Life in General

Who is Jim and Why are my Knees Trembling?

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You’ll be pleased to know I’ve started going to the gym again. Not for the first time have I started again. It’s been a fairly regular occurrence over the last 20 years or so  but I keep falling off the treadmill wagon. And if this sounds like an alcoholics anonymous meeting or a confession, it sort of is. My name is Chris and I confess that I have been going to the gym for two weeks and two days – round of applause.

Actually its only 10 times over that 16 day period plus one bonus round of golf but I have to admit to noticing the difference already. I’ve lost a few pounds, mostly from round the middle so when I run (slowly and not very far) the shuddering mass round my middle isn’t causing a crippling backache and the shin soreness that feels like red hot needles are being poked into my legs is easing.

The best part about gyming is that I can listen to my music. This is one of two things I use my phone for. If you can’t think of the other one you’re too far gone. And I’m not into muscly thumbs.

Of secondary importance but nevertheless significant is that I don’t believe I have to change anything about my lifestyle. Superimposing a gym regime over my red wine  and beer soaked diet can only be a good thing right? Why take a double hit when one hit should be sufficient for a net positive result.

The worst part about going to the gym other than the physical pain, is knowing that I used to be a reasonably good athlete to the extent that I won a couple of cross-countries at school and played a variety of sports to a reasonable level of proficiency so why can I only bench a pathetic amount of weight and why am I completely knackered after running for about four minutes. The four minute mark is about when I start feeling like those runners who lose control of their legs at the end of a marathon. To be fair though I can walk for hours but a stop-start stroll with the dog doesn’t really count.

I’m reminded of the last game of rugby I played when I was about 40 years old. I was playing for a team of past students against the second XV at my old high school. This was the perfect opportunity to show off to all the adoring chicky babes on the sideline. Well, showing off to the child bride who was actually too busy checking health insurance policies to care. Despite the fact I was only up against a mob of pimply high school students this was the occasion I knew my athletic career was well and truly over and here’s why.

The brain retains its sharpness much longer than the rest of the body but knowing what to do, wanting to do it and actually doing something of athletic prowess, taken together are somewhat problematic. In this case I could see the defender one out from my position was advancing too fast so I figured if I could move my defender a little to the right I could slip past him and behind the outside defender, get into the clear and streak away for a glorious match-winning try.

So the ball’s coming my way. Pass it now, pass it now, the brain’s saying. I get the ball and the brain says step off the left foot and pivot on the right. My defender reacts and moves to my right. The brain sees the outside defender on the left come up too fast as predicted so now’s the time to explode through the gap I’ve created and away we go. EEEEEhaaa. But then the legs say, not so fast brain, we’re not going anywhere that involves more than a leisurely trot. End result – face first in the dirt without a defender laying a hand on me.

When the brain and the legs are in such dogmatic conflict the only compromise is sort of what I’m doing at the gym now.

 

 

A Serpentine Tale

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The CB and I have spent a large part of our co-existence living on acreages on the outskirts of Brisbane. It was an idyllic existence apart from the weekends of slave-like labour maintaining the grounds, the pool, the pumps (no town water where we were) and a plethora of other activities which someone else looks after in our current location – a townhouse complex close to the city.

Living out there occasionally threw some rather interesting experiences our way, many involving wildlife. With no David Attenboroughs in attendance to alleviate these situations (or at least film them and let nature take its course) while hectoring me about my skepticism regarding imminent catastrophic, man-made climate change, I had to manage whatever the situation myself. Please read on.

It was one of those days when the knight in shining armour was required to ride to the rescue of his damsel in distress. Having just returned from the weekly pilgrimage to the Bunnings hardware warehouse (care is needed here – if you spell this word with a “wh”, spellcheck will change it to “whorehouse’), I parked my trusty steed (“Mazda the Sixth”) in its stable and proceeded to repair to man cave 3 – the shed (man caves 1 and 2 being the music room and the media room respectively).

Before I even had time to breech the battlements and swim the moat, I was confronted by said damsel, both ashen faced and trembling of limb (enough of the medieval metaphors). “Come with me” was all she said. I obediently did as I was told (after decades of indoctrination, a man knows his place).

She led me to what used to be our daughter’s bedroom, now a repository of faded memories and other junk, and pointed with a torch, for a torch she was carrying in the middle of the day (I know to not ask why), at an upturned plastic box. “There’s a snake”. “No, it’s a plastic box”. I would not normally have gotten away with such smart arsery but these were unusual times. “Under the box. You know I don’t do reptiles”. Spiders, snarling dogs, burglars – no problem. Snakes – call the SAS. But who needs the SAS when someone perfectly capable of handling a deadly, poisonous serpent of anaconda-like dimensions is around (okay, he wasn’t so I had to handle it).

Now the CB isn’t a complete gibbering mess when it comes to our silently slithering home invaders. She did have the wherewithal to lob that plastic box on it. But that’s where her participation ended and mine began.

I carefully moved the box, exposing the animal’s tail. I grabbed it with both hands, shouldered the box out of the way and threw myself onto its torso, releasing its tail and grabbing for it’s throat. Steve Irwin would have been proud. (Child Bride here – it was about a foot long, barely thicker than a shoelace and with a mouth that would struggle to bite a match stick let alone a finger or a leg. Please continue). Okay, sorry for the over-dramatization. I picked it up by its tail and removed it to the bush. End of story.

Trials and Tribulations

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Apologies to the reader once again for the paucity of posts recently. As I may have mentioned previously, every now and then I have to play the journalist. Journalist in the sense that this (once) noble profession is lumped with fire-fighting and prostitution because they all involve long periods of slothfulness interspersed with furious bouts of intense activity. I have just finished a bout of intense activity culminating in, well, read on…..

I’ve just spent a somewhat stressful time in the witness box, playing my small part in what has been a long and complex trial that doesn’t appear to have an end in sight. Suffice to say it concerns a coal mine that never happened and one of the owners is somewhat miffed that it didn’t. My role was as an expert witness as I am perceived by some to have a degree of expertise in a particular aspect of the subject at hand. I’ve been working in the industry for decades so expertise is an inevitable consequence of longevity.

Anyway, the day and a bit I spent in Court 21 of the Supreme Court of Queensland was the most stressful of my life I think. Maybe flying into Bandar Abbas in southern Iran for the first time just after the Iran/Iraq war and seeing “Death to America” plastered across the front of the terminal was marginally more stressful. Or perhaps the three times I’ve been convinced the aircraft I was in was going to crash causing the heart to pound like John Bonham was using it as his bass drum. But this was up there and lasted far longer.

I’ve negotiated with some of the most intractable, stupid and downright nasty people in the commercial world in my time. Some would qualify as smiling assassins and others would not have been out of place in the Kray gang. Animosity (both real and bogus) notwithstanding, we did both require and (most of the time) eventually achieve a mutually satisfactory outcome followed by handshakes all round and hundreds of beers later that night, except in Iran when I had to wait until I got to our embassy or caught the next international flight out.

But sparring with a sneering barrister who wants to not only destroy your opinions but also destroy your reputation and that of the sources you cite tends to focus the mind to the total exclusion of everything else. It’s not a pleasant experience because no matter how confident you are in what you are proposing nothing escapes a skilled and belligerent advocate’s forensic search for minor inconsistencies and use of semantic nonsense. At least in a negotiation you can come back hard (in the nicest possible way, you understand) at your protagonist whereas in cross-examination overt displays of frustration and anger are very much a losing hand.

Afterwards, over a glass of red, when my mind was acclimatizing with the real world again, I was reminded of the famous interview of Jordan Peterson by Cathy Newman on Britain’s Channel 4. If you haven’t seen it I thoroughly recommend you have a squizz (it’s on YouTube). She spends a lot of the interview prefacing her questions with  “So what you’re saying is….” and he invariably responds with “No that’s not what I’m saying” or words to that effect. Every statement (I naively thought I was going to be asked questions) that was put to me in court finished with “you’d have to agree with that wouldn’t you” of “that’s correct isn’t it” and many times my answer was simply “no”. If I was mortally threatening his line of interrogation when given a chance to expand and expound on my “no” he would occasionally seek intimidating reinforcements and disdainfully state  “are you telling his honour that blah blah blah?”.

Most of the time I struggled to tell anyone anything because of the wad of cotton wool in my mouth. It’s funny because I do actually know what I’m talking about but there are so many points of attack, real and imagined, that can be gleaned from two lengthy reports which are in response to two other reports, all of which cite numerous learned sources. and especially when I’m disagreeing with the opposition’s experts. In these circumstances the metabolism does funny things, one of which is make you talk like a frog.

Yesterday morning one of my golf mates rang from the course and enquired as to my whereabouts as it was a few minutes past our normal tee-off time. Apart from not realizing we were supposed to be playing, I had to say “Sorry, I have to be in court”, a phrase I had always hoped I would never have to utter. At least in this case I was being paid to be in court rather than facing the reverse situation for which I would have to pay my debt to society. Despite the privations I was able to repeat back to him a phrase he once said to me regarding a less than salubrious task but one which was nonetheless a nice little earner – it’s another cruise.

 

Ikea A-maze-ing

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I’ve been to Ikea three times in my life. The last time was last Friday and hopefully it’s the last, last time because I had sworn an oath that my lifetime visit limit had been reached when I hit two. But it was not to be. The prodigal son has his own apartment that is only sparsely furnished so the child bride and I were required to accompany him into this maze of doll’s house – like rooms. And speaking of mazes, I’ve never been in the Hampton Court Maze but I am pretty sure I know how boring it would be and how difficult it would be to get out of so the analogy is perfect.

The only reason I was there was to be the assistant beast of burden. The CB was there to give advice on whether or not a particular ceramic dish was dishwasher friendly, or something. The son was choosing what he wanted (and paying for it – a novel twist on what had previously been a recurring theme) and was also the principal beast of burden as he is somewhat bigger than me.

Daughter and son-in-law had just returned the CB’s Subaru Outback after a brief three year borrow. Suitable transport for flat-pack bookcases was absent until the return of said vehicle so there were no more excuses not to go. The Ikea on the southside of town is 450 metres closer than the one on the north side of town (thank you Google Maps) so southwards we trekked.

Driving there and parking then unparking and driving back is a breeze compared to walking around once you are inside. The evil genius who designed these places made it impossible to take short-cuts. If what you want is right near the entrance you still have to walk past everything else in the store to get to the check-out. I know of some people who enjoy this style of shopping. They are deranged. I saw people, mostly men, who looked like they had been there for a week. Fortunately there are hundreds of bedrooms to choose from if you become trapped. The only peripheral benefit of traipsing round these places is the fitness aspect. I’m pretty sure I logged (this time, courtesy of Mr Apple) more steps there than the day before when I played a round of golf. And believe me, I have visited places on that golf course that have not felt human footsteps for generations.

The last time the CB and I furnished an apartment with flat-pack furniture, I couldn’t walk upright for a week. This time I was happy to assist in carrying the boxes to son’s apartment, depositing them in his lounge room and leaving them there, unopened.

Play It Again, Diego

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Well the child bride and I are off to Europe again next week. It was to be South America this year but a family wedding in Wales in August put paid to that. Those of you who regularly read my stuff on this website will know that I occasionally digress and I’m going to here. Do you know where the term “put paid to” comes from? No, neither did I until I looked it up a minute ago. It refers to the practice of bookkeepers stamping “Paid” on accounts which had been finalised so it’s not quite as exotic as sayings like “beyond the pale” or “three sheets to the wind”. But you did learn something by coming here today.

Anyway, back to the travel thing. Yes the epic tour of South America has been postponed until next year so we can get to a wedding in a place called Mold in Wales. I don’t know if that name has some historic meaning or whether it’s just constantly damp, but I do know it’s a real place because I have a cousin who used to live there. But before we meet up with Cuz 1 and Cuz 2 (of Rheinube River Ramble fame) whose son it is who’s getting married, we’ll be tripping around Spain and Portugal (the Iberian Interlude perhaps, in keeping with the rather dorky names I have for these trips) then we’re off to Morocco which could be called the Camel Caravanserai. Carlos Santana’s fourth album was called “Caravanserai” but I’m sure he won’t mind me pinching the name as I’m sure we’re outside the statute of limitations as it relates to these things. While there and in keeping with its current trendiness, we’ll be looking for a gin joint for the CB to walk into. This sentence and the title of this piece are a little esoteric, I know, but not that esoteric if you’ve seen the Bogart movie. And Rick didn’t actually say…….. doesn’t matter.

So this post is like a prologue to our trip. I shall try to keep you posted as we swan around – there’s another one of those sayings. No wonder English is such a hard language to master. I’ve been speaking and writing it for decades and just had to look up “put paid to”.

It was going to be a bit difficult to keep up with the scribing because as I mentioned in the previous post, I was expert witnessing for a mining related trial and that process was to be ongoing while we are away. Fortunately, (or not depending on how you look at it) I was kicked off the case. I was a relative latecomer to the trial after another chap got sick but my report must have been so demoralising for the other side that they protested to the judge and he elbowed me. There were legal reasons which I won’t bore you with here. Needless to say it’s yet another example to add to my list of reasons why I believe we have a legal system and not a justice system. And I don’t have to lug a laptop around Europe with me now. Yippeee!!

Another Cruise Perhaps

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Apologies for not posting for a while dear reader, but I have been rather busy. If you’ll excuse the colloquialism, I’ve had my arse hanging out. First I had to squire some overseas colleagues on mine and port visits and then I had to write a report for a court case I am expert witnessing on.

I sometimes wonder which was the harder. The first one involved extensive planning then being on the road for the best part of two weeks with flights, long drives and lots of coal dust which had to be washed away by the occasional beer. Only occasionally I have to stress because we were all alcohol tested at every site and had to draw lots to see who got drug tested at every site. The mining industry is far too serious these days. The second job involved writing a hundred words when ten would suffice in plain-speak. But we’re talking legalese. And leaving out a comma could mean the difference between a slap on the wrist and death.

The trip was quite interesting for me – 11 coal mines, four ports and seven separate meetings plus lunches and dinners spread over ten days. I say interesting because even though I’ve been in the industry for centuries I never got to visit any of these mines (apart from one) because I always worked for a competing company so the respective owners wouldn’t let me in the gate. Now I work for a steel company which buys a……I was going to say truckload of coal but while a truckload of some things, like paper clips, is a lot, for coal it’s a veritable eye-drop.  Anyway, the cost of what they (I’m on contract so strictly speaking, am not an employee) buy from mines in my state every year is measured in the billions so it was nice to be treated respectfully by former competitors. Oh and the “apart from one” mentioned above was one I worked for when it was owned by one of my former employers and the less said about them, the better. One of these days that little episode will probably find its way here but I’m still looking for an amusing angle and right now that’s like looking for sincerity at the Oscars.

My visitors were from Singapore, India and Holland. All of them whip smart and experts in their respective fields but half of them had never been to Australia before so it was like herding cats. A half kilometre walk from one meeting to another in the city would see the group strung out over a hundred metres or so because photos had to be taken and walking was more accurately described as carefree meandering. And time management…pfffft.

Notwithstanding it was a very successful trip. We didn’t lose anyone despite going into a number of very large and very deep holes – that’s the most important of all success measuring criteria – and no one got hurt. The paranoia about safety in these places is bordering on the fanatical. In fact it probably is when you consider the need for a safety induction, a long sleeved shirt, a hi-vis vest, gloves, steel capped boots and a hard hat when you don’t even get out of the vehicle. Interestingly some open cut mines don’t require you to wear a hard hat because what’s going to hit you on the head – a bird? But others do. And some don’t require the boots or the gloves. My mates in production will be horrified at my devil-may-care attitude to safety but when I worked underground (as a mine geologist, not a miner) many moons ago, no one really gave a shit. And apart from the occasional mine visit nowadays most of my post-underground time is and was spent in offices and aeroplanes. I am rather a stickler for safety when it comes to flying though.

As I’ve already mentioned, either side of the mine visits I have been writing an expert witness report for a mining related litigation and the less said about that the better – literally. Legalese is a foreign language and a very wordy foreign language. If there isn’t at least one statement of the bleeding obvious in each paragraph then you’re not trying. But it pays the bills. As a mate said recently, every time he did a job like this it was another cruise for him and his wife. Not a bad way of looking at it as I wend my way wearily into the semi-retirement sunset. As if….

Hashtag This

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Now that the Mueller Report is out, I believe it should be safe to publish this. I wrote it a couple of months ago and filed it away for future reference. The future is now and I feel ever so slightly vindicated because I think I have already  heard one or two mea culpas . Read on to find out what this is all about.

Alright blog, what do you think of this? The Spectator magazine is running an essay competition and the topic is “The Next Great Hashtag”. I’d love to enter. I’ve been threatening to submit something or other to one of these competitions or to a magazine for ages but it’s unlikely to happen here sadly because I’m not familiar with the mythical (to me) power of the hashtag or indeed why it isn’t still just that little sign you put in front of a number to indicate that it is a number, as in #3 or “number three”. There’s a degree of redundancy there you’d have to admit so someone somewhere has decided that # is being grossly under-utilised so is in need of a higher purpose. So dear blog, to continue concealing my hipness ignorance (“hignorance’ or “hipnorance” – could have invented a new word there) from the rest of the world because only three people regularly read you, I’ll subject you to a discourse on the topic at hand.

I’m a child mostly of the previous century so the significance or indeed the aforementioned power of a hashtag eludes me. My football mad relatives write comments on Facebook followed by #ManU  #Football  #SirAlex or such like. Why? What’s the point? Does this magically transport the comment to …..somewhere or someone? That Twitter thing uses them a lot but I don’t wallow in that sewer so am none the wiser there. I remember a picture of a pouting, frowny faced Michelle Obama holding up a sign with “#Bring Back Our Girls” written on it. The parodies were hilarious which just goes to show that unless you can genuinely fake sincerity then forget success (attrib. George Burns or someone called Jean Giraudoux or someone else). Come to think of it, Michelle Obama’s fake sincerity doesn’t seem to have held her back. Neither has Bill Shorten’s for that matter – once more with feeling Bill, the director might shout. But why is that noughts and crosses thing needed at the start of the comment?

So not understanding the authority of a hashtag makes me eminently qualified to expound prophetically on the next “big thing”. If it’s okay for humanities professors to lecture me on climate change and get away with it, then cop this.

No, I can’t do it. My curiosity has got the better of me and I’m going to have to do a bit of research.

Later that day……………..

Apparently, according to that fount of all knowledge Wikipedia, a hashtag links messages with a common theme, much like a common theme used to. During my in-depth research I went onto Facebook and clicked on a hashtag to see what would happen and bugger me, all of these Facebook entries appeared and all were related to the same, wait for it, theme. So there’s the clue. The Next Great Hashtag has to be linked to today’s most ubiquitous, prevailing (“trending”?) theme. And what might that be, said he, asking the most obvious question in the world?

Before I answer that question, let me say that I follow American politics reasonably closely. Closely enough to not have to read the numerous articles written by the work experience kids who populate some of our online “news” websites. You know the ones – they regularly point out where Donald Trump continues to go wrong or expound on the five reasons he will be impeached or resign or somehow or other be kicked out of office in the next three or six or nine months. This has been going on for more than two years. Predictions of his downfall or at least that he would achieve nothing and be the worst president since the last one have come and gone like so many climate tipping points.

Consequently I’m predicting that The Next Great Hashtag will be #Iwaswrong as in I was wrong to underestimate, demonise, mock (pick any number of abusive adjectives) Donald Trump and not give any credit where credit is due, which is all Donald Trump (and the rest of us for that matter) can ask for. I accept that this will be a stretch for those suffering the most chronic, incurable strains of Trump Derangement Syndrome, because let’s face it, there’s a lot of face to lose here. Mea culpa’s of the “It’s a fair cop, Your Honour; guilty as charged. I was wrong” type, will need to be levered out of CNN for example, with a crowbar.

In a parallel universe a casual observer might feel sympathy for someone who has put the bank account, the house, the car, the wife, the kids, the credibility and the beer can collection on a sure bet like Hillary Clinton who then rather unsportingly loses. If not for the billions squirrelled away in the Clinton Foundation, you’d almost believe that the fix was in. And the flashing red lights were there for everyone to see. Fortunately the “someones” in question in our universe are celebrities lite, 90% of the media, the self proclaimed elites of the bureaucracy and academia plus random undergraduates with nothing to lose and as would have happened with a different election result, nothing to gain. So they get no sympathy.

These clowns (for want of a better word) painted themselves into such a tight corner with their samurai-like commitment to Hillary, the only way out for some of them if she lost was the Hollywood version of hara-kiri – moving to Canada. When this level of devotion takes you to your own version of Jonestown, there is no backing down. The only way out, up to now, has been to totally discredit everything Donald Trump said, says, did and does, past present and future, so that upon his downfall they can say “See, I was right all along. It just took a bit longer than I thought to play out.”

Sadly for them, it’s not playing out. Consequently we have the tragically pathetic sight (and sound) of an actor at the top of his game (debatable, I know), Robert De Niro contributing a philosophical “F…Trump” to the discourse thereby proving that even the most inspirational actors are orally vacuous unless someone else puts words into their mouths. In fact the two years of Trump’s presidency have played out like the speeded up versions of left-slanting news shows on CNN and MSNBC on election night which are preserved for posterity on YouTube  – initially euphoria but morphing into equal parts feral aggression and despair. If the leader of the free world didn’t have such a profound and ongoing impact on global machinations, those shows would have represented the pinnacle of Trump’s presidency before it even started.

Now we know most of the Trump opposition is of the left; not exclusively but predominantly. And we know that leftists like collectives because, let’s face it, most of them don’t have the courage of their convictions when confronted by arguments which rely on facts, logic, common sense and human nature. They need a protective outer cloak of like minded automatons. Watching Ben Shapiro or Brendan O’Neill or Jordan Petersen or the late Christopher Hitchens skewer emotive half-baked arguments with these axioms, even though a couple of those people mentioned would not necessarily consider themselves to be of the right (socially and/or economically), is a latter day version of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, such is the mirth-making.

Returning to the hashtag, the aforementioned emotive collective (“emective” perhaps – I’m on a roll with these new words) has nowhere to go especially if the Mueller probe into God knows what turns up nothing of significance and the now Democrat dominated House of Representatives turns out to be, as expected, all piss and wind.  I’m predicting that the dam will break when one prominent leftist admits they erred in condemning everything Trumpian and tweets #Iwaswrong. Collectivists being what they are will initially try to isolate this clearly deranged outlier until someone else realises that maybe he/she is right. Then other collectivists, because they are, will want to join the party to show how woke they are and hey presto, the trend is on its way.

Incidentally I was torn between #Iwaswrong  and #Wewerewrong but such is the power of #, I have found, it doesn’t matter because in social media world # is the great gatherer or more appropriately collector, if we want to stick to our leftist shtick. It turns out the armour provided by “we” won’t be required.

Now I’d love to do a piece on the “Green New Deal” but it would look something  like this byooooootvglsek5bvdktgb,bsc              after I fall face first into the keyboard laughing like a drain.

Rule 1 – No Dick Heads

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We’ve all started new positions during our working life. Admittedly some people do it only once and these are generally public servants or Japanese although the job-for-life the previous generation of Japanese workers expected is not quite as ubiquitous these days.

Before you start a new position you generally have to negotiate your way through an application to get an interview, then fill in some questionnaires to make sure you’re not a psychopath or a sociopath. And here’s the rub.

Did you ever wonder, once you’ve got to know your workmates, how some of them jumped those hurdles. Some of them wouldn’t be able to jump rope if it was lying limp on the ground. How did these thoroughly unlikeable individuals slip through the fuck-wit filter? Were they interviewed by like minded people? Are they put there as a management challenge for everyone else? Do they know someone or have photos. Or are they simply the beneficiaries of the only job generating programme left-leaning governments throughout the world know – employing more and more bureaucrats. Because let’s face it, many of these people work in government. One of the few privileges private enterprise enjoys compared with government is the ability to fire someone. That person has to have committed an atrocity three times or three different atrocities before human resources will stop wringing their hands and gnashing their teeth long enough to risk a trip to the unfair dismissal tribunal. But such are the “rights” of employees over management these days.

Back to our work-place wankers. You know the type. They work to rule absolutely when it advantages them. Breaks are taken at exactly the time they are meant to be taken. This doesn’t necessarily mean one returns to work at the allotted time. One has to finish one’s cigarette, doesn’t one. They are the ones who loudly assert their rights at work. If there’s a union presence they will utilise it as often as my mother calls her local member of parliament. They will leave their workplace exactly at knock-off time even if it means leaving a nail half banged into a piece of wood. And they will gossip, maliciously.

There is an Australian Football club that famously implemented a “no-dickheads” rule which is a bit like the fuck-wit filter mentioned above. This meant that if you were up yourself to the extent that you disrupted the team’s cohesion, it didn’t matter how good you were, you weren’t welcome and you weren’t selected. And it worked because the club enjoyed considerable success.

This doesn’t necessarily mean it will work everywhere. Imagine applying it to an NBA franchise. Overnight you’d be down to about three players. And NFL teams would lose whole defensive lines – you know the ones who carry on like they’ve cured cancer after making one tackle. Unfortunately when you see an eight year old soccer player put on a Hugh Jackman routine when they score a goal, to the raucous cheers of Mum and Dad, you know the future supply of dickheads is secure.

When the no-dickheads rule is rolled out to all work places in the country we will have platoons of embittered ex-administration officers roaming central business districts all over the country, stopping outside their previous places of work, sucking on fags and abusing passers-by. In the US they will occasionally (rarely thankfully) return to their old workplaces with guns. Stringent application of the no-dickheads rule at the appropriate time could have nipped a tragedy in the bud. Or more likely simply shifted it to another location.

Unfortunately it seems we are stuck with these people and now that political correctness has sunk it’s cold dead claws into every facet of life, especially the fun bits, they can claim victim hood status as well. Best to just ignore them.

What You Will

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I received this letter from the future. It’s rather a long one so I figured it needed a title. On reading it “Brave New World” sprung to mind but that’s been taken as has “Back to the Future” and even if “How Green was My Valley” hadn’t been taken, I wouldn’t have used it. No, it needs a unique title. “Earl” fits the bill – get it, Earl, title, but “My Name is Earl” is also legally off-limits. So let’s call it “What You Will”. Here it is:

It all began in the second quad-mester of 2019. The second quad-mester used to be called autumn but seasons were banned because summer in the southern hemisphere discriminates against winter in the northern hemisphere. Anyway this was when the fascist scum Morrison called the last election. We haven’t had one since – that one was enough apparently.

Billy-boy won that election but then suffered an unfortunate accident when he stupidly tried to fake way too much sincerity, experienced a stress induced Uriah Heep attack, turned dark green (if only briefly) then black as coal (how ironic and culturally appropriating?) and kicked the proverbial. We now have the Utopia we have always dreamt of but didn’t dare to articulate before, under pain of terminal ridicule and Goebbellian censorship, except on the ABC and free to air TV channels, in Nine/Fairfax publications, on countless blogs and in the halls of every university and school in the nation. We will not be silenced any longer by the Howards and Morrisons of this world and their bastard devil’s spawn like Tony Abbott.

Person how things have changed since those dark days. Praise the Justine because everyone has a disability pension now as it was discriminatory to allow some to have one and others to not. For a couple of weeks there it was $150,000 per year until Gina’s and Andrew’s and James’ and Kevin’s money ran out. Now it’s down to $1.50 per week but we don’t actually see it as it has to be saved in a special account for the good of the collective.

Also, everyone has a right to public housing for the same reason we all have disability pensions. My mate Johnno, lucky bastard, he got Gina’s place after the billionaires were told to leave. Who knew there were so many billionaires in Australia – about three million if you include the kids. I actually knew one and didn’t even realise it. The internet guy was a billionaire, or I assume he was. I thought he just fixed things but he actually ran his own business and employed two people. I’ve no idea whether he took any Aussie dollars with him when he left but I hope he did because they’re completely useless now. Those greedy bastards deserve everything that’s coming to them wherever they go. He gave me a cheery wave as he boarded the plane and shouted “read Atlas Shrugged you moron”. Now I believe “Atlas Shrugged You Moron” is a book but I haven’t read any books. They don’t teach reading in schools anymore other than as a gender metaphor in interpretive dance.

I wonder where they did go. Not to Indonesia of course because we banned Indonesia. They light fires there and kill things to eat. And they have cars. And they’re not contributing to population control to save the planet like we are. Their population has gone up by five million in the last 12 months according to the Information Directorate In Our Town. Ours has gone down by 8 million in the same time so I ask you in (please excuse) Hockey speak, “who’s doing the heavy lifting now?”

The place has improved so much and we’ve never been happier. Justine, who’s been in charge since the revolution after the last election and had nothing to do with Bill’s accident, honest, was seen to skip (once). She threw a Birkenstock, holed a tight and cracked a smile and unfortunately her face fell off but we screwed it back on and re-inserted the lemon so everything is back to normal.

It’s a bit tricky actually finding out what’s going on in the world now. Five states are without the internet because, as I said earlier, the internet guy left. Apparently Tasmania still has it but of all of the people who’ve tried to swim across Bass Strait, none have made it back, so it’s a bit of a mystery. That running dog poopy pants Murdoch Minor doesn’t pump his propaganda into our sub-conscious anymore either. We ran him out of town on a rail and he took his 150% of the media with him. So we don’t know anything now but at least what we don’t know is pure and unadulterated.

“Unadulterated” is now the official adjective for the ABC. Strangely, many of the once familiar faces are no longer there. Okay, we haven’t had power for a while but even when we did we noticed that they disappeared from our screens about the same time as when the planes left. We assume they went to heckle and see the billionaires off the premises but they never came back. They were foot-soldiers for the revolution so surely none of them were billionaires as well?

As I mentioned, the power’s off now. My windmill won’t turn because there are three dead birds jammed in it and a meteor hit my solar panel (curse you Tony Abbott). But that’s okay because food’s really cheap so I don’t need a refrigerator. I can put caviar on my toast (if the toaster worked) because it’s as cheap as corn flakes. Justine tells us the food’s going to last at least for another month so nothing to worry about there.

Unfortunately the pharmacists all left when Justine threatened to end their monopoly so the drugs ran out six months ago. Fortunately, as I mentioned before, there’s been an extremely responsible reduction in our population so the planet can be saved. This means we don’t need as many drugs (or as much food for that matter) as we did before, so win-win. The latest government forecast has the population reducing even more dramatically in coming months which is fantastic and a testament to environmentally responsible totalitarianism. Shame on you Abbott you fascist pig for encouraging the nuclear family and responsible family planning. Nuclear – I ask you?

It’s amazing how much we’re saving on food and drugs (if we had any) and power (if we had any) by responsibly allowing the population to once again reach equilibrium with our incredibly fragile environment. It’s so good to see the rainforest reclaiming the CBD. Another high rise, those phallic symbols of the capitalist scum, just fell over. Good; that’s more building material for those who have the absolute right to public housing but don’t actually have a public house because there aren’t enough after the May razing got out of hand during the celebration of Democratic People’s Freedom Day. We’re intending to pull down more of these huge apartment buildings to provide even more material to build even more public housing. Next job – find some builders. There’s no problem finding wrecking crews and it stands to reason that if you can pull it down you should be able to put it back up again so that’s another box ticked.

This is too easy. Have to go now; the Population Enhancement Transgression  Association is coming through the window.

The Hollies – a Tribute to Time Served

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The child bride and I took off for the Gold Coast on Thursday. The last time we went, to see Status Quo (reported on here), we hadn’t planned the most efficient route and therefore encountered about 47 red lights. This time we did it right which is just as well because the CB drove. I’ve been feeling like death warmed up since Wednesday or as an old boss of mine used to say “half fucked and let go”.

But I wasn’t going to let that prevent us from seeing the Hollies so, as I said, the CB drove. Now I’m not going to comment on her driving because we are safely back at home now. Suffice to say, I don’t tail-gate, I don’t lane-hop and I manage to keep my road rage more or less under control. And that’s all I’m going to say about that, as a great philosopher once said.

We’ve been lucky enough to see most of our musical heroes from our yoof so while it was great to see the Hollies last night, I’m sure there’ll be other opportunities because they tour relentlessly. They are probably the longest surviving band in history having performed and toured every year since the formative year of 1962 and the eventual settlement of most of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame line-up in 1963. Bobby Elliot and Tony Hicks have been with the band since 1963 – no hiatuses (hiati?), no taking a year off to pursue individual projects. Now that’s stamina. Actually, we may not get to see them here again because as you can calculate, those two are getting on a bit.

After performing Bus Stop, Carrie Anne, He Ain’t Heavy etc etc etc for all of those years you’d expect them to be pretty tight. Of the other four band members, two have been there almost 30 years and the other two 15 years. So they are able to reproduce that typical sound. Peter Howarth, the lead singer said some heckler in the audience at a previous concert yelled out “I didn’t expect you to be this good”. That sound was honed back in the 60’s with some rather accomplished session musicians – how about Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Elton John.

And when they came on stage at the start, they were all dressed in white shirt, black tie, black trousers and shiny black shoes. The drummer had his top button undone and his tie was all over the place but that’s drummers for you. I haven’t seen performance uniforms like that since I went to see the Halle Orchestra in Manchester in 1973.

The crowd was the Status Quo crowd and the Eagles crowd – SKI’s (spending the kid’s inheritance), COB’s (cashed up bogans), GLAM’s (greying, leisured, affluent, married) and GOFER’s (genial old farts enjoying retirement). We were six rows from the front so I’m speculating on those who were behind up but I’m pretty confident in my CUOA (compulsive use of acronyms).

So as I said, I’ve not been well, in fact I’m not well now so this post is not quite as hilariously funny and irreverent as previous ones. The concert was a welcome distraction but I hit the wall a few hours later and woke up at 4.30am thinking I was sleeping on the inside of a water bed. Hopefully a course of antibiotics will do the trick. Personally, I think it was the mouthful of bacteria I experienced during a tooth extraction two weeks ago. Maybe the course of antibiotics that followed didn’t complete the job. Let’s hope (well you don’t have to but I certainly do) this course does the trick.

It’s all I can do to tap on these keys at the moment but it just goes to show – if the desire and incentive are there, adrenaline will get you though.