On wholesome food

“Made with 100% Australian breast chicken”. This claim, from a leading fast foot company about some new wrap they’ve come up with, is very strange. To what does the “100%” refer? Putting in a number, “100%”, suggests that it could be less than that, say 50% or 75%. The first possibility is that we are being patriotic by buying chicken that is 100% Australian. No dual citizenship chickens, no permanent-resident-but-not-real-citizen fowls or birds that don’t like Vegemite have been used. Perhaps the “100%” qualifies “breast”. Only chickens with real breasts have been used; no silicone implants allowed. Finally could the product be anything other than 100% chicken? There have been some strange experiments in genetics of late – you’re getting 100% chicken here, no dogken or turkiken or chickmouse or anything like that.

An immediately adjacent ad, strategically placed during morning TV to help me lose weight by making me nauseous at the very thought and unwilling to eat anything at all, suggests that the benefit of the omelette on offer is that it was “made with real ingredients, such as eggs.” If  ‘real’ ingredients are a feature of the product, perhaps there are alternatives on offer from inferior competitors. Perhaps some ingredients are mere memories of ingredients; inferior in every way to the writhing, shining, oozing, real ingredients currently available. Perhaps they are ingredients that are yet to be – eggs bought on the futures market that have yet to be laid but are, nonetheless, included in today’s breakfast by accountants with a grounding in accruals and a bad drug habit. The mathematician in me also considers the possibility of imaginary ingredients – ingredients that exist only as theoretical constructs with very little relationship to reality. Eating them would have negligible impact on your waistline but could suck you through a vortex into a universe of fractal dimension if you had too many.

I’m also dubious that a “freshly cracked egg” is a guarantee of quality. Some jokes, especially the ones you get on email circulation at work, are freshly cracked but they are certainly not new … or wholesome.

“Hormone free chicken.” How that, I doubt. Chickens have hormones. I have a rooster about three doors down as evidence. Or had – maybe the fox I bought has finally done his job; I’ve been able to sleep in the last few days (for the record, I have no idea what he says but a very good idea of what he eats). Anyway, I think they mean

 “Chickens to which we have not added any unnatural hormones (a.k.a. body building supplements, protein shakes, strengthening agents or cough medications).”

In short – chickens that have never been part of a Tour de France team. I’m glad they’re not trying to sell me chickens on roids because that’s illegal. Any kind of hormone additives fed to chickens are illegal. If this is a recommendation for a product, then I think we could go further with such slogans as:

“Second hand cars – guaranteed not stolen”

“Arsenic free apples – safe to take from strange old ladies”

“Lead pencils – no, not really”

“Wedding rings – won’t turn you into an untrustworthy, photophobic little greeby guy”

“Refrigerators – 100% CFC free”

I’ve seen that last one around a bit. CFCs have been illegal in the developed world for nigh on twenty years. It’s like promoting your product by telling you it’s not made with asbestos or doesn’t include DDT.

Finally, I’m not convinced that “organic” is a noteworthy or distinguishing quality when it comes to fruit. Is it possible to come up with an inorganic banana?

Pensioners are revolting

The pensioners of Australia are in revolt following announcements from the federal government that the pension age will be raised to 70 and that the family home will be considered an asset when calculating pension entitlement.

“I hope dentures get better”, commented one man, “we'll be eating our houses one bedroom at a time in the future.”

A spokeswoman for the Australian College of Codgers, Geezers and Biddies (ACCGB) said in a statement:

“Well you can take the nice little old lady routine and stuff it! From now on, it's fee-for-service. You want the grandkids looked after? It's $30 an hour and I want my scheduled breaks. Lions Club building some new picnic tables? I'm available Thursday week and the invoice will include GST. Biscuits at Nan's? Fifty cents each, 75 if you want chocolate. And the problems you're having with your husband and kids? I'm not talking to you without a mental health plan from your GP and private health insurance; I'm a registered provider now.”

Meanwhile, concern has been raised about the suitability of many childcare facilities to accommodate the chronically ill dependents of many pensioners. Wheelchair access is often not provided and the childproof gates don't allow enough turning room for hospital gurneys for the bedridden. "I mean, what choice do we have?" asked one woman, "If I have to go out to work, I can't leave him on his own." Carers are also concerned that their wards have long since forgotten how to use crayons, how best to optimally combine glue and crepe paper to stain the largest amount of skin, and never did learn the words to "Rock a bye your bear". “We’re just not sure they’ll fit in”, said the woman.

A government spokesman responded by saying that the department was addressing the shortage of care places by lowering the working age to four and a half. "Education is a waste anyway," he said, "most kids don't want to be at school and what’s being taught not staying with them as they get older; most adults think 6 + 7 x 4 is 52. And, as for critical thinking, just ask any ten adults if they think the contestants on reality TV are just average people like them, not has been or wanna be models and actresses. Bugger it, get them out and working."

Responding to criticisms that this policy represented a return to Victorian Britain,  the spokesman said, "Well it's the last time they had an economy and an empire over there."

Meanwhile, a parliamentary committee is continuing its probe into the Productivity Commission* and the cost of employing a four person consultancy from Yorkshire to advise on cost-of-labour improvements in the economy.  Minutes of their most recent meeting, apparently held in a pub, are at this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAtSw3daGoo

 *For non-Australians: In a dry country famous for deserts, the Productivity Commission stands out -  a pseudo-government agency full of the driest economists on the planet. The job of the Commission is, apparently, to make sure that we all work harder and longer so that the rich keep getting more so.

Humiliation by design

Schadenfreude is a word that doesn’t get used often enough. It’s a German word meaning “taking pleasure in other people’s discomfort or pain”. Note, it’s not “sadism” which is the pleasure you get from inflicting pain on others. You can easily tell the difference. Schadenfreude is what you feel when you watch “The Biggest Loser”; the sensation of “rather you than me”. Sadism is why the people that created “The Bachelor” are inflicting it on you.

In our daily lives, we suffer little humiliations that bring pleasure to others. Are they schadenfreude or sadism? Your call.

Toilets with walls just over a metre high. You know the ones? The wall starts about 50cm from the ground and ends at 150cm – about right for a normal 12 year old to be able to see over the top of. Convenient if you want to chat amiably to other ease-takers but uncomfortable if pooing in public is not something you enjoy.  Someone designed those. Was is just a cost-saving to use less material or was the humiliation deliberate? My call is schadenfreude: the pleasure you feel watching sh*t happening to other people.

Security windows. You go to Emergency and you’re feeling well below standard – or you wouldn’t be there. You go to see the nurse, so that they can assess how urgent you’re not, and you have to speak through the perspex window. They used to put holes in them about mouth height to allow the ingress and egress of sound but not anymore; there’s a letter box sized opening at the bottom and that’s it. And everyone, other than people with a live-in contract at a chocolate factory and chronic liver disease, has to bend to get their mouths near the window. If you don’t the nurse, who can lip read but won’t, will ask you the same questions three times – which, of course, you’ve got the patience to put up with, feeling as hale as you do. So, strike a pose! Bent over sideways to talk, doubled over front-ways in pain, leaking blood from under the bandages and showing your backside to the world - clad in the house-cleaning tracksuit pants that were the only thing you could grab as you walked out. My call? Sadism. I think the nurses hate their jobs and want to take it out on the patients. It’s the same reason that waiting room chairs are as comfortable as they aren’t.

Airplane toilets. For men over 5’2”, this one’s for you. At risk of being crude, men pee standing up. That’s our divine right and it’s not negotiable. To make that work you need a good firm footing a reasonable distance from the porcelain. Then you go on a plane. It would be fine if the loo was up against an internal wall but it’s not, it’s shoved into the corner against the sloping fuselage. The curvature  of the wallroof means that you have to plant your feet well back and lean it at the hips to have any hope of hitting the target. So there you are, with your best parts forward, your feet well back, unable to see what you’re aiming at, with weapon in one hand and the other trying to find something to brace yourself against. At this point, a little light in the cockpit alerts the pilot to fake some turbulence and you sign your name across the wall in your best cursive writing. The worry that follows is that the amount of paper you’ve had to use cleaning it up won’t flush away. Despite the humiliation, I’m calling schadenfreude on this one. If it was sadism, the door wouldn’t lock as well as it does.

Waste transfer stations. The old tip (landfill site) was great; big pile of garbage and plenty of room to get your trailer in to unload. Now the general public can’t be trusted with access to putrefying detritus and we have to use the waste transfer station. All very hygienic with concrete driveway and large bin into which you can dump your refuse. Fine - provided you can back a trailer up a cobbled laneway, in an Italian hilltop town, in the rain, on the day of the annual harvest festival. And no-one can back a trailer. They’re designed that way.  Deep in the heart of the engineering is a little random movement generator which will thwart you every time. But you try. You remind yourself of the rules:

 “OK, think about this before we start:  steering wheel down left to get the thing to go left, steering wheel down right to make it go right. Unless it’s already too far left in which case it will keep going left. Unless you’re on a slope in which case it will go right if the angle subtended by a line orthogonal to the axle with an imaginary line drawn through the Pole Star is less than 45 degrees, otherwise it will go left. Or unless you’re tired in which case it’s just as likely to refuse to go anywhere other than straight up.”

 This is all complicated by the magnet built in just behind the left brake light which drags the trailer inexorably towards neighbouring vehicles.

The humiliation is completed by a “helpful” passer-by or council worker standing behind you giving hand signals for left rudder, right rudder, come closer, slower, faster and that weird one they do with a clenched fist held over a raised finger moving in a circular motion which I can never really fathom but I think is a reflection on my masculinity.

Waste transfer stations are engineered sadism, pure and simple. I’ll accept debate on the other ones but I’m not entertaining any other views on this last point.

We are outsourcing the wrong things

Recent news articles and press releases – how often they are the same thing – have bemoaned the continuing loss of jobs offshore. First it was manufacturing, then call centres  (staffed by everybody they could find in Mumbai called Joan), then computer programming and now engineering. So many things that we have done in the past are being outsourced or offshored. By the way, when I find the petri dish in which that last word was cultivated, I’ll force its creator to eat it, tweezers and all.

Why are we outsourcing this stuff? Some people even enjoy being engineers and computer programmers. There are hundreds of other things I’d like to get someone else to do:

Attend meetings for me.  I used to think to myself, “Can’t we stop having meetings so that I can get on with my work?” Then it dawned on me that for most people, this is work. This is what we do now. We attend meetings and respond to emails, often at the same time. No-one’s got the money to employ us to actually design or build anything, that kind of thing is done in Bangladesh because the board has a responsibility to the shareholders to maximize the profits; a sense of personal satisfaction at work is something we can’t afford any more. So we go to meetings and discuss the framework, the strategies and the quality assurance mechanisms around, through and in spite of which things will be done by someone else. Can’t I take back the job and outsource the meetings?

Keep my electronic devices up to date. I bought a new blu-ray player the other day. Before I could even watch one movie, it had to update its software. Almost everything in my house needs constant updating of the software, the firmware or the “this has never happened to me before, I’ve been under a lot of stress lately” -ware. I was a geek at school and knew everything there was to know about the computers. Now, I’m a geek without a clue. I don’t know what’s going on, I just follow along like a sheep and don’t turn my computer off while Windows fails to complete an important update for the third time this week.  This process takes up hours of my time, hundreds of my dollars in purchased bandwidth and years off my life in stress and hassle. And when I’ve got devices that really need an immediate software update – my kids – I can’t get one. Couldn’t I outsource this?

Talk to boring people for me. I call my bank and my call is re-routed to India. I call my ISP and my call is re-routed to Pakistan. I call my telco and my call is re-routed to … well I’m not sure because it’s never actually connected to anything yet. At least nothing I can make any sense out of. I’m starting to think there’s a deep-sea octopus about halfway across the Pacific hanging onto the other end of the line, bubbling at me and then hanging up in bewilderment that there’s no-one there, yet again.  Clearly these people don’t want to talk to me. There are a great many people that I don’t want to talk to. Couldn’t I organise a set up whereby, if they called me or bailed me up outside the supermarket, I could put them on hold for a minute and then let them talk to Joan about it?

Cutting school lunches. My wife and I flatter ourselves that we’re good parents. We provide a good education for our children, make them do chores and be polite, and turn up for the ritual torture of the “end of unit” displays in the classroom. We feed our kids well and only use McDonalds when it’s a real emergency such as when we’re tired or hung-over. But we hate packing school lunches. Every bloody morning. Sandwiches, piece of cake, yoghurt, fruit, carrot sticks, little box of fruit juice. Half of it comes home uneaten but I dare not pack less the next day in case it’s the one day they’ve got double PE and keel over in a dead faint at the end of fourth period for want of carbs. We hate it but we do it, we pack it and it’s healthy. I can’t send my kids to school with chips and lollies because then I’d have nothing to feel superior about. Is there a company somewhere that can cut my kids’ lunches without them being seen going to the tuckshop every day?

Feeling guilty. Douglas Adams, in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, created the character of an Electric Monk whose job it was to believe things for you. In a similar vein, can I please outsource feeling guilty about the seemingly endless list of things I’m at fault for? Warming the planet by driving a car, bloating the landfill by drinking take-away coffee with the little toddler-proof lid on, demeaning women everywhere by finding models in bikinis attractive, embarrassing my children by listening to classical music in public places, not staying young forever, not having an appropriate BMI and generally enjoying the benefits of ancestry – being, as I am,  a first-world, Anglo-Saxon, middle-class, well-educated male blessed with a stable family and a life-time’s supply of hyphens. I come from a Catholic background.  I’m more than happy to accept that it’s all my fault, but is there anyone out there I can get to feel guilty for me?

Conversations with my one year old

Scene 1 – shopping

[Enter me, walking, and one year old in pram]

Hey, that toy looks interesting and colourful. Give it to me!

No, you’re not getting the toy, we have places to go.

But I want it, it looks easy to break or at least smear something on.

Come on you, straining against the seat belt is not going to help.

I … can … just … about …reach … it …

Oh no you don’t, I’m going to move you away.

Don’t do that.

Over here for you.

I’m warning you, this will not end well. We’ve had this conversation before.

Just wait there while daddy pays for this.

If you want me to embarrass you in public, I will. Don’t think I’ll hold back just because there are people here.

[Dignified silence on my part]

Right. I warned you.

BOOM!

Scene 2 – the change table

[Enter me carrying one year old]

Come on dude, we’ll change those pants of yours. Here, you hold this while I change that nappy.

You’ve tried this before.

Go on. Grab it!

You try this every time. My goal here is to spread powder, cream and excrement as widely as possible. I’m going to scream and roll around and, no, some ditzy fluffy toy is not going to distract me from my task.

It’s so cute!

No it’s not! The factory worker that made that face was having an unfortunate reaction to flu medication and was hallucinating badly at the end of a 16 hour shift. It’s terrifying.

It’s a bear!

I can see that, dopey. Bears eat people. This one also appears to have eaten a small porcupine which is struggling to get back out again.

Well I’ll raspberry your tummy!

Don’t!

I’ll raspberry your tummy. You love that!

I’m full of milk and baby food.

Raspberry!

Don’t bend me in the middle like that. You’re down the business end. Don’t …

BOOM!

Scene three – the park

[Enter me with coffee and one year old.]

Now you go and play while dad has his coffee.

[sotto voce] Like that’s going to happen!

Hmmm?

Nothing dad. Enjoy your coffee.

What are you up to?

Climbing the slippery dip. It’s all wet too, so it’s really dangerous.

Come back down from there.

Not until you put your coffee down to get cold and lift me off.

There. Down. No, don’t go back up there.

Why not, your coffee still looks like it’s warm enough to be drinkable.

Dad is trying to drink his coffee here. You go down and run around.

I know what you’re trying to do. You’ve got Buckley’s.*

Now where are you off to

These rocks over here. I’m developed enough to climb them but my balance isn’t so good. I’m planning to climb just high enough that you can’t one-arm-from-behind lift me down.

You’re a cheeky man! Run around over that way.

Which way? The one near all the other children, where you can sit on the little wall for a bit, chat to that cute mum and drink your coffee? No. I’m thinking over that way towards the large dog with the uncertain temperament.

You come back here. You’re too cheeky!

You’ve got nothing. I’m going to run and laugh at the same time and there’s nothing you can do to me. I’m one. I’m cute. I’m laughing. You can’t smack me – especially not in front of all these people.

I’m going to put you back into the pram.

You know, it seems like a good idea but it’s just not. We came here for me to play.

In we go. Straps on.

You get me out of here! I’ll count to three!

There’s a good boy.

One. Two. Three. Right …

BOOM!

*Cultural reference: Australian slang "You've got Buckley's" is a short form of "You've got two chances, Buckley's and none" - meaning you've got no chance. The etymology is disputed but the one I like is that it's a pun on the name of an old Melbourne department store "Buckley's and Nunn"

Scene 4 – the cot

[Enter me carrying one year old with bottle of milk and dummy.]

Ok mate, time for sleep.

Gee, I wonder what you’re up to; putting me to bed early like this. Trying to get to mum before she’s tired are we?

Onto the pillow. Here’s the bottle. Here’s your little blankie.

Parents are so cute. You love your little routines, and your belief that milk and a blanket are organic tranquilisers is endearing.

I’ll put your little music thing on. It’s been a big day. Off to sleep.

Yeah, you think! Saying “it’s been a big day” won’t psych me into being tired. Look into my eyes. I am not getting sleepy!

Time to lie down dude.

No. I’m going to bounce up and down in the cot. At this age, I can still use the “I don’t understand words yet” defence. Look, I’ll even paint some pictures on the floor with the dregs of my milk.

Right. Here’s the pillow. Here’s the blanket and here’s your dummy. Lie down.

And here’s me saying “no”.

[Time passes]

I know you’ve been ignoring me hoping I’ll get bored and go to sleep and you think you’ve nearly won but you’re so wrong! Outsmarted by a toddler again! That’s got to hurt.  I’m just lying here on this pillow with my eyes open. I’ll give it thirty more seconds for you to get your hopes up and then I’ll stand up and laugh.

Come on dude. Sleep time now. You’ve had your bottle.

Ah, sweet. In about sixty seconds, he’s going to think that a second bottle of milk is a good idea. He falls for it every time.

OK mate. Here’s the other bottle but you have to sleep now.

And the things that will do to my tummy …

BOOM!

Scene 5 – my house with one year old and a visitor of a similar age whose father has come over for a beer.

[Enter both one year olds, who give one another the secret dribble exchange handshake]

I see you too are a Junior Mason.

I am. Are you prepared?

Of course.

Where are the dangerous chemicals kept?

In the cupboard under the sink.

Ah, so original these adults are. (Jedi, I am becoming). Child lock?

Not since they got sick of taking it off every time they needed the dish cloth.

Excellent. How about power points without the plastic protectors?

Master bedroom, behind the bedside table on dad’s side.

Furniture?

The dining room chairs are low enough to get a leg up on, then onto the table with the candles and the matches they think I can’t reach. There’s also a step on the side of the bath from which we can fall headfirst into the tub.

You truly are an expert.

But, wait there’s more!

Steak knives?

Nothing so predictable. My old brothers have left Lego pieces down the back of the couch – fit beautifully in the mouth. Then there’s the toilet door that doesn’t lock properly unless you really slam it: perfect for walking in mid-stream. Finally, I can get the fridge open. The beers are in the door, second shelf from the bottom and they fizz over everywhere then you drop them.

You are truly an artiste.

Why, thank you. How long should we give them?

Oh, let them get 2/3rds of the way down their first drink; just enough to be relaxed and under the illusion that they’re getting an uninterrupted hour. In the meanwhile, can I tempt you to a little suspicious silence?

[Exeunt omnes – laughing]

BOOM to follow.

Who does North Korea think it's kidding?

Who does North Korea think it’s kidding?
Honestly, who do they think they are kidding?

To their credit, the DPRK’s rulers are not media tarts – they don’t say much – but what they do say is such transparent rubbish that I wonder for whose benefit they are saying it?

Some of the classics we’ve had recently include:

• We’re going to launch a satellite,

• We’ve built a smartphone,

• We’re building a ski resort,

• We’re training cyber-warriors,

• We’re building an electromagnetic pulse weapon, and

• We’re going to attack the United States.

Someone who’s spent what little money the Nigerian prince left them on the last six flab blasting machines wouldn’t fall for these stories. These blokes can’t mix concrete that will stay together let alone succeed at any of these other things.  My son has more chance of knocking a hole in the moon with the ray gun he’s putting together out of old printer circuit boards and Blu-Tak than North Korea has of building a pulse weapon; at least my son has access to 21^st century technology.

Certainly, no-one outside North Korea believes any of it. I think world leaders are only holding back from laughing in public because they fear the one thing North Korea isn’t lying about is that they have the bomb and that the one thing they don’t have is a sense of humour. There must be, however, some good jokes over a few beers at the International Intelligence Officers Association annual dinner and dance:

“Did you hear the latest from the Kims?”

“Hang on, hang on. I’ve still got a mouthful of beer. [swallows] Right, go on!”

I can’t think that the locals would be buying too much of it either. The few who have televisions also have eyes and can see the world around them. And that’s if they even bother to turn on the set in the first place … if it works … when it’s their day to have electricity … and use of one of the commune’s three pairs of spectacles. There’s not much on. The free-to-air TV market in the DPRK has recently been opened up to competition and the savvy viewer can choose between Great Military Parades of the Past, Lifestyles of the Rich and Kim, Morning Juche-ercise (where you get fit goose-stepping and flipping cards over to create crowd pictures) and Big Brother – where one contestant is voted off each week by the one person in North Korea who has a vote (and you can bet, if he votes you off, you won’t be making a surprise comeback later in the series).

So I’m at a bit of a loss to figure out who they are producing all this fiction for.

There is one possibility – that there just aren’t all that many people in North Korea and they’re trying to keep up the pretense that there is a real country somewhere in there.

What do we actually get to see of North Korea? 

 Almost invariably, we get a picture of Kim Jong Un, dressed in an old Catholic priest’s outfit that he picked up from the thrift shop at the Vatican last time he was there, and the same three or four generals wearing the standard Communist general REALLY big hat and uniforms adorned with sheriff badges they got from some showbags that North Korean diplomats were spotted frantically buying up at the Moree annual show and cattle muster in 2011. Looking at them, the “generals” are probably geezers on loan from the Great Leader Retirement Home and the little blue books they are always carrying are  to remind them of the name of the bloke in the black suit, their own names and when next  to take their pills.

Sure, there are some extras on the set, dressed as technicians or scientists or soldiers or something but the only time you see large numbers of people are when they’re all doing the same thing at the same time; which reeks of CGI to me.

It may be that there are only about 100 people in the whole country. They get moved around depending on where someone needs to be seen. When the Kims shut down the Kaesong Joint Industrial Complex, it’s not because they’re offended, it’s because they need the population to be available to appear as ferocious guards near the DMZ, to be technicians at mission control or labourers on a construction site.

When you’re trying to bluff on a handful of nothing, sixes high, you want to have a damn good poker face. As the dictator bluffing, you need to make sure you look credible. Kim Jong Un hasn’t learned this yet, nor had the Iranians last time they announced they’d built a high-tech military asset – in that case a stealth fighter that one Australian analyst commented might rock back and forth if you put 20 cents in the slot. There’s a business opportunity here: these guys need a good production company. Any takers? 

Scandal in the building industry

The local building industry has been rocked this week by a third set of allegations relating to a prominent local builder.

According to an affidavit, obtained by this reporter, it is alleged that Robert Fitzwilliam Thistlethwaite – operating under the trading name “Bob the Builder” has been overcharging and over-servicing local primary producers. The allegations have been made by one Farmer Pickles who claims that Bob is “over at his place every other day, fixing something that he claims needs urgent attention.”

Certainly Mr Thistlethwaite appears to have come into some money in recent times with the lean-to sheds that were a local landmark for so long replaced by a set of fine new sheds with structural integrity and power doors. He has also taken on new staff to supplement the original team of four psychologically disturbed machines.

This latest development is bad news for the reputation of Bob the Builder as it comes on the back of other allegations of “over servicing”, in that case of one Mrs Potts. The word around town is the Bob was at Mrs Potts’ place almost as frequently as he is supposed to have been down at the farm. In that case, though, it seems that Mrs Potts was a willing participant in the services rendered with the appointments book at Bob’s yard noting calls for urgent attention from Bob as many as three times per week.

It is unclear to the authorities if the allegations are to be taken seriously or are vexatious complaints made by Bob’s one time business partner and rumoured paramour, Wendy.  It had been believed for some time that Wendy, whose surname has been suppressed by the courts, was only a business associate of Bob, but recent comments made on Wendy’s blog to the effect “he might have an oversized spanner in his pants but that’s about all” suggest that the relationship may have been more intimate than first thought; Wendy may be a woman scorned.

Notwithstanding any personal animosity in the matter, Bob will still have to appear in court on Thursday next to answer another set of charges relating to workplace health and safety and breaches of immigration regulations. According to a statement of claim laid before the court, inspectors from the Builders Licensing Board visited a number of Bob’s worksites over the last few years and cited him for a range of breaches:

Riding unsecured on machines from job to job, apparently dangling one handed from the side of earth moving machinery;

Employing flammable labour in the form of a scarecrow called Spud;

Failing to provide a healthy working environment and tolerating bullying.

This last allegation follows a psychiatric assessment of Lofty whose chronic anxiety disorder, it is claimed, arose from working with Muck and Rolly who have thuggish, bullying personalities and Dizzy whose manic tendencies have exacerbated Lofty’s existing frailties.

Questions have also been raised about Dmitry the Dropsaw and Olga the Orbital Sander who, it is claimed, are illegal immigrants from Eastern Europe who have been working on Bob’s sites and being paid under award rates while not being covered by worker’s compensation insurance.

The outcomes of the court matters may, in the end, prove irrelevant as local businesses seek to take their custom to an establishment less mired in scandal.

The importance of cycling

My son said to me, “Dad, what’s the most important thing I need to know in life?”

I said to him as follows:

Son, you need to understand the cycles. The cycles will govern your life in all ways.

First is the cycle of the seasons. The cycle of the seasons will determine what you can wear, what you can do, what sport you can play and how much skin you’re allowed to show in public. Be careful though, because there are two cycles of the seasons and they are not in sync. There’s the weather season cycle and the fashion season cycle.  Don’t go looking for summer clothes in the shops during summer, they’ll be long gone. It’s time for autumn in that universe. You need to know what you want to wear in summer while it’s still winter, in winter while you’re still on the beach, and in spring at no time because no-one’s really sure when that season has actually started and, by the time you get a consensus, it’s summer already.  In most respects, winter is time for jeans, scarves, gloves and beanies except in the alternate universe of the shopping centre where it’s time for shorts, t-shirts and models in bikinis – so there’s a small compensation for the psychological dislocation in there somewhere.

The next is the cycle of the ratings. Television stations can’t be bothered to show you good television all year so they’ve mutually agreed on a few months during which strive like horny salmon to show you something worth watching. This is called “the ratings season” – during which the networks desperately try to find someone to rate with. Outside of that it’s all dead floating fish, reruns of Jaws, Seinfeld and, for some reason, M*A*S*H which was probably funny the first ten times. Don’t blame the networks entirely though; they are under a legal obligation to show the three Back to the Future movies, all the Lethal Weapon flicks and at least one National Lampoon movie each year. It’s only a small mercy that the sunset clause in the regulations has come into effect for the Police Academy series and we don’t have to see those again.

The ratings season almost never, for reasons that pass understanding, occurs when you are available to watch television. Your natural work cycle peaks in the middle of the year and tapers off towards Christmas and New Year when the exams are finished, there are a few public holidays, and you might just be able to sit back with a quiet ale and a receptive mind. It’s for this reason that your impersonation of Christopher Lloyd saying “Great Scott!” and your answer to the trivia questions about which three years Marty McFly visited are so good; you’ve seen them every year at the most fertile time in your mental cycle.

Shorter than the cycle of ratings seasons is the news cycle which goes around every twenty four hours. It’s developed on the Dark City premise that the audience’s mind is wiped clean every night as the world is rearranged around them – thus ensuring people need novelty every day to reconstruct their world view. It’s a responsibility the networks take seriously as evinced by the amount of airtime devoted to news and current affairs, even if there’s almost nothing to talk about. This is why celebrity is so important because a little sprinkling of celebrity-dust from Tinkerbell makes even the most mundane happenings worthy of your attention.

The 24 hour news cycle is out of sync (I bet you saw that coming) with the natural cycles of almost everything it reports on.  Business, government, the economy, the environment, in fact everything other than day and night operate on cycles measured in months, years or millennia. News networks get around that problem by just focussing in on some trivial but sensationalisable detail or happening. You’ll rarely get context for the event, just the headline and the scandal. This is partly because you don’t care but mostly because the journalists don’t understand what they’re reporting on. It doesn’t really matter – the story will be forgotten by tomorrow. The tragedy is that a good number of people that run the government and businesses try to adjust their reality to reflect that of the news cycle.  Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein couldn’t figure out a way to fold space-time that tightly but it is sweet to watch the leading figures of commerce, industry and government running around trying to make it happen – bless their little wool-blend socks.

You have to get all of the above to work with your personal cycles: energy cycles, sleep cycles, diurnal rhythms and boredom threshold. If you want to learn how difficult they can be to synchronise, have children.  By your late twenties, you’ll have a well-established diurnal rhythm and sleep cycle but I’ll bet you your first pay packet that your children won’t be spinning at the same rate you are and probably not even on the same axis. They don’t have any respect for your sleep cycle, especially on weekends, and they can scream louder than you can ignore. (On a side note, I don’t recommend getting into an I-can-scream-louder—than-you match with a baby – you’ll lose. Don’t ask me if I’ve tried that).

Finally, and perhaps most critically, is the monthly rhythm of the menstrual cycle. Not yours – see the first line of this post – but trust me it will affect you. Get out of sync with that one and you can ask Dante to introduce you to his mate Virgil’s tour company because his holiday options will be a picnic by comparison.

In a charmed life, son, you will find a point where all the cycles come into synchronisation, just once, and at that moment you will have Gershwin’s trio of satisfaction. For most of us, the cycles wind around us like a deranged serpent, driving us in ever decreasing circles until we disappear up the fundament, never to be seen again.

Modern parenting

It is inevitable that any writer seeking public acceptance will have to scribble something about parenting, children and the disgusting way that the young parents of today fail to raise their grubby specimens to be exactly like the perfect archetypes that reside in my impeccable home.

So I’ve spent time at some shopping centres, parks and other public places to watch parents and to learn valuable lessons from the ways they deal with the challenges of children.

Here is what I’ve learned:

Naming your child. Give your child a name that will rip through the eardrums of innocent bystanders when you yell at them from 500 metres away to “get over ‘ere”. Anything with a vowel you can torture in it is good. “Mark”, for example, works particularly well when you scream it like a kamikaze cockatoo on final approach. Anything ending in “on” or “en” works – “Darren” or “Sharon” with the emphasis and volume on the final syllable – slide your voice up the scale about a fourth as you crescendo to that final sound. The “ene” family of names is also great when you give the final syllable the whip-bird treatment: Joeline, Darlene, Pauline, Kerosene, Chlorine, Bromine etc.

Remember that your children are really adults inside. Whatever childish things they do are not just normal for their age – they know what they’re doing and they do it to spite you! They know full well that today’s a busy day for you, that the traffic’s likely to be a nightmare after the overnight rain and that you need to get out the door early. Because they hate you, they’re playing Lego when they should be getting their school uniforms on and willfully failing to cut their own lunches, clean the toilet and repaint the lounge room so that you can get out the door on time.  Punish them accordingly!

Children don’t know when you’re lying. You know those Christmas shopping trips? You’ve been in an overcrowded shopping centre with thousands of other short-tempered adults and crying children for four hours, busily preparing for the season of joy and goodwill? When your children cry, just console them with, “We’re nearly done, honey, nearly home time.” As they look up at you with their wide trusting eyes, you know they believe you, even if it’s the fourth time you’ve said it. You know they think that the ordeal of Christmas will all be over soon and so they won’t cry, steal toys off the shelf or demand drinks, donuts and visits to the toilets that are now at the far end of the centre and which they told you they definitely didn’t need to use not five minutes ago.

Children should always be on a state of heightened alert, ready to sprint to you whenever you so much as whisper their names. If you can’t mumble “Tom” into an empty sugar bowl while hiding in the back of the pantry under a stack of tea-towels and have him turn up within 5 seconds, the kid deserves to be punished. What you do next is escalate your mood and voice exponentially, storm into their rooms and scream at them “I told you to get out here now do it now!” (they know you’re angry if you use words like “now” with sledgehammer emphasis twice in one badly constructed sentence).  If they didn’t hear you the first time, they’ll become so paranoid after your bolt-from-the-blue explosion that they’ll hear you every single time from now on. Really, what else do these kids have to do with their time?

An adult’s tolerance for boredom should be innate in kids’ DNA. There’s something wrong with your children if they can’t sit still, un-stimulated, for 2 hours without the intervention of duct tape and sedatives. As adults, we’ve resigned ourselves to the fact that most of the precious minutes of our lives will be squandered in boredom from any number of sources: someone’s inability to manage a doctor’s schedule,  chronic lack of carparking at a major event, making small talk with people you don’t like, watching power-point presentations or listening to self-indulgent, monotonous wedding speeches. Boredom and sleep will take up most of your life. If your kids aren’t born with an ability to demonstrate that knowledge before they can walk, they are evil and ill-disciplined.

The modern parent doesn’t plan ahead, doesn’t manage things for their children and resorts to yelling and swearing as the first (and, often, only) means of discipline.  Parents had kids because … they were cute as babies, but they kept growing up and wanting stuff and not understanding that mum and dad have their own issues to deal with – what with getting older, and going to work, and trying to find money for cigarettes (gone up again - bloody guvmnt!) – without having to manage stuff for these kids as well.

So there they are; my observations about the skills of modern parenting. Go forth and multiply!

Noachian happenings

It was a fine and gently moonlit evening in the tropics of North Queensland. The breeze was blowing in gentle kisses from the south east. The children were bathed, the baby fed, the washing was folded and put away. My wife was out with my daughter for their evening constitutional and I, the competent and loving patriarch, was in the final stages of preparing a bolognese sauce that promised to save me from elimination and let me come back next week to amaze and delight the audience with my chocolate mousse ganoosh.

A bosanova was playing somewhere, just on the edge of hearing.

The laws of a good story aren't going to let this idyll continue. You know that. It seems a shame to spoil the domestic bliss but, as a friend taught me, "dura lex, sed lex" so ...

The first inkling of the coming catastrophe, the ely (if you will), was the overlay of the sound of the gently simmering meal with the tones of delighted splashing - as it were a baby playing in the bath.

The sounds of the bosanova faded to be replaced with a sinister riff on the low strings as I turned to find my nine month old son cavorting happily in the middle of the hallway in about 2cm of water.

This is unusual. Townsville is low lying but we are on the second floor. So, ecce homo - to continue the Latin cliches - and I pulled out the tinny, loaded the shotgun and set off up the corridor river to the find the source of the encroaching moisture.

 Piloting my little craft through what I'm sure were crocodile infested waters, I came to the bathroom where I discovered that my seven year old, on leaving that bath, had helpfully left the shower handset under the waterline and running. The sinister strings now replaced by Paul Dukas while visions of marching broomsticks forced themselves into my mind.

I could, through Herculean effort, staunch the flow of the Nile but I realised that, because of Archimedes (damn those Greeks), I wasn't going to be able to pull out the plug. Competent father that I am, I saw this as a learning opportunity for the culprit and carefully prepared him (stripped off his pyjamas) for his expedition into the abyss.

Unfortunately, the offender had also heard of the Greeks (note to self - stop reading books to my kids) and plunged bodily into the bath, setting of the early warning systems in Sendai and making inhabitants of low lying Pacific islands flee for the coconut trees.

In a musical interlude, a short set of variations on the well known theme "You're a bloody idiot!" followed, along with a threat of a performance of Bach's "Toccata for bottom and dad's right hand".

At this point, it became apparent that Satan - as one of his works and empty promises - had neglected to put a floor drain in the bathroom and so mops were going to be required.

An expedition was mounted to the downstairs laundry to retrieve same but authorities were dismayed when reports came back of torrential rain falling through the floorboards and threatening to engulf neighbouring townships. From this it became apparent that he deluge had seeped from the bathroom, through the walls into neighbouring rooms. Further variations on a group of themes related to those above followed.

Fearing a disaster of Exxonic proportions, temporary bunds in the form of bath towels were installed at strategic points and the SES were called to sand bag the lounge room. As the waves threatened to erode local beaches, warnings were dispatched to local radio stations and the children were sent to check on elderly neighbours. The Moldau gave way to the closing half of The Hall of the Mountain King.

At this point, a knock on the front door reveals the Premier with a declaration of a state of emergency for the Herbert and Lower Burdekin districts, the police investigating reports of the attempted murder of a seven year old and an elderly Jewish man with a robe, a staff and a "told you so" look on his face who, apparently, had come for the dog and a representative sample of the rats that were deserting in an orderly line down the driveway to escape the oncoming wrath.

Then my wife came home to have confirmed for her everything she'd ever heard about leaving dad alone with the kids.

On the occasion of the Melbourne Cup

Note for non-Australians: The Melbourne Cup is, believe it or not, a horse race that the whole nation stops to watch. It occurs on the first Tuesday in November each year. It is to Australia as the Superbowl is to the USA in terms of sporting popularity.

Our live coverage begins at 6am on the Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox and finishes sometime after the promise of that day is fulfilled.

The event itself, like so many other “events” that are subjected to live coverage, takes about 3 minutes and is, apart from the difficulty the horses have running on a track packed with Steadicams and journalists on horseback, no different from any other horse-race. It has the obligatory Fisher-Price colour schemes on the jockeys, the repeated sense of disbelief that the bloke whose job it is to drag the horses into the little boxes has escaped with his life again and the incomprehensible commentary delivered by that one guy who apparently calls every horse race in the world.

I’m pretty sure that bloke, let’s call him Ken, is making it up, by the way. The horses and jockeys are about three leagues away and bunched so tight that the static from the shirts makes them cling together like polystyrene balls. There’s no way known that Ken could pick What a Nuisance from Rogan Josh outside of Makybe Diva then a long length back to Americain and then Eclectic, Stupid and Downright Loopy bringing up the rear.

(The first four in that list were real Melbourne Cup winners).

It’s all just an excuse, in any case, to trot out the awe and majesty that is “live coverage” – which is another way of saying “a chance to bleed some sponsors anaemic for advertising spots”. And there’s no shortage of leeches, sorry “opportunities” to attach your brand to something that is, itself attached, to something that is tangentially related to the event. Only amateurs stop at naming rights for the event itself. What you can buy rights to is limited only by your imagination. There’s the action replay sponsor, the wardrobe sponsor, the track sponsor, the drinks partner, the official airline and the IT systems provider. Go further with the telecast coffee mug sponsor, the port-a-loo provider and the closely related purveyors of certified organic fresh air and environmentally friendly oxygen.

Live coverage also provides an unparalleled opportunity to flog merchandise. After all , the heavily made up anchors with the wired-on smiles and the puppeteer’s hand probably inserted somewhere uncomfortable, have to talk about something hour after hour – they might as well be making some money in the process. Again, take some good LSD and the merchandising opportunities will just flow into your mind.  Mural sized framed prints of every winner since 1861 (designed to sit in your garage until you die because there’s nowhere big enough your wife will let you hang it) , genuine lapel badges that are authentically badge-like and really designed to be worn in your lapel, collector’s edition hankies that the winning jockey used to wipe his brow after training sessions and, if you can guess the weight correctly, a bag of manure from last year’s winner– guaranteed to make your roses a cup winner every time!

I am, however, becoming highly suspicious of the ability of news networks to get people on the ground at the speed they do to run these live coverage extravaganzas. Wherever something is happening, whatever it is, there’s always a journalist there with a microphone and a camera and presumably a technical support crew, makeup artist and coffee van. Unless they’ve invested in some military grade, double bladed helicopters, these guys’ ability to get there is uncanny to the point of unbelievable; which makes me think that these guys are creating the news and suggests the question “Why aren’t they doing a better job of it?”

Really, if you were going to create events and disasters just for the cameras, surely you could make sure they were a bit more photogenic and get some more sponsorship dollars from them. Could companies not be talked into having naming rights to the catastrophe?  They had a go in Germany a couple of years ago and VW had a storm named “Cooper” after one of its car models. Fair enough, the storm did go on to kill 100 people, but the brand was on everyone’s lips for weeks. You have to be Miley Cyrus to get that kind of exposure these days!

The recent Sydney bushfires were an example of a badly handled production. We were on the cusp of a “mega-fire”. Good naming, good branding and great preview material. Then some clowns went and put the fire out. Who’s producing this show? Who’s writing the script? Let the thing go, get a house-burnt-down tally in the thousands then generate revenue in spin-off coverage of the recriminations that follow. Geez people!

Tropical Cyclone Yasi was another case of “live coverage” being produced by the work-experience kid. The storm covered five degrees of latitude when it crossed the north Queensland coast in the early hours of 3 February 2011 and yet, the anchor sent to Cairns to cover the event, was left standing awkwardly in front of a placid harbour with lights twinkling across water you’d be happy to be seen drinking champagne in front of when the storm missed entirely. To his credit, he wore his raincoat throughout the event and hooked in some local kids to spray him with a hose every so often but it still wasn’t anything like what it could have been.

Here are a few tips to running a successful rolling coverage show:

Have a news ticker – that little headline banner thing that runs across the bottom of the screen. It could show football scores, stock market prices and pithy calendar quotes if you need to but nothing says “urgent” and “now” like a news ticker.

Partner your key anchor with a “facts guy” off to one side. He needs to have at least two laptops in front of him and be seen in shot, from time to time, taking mobile phone calls. The first thing out of his mouth at each cross should be “Yes, I can confirm that …” It makes your anchor look smart – even though he was fed his “speculation” from the same guy - and makes it look like you’re at the nerve centre of events. Just don’t show anyone what’s actually on the screens of those laptops.

Make some technical mistakes. Have the audio drop out during one or two of your live crosses, cross to the wrong person … that kind of thing. You’re there in the fast-changing, do-or-die, gritty “now” of the situation; no-one expects you to be perfect and the audience feels a lot more connected to the unfolding crisis when reality bites like this.

Find some bogans to be the vox populi. You don’t want to be interviewing real people who are intelligent or articulate – who can separate observed fact from emotional overreaction or hysteria. Your audience is being kept tuned in by feeling like they’re part of the tragedy unfolding so find someone to feed their need for vicarious excitement; someone who’ll cry on cue or someone who can scream a little in that girly way at the overwhelming joy of it all. In a tragic situation, you want someone middle aged, over-weight and posed against a sombre background with some photos of relatives (who cares whose relatives) somewhere in shot; someone the viewers can thank God that they’re not. For something like the Melbourne Cup, you want early 30s women – still attractive – wearing clothes that look slightly but are not really all that expensive; people the viewers can relate to. Go too young, too attractive or too rich here and you’ll make your viewers feel inadequate and not in the mood to buy your sponsors’ stuff.

Note there’s nothing here about having a story worth taking up people’s valuable time on this rock. Frankly it doesn’t really matter. Provided you leave people feeling that they’re at the centre of something important, no-one cares what it’s actually about. Get a good producer, some photogenic anchors and new ticker and you can milk ad spots every fifteen minutes for eight hours out of three minutes of incomprehensible gibberish and a 24kg bag of pedigree horse crap.