I'm a geek. Anyone that knows me will confirm that much. I have post-graduate qualifications in maths, I watch science documentaries for fun and think that knowing the Latin and Greek roots of words is one of the best things a person can do.
What many people don't know is that I am also very contra-society. Not sociopathic - I don't dislike people or the society I live in - I just find myself swimming against the current all the time. Well not against the current. Being a good Australian boy, brought up on the beach, I would never swim against the rip - just diagonally across it.
For an apparently smart guy, I was dumbfounded to realise how many years it took me to get that Harry Potter joke: Diagon Alley. Apply heel of palm to forehead at speed - repeat.
Anyway, here's my confession:
I didn't like Steve Irwin. I didn't wish him ill and I have an enormous amount of sympathy for his family but I just didn't like the guy and I certainly don't think he is a great Aussie Icon. He was loud and unkempt and uncouth. As a TV persona, he was everything the world has come to expect of our national stereotype. He may well have known what he was on about but he came across as ridiculous and reckless. I refer you to Sir David Attenborough if you want to see how nature TV is done properly.
Sport is a closed book to me. I understand the need to remain in reasonable physical condition and do a distressingly modest amount of exercise to attain that goal but that's as far as it goes. The sheer visceral joy that so many experience just by watching sport, let alone participating in it, is entirely mysterious to me. I live in North Queensland and if any anthropologists would like to study primitive tribal customs, come up here when the State of Origin is on. For those of you who are mercifully spared this annual circus, it's a three game football competition between New South Wales and Queensland. Queensland wears maroon and NSW wears blue. If you've seen old footage of tribes in Papua New Guinea or the Zulus from Africa banging their shields and preparing for war, imagine that with a beer gut and a maroon football jersey and you'll have a pretty fair mental image of North Queensland at Origin time. Even people with university educations seem to get involved. Why?
Reality TV is a waste of time and, worse, it's boring. Like sport, though, it appears to hold some level of unholy sway over even reasonably clever people. As a ruse, I would have thought it would not fool people who have figured out that there really isn't a creepy old guy watching and judging you every sleeping and waking moment and awarding toys accordingly. It's clearly not real; there's no way two soccer mums with no training or advice are plucked from their four wheel drives, given matching aprons and attitude problems, and then turnout Michelin quality meals with no more than a turnip, two sticks of asparagus, some butter and an annoying French judge. Equally, two indistinguishable police officers who've never handled a hammer are not magically finding that perfect lampshade to complement their Art Deco bedhead in the first shop they come to - with only twenty minutes to spare. Someone who bought a Jeep wouldn't fall for it. It was all filmed months before broadcast but people whose job it is to run the country or educate our children seem to find it fascinating enough to waste a half hour's conversation on it most days.
I'm probably of an age now when being in a nightclub would seem badly like I was hoping to form an extra marital interest in a 19 year old. Even before my beard needed a little colour support, I never really liked them (nightclubs that is, I had a very healthy interest in 19 year olds back in the day). What's the point? The purpose of a club, presumably, is to socialise. A chance to meet with and, if the night goes well, mate with one's fellow human beings. How are you supposed to achieve this when you can neither see nor hear said hominids? Certainly I'm a musical sort of chap and can dance to a beat. So one does this. Perhaps a potential mate approaches and is impressed with my well shaken tail feathers and rhythmic stamping. What next? It's not like pigeons - you can't progress to congress there on the dance floor. You can somehow communicate through sign language that drinking alcohol at adjacent bar stools is an option. Provided she understands my cryptic gestures and we are set up with two Tequila Sunrises at $25 each, we're still no closer to the end game. Screaming at each other usually comes later in the relationship but there's no other method of communication possible amongst the industrial levels of noise. Maybe things are different in these days of smart phones; the boy can just text his bad pick up lines. How she gives him a disgusted look via SMS I'm not entirely sure, but they can do great things with emoticons these days.
So I swim across the current. I know there are those who enjoy such things and I don't judge them for it but I remain baffled - even after 40 years.
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