Journal

A random and irregular journal of observational hoo-ha and miscellaneous stuff, etc

8th March 2010

Don’t You Hate It When...

You fill the thermos with milk and hot water then forget to take the teabags.

The piece of grass you’re cleaning your teeth with isn’t thin enough to get between the smallest of the gaps.

You wake up and everything seems too hard, the words don’t come out right and everyone you meet seems like a wall-faced monster who hates you.

A charismatic redneck politician appears on the scene with racist and anti-poor policies, because you know lots of people will love him and vote for him.

You think of something really fantastic and/or funny, then get distracted and forget it, then spend the next half hour trying to remember what it was but never do.

You bowl like a genius at a great batsman for an hour but can’t quite manage to get him out, then some pie-chucker comes on and dismisses him with a rank full toss.

You go to the pie shop and all they have left is that vegetarian crap.

You see something really annoying on TV and feel like complaining about it, but then you realise that nobody gives a damn and actually, neither do you.

You spend five hours retracing your steps through the house looking for the keys, then find them by accident, and inexplicably, in the box of carpet cleaner under the sink.

28th February 2010

A couple of additions to the website:

There's now a Music page from where you can play Zedgoat songs as they appear, as well as the instrumental malarkey I've been revelling in.

Also: a Billy's Day Out page with an embedded Youtube link so you can watch the film from here. Billy's Day Out is my short which won Best Short Film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2004.

That's it.

19th February 2010

In a month or two, the next door neighbour is moving out. He comes round to ask if he can have some of the cardboard packing boxes which have been sitting on our front verandah since we moved in here four months ago.

Sure, we say. Before Christmas we got rid of a forty of the damn things to a teacher at the kids’ school. Then over the summer holidays I used twenty or so to build a maze for the kids to play in. But alas, the maze has come down now, and lately we’ve been wondering what to do with the rest of them which doesn’t involve any arduous trips to the recycling centre.

So, last few days, the neighbour comes and goes. I see him through the screen door, taking the odd box or two each time. Today, though, instead of taking a box, he brings one of his own and chucks it there with the others.

I guess that’s how he sees our front verandah. As though it’s a dumping ground. Maybe that tells you something about him. It couldn’t possibly tell you anything about us.

Funnily enough, when I go out to look at the crap he’s bequeathed us, I find a whole bunch of stiff cardboard off-cuts. Which will be just perfect for the kids and their craft projects.

So everybody’s happy.

8th February 2010

I like the way, in the Transformers movies, the old robots have beards made of metal. But that’s about all I like.

Sure, the first movie was okay until the robots made an appearance, but went downhill pretty fast after that. Does anybody really buy the idea of a robot which can turn into a car? Unless you're five?

With the second film - Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - taking place a couple of years after the first, when the Transformers are an accepted fact of life, by the US military and conspiracy theorists at least, it can’t really ever transcend its inbuilt mediocrity. No matter how many times giant clanking robots collide with each other in mid air.

The problem lies with the robots themselves. Unlike in, say, I, Robot, where the robot had some soul, here they’re little more than chunks of animated metal involved in the vast galactic struggle of GOOD v. EVIL.

They lack character, they have little nuance beyond the narrow triangles of their faces (EVIL) or the red, white and blue of their burnished armour (GOOD) – or for that matter the dangling metallic strips of their facial hair (OLD).

Call me picky, but I find it useful while watching a film to have someone or something to identify with. Otherwise I may as well be watching something by Peter Greenaway while gnawing my own fingers off to keep myself entertained.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen makes that difficult. With the robots either too mawkishly virtuous to care for or too dastardly to take seriously, that just leaves the humans. Sure, there is a bit of drama and suspense happening – will the guy ever tell the girl he loves her? Will the girl ever forgive the guy for almost having sex with a girl robot who was trying to rip his throat out?

But as soon as the robots make the scene, the tension evaporates like so much sweat on Megan Fox’s tanned and shiny shoulders. Because what can humans do in the face of quick, powerful, intelligent evil robots with futuristic weapons who want to kill them?

Run! Hide! Run and hide! That's what.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen boils very swiftly down to that: good-looking people running, good-looking people trying to hide. Quirky-looking people making wise cracks about running and hiding. Or, in the case of the leads, the aforementioned Megan Fox and Shia Labeouf, trying to tell each other they love each other. Which slight commitment anxiety seems to be about the sum total of what their relationship amounts to.

Which is very little.

All against a backdrop (and foreground) of big robots beating each other up.

A lot.

Too much.

5th February 2010

So we got the satellite TV. The man came round, he put the dish up on our roof in the spot where it’s visible from outer space and not obscured by giant trees, he ran the cable down through the wall cavity to the socket, then he connected up the satellite box and started pumping fifty channels of drivel into our living room.

Sure, it’s better than terrestrial. I don’t deny the terrestrials run some decent shows, but it’s an endurance test watching them.

Apart from the ABC, they stack them with so many ads that sometimes you wonder if you’re still alive, or if some bastard hasn’t killed you and sent you to hell where you’re being forced to hear about the new Ford Mondeo over and over and over again until your ears and eyes bleed.

For some reason they end all their shows five minutes late. A little tip for the commercial programmers: start your day five minutes earlier, then it won’t be a problem.

With satellite, though, you get the box which can stop time/pause live TV, as well as record programmes in advance.

You can get the terrestrial channels through the box, so you can stick it to The Man by pre-recording shows and fast-forwarding through the ads. Admittedly, sometimes there are so many ads that you end up doing more fast-forwarding than watching, but at least you’re sticking it to them. That counts for something.

Yes, satellite is better. But not much. The time-stopping recording box is a you-beaut idea in theory, but in practice it’s the worst piece of kit I’ve ever seen.

It has the brain of a redneck, slow and temperamental. It will pick up on your instructions, but in its own good time, thanks, and not before. It deletes programmes without explanation, or simply doesn’t record them. Odd little numbers appear on the screen at random. It resets itself without warning, goes to the wrong menu, or else bans you from watching The Muppets unless you have your pin number handy.

All to a backing track of infuriatingly dull jazz classics recorded by The Mogadon Ensemble.

Not to mention, watching satellite TV is like sifting through a tonne of garbage to find a ten cent piece. There are whole channels dedicated to twenty-year old repeats. There are whole channels dedicated to forty-year old repeats. There are cooking channels, celebrity channels, channels which show back-to-back reruns of Law and Order like they’re doing you a favour.

They have ads too. Lots of them. Plus, satellite companies Foxtel and Austar charge you a bomb for this dross, then want a bunch more for movies and sports.

And now I hear, Foxtel aren’t just broadcasting the Winter Olympics in Canada. They’re charging for the privilege. Four dedicated channels from Vancouver, and you can pay to watch it. Pay? To watch skiing??

Gimme a break.

Frankly, I like my TV. I like The Sopranos, Damages, Mad Men, Band of Brothers. I like The Wire, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and obscure brilliancies like The Eagle: A Crime Odyssey.

But I’m paying for it. Not just with money. But with the ads and the rubbish technology that’s five years behind the rest of the world in everything but price.

With the lack of choice amidst all the choice.

With the crappiness of how it is, watching TV in Australia.

21st January 2010

Proof that you shouldn't go through old papers...or that you should?

Dark rain on a dark road. The echo slices through silence again and again. Someone is shouting too loud.

Here in my arms is the logical sequential to a biological impulse. Here is the expression of my feelings of hatred and violence, my death wish, between the shoulders and the hands of my arms.

Here in my world where the thoughts are always for me, where I eat to feed myself, and laugh at others, or laugh with them as we laugh at others.

Here, where the chameleon in my brain aches to be like every greener pasture I will ever see. Here, where I long for a love without lust, where I sink below at midnight under grimy bedclothes.

Where the rain makes me happy. Where she is for a while.

From here I look out the windows in my head, through my superior glasses at the dirt on the street. From here I wish I could sit back, take her perfect hand in mine, look not too long, say just enough, want nothing, and know that she wants nothing because I've given her all I have to give.

Up at the house, voices are making like the world is still alive. But here on the road, in my car, for a second the darkness has showed me for time's smallest division how a love should be.

November, 1979.

18th January 2010

I read today that French pensioner Jean-Louis Lioret has been arrested and detained in Abi Dhabi after making a bomb joke on an Etihad Airways flight from Paris to Bangkok.

Apparently, when asked by a fellow passenger if he could mind a packet of cigarettes on the seat next to him, this poor bastard replied, “I hope it’s not a bomb!”, was overheard by cabin staff, and shortly after the plane landed found himself behind bars in a Middle Eastern prison.

Is it just me, or is that a wee bit harsh? What is the world of bomb jokes coming to when you can’t make an off-hand remark about the plane going down in flames without being suspected of planning that very thing?

And it’s not as if Mr Lioret said he hoped it was a bomb, he said he hoped that it wasn’t. What are the charges being laid here? Hoping that a terrorist attack doesn’t take place?

Can you even say the word ‘bomb’ any more if you’re on a plane thirty thousand feet above a watery end? If you’re watching the Transformers sequel on the in-flight TV and happened to mutter to yourself This movie is a complete bomb will you get hauled up before the beak and locked away indefinitely?

If there were signs in passenger planes which said Please Do Not Say The Word ‘Bomb’, You Will Be Regarded With Suspicion, Cause Hysteria And Shortly Afterwards Be Arrested, would the person who wrote those signs and indeed included the word ‘bomb’, find themselves rotting in prison?

I feel sorry for Mr Lioret, who finds himself in the middle of an absurdist comedy which to him must not be very funny at all.

Security is one thing. Crazy paranoia is another.

8th January 2010

Film Ideas That Never Quite Made It No. 2

Home With Only A Couple Of Other People

A young boy is accidentally left all alone at home over Christmas, with just a couple of other people.

While the rest of the family is away, the boy and the other people have to fend for themselves, but there are enough of them to deal with any problems that arise, and in fact, they easily succeed in scaring off a pair of local housebreakers.

The young boy sure would have been scared if he'd been there on his own, but luckily for him, this time at least things didn't turn out like that.

The End.

17th December 2009

The other day I did something very brave – and very foolish. I’d been listening to ABC Radio Sydney all day – as is my wont – and at the end of it, I logged on to the net, and hunted down the presenters I’d been listening to.

Not literally – hunting people down is illegal. What I did was search out their faces, to see what they looked like.

As it turned out, not a great idea. Not because of what they do look like – that’s frankly none of my business. No, it was because, after so many hours of listening to these people, I already had a very firm picture of them in my head. And when I saw that in real life they were different – which of course they were – very – it jarred me to the core.

Because now I had two pictures of each of these people in my head. On the one hand, there was the image which had been meticulously crafted by my imagination, drawn straight from the sound of their voices. On the other, their actual faces.

It reminded me of the first time I watched The Fellowship of the Ring. After reading The Lord of the Rings half a dozen times over the years (tragic – but not as tragic as some) I had a pretty firm idea of how the Fellowship dudes actually looked.

Now, here were all these competing images – Viggo Mortensen as Aragon, Elijah Wood as Frodo, Ian McKellen as Gandalf – right in front of my eyes, trying to tell me that, all this time, I’d been wrong, and this is what those characters really looked like.

I guess that’s the danger inherent in watching the film of the book – if you love the book. If you hate the book – or if the book sucks – then who cares what they do to the characters? They can turn them into animated phlegm for all I care.

But for characters you love, characters you know, it’s not so easy. It’s a painful farewell.

I miss the Lord of the Rings images which came out of my mind. Gradually the film faces replaced them, and now they are gone forever.

Oddly, though, I can still see the imaginary faces which sprang out of the radio ether, there in my mind’s eye, whenever I hear the voices.

So I’m keeping those ones. Somehow they seem more real.

7th December 2009

So the other day I look out the back window and I see that damn cat, prowling around on the lawn like it owns the place.

‘Hey Zac!’ I say, ‘Want to throw something at a cat?’

‘Yeah!’ he says.

We grab a cricket ball – not a real one, but one of those intermediate ones half way between a real one and a tennis ball – hey, we’re not cruel – and we go out onto the back verandah.

The damn cat is just down there, mooching. It doesn’t even acknowledge our presence. That alone is enough to infuriate me.

‘Oi!’ I shout at the stupid thing. It looks at me as though I’m some kind of dirt. But it doesn’t move. It’s too smug. It feels too safe. Too secure.

Maybe it’s led a pampered life, eating whatever birds and lizards and rodents and snakes it wants to, then swanning home to lie in the sun and think overly self-satisfied cat thoughts.

Maybe it’s never been ejected from a garden before. Maybe it’s about time it was.

I hand the ball to Zac. He’s got a pretty good arm these days. He scored a direct hit run-out just the other week. Not bad for a little guy.

Then I notice the neighbour, waving at me. She hasn't seen the cat. She thinks I shouted ‘Oi!’ at her.

‘Uh, hi!’ I say.

‘Just enjoying some time in the back yard,’ she explains.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes. Lovely day for it. Not cold like it was earlier in the week.’

She’s looking at me and Zac, at the cricket ball.

‘Next time,’ I whisper to Zac. ‘We’ll get the bastard cat next time.’

‘Huh?’ says Zac. ‘But it’s right there..’

‘Next time.’

The cat shows us its butthole and saunters off through our garden, like it has so many times before.

My neighbour does the same, though in her garden, and without the butthole bit.

Now she thinks I’m the sort of person who would start a conversation with her by screaming ‘Oi!’ at her from over the fence.

And the cat doesn't.

Bastard cat.

28th November 2009

Zedgoat are here!

Pretty well, anyway.

Linking up with my old mate Ian Neilson has begun to yield some new and interesting original music (which actually has lyrics), and you can listen to our first completed song Know The Answers at your leisure.

My musical association with Ian goes back about thirty years, which is a bit scary when you think about it. Well, not when you think about it. When I do.

I'm on guitar and keyboards on this one, and Ian plays the guitar and bass and does the drumming. Ian will usually be singing (nice) but for some reason I ended up lead vocals on Know The Answers, possibly because I can mine those jaundiced depths more cynically.

Ian gets producer credit.

There are a million bands out there, and we're almost one of them.

19th November 2009

So here's an upcoming Aussie novel by this guy I used to drink black coffee with on the verandah at Dartford Rd.

Thirty years ago.

I was lucky enough to check it out in ms form, and it's well worth checking out when it comes out early next year.

Reads like a dream.

18th November 2009

Okay, so I've been losing a few pounds. Thanks for noticing, yeah, I know I look pretty good, and I feel pretty good too.

I've noticed too that these days less of you are shooting surreptitious glances at my gut.

Fine. It wasn't your fault. I know, because I do it too.

I glance at your guts and think, man, what a gut. So I'm aware of the process. I know it goes on, it's part of the human condition.

So what's my secret? Where have my pounds gone which once were there?

Well, I came across a new way of slimming.

It was there in my head all along and that's where I found it.

I call it the Eat Slightly Less Than Before Diet.

The way it works is this: you still eat, because if you didn't, then you would eventually die of starvation, which is apparently a horrible way to go.

But the trick of it is - and here's the cunning part - you eat slightly less than before.

So, supposing you eat a lot. Now, with the Eat Slightly Less Than Before Diet, you eat slightly less!

See how it works?

There's gotta be a book in that.

Or two.

7th November 2009

I knew this lady once who could tell your star sign as soon as you walked in the room.

She lived up the road and round the corner from us when I was growing up. I knew her kids, they were a little too far from us to hang around with, but it was a neighbourhood where eventually everybody got to know each other.

Anyhow, this lady was a hobby astrologer, I guess you'd call her. You could get astrology leaflets off her, and she'd do readings for you if you wanted.

I was pretty credulous in those days - as I've written in this journal - and astrology was one of those things that I had no problem believing in.

It's different now.

Today, I have no problem not believing in it.

But whether or not I believe in it, doesn't changed the fact of what happened. One night our whole family went round to a party at a neighbour's house. The astrology lady was there, standing in the entranceway, doing what must have been her parlour trick.

One after the other, as we walked in, she told us our signs: Aquarius, Pisces, Cancer, Virgo, Capricorn.

Kinda weird, huh?

Spooky.

Today, 2009

Up here in the Blue Mountains, people have garage sales.

There are ten or twenty on any given weekend. You can get all sorts of stuff: books, furniture, toys, clothes, games, tools, crockery.

People advertise in the local paper, or they put up signs on the telegraph poles saying GARAGE SALE! 25 IDIOT STREET! TODAY!

Then, after the sale is over and everybody has gone home with the junk they’ll soon be wondering why they bought, what do the people do?

Do they come get the signs and take them down?

Like hell they do.

They leave the signs on the poles. Day after day, they leave them there, the signs which say GARAGE SALE! 25 IDIOT STREET! TODAY!

Do you see what that means?

If you drive past that sign, doesn't matter when, you’ll think, the sale is on today!

Which it isn’t.

If you drive past it three weeks later, you’ll think, the sale is on today!

Which it isn’t.

Unless you drive past it more than once.

That's different.

But when is today? Is it yesterday? Three days ago? A month?

People, do us a favour. When the sale is over, take the signs down.

Or else, put the date on the sign.

Do it TODAY!

23rd October 2009

Sympathy For Zombies #1

Tash: But all they really want is to eat people's brains.

22nd October 2009

It’s amazing, isn’t it, how everyone’s taste except mine is complete crap?

I was thinking about it last night while flicking through the recorded programmes on our digibox. Wow, I’d think, look at that crap my wife has gotten me to record for her! How can she even be planning to watch that when she gets a spare hour in three weeks time?

Then, my eyes would light upon a show which I had chosen, and I’d think, yes, good choice there, you’ve done it again, selected a fine programme to take in at some unspecified time in the future, possibly while nursing a beer and eating roasted salted cashew nuts straight from the bag.

It’s not just the television either. I see my wife reading a lot of rubbish books, and I know she listens to crap music. It’s everything.

And it’s not only my wife. There are my friends as well, they all seem to have crap taste. My brother and sister and the rest of my family are the same, even the ones I haven't seen in twenty years.

And then there are all the people I’ve ever met in my life, along with all the people I haven’t. Their taste is pretty bad too.

Which is a shame. I feel sorry for all those people out there watching crap telly and films and reading crap books. Even my kids are growing up to have bad taste. They like different cartoons than the ones I do, and different types of fruit juice.

Once it would have bugged me, seeing all these people suffering through mediocrity when they could be reading and watching excellent stuff such as that which I choose. But I've gotten over it.

So what if all these people want to read, watch and listen to utter crap the whole time?

What’s it to me?

15th October 2009

Happy first anniversary to my journal, one year old today. It's been a heady time of inconsequential ramblings and indeed some observational hoo-ha, as promised on the tin, and I'm only glad that I have been in some small way able to contribute to the mass of time-wasting displacement activities out there on the internet.

I'm going to stick a candle on my computer monitor and sing Happy Birthday.

If anyone is still reading this sucker, apologies for the short absence. It's been a busy time the last few weeks, what with buying a house, painting a house, writing crosswords and looking after the kids during the holidays. Would have been nice to take them to the pool, of course, but the weather has been so lousy that's been out of the question.

Stupid stupid low temperatures.

It snowed up in Katoomba last week.

In October.

Global...warming?

But I'm not bothered. As Tashie said to me yesterday while we watched the (in my opinion overrrated) film Up,

I'm not going to be a sad old man, am I Daddy!

Thanks for reading.

3rd October 2009

Great Moments in Radio Nos. 1 & 2!!

ABC Radio Sydney morning presenter talking to a wheelchair-bound caller about how he managed to find employment:

So, how did you get your foot in the door?

ABC Radio Sydney presenter at the live barbecue broadcast:

Margaret, you've got your fingers knee deep in onion there, what's going on?

I admit it.

Cheap shots.

2nd October 2009

Great Copywriting Moments Of Our Time No. 1

Guy In Insurance Ad: All the memories we came across made us remember all the things we never got round to doing.

Me (Watching Guy In Insurance Ad): Huh?

25th September 2009

People Who Insist On Telling You Their Only Vaguely Interesting Anecdotes Twice No. 1

Guy On Radio Call-In Show: When we were playing volleyball in the back yard, we put this plastic seat on top of our Hills Hoist* for the umpire and used to raise it up so that he could get a better view of the game.

Call-In Show Host: Ah yes, incredible Aussie ingenuity there!

Guy On Radio Call-In Show: Yeah...we had this plastic seat, and we'd put it on the Hills Hoist for the umpire when we were playing volleyball. Then we'd wind it up so that he could see the game better...

Call-In Show Host: Wow, great!

* Iconic Australian rotary clothes line.

18th September 2009

So at what point is it okay to kiss the cheek?

Of course, the rule of thumb is, when the cheek is offered. Not before, not after. When the cheek is thrust forward into your face, then and only then should you pucker up and peck.

Sadly, it isn’t always so straightforward. There are variables. There can be a lot in play here. Things can be going on.

Some women offer the cheek almost before they’ve met you. With these women lies the blame for all the cheek kiss problems floating around out there. To these women, these loose cheek offerers, it means nothing. To them, it’s like a handshake between blokes, something to casually throw out there then forget.

And that’s what makes it tricky. Because for other women, it can take a while. For whatever reason, they need to think of you as a trusted friend before the cheek will be offered for the pecking.

Incidentally, for this type of woman, the offering of the cheek is the measure of whether they see you as a friend, as one of their circle.

Because while you are in their company, in a large group, you will see them offer up the cheek to this guy or that, in greeting or farewell.

And there is the root of the problem. Will they offer it up to you? If you see the cheek being offered, to this guy and that, then you will think, the cheek is on offer here!

But it may not be. Not for you.

It's been a grand evening. You and the woman have had fun, shared a few laughs. But now it's time to say goodbye, to leave and return to whatever miserable existence awaits you elsewhere.

You lean in for the peck, and the cheek is not offered, it stays resolutely where it was. You lean, then you lean some more. By the time your lips reach the unresponsive cheek, you are toppling over. Only the unresponsive cheek is there to break your fall.

Worst case, you end up kissing air.

But maybe, that’s not so bad. Because the woman who offers the cheek, she offers it only to the guy she has no desire for. Only to her friend.

If you want more, and the woman offers you the cheek, then too bad, you’ve blown it. It’s time to give up and look elsewhere, somewhere the cheek is not.

But if the cheek is not offered, then maybe, you are kissing air today, kissing lips tomorrow.

Maybe.

But probably not.

11th September 2009

Tash: Dad, does the future actually exist?

Me: I'm not sure to be honest. What do you think?

Tash: Well I've seen it on TV, but that's the only place I've seen it.

7th September 2009

New music!

My latest addition to the world of virtual instrumention, Green Thaw, is here.

Lots of pianos and some modern noises as well.

Still no vocals, but my mate Ian Neilson and I have been writing some songs. I'll throw them onto another MySpace page when they're done.

6th September 2009

Official Chant of the International Nihilist Protest Group

What do we want?

Nothing!

When do we want it?

Never!

2nd September 2009

Part-Time House Husband Blues, No. 1

The Part-Time House Husband is pushing his trolley through the supermarket, trying as usual to strike a balance between healthy options such as wholemeal organic ginseng stalks, and delicious junk food alternatives.

As the trolley begins to slow down under the weight of chocolate, Twisties, white bread, ice cream and Super Hi-Fat cheese, the Part-Time House Husband spots a School Gate Mum across the aisle. He doesn't know the Mum's name, but has exchanged the odd hello with her, as it happens, at the school gate.

Too late, their trolleys are almost touching, and there's no choice but to dive straight into conversation.

Part-Time House Husband: Looks like you've got a full load there!

School Gate Mum: Yes, but yours seems a bit empty.

Part-Time House Husband: Oh, I'm not finished yet!

School Gate Mum: Yes, but there are six of us.

Part-Time House Husband: Really? Oh well, there you go!

Suddenly there seems little left to say. The Part Time House Husband casts around in his shopping brain.

Part-Time House Husband: Can't wait til that Aldi opens up the road, should be a lot cheaper!

School Gate Mum: Yes.

Now, the conversation is over.

A series of slightly awkward encounters ensues, as both the Part-Time House Husband and the School Gate Mum head for the Dairy section, where they bump into each other three more times without really wanting to.

29th August 2009

So the mobile phone companies in Australia have a nicely underhand and sleazy way to part you from your cash.

When you buy a pre-paid voucher for your phone, it has an expiry date, and any credit that you haven't used by that date automatically disappears.

And since there is a minimum twenty dollar voucher price, if you don't use your mobile a heck of a lot, then come expiry time, you're always going to feel like you're wasting money.

And nobody likes to feel like they're wasting money.

The result is that you feel compelled to use your phone more than you normally might in order to get the best 'value for money'.

And having used your phone so much more than you otherwise would, you start to think, well, if I'm using this goddamn thing so much, I may as well take out a monthly contract. That way, I'll save even more money!

So you tie yourself into a 24-month deal.

Which means another chunk of change sliding out of your bank account on a regular basis, so quietly that you hardly ever notice.

Which is precisely what they wanted in the first place.

Bastards.

25th August 2009

What did Speedy Gonzalez say when he found out he'd gotten the job as a carpet fitter?

Underlay! Underlay!

Ha ha ha ha.

I laughed so little I couldn't start.

20th August 2009

So I'm listening to Eno's Another Green World while I'm trying to write the Zombie Screenplay, and I displace some of my apparently endless time by reading the CD inset sheet.

I read this: The cover is a detail from After Raphael by Tom Phillips.

Would that be the British artist Tom Phillips? Father of my old mate Leo from the cricket team?

Yes it would.

Well how about that. Leo, former skipper of Far From The MCC, has a Dad who came up with the painting which became - in part - the cover of my favourite album.

It's a fine cover for that fine CD, evoking in style the mysteries of Eno's altered world, green and otherly as it is.

Leo, a noted violinist, left the UK in the early 2000s to live in South East Asia, though not before slapping a few runs at Cuttleslowe Park.

I'll always remember Leo as the captain who, when I said, 'I fancy a bat today', replied 'Put the pads on, you're opening.'

History records that, after being dropped on 30, I went on to hit 58 in an incredible display of power hitting which still lives on in the memory.

My memory, at any rate.

And yes, another journal entry which ultimately turned out to be all about ME!

13th August 2009

Today's Resolution

Not to shout at the radio when someone uses transition or impact as a verb.

To accept that language is a fluid entity, always transitioning in different directions and impacting society in different ways.

12th August 2009

Things That I Wish Had Been Ironic, But Weren't, No. 1

I'm at the intersection of everything, where my existence conflicts with many ideas in the Western world in terms of conflict and binary and so forth.

'Cultural Interpreter' overheard on Radio 702 Sydney.

11th August 2009

Evidence That My Son Zac Is Truly A Product Of The Videogame Generation Which Admittedly Is My Fault Entirely, No. 1

Zac, to his younger sister, on seeing a set of swings in the back yard of a house we were looking at buying:

Come on Tash, let's play 2-player!

8th August 2009

Seen on the back of the Paul's Plumbing and Gasfitting van (incidentally, the guy who is coming round to fix our dodgy shower):

Your shit is our bread and butter.

6th August 2009

I used to believe everything. I was credulous. I guess it all started with my parents. I believed everything they told me.

Then along came God. As a teenager I was a devout and pretty annoying Christian. I liked going to church, and found Youth Fellowship particularly fulfilling.

Whenever we went to Canberra on holiday – on average twice a year – I’d frequent the Christian shop in the Civic Centre. I bought gaudy stickers saying things like God Is Love and stuck them on my brain.

I bought the Good News Bible. The bad news was that it was written like a Reader’s Digest version of Treasure Island.

Disillusionment set in when I turned eighteen and found Jethro Tull and certain substances which I have since discovered were illegal at the time. Out went Jesus and in came a quasi-cultist lifestyle full of repression and guilt. Just like religion, but more personal.

After that particular house of cards came down in the Stiff Breeze of Change, I embraced the esoteric in a more or less haphazard way.

I was always big on séances. I did tarot readings for indulgent friends. I read Linda Goodman’s astrological bible, Sun Signs. I dabbled in numerology, poked around in Israel Regardie’s The Golden Dawn. I threw the I Ching coins.

I embraced the writings of Whitley Streiber, believed he had been kidnapped by aliens. Hey, why the heck not?

I gave credence to spontaneous human combustion, I sat under a home-made pyramid, trying to sharpen razor blades.

Yeah, I did.

Then, at some stage in my life, not long after my second Jung-and-the-archetypes/synchronicity phase, it all kind of faded away. I guess I got married. I guess I had kids. I guess I started playing cricket on Sundays.

I’ve come to believe this: even if all these things are true, or none of them, it doesn’t matter. There are more important things in life, such as friends and family. And what you do. It’s more important to do things, to make an impact on the world, if you can, in whatever way, rather than just to believe.

And yet, when I read this in The Sydney Morning Herald last week, it made me wonder:

Dutch cardiologist and Near Death Experience researcher Dr Pim van Lommel met “Ben B” several times in Holland following that patient’s reported experiences during a series of cardiac arrests due to myocardial infractions in the 1970s and ‘80s. Ben told van Lommel, “I saw a man who looked at me lovingly, but whom I did not know. More than ten years later, as my mother lay on her deathbed, she confessed to me that I had been conceived during an extramarital relationship, my (biological) father being a Jewish man who had been deported and killed during the Second World War. She then showed me his picture. The unknown man I had seen more than 10 years earlier turned out to be my biological father.

30th July 2009

So there are these XXXX beer ads on TV here that they show a lot during the cricket. These four guys are building a boat. It's like, hijinks and gluing each other's pants to chairs and replacing suncream with paint and so forth. These four guys are real pranksters, they like a good joke, it's all part of their bonding.

The ads are okay, nothing special. You get sick of them after about the eighty-third viewing.

But at the end, every time, this line comes up:

Watch all 12 episodes online.

Watch all 12 episodes online?

You want me to go online and watch advertisements?

For fun?

By choice?

As a volitional act?

Give me some time to think about this one, because I'm still trying to get my head around it.

29th July 2009

From this morning's email, exactly as it appeared:

Congratulation...750.000.00 GBP

Dunhill Award Promo

You have been approved for a lump sum payment of £750.000.00 GBP, in this Year Dunhill Promo.

1.Full Name:.............. 2.Full Address:.......... 3.Occupation:..........

Is it just me, or are junk email senders getting a bit lazy these days?

Hey man, I know this junk mail is sloppy, I didn't get the spelling right and it looks kinda like something a seven year old would put together, but hey, you can look past that, right? You're still gonna reply, yeah? Because, like, that'd be cool for me if you did.

Thanks bro.

26th July 2009

I’m continually amazed by the usefulness of small things. It’s all to do with their size – the fact that they’re not big means that they’re easy to carry about with you, either in your pocket or in the car.

Not to mention, their smallness means that you can easily have more than one. Two or three is very popular, and even four or five is not uncommon.

Smallness does have its drawbacks, however. Small things tend to go missing more readily than big. Their inherent lack of size means that they can easily get lost amidst the sea of other small and medium-sized objects that most people accumulate, or even disappear under the big.

To be frank, though I appreciate the value of the small, nonetheless I suffer a lot from small object insecurity.

Key Insecurity used to be a major problem for me. I used to put my keys down as soon as I’d walked in the front door – on the table, on the stairs, on the bookshelf.

It was never the same place. They were hard to track down.

I once found the car keys under the clematis outside the front door. Another time, they were in the bin. One time I located my house keys in a box of carpet shampoo. I still have no idea how they got there, and I still have no idea how I found them.

Why did I put them there? More to the point, why did I look for them there? Was it some kind of barely conscious memory that enabled me to retrieve them?

Thankfully, Key Insecurity is no longer a problem. I have a key basket, and that’s where the keys go as soon as I walk in.

I am Key Secure.

Wallet Insecurity is still something of an issue in my life, but I am taking steps to address it. I have a Place Where I Usually Put My Wallet, But Not Always. So, I can usually find my wallet.

But not always.

I don’t understand why I don’t put my wallet in the key basket (making it a wallet-and-key basket).

It would make sense to do it.

But I don’t.

Pen Insecurity is a new one for me, ever since my old cricket team gave me a cool inscribed pen which it would be a shame to lose like all the other pens I have ever had in my life.

Admittedly, there have been some tense moments when it has seemed like the pen has finally disappeared into Small Object Oblivion, but thus far, the pen has been preserved.

Nice pen, guys.

Thanks.

Glasses Insecurity has plagued me ever since my eyesight started to pack up after staring at the computer for too long playing too much Doom.

The problem with Glasses Insecurity is twofold – you are dealing with the glasses case, and the glasses themselves.

In my experience, it’s not always enough to walk around the house in circles for half an hour muttering ‘Where are my glasses? Where are my glasses?’

Because when you do finally track down the case, the glasses may not be inside. Then it can get nasty.

If they’re not in the case, where are they? Somewhere about to be sat on by a small child? Out the back in the wheelbarrow? Are you already wearing them?

Don’t worry, you will find them eventually.

Unless you don’t.

Even thinking about Remote Insecurity makes me shudder in horror. Compounded by the need for half a dozen different remotes to operate all the new and varied technology which has colonized our living rooms, Remote Insecurity seems to strike just when the need for sitting glued to the TV wtaching unmitigated crap is at its most pressing.

Not to mention the emasculating effect on blokes which comes from knowing where the remotes have gotten to.

Remotes can travel on their own, sometimes migrating in pairs – out into the kitchen, under the divan, into that bag of kids’ toys which has since been tidied up and put back in the attic.

It’s amazing that anybody gets to watch any television at all.

Phone Insecurity. Hat Insecurity. Camera Insecurity. Shoes Insecurity.

Small things suck.

I wonder where my wallet is.

19th July 2009

Film Ideas That Never Quite Made It, No. 1

Second-To-Last Destination

After a group of teenagers avoid slight injury by not going on a plane which crashes not very badly soon after take-off, the Grim Reaper’s cousin – the Not All That Grim Reaper – tracks down the teenagers one by one and causes them the mild injuries which they would have sustained if they’d been on the plane in the first place. At the end, all the teenagers recover and go on with their lives.

The End.

17th July 2009

Questions I Have Managed To Avoid Answering Recently No. 1

Zac: Dad, what's camel toe?

16th July 2009

So I’ve had this idea. Just popped into my head. How about the Reverse Comeback?

A normal Comeback works like this: a rock singer or band from the 70s or 80s, unable to accept gracefully the onset of middle age and the slow decline which beckons, goes back on the road to cash in on their now-ironic status, hoping thereby to resurrect their career and perhaps even tap into a whole new audience which has never heard their music before.

That’s all very well, but what about us? The sight of these over-aged buffoons leaping about the stage is enough to make most people ill, including themselves if there are any mirrors handy.

And as for their music, it's just about bearable tucked away in the backed of the CD collection, there to remind you of those glory days of your youth whenever you get around to do the dusting, but you don't actually want to hear it any more.

The Comeback sucks.

The Reverse Comeback is a much better idea.

It works like this: instead of heading back to the stadium in embarrassingly stretchy tights, prancing about with wobbly jowls and no hair, the aging rocker sets out methodically to wipe all trace of themselves and their music from the face of the earth.

Not an easy thing to do, you may say.

A big ask, you might argue.

But think of the dual benefit here: not only does the Reverse Comeback keep the aging rocker busy for the rest of his working life, with his dignity intact, but with every CD destroyed, with every biography pulped, with every t-shirt shredded, the world is a better place!

This idea makes me feel like dancing.

I want to dance the night away.

14th July 2009

So I've written some more music, and you can listen to it here.

It's a piece called Crazy Jenny (Is All Right Now), for all the crazy women I've known, some of whom are all right.

Some of whom aren't.

10th July 2009

Here in the Blue Mountains, where there are rumoured to be various close-knit and yet welcoming and supportive communities of one kind or another, you tend to meet friendly people on a daily basis.

Of course there is a difference between friend and friendly, and over the years in Oxford and around and about in the UK I made strong friendships which I hope will endure. Some, I am certain, will last a lifetime.

But the southern counties of England are legendary for the non-specific indifference of the natives to anything except the small patch of pavement they happen to be staring at as you walk past them waving frantically and shouting ‘Hello! Hello! It’s me, over here!’

Indeed, after fourteen years of being variously ignored, snubbed, disdained and dismissed on a daily basis by people who were also ignoring, snubbing, disdaining and dismissing each other and even themselves, I became resigned to the mighty stone wall of disinterestedness which passes for casual social intercourse among certain denizens of the UK.

Resigned, but not accustomed. I never stopped railing against it, protesting in small ways which were of no real benefit, but which at least gave me a modicum of personal satisfaction and in part repaired the thousand tiny hammer blows to my overall sense of existence which being ignored can inflict.

In Tesco, when some single-minded old crone with an uncontrollable urge to fondle the yogurt would push me aside before she dived into the cooler section, I’d always stick up for myself and say, ‘Old crone! Do you mind not being so rude?’

Most times, of course, I was ignored a second time, but occasionally I would be rewarded with a ‘Hrumph humph unph mumph’ for my troubles, partial recognition at least of my corporeal status.

When somebody blanked me after I'd said hello to them, I would sometimes follow up with, ‘Hmm, another deaf mute!’ especially when Zac was around, because it felt pretty stupid saying it when I was on my own.

Usually, people were deaf to that too, but there was this kid once who turned around and said, ‘What are you talking about? I'm not deaf!’ and there was I, all, ‘Sorry, thought you were deaf, kid, the way you blanked me like that, you little turd.’

In my mind, at any rate.

It’s not nice to talk to kids like that.

In Australia, it’s different. You say hello to someone in the street, and even if they’re having the worst day of their life and don’t want to talk to anybody ever again about anything, they’ll still look at you and say g’day mate.

Even more disquieting, people often say hello to you first, usually with a smile, and on occasion, accompanied by a conversation during which you learn their name, address, favourite colour and shoe size.

People talk to you in shops, in the park, at the bank. Anywhere. Anytime. For any reason.

And that’s the problem. I have no idea how to react to that level of friendliness any more. I’m so used to the grey skies of Oxford that all these sunnier dispositions are coming as a bit of a shock.

What am I meant to do with all this goodwill?

I’m like the bear in cage, who when they let him out after ten years, could still only walk back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, in ten foot stretches, even though there were no longer any bars to hold him in.

I need to find some little old ladies with a craving for yogurt so I can get a fix of resentment.

Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Gimme some drizzle.

9th July 2009

Pretentious Drivel That Has Recently Made Me Feel Ill, No. 1

"There's no such thing as reading, there's only rereading."

ABC Radio literary critic.

2nd July 2009

Contrary to what's been commonly averred in the media recently, I've already forgotten where I was and what I was doing when the news broke about that pop singer guy being dead.

You know, the American one with the nose made of plasticine.

Let's face it, he wasn't John Lennon.

And I never 'got' The Beatles anyway.

And Elvis always left me cold.

And I always thought that Princess Di was a pain in the butt.

That Queen of Hearts stuff just made me feel sick.

I wish sometimes that somebody iconic would die that I actually liked.

Then I could feel bad.

Still, at least there'll be some new conspiracies theories kicking around for a while.

27th June 2009

This week I’ve been suffering from nostalgia confusion, an ailment common to people who no longer know which part of their lives to be nostalgic about.

Naturally, having recently moved to Australia after living in England for fifteen years, I think I ought to be nostalgic about everything and everyone that I miss back there.

Hearing, for instance, about the old cricket team's recent thrashing at the hands of Tetsworth made me want to be there again, having my bowling carted around the park by a West Indian slogger now living in ...er...Tetsworth. For reasons best known to himself.

I am an Aussie, though, so maybe I should try to preserve the warm rosy glow of memories I have for my homeland. Especially now that I’m back here.

But from which time on my life? Living in the mountains reminds me of coming up here when I was a kid, staying in Katoomba, going to Jenolan Caves.

But on the other hand, seeing all my old friends in Sydney takes me back to formative years at high school and beyond. Great memories, great times. Even when the times weren’t so good.

And finding the Vincent Tree near Coffs Harbour made me yearn for a time when I hadn’t even been born.

To make things even more complicated, last week some photos turned up in my inbox, sent by my old friend Andy in London. Photos from the mid '80s when we shared a house in Tooting Bec.

It was a great year in that house. We had some brilliant times. If only I could remember what they were.

Maybe for the moment, I’ll keep it simple.

I’ll just be nostalgic about last weekend.

I didn’t get up to much, but it was a pretty good time.

22nd June 2009

Now that anyone can write music at home on their computer, it seemed to make sense that I become anyone as well, and start writing some music of my own.

Rudimentary compositions at the moment, maybe, and if for some reason you don't like electro-ambient stuff, influenced by my love of Brian Eno and Steve Reich, then I'm afraid there's no help for you out there, but you can listen anyway here

I don't have 237 MySpace friends yet, in fact, I have only three.

But Silverbox writes excellent ambient music, Ellen McAteer is the Ellen I was playing with last year in Oxford as the band-that-never-quite-was The Blue Valentines and is a great singer-songwriter and Crazy Jane is Sue Chewter once of The Wise Wound.

19th June 2009

Overheard recently in the car:

Zac (age 10): When you have babies, the man doesn't have to do much at all!

Tash (age 6): That's right, they just have to stand around smoking.

18th June 2009

So I’m eating a packet of Cheese Twisties – something I’ve been doing a lot since I came back to Australia.

Though I am starting to cut down a bit, they're not exactly health food.

Anyway I’m eating these Twisties and Zac comes up and says, how can they sell these things if they taste like nets?

15th June 2009

Mousehole 1999

My father was here before I was born
He said that he would not come back.

The cradling ribs, these harbour walls
Close out the sea; they overlook
St Clement’s Rock
Framed, like the pictures that he took,
By sky and white swell line…and moved
To turn, the ridgetop drew his eyes
Beyond the flock
Of gulls that drown the day in sighs
In flurries round the steps, the stalls,
The masts of fishing boats, the mud
That missed the tide.
He willed the best part of his blood,
The past of which he most approved
Was here where lichen-yellow tiles
On rooftops vied
With white and grey in stretch of miles

Encircling. As the hour played out
In watercolour wash and hue
From deep he saw
His father, whom he never knew,
Reflected in the salt mist spray
On windscreen, chrome and phonebox glass.
I saw this, more
I saw, soft shone from sextant brass
Amidst The Ship’s night light and shout,
From where I sank within the jar
He drained to find
What others found, come back so far,
Not held though called by carn and bay
And crag, arrived in time to turn
To leave behind
Who’d said that he would not return.

13th June 2009

Funny, isn’t it? You’d think that ISPs, what with their natural affinity for all things web, would have great, easy-to-navigate websites where everything worked as it should.

But hilariously for masochists, the opposite is true.

I won’t go into my experience with the old ntl in the UK (now Virgin). Frankly, I’ve tried to erase that trauma from my psyche in case it gives me another breakdown.

My most recent UK ISP horror story was written by the nice folks at Pipex, who used to actually be nice folks before they sold out to Tiscali in a cynical move designed to give me nightmares.

As everyone knows, Tiscali is real bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, and their Pipex website was no exception – most times reminding me of some cheap do-it-yourself wardrobe, with the doors not fitting properly and bits missing here and there.

It was usually impossible to log in, had slow response times and boasted consistently inaccurate information about my account. In other words, standard ISP internet service.

Over here in Australia, my current burdensome internet experience is provided by TPG. They’re no better. Can’t get a read on how much I’ve been downloading this month. Can’t change the password. And that’s just my first visit.

So what’s the problem with ISPs? Are they all run by stupids? By sadists? By stupid sadists? Unfortunately, it’s a bit more sinister than that. ISPS are a prime example of ‘inertia’ businesses. They rely on the fact that once you’ve signed up with them, your natural customer inertia will usually keep you there no matter what goes wrong.

An ISP like Pipex/Tiscali sees no reason to pump money into websites (and call centres) because they know their indifference to customer satisfaction will piss off everyone, but that only a small percentage will do anything about it. Most people will just accept it as being the way of the modern world.

Other inertia businesses such as telecoms and utilities and banks work on the same principle – sign up then forget. British Gas is probably the best UK example of this, a formerly public company trading on its old reputation in the most cynical of ways.

Here in Australia, once-public phone giant Telstra shambles on like a greedy giant, sucking money from misguidedly loyal customers who still think that Telstra is a good old Aussie name.

Records of customer service in businesses like these are notoriously diabolical, but penalties for treating customers like turd are virtually non-existent, so they continue to get away with it.

Inertia businesses also try to make it as hard as possible to escape their clutches – witness the stink caused when it was revealed that Setanta Sports required written authorisation for customers to terminate their contracts. Just think of all those letters going mysteriously missing, and the hours spent by irate people on crowded phone lines trying to find out why Setanta was still ripping money out of their bank accounts.

So what’s the best plan of action when something goes wrong and you find yourself caught in the grip of these stinking bastard organisations who don’t give a damn about anything except the bottom line?

It’s a tough call, because customer ‘service’ in inertia businesses consists of the bored and the vacant reading from scripts designed to wear down your anger and replace it with weary resentment.

They’re banking on the likelihood that eventually you’ll just give up scratching on the locked doors of their fortress with your puny toothpick and go back to the crap service which made you complain in the first place.

But don’t do that. You have to persist. You need to keep at them. Use your anger as a fuel for your actions. Make them pay for what they have done to you, for your sake, but also for the sake of all the other poor saps who have gone down the same road as you and fallen by the wayside.

For that is the path of the noble and the true, and great boldness is always needed in the face of great evil.

8th June 2009

So I see that actor David Carradine has been found dead in a Bangkok hotel room, hanging from a rope around his neck and...er...genitals.

Looks like auto-erotic asphyxiation to me, although the family lawyer has claimed that Carradine was investigating groups in the ‘martial arts underworld’, whatever that is, and that they may be behind his death.

Carradine’s demise bears remarkable similarities to that of Aussie rocker Michael Hutchence, who in 1997 was found dead in a Sydney hotel room, naked and with a belt around his neck.

I guess that celebrities who die like this are doing the tabloids and conspiracy theorists a favour by providing more grist for their tawdry mills, but honestly, is it all that smart to get something like this wrong and end up dead?

More importantly, is it fair?

To people like me?

Forget Michael Hutchence for a second. I thought he was an okay rock-type singer, though clearly full of himself and not nearly as good as he thought he was. And just for the record, I saw INXS playing at The Vicar of Wakefield in Dural in around 1979, before they got famous. So I should know, right?

But David Carradine, he was Kwai Chang Caine! So what if he was a crap actor who had less of an emotional range than Keanu Reeves? So what if he ruined his B-movie reputation by taking a role in the crap Tarantino film Kill Bill?

He was Kwai Chang Caine from Kung Fu! He was one of the heroes of my televisual youth!

But am I going to remember him for that?

Nu-uh. Not likely.

Now, I’ll just remember him as the guy who was found dead in a hotel room with a rope around his neck and...er...genitals.

Thanks a bunch, Dave.

6th June 2009

Now that I can send text messages after many years of not being able to - and many years not caring either way - I notice that texting has begun to creep into my life in an insidious and less-than-healthy way.

I notice that I’ve started checking for text messages quite a bit, even when I know that there are none there. And when messages do come in, I find that I reply to them almost at once, sometimes becoming involved in stupid text conversations about not much at all.

It feels as though texting, convenient though it is, has removed me one degree further from the people I may otherwise be seeing in person or talking to on the phone. And now when the phone does ring, I often find myself just ignoring it, in case there is a real person on the other end of line. Which there probably is.

Hey, if it’s important, they’ll ring back. A lot.

It all reminds me of my relationship with my email – compulsively checking for new messages, wondering why all the bastards haven’t been in touch, congratulating myself on how clever I am for not replying to the rich, bereaved Nigerians who want my bank account details.

Frankly, my relationship with my email is pretty unhealthy. And yet, I’m pretty well hooked on the dysfunctionality. It’s cigarettes and chocolate all over again. Instant gratification, but with not much in the way of long-term gain.

At least texting doesn't give you cancer.

Yet.

The link isn't proven, right?

I sometimes try to remember the world I lived in before email came along, and I guess I got along okay without it. It’s like the time before the kids arrived – I know it existed, but it’s hard to remember exactly what went on.

One thing I’m fairly sure of, there was more room in my brain back then for reflective thought. My head was less cluttered with the transitory, and not at all plagued by the desire to double-click and see.

I think maybe that the time I spent back then on reflective thought was time well spent.

But I’d need to reflect on that a bit more to be certain.

I might do that later, after I’ve checked my mobile phone and emails.

3rd June 2009

Even from across the other side of the world, it has not escaped my attention how dull the just-finished English football season has been.

To be fair, it was in a state of extreme dullness when I left the UK in February, so it was no great leap to imagine that the dullness would continue on in the same relentless manner.

I may be wrong, but this season seems to have been particularly dull, perhaps the dullest for some time, which is quite an achievement considering the large number of dull seasons which have preceded it.

Personally I feel that the Premier League, the Football Association and EUFA should be congratulated on this triumph of tedium.

In very few other fields of human endeavour is it possible to combine the very pinnacle of talent (embodied in the skill levels of the players involved) with a boredom so excruciating that it makes watching trees grow seem like outrageous fun – and all thanks to the way everything is designed to keep the richest clubs at the top of the pile.

Before we all nod off, let’s quickly review the stultifying events of Season 2008-09:

1. Manchester Utd win Premiership. Again. Verdict: Dull.

2. Liverpool make futile challenge to win the Premier League. Again: Dull.

3. Big Four (Man Utd, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal) finish in the top four places, again: Dull.

4. Big Four side (Chelsea) wins FA Cup again: Dull.

5. Big Four side (Man Utd) wins Carling Cup again: Dull.

6. Aston Villa/Everton mount early challenge for Big Four status, which peters out fitfully as the season comes to a close, again: Dull.

7. Barcelona win Champions League for the seven hundredth time: Dull.

8. EUFA Cup happens, somebody wins. Again: Zzzzzzz.

Verily, these are times of great dullness for football fans around the globe. Rejoice in the tiresome monotony and ponderous, dismal uneventfulness.

And thesauruses be praised.

1st June 2009

My handwriting is so bad now that I’m thinking of applying for a doctor’s license. Everything I write these days with a pen looks like a prescription.

In fact, glancing at the brief notes I scribbled earlier today for this journal entry, I can hardly make them out, although there is one section which looks something like take one tablet twice per day before meals.

My handwriting used to be excellent. Just how excellent was it? People used to comment on how excellent it was. And people don’t do that unless you have excellent handwriting.

What happened to it? What happened to my exemplary penmanship? I bought a computer, that’s what. And ever since that moment, my handwriting skill levels have been going steadily downhill.

Because I don’t use a pen any more. I use a keyboard. Now, when I pick up a pen, I’m not accustomed to it, and my hand goes into a kind of crampy, arthritic spasm. I hold the pen much too hard, writing quickly in a sprawling illegible script which nobody can read.

If Zac happens to be walking past while my notebook is open, he tells me pointedly how rubbish my handwriting is. This after I’ve spent the last four years telling him how important it is to be able to write clearly.

So how is that fair? Zac implies with his pointedness. How is that fair, if your handwriting is crap but you keep on telling me that mine has to be good?

Ah, I imply back, my handwriting used to be excellent, you see? I attained excellence by dint of perspicacious application to the task at hand over many years, and pride in my work.

And if I threw the five computers in this house out the window and reverted to pen and paper once more, my handwriting would be excellent again.

In time.

If I could manage to get these stupid cramps out of my hand.

29th May 2009

A Selection Of Words You Can Put Before 'Me'

Don't ask
Why
Who
Wait for
Search
What about
It's only
Wasn't
Don't look at
That would be
Don't forget
Leave it to
Silly
Well, *&#@

26th May 2009

I like listening to talk radio – who doesn’t? – but I also like turning it off.

I treasure those few moments of stunning quiet when, in the wake of the cessation of burbling voices from outside, the internal babble hasn’t yet begun – that stream of inane self-conversation which goes on and on and on like a crowd of blind idiots talking to each other about things they’ve never seen.

Sometimes I think that’s what life is all about – finding ways to turn down the internal drivel that we learn as children and which carries on with us throughout our lives.

It’s no surprise, then, I guess, that I look forward to hearing stuff on the radio which annoys me so much that I have no choice but to hit the off button.

When I was living in the UK, I had the chance to develop specific irritations, to let them mature over time into genuine dislikes. I jumped for joy whenever I heard the voice of Tony Blair or David Cameron – the radio would go off at once. Likewise George Bush.

I loved listening to football-hating football commentator Alan Green, because I knew that it would be only a matter of seconds before he yelled out Oh, referee! and that would be my cue for shutting him up.

And of course it was great hearing anybody from the car lobby gibbering on about how speeding wasn’t dangerous. Not that I ever switched them off, it was just great, because I also love listening to complete morons talking garbage.

Here in Australia, it’s not so simple. My dislikes are still evolving, as novelty slowly gives way to ingrained habit. Here, I haven’t yet discovered who to loathe, so at the moment I’m relying on individual comments to get me by.

Recently I’ve turned off the politician who said and that’s going to meet our needs for the future as an Australian country. Like, how many Australian countries are there, dude?

I also muted the guy who said Australia has a unique climate compared to Europe and the one who tried me with We export a lot of bees to the US by the kilo, we fly them out. But as yet I have no names, no faces. Just fragments from the ether.

So it’s fortunate that I can still get BBC Five Live. It’s taken me a while to configure it and get it all set up, but now, thank God, I have the facility to switch off Talk Radio again whenever I need to.

22nd May 2009

A message arrives from a Mr Jay Mo of Oxford, UK, with suggestions for more entries in the ever-growing list of What Books Would Have Been Called Etc:

Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Chickens

Jerome K Jerome - Three Men in a Home

So that makes four now. If anybody else has any ideas, send them on. Contact details are on the bibliography page of the website.

Hey, who am I kidding? Who even reads a book any more, let alone remembers the title.

20th May 2009

What Books Would Have Been Called If They Had Rhymed With Their Writer's Name, No.1 & No. 2

Dan Brown - The Da Vinci Clown

Barack Obama - Dreams From My Farmer

19th May 2009

Flogging A Dead Horse Productions Present:

A Short Play About Australian Rugby League

ROBBO opens the door and walks into the hotel room.

It's quite dark, but he can nonetheless see MACCA, standing across the room, his pants round his ankles, having... ahem...a wank.

ROBBO: G'day mate. Sorry, think I'm in the wrong room...

MACCA: Nah, come on in!

ROBBO: All right. Er, what you doing?

MACCA: Just havin' sex.

ROBBO: Oh yeah? Who with?

MACCA: See that woman over there on the bed? The one Jacko's on top of?

ROBBO: Oh yeah.

MACCA: Having sex with her.

ROBBO: Oh right.

There is a pause.

ROBBO: So what team do you play for?

Curtain.

16th May 2009

This Four Corners Rugby League documentary. There was another part where they showed a youth team in an education session, being taught that having group sex with naive, drunk young girls, treating them like crap and then chucking them out into the street afterwards was a BAD THING.

They showed a dramatisation of this girl going home with a Rugby League player, and then being tricked into having sex with another guy as well. The message was, THIS IS NOT GOOD, DON'T DO THIS.

But I'm not sure it was getting through. There was this one guy who said, well okay, keep the group sex thing, but instead of telling the girl to piss off and kicking her butt out into the street and slamming the door in her face, be nice to her and call her a cab. And if you do that, then it will all be okay.

And you know, I feel a little bit sorry for this guy. Not only does the whole of Australia now think he’s an idiot. Now his mates think he’s an idiot as well.

Because now, who’s going to be expected to pay for cabs for these women? The players are, right? Because of what this guy said, these other guys are going to have to fork out for these cabs, and that’s money out of their pocket.

And not only that, they may have to talk to these women as well. Like, engage them in the semblance of a conversation. Sure, during the actual group sex, they can still ignore them and laugh and joke amongst themselves while most of them are standing round having a wank.

But afterwards, what then? Someone is going to have to talk to these women! Ask them if they want a taxi, maybe even say something else like...er...what's your name?

And that's all down to this one guy.

Not clever, mate.

12th May 2009

I caught the end of a documentary on the ABC last night, an episode of Four Corners about the apparently widespread practice of group sex among Australian Rugby League players.

Not with each other, as far as I know, but more along the lines of, one guy from the team will chat up a girl in pub, and then take the girl back to his hotel room.

Then while he’s there, a few other guys will sneak into the room, sometimes through the bathroom window, and some of them will form a queue at the end of the bed, waiting their turn.

The rest of them will just stand around the bed with their pants down and...er...have a wank. Not saying anything to the girl. Just, talking and laughing amongst themselves while they have a wank.

I know, I know, when you see it written down like that, it sounds pretty romantic. But is that really group sex? I always thought group sex was when a bunch of men and women got together and had sex.

But apparently if you’re in a Rugby League team it’s when a bunch of men and one woman get together, without the woman being told about it beforehand, and then most of the men just have a wank.

Don’t they have showers for that kind of thing?

It was all pretty mind-boggling. It made me think about my own sporting history. I’ve played team sports over the years. In fact, I played cricket in Oxford for ten years running.

And not once during that time did I get to have group sex.

Doesn’t seem fair somehow.

Although if it’s Rugby League-style group sex, then I’m not sure I’m that interested.

10th May 2009

I was pumping up Zac's basketball yesterday, and strangely, it seemed to take a lot more air than it did the previous time.

I guess that's inflation for you.

9th May 2009

Since I've been in Australia, one of the things I've tried to do is start a hot-air balloon adventure experience company.

But I couldn't get it off the ground.

7th May 2009

I was in the pub the other night and a guy called me a homonym.

At least, that's what it sounded like.

6th May 2009

In light of Silvio Berlusconi's recent comments after the Abruzzo earthquake, namely, that homeless survivors living in tents should treat the whole experience like a camping trip, I've come up with a few more excellent morale-raising ideas for the Italian Prime Minister.

Silvio, if you happen to be reading this, feel free to use these as and when the situation arises:

For survivors of a terrorist attack - treat the experience like a paintball game using red paint!

For flood survivors - try to think of it all as a fantastic swimming holiday.

For survivors of a famine - just look at it as though you've been on a really, really successful diet!

For people who have survived a drought - hey, don't be downcast! Get out the suncream and grab yourself a fantastic tan.

For survivors of Berlusconi's apparently endless reign as the Prime Minister of Italy - just treat the whole thing as a bad dream: you might be able to get through it more easily that way.

5th May 2009

From The Sydney Morning Herald:

As the two teams yesterday began preparations for their first meeting since New Zealand's upset win in last November's World Cup final at Suncorp Stadium, most of the talk centred on the Kangaroos' bid to redeem a defeat many of the players admitted had haunted them for weeks afterwards.

Hmm, that's quite an admission to make. Haunted for weeks afterwards? Several lots of seven days in succession of merciless and brutal haunting? And they're still standing?

Man, I don't care what you say. Those guys really are tough.

1st May 2009

It’s not easy for me to remember back that far, but time was when a television repeat was called a television repeat. In those days, the meaning was pretty clear: if you showed a programme on television that you’d already shown before, it was a repeat, i.e. it was being repeated. And there would be the word repeat in brackets after the programme note about the show, so that if you didn’t want to watch it again, you’d know to avoid it.

Nowadays, things are a little different. There’s no such thing as a repeat any more. The advent of multi-channel television, the cable/satellite versus terrestrial divide, and the lying scumbaggery of television stations has led to the development of a whole new nomenclature to describe the idea of the repeat in its contemporary context.

Finding your way through this modern maze of television terminology can be pretty confusing, but fear not, I am here to help you out. Any time you’re not sure if the show you are about to watch has been on television before or not, just refer to this handy check-list:

Reprise

Sometimes a show is described as being reprised. This means that it is being shown again, i.e. repeated.

Encore Performance

It can happen from time to time that a network will be so proud of the series they have just aired (i.e. it got good ratings) that they will soon afterwards schedule an encore performance, implying in the process that they are doing you a favour by letting you see it all over again. This is a repeat.

Catch-Up Screening

Similar to encore performance, but not so poncy. A catch-up screening is usually four or more episodes of a series shown back to back for the benefit of viewers who missed them the first time round. These are repeats.

Network Premiere

The first showing of a movie/series on that particular network. These days, however, said network is one of ninety-three, ninety two of which have already screened the show. Repeat.

Anniversary Showing

A repeat, aired 5/10/20/50 years after the programme’s premiere, of a show which was not very good in the first place, but has become a so-called classic.

You will sometimes be tempted to watch one of these programmes, but try to resist - do you really want to find out that all the 'cool' TV shows you watched when you were a kid were actually complete rubbish?

Most Ridiculous Celebrity Butt-Spanking Scandals #7

Clip shows are a relatively new phenomenon. Vaguely interesting to begin with, without exception they are now utter garbage comprising a series of inane clips connected by lame-o commentary from so-called celebrities you have never seen before. Cheap to produce – hence their popularity with TV executives – all the clips on clip shows are repeats.

And yes, you're right, where else do you get spanked except on your butt?

Repeat

This is a repeat.

30th April 2009

Things You Will Never Hear On The News, Ever (No. 1)

...meanwhile, outside the High Court today, the victim's mother said that, all things considered, the sentence seemed to be about right, and she was glad the perpetrator would have the chance to rebuild his life after paying his debt to society...

28th April 2009

I’m not really one of those people who talk up their own kids’ brilliance and cleverness (although if you do have any kids, than naturally mine are much smarter than yours).

At times, though, my kids have come out with something which is pretty cool, and possibly worthy of mention. In my experience - which is greater than some but less than others - there is an optimum age for Children’s Funny Remarks, and that age is between 5 years 2 months and 5 years 11 months old.

Before that, kids just don’t have the vocabulary or Weltwissen (that’s German for world knowledge) required to express themselves in a sufficiently quirky way. Sure, they can do funny, but it’s all in the way of slapstick and visual gags, stuff like falling over while trying to walk, or pulling the cat's tail. Good for a laff, sure, but it wears thin.

Afterwards – from age six and beyond – they are just too smart to be innocently clever any more, and of course it’s the innocence which is so appealing.

If you happen not to be listening to your kids from 5 yrs 2 months to 5 yrs 11 months, then you’ll miss these innocent gems, but if you do cock an ear, you’ll hear some good material – maybe even good enough to bore your friends and family with at social occasions.

For just as there is nothing more delightful to the parent than the cleverness of their own offspring, there is nothing more dull for anybody else, nothing more guaranteed to send people into a state of glassy-eyed and rigid catatonia.

However, because I don’t really care if I bore you or not, check this out! Here’s something Tash said the other week, when she was still five:

Would you rather have a present on your birthday that you didn’t want, or be kicked in the face and have a bird poo on your head?

Clever eh? Naturally we all laughed when she said it, and so did she, but then a few minutes later she turned six and went off to study calculus.

Hasn’t cracked a joke since.

26th April 2009

100 Exceedingly Short Screenplays No. 1

FADE IN:

DIANA and KARL pick their way slowly across the battered moonscape, past the wreck of the shuttle, towards where the lunar base rises majestic on the horizon. The Earth hangs like a giant blue orb in the background.

Though partly obscured by her spacesuit, it is clear that Diana is a beautiful woman, almost regal in her bearing. By comparison Karl seems something of a weasel.

DIANA: You really do ask too many questions.

KARL: Do you think so?

FADE OUT.

25th April 2009

Anyhow, after a couple of weeks of assiduous research, firing off emails to technology- savvy friends, familiarising myself with heady concepts such as HDMI ports, and doing price-check comparisons in the local shops, I finally bit the bullet and went out in search of a new TV.

It's always an exciting time, buying a new piece of kit. First, of course, you need to have the idea, that new thing moment of inspiration, when it comes to you out of the ether with light-bulb clarity that yes, you will soon be buying something big and shiny and expensive.

Next comes the sense of pre-ownership, the gradual intellectual acceptance that the state of 'being without' will soon change to 'being with'. This is a worthwhile feeling that you can carry around for just about as long as you want without doing too much harm to yourself. Some experienced Big Item buyers have even been known to put off the actual day of acquisition simply in order to prolong this delicious and complex emotion.

Last, you must face up to the Moment of Purchase, the instant of parting with the Big Cash in order to obtain the Big Thing. This final stage - otherwise known as Crunch Ttime - is always a little nervewracking, a bit like going on a first date. It always helps here to pretend that the salesman is actually your friend, and not just some guy who is only talking to you because you want to boost his monthly sales target by a notch.

So it was for me. Excited, yet somehow still in control, I drove down the mountain with Zac and Tash and hit the discount stores. And there it was in Bing Lee, the exact model I'd been contemplating, at a reasonable price, and looking every bit as televisual as I'd hoped it would.

Great full HD picture, excellent sound, lots of sockets at the back. So what did I do? Bought the one next to it, the one I’d never seen before.

Why? Because while Tash was running around the store playing hide-and-seek, or pressing all the buttons on the SatNavs, Zac and I stood next to each other, looking from the meticulously-researched television which had garnered all the great reviews in the online tech journals to the other one beside it I knew nothing about.

Saying one word to each other, over and over again.

Bigger.

So we’ve got this new TV now. To be honest, it’s not all that good, and I wouldn’t recommend anyone else buy one like it. The picture is a bit fuzzy and the sound quality is crap. But I don’t care.

It’s bigger.

23nd April 2009

I really wish that, just for once, when the hero - the guy who saved his mates from drowning after they were washed off the rocks, or who rescued the kid from the burning building, or who landed the nose-diving plane on the Hudson River and didn't lose one passenger...

...I really wish that, when some twerp from Radio Dickwad sticks a mic in the hero guy's face and says, You're a hero, aren't you? What you just did makes you a genuine, bona fide real-life hero...

...I wish that, instead of saying Well, I was just doing what anybody else would have done or I'm just an ordinary joe going about his business...

...I wish that, instead, the hero guy would say...

...Yeah, as a matter of fact, I am a goddamn hero, you got it right, I saved all those people and that was a bloody heroic thing to do, especially considering the extreme risk to my own personal safety which was involved. Hell, I must have been crazy doing that dangerous stuff, but I did it, and that makes me a hero all right!

Sadly, though, I seriously doubt that any heroes are going to talk like that any time soon.

For one thing, all those heroes actually are just ordinary guys, that's how they see themselves, even if - after they do their heroic thing - the rest of the world doesn't.

That's right. Even though the world is suddenly thinking, Wow, that guy must really be a hero, did you see what he did? the guy is actually thinking, Hey, I am just this guy who did this thing, it was only an accident that it didn't go horribly wrong anyway, now leave me the heck alone to get on with my ordinary existence before you screw it up for me by sticking too many microphones in my face and making me think I'm something I'm not.

So, there's more than just a grain of truth in what the hero is saying when he trots out the old self-effacement routine.

One top of which, any hero knows that if he does tell the world that he's a hero, then the world will immediately think that he's actually a dick. And will always think he's a dick.

Hey, there's that dick who saved all those hundreds of people from drowning the world will say. Or He rescued twenty children from a terrorist? Funny how even a dick can do something right now and again.

Unless he gets cancer, in which case the world will forgive him and put him back on the front pages of the tabloids.

But in a nice way.

22nd April 2009

Apologies to my five (or is it six?) semi-regular readers for the long time between posts.

Despite an incredible degree of innate IT skill - most likely not genetic - it's taken me a while to get the internet hooked up to our cave here in the Blue Mountains.

It's good to be back.

31st March 2009

Admiral Car Insurance. Admiral Leasing. Admiral Sports Betting. The Admiral Group, Inc. Admiral Soccer. Admiral Office Technology Solutions. Admiral Plastics. Admiral Kitchens. Admiral Concreting. The Admiral Theatre.

That's all very well, but what about all the other ranks? What about Colonel? Captain? Sergeant? What about Corporal and Lieutenant?

I don't see any companies named after them, and I have to say, I feel a little bit sorry for them.

Is this really what they deserved?

30th March 2009

Spewing: angry
Chundering: spewing

29th March 2009

Tradies: tradesmen

25th March 2009

Australian-English Dictionary

Barbie: barbecue
Truckie: truck driver
Tinnie: tin (of beer)
Cozzie: swimming costume
Mozzie: mosquito
Footie: football
Pollie: politician
Vinnie's: St Vincent De Paul Society
Rellies: relatives
Rellos: relatives
Rels: relatives
Rego: (car) registration
Pash: snog
Chips: crisps
Hot chips: chips
Cold hot chips: cold chips

24th March 2009

Big Things I Have Seen Since Being Back In Australia

The Big Banana
The Big Prawn
The Big Avocado
The Big Slurpy

22nd March 2009

Memo: To All Staff

Please find below the new schedule for features on dead celebrities:

James Dean - one feature article every 11 months
Marilyn Monroe - every 9 months
Sid Vicious - every 18 months
Princess Diana - every 13 months
River Phoenix - every 19 months
Jim Morrison - every 27 months
Elvis Presley - every 14 months
George Best - every 16 months
Jimi Hendrix - every 22 months
John Lennon - every 17 months
Jim Morrison - every 31 months
Heath Ledger - once every 9 weeks

Some of you still seem determined to come up with new angles on the above, but PLEASE NOTE, we are not looking for any original material. REHASHES OF OLD ARTICLES ONLY, thank you.

Please note, Bobby Fischer is now DEAD, so no more Searching For Bobby Fischer pieces.

Thanks,

The Editor.

14th March 2009

Anyhow, so I'm driving back from my nephew Jake's basketball game with my sister-in-law Lara (a 62-14 loss, bad luck little dude) and instead of taking us straight to the house on Bruxnor Park Rd, she goes past the driveway and up the hill towards Sealy Lookout instead.

Jake's ears are plugged in to his I-Pod in the back, but he's still finding the time to squabble with his little brother Darwin, and Zac is joining in the complaining about not going home, he wants to pick up the trampolining marathon where he left off a couple of hours before.

But hey, me and Lara are the grown-ups, and we can make the little guys do what we want. So despite all the moaning from the back seat about how everything is boring, we turn left and take the winding road up to the Lookout through a forest of eucalypts, looking down on the banana plantations in the valleys below, the houses perched crazily on the slopes and ridges.

The view from Sealy's Lookout is impressive, sweeping from the north down along the beaches of Coffs Harbour, then on towards the coastline bending south, disappearing into ocean haze.

But we don't stay long. We get back in the car and head down, and though the kids are still protesting, Lara says One more thing and turns left at the bottom of the hill, driving down into Bruxner Park Floral Reserve itself. The flora changes quickly, the tall woodland eucalypts giving way to flooded gums and grass trees, tree ferns and lush, shiny tropical palms. It's beautiful down here, and untouched.

This is the way my bus takes me to school says Jake as we pull in opposite a half-clearing. There's a giant flooded gum growing there across the road, a massive tree as old as the forest itself.

A plaque has been nailed to the tree about eight feet from the ground. It says:

The Vincent Tree
Eucalyptus clandisi
Height 218 Feet
Girth 23 Feet
Named in Honour of Roy S Vincent
MLA For Raleigh (1927-1953)
Minister For Forests (1932-1941)

I pick my jaw up off the car floor. Roy Stanley Vicent was my mother's father, Member of the NSW Legislative Assembly, and this is the tree they named for him after he saved the forest here from the loggers.

Lara has brought me down here without knowing that, driven me down to show me my grandfather's tree having no idea what it means to me. As for myself, I had no idea it was here anyway.

Sure, I knew my grandfather had a tree, I had a vague idea it was around somewhere, but here? Here? Three miles west of the house Judy's sister just happens to have rented for the last 16 months after emigrating from the UK in 2007?

And as I look at that huge fat mother of a tree reaching into the blue skies, while Jake and Zac and Darwin play and crawl over the elephant-sized knot in the trunk, I realise that my mother and father stood once exactly where I am standing.

I remember it now, how they talked about it, the Vincent Tree, but I never really took it in. I was too busy doing whatever I was too busy doing in those days to listen.

They came here as part of a driving holiday up along the New England Plateau, over thirty years ago.

To see on purpose what I saw by accident.

9th March 2009

Q. What fruit do little old ladies like best?

A. Granberries.

Q. How does wrestler Steve Austin like his pizza?

A. Stone cold.

6th March 2009

Moseying on down to the beach so often in the last few days - peerless blue skies, twenty-eight degrees in the shade, bikini-clad girls strolling on by, my gut wobbling in the surf - you get the gist - well, it's brought it all back.

The days of my youth, spent on Sydney beaches and beyond: the family holidays up the north coast (though never too far), the car trips with friends, camping around Seal Rocks or Swansea, just getting in and driving, four or five of us, heading for the cold beer and the girls we somehow never managed to impress enough to shag.

The girls, that is, not the beer.

As far as I know, nobody shags beer. Though I know a lot of guys who drink it like they wish they could.

Well, I never did, anyway. Shag those girls.

I can't speak for the other guys, maybe they did and just didn't tell me, the stinking bastards. But I was always too shy, caught in the Catch 22 of inexperience. Girls thought I was cute, some of them even told me as much, but I didn't know what to do with that, though I might now, when I'm not cute any more and in any case all happily familied up and more worried about the cricket scores.

I remember the night, sitting round the campfire with the locals at McMasters Beach, the young guys and girls so into their drinking and smoking, their partying and sex.

The guy beside me, kinda nerdy by their standards, but cool compared to me.

Isn't it bad? he said, turning to me. Isn't it bad when you're at a party and you have to sleep with one of the ugly chicks.

I wouldn't know I replied.

Hey man, that is so so cool! he said. Did you hear that, everyone? This guy is so cool!

Him not realising, it was because I was a virgin.

Me not setting him straight.

The pretty girl across the fire, the way she looked at me in a new light, like I was cool. Like I should go over and sit down next to her and do something about it.

Me staying where I was, not knowing what that something might be...

As you can see, I still think about that time, that night, that look, that girl.

But I think more about the cricket scores.

3rd March 2009

Yes, I'm still here.

No, not there, here.

It's hard making journal entries when you're in Australia traveling from mountains to beach to beach to other beach to other other beach back to mountains, but I'll try to keep it going as best I can.

At least we haven't had to stay in the suburbs yet.

Australia seems like in England in a lot of ways - great weather, friendly people, fantastic beaches, amazing birds in the trees. But things do seem changed a bit since I was here last.

Sure, people still say g'day, how's it garn?, yeah and nah but not on yer bike or awright mate?

But we have an Anti-Terrorism Hotline now. Heard them plotting? Seen anything suspicious? Call the Anti-Terror Hotline, anonymously, and we'll treat your fears as seriously as we can. Fears. FEARS. FEARS!!!!! Hahahahahahaha!!!!

That's not exactly how the ad goes, but it does kind of creep me out.

Fortunately, because TV over here is generally either a) so crap or b) so riddled with advertisements, I haven't had to watch it much.

21st February 2009

It looks like this will be my last journal entry on British soil for a while. We fly out to Australia on Monday evening, though we have craftily sorted things out so that Judy's laptop is internet-ready wherever there is a wireless network which will have us.

Which means it will soon be my laptop in everything but name.

This has never been intended as a personal diary of any kind, so I can't really tell you what a sad but exciting time it's been lately.

I can't really tell you, either, how strange it is, seeing your house emptied and packed into a shipping container by four lads from Essex.

How odd then, to see the container truck drive away, leaving you with just a bunch of walls and floors, some ceilings, a half-empty bottle of Knockando and a late-night showing of Narrow Margin starring Anne Archer and Gene Hackman.

So it goes.

20th February 2009

I Went To The Shop 2.0

I guess most people have heard of the game I Went To The Shop.

The way it works is that you pretend you went to the shop and bought something, e.g. I went to the shop and bought a bicycle and the next person has to buy something else then add whatever you said previously.

So it goes, for two or more players, with more and more things being added to the shopping list, until someone gets one wrong and either has their hands cut off, or else is just thrown out of the game, whichever is more culturally appropriate.

Big news: Zac and I have come up with a new and improved version of I Went To The Shop which you might find useful for passing the time in those long car journeys. In this new and improved version - and this is the part that rocks - everything you buy must somehow impair, break or completely destroy the thing which came before it.

To demonstrate, here's the game Zac and I played while standing next to the car in Summertown waiting for Tash and Jude to come back with the cakes:

Zac: I went to the shop and bought a banana.

Me: I went to the shop and bought a banana, and a monkey to eat the banana (thus, the banana is consumed).

Zac: I went to the shop and bought a banana, a monkey to eat the banana, and a shotgun to kill the monkey which ate the banana (and now the monkey bites it - figuratively).

Ant: I went to the shop and bought a banana, a monkey to eat the banana, a shotgun to kill the monkey which ate the banana, and a nail to jam the shotgun which killed the monkey which ate the banana (and so the shotgun is rendered useless).

Zac: I went to the shop and bought a banana, a monkey to eat the banana, a shotgun to kill the monkey which ate the banana, a nail to jam the shotgun which killed the monkey which ate the banana, and a blowtorch to melt the nail which jammed the shotgun which killed the monkey which ate the banana...

And so on - hammer, bigger hammer, bale of cotton wool, match, glass of water, bloke, mad scientist, etc etc, the only limit being our vast imaginations - until Jude came back with the pecan pie. Get the idea? The beauty of this game is that you get to think of cool ways to destroy stuff. And you don't need any paper and pens.

Try it some time with your friends and family.

Or not.

16th February 2009

The idea has come into vogue recently - especially in reality TV - that ‘speaking your mind’ or ‘being honest’ is admirable, no matter what you end up saying.

Big Brother contestants seem especially fond of using this righteous honesty as an excuse for justifying any vile behaviour they feel like indulging in. It’s usually the mouthy ones who do it, the ones who can’t shut up and like to pick on people just to make them cry.

Whadya mean she’s upset? I was only being honest when I told her she was a limp boring waste of space. I’m just speak my mind, innit?

Jade Goody, one of the few Big Brother contestants to graduate from being a Normal to a Celebrity – and now, thanks to illness, in the post-vilification stage of her non-career a genuine, bona fide Celebrity Cancer Hero – used the ‘speaking my mind’ argument in defence of bullying Shilpa Shetty on Celebrity Big Brother.

Subsequently, Goody was thrown off the show, demonstrating perhaps that ‘honesty’ is not the best policy, especially when that ‘honesty’ takes the shape of vituperative and prejudiced garbage better kept inside than outside your mouth-driven brain.

And recently, I saw my favourite Dragon, Duncan Bannantyne – featured in a show about Duncan Bannantyne – telling the world that he just ‘speaks his mind’ no matter what, and that if people don’t like it, then too bad.

I guess that’s fair enough in the context of a programme like Dragon’s Den, in which Bannantyne and four other high-powered successful entrepreneurs are paid good money not only to invest their ‘childrens’ inheritance’ in promising business ideas, but also to ‘speak their mind’, i.e. be as unpleasant as they can to anyone who falters in the harsh glare of their spotlight.

But I wonder, if Duncan Bannantyne’s wife bought an ugly dress and brought it home and put it on, then asked him what he thought of it, would he tell her? Would he say, That dress is crap, and if you wear it, you’ll look like a stuck pig?

If one of Duncan Bannantyne’s kids drew a picture, and it sucked, and they brought it to him, beaming up at him in expectation, and asked him if it was any good, would he say, Actually, that picture is complete shite, you talentless little moron?

Frankly, there’s a lot to be said for lying, especially if it doesn’t hurt anyone.

Liars are much nicer.

Honesty is for scumbags.

15th February 2009

Many thanks to the kind internet elf who has posted my short film Billy's Day Out on Youtube.

Billy's Day Out premiered at Toronto in 2004, and won Best Short Film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival the same year.

Other festival appearances include London, Bristol, Leeds, Oxford, and a bunch more around the world.

Last year they showed it on Swedish television.

You can watch Billy's Day Out here

11th February 2009

At time of writing, I have a slow-burning case of egg rage, prompted by today's news that scientists have discovered that eating a crazy high number of eggs will not in fact raise your cholesterol level at all.

It was when scientists discovered the exact opposite some years back that I began to moderate my egg intake.

It was also around about then that the idea that eating eggs was somehow bad for you began - understandably - to take root and grow in my head.

Also around about then I began to worry about it, especially when I was eating eggs.

Every time I ate more than a few eggs a week, I wondered if I was eating too many, if I had finally tipped the egg balance, stepped over the egg precipice.

Now I find that all my egg vigilance has been for nothing.

I think those scientists who linked egg consumption and cholesterol owe me an apology - not just for ruining my enjoyment of eggs, but also for undermining my faith in science.

Because I wonder now how many other mistakes scientists have made about the things I eat.

Mistakes which will only become clear when better scientists do better research some time in the future.

In the future, when it will be too late for me.

I wonder, is fruit really good for you?

Should I eat more pizzas?

Should I order one now?

6th February 2009

I think what annoyed me was that there was no acknowledgment their son could have been in the wrong to any degree whatsoever.

They had asked him, had he been involved with my son being picked on in any way? And he had said no. They had also asked him, did he stand up against the others and try to protect my son? He had said no to that too, and they had said to him, that in itself was wrong, not to intervene when somebody was being picked on.

To me, that seemed like a fudge. He hadn’t admitted his part in what happened, and they had believed him without question.

The way it came across to me, they had asked their son, he had denied it, and as far as they were concerned, that was the end of the matter. There wasn’t even any attempt on their part to find out what my son had told me about it.

Clearly, my son's story differed from their son’s, otherwise, we wouldn’t have been having this conversation in the first place. But they didn’t want to know. It was as though that side of the story was irrelevant, and I felt that, by defending their son like that, unreservedly, without admitting the possibility that he might not be telling them the whole truth, without discussing it properly with me, by implication they were calling my son a liar.

We met over a beer in the pub, and the father said, literally, that his wife had sent him out that evening to defend their son. Maybe I should have said, don’t you want to hear what my son told me? Don’t you want to hear about the discussions I had with the teachers at school? Don’t you want to know what your son was actually doing? What I saw?

Maybe I should have, but I didn’t, and so that was where we left it. We had been friends, but we never talked about it again, and as it happened, pretty soon after that we lost touch.

Later, they moved across town, and they never let us know their new address.

5th February 2009

Don't Fall In Love With A Junkie

Lively, 3/4 time.

Don't fall in love with a junkie
They'll take all your money and stuff
They'll treat you like shit
And lie quite a bit
And as if that isn't enough

They'll sleep all the time
Or do lots of crime
Then ring you from jail
To ask for the bail.

Don't fall in love with a junkie
You'll end up with AIDS or Hep B
You'll be hanging round losers
With needle-mark bruises
And no sense of common decency.

They'll rip off your mother
Screw over your brother
And when everything's gone
Then it's time they moved on.

No, don't fall in love with a junkie
They don't have much sense of remorse
There's cheating, there's lying
There's sleeping, there's dying
In the end you end up with a corpse

They'll selfishly lie
Then they'll selfishly die
After taking your cash
It's you who takes out the trash.

No, don't fall in love with a junkie.

4th February 2009

Apparently the Elephant Government of Africa – the elected elephant officials who rule over all the other elephants – have recently made the eating of fermented fruit by elephants illegal.

It seems that too many elephants were bingeing on the fermented fruit and acting crazy. As well as that, a lot of young elephants were staying out after dark and eating the fruit, and their parents didn’t know where they were.

So the Elephant Government Advisory Health Board recommended the listing of fermented fruit as a Class A Substance.

As an elephant Health Minister said, “It’s no use just letting elephants eat fermented fruit willy-nilly. The abuse of fermented fruit, by young elephants especially, is a massive problem for elephant society, and in the first instance, we need to discover the root causes of why elephants want to eat it in the first place.”

There is no truth to the rumour that the Monkey Government is raising the tax on bananas.

1st February 2009

Australia have lost so many games of cricket recently that my friend Ian has stopped emailing me to crow about it.

Being English, Ian is used to supporting a mediocre cricket team, but I’m not, and it’s starting to bug me.

How fondly do I recall the excoriating emails which flooded in after Australia lost to Bangladesh in a 1-day game in 2005, the witty remarks such as ‘Ha ha ha you guys are rubbish’ and ‘You guys can’t even beat the Banga Boys fnar fnar!’

When we lost the Ashes in the same year – in that incredible series dominated by Gary Pratt and the ball which Glenn McGrath stepped on before the second Test at Edgbaston – the banter was of an even higher standard.

Comments like ‘So who won the Ashes then?’ and ‘Ha ha ha haaaaaaaaa’ were commonplace, and I revelled in them. Because it meant we were the best.

Sure, England had beaten the Old Enemy, but it was only because Australia were the top dogs that feelings ran so deep. If we'd been rubbish, if we hadn't won the last eight Ashes series in a row, it wouldn't have meant nearly so much.

Australia were the best team in the world, possibly the best team ever, maybe the best team ever in any sport from any time.

Quite likely, that period of Aussie cricketing dominance was the greatest group achievement across any field of human endeavour from any era in the history of mankind.

Now, I get nothing. Not even a ‘You guys suck’ or a ‘You guys are crap now yeah?’ We’re mediocre. We’ve come back to the pack.

We’re not even worth insulting.

28th January 2009

Sayings That Appear To Mean Vaguely Something, But It's Hard To Say Exactly What (No. 1)

It's not the maggots that stink, it's the food they're eating.

27th January 2009

Things that you always think, there'll be just a little bit more in the bottom, that you'll be able to squeeze or scrape a tiny smidgin out of, no matter what, and that always cause you to be utterly gobsmacked, dumbfounded, incredulous and offended, when finally you realise, they're bloody well empty:

Tubes of toothpaste
Pots of liquid paper
Tubes of tomato puree
Bottles of ketchup
Jars of mayonnaise
Bottles of whisky
Tubs of margarine
Pouches of tobacco
Bottles of shampoo
Other tubes and jars of other stuff
Other pots
Other stuff in general

21st January 2009

Driving up to get the kids from school yesterday, I was passed going the other way by a guy who had his finger right up his nose digging around for - I guess - a snack.

Okay, nothing unusual about that, you might say. But in the car behind this guy, the next car that went by, the driver had just picked his nose and was looking at the tiny treasure that he'd found on the tip of his finger!

It was like some kind of weird animation, picking the nose in the first frame, then examining the find in the second.

How often is that going to happen? I mean, that's just pure dumb luck.

20th January 2009

It says somewhere in The Guardian this morning that we will all remember where we were and what we were doing today – no, not because it’s my birthday – Happy Birthday to me, by the way – but because it’s the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th President of the US of A.

Isn’t that jumping the gun a little bit? I mean, people are supposed to remember where they were and what they were doing when something momentous and unexpected happened, right? For instance, I remember where I was when I heard that John Lennon had been shot. When Elvis had died. I vividly recall exactly which shrub I was pruning in which garden in North Oxford when the first of the Twin Towers collapsed, followed shortly by the second.

But, Obama’s inauguration? It’s not as though the news just came through on the wire. Oh my God, Obama’s been inaugurated!!!! It’s been coming for months now, hasn’t it?

Frankly, as with so many things these days, the media spoiled Obama’s presidency for me ages ago. It’s been Obama this, Obama that just about every day now since the election. And today the TV, the radio and the papers are awash with it. Do I really care what complete strangers are doing today on the day of the inauguration? Apparently, I should. Because Five Live is asking people to call in, to let the nation know what they're doing.

Is that so they'll find it easier to remember?

That woman who just called in, she’s playing golf with her son!

Golf, huh?

With her son!

I really wanted to embrace this day for its true meaning, whatever that was, but the steady drip-drip-drip of media coverage, and now the giant splash on the day itself, has diluted it so much for me that it just sucks. Like the colour's been washed out of the whole idea, and all I'm left with is a faint impression of what it might have been.

Blah blah blah Obama blah blah blah I have a dream blah blah new era blah blah hopes of a nation blah blah blah zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I hate rolling news.

16th January 2009

The other day I was listening to tabloid talk radio station Five Live. Some C-list celebrity had just had another nose job, so there was an important discussion going on about plastic surgery.

Plastic surgery. Was it a good thing or a bad thing? They got a couple of experts to come on air and argue about it, and one was saying, yes, it’s a good thing, and one was saying, no, it’s a bad thing.

Afterwards they opened up the phone lines, and people started ringing in. Some were in the yes camp, plastic surgery good. Other people were ringing in and saying no, plastic surgery not good.

It was pretty gripping stuff, the yes, then the no, then the yes again, then the no, but I was distracted for a moment by accidentally thinking about something independently and didn’t hear what the latest caller said.

Had she been a yes or a no? Pro fake boobs and noses or against? It seemed kind of important, and immediately I thought, no problems, I can just rewind the radio and find out!

And then I remembered, you can’t do that with radio.

I guess I’ve been spoilt by television. With TV, these days I can pause it to go make a cup of tea. If I’m watching on a commercial station, I can start the recording of my show while out of the room and come in after fifteen minutes, which gives me just the right leeway to fast-forward through all the ads at 30x speed.

I can set my box to record whatever I goddamn feel like whenever I want. And of course, I can rewind to watch that great catch again, or that funny bit where the guy did that funny thing without meaning to ha ha ha ha.

These days, all of TV is an action replay. Which is good. I like it. It gives me the illusion of power and choice, and they’re two illusions I really like to have.

In fact, I’m going downstairs in a minute to watch the wickets which have just fallen in the Australia-South Africa game. I’ve got the Cricinfo score tab on my toolbar, see, so really I’m not missing a thing.

When I was a kid, my Dad used to take my brother and I to the cricket and the rugby league. We'd watch NSW playing cricket in the Shield, or St George playing league, both at the SCG. In those days, if you went for a leak, or to buy a pie, and you missed a wicket or a try, that was it, you missed it forever. Though you were annoyed when you were standing in the queue and the giant roar went up, rising like a wave, signifying action on the field, you didn’t really care, because how can you miss what you’ve never had?

Then, TV replays started, and if you were watching the game at home, they would always show you the key moments again and again and again. You got used to it, having the replay there, handy, right in front of you.

After that, if you went to a game live at the ground, and you missed a wicket, you still didn’t get to see it, but you looked around kind of lost in expectation – waiting for the action replay which never came. Action replays were in your blood now. You’d missed it, but you missed it as well. You were missing out – on something that you’d never had.

Now, at the cricket at least, if you do miss a wicket, then you can see the replay at once, on the Big Screen. You can watch it as all the players on the field watch it with you. Then you can go home, and watch the highlights on TV, see it again, the wicket you missed, as though by not missing it, you have somehow filled in a gap in your life that needed filling.

Anyhow, big deal. Times change, right? When someone invents them, I’m definitely going to buy one of those rewindable radios. Though not one of those DAB ones which already exist. What, you think I'm made of money?

Those DAB radios which already exist, which you can pause and rewind. Are they a good thing or a bad thing?

Some people say yes, some people say no.

11th January 2009

Brown, blue, black, grey, white
Sometimes a football jumper that’s red
These is the colours what the English wear
On their feet, their body and their head.

Look in the shops, look on the streets
Look at what you have got on your own shelf
Even look at what you picked this morning
To put on your own self.

Man, woman, girl and boy
Hindu, Muslim, Christian or Sikh
If you is English and you is not wearing
These colours, then you is a freak.

10th January 2009

I've always found the saying Don't *#&% in your own backyard a bit strange.

I mean, it's about having an affair, right? Basically, it's saying that if you decide to have an extra-marital or extra-de facto relationship with a person who is not your partner, then make sure it's with someone outside your immediate circle of friends etc.

In other words, don't shag your wife's sister, your wife is bound to find out and kill you, and your kids will grow up to hate your guts because you're weak and stupid.

Fair enough, that makes perfect sense. Good advice. Don't shag illicitly too close to home, it might get messy.

What I don't get is, what's the connection between having sex and taking a dump?

Different strokes, I guess.

9th January 2009

I’m not naturally a very good shopper. I don’t go into a shop with my wallet open and immediately think, wow, look at all the nice stuff the nice shop people have put out for me to paw over and buy.

I tend rather to think, hmm, these shop people have put this stuff here for a reason, and the reason is, they want all my hard-earned cash. They don’t care how they get it either. They’ll lie and cheat and almost steal, just to shift some of their crappy products into my house, products which in all likelihood I don’t actually need.

Unless those products are food and clothing and toilet paper. I need those ones.

The food and the toilet paper, you tend to come across that in supermarkets. Supermarkets aren’t nice places, because the people who run them aren’t thinking of me, they’re thinking of how to get my money. They think about it all the time. They pay other people to think about it too. Some people get paid a lot of money – some of it my money – to come up with new ways to get more of my money.

I despise the way supermarkets change their aisles round. They do it every so often, putting all the products in different places, so that when you come into the store, you don’t know where anything is any more.

Supermarkets must have a reason for doing this. I don’t know what it is. But it makes me hate them. Maybe that’s what they want. They want me to hate them, as long as while I’m hating them, I’m giving them lots of my money as well. It takes a strong personality not to mind being hated, and so I guess supermarkets are strong.

Strong and detestable.

I’ve noticed how supermarkets always put the freshest produce at the back of the shelves. They want you to buy the stale stuff, see? They want to get rid of the stale stuff, and save the fresh stuff for next week, when it will be stale too. Basically, supermarkets just want to sell stale stuff, not fresh.

But I’m wise to that. If I find stale stuff in front of the fresh stuff, then I swap it all round, so that the fresh stuff is at the front and the stale at the back. That’s only fair, and before you accuse me of anything, just remember I’m spending my valuable time here giving benefit to all you other shoppers, because let me tell you, doing that kind of thing doesn’t do me myself any direct good at all.

Okay, so I only do it because I hate supermarkets, and not because I like shoppers, but that’s beside the point.

I’ve also figured out the Great New Taste thing. Occasionally, when you go to buy one of your regular food products, you see Great New Taste on the packaging.

What that basically means is that the food technicians who work for the supermarkets have discovered a way to make the product taste roughly the same, but by using cheaper ingredients. So they can get more of your money.

Note that it says Great New Taste, not Great Better Taste. Because that would imply that the old taste was frankly disgusting, on top of which, it would be a lie, because the new never is better, it’s just different, and usually slightly worse, but really on the whole, not so bad that you stop buying the product, and after a while you get used to the new taste and can’t remember what the old one was anyway.

I see through the Same Low Price ploy as well. Same Low Price appears now and again on products which have been mysteriously repackaged for no apparent reason. New box, new colours, whatever.

But, look inside, look beneath, and you’ll see that there is actually less of the product hiding in there than there was before. Same Low Price, Same Less Product. Works for me.

I am also wise to shelving strategies. For instance, in most supermarkets, the Value Teabags are on the bottom shelf in the tea section. They’re so low to the ground that for a tall person like me they’re almost impossible to spot. Sadly, Value Teabags taste like crap, otherwise I’d make the extra effort, bend down and buy them.

Clearly, I would be a supermarket’s worst nightmare if I didn’t shop there every week and pump endless amounts of money into their coffers anyway. As it is, I am not even a source of vague disquiet. I am just another sucker who perpetrates small acts of dissent and disobedience against The Man in a futile kind of way.

Compared to some people, I don’t own many things.

But I do have food in the house.

8th January 2009

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I can't decide.

Iggy Pop advertising Swiftcover insurance.

Does that enhance or diminish his reputation?

7th January 2009

Watchmen

by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

Me: I'm reading a comic.

Zac: Yeah, I saw that. Is it funny?

Me: No, it's an adult comic.

Zac: Well, I don't see the point in reading a comic if it isn't funny.

6th January 2009

Mr Brown. Mr White. Mr Black. Mr Green. Mr Gray.

I can't help thinking that some of the other colours must feel a little bit left out.

I haven't met many Mr Yellows lately.

1st January 2009

Run your eye over the following:

Avensis. Saxo. Qashqai. Mi. Ka. Filou.

They're all car names of course, ridiculous and without merit. It makes you wonder what idiots are charged with coming up with the names for cars, and whether you need a degree in being a nobhead to do it.

And yet, look at these:

Mondeo. Corolla. Civic. Accord.

Also names for cars, and also completely stupid. And yet they somehow seem right, as though the passing of time has ameliorated their inherent lack of meaning.

Mondeo? What the hell is that?

31st December 2008

A happy New Year's Eve to my readers. I hope you both have a great night.

15th December 2008

Forget 6000 years ago, I think the world was actually created by God in 1960, the year before I was born.

I have no proof of it, it’s just a feeling I have, almost like a belief.

And all that stuff which they say is from before then, well, they can say what they like, but how can they prove it, huh?

Who’s to say that God didn’t make it all just before I was born then stick it on the planet, or else even make the planet then too?

And all those people who were supposedly born before I was, well who’s to say that God didn’t make them as well?

Come to think of it, maybe the world was created in the period from 1960-63, because I can’t actually remember anything from before 1964.

14th December 2008

Something which has been bothering me for a while now.

If it's cool to hate the people that the cool people hate, and the people that the cool people hate hate themselves...are they cool?

9th December 2008

The tabloid media.

Taking the nation's temperature. And raising it higher.

6th December 2008

My mate and freelance director John Maidens has just made what looks like a very good short film, Caterpillar. I saw the script for this before it was shot, and it sparkled.

Check out the trailer here

5th December 2008

Song Lyrics Which Mean Something But Are Nonetheless Completely Stupid No. 1

Band: The Feeling

Song: Feels Like Christmas (2008)

Lyric: ‘Is it Christmas, or am I just going insane?’

Comment: I have an enquiry of my own: is that question rhetorical?

Stupidity Rating: 8.7

3rd December 2008

When I was about fifteen, I made a copper necklace in metalwork at school. It was as basic as my metalworking skills – a piece of copper wire wound around a pencil, then cut into circlets and linked together – but it was a cool item , it felt good, and I wore it for years.

Though there wasn’t a heck of a lot to it, for some reason the necklace meant a lot to me. I used to take it off and wrap it round my fingers, or heap it in my hand, feeling the cool weight of it, then put it back on.

Then, when I was twenty-one, I met a girl, and she meant a lot to me too. One night after we’d been going out for a while, we were in her bedroom, and on an impulse I took the necklace off and gave it to her.

I was hoping she’d put it on, but she didn’t. Instead she took a wooden box from a shelf and opened it. The box was full of bits of jewelry and knick-knacky things which clearly had some sentimental value to her. She dropped the copper necklace in the box and closed the lid, then put it back on the shelf.

I never saw that necklace again.

2nd December 2008

How Football Works

Monday evening.

Liverpool play West Ham at Anfield.

Liverpool draw and go top of the table.

Fans boo Liverpool players off the field.

1st December 2008

Irritatingly Meaningless Song Lyrics No. 1

Band: The Killers

Song: Human (2008)

Lyric: ‘Are we human, or are we dancer?’

Comment: A bold attempt by The Killers’ frontman Brandon Flowers to prove that dancers are not actually people, but one which sadly doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny. Would carry more weight if Flowers made some effort to tell us what variety of life form he thinks dancers might be. Is Flowers possibly suggesting that if we are not human, then we are one of Santa's reindeer?

Irritation Rating: 9.4

29th November 2008

Listening to the radio while painting the hallway of a house in Don Bosco Close. Crown Trade Vinyl Matt, Sunrise.

They’re talking about Mumbai, the terrorist attacks. It’s ongoing, breaking news, rolling out across the world.

Can’t help feeling a little guilty for being entertained by it all. People are in hiding in the city, in fear for their lives, some of them will die, but it’s strangely gripping, the radio pictures in my head, like watching a car crash in slow motion.

Phone calls from people on their mobiles, trapped in their hotel rooms, doors locked, while the terrorists roam the corridors.

The wonders of modern communications technology and 24 hour news. Would they keep playing these phone calls if the doors burst open and gunmen charged in, spraying bullets? They’d be tempted, no doubt. And I’d be tempted to listen, fascinated and horrified.

An Indian journalist on the line. His claim to fame: a friend of his mother is still trapped in one of the hotels. He says it’s all just like Die Hard.

Weird, I was only just now thinking it sounded like Rainbow Six Vegas. Life mimicking interactive video entertainment and the movies.

An English Muslim on next, a token apologist for the violence. It’s all the West’s fault, persecution of Islam, foreign policy, etc etc, blah blah blah.

Me, I’m in two minds. No doubt that Bush and Blair made one of the great mistakes in history. Either they were utterly stupid, or utterly criminal – and which is a worse trait in world leaders? Maybe they were stupid AND criminal. But on the other hand, what is there to recommend Muslim extremists? People who would do you violence for calling a teddy bear Mohammed, ha ha ha, it’d be hilarious if it wasn’t so chilling.

Security correspondents almost wetting themselves in their excitement. Was it Al Quaida? The Pakistani security services? Do the attacks mark a new era of terrorist attacks?

It sounds like they hope so. I guess this is their big moment, hundreds dead, world terror, regional instability. And they get to talk about it on the radio.

Lonely Planet spokesman, is it safe to travel to Mumbai?

Maybe not right now.

A woman calls in, her son is somewhere in Mumbai, she hopes he’s safe.

Reduce it to the personal angle, the human experience. But …mother hopes son is safe?? Is that really news? Now, if she’d said, she hopes he’s been shot…

Talking to an expat in Mumbai: ‘And how are you feeling today with your city so visibly shattered?’ Expat replies: ‘Well, I’m only visiting, I don’t live here.’

So it’s not his city after all. I guess he’s lucky.

Meanwhile, the news breaks: Gordon Ramsay has had an affair, Simon Cowell’s girlfriend has left him because he didn’t want children, and Robert Kilroy-Silk has been chucked off I’m a Celebrity…

…and I’m thinking, get me out of here. Can this diet of global terror-infotainment really be doing me any good? Probably not. I turn off the radio, and paint awhile in silence. Crown Trade Vinyl Matt, Sunrise.

24th November 2008

From The Daily Mirror, 21st November, in response to John Sergeant walking out of Strictly Come Dancing:

Millions of viewers have threatened to boycott the programme this week after his shock decision to leave because 'the joke was wearing thin'. His emotional last dance with partner Kristina Rihanoff on Saturday is expected to attract a huge audience of adoring fans.

I'm not a huge fan of the show myself, but I'm guessing from what The Mirror says that millions watched and boycotted the show at the same time.

Technology is amazing these days.

20th November 2008

The Duality of Human Nature

Thanks to the woman who stopped to let me over the road yesterday, then abused me when I didn't cross fast enough.

19th November 2008

Christ. Mohammed. Confucius. Buddha.

Alexander. Caesar. Cleopatra. Charlemagne.

Shakespeare. Dickens. Caruso. Tolstoy. Einstein.

Stalin. Churchill. Hitler. Mussolini.

Maradona. Elvis. Pele. Fangio. Madonna. Fangio. Puskas. Arnie.

Delia. Nigella.

13th November 2008

Also on the subject of public displays of emotion:

A message to all the people who come on the TV and radio to spill their guts about something quite bad which has happened to them just now or a hundred years ago: QUIT IT!

Okay, something bad has happened to you, agreed. But all you’re doing is encouraging other people to come on and throw their guts into the mix with yours. And if enough people do it, then all we end up with is a huge pile of guts. And a huge pile of guts on the radio or TV, it’s not pretty.

And look, I know that radio and TV show producers and presenters are egging you on, hoping that you’ll lay your guts all over the airwaves for the whole world to see and hear, but gutspillers: try to resist the temptation.

Thanks for caring enough to stop.

9th November 2008

How Do You Feel?

You’re a complete stranger to me, so let me ask you a personal question. Something really good has just happened to you – you’ve won the London Marathon, or scored the winner in the FA Cup Final. Or something really bad – your house has burnt down, or you invested all your savings in Iceland and now it’s gone. So let me ask you – how do you feel? Pretty damn good right? Or, on the other hand, pretty bleeding bad.

In fact, my question is completely irrelevant, really. Considering what’s just happened to you, I already know how you feel. I have an imagination, I can figure it out for myself. That being the case, I’d have to be a real idiot to ask that question in the first place.

Or else, just a lazy journalist with a microphone in his hand.

I’ve got another question, this one for all the journos out there who shove their mics in people’s faces just after the race or right smack in the middle of the disaster. How do you feel about asking people how they feel all the bloody time?

Does it make you embarrassed that you feel compelled to exploit people, famous or not, at a time of extreme and heightened emotions?

Is it that your producers and editors have asked you to mine the rich seam of the obvious and the banal, day in the day out, without end?

Does it bother you that your audience is sick of your lowest-common-denominator crap and is longing to find something sustaining among the huge pile of infotainment junk you like to serve up?

Or are you just so much of a goddamn hack that you can’t be bothered to come up with an original, cogent enquiry?

7th November 2008

Some Journal Entries, Such As This One, Will Now Have Headings

I’ve decided that some of my journal entries, such as this one, will now have headings. Others may not, it’ll just depend on how the heck I feel.

2nd November 2008

Occasionally, while I meander through my uneventful life, I find some time to resent the fact that I had a pleasant upbringing in caring and loving surroundings. Frankly, it’s left me in the unenviable position of never being able to write a depressing memoir about my early life.

Sadly my parents were both very generous and always had time for my siblings and myself. And unfortunately, we never lacked for money or had to endure any hardship whatsoever.

Even worse, in the 1960s, when I was a young child, our neighbourhood in northern Sydney was nothing short of idyllic – I grew up in a large suburban house with ample garden, surrounded by pristine bushland full of wildlife and adventure, at a time when Australia’s standard of living was the best in the world.

If only I’d been raised in abject poverty, or at least been kicked or beaten senseless from time to time.

For Christ’s sake, my Dad wasn’t even an alcoholic.

That’s not to say bad stuff didn’t happen when I was a kid. This friend of mine up the road threw stones at me once. And I broke an arm riding my skateboard.

Maybe I'll write a book about that.

26th October 2008

I remember waiting. I remember it with great fondness, and a certain nostalgia. I used to wait a lot, and I wasn’t the only one. Most people did. Waiting was an integral part of my life, a chance to not be doing something, to reflect briefly or at length – depending on the duration of the wait – on the things I would be doing when I wasn’t waiting any longer, or things I had already done, before the waiting began.

I remember waiting for trains, for dentists. I waited for doctors and buses too of course, and sometimes for the mail to arrive. On occasion I waited for my favourite TV show to start, or else I would wait for a friend to come over, or a girl to ring. Now and again, I would just wait for nothing in particular, fully expecting something to happen eventually, and in due course it usually did.

I tend not to wait any more. Nowadays, waiting sucks. I get agitated if my sausage McMuffin takes more than two minutes to arrive at the till. Waiting for buses and tubes just pisses me off. Doctors’ waiting rooms make me nervous. Red traffic lights are an abomination.

I don’t want to waste time, see. I have more important things to do than wait, and there are so many things that I need to do, I’m pretty sure that at least a few of them must be reasonably important.

To be fair, I don’t know if it’s me who hates waiting now, or if it’s life that hates me to. Like, today, I’ve been watching some chess on the internet – Anand v. Kramnik, 9th Match Game, World Championship. I think it’s great that I can do that, move by move, in about ten different places on the Web, with expert commentary provided by both humans and computers. But I didn’t ask for that, someone just gave it to me, as though I needed it, even if I didn’t. And when they gave it to me, naturally I didn’t say no, I just took it.

When I was a kid, following Fischer v. Spassky in 1972, I had to wait. The day after each game, I had to wait for the paper to arrive. Then I had to wait for my Dad to finish reading it. Then, my brother and I could finally play through it. We still got to see the games, it didn’t hurt us to wait.

I miss the spaces in my life that waiting used to bring. I’d like to know how to get them back. I’d hazard a guess that it isn’t by doing four different things at the same time, none of them very well.

Anand just played Bishop takes King’s Knight.

23rd October 2008

Watching the World Series of Backgammon on Eurosport last night made me realize just how boring I find football these days.

Backgammon is a decent game of luck and skill which benefits from a yachts-and-playboy image, and which I played well enough when younger to get a handle on the rules and basic strategies. And who should pop up on the WSOB* show but poker smooth guy Gus Hansen on commentary second-guessing the percentages! Nice.

And yet, for some reason, backgammon on TV is not that interesting! Okay, so there’s a bit of dice rolling and counter moving, a few shots of furrowed brows, and quite a few shots of hostess Jessie Cantrell behind the mic. But it doesn’t add up to a whole lot. Despite which, I still found myself checking it out instead of Chelsea v. Roma and Athletico Madrid v. Liverpool in the Champions League. And enjoying it more.

The problem with football – the Premier League in particular – is that it’s become a bit of a laugh. It’s hard to take seriously any more. By virtue of their dominance of the league, the sports pages, TV, radio, the internet, the backs of people’s shirts and the whole of Asia, the so-called Big Four of Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool evoke little more these days than dreamy thoughts of coma and oblivion in anyone not one of their own.

And once you get beyond them, there’s precious little left except for the current joke teams like West Ham (Carlos Tevez affair, forcing out Alan Curbishly), Man City (Taksin Shinawatra, anyone?), Tottenham (the eternal pretenders – yawn) and Newcastle (obvious reasons). That doesn’t leave much except for wondering how long before Hull sink into mid-table, who will get relegated, and who will qualify for the EUFA Cup.

Which would be great, if the EUFA Cup wasn’t even worse. Now here is a completely superfluous competition. It consists of two preliminary knockout rounds followed by a supremely dull (and apparently endless) round robin stage broadcast on TV stations like ITV9, then a second knock out phase (5 more rounds - whoopee!) including 8 teams not good enough to progress in the Champions League. The only purpose I can see for the EUFA Cup is to tire out teams like Pompey, Spurs and Villa so that they have no chance of ever challenging the Big Four. Does anybody remember who won the EUFA Cup last year? Does anybody care? I rest my case.

For the record, I used to support West Ham, back in the days when ___________ (nostalgic reference to follow). All right, so I still look at the scores and tables - otherwise, how would I know that Hull are just about to start their slide into mediocrity? But I’m much more interested in seeing whether Tassilo Rzymann can beat Hans Christian Mathiesen in the final of the WSOB Nordic Cup. Which was actually completed a couple of months ago.

Even the repeats of the backgammon beat the football.

Don’t tell me the result.

* not also known as World Son of a Bitch

21st October 2008

The news tells me that Barack Obama is suspending election campaigning later in the week to visit his sick grandmother in Hawaii.

Nice campaign tactic.

17th October 2008

Lately, my 9-year old son Zac has been losing faith in freak show television. It’s been a gradual process, just as I expect will happen when he stops believing in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. It’s sad, but in a way, I guess it’s inevitable. Even I can see that the quality of the freaks on shows such as American Idol and X Factor has been steadily deteriorating.

It’s gotten to the point now where the only truly outstanding freakfest left is American Inventor, which thankfully still boasts an impressive array of obsessive and deluded fame-seekers, many of whom have spent long decades and entire fortunes, even sacrificed their families, all for the sake of their utterly useless contraptions which no-one will ever buy.

So what’s the problem here? Why the drop in freak standards? Is it because TV producers these days are actually baulking at exploiting the self-delusional hordes who think that singing like fingernails on a blackboard will be enough to get them to Wembley Arena? Or has this very same deluded multitude gained a little insight and gotten wise to what its role on these shows is? Namely, to make Zac laugh.

Maybe it’s a bit of both, but whatever the case, I fear now for the freak show’s future. X Factor, for instance, traditionally begins with the entertaining awfulness of auditions then proceeds to the sickeningly emotional overkill of ‘bootcamp’, moving at last to the mildly diverting mediocrity of the live shows, where a bunch of people with not very good voices compete with one another to get the Christmas No. 1 before disappearing into well-earned obscurity.

In other words, it starts out as great entertainment, then goes swiftly downhill from there. But if the entertainment part of the equation is excised, then what’s left? For Zac, the answer is nothing, because (sensibly) when Zac watches TV, it’s above all entertainment that he wants. Fortunately, he’s a strong little kid. Despite feeling let down, he’s been able to pick himself back up and go play Adventure Quest or Runescape on the computer instead.

Me, I’ll probably stick with X Factor a bit longer. I’m vaguely intrigued to see who’ll win this year, in a hey, I’m lying here drinking beer like a slob anyway, I may as well watch some drab singing too kind of way.

Will it be Nice Guy Whose Wife Has Died? Or Guy Who Always Cries? Or maybe even Girl Who Used To Be On Drugs, or Girl Who Was On Show Before But Got Kicked Out Last Time At Bootcamp.

Or will it be my personal favourite? Hippie Chick Who Brings Something Different To The Show, But Who Despite That Still Can’t Sing Very Well, Not That It Seems To Mattter.

15th October 2008

I see that my book Milo & I (Elastic Press, cover art by Andy Skinner) is available second-hand from a couple of Amazon vendors for around 40 quid. Not bad, considering it sold for a fiver when it was published back in 2003. That’s inflation for you. I’m not sure if it means that Milo & I is really really good, or that these are just the last two copies for sale on earth. Though I can take a guess.

Actually I shouldn't be so self-effacing. Milo & I really is pretty good in places. It’s a bit weird having a book published. I guess if you have a lot of different titles out there, you get used to it, you expect to have books everywhere, you maybe even see people reading them on trains, or buying them in shops. But just the one, you’re never quite sure, was it a fluke? A lucky three-pointer from the half way line?

A friend of mine told me a friend of theirs borrowed Milo & I from a library in Cambridge. Liked it, they said.

Another friend told me they saw a girl reading it at a bus stop.

Didn't find out what the girl thought about it, though.

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