Femininity and body hair; to depilate or not to depilate, that is the question …
In modern, generally anglo-infested countries, it is a sad reflection on the state of things that still a woman's femininity is frequently judged on (amongst a zillion other things) a strategic lack of body hair. This is a plague upon my life, as, being a member of one of the more middlingly-hursuit gene pools, if I choose to (even seasonally) adopt the 'less hair is best hair' approach, frequent clear-felling is needed or total regrowth forests result (in fact I have a theory that, secretly, gorillas sneak into my room at night and reattach all the hairs!). And as for waxing, those suckers are tied to the bone, so unless I'm prepared to sign up for frequent skin grafts, waxing is out!
The bumper sticker …
March - Education
What's wrong with a trade? The demise of the tech school is criminal .
It's a well-known fact if you want your offspring to never go hungry, own their own home by the time they're 24, and be able to retire before 50, then they should become (or marry, regardless of gender) … a plumber. But a generation or so back, our misguided opinion pollies and associated public-servant-policy-bods decided that only education focussed on producing the next generations of academics was worthy. I'm old enough to remember a time when we were encouraging kids into 'trade' or 'matric' streams of the curriculum, and it seems to me to have given those with less inclination towards academia the opportunity to actually become extremely happy and successful people. Why did we get rid of tech schools? A trade is not a failure to graduate!
The bumper sticker …
April - Pets
When good intentions go bad.
Friends of mine rescued an old, old ex-racehorse from a Bad Owner. It was injured, but they got it under a vet's care and everything was being done for it. Its condition was long-standing and they gave it the best of care.
Another friend has an elderly horse with an old knee injury and stomach condition. Again the horse was well loved and cared for, but not the healthiest of beasts.
Now, those Good Folk driving by the respective paddocks who reported the horses' condition weren't to know these facts, so understandably, seeing a thin, dull-coated hobbling animal, rang Our Friends at the RSPCA. Herewith begins my complaint. For all the undeniable good this organisation does, it is equally plagued with bleeding heart do-gooders who jump in with ire raised and hearts aflame before checking their facts. In both these instances the owners of the horses were treated like repeat-offender criminals of the worst kind, even when all the circumstances were explained and vet bills etc produced. They were actually placed 'on notice' and one of the owners was repeatedly harassed by the inspector, who was not a horse person, and would not understand that a 26 year old thoroughbred ex-racehorse (ie 'equine greyhound', and the equivalent in horse years of your 117 year old granny) would never be fat, glossy and skipping around like Bambi! RSPCA, educate your inspectors, don't just hire them on their empathy.
The bumper sticker …
May - Digital Age
Is it possible to have too many mass storage devices?
Before the iPod (or its non fruit-logo'd equivalent), before phones with more memory storage than the first building-sized computer, before thumb drives, before external 640GB USB drives, there was …. NOTHING!! The universe was a blank slate and average people did not worry about data storage.
Now, listen in on any conversation around the water cooler/coffee machine and you'll hear smatterings of "…yeah, but only one terabyte arrayed …" ,"…I've got four million gigs on 724 drives but I've run out of space again …", "… you got your data stick with you, I'll give you a copy of [insert name of appropriate recent TV show not yet airing in Aust here] …".
In the primitive post-medieval phase before the Digital Age, people spoke to one another on the train (and therefore met more weirdos that they really wanted to), they could walk without looking at little screens (apparently 'injuries from falling over' is on the increase as more and more people text while walking - how odd is the world, I ask you!) and the sweet sound of everyday life permeated their lives without the need to plug headphones in 24/7 ………
BUGGER THAT!!!! Where's my MP4 player? I've got an eBook written in 2.5pt font I'm still trying to get through, and yes, I've got my 8GB thumb drive with me - fill 'er up with last weeks illegal downloads, and how much did you say you paid for that 10,000GB drive - only $65,000?! Were there any more left?!!!
The bumper sticker …
June - Drinking
Why orange juice makes me sick; a miss-spent youth and the Harvey Wallbanger.
I couldn't drink orange juice for about a decade after my 16th birthday. A gang of us snuck into the 'nightclub' at the Paradise Hotel in salubrious Sunshine and all my friends bought me Harvey Wallbangers and Screwdrivers until I couldn't remember who I was. Rite of Passage completed, I threw up for what seemed like a week and then got on with the rest of my life (sans vodka, orange juice and galli-bloody-ano!!).
Everyone - well almost everyone I know, has a ‘when I got so drunk’ story … and we tell them, shamelessly pulling them out for an airing in the occasional verbal drinking stories one-up competition. Why is this? We Aussies, or maybe just my sub-culture of Australia - white, anglo/celtic-descended, upper working class background-types - love a good drinking yarn. All the alcopops taxes and drink-driver campaigns in existence will have no effect while we all still think it's bloody HILARIOUS to fall flat on your face in front of all your buddies, giggling madly with your skirt up over your arse and your sunnies stuck sideways on your nose … go on, admit it, it's pretty funny!
The bumper sticker…
July - Bring Back Jeff
And the trains all ran …
Many, much cleverer people than me, wrote wonderfully insightful things about Jeff earlier this year (a man who to this day I have an ambiguous opinion of), so I wont attempt much more other than to say, despite the politically incorrect (from my side of the fence) manner in which his government went about it, the only thing I'll ever thank Jeff for is that the trains were cleaner, safer, and more punctual than any that ran before or since (shame Connex, shame!). Oh, and he built a bloody big shed.
The bumper sticker…
August - Children
Why do we need to ask ourselves if our kids are lazier than past generations?
Without completely re-enacting Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen sketch for you, (youtube it if you haven’t seen it) I grew up in the 60s and 70s when, as a child, "things were tough" … you were expected to make your bed every day, tidy your room at least once a week (grumbling the whole time of course and taking three times longer than necessary because you kept finding stuff you thought you'd lost down the back of the wardrobe) wash and/or wipe the dishes after dinner (squabbling with your brother the whole time over who had to do all the fiddly cutlery), rake the grass on lawn-mowing day, and some other completely unreasonable chores here and there, including walking everywhere you wanted to go in all seasons because no-one had extra cars hanging about, and beside 'kids should be outside anyway' …. We moaned, we bitched and we grumbled and made everyone around us suffer for it, but we did it, we survived it, and some of us even developed work ethics as a result. And no-one really thought they were hard done-by, but you try and tell that to Gen Y…. and they wont believe you!
The bumper sticker…
September - Money
The quandary and etiquette of paying beggars and buskers.
I never know whether I should. I'm almost paralysed by the real despair of sad old winos - can my paltry few dollars help them back to sanity and sobriety, or even just feed them? Or would I just be helping them fuel their own misery? The capable, hard-eyed kids 'begging' for a laugh are easier to ignore, and deserve nothing but my scorn. The buskers I love - even when they aren't all that good - it's something about how they put themselves out there, but should I only pay if I stop, or if I stop must I pay? The ranters and wild-eyed people on the train scare me and to my shame I try not to see them. Sometimes it can be hard to walk around sober, sane and relatively affluent in our city.
The bumper sticker…
October - Village Idiots
Parliamentary question time.
I drive, gesticulating and screaming, apparently mad to all who see me (and who subsequently change lanes to get away from the nutter in the Ford), beside myself with rage, and near articulate with frothing fury …. yep, I'm listening to Parliamentary Question Time on the radio again! Fun for all the family … an example to our children … our elected officials in action … a nation on the move. OMG! He said WHAT?! You complete hypocampus! That idiot wouldn't know how to knit socks he's so tangled! The Right Honourable Member for Picnics, I say! WTF?!!!!!! Arrghhhhh, turn it off!
The bumper sticker…
November - Media
Radio National; they're friends of mine. Let me just say, right up front, so you know where this is going … I LOVE THE ABC! They've been there, through thick and thin, reminding me who we were, who we are, who I should be, damn it, what Our Great Nation can be! I never knew the law, or sport, could be so interesting; I've learned more than I thought possible about things I didn't know existed, and cried no few tears at stories of tragedy, hope and the bitter-sweetness of life. I've learned that it probably is 'all in my mind' and that 'Australia can talk!'. Our country is full of 'big ideas' and the 'bush telegraph' is alive and well, but as a 'counterpoint' to that, we know that the 'future is tense'. In 'hindsight' though 'the national interest' can be a positive thing 'by our design'. So ABC, the bumper sticker, a simple one from the heart…
!joomlacomment 4.0 Copyright (C) 2009 Compojoom.com . All rights reserved."
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
