I object

What's a 'schlange'?

Having vented my most pressing whinges last week I thought I'd move on to my most pressing objections. Afterall, to whinge is human but to object is divine.

Indeed it is, so here I go on my path to objectionist divinity:

1. I object to bloggy friends packing up their virtual badminton nets and going home, like Squib and The Projectivist (I haven't yet given up hope, Ms P, but there was something very final about that last capitalised X). Surely starting a blog is like joining the army or having a child: you're in it for life, right?

2. I object to Herman Melville's Typee being such a boring book. What's not to love about Melville's tropical island and cannibals? Don't waste your time reading the book; I'll tell you: everything.

3. I object to silly James Fenimore Cooper calling his characters 'Chingachgook' and 'Natty Bumppo'. For chroist sake, 'Chingachgook' has been stuck in my head on a loop since 1994. It is the world's most annoying word. Ever.

4. I object to my blog template, all bally and bouncy and colourful and sweet. Blech. In addition, I object to my lack of graphic design who-dit and computer know-how which prevent me from installing a less poxy template.

Hmm, I have less objections than I thought, which is surprising and slightly disappointing.

So help me cover up my shortcomings by telling me something you object to. And Squib and Ms P: you can't object to being objected to!

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.

A moment

I start my new job on Monday so this moment, sitting here with my late-afternoon vegemite toast and cup of tea, at home in the quiet on a Friday afternoon, is the last such moment I'll have for a while.

When I was a kid I used to think there was something magical about 2pm on a school day when you were home sick. You were in a place you wouldn't ordinarily be at that time. Somehow the light was different, and the neighbourhood didn't sound the same as it did on the weekends.

I've got that feeling now.

Afternoons like this have been such a pleasure over the last two months. As I've sat here fiddling around on the computer, making plans and writing up lists (such tremendously enjoyable things to do) I've been struck by the absurdity of going to work. I have, quite simply, been free. My time has been my own. It's been a shock to realise how little this is ordinarily the case.

I can but apologise for the banality of these thoughts, but as simple and dull as they are it remains that in a moment when I head off to collect the members of my family from their various places around the city the weekend will begin, then the week will begin, and Monday afternoon at home will pass without me.

So dear tea and toast and afternoon sun and random school-day adventures, thank you and see you in the next redundancy.

How I learned to stop worrying and love writers' festivals

I've just spent a long and fabulous weekend at the Sydney Writers' Festival. Sure there were hoards of those snobby rich-type people from the Eastern suburbs who only recognise books as those nice flattish statues they have on the glass-topped mahogany coffee tables in their north wing sitting rooms, but the Festival had more delights than even the high concentration of cats'-bum-faced women could diminish (apologies to cats and their arses everywhere).

So what were these festival delights? Let me share some with you.

Festival Delight Number 1
Bob Ellis was there talking about his new book And So It Went. He sat behind us at the restaurant on Saturday night. This is possibly my favourite festival photo of all time:


Festival Delight Number 2
There was a panel on erotic fan fiction. Marieke Hardy was on the panel and she read a piece on her lust for Brian, the dog from Family Guy. It ended, wink wink nudge nudge, with how she knew how to "throw a dog a bone".


One panellist read a piece on Inspector Gadget, describing, in detail, the Inspector's colouful feelings for Penny; another panellist described how Jennifer Aniston might be filling those lonely hours post-Brad by imagining what Brad does to Angelina under the table at all those gala dinners they go to. But the best piece of the night was based on the characters from Cluedo, which from the very innocent "'Lick my beard!' yelled Mustard to Green" descended into all sorts of delightful filth.

Festival Delight Number 3
My friends, undoubtedly against their better individual and collective judgements, let me do a festival quiz over dinner. Weren't they pleased with the quality of my questions:

The weather forecast for the festival was rain all weekend. Has it rained today?

The man who attempted to heckle George Friedman on Friday night was wearing what coloured scarf?

The Sydney Writers' Festival is held in which city?

Festival Delight Number 4
There was a session on the Booker Prize and the panel included a writer who had been short-listed and another who had been long-listed for the award, neither of whom had 'progressed' further in the competition. I enjoyed watching the facilitator rush headlong into a sentence that, as it started to unwind, could go nowhere but to the rather damning end of describing the two writers (of excellent, engaging novels) as 'Booker Prize losers'. It was an awkward moment. I'm pretty sure I saw one of the writers look at his/her watch.

Festival Delight Number 5
My final festival delight was the discovery of just how nimble old people are. There's no need to worry about old people getting worn out and feeble; the writers' festival has shown me that physical deterioration in your advanced years is a myth!

This weekend I saw more old ladies duck, weave, shoulder and side-step their way up queues than I could count on an abacus. One moment I was sure I was at the front of a queue then I'd blink and there would be fifteen thousand wrinkled faces with 1950s lipstick in front of me. What ho, I would think to myself, where did these fifteen thousand people come from? Then I would marvel anew at the speed with which fifteen thousand old ladies can duck, weave, shoulder and side-step, as they did within the blink of my eye (300 to 400 milliseconds), to get themselves to the front of the queue. I no longer fear getting old.

How much are tickets to the Byron Bay festival? I can't wait to see what the old hippies are up to.

Whoops! I forgot to put the safety on

I've been to the Opera House twice in the last few weeks (bringing my life's total to two visits). On both occasions the foyer was full of more bare shoulders and angular-cut skirts than my year 10 formal, but I felt perfectly at ease in my jeans (don't worry! They were my dress jeans! It's not like I went day casual).*

Anyhoo, so there was lots of quality time spent people-watching, friend catch-upping, and lining up at the bar for drinks and snack foods (like Toblerone? I'm still completely mystified why they'd sell Toblerone at the Opera House bar?), which was all lovely and fun but what I enjoyed most was the awesomely dangerous architecture.

Having grown up in a golden age of litigation, I most expect, when I head into the city on the train, say, to see at least 25 signs warning me not to cross the yellow line, not to prevent the doors from closing, not to crowd into an already crowded carriage, not to jog (or even walk quickly) down the escalator, not to wear shoes with loose shoelaces on the escalator, not to let anyone I'm travelling with who might have shoes with loose shoelaces and a penchant for jogging (or walking quickly) down escalators do so, and by crikey not to shriek and point when I see three-foot rats baring their teeth then gnawing on the rails that we're about to travel on!

So what a relief to visit the Opera House, sans safety signs, and find all sorts of delightfully dangerous architectural death-traps that are, no doubt, keeping the local council awake at night. Take, for example, this breezy external staircase that has thrown off the shackles of its railing:


Or this marvellous internal staircase litigiously connecting two thin 'platforms' on which drunk people congregate to partake further in the purchase and consumption of alcoholic beverages:


Surely leading to:

But I think the thing that made people most truly fearful was the 'click' sound my camera made when I took a photo in my toilet cubicle:

Ah, photos in toilets, now there's something to sue about.

* I haven't the faintest idea whether dress jeans actually exist, and thus clearly own none. I did indeed go day casual.

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?

Why didn't someone stop me?

I used to think it was important, in some areas of life, for us to take a small amount of responsibility for our actions, like when that woman in the US a few years ago sued a fast food outlet for burns to her, uh-hm, inner thighs from driving with a take-away coffee between her legs. I remember thinking at the time there may have been a few things she personally could have done to avoid the incident.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the horror that is the fast food industry or their inexplicable desire to douse our nether regions in hot coffee, but I just felt the fast food joint wasn't entirely to blame for the unfortunate mishap.

But that was then and I hadn't seen Jerry Springer: The Opera.

Post-Jerry Springer any question about where responsibility lies for all future actions has been resolved. From now on, responsibility lies with everyone else but me: friends, loved ones, associated acquaintances and, why not, complete strangers. Clearly I am unable to make sound decisions for myself so the best thing I can do is stop making them and pass the decision baton on to others who might make less of a hash of it than me.

This is all a long way of saying, when I said "Jerry Springer: The Opera? Sounds awes!" you should have said "are you out of your frickin' mind? No, you fool! Put your money away and go sit on your hands."

From the refrain of the opening song ("my wife used to be my Dad!"), through the call-and-answer "'what do you want?' - 'lesbians fighting!' - what do you want?' - 'open-crotch sighting!'", to the Ku Klux Klan having their 'Jerry Springer moment' it was all so very wrong.

The funniest part was that the audience was full of dressed-up Opera House aficionados who were whooping and guffawing it up big time.

[The nicest part, as always, was the company.]

So from now on when I come up with some sandwich-short-of-a-picnic idea, like getting tickets to see Shane Warne: The Musical, what do you do?

You wave your big decision baton at me and yell: "Are you out of your frickin' mind? No, you fool! Put your money away and go sit on your hands!"

Excellent - things are going to be ok from here.