Survey this

A long time ago (January?) I started a series of posts called 'Things I Don't Understand (But Wish I Did)' on another blog. It was meant to be an occasional series, and I must confess I have taken such liberties with it that I have not added to it since its inception in January (although there have been things, multitudes actually, and daily, that I have not understood).

So in an effort to address this terrible neglect I decided this morning to post the very next thing that mystified me, so here it is:

Not the easiest thing to read, is it? Sorry. I'll see if I can fix it.

Ok so apparently I can't fix it. Sorry about that (Alex help!).

Anyhoo, it's a survey that arrived today, one of those 'Tell us what it's like to live where you live, chump!' surveys. Now I love filling in a good survey, in fact I love filling in forms of all types (formgasmic), so imagine my delight when this giant 10-pager arrived.

I rattled through the pages, ticking boxes, strongly agreeing and mildly disagreeing everywhere. Then I got to the last two questions, above:

Question 42: How satisfied are you with the way democracy works in Australia?

and

Question 43: What is your favourite retail shop in your local area?

What the fuck? Seriously? Your thoughts on the effectiveness of Australia's political system, and oh, while we've got you, where do you buy your Tampax?

I'm guessing this is a State government effort.

Yeah I mean you, shitty business

So here's the thing with Facebook: If you're a business and you have a Facebook page and you post things on it and people respond, unless those responses are unforgivably lewd (and you're not, ahem, a publisher of adult 'books'), THEN YOU SHOULDN'T DELETE THEM BECAUSE IT MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A CENSORIOUS DICK of a business.

Just saying.

Well hello there

[I've got some thing-bits to do at the moment; sorry it's been so boring here (unless you just come by to read the comments, in which case we may all be in luck! Over to you, MCL, Ramon and Squibelline).

I'll be back next week, most likely Thursday, with a whole load of twaddle just ripe for twaddling. See you then.]

This just in: parking fines still suck

It has been brought to my attention recently by a silly local council-type that doing certain things in car parks is considered dangerous and that doing these certain dangerous things (and getting caught - bugger) warrants immediate recompense by way of handing over $84 to another silly local council-type.

While it's theoretically possible that the first silly local council-type (the one who left the sunny yellow fine notice under my windscreen wiper) was a. primarily concerned for my welfare, and b. a thoroughly reasonable person, it's highly unlikely, so it is that I call on you to join me, dear comrades, in overthrowing the local council parking dictatorship!

Sure the revenue raised from parking fines goes towards maintaining essential services, planting trees, saving baby fur seals et cetera, but couldn't I contribute in some other way than paying $84 for parking the wrong way around in a car spot?

Yes, that was my hideous crime. I did this:


When I should have done this:


Once more in case you missed it (unlikely, I know, given the intense danger inherent in the situation); this:


Instead of:



Mercy, I'm lucky to be alive. Imagine if Obama got it wrong just once and parked front-to-kerb instead of rear-to-kerb; heavens! The whole world would collapse.

So now I have to steal enough plants from local council gardens beds then sell them at the local council markets on Saturday in order to pay my $84 local council parking fine.

Ah-ha! So the system does work after all.

Introductory Procrastination

Do you ever have those days when you do everything but the thing you're meant to be doing? I'm having one of those today, which is why I'm here blogging instead of, you know, doing the thing I'm meant to be doing.

It's not that I haven't given this thing a lot of thought. I have. I thought about it then started it, then thought about it some more then scrapped what I'd started, then re-started, then thought about the re-start and scrapped that too.

At one point this afternoon I had worked my procrastinatory thinking into an absurd circular argument, which didn't help with progress at all.

On the positive side, I've learnt over the years when to abandon something and go to bed. The abridged sequence is as follows:

1. Sigh regularly while sitting at the computer for several hours: type something, sigh, delete it, type something else, sigh, delete it, type something else, sigh, and et cetera.

2. Lie on the couch because you may have better luck thinking over there.

3. As soon as you realise lying on the couch makes no discernible difference to the quality of your thought (this usually takes two to three minutes), return to the computer and do something completely unrelated to the thing you're meant to be doing.

MCL, this seems like a perfect time to show you the piccy I came across in Frankie of that great cat-print suit:




I'm sure you would look totally hot in this and I vote you dedicate your next pay to the purchase of it (or else get work to pay for it; it's clearly an office essential).

4. Having done something completely unrelated to the thing you're meant to be doing, return to the thing you're meant to be doing and say out loud: "Screw this, I'm going to bed," then go to bed.

Works for me every time.

And the winner is...

I used to think literary prizes were silly, no wait, I still do, but I do like the person who just won the Booker (oh, my apologies magnanimous corporate sponsor, I mean the Man Booker prize).

Hilary Mantel just won the sash for her weighty tome Wolf Hall. I don't know Hilary Mantel from a stick of licorice, but given her prize-related soundbites I'd be honoured to shout her a beer and bowl of peanuts if she's ever in Sydney.

According to the UK's Telegraph, Mantel professed herself “heartened, delighted, encouraged, strengthened and a little bemused” to be the favourite. Yes yes heartened, yawn yawn delighted, but bemused! I do so love a bemused writer (Bob Ellis would be constantly bemused, don't you think?).

Moving on to Mantel's post-prize soundbites, she said: "I hesitated for such a long time before beginning to write this book, actually for about 20 years."

Boom tish!

And, she was good enough to provide a soundbite for the morbidly-inclined amongst us:

"If winning the Booker Prize is like being in a train crash, at this moment I am happily flying through the air."

Exactly.

And because my life plan is to sunbake and snort cocaine when I retire, I'm delighted to hear Mantel (who's 57) has quipped that she plans to spend her prize money on "sex, drugs and rock'n'roll".

So I'm happy to announce that the delightful Ms Mantel is my new hero (or literary prize anti-hero hero), but this doesn't mean there isn't any room in my heart for the judging, ah, intelligentsia. "Our decision," the chair of the judging panel has explained, “was based on the sheer bigness of the book, the boldness of its narrative, its scene-setting, the gleam that there is in its detail."

Yes that's right, Mantel's book won because of its 'sheer bigness'. Tell that to Coetzee.

A sport for kings and kettles

Several years ago some friends of a friend of mine decided to pick a sports team to follow. The two halves of this couple had grown up in different cities so rather than having one ardent supporter and one meh-whateverer they decided the best and fairest thing would be to choose a new team to love and cherish together.

They spent considerable time figuring out the criteria for their new team, none of which I can remember other than the team had to have the potential for greatness but not actually be too great at the time of choosing (so they could enjoy its rise), and it had to be based in a town with a population over 135,000.

That's right, because they were going to move there.

These friends of a friend were looking for a little more than a team to support. They were looking for team colours that matched their skin tones, a supporters' club that knew a bbq wasn't about the sausages, and a place to bring up their kids. They were looking to fill the void of modern life.

It's possible I made fun of them at the time. It's possible I called them crazy nutbars, but now the void has come whistling around my neighbourhood so I too have decided to turn to sport for salvation. My sport of choice? Le Tour de France.

Sure I only just figured out it's started already (who knew?), and sure I know nothing about cycling, but what's not to love about a sport that uses words like 'peloton', 'rear cog cluster' and 'derailleur'?

But my desperate over-justification doesn't end there: I had a pale blue Malvern Star all through primary school, I enjoyed The Triplets of Belleville when it first screened in 2003, and I even saw what could have been Le Tour itself when I was driving around France in July 2002 (or else the French have a crazy habit of motoring through narrow streets in small towns with bikes on their roofs):

Note my nascent fandom peeking out from under the front tyre of the second bike on the yellow car.

So unlike my crazy nutbar friends of a friend I feel well qualified in my sporting choice. I'll report back on Le Tour's void-filling capabilities; what fills your void?

And another thing

Ooh look! Some bright and shiny things!

I've sat down several times over the last few days intent on writing a few bits and pieces about my new job but I keep getting distracted with little non-job whinges. My ramblings keep coming out like this: "Whinge. Whinge. Whinge. Whinge. Whinge. Oh yeah and I reckon my new job is going to be ay-okay."

So I've decided to embrace the whinge because clearly whinges distract me like bright shiny objects so hopefully once the whingeing is out of the way (stop saying 'whinge' in there) I will have some insightful things to say about starting a new job in a fractured economy.*

Where shall I begin? With whinge number 1:

1. It's cold in Sydney and I keep doing stupid things with powerpoints and power cords that mean I turn the heater off and the toaster on. Stupid stupid stupid.

2. I got a traffic infringement notice for turning left at a 'no left turn' sign. I think road rules can be divided into two groups: essential (stop at red lights) and suggested (no left turn). Unfortunately the constabulary at Newtown Police Station disagreed so made an example of me. I hate being made an example of because no-one learns a thing! The only person who knows I got busted for breaking a road 'suggestion' was the chap in the blue car behind me who did the same thing and got the same infringement notice. For our fines no-one is any wiser.

3. My son keeps waking up between 3.47am and 3.59am. Apparently he's not convinced the day doesn't start then. This is made doubly worse when I keep doing stupid things with powerpoints, power cords and heaters.

4. I got an email from the RTA about my toll pass with the subject heading "Easytoll Account Notification - Account Blacklisted". I'm not sure that my account balance reaching $0 makes me a person or organisation that has incurred disapproval or suspicion or should be boycotted. I would much prefer: "Minimum Account Balance Reached - When you've got a mo', pop over to our website and put some more clams in your bucket. Good on you."

5. To the person who squashed into the inch of space next to me on the train on Friday: squashing does not two foot of space make.

Ah, that's better. And my new job? I reckon it's going to be ay-okay.

* Unlikely.

Confound it all

I read a piece by Richard Glover in the SMH a week or two ago deriding the language pedant. Glover opened with:

One day, during my show on ABC radio, I shall summon up my courage and say it: "The Nazi Party were right for killing all those communists, homosexuals and Jews." I know I will get complaints. People will be very, very upset. Some will be almost apoplectic with rage.

"I expected better of the ABC," they will say. "You fail to understand that the 'Nazi Party' is a collective noun and should thus be followed by the word 'was'. I await your apology by return post."

Glover's point being, of course, that the language police are more concerned with grammatical errors than content.

Good point well made, as my hero of late '90s sketch shows Shaun Micallef used to say.

Anyhoo, Glover's piece wound through some common errors the language police often seize upon, like 'PIN number,' 'ATM machine' and 'potato's', and I confess I've spent many a gleeful hour chortling over misspelt, mis-punctuated and mis-written menus ("Try our samosa's! You will love it!"), but I do think form is there to assist meaning, not to shine a torch up its own, uh-hm, colon.

But I've found this week that there are sentences that, although they appear to have form and content, are completely devoid of meaning, like this little gem below. Could I trouble you to read it with me?

In his conclusion to [Blah Blah Blah], Mr Blah Blah describes the "decentering" of modern consciousness as the standpoint of the ironic, antimetaphorical mode. Against this "lack of central plenitude," melodrama "represents a refusal of this vertiginous but possibly liberating decentering, a search for a new plenitude, an ethical recentering".

Does anyone know what that means? My best guess is: "I ate my sandwich too fast and sometimes I like to wear yellow undies". I think the bit about ethical recentering at the end might be about the RSPCA but I can't be sure.

So my question is, what do you do with sentences where meaning and good sense are wholly absent? Is it best to just open the gate and let them wander onto the road?

The Very Hungry Global Economic Crisis*

In the light of the golden arches from the Maccas across the road, a little house with a sub-prime mortgage sat in the middle of its block.

One Sunday morning the warm sun came up and - pop! - went the US property market. Out of the rubble came a tiny and very hungry economic crisis.

It started to look for some food.

On Monday it ate through one bundle of securitised loans. But it was still hungry.

On Tuesday it ate through one half of the middle management of a mid-tier bank, but it was still hungry.

On Wednesday it ate through the rest of the middle management of the mid-tier bank then ate all the other levels of the bank, but it was still hungry.

On Thursday it ate through one Merrill and one Lynch, but it was still hungry.

On Friday it ate through one emerging market economy, but it was still hungry.

On Saturday it ate through one nest egg, one framing business, one aid program, one maternity leave provision, one camping trip, one Laura's Hot Bake and one nice new pair of Connies (Chuck Taylor All Star Multi Eyelets). That night it had a stomachache!

The next day was Sunday again. The caterpillar ate through one nice greenback, and after that it felt much better.

Now it wasn't hungry any more - and it wasn't a little economic crisis any more. It was a big, fat global economic crisis!

It built a house, called corporate law, around itself. It stayed inside for more than two weeks. Then it nibbled a hole in an amended subclause of a subsection, pushed its way out and...

Boarded a private jet and winged it to the Caymans where it's now lying about in a banana chair drinking pina coladas and barking commands at the help.

* Apologies to Mr Carle and his very lovely caterpillar.

Home appliance cheats, compiles headlines

Just a quick sticks one... big day tomorrow, etc.

Today's Top Cornball Headlines:

1. "Pene for your thoughts, Tom": Yep, Tom Cruise acting creepy around former love-chunks Penelope Cruz at an Oscars after-party.

2. "Lonely Planet tells staff to pack their bags": You guessed it, this one ran in the business section.

3. "No waltzing for Heath's Matilda": I genuinely thought we had an unspoken but general agreement that no waltzy puns would be attached to Heath's little squirt. Shame on you, large media outlet.

Tomorrow: a close analysis of this article: "Robbers loot Greer's home: Academic says female cops at her home looked like cabaret artistes." Oh happy headline days! Bring on the new dawn!

We have all this to look forward to tomorrow. Thanks SMH for bringing us such photo-y goodness. My my, legs 11 indeed.

Highway to Nowhereville

A street number, doing what it does best.

I had an appointment this week and I decided, most irregularly, to drive.

It should have been easy enough to get to, my online map-thing said it was only 9.1km and 16 minutes away, but by the time I finally reached my destination I felt like Burke and/or Wills and was ready to eat my camels (if only I had thought to bring some).

So after a significant period of time and a rather unpleasant detour that involved rain and walking in it, I arrived, almost an hour late, sputtering and stammering to the receptionist about the stupidity of town planners everywhere.

She laughed good naturedly and said, with nowhere near enough sympathy for my wrong turns, lost hours and wet socks, "oh yes yes, it's the darndest thing, the numbers on this road restart every time it hits a new suburb".

What? Whose crazy-arsed idea was that? Street numbers are supposed to go up! And they're supposed to go up in order! It's their thing! It's what they do!

What kind of roads-based policy maker would come up with the idea of restarting the numbering in every suburb? An evil one, that's who. Next they'll be handing out addresses like 'Over the Hill and Far Away,' 'The Bridge at the End of the World,' or 'Earth', none of which are going to help me get from A to B.

I can't wait until the robots take over the world; they'll sort this shit out.

Gah!

Piccie from here.

I had the great pleasure of spending today, the whole day, in a large fluro-lit room that could easily have been mistaken for a common room in a prison, say, if only the wooden skirting boards hadn't been quite so decorative.

While not literally a prison, it was prison-like nonetheless.

And what oppressive force caused this day-long sentence? That's right! A professional development day! While I'm still at a loss to explain the words 'professional' and 'development' in that phrase, I can confirm that it took all day.

In the sea of 'blah blah' that washed over me today, here are three things that I learnt:

1. If you're in agribusiness and have trees maturing in 18 years time you might want to have a think about climate change, or at least pretend you have when someone asks you a question about it;

2. An insurance salesperson with a broken foot is not ironic, it's karma; and

3. The funniest sentence uttered by anyone anywhere in the world about the whole global financial crisis chestnut is this: "Asset prices may fluctuate with, you know, your market forces."

Yep, they'll do that. Gotta watch your market forces. Won't someone lock me up and spare me anymore learning?

Quite an impression

Being a unique snowflake I had the startlingly unique idea to go to the Monet exhibition on Monday, its last day. So I lined up with the other half million unique snowflakes who had had the same idea, then bustled, jostled and fairly pushed my way in through the doors when they opened at 9am.

There was so much to love about the exhibition: the paintings of Monet's predecessors, the influence of Japanese art, the sheer beauty of Monet's own works. But what I enjoyed the most was my fellow exhibition viewers. Allow me to share some of their insights:

1. Chappy to his friend: "It's funny how the effect changes when you move back." Yes, dear chappy, you're quite right and are thus granted the award for the Most Insightful Comment on Impressionist Painting Ever. Your prize is the Impressionist picture above, provided you can step far enough back to tell me what it is.

2. Earnest husband to earnest wife: "Hm, that one, the Priory at Vauville, where's Vauville?"
Earnest wife to earnest husband: "I don't know. Maybe you could look it up when you get home. It could be your project for the afternoon. You could get your map out."

Two things: 'project' for the afternoon? Was she a) pulling the piss, or b) um, pulling the piss?

Secondly, 'get' his map out? While he's 'getting his map out' and looking for random French towns we'll all be doing quick searches on the interwebs. While he's still looking ("Is it in the Loire Valley? Somewhere near Reims?") we will have made cups of tea, had naps, woken up, made hearty casseroles, eaten them, watched tv, finished a few sudoku, brushed our teeth and gone to bed. Then around the time we wake up the next morning he'll be saying "ah-ha! Normandy! It's in Normandy!" Yes yes, jolly good.

3. And finally, someone who possibly hadn't had enough sleep (or been to sleep at all?) to a guard: "Is this the last day of the exhibition? Right, so it's closing today?"

Yes, it's both of those things.

Monet: marvellous entertainment.

My kinda investment

I've read plenty of stories over the past year about huge drops in property markets around the globe but thought they were mostly media beat-ups, you know: "property values plummet!", "repossessions soar!" What shall we do! Who shall we turn to!

I usually snort at such media silliness but this time it appears they're right. Imagine my surprise.

Apparently Richard Fuld, who was the chief executive of Lehman Brothers before it filed for bankruptcy, sold his $AU20.3 million ($US13.3 million) Florida mansion to his wife for $152 ($100) last November.

So there really are some great bargains out there at the moment! I bet there are heaps of $152 mansions for sale in Sydney. I don't think it's overly optimistic to say make sure you keep Friday night free for my $152 mansion housewarming; it's gonna rock.

PS, buy early, buy often

Oh those economic-type people do go on! Yesterday I was happily celebrating our democratic freedom not to consume (all the time) and today some silly sod is bagging just this kind of anti-consumerist attitude:

An economist at TD Securities, Mr [W], said inflation figures next week were likely to show consumer prices had fallen 0.6 per cent in the final quarter of 2008. Such deflation could became a real problem for the economy if consumers went on a "buying strike". "If consumers start thinking 'Why should I buy this good or service today when it's going to be lower tomorrow?' that can gum up the whole economy," Mr [W] said.

We wouldn't want to "gum up" the whole economy now, would we? Golly, what if we got caught in a lolly shop and could do nothing but get "gummed up" and stand helplessly by as deflation let down the tyres in the car park? Tricky times, these, tricky times indeed.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it. Or don't.

My time-wastage through the globe's dailies continues unabated with my eye-rolling at cheese-ball headlines keeping apace, so today I thought I'd bring these two glorious past-times together. "Oh happy day!" I hear you cry. Oh happy day indeed.

So let us not waste precious time-wastage minutes ruminating on the whys and wherefores of headline construction and story placement; let us let the little gems speak for themselves:

1. The New York Times brings us "Obama's choice for U.N. is advocate of strong action against mass killing": um, not so much funny-funny as scary-funny? Against mass killing: good start.

2. The Telegraph.co.uk brings us "London Scottish Bank goes into administration" followed swiftly by "Government must rethink bank bail-out". Note to self if were UK Prime Minister: think about rethinks before major balls-ups with major banks.

3. Also on the Tele site: "Warm glow from Coldplay": a contrast worthy of a fifth grader. Imagine! 'Warm' for 'cold'!

4. Ooh ooh from the Tele again: "Christmas tree boss denounces 'toilet brush' artificial versions". Headline aside... there's a British Christmas Tree Growers Association? Cool.

5. The Chilliwack Progress could bring us anything and it would be charming and delightful.

6. But The Sydney Morning Herald takes today's award for pulling this family of punny badness together: "Project gum way: Toothsome Heidi Klum shocks TV host" and yep, you knew it was coming, the caption under the photo reads: "Dental as anything... Heidi Klum shows her extracted teeth on American television".

Wrongness, grossness, and more wrongness. As Jay Leno said: "Any fantasy I had is pretty much over now" ... about Heidi Klum and the world's sub-editors.

Why I hate headlines

Here's a beautiful example of why newspapers (excepting Icelandic ones) leave me thoroughly disappointed and wandering around all day singing the Star Wars theme with the lyrics "lame lame lame laaaame lame / lame lame lame laaaaaaaame lame," and etc.

Headline on homepage: "Copyright police are patrolling cinemas with night vision devices."

Expectations: high; there are copyright police? Do they have a uniform? Do they carry truncheons with red pens attached?

Headline at the top of article: "Cinema 'cops' deploy night vision devices."

Expectations: lowering; lameness of story rising due to use of single quote marks around 'cops'.

Caption under photo of probably quite sweet cinema chappy who we now pretty much hate enough to throw javelins at because he's dobbing on the kids who are just try'na have fun: "A cinema employee demonstrates a night vision scope used to spot illegal video taping."

Expectations: abyssal; lameness confirmed.

I'm mostly disappointed that I'm like some kind of goldfish-brained reader who gets excited about headlines anew every day, having sweetly forgotten the steep gradient I've just witnessed a story go tumbling down not 15 seconds before.

Oh well.

Ooh look! "Navy sunk my trawler, not pirates"...

No way man, I so called it first

I do so love a good Zeitgeist-calling. You know, some people like to name planets, others like to get in first with hurricanes, and some funny people like to call Zeitgeists.

I think identifying something as the current 'Zeitgeist' is, well, frankly as silly as having to actually say a book is 'seminal' (as in: "This book I wrote on post-industrial Marxist feminism is the seminal text on the topic"... HAVING TO POINT IT OUT MEANS IT ISN'T SO, PEOPLES).

And - argh! - when you call a Zeigeist you run the very real risk of getting it wrong and looking like a total wally. Identifying the spirit of the age means identifying the spirit of the age, not the spirit of the I-love-my-footy-where's-my-pie-throw-it-in-the-ute-mate-geez-that-Kochie's-a-stiff-but-he's-ok cliched wallyism (unless that is the current age? Hmm, this may need revision).

Anyhoo, what's brought on this Zeigeist-calling-bashing is an article in the SMH that has bafflingly suggested that the show that has captured our hearts and is currently warming our cockels, nay that reflects us (dear god, dear readers) is ... Packed to the Rafters.

Says the article: "Once in a while - every four years seems to be the average - a production team manages to catch the Zeitgeist. In the chilly hours and minutes of uncertainty, someone generates a concept that sums up the times we live in, and out comes a movie or TV show that doesn't just entertain us, it reflects us. Australians watch in their millions because THEY RECOGNISE WHAT THEY ARE, OR WHAT THEY WOULD LIKE TO BE."

[Please note, I have added capitals where I consider it appropriate to YELL things, you know, IRONICALLY].

So many questions fly out of this. I'm puzzled as to how these chilly hours and minutes of uncertainty are identified (does the temperature actually drop? Is it a matter of carrying around a thermometre and a pen and paper?). Does the production team need to be together / awake / skantily clad to notice said chilly uncertainty?

And how long, really, do these periods of uncertainty last? I mean, if it's hours the production team has a better chance of catching it than if it's only minutes. If it's minutes what if it happens when someone's out to lunch, or in the bathroom, or in the lift, and by the time they get back to work the Zeitgeist has been called and there's nothing to do except hand out the mail and do some stapling?

But my biggest question is why, why, why would two million people watch this show, thereby leading to a Zeitgeist-calling, thereby leading to my disquiet about the state of the Australian psyche, thereby leading to 18 million people booking flights to anywhere-the-heck-outta-here (imminent, I'm sure)?

I'm considering moving to America, what with their whole progressive agenda thingy happening at the moment. On the other hand, they gave us Friends, which led to the calling of the last Zeitgeist...