well as a man who was the popular choice for the majority of Australians.

I thought of Liz Arday, a young female theatre director whose response to being knocked back from this year’s NIDA intake was to go and book three spots at the TAP Gallery in Darlinghurst, where she is currently staging a performance of Ibsen’s famous Hedda Gabler – a play that deals directly with the disempowerment of women in 19^th century Norway. She is also writing her own play while working full time and studying for a BA in English Literature.

Is anybody holding her back because of her gender?

The rest of the pieces fell into place last night, when a female friend was bemoaning that men are rude and never apologise when they bump into her in the street. When I pointed out that I had the same experience with women bumping into me and not apologising, she was astonished. After all, her argument rested on the premise that women always apologise and men never do. Finally she retreated to a place where men are not allowed to follow: “From a woman’s perspective, men in Sydney are rude, arrogant and never apologise.”

I see. From a woman’s perspective. But what kind of perspective is that? Focusing on the perspective of just one gender when discussing gender issues is like cutting up an orange and claiming you’ve made fruit salad.

Finally, I thought of Don Draper from Mad Men, specifically the episode where he snapped at Peggy that she had been employed as a secretary and he had made her a copywriter – and that she should stop asking for things and do her work. This might sound condescending but only if you ignore the corresponding scene in which Don tells Pete Campbell something similar. Gender has nothing to do with these scenes because they are about the truth, which is there is no entitlement to success.

Success is a reward for sustained, hard work. Marie Curie knew it. Julia Gillard knows it – and God help anyone who gets in the way of Liz Arday as she goes about doing her work. If these women don’t need quotas, why should other women?

Germaine Greer didn’t need them to get published. Nor did Stephanie Meyer, J.K. Rowling or even Sappho. The film directors Nora Ephron, Kathryn Bigelow and Sofia Coppola don’t need them either.

None of us have a right to success that supersedes the rights of others, which is what a quota system does. But if we did need special programs to help people get a fair go, you’ll have to forgive me when I say that privileged, white, educated, affluent, middle-class people of any gender go to the back of the queue.

MRJ

So let me say just three things.

Item 1: Labor are fucked. I don’t mean I can’t stand the current incarnation of the Labor Party (I can’t) – I mean even though they’re up the messiest of all possible creeks, they’re still contemplating skinny dipping.

I’ll explain – when Rudd was fired by his subordinates (now that’s what I call living the dream) the electorate was united in their disgust, with the exception of a few Feminists who for some reason thought it was good for the movement for our first female Prime Minister to tick every box on the Misogynist’s List of Reasons to Distrust Women. Despite the technicality that our system of government requires us to elect a party rather than an individual, in reality that’s not how it works. If there are any Caucus members reading, pay attention while I explain to you how it actually works: you elect from your ranks a Leader, and we tell you at the election if you got it right.

And we said no to Gillard. And to Abbott. This is an important point – the Labor Party don’t have a mandate to govern any more than the Liberal Party do. The electorate said in a very loud and very clear voice that we did not want either an Abbott led Liberal Government or a Gillard led Labor Government. The Independents who delivered a minority coalition to Labor did so against the wishes of the people of Australia.

The removal of Rudd was a betrayal of trust and we have told you so in every poll since the 2010 election.

Item 2: the Liberal Party are fucked. I don’t mean I can’t stand them (I can’t) – I mean they are beyond any doubt the most useless Opposition since Latham lead Labor.

Again, I’ll explain – the Libs keep saying that it’s not their job in Opposition to announce policies, but to oppose the Government’s policies. This is like saying it’s not the job of an air conditioner to cool the room down, it just needs to exist in opposition to the heater.

The job of the Opposition is to provide an alternative government for voters to consider. If the best the Liberal Party can say is that they aren’t Labor, then they’re not actually saying anything. After all, the Greens make the same claim.

The correct way to oppose a Labor policy is to provide an alternative policy. Until the Libs can do that, I see only three things that can be inferred.

• They don’t have any policies and they’re just praying that all of the other parties slip over on the ice while they skate over the finish line. This is the low percentage but spectacular Steven Bradbury Gambit.
• They do have policies but they are so terrifying and draconian that they don’t dare tell us what they are. This is The Sith Proposition.
• They really have excellent policies but they don’t want to tell us because we are too stupid to understand them, otherwise known as The Inception Exception.

Item 3: Gillard is fucked. I don’t mean I don’t like her (I don’t) – I mean she’s about as washed-up as it’s possible for a politician to be. The only thing left to do is pull the plug and watch her spin down the drain with all the other detritus.

Once more, I’ll explain – she overthrew our Prime Minister. That’s our Prime Minister, regardless of whether or not you voted Labor in 2007. Democracy spoke loudly that day. It spoke with such eloquence that the incumbent Prime Minister couldn’t even hold his own safe seat.

And when Gillard took her legal-but-illegitimate ascension to the polls with the arrogance of…you know, I can’t even think of another case like it. Well, maybe that last scene in the first series of Black Adder when Edmund finally becomes King and thinks it’s by Divine Right. It only lasts for a brief time though, because it was an injustice that put him in charge in the first place.

In the end, it doesn’t matter if Gillard survives Rudd’s challenge because at the next election we, the People of Australia, will certainly give the Labor Party a lesson in how democracy works.

Perhaps another decade of watching politics from the sidelines will teach them a thing or two about their constituents.

MRJ

The thing is though, I’m Australian. Being pro-US is as pointless as being anti-US. It’s not a popularity contest and even if it were, I don’t get a vote. Still, this is international politics we’re talking about, so although my opinion is worth bubkis, I’m allowed to have one. I’m probably even morally obliged to have one, considering the impact the US has on the world.

Whatever. This week I decided to write about all the great things the US has done. I gave up that idea after staring at a blank screen for nearly ten minutes, my mind ticking over all of the things that the US has done for the world and discarded them one after another as I realised it was mostly propaganda. Sure, there was WWII – except the US’ main contribution to defeating Nazism was to make movies congratulating themselves on winning the war when it was the Russians who did the bulk of the dying and the English led allies who did the bulk of the fighting.

Then there’s Hollywood, whom we can probably thank for the death of storytelling.

Sigh. The long and short of it is I’ve decided instead to have a little hissy fit about things that have pissed me off in the last couple of days. Maybe I’ll write a pro-USA post sometime when I’m not so annoyed at other things.

Let’s start with my bank and the vapid question ‘do you want to save this withdrawal as your favourite transaction?’ No, I do not. Not only do I not want to save the withdrawal as my favourite transaction, I want your stupid system to stop asking me if I do. About six months ago, I was so fed up with the time wasting question I actually answered yes, thinking maybe I would want to withdraw $40 often enough for it to be worth my while. It made no difference. The NAB failed to remember that I have a favourite transaction and every time I want some money I have to engage with the ATM in the same conversation. The worst part is the question is so inane it doesn’t need to be asked. It’s the kind of futile conversation you would expect to have with a…well, with a bank I suppose.

Dear NAB, I know you are one of the ‘big four’, but you should know that I normally use another four letter word beginning with ‘f’ to describe you.

Next on my peeve list – push bike riders. Yes, yes…I’m one of them. Except, I’m not. Not really. I obey road rules. I stay in my lane. I try not to spook drivers because I know how frustrating it is when you’re driving and a cyclist behaves erratically. Like the guy I saw yesterday – he was at least thirty and with more facial hair than a Wookie, yet for some reason he thought it would be a good idea to ride on the wrong side of the road, in the middle of the lane of on-coming traffic, without wearing a helmet and doing little burnouts. Give me a freaking break! Spread the word everybody…if someone’s old enough to vote, they’re too old to pretend to be a BMX Bandit. Unless they’re also a sub-cultural cretin, in which case it’s good for the rest of us to be able to spot them in a crowd.

Unfortunately, after the 30 year old teen wolf rode past us, I made the mistake of remarking to the rider behind me that the guy was making us all look bad. Then we rode through the lights and she caught up to him. He had been waiting for her. They were friends. It was awkward. Not as in ‘that awkward moment when you realise everyone on Facebook is a lemming and can’t think of anything original to say’ (I’m really fed up with ‘that awkward moment when…’ status), but as in I had just clearly insulted one of her friends to her face and then had to travel along bike track for 5 kilometres with them.

It was bad form all round.

Which brings me to etiquette. Does nobody know how to behave in public anymore? I was on a bus the other day with a kid screaming it’s head off, and it was the least annoying person on the bus. At least it had the excuse of being an infant – unlike the 40 something year old woman who thought it was okay to lean her head against my hand as I gripped the hand-rail. My hand! When I moved my hand to another position, she moved her head so that she could keep leaning on it! But even she wasn’t as annoying as the Town Crier who thought her phone conversation was so important she had to speak over everybody else’s phone conversations just to make sure everyone knew she was on the phone.

We’ve all got one, sweetheart. You’re not all that just because you got sucked into a two-year contract on an iPhone 3GS 18 months ago.

These days, though, such behaviour is normal on a bus. It was at the theatre last night that I really almost lost it. I’m fairly easy to spot in a crowd – I’m six feet tall, 2 feet across the shoulders, with a big bald head and a big bold voice. So when someone bumps into me, causing me to spill half a glass of cheap house red wine over my hand, the offender can’t really claim that they didn’t see me. And while I may be carrying a bit of extra weight around the mid section, I’ve also been working out at the gym for the last three months with some success. I’m now quite solid, which means the stampeding cow that bumped into me (and was subsequently knocked off course because of my musculature) can’t reasonably pretend not to have felt the impact. But she did. Without so much as a glance behind to see the damage in her wake, she continued to careen out of control through the crowd of polite but terrified theatre patrons like an old lady on a motorised wheel chair in Victoria’s Basement.

I’m starting to feel better. If I hibernate for the next week, I should be able to write about grown up things then.

MRJ

Here are some of the better ones.

There’s a special word to describe people who think game character are hot. It begins with ‘L’ and ends with ‘ame’.

I can’t put my finger on what makes this one so suspicious. Perhaps it’s that the ad is clearly intended for New Zealanders and FB knows I am not in New Zealand. Or maybe it’s that Maria Duval’s website claims that, among other things, she is a dowser. It’s true that I’m not qualified to categorically dismiss the validity of dowsing as an occult art, but I am questioning the value of using a psychic to find water in an island nation whose water sources have been known for millennia.

FB presented me with both of these ads at the same time. It knows that I’m in a relationship but not married, so it offers me both the chance to buy an Engagement Ring online as well as the chance to try and find single women. Pay particular attention to what the ad is actually offering: not the chance to meet women, but merely to find them. Considering that I live in Sydney and single women are about as easy to find as a writer at a free drinks event, the ad is offering nothing.

Now this little ripper is exactly what you want to be wearing if you’re planning to stand outside the tent embassy and shout “Why don’t yous all go back to where ya come from.” It is even engraved with ‘Son of the Southern Cross’, so that if you ever forget you are a rednecked, inbred, banjo-playing hillbilly, you can take the ring off and ask someone to read it to you.

Some FB ads offer you something in exchange for a ‘Like’ but Wild Turkey have gone down a different path by offering you nothing except the chance to join the other idiots who would probably ‘Like’ prison-rape if it had its own Facebook group. It doesn’t. I checked.

I know that I make some small efforts to withhold personal information from Facebook, but I’m sure they have enough knowledge about me by now to know that I’m not a fuller figured lady. Also, I prefer to try lingerie on before I buy it.

If anybody could translate this gibberish into English for me, I’d appreciate it.

Yep, all three of these popped up at the same time. I know Valentine’s Day is almost upon us but this reeks of desperaton. Well, it’s almost upon you, actually. I don’t celebrate it. I have no desire to take part in an annual farce that puts couples under ridiculous pressure to have a good day whether they feel like it or not, as well as making single people feel like they’re missing out on something because nobody gave them an overpriced rose. It’s so much simpler, nicer and more loving to just tell you’re partner you love them on all the other days of the year.

Because nothing says ‘I love you’ like a hand written card provided as a promotional freebie by an internet dating agency. Good luck explaining this one to your wife, fellas.

MRJ

In the lead up to Christmas I noticed some of the things being sold in the stores, presumably to people who intended to give them away as presents, and realised why there is so much crap out there masquerading as products of value. I even remember the moment the penny dropped: I walked past a store window on which there was a sign wishing everybody a ‘Merry Giftmas’ and in a thought so clear and sudden it could only have come from a Muse (Skeptixia, an early Muse who left the group before they got really big), I understood.

The thing is, people no longer give presents solely for the purpose of enriching the life of the recipient – we now also give gifts so that we aren’t the ones who’ve held out at Christmas time. This doesn’t mean that none of us give for the right reasons. Of course we all take pleasure in giving something special to those we care about. Even I do that. The problem, though, is we are so bent on making sure we give to everyone that we don’t realise we are sometimes giving poorly made and unwanted rubbish that will never be anything other than landfill. Even the phrase ‘stocking filler’ refers to disposable items whose only purpose is to ensure the recipient gets more valueless stuff.

Ah, but never mind me. I’m a known grouch who was lucky enough to dodge the Christmas bullet because my in-laws decided they’d rather be anywhere – even in Victoria – than be forced to spend another Christmas listening to me harping about the evils of unchecked consumerism while stuffing my face with its annual supply of ham.

Side note: skipping Christmas means that I missed out on ham, making this the first Christmas in my life during which I lost weight.

Just a few days after Christmas, I found myself at a New Year’s Eve BBQ, where a strange and disconcertingly attentive woman asked me one of those questions that brings out the best in my sparkling and shiny personality.

“Do you go to Church?”

She asked it in such a way that it sounded more like “I haven’t seen you at CHURCH before so obviously you’re going to spend eternity burning in the deepest, loneliest pools of napalm in HELL while I’m in HEAVEN (rofl) enjoying the rewards of a life spent being a CHRISTIAN. Even though there is no point trying to save your blackened and shrivelled soul, I will try anyway because that is just one of the reasons I will be rewarded for ETERNITY while you suffer the torments of DEMONS CHEWING ON YOUR PRIVATE PARTS HAHAHAHAHA.”

“No, I don’t,” I said, smiling because I was pleased the conversation was ending so soon.

“Why not?”

I had only a moment to sort through all of the reasons I don’t go to church, but my mind just couldn’t select one of the very, very many of them.

“How many reasons do you want?” I asked, and smiled in a way that would have politely ended the conversation if I’d been speaking with a normal person.

“All of them,” she said.

Sigh. Challenge accepted.

It took about an hour but I finally convinced her that I’m serious when I say you’d need to be nine kinds of stupid to believe Mary was a virgin who’d been impregnated via some sort of Celestial IVF programme facilitated by an Archangel with a turkey-baster. Furthermore, if I were going to begin believing in anybody’s religion, I would probably start with my own and work my way down to the newer religions until I finally arrived at the Johnny-come-lately of the theological world, Christianity.

It is a credit to her belief in her own superiority and guarantee of eternal reward that she wasn’t offended, although she did seem sad that I would suffer the torments of constipation while watching re-runs of Glee until the end of time (Oh Lord, anything but that. I beg you, feed my wobbly-bits to Lilith if you must, but please not Glee!).

Never mind though. All of this was before I had a life-changing epiphany. Not the kind I normally have, where the lives that require changing are the one’s around me. I’m talking about the kind where I am forced to make a change. You see, it has come to my attention that I don’t have a Poker Face. For the past forty or so years, I’ve been operating under the delusion that my visage was inscrutable. I thought my inner thoughts were locked inside an impregnable fortress, accessible only to myself (and any woman willing to sleep with me). Discovering that I’m as hard to read as Bananas in Pyjamas has thrown a real spanner in my works.

Trust me on this – when you spend as much of your life as I do feeling incredulous, outraged, disdainful or downright offended, a Poker Face is the only thing standing between you and a lynch mob.

So I realised I must change and so devised a cunning plan to deal with my Open Misere Face. I would adopt as my standard face a friendly, happy smile. The kind of face you might see on How To Vote slips on polling day.

Which brings me to last night. I was sitting at the bus stop thinking critically about a play I had just seen. I realised my critical thoughts must be as obvious as the ending of Avatar, so I made a special effort to smile. There I sat, grinning benignly at the universe until a raving loony mistakenly recognised a kindred soul and decided to tell me all about her vegan Pomeranian who won’t eat chick peas unless they are arrayed in a straight line across the floor. Or in a zig-zag pattern. Just to make sure I understood her position on the matter, she boarded my bus heading to Waverley even though she had already told me she lived at Kensington. When I pointed this out to her, she responded that she would either change buses at Museum or go to Manly.

Why, oh why, is there never a CHRISTIAN            around when you need one?

MRJ

Let me be frank with you – there are some fundamental distinctions between Jews and Christians that are much more basic than eating pig. One of those differences is that Jews have a personal relationship with God. When we want to discuss something with God, we don’t muck about with intermediaries – we go straight to Him.

Therefore, when it comes to bacon you can rest assured that I’ve discussed the matter with God in some detail. The conversation went something like this:

GOD:            Matthew, I’ve told you before not to eat bacon.

me:            OMG – you’re killing me here!

GOD:             Not yet…

me:            But it’s silly. Everybody does it and you know it.

GOD:            If everybody started fornicating, would you do that too?

me:            !?

GOD:            Okay, bad example. But you know how I feel about the rules. It’s part of being one of my chosen people.

me:            Yeah, about that…

GOD:            Don’t start.

me:            Okay, okay. But seriously, if I’d followed all of your rules I’d have been beaten to death in high school for dressing like a twit.

GOD:            Your point?

me:            Well, since I survived high school by not following your rules, and it’s my primary duty to value the life you gave me above all other things, it stands to reason that the rules should be seen more as a set of guide lines than hard and fast rules.

GOD:            WTF? Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?

me:            Think about it. You’ll see I’ve got a point.

GOD:            (to self) Oy vey. Chosen people. The second worst idea I ever had, right after foreskins. But they both seemed like such good ideas at the time…

As you can see, that’s me taken care of. For all of you out there in the webiverse, try and remember that it doesn’t matter what religion you are – the holidays are a time for being nice and enjoying life, the only two things we need to experience Heaven on Earth.

Thank you all for reading my posts this year. I’m really grateful for every reader, which is why I’ll be back next year with a slight change. Up until a couple of weeks ago I had a strict ‘no reply’ policy to your comments because I figured that my say was my post and your right of reply was your say. From now on, I look forward to engaging in a conversation with those of you who feel up to commenting on my blog.

Have a great break, be safe and I look forward to speaking with you next year.

MRJ

PS – Don’t worry, the world won’t end in 2012. I asked.

It begins with precise, pre-event planning. Early to bed Friday night, sleep in Saturday and follow up with a good breakfast. Go out to get supplies: four different varieties of beer, bacon and orange juice to go with eggs and toast for recovery breakfast, and pastrami for pre-event lunch.

This brings us to the execution. A November Oktoberfest party is, by definition, running a bit behind schedule, so there’s clearly some catching up to do. Oktoberfest normally runs from around the 20th September to the 20th of October or thereabouts, which means there’s a lot of pressure when the event is in November. Or Novembeer, as I tagged it yesterday. Not just once. I repeated it a few times for those who hadn’t heard it the first time. This is because when I’ve been drinking, I’m not only witty; I’m also considerate.

We arrived at the party at 12.30pm and put most of our beers in the ice buckets and a couple of special beers in the freezer so they could get frosty after travelling in the heat. By then, other people were arriving and putting their own beers into the ice buckets, cracking them open and cheersing.

At this early stage a few of the boys got together for a chat. I was especially pleased to be included because all too often I find myself gravitating toward the women folk at these events, due to most men misunderstanding me when I say things like: “I’m not really into cricket. Can you read?” or “Oh, you mean rugby league! I thought you said football”. The women don’t normally mind me hanging around, except for when they start talking about Sex and The City and I inadvertantly say things like “a vacuous trollop wearing expensive shoes in Manhattan is still a vacuous trollop”. As you can imagine, I sometimes find myself sitting alone at parties for extended periods of time. It’s okay though, because I became accustomed to it as a teenager, when at parties I often said things like “Don’t you hate it when you’re at a party and talking nicely, and then some git decides to start playing the guitar, which means everybody has to stop trying to get laid while the girls moon over the smarmy, off-key bastard who pulls the same trick at every party and is only ever invited by the one girl he won’t sleep with, because then she won’t invite him anymore? Can you read?”

You can see why I was excited about taking part in a bonding exercise that would define our social statuses for the rest of the afternoon. One of the men, who works in the steel-works down south, opined his disgust over the watering down of the resources super tax, claiming that it was a national disgrace that our resources were being sold to the world while only a very privellaged few enjoyed the profits of sale here in Australia. Everyone agreed and we spoke a bit more leftist propaganda just to make sure that we were all not only left leaning, but also educated and working class. Once we’d established the common ground, we sat back to drink our imported German beers and eat boutique sausages from a specialist German butcher in Kirrawee, while we all swanned around in fancy dress admiring each other’s Lederhosen or other costume accoutrements. I liked it, being somewhat of a leftist snob who takes a special joy in eating the common fair of our overseas brethren, even though it sometimes costs more than twice as much as our own common fair.

The sun set and still we stayed, leaving just after 9pm to catch the train from inner city Arncliff back to Bondi Junction. This train trip is always a treat because it passes through Kings Cross and it makes me smile to watch the women balance in those things they wear in place of shoes and dress like strippers. I sometimes imagine a stripper turning up at some girl’s workplace and doing her job for free, then when she gets fired because the boss doesn’t want to pay for the work when he can get it for free, saying ‘Now you know how I feel, bitch.’

Finally we made it home, no longer drunk but so tired from the beer and the heat that even picking up my pre-bed cup of tea was an ordeal. I lay on the lounge, my beer-baby belly bursting over my waistband and reminding me why it’s not a good idea to spend a day drinking beer from a glass that’s bigger than my own head.

It was looking as if I would avoid the hangover, being in bed by 11pm and having 9 hours sleep ahead of me. Until the phone range at 11:45, waking me up. It was the Panda, and of course he didn’t leave a message. I had to call him back to find out that it was nothing important and he would be home soon. He just wanted to wake me, apparently. I soon fell back asleep, until I went into beer-baby labour at 2.30am. You just can’t drink that much beer and not get gassy. I probably shouldn’t say ‘gassy’ because it sounds indelicate but in this case, ‘gassy’ is the euphemism. It sounded more like I had swallowed a trombone player and he was sending out Morse code signals for help. Through the frosted glass of the bathroom window, I could see the neighbour’s lights go on as they investigated the strange nocturnal noises. I finally fell back to sleep (in bed, not in the bathroom) at around 4 this morning, waking up again at 8 with a sore neck from sleeping at an odd angle on a new pillow that I haven’t broken-in yet and needing to get to work.

So am I too old for such shenanigans? Should I know by now not to over-indulge? Ought I show some self-restraint and start behaving like an adult who has two almost-grown-children instead of a teenager let off the leash for the first time?

Not a chance. As tired as I feel today, I’m ready to bounce back and do it again tonight. Just after I’ve had a little…zzzzz.

MRJ

…………

While we’re waiting for them to come back, the funniest thing happened today. I was helping my brother in his store (www.metooplease.com.au – check it out, he keeps telling me that not many people have been referred from my blog) when this woman came in and told me that her twin sister was just parking the car. Except, her twin sister wasn’t actually her twin. It was her younger sister. Get this – their parents had three sets of twin girls. So her younger sister was her twin sister because she was a sister who was a twin, even though not her own twin. Technically, she has five twin sisters because all of them are twins.

Also, I think the Thai Lunch Special is the greatest culinary advance since the famous Frenchman Pierre Du Frogg fatally destroyed an omelette and claimed it was deliberate, thus inventing scrambled eggs.

Are we all here now? Good. ‘Cause I’m about to get serious.

A lot of people around the world are having suspicions about our economic system and the people in charge of it. One of the built-in problems with the Western economic model is that it hasn’t really changed that much over time. It’s a structure that has always been built on the foundation of producing goods by exploiting workers. Once upon a time, those workers were slaves, serfs or peasants. When the combination of civil libertarianism and trade unionism forced manufacturers to pay fair wages, they shipped production off-shore because Capitalist mass production requires minimum production cost (i.e. wages for workers) to maximise corporate profits (i.e. yachts for CEOs). These days, Third World countries are becoming wealthy and with wealth comes a higher standard of living. With a higher standard of living comes the demand for education. With education comes a demand for civil liberties. With civil liberties come wage increases for workers who expect a greater share of corporate profits. Which means that production will necessarily have to move out of its current locations for the same reason it had to be moved off-shore to begin with – to maximise profit.

This is a good time to mention that I’m not suggesting Communism is the answer. I’m not going to go into all the reasons it failed but let’s put it out of today’s equation.

Back to off-shore production: we’re running out of third world countries. Although there are still some people in the world who are ripe for short term exploitation (thus ensuring a good short-term supply of cheap flat screen televisions for middle class Westerners who have 36 months interest free purchases but little concern for where their creature comforts come from), the truth is that Capitalism will have to find a new method of production at some point in the near future. In short, Capitalism is broken and always has been. All we’ve been doing is squeezing as much from it as we can while we can.

If you look at some of the key drivers in business you can see there are some distinctly male ideals that have traditionally advanced the exploitative model. Corporate executives who are obsessed by the need to conquer more markets along with the competition, often as much to increase revenue as to justify their own value (hubris) is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to poor decision-making foundations. The endless struggle for short-term gain – often as near sighted as the end of the current quarter –results in regular financial market collapse. Workforces are steadily reduced or as-good-as enslaved to save profits, regardless of the blindingly obvious: if everybody gets rid of their employees, then there won’t be enough people earning enough money to purchase goods, which inevitably results in the need to cut the workforce even further because sales are down. Meanwhile, no CEO in their right mind will admit their own complicity in the unemployment statistics. Instead they focus on the clever cost cutting that has helped to deliver another quarter of solid results. Often the claim is that their results are even more impressive if you factor in the current economic climate, which is all too often the rationale for giving themselves a pay rise.

So now we see two things – Capitalism has to find a way to function in the future without exploiting workers because we’re running out of them AND it’s been male stewardship that has brought us to this point.

Maybe it’s time to consider what Capitalism would look like if women were in charge. It may be that short-term, goal-oriented ‘masculine’ Capitalism has gone as far as it can. Let’s be clear about what I’m suggesting with regard to women – female executives who do nothing more than deliver the same results as men can hardly be seen as an improvement on the status quo. Putting women in charge has to mean more than just having CEOs with ovaries or there’s no point. We need a different approach to the traditional one and gender equality means nothing if it forces women to behave like men.

A feminine approach to capitalism might offer substantial change for everyone, with masculine dominance of the marketplace replaced by feminine nurturing of the marketplace; masculine leadership giving way to a feminine holistic view; masculine control of market share taking a back seat to feminine sharing of the market. I’m suggesting a feminisation of the corporate world.

The thing is, we already know what happens when men are in control. On the other hand, we have a Queen, a woman as Governor General, a female Prime Minister, the CEO of a ‘big four’ bank is a woman and so is Sydney’s Lord Mayor. Our Queen presides over one of the last monarchies in the world, our Governor General has none of the taint that clung to her predecessor, our Prime Minister oversees one of the strongest economies in the world, Westpac’s corporate culture has changed dramatically without negatively effecting shares, and Sydney is undergoing the kind of changes needed to make it a world class city, with cycle ways and free public transport just the beginning of a grand vision.

This is already well beyond the length I like to post and this is no place for a thesis. There’s a lot more that can be said for and against what I’m advocating. But seriously, even if you want to debate the substance of my argument, is there any real reason for women being denied positions of authority? It’s not as if they’re going to stuff things up worse than men do.

MRJ

PS – I made that bit about Pierre Du Frogg up.

Let me explain. About feminism that is, not the collective nouns. Or any of my other penchants.  On the one hand, I have a number of very important women in my life – mother, partner, daughter, close friends, peers and teachers – whom I deeply respect as well as hold affection for. They’re intelligent, caring, moral and insightful. They personify the values I prize as much as the men I respect, and it angers me beyond articulation when I hear of women being overlooked for promotion or paid less than men just because they are women.

On the other hand, feminists often seem disinterested in equality. Too often the goal of feminist activism seems to be the establishment of different rules for women than for men. Quota systems in the workplace, special programs in schools – it seems like an ever-expanding collection of programs (my original version read ‘tampon of programs’, but I thought that was in bad taste) aimed not at equality, but at the advancement of women regardless of the impact on men.

But what is the moral difference between a program that excludes the needs of men and a program that excludes the needs of women? Chauvinism is chauvinism, and if all feminism has to offer is the licence for women to behave as badly as the worst of men, then you can hardly call it a cultural advance. Give me a brand of humanism where each individual is recognized as vital regardless of his or her gender, not because of it.

What sparked this off for me was the ongoing dialogue about gender representation in the theatre. There are a whole series of statistics about how few new performances of plays written by women are staged, but what it boiled down to is that this year only 12% of new Australian plays being staged were written by women. It sounds ominous but what I find even more worrying is that I can’t find out the total number of plays submitted by women and men. Statistics just don’t have meaning without raw numbers to frame them.

I’m not going to theorise about what has caused this. In my experience, women are just as skilled at writing and selling their creative ideas as men. I don’t know how to explain the disparity any more than I know how to explain the Triple J Hottest 100 Of All Time a few years ago in which listeners voted for their 100 favourite songs of all time – and not one of them was sung by a female artist. It’s possible that audiences respond to a distinctly male voice more positively than to a female voice. It’s equally possible that there was a gender disparity among voters that resulted in skewed results. Like I said, I don’t know why it happened, just as I don’t know why female playwrights aren’t getting staged.

What I do know is that rules demanding gender parity in the theatre are not the right approach. Such a rule would give female writers more voice but at the possible expense of superior plays written by men. It would also mean that if next year, women write better plays than men, some women will miss out because the rules demand 50% of the plays be written by men, regardless of how bad they are. Are we trying to produce the best theatre possible, or make sure that everyone gets to play in the sandpit? There’s enough bad theatre out there without creating rules that ensure more of it. What we want are rules that ensure the quality improves.

My suggestion would be to adapt the submission process used by the Australian literary journal Wet Ink, whose submission guidelines state that if a manuscript has the authors name anywhere on it, it won’t be read. This seems like a fairly simple way to make sure that work is accepted on its literary merits without the possibility of bias toward an established author, a friend of the editor or a specific chromosomal assignation. Obviously, this would mean foyer-networking practices would have to change but I think this would only be a good thing for an industry that’s notoriously political and nepotistic – often to the detriment of quality.

The other thing I realised this week is…you know what? I’m going to stop there. I’ll be back next week to outline why I think women might save Capitalism.

I’m not kidding.

MRJ

I wish to draw your attention to my four requests to be unsubscribed from your database. I have tried using the ‘unsubscribe’ link in your email (yes, I found it. Even though it appears in very small print, in grey font on a grey background, it wasn’t that hard to find once I donned my glasses, moved my face right up to the monitor and changed my screen resolution to 640×480) but your automated system seems to interpret ‘unsubscribe’ as ‘ignore and keep sending emails’.

I guess my main complaint is not so much the contempt with which you treat my communications as that your system of reward seems to be rigged in favour of people who use your airline. I understand that if I flew with you more often – or ever – you would be more than happy to give me reward points that could be used for something, although I’m not sure what. You see, after checking your website, I have learned that one of the ways I can accrue reward points is by flying into outer space with Virgin Galactic. For this service, you will charge me approximately $200,000. I’m not sure, but I’m assuming that’s in US dollars. Presumably this means you would also accept 200,000 coconuts, which I think is worth a little more than $200,000 US dollars but let’s not quibble. I’m not sure how many reward points this will get me, but your website indicates it will take up to four weeks for the points to be applied to my account, after which time you would still expect me to pay $33 on top of the 6,900 reward points for a flight from Sydney to Melbourne. Now, I may be paranoid but if I die in space, who will get my reward points? For all I know, once I am dead you may decide to process the accrued points in the same alternate universe in which you process my ‘unsubscribe’ request.

Given the circumstances and the unpredictability of inter-dimensional data transfer, I think it would be best if we just ended things now. Please don’t take this personally. It’s me, not you.

Regards,

MRJ

Dear AB Hotel,

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for sending me text messages at unexpected times (such as when I am sleeping) to advise me of your latest special deals. Despite my repeated ‘unsubscribe’ requests. As you no doubt remember, you came into possession of my phone number when I filled out an application form to enter a competition you were running. Just to remind you of the details, the major prize in the competition was a convertable Aston Martin. This is an important detail because I suspect we are having a difference of opinion vis-à-vis the use to which my contact details are being put.

Allow me to illustrate. I was under the impression that you would phone me to let me know when and where I could take possession of a brand new Aston Martin motor car, whereas you seem to think I welcome text messages inviting me to play ping pong, watch the rugby and take part in other events that are clearly riveting to some people but not to me, in the same way that a three-way with a Thai Ladyboy and a goat would be interesting to some people, but not to me.

To be honest, I thought that my unsubscribing from your service (when it became obvious you were not going to give me an Aston Martin) was going to be the end of our relationship. You didn’t get the hint though, so I’m going to have give you a bit of tough love and make it clear to you that its over. We are over. And yes, it is you, not me. I’m just not getting what I wanted from this relationship, which as you should know was an Aston Martin.

If you would like to rekindle our relationship in the future, it would be a good move on your part to begin by presenting me with a gift. As you have given somebody else the Aston Martin and it would be in poor taste to remind me of this, my suggestion is to give me something unique. Such as a flight into outer space with Virgin Galactic, for example. At only 200,000 coconuts, I’m sure you’ll agree that this is a very good deal. The best thing about giving me such a gift is the Velocity Reward Points that I would receive. Are you familiar with Velocity? You have a surprising amount in common with them. Please take my advice in the spirit in which it is intended and sign up to Velocity straight away. I would be very disappointed if you don’t receive the same degree of pleasure from them that I do.

Regards,

MRJ

Dear NRMA,

When I phoned you and cancelled my roadside assistance and car insurance, I made it quite clear that my reason for cancelling was that I had disposed of my car and did not intend to replace it in the foreseeable future.

This conversation was not an invitation for you to send me reminders about my car insurance, CTP Greenslip or Roadside Assistance. It was an invitation for you to bugger off and leave me alone. Let’s be clear – we are not friends. You are the provider of a service for which I have no use. Your marketing material is as welcome as Jack the Ripper would be at Sexpo.

Even though I feel a pang of guilt for the environment every time I throw your unopened envelopes into the bin, I can no longer bring myself to read whatever you are sending me because:

1. You do not owe me any money, so you have nothing that I want.
2. You want money from me. No matter how nicely you phrase it, every piece of paper that you send me is a disguised request for me to give you money for services that I don’t require.

On the surface, it seems like we both want the same thing i.e., my money – but I don’t think it’s going to work out. Really, it’s not like anybody is at fault here. Except perhaps for you, that is.

I am not unkind, though. I wouldn’t take from you all hope of us ever being reunited, albeit in a limited way. Any day now, I am expecting the AB Hotel to contact me with confirmation of my flight into outer space. At that time, I will be seeking from you a quote for travel insurance because I believe that interstellar travel can be dangerous and I am concerned that, in the event of my death, my loved ones may not receive my full compliment of reward points from Velocity due to the four weeks it takes to count 200,000 coconuts. I will admit that this is not the best system and could probably be streamlined by completing the task in our own dimension rather than shipping everything off to an alternate reality for processing, but I’m sure they know what they are doing.

Thank you for your understanding and remember – don’t call me, I’ll call you.

Regards,

MRJ

• 1½ paragraphs of a love letter to Lauren Jackson before telling us that she is now the patron of the NSW Rape Crisis Centre.
• Last financial year 21,647 people contacted the Centre but only 31% of these were related to sexual assault. The rest were in regard to domestic violence.
• Another paragraph of love for Lauren Jackson.
• It’s been 24 years since the All Blacks won their only Rugby World Cup.
• Had Australia beaten the All Blacks, they would be playing ‘for a record third’ championship.
• Nobody in New Zealand has the emotional strength to have survived if Australia had won last weekend.
• The All Black’s ritual performance of the haka ends with a throat slitting motion.
• Captain Cook was scared of Maoris.
• Because of the haka, all New Zealanders are unsportsmanlike.
• 96% of the world doesn’t care about rugby anyway.

Is the writer trying to link the All Blacks to rape? I can’t think of any other reason to put them together in the same article

Of the 21,647 queries that the NSW Rape Crisis Centre received last year, how many were about New Zealanders and how many about New South Welshman? This seems important in light of the article’s context.

Does Lauren Jackson return the writer’s love?

How does he know so much about the emotional fragility of New Zealanders? Maybe it is his special affinity for the Force. If you think of it that way, it was a shame he didn’t use his special powers to help the Wallabies win the game.

I’m not sure why a history lesson was included but I’d like to know how the brutality of the Maoris during Cook’s era compares with the brutality of white settlers during Cook’s era.

And saying that if Australia had won last week, we would be playing for a record third championship is a very complicated way of saying that we’ve only won twice. As of today, so has New Zealand. I guess in four years time, they will also be playing for a record third championship. So will South Africa, who has also won twice.

As for the ridiculous inclusion in the article that only 4% of the world cares about rugby – a fact that would have been ignored had Australia won last week, and begs the question: if nobody cares about rugby, why is he writing about it? – let us not forget that only about .01% of the world reads the Sydney Morning Herald (based on online circulation figures).

Let’s put that into perspective: in raw numbers it is like saying that:

• only 754,000 people read the weekday SMH (equivalent to 16% of Sydney)
• while 278,800,000 care about rugby (more than ten times the population of Australia)

I guess my real problem with the article has very little to do with rugby. Call me unpatriotic if you like but I really don’t care who wins the Rugby World Cup. The column as it stands demeans Lauren Jackson’s very important work with the Rape Crisis Centre as well as the women who require such a service. Sexual and domestic violence are serious current issues and for a newspaper opinion columnist to use them in a back-handed sour grapes attack on the New Zealand Rugby Team shows a hypocritical lack of respect. It is not the All Blacks who ought to be admonished for their behaviour, it is the columnist.

Oh, and I’m pretty sure that the haka is not the haka. It’s the Haka, unless referring to a specific haka such as the Ka Mate haka. I’d be happy for a New Zealander to correct me on this, though.

MRJ

You can find the article here.

Not 50 metres from the incident was Officer I’m On A Break And Couldn’t Be Arsed and his crime fighting side-kick, Officer I’ve Already Finished My Break But I’m Busy Chatting Up This Girl With Big Knockers. It turns out that the Dynamic Duo were unable to attend the scene and sort everything out because I wasn’t killed. If I had been killed, it would have been a matter worthy of their attention, but as I survived they left the matter to be sorted out between myself and Professor Moriarty.

Later that day I phoned Waverley Police Station to make a report for insurance purposes, seeing as how my bike was totalled, and spoke to Officer What Do You Want Me To Do About It?. He advised me to phone the Police Assistance Line and make a report over the phone. I followed these complicated instructions carefully and made a report.

Then I tried to phone the Waverley Serial Bike-Rider Killer and discovered that the knave had given me a false contact number. Deducing that knocking a cyclist into the traffic with the intent of murdering him, destroying his bike and providing false contact details might be a bit dodgy, I phoned the Police Assistance Line and spoke to Officer We Don’t Provide Assistance We Only Take Reports, who confirmed that it was indeed dodgy and I should go to the Police Station to discuss the matter with them.

I went to the Police Station and spoke to Officer Is That A Doughnut In Your Pocket Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?. When I explained that it wasn’t a doughnut, merely the bandage over the injury caused by rolling around on the bitumen and dodging buses after Osama bin Psycho attacked my bike, I was told that he couldn’t help me and I would have to phone the optimistically named Information Access Unit to get Norman Bates’ correct contact details.

When I phoned the Information Access Unit, Officer One More Day Until Retirement told me that he would put me through to the Insurance Unit and I could speak to them. He made a special point of telling me that I had to press “9” when I heard the menu options on the recording.

On the third ring, the phone was answered by Officer Suspiciously Doesn’t Sound Anything Like A Recorded Menu, who told me that the information couldn’t be given out over the phone and I should speak to my local Police Station. When I explained that Officer Is That A Doughnut In Your Pocket Or Are You Just Happy To See Me? had given me this number, she said he was a very naughty boy. I suggested a couple of other adjectives that were probably more accurate and hung up. Then I phoned back, hoping for the first time in telephonic history that I would get a recorded message because I didn’t know how much more I could stand of the Police Department’s ‘personal service’. I was rewarded. Apparently Officer One More Day Until Retirement had to go to the bathroom and I was put through to the recorded message. Unfortunately, there was no option “9”. I took option “5”, which promised to put me through to the Information Access Unit. I spoke to Officer You Can’t Access Information Here, who told me to download a form from their website. I asked for the name of the form, which she said was the Formal Application Form.

The name of the form sounded too much like something out of a Monty Python routine, so I asked her if the form was really called the Formal Application Form. She said yes. I then asked her why the Police were intent on not helping me track down a man who posed a threat to the cycling population of Sydney and she went silent for a moment before telling me once again that the Information Access Unit could not access information on my behalf. By this time, I was beginning to think that the Police knew who I was, had realised how little I pay in taxes, and are secretly hoping that Adolph Door Opener would come back and finish the job.

I eventually found the Formal Application Form in a Google search, because the police website doesn’t let you search their site for forms. The Formal Application Form turns out to be a Microsoft Word document – correction: an editable Microsoft Word document. That’s right. The NSW Police Department have an official form that the public can download – and it is editable. You can find it here. The form was no doubt designed by Officer Too Stupid To Be Allowed To Carry A Gun Or Even Scissors.

Now, I am certainly not going to suggest that anybody should download the Formal Application Form and change the section that stipulates a $15 application fee to read: $0 application fee, and then submit it. That would probably be punishable under the Must Not Let Cyclists Receive Justice Act of 1437, which coincidentally was the same year that the Police last revised the Constabulary Entrance IQ Test, wherein applicants had to learn by heart the Police motto: To Snooze and Neglect.

Oh, blast. I probably should have told you at the start that this was going to be one of those postings where I don’t have a moral at the end. Sorry.

Oh, wait – here’s one I just thought of: check over your shoulder before opening your car door. It’s not hard to do. If you find that remembering to do this one simple thing is too difficult for you, then might I suggest a career as a New South Wales Police Officer?

MRJ

The thing I feel compelled to illustrate is that the Internet – that ubiquitous, insidious, electronic vampire that’s sucking your life out of you right now – is not all that it’s made out to be. It is, after all, just a big database. Databases existed long before the net. In fact, they existed long before computers. They’re just a system for organising information, after all. As far as technology goes, the only interesting thing about the Internet is its scale.

In fact, there have been a lot more interesting and impressive technologies and technological advances throughout history than the Internet, which is nothing but the ability for computers (which already existed) to speak with each other via modems (which they could already do) and access databases (essentially their prime function) so as to provide information to people who are too lazy to go to the library and read a book (the internet hasn’t changed this about them).

Let’s look at four technologies.

Astronomy – Forget about astrology and the conclusions that the ancients drew from people’s personalities. Let’s just focus on the feat of cataloguing, monitoring and mapping the stars for long enough to learn their movements and patterns. I can’t begin to get my head around the task. It’s the same as somebody asking me to…I don’t know. There’s no simile for this. There is nothing in all of human history that matches the feat. Even the mapping of the human genome was accomplished by using computers. For my money, the science of Astronomy remains the most amazing thing that humans have ever accomplished.

Photography – I like to think that I’m smart but if I had a thousand years to research and experiment, I would never be able to create photography. George Eastman gets most of the credit for inventing recognizably modern photography in 1884, but his work was just the culmination of many different experiments dating back several hundred years before that. Digital photography is just an advancement and application of existing computer technologies. Chemical Photography is stupendous.

Silk – Seriously. Silk. I mean, are you kidding me? I’ve just finished reading about how it’s harvested and spun and I still can’t grasp it. Yet somehow, the Chinese were able to figure out how to collect the cocoons of the silkworm and spin them into clothing 5,500 years ago. But it’s not just that they figured out the how – it’s that they realised it could be done in the first place that’s amazing. You can keep your modern polyesters my friends. Give me some of that wormy silk any day.

Bread – Yep, you read me right. Just think about it. Somebody, who we would probably dismiss as a primitive if they time-jumped to 21^st Century Australia, conceived of collecting grain, grinding it until it was flour, mixing it with some water (the right amount, or it won’t work!) and baking it. If we were to conduct the same time travel experiment in reverse, and send me back 10,000 years into a field of grain near a stream, I would starve to death. Modern archaeologists would then discover my bones in a field, ascertain from studying them that I had died of starvation, calculate from soil analyses that I was in the middle of a field of wheat and conclude that it was just as well that I’d removed myself from the gene pool because I was too stupid to survive unaided.

But I’m not anti-internet. I love being able to research interesting things like astronomy, photography, silk production, and bread with relative ease. But having information about these things should not be confused with having knowledge about them.

MRJ

This wasn’t the only reason I went off Facebook. There were plenty of reasons for me to stay offline, including but not limited to thinking ‘Zuckerberg’ is a creepy sounding name. I did a bit of a search and couldn’t even find a meaning for it, although it appears to be Austrian. So I made up my own meaning. I’m coining it as a medical term used to describe red sores on the buttocks caused by the combined effects of long hours sitting at the computer and a vitamin D deficiency.

The correct usage would be something like:

“Excuse me, Dr @mrjsays. Can you take a look at my butt?”

“Well, I normally charge extra for that…”

“I know, but I’ve got these weird sores and they’re starting to worry me.”

“Okay, let me see…ah, yes. This is just a mild case of Zuckerberg Syndrome. The cure is easy – spend a minimum of 14 hours per day away from the computer and at least 4 of those hours outside the house. It’ll clear up in no time.”

“Wow, thanks Dr @mrjsays. How can I ever repay you?”

“I prefer cash deposits in my Liechtenstein bank account. And follow me on Twitter if you like. But mostly cash deposits.”

So I liberated myself from Facebook for a month or so and discovered that I began using my time a lot more effectively. I was getting through more work in less time as well as reclaiming lost reading time. I phoned friends and family and ignored everybody else. I went for walks. I quite liked the walks. It’s a very different experience to rolling around the living room on the wheels of my desk chair.

While offline, I tried to figure out what would be a healthier way to use social networking sites. For all of my complaints about Facebook, the service really isn’t as evil as everybody makes out – as long as you use a bit of common sense. So now that I’m back, I’ve changed the way I engage with Facebook. I use it sparingly to keep in touch with friends and family while shamelessly promoting my own blog. I’ve even linked my Twitter account to my Facebook account, which I think is kind of cool because it means I can update my Facebook status without having to read about what other people are doing. It suits my egocentric, hedonistic personality perfectly.

Facebook has been great for keeping in touch with my son who’s on a school trip overseas. He’s taken his iPhone with him and is able to use free wi-fi in the hotel to upload photos and chat. I was also able to publicly humiliate myself yesterday by turning my status into a Collingwood homage for several hopeful hours before watching them crumble in the final quarter. It’s okay. One of the good things about being a Collingwood supporter is that you get plenty of experience at being disappointed. I don’t want to talk about it.

But now that I’m back on Facebook I’ve noticed that they’ve gone crazy with ads. Like this one:

Presumably Facebook targeted me because they know I’m a parent. Well, I’ve taken this one step further. If furnishing a home with cardboard is a good idea, then my son will be thrilled when he gets back from the school trip to find that I’ve set up a cardboard box in the back yard for him to live in, and converted his bedroom into The ‘Big Issue’ Museum, where for a gold coin donation you can view all of the copies of The Big Issue that I’ve bought over the years.

But my favourite ad was the sex pills that promised the following:

Men taking [product name deleted] will improve erectile function, will eradicate impotence, Increase libido, reduces premature ejaculation, will reverse the sexual weaknesses of ageing, gain girth and/or penis length even when not erected. With the above comes: Confidence in bed, and happier sex life. Other Health Benefits: It has been proven that individual ingredients will also help with: memory, address disorders of the liver, joints, kidneys, boost energy levels, combating fatigue, strengthens the muscle and better blood flow, helps ease depression and stress symptoms, and other bodily functions.

The promo doesn’t specifically say it but I’m expecting the pills will also make me an Astronaut, President of the World, Mick Jagger, a Sith Lord, Hugh Heffner’s heir (I’ve already ordered my bathrobe from e-bay, new Dad!) and a concert violinist. And maybe three inches taller. And better at converting inches to metric.

I love the Internet.

MRJ