Coles and IKEA recruiting through creative promotions

I have gotten into the spirit of ‘consumerism through children’ with the latest of Australian retailer, Coles', collectable series, which is promoting its new Harry Potter range. 

The Coles Magical Builders are cardboard cut-outs of all the characters from the Harry Potter and the Fantastic Beasts cashcow empires, with the catch (for grown-ups) is you have to assemble them yourself. They come separately swathed in tiny tough cardboard flatpacks with instructions for their assembly on a tiny piece of paper. It’s like miniature IKEA. The instructions are impossible to see and also not terribly helpful but I am also impressed that they produce so little paper wastage.

With a resolve to demonstrate that I have the dexterity and cognitive function of a six year old, I decided to put one together. As it turns out, only tiny fingers can pop out the tiny cardboard fragments of arms and legs and owl wings and wizard beards. 

As ever with activities that are designed for children, I generally require child supervision to work out how to troubleshoot, but not on this occasion! I stabbed those diminutive suckers out using a sharp kitchen knife.

I’m guessing Coles aren’t considering my requirements in their customer base. Speaking of IKEA and companies that know their base, the Swedish megabrand have recently put “career instructions” inside their IKEA products that are labelled “how to assemble your furniture” in a push to recruit people who use IKEA products, which resulted in thousands of applicants and a whole bunch of people were hired who liked and used IKEA products. Hire your brand’s current customers and ambassadors  – good idea. What would also be a good idea would be to put in these boxes ‘how to actually assemble your furniture – like, some actual instructions”. Anyway.

So perhaps, with that in mind, and with the ol’ tradie shortage around areas of Australia that aren’t currently undertaking emergency disaster restorations, Coles perhaps should be looking for future tradies and engineers through this current tiny cardboard promotion. 

If you can assemble the tiny Ron Weasley character without the instructions (or even with the instructions) and you’re only seven, of if can assemble it to put Dumbledore’s head on his knees (but deliberately), then you have just won yourself a fast-tracked carpentry career. Very fast-tracked. Faster than a speeding Japanese superman bullet train. Anyway, there’s some foods for your thoughts, Coles. 

Space Travel

"We're here to make space travel more accessible to all", said uber-entrepreneur, Sir Richard Branson, the linchpin and cashcow of Virgin Galactic, a fierce competitor in the new billionaires space race. With seats on board starting at USD$450,000, it might do to wait until the sales.

With Australia slamming shut its international borders for an entirely indefinite period of time in a tough stance to reduce the spread of COVID-19, it's interesting to look at other options for travel that are just as exciting as earth-bound travel, and indeed alternative ways of getting there. Outer space! 

What news from the outer space world? Well, here’s a thing. Space rockets have been hurtling from earth up into the stratosphere, one billionaire after another. Richard Branson onboard his Virgin Galactic, Elon Musk sending up his SpaceX, and that other billionaire, Amazon founder and business magnate, Jeff Bezos, on his Blue Origin journey. Pew-pew-pew-pew-pew and then fighting each other with giant laser beams - pew-pew-pew-pew-pew. Oh wait, no sorry, that’s Star Wars. I regularly get confused between Star Wars and IRL.

HAVING SAID THAT, I note that the U.S. Military have recently shot down an intercontinental ballistic missile in outer space from an aircraft carrier based off the coast of Hawaii in a testing exercise, so hi there Star Wars.

All of these recent space launches (with the exception of the extremely non-televised US military exercise) have been televised on some type of platform – TV network, YouTube, even Facebook stories. 

It’s always entertaining during space shuttle launches when the commentators discuss how long it’s going to take them to get to their destination, as if 27.5 hours was a long time, as is the case for the 4 astronauts that Elon Musk’s SpaceX recently took to the International Space Station (ISS). 

Girl, that’s a medium-haul international travel jaunt for Australians. Sydney to London is 23 hours more or less, and that’s not including airport waiting time, stopovers, lost luggage, impromptu body cavity searches, immigration control and waiting for a shuttle, which takes at least another 18 hours.

While the ISS altitude is only 408 km from earth, it takes over a day to get there, due to the spinny, spinny, upside-downy nature of our planet (that’s science-y talk – don’t feel bad if you can’t keep up with the terminology).

So what do they do on their roadtrip to above and beyond?

Well first of all, it’s not a roadtrip. It’s very serious space mission business and if you don’t know that, you can’t go. 

Second of all, there’s the snacks. When I fly international on a long haul, or drive to the shops on a relatively shorter haul, I always take snacks. What snack do the astronauts take and at what point in the first hour do they eat them all?

As you’d expect from NASA, the criteria for developing space food is: safety, stability, palatability, nutrition, resource minimisation, variety, reliability, and usability. Sure, but they probably just have M&Ms, and kill some time - and get some exercise - by chasing the little suckers around the zero-gravity cabin.

Also, are there even any Starbucks on the way if you need a caffeine pick-me-up? Who gets to drive? Can you call shotgun? Assigned seating is absolutely very serious business on a long haul. There’s certainly a slew of questions that I think we all want answered before we’ll fork out 450 grand. 

In terms of timeliness, I suppose taking a space ship to the ISS is slightly faster than taking the train, but I certainly don’t think you shave off that much time. 

One advantage of flying away from earth is you don’t have to put up with our pesky airport rules - no ticket counters, no passport control, no immigration checking to see if you’re carrying any activated vegemite and no waiting for shuttles that never come (or is that just LAX).

It certainly seems like, statistically, it’s a lot safer travelling on a space ship than a commercial earth-bound airline, specifically when it comes to take off and landing. On a space ship, you are flung into space and then flung back into the ocean. Perfectly safe. 

Boeing research shows that takeoff and landing are statistically more dangerous than any other part of a commercial earth-bound airline flight, with 49% of all fatal accidents happen during the final descent and landing phases of the average flight, while 14% of all fatal accidents happen during takeoff and initial climb. 

It's certainly often surmised by flight attendants in their pre-flight safety message that the plane will in fact crash if you don't return your tray table to the upright and locked position after your meal. Absolutely no need for food trays in space travel; your food floats. See! Space travel is the future.

So can you buy a ticket to go into space? Well, yes. I don't know about the future of international earth-bound air travel but space tourism will soon be a thing I'm sure of it, but it may be a wiser financial investment to just watch Star Wars.

Cost: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

 

My Little Bogan

Last year I bought a Holden - one of Australia's iconic automobiles from the marque manufacturer (well, it is until 2021). I affectionately refer to it as My Little Bogan. 

I always knew that My Little Bogan had a racy past life, as it has sports seats, displayed racing car livery down its side when I bought it, and was surrounded by fumes and sweaty men to represent the smell/presence of a pit lane. But I stripped it of those stickers, smells and sweaty people - thus its entire personality - because I'm a monster.

Anyway, since I bought My Little Bogan, it's had a relatively dull life. I walk to work so the only time it gets to hoon is on the weekend when we go round and round the block a thousand times and only stop when someone raises a black and white striped flag at us and sometimes that doesn't happen at all believe it or not.

But today, a strange thing happened when I was driving home from undertaking one of the most average tasks you can ever honestly endure; visiting my local supermarket to purchase a range of fresh and preserved produce, traditionally known as grocery shopping. 

Laden with my goods, I was sitting at the lights, minding my own business, as much as I ever mind my own business, waiting for my right turn. But as I took off My Little Bogan decided to go full Holden.

Before I knew it, the back wheels were spinning considerably more than the front wheels were spinning in some sort of wheel spin and then the front ones locked. I think it's called a burnout. I did a burnout; in what can only be described as in an 'aggressive manner'. 

I didn't mean to do a burnout. I couldn't do it again if I tried, honest. It stopped at soon as it started which was a good outcome for everyone given there's a police station sitting on that corner. It was very embarassing but I don't think anyone noticed to be honest.

When I got home I had a good, hard brief glance through my Holden manual to see if there is perhaps a hidden button on my dashboard labelled the 'Bathurst 1000'. It turns out no. Okay, maybe a special feature was added to my car on purchase but I feel like I would have remembered that conversation with the car folks, I am fairly certain.

I can certainly relate if My Little Bogan wanted to live it's best Holden life. Yeah Bathurst! Evidently, Bathurst's first turn is a ninety-degree left-hander called Hell Corner, so fairly similar to what you'd find at your standard set of traffic lights. And then there's Mountain Straight, described as a gentle climb where you can reach speeds of 255 km/h, which really wouldn't be ideal at the traffic lights because the next building is the aforementioned police station and that's not how law-abiding behaviour works I'm pretty sure.

Now My Little Bogan has been unleashed, rather more angrily than necessary, this is most definitely a recipe for disaster, so I shall endeavour to tame the beast. I will (I won't).

Test Cricket - Australia vs the Hobbitses

 Some hobbitses fighting over the precious.

The New Zealand cricket team and its fans have taken a well earned break from sheep shearing, wine guzzling and Lord of the Rings ‘hobbitses’ role-playing to pop over to the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) to play some good ol’ fashioned proper sport that doesn't involve sheep, wine or hobbits.

This is the second Test in a trilogy of fantasy matches featuring these gnome-like hobbits battling evil warlords (the Australians, stay with me) for control of a magical place called the MCG.

As it turns out, the newly designed activity program for hobbitses at the MCG does in fact allow for all of the important leisure pursuits that New Zealanders enjoy.

The MCG Fun Curators have decided that fans should no longer have to choose between attending a Test Cricket match or maintaining basic hygiene standards, because now the MCG offers a barber service.

It is not clear whether it is for sheep and hobbits as well, but I saw a human-ish looking man in the barber chair having his sheep-like beard tended to, so he could sit back and watch the match in the blazing Melbourne sun/wind/rain/hurricane (depending on the time of day you choose for your manscaping). This is the new cricket. This is men living their best lives. It’s a great time for sheep shearing hobbitses to be alive.

The MCG has stepped up big time his year. There are a variety of goods and services on offer at the ground that you wouldn’t normally expect from a day at the cricket. You can get a shave, get a haircut, shear some sheep, indulge in some fush and chips, play some rugby probably and do some Haka, I don’t really know. Nevertheless, exhausting day!

Credit to the boys, the creative types at the MCG, they really are making the Fushy Chaps (my nickname for the drunk New Zealand larrakins who made their way across the fishy ditch to the Test) feel right at home. The Chaps are loud, and singsongy. Never mind ’alcohol free areas’; I’d need a New Zealander free area.

Where do we even draw the line with spectator entertainment at stadiums these days? I’ve got no idea, but I also have an idea, Cricket Australia. How about Pay to Play, where for a few hundred quid (going to charity) you get to field for Australia for 5 minutes? I didn’t say it was a good idea. I’m sure the Australian captain Tim Paine would more than welcome a drunkard twit running around his outfield tripping over their hobbit feet. Stupid hobbitses.

The Australian captain has been awfully perplexed lately at the Umpire Decision Reviewing System, the DRS, and rightly so. To be fair, the meaning of the acronym DRS should change with each ref decision. For example, Didn’t Really See, Dat Ref Shite, Didn't Review Shite. The reviewing system needs a systemic review.

Anyways, it’s looking like a win for the Aussies. We wants it, we needs it.

Thoughts from the Big Bash League

Last night I went to a Big Bash League (BBL) cricket game at Manuka Oval in Canberra. Cricket being the sport where two team play a game with sticks and balls and one team wins and the other does not. If you’d like me to describe anything else to you please let me know.

So this particular match was between Sydney and Hobart - the Sydney Thunder versus the Hobart Hurricanes, with Sydney hijacking the Canberra pitch as a lesser second-string home when their parents at Spotless Stadium have kicked them out for partying and cricketing too much.

BBL names are curious. While Sydney is very dependable with it’s thunder activity throughout the summer months, I’m not convinced Hobart has ever experienced a hurricane, but that’s not important right now. Well it is important actually if you are of the view that team names should perhaps vaguely reflect something about that city but, alas, nope. Maybe it’s a bit like Gandhi’s world view - be the stormcell you want to be in the BBL. 

Clearly the BBL Team Naming Gods were not concerned with the potentially adverse consequences for international tourism of giving Australian sporting teams names like hurricanes, thunder, heat and scorchers. Maybe in the future they’ll add terrifying spiders, deadly snakes and bogans to the comp to really give those pesky tourists the boot.

Anyway, I’ve been to the cricket before, and I always find it a mirthful experience - what’s life without MIRTH! - except I always get wet because it always rains, and I always get cold because it always gets cold, even though it’s supposed to be summer, and my brain apparently can’t be bothered reminding me of these facts before I go.

So last night was no different - wet, cold, yet mirthful - and also a kid got hit in the head by a cricket ball. If the world of cricket is foreign to you, the balls are made of the hardest substances in the known universe and they are whacked at a very, very hard speed. 

The crowd announcer always thoughtfully tells us to watch out for balls that may fly into our heads. Look, thankyou for the threatening heads-up, but it’s kind of difficult to avoid when you’re constantly being distracted by the endless advertising, adorable little attention-seeking robot cameras zooming around, dance cams and crowd waves. Also, head injuries are highly likely when the you’re working within a framework that rewards a player with a ‘six’ for clubbing a ball into the crowd. It is, in fact, a work, health and safety nightmare.

The offending ball. Maybe.

Onto other burning matters. I almost forgot how most excellent Australian sport is at promoting the junk food industry. It actually does a better job at promoting the $20 billion a year Australian junk food industry cash cow than the industry does. Last night was KFC’s turn to turn us all off healthy options and be less health conscious consumers. 

Last night the crowd announcer - who had seamlessly moved on from a kid getting hit in the head with a ball - told us excitedly that if a ‘six’ was caught in the crowd we could all win free KFC. Because that’s the way to earning yourself a cricketer’s physique, kids. Fairly confident the cricketers are not eating that for supper, ever.

Anyway, my team won - the dependable Sydney thunder activity - so yay.

Coles mini shop obsessive-compulsive disorder

A few months ago, Australians were busy shopping for groceries wherever we damn well pleased. It was a great time to be alive. Coles, Woolies, Aldi, the markets, you name it, we were there, purchasing things, for no reason other than we needed things. 

And then the Coles marketing team came and ruined everything that is good about grocery shopping forever.

They stormed into our lives uninvited and, since July, they have been hunting us like prey. They threw out a silky web, made up of gross spider glands and other gross things, and also millions of those Coles Mini Shop Collectibles that have made us lose our collective shits with the excitement of all of it. (Don’t pretend you are collecting them for your kids.)

Me gently cradling my beloved Coles Mini
Shop Collectible Nescafé Gold.

We should have all kept our poker faces and shown only a vague, passing interest in the useless miniatures but, no, we’ve showed our hand and actually LOST. OUR. MINDS. over pointless pieces of plastic handwash. 

Bloody iconic products too, because Coles are not amateurs at this. This is not  their first time at the rodeo. Who turns down a mini Timtams or Weetbix? 

I haven’t read up on the Constitution recently, but it’s presumably in there as an Act of the Australian Parliament – if someone gives you free iconic Aussie shit, you take it, and you collect it, until you have all of it and, ironically, can no longer afford to buy groceries because you went and spent all your money buying minis on eBay. She’ll be right, mate.


Since the promotion came, saw and conquered I have become conditioned, like Pavlov’s dogs, to spend $30 or more in store when I just pop in to pick up some milk. But I think, eventually, I will be okay and come out of this fog. 

I’m popping in this afternoon to get bread, which, because I don’t buy the gluten free type, will come in under $30. I’ve got this.

But you just know there’s more to come. The marketing and advertising teams of the big companies now know how to catch their prey. Which, in my opinion, isn’t an accident.  

As if it couldn’t get anymore dire, the chatter on the street (in Coles aisles – I don’t go to streets anymore, unless there is a Coles), is that they are going to bring out a second range called Coles Normal Size Shop. 

Which is just grocery shopping, Coles. And we won’t play your game. We won’t no matter what (we will).

I watched Home and Away.

Putting aside the piece of chocolate cake that I stole from colleagues last week at work, I'm a good person. And sometimes bad things happen to good people. For example, tonight I watched Home and Away. Here's proof.

Straight off the bat - mere minutes into the show - Number #1 girl uses a big word. I can't remember what it was but I was actually impressed.

Number #1 girl undoes all her good work during an argument by turning to her pantry and placing her face in such a distressed arrangement that made me think that someone ate her 12 pack of twisties. She must have been really sad or angry or frustrated or something.

Here's Number #2 girl. Another Oscar winner in the making. She's super sad or frustrated or depressed or something and I don't even know what she's going through because she also has no facial expression.

Now I feel like a bitch because expressionless lady actually lost her twin babies in her womb. But that doesn't change the fact that her only facial expression is expressionless. Who hires these people?

Watching teenagers sitting around in their lounge room watching AFL on television and drinking vodka cruisers and beer and making out and being bitchy to each and doing all the teenage angst things. I hate them all within seconds.

Spoiler: This guy doesn't do this show anymore.

Yay ad break. Head to the kitchen to make a cup of tea and find a hot poker that I can have on standby in case I need to gouge my eyes out.

Number #3 girl is concerned or angry or sad when she finds out her boyfriend of two weeks has "commitment issues". He's 20. His name is Tank.

The most concerning part of this scene is my realisation that those precious minutes it took me to watch it are lost to me forever. And now I have to live with that.

Number #3 girl gets home 18 seconds after her curfew.  The parents are waiting in the dark on the driveway with a location camera crew. Cue boring argument. Jesus, this show.

Whatever happened to Brax (pictured in the picture), the feared member of the River Boys? Just googled him. The car transferring him to jail ran off the road and plunged into a lake but HIS BODY WAS NEVER FOUND...

Ooooooh, ahhhh, ooooh, ahhh, the sun is rising over the ocean. That's a bit pretty.

Oh great, actors have just walked onto the beach and decide to speak. Sunset ruined. Oh great, here's more of them. It's a morning beach sunrise-ruining congregation. This scene would improve enormously if the actors went away so I could just watch the sunrise in peace.

More teenage angst. I feel like I'm not the target audience.

Thank the lord that's over.

Runs on the Cheeseboard.

We all know that Australia is in the middla ocean in the middla nowhere. A back of beyond, full of the Bush, the Outback, the Bushfire, the Cricket and big mobs of the Whoop-Whoop.

Our country is like one half of a pair of ships that pass in the night, except there isn't any other ship for miles, unless the other ships are lost or have been overrun by pirates who like vegemite on toast and a glass of milo before a night of pillaging on ye high seas.

The remoteness of Australia often gets my goat. You know when you're on a lilo in a pool and you get to the edge and you kick off with your feet to drift to the other side? I wish we could do that with Australia. We could traverse the world! I suppose the sharks would pop an inflatable Australia with their baby teeth in seconds.

One of my main gripes with our remoteness is during The Ashes. If you don't know what The Ashes are then how dare you.

The Ashes are an extremely tiny but important urn that is given to the winner of a series of cricket test matches between Australia and England.

Aussie cricketer Mitchell Marsh tucks
 into a cheeseboard because yum.

Cricket is a religion in Australia. It is an institution founded on the worship of skank slash loveable rogue slash cricket commentator Shane Warne and a strict set of beliefs. Like winning. 

And giddily jumping up and down when this happens. So happy. And then so sad. So sad. All the emotions. And that's just after one ball from a fast bowler, the dramatic divas of the cricketing world. Ours are called Mitchell. It's just easier to remember one name.

If you need me to explain cricket to you it goes like this: two teams, one wins. Although sometimes they play for five days and then shake hands, drink tea, and eat cheese and agree to a draw so no-one wins. It's complicated. 

It's also non-contact. At no time during a game is it acceptable to touch each other, until they all hug and drink tea at the end of a game after agreeing that this sport doesn't always need a winner, sometimes it's just nice to drink tea together. Lovely.

A lot of people think cricket is boring. Well many things are boring to those who unable to grasp the concepts of strategy or thinking.

I think you are probably going to get some enjoyment out of any sport if you attend in person. 

Live elite cricket, for example, highlights the speed of the game, the precision, the skill, the technique, the strategy, the dedication, the persistence. That's all worthy of an admission price, innit?

You may not love it, but you will appreciate something about the skill sets on show. Unless we're talking about the sport of boxing, in which case you may as well save your cash and just hang around the pub and appreciate that no-one has KO'd you yet.

I love my cricket. However at this time of the year - winter in Australia - any cricketing event of import involving my national team is played on the other side of the world, in another time zone, in another galaxy.

But now that this year's Ashes is finished, I need to find a way to get off London's Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and return to a time zone that is vaguely, or, even better, specifically, connected to my every day existence.

Another Mitchell. So confusing.

While I happily exist on London time my home town of Canberra, Australia is not. It is from the future.

GMT was invented in England in the late 17th century to give English cricketers a general idea of when to stop their match for a spot of jam and scones, or cheese and crackers if that's your jam. 

And, to this day, the unruly GMT continues to ruin the sleeping patterns of cricket fans the world over.

A Tale of Two Warring Tribes

I’m off to the big football game on Saturday. The one where they play with oval shaped balls.

Collingwood versus Carlton at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, the World, THE UNIVERSE.  

Should be fun, if I don’t die in the crossfire between two warring tribes.

I’ve made a lame attempt to learn a bit about these tribes, so I can negotiate my way out of a blood-soaked armed combat situation if the need arises.

Back in 1892 (or maybe it was 2189, I forget), a bunch of tribes joined together in Melbourne, Australia to create a new form of entertainment for the masses, to replace the previous form of entertainment that involved watching people die of bubonic plague or something. I don’t know; I was unalive then. 

One of these tribes was known as Collingwood, and everyone dressed in black and white and stripes and nothing else. They all looked very much like human zebras but they’d bust your chops if you said that to their faces so no-one did ever. 

The Collingwood tribe took fortress in a crowded, unhygienic place with historic buildings and, like modern times, most people worked in places and did other things when they weren't doing the work things. 

This tribe grew and grew until it had over 300,000 likes on Facebook which is important because Facebook likes meant everything to everyone in 1892.

The other tribe was known as Carlton, and to this day do much the same thing as the Collingwood tribe with their days, but they have only 225,000 likes, so what even is the point of them. 

Back in the day, both tribes spent much of their free time engaging in hobbies such as breeding rats and suffering from typhoid and cholera and other health related conditions. It was the fun, carefree days.

And since 1892, on one day of the week, both these tribes gather in sports grounds and watch men throw their balls, while they engage in cheering and alcohol drinking and the ensuing violent tussles and then go to bars to discuss all of those things in gratuitous detail. 

Both tribes still obsess day and night about the hunting and gathering of the points earned at these sporting fixtures with the aim of bragging about it the next day at the work places and while they huddle in shops to purchase caffeinated beverages. It’s just what they do.

You're gonna need a bigger big screen, Canberra

Yesterday I went to The Cricket - England vs. the Prime Minister's XI in Canberra.  It was great craic.

Every year the PM asks several of his more flexible Cabinet Ministers, a few Australian international cricketers, and a bunch of up and coming kids, country bumpkins and blue heelers from local cricket teams around the country to attend Cabinet to make very important decisions on which the fate of the country rests, drink some tea, and then finish off the day with a spot of cricket. Some of that is the truth.  What is this, Watergate?

And they all said yes, that would be lovely thank you, so we had a match on our hands, old sport.  And the blue heelers did good. They didn't beat the England cricket team - no less - but they made it to the end almost. And they mostly returned the ball to their opponent after each over, but only when they were given a treat. Kids these days.

I love my cricket. I haven't been to a live game before, unless you count the time my mum took my sister and I to the MCG and we had to listen to the moronic alcoholics in Bay 13 for eight hours.

A lot of females I know think The Cricket is a big bore, which is rich coming from people who think watching 'how to paint roses on your toenails' Youtube videos is a fascinating way to while away the hours. 

Next up in my new busy, busy cricket calendar is the Big Bash League final, which Canberra will host in a few weeks. Muchos looking forward to that.

The fact that the other More Important Cities of Australia are being denied the final warms the cockles of my heart. It really does.

But Canberra is gonna need a bigger big screen.  Perhaps start with one from the 20th century.  While you shouldn't need your binoculars to see replays on the big screen, frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.  All right Mr DeMille, I'm ready for my closeup, but not on that tiny bigscreen.  If you build a new one, they will come.

I'll be back.

What's that Skip?

Lately I have been exercising up a storm, up a mountain, during the night.  It's the latest thing, you know.  I love late twilight in the bush - it's just me, the kangaroos and the 150 or so other people with the exact same gameplan.  I have no idea when exercisement became so fashionable, but fortunately for them all, me and the roos are mostly more than happy to share our mountain.

So last night I went for my exercise roam at nightfall, when it was still a balmy 32 degrees under the shade of a eucalypt tree.  It was still a highly uncivilised weather situation, but I ain’t going for no run at midnight, and I don't do mornings, so what's a girl gonna do?  

On my descent from the mountain I came face-to-hairy-face with a chocolate poodle who I can only describe as a bouncy midget horse.  Abbey was most likely a standard poodle, but she was ginormous, super friendly and was dragging her leash behind her.  I stayed with her for around ten minutes until we both realised she was by herself so we started to walk back down to find her parental units with me holding her leash, unaware that I needed to buckle myself in for the ride. 

Abbey was so thrilled to meet me, or something, that she decided that we had to run really fast down the mountain and we also had to torpedo ourselves randomly and erratically into the bush whenever we laid eyes on a kangaroo, especially when we neared a dangerous cliff face.  These were the rules.  There are about 750 kangaroos per square metre at that time of day, so that was exciting.

We eventually found Abbey’s dad - who was beside himself with stress – while Abbey continued to try and chase everything that bounced.  I reluctantly said goodbye to her while she completely ignored me.  Great, now I think I want a poodle.  I'm a total sucker for dogs.  And kangaroos.  I LOVE  kangaroos.  I could sit and watch them for hours.  Or maybe for ten minutes; they don't really do a great deal.

Just in case a cyber-person-who-isn’t-that-cluey from someplace-that-isn't-Australia reads this post, I don't actually have a pet kangaroo.  No-one in Australia does, except for those weirdos who have pet roos.  Kangaroos are wild and free, plus they really don't care for human interaction at all. They would make a really sucky pet actually, but they are beautiful.

Every now and then my stupid local government decides that it’s best if we have a cull of kangaroos, because apparently you can have too many of them, which is just utter bollocks.  You can never, ever have too many kangaroos.  Humans just have to make way for them, that's all.

These politicised fools never carry out human 'bogan' culls, mind you, and there are definitely too many of them.  The whole idea of a roo cull is disgusting, but a bogan cull seems to be a perfectly acceptable and agreeable way to get rid of feral pests if you ask me.

Snakes and Manners

I love nature; really I do.  It's all natural and stuff and the absolute best thing about venturing into nature is that it is largely devoid of annoying humanoids, probably the same ones who insist on using supermarkets and highways the same freakin' time as I do.  But as much as I love being in nature's aura, I refuse to spend the night with it, because that's what houses are for.

I write of nature because today I saw my seventh hissy snake of the 2012-13 snakey season.  I regularly walk up a mountain - think Everest, and then decrease the enormity just a fraction - so I am accustomed to a world of creepy, Jurassic Park-type creatures and their crazy, creepy ways.  I wonder if there are any type of snake or lizard that all the other snakes and lizards find weird and creepy?  Only us humans, probably.

Me and snakes get along just tickety boo.  When I say tickety boo, I mean we tolerate each other. Like most marriages. Like ebony and ivory, we live togther in perfect harmony. Until we don't.  In actual fact snakes are shit scared of me and I must admit that my heart rate goes through the roof when we encounter each other.  I'm not scared of them as such, but I would be okay if they didn't always throw me a surprise party whenever I showed up on their mountain. That's all. 

It's not like I don't plan ahead and practice good mountain etiquette.  A few years ago I decided that I would warn my snake buddies of my arrival on the mountain by basically stomping along as I walked up the mountain.  It's just good manners.  They are supposed to feel the vibrations and stay the fuck away from me.  These were the rules.  They were good rules.  Everyone knew the rules.  But apparently a new family of snakes have moved into the neighbourhood and don't know about the body corporate. 

Why are there so many snakes? I think they need to implement a one child policy in the reptilian world. Why the hell would anyone want 40 children anyway?  It's not like they get a baby bonus.  Or do they?

That is all. Good day.

FauxTan - Beyond the Pale

Despite what Nicole Kidman says, pale skin is horrible. Although Kidman was married to renowned professional nutjob Tom Cruise for over a decade, so how good can her judgment be anyway?  While I don't generally look to movie star actresses for my health and safety bulletins, Kidman is a great, unintentional role model for the skin cancer cause.

One is not amused by pale skin, the type of which one was distressingly born with. If my lineage had the indecency to thrust pale skin upon me, it could at least have gone full circle and provided it with a translucency that rivalled Nic's.  On the plus side, at night I don't glow like a cheap and tacky christmas tree angel with a fur tree pole stuck up my arse.

Having said that, I’m all for avoiding the sun at all costs (my life is full of inconsistencies. I just roll with it). Despite its life-giving properties, the sun really is a massive pain-in-the-arse, with its key attributes falling more into column A (bad) than column B (good) when it comes to human contact.

The incidence of skin cancer stats freak me out a little bit, so I try not to think about it other than always slipping, slopping and slapping before, during and after sun exposure. It really is a burden but, hey, I don’t want to die from sun. Apparently two in three Australians will be diagnosed with skin cancer by the time they are 70, so that’s just great.

The person who brain-washed women into believing a particular hue of tanned skin is more pleasant than white skin should be slapped hard in the face.  My desire for tanned, brown skin and my terror of sunbaking do not really correlate.

To get around this, for years I have invested in a good fake tan product that I apply myself.  I have never really been that bothered over the years applying this fake tan, but I’ve recently bought a new product – Johnson & Johnson’s Holiday Skin Body Lotion - that alleges to blend a moisturiser with a fake tan, that “gradually builds a beautiful, light tan”, which is proving to be a complete annoyance.

Of course I was sucked in by this nonsense, and I'm sure it works a treat, but here’s my beef. This product says it provides “24 hour moisturisation”, but also says to “avoid contact with clothes and other items until the lotion is fully absorbed”. So if it takes 24 hours to “fully absorb”, when am I supposed to sleep? It would be helpful if the big cheese of this multinational had used the product before marketing it to millions of women who now only get to sleep in winter.

Ruinous Rats and Drowning Swimmers

It seems the long-awaited (in that we've been waiting eons and eons) NBN rollout is been sabotaged by jaded and ravenous rats in Darling Downs.  I have no idea where Darling Downs is, nor do I especially care, but I assume it is in some inaccessible part of Australia where the NBN will fail to work properly anyway.

I think perhaps the Gillard Government could provide a rat welfare program for vermin that are just scraping by on the poverty line. Or at the very least allow them to dodge filing a tax return in 2012-13.

Perhaps the government could also administer some type of rat fulfilment scheme, where rat youth could while away their days playing free pokies and developing an alcohol or nicotine addiction rather than spending their time destroying the somewhat futile government infrastructure. There is no evidence that I know of that suggests rats suffer from gambling dependence, so I'm sure a program of this nature has some legs.

Speaking of rats, two swimmers that were chosen for the Australian Olympic team are watching their careers go down the gurgler. The two boys - I don't know their names, and don't really care, and couldn't really be bothered Googling them or reading their names in the attached article to find out - that will carve up the dirty, grubby, swampy Thames during the Games in London in July have found themselves in sticky festering septic water again, thanks to the fact that they are both total dickheads.

I think one of them broke someone's jaw once and the other lied about something or something. It seems to me that if the people who pay for your togs and your jetsetting around the globe already hate you it is perhaps best to not give them any more ammunition, like access to photos on Twitter of you posing with guns and ammunition. 

But the boys did just that, most likely because they are not terribly smart; I suppose you don't have to be to pursue a black line up and down a pool. I expect the left wing media and Swimming Australia wouldn't have blinked an eyelid if the boys had been embracing a javelin, for example, which is, however, also a nifty weapon to be clutching if you are suddenly overtaken with the psychotic predisposition.

But guns, woah, guns are dangerous. Leftwingers (ie. much of the media) are terrified of guns.  They start  hyperventilating when anyone holds a gun: "Aghhh! It's a serial killer! We're all gonna die!"  It really is anyone's guess why they allow coverage of the swimming at the Olympics in that case, because kids drown in pools all the time. And doing backflips on a thin mattress and coining it gymnastics isn't the best idea for your posture.  And sprinting over hurdles is just a wacky brainchild.

I am going to Florida shortly, home sweet home of redneck alligators and Disney World, and I think it is an ideal location and an opportune time for me to buy a handgun. Just because you can.  I don't mean at Disney*, I mean at Wallmart. I’ve always wanted to go to Wallmart. 

And then I can post some snaps on Facebook with my new toy. One of my favourite pastimes is watching leftwingers get so agitated that their heads spin around until they explode, so what better grounds do I need?  And then I could get labelled a pro-gun extremist - ie, the Age's name for anyone who disagrees with the Age on gun control.

Anti-gun groups and the nutty left wing media windbags start screaming like banshees about banning guns altogether whenever they hear the word. They seem to think the crime rate would simply disappear if guns didn’t exist. The assumption that everyone would start shooting everyone if everyone had a gun is absurd. And the assumption that criminals would forget about murdering, raping and pillaging society if there were no guns is also idiotic.

The left wing media should be targeting Federal judges, who often release serious criminals back onto the streets, believing they can be rehabilitated. They believe murderers are basically good people except for their tendency to sometimes kill people.

* Just kidding Disney.  Why would you sell handguns? What I mean is please don't sue me.

Mud, Sweat and Tears

I am currently rereading Bear Grylls autobiography - Mud, Sweat and Tears, which is a personal account of the real-life GI Joe's life adventures thus far.  While Grylls honourably discharged himself from the British Special Forces in his early twenties due to injury, he delayed his autobiographical career until he had achieved quite a few more amazing feats.

Which is preferable to many of the celebrity autobiographies we are subjected to these days, written by some journalist who is trying to make a name for themselves in the publishing industry and thinks ghost writing the life story of a boring model / actor / tree humanitarian who starred in a kid’s game show that was axed after two shows and then got their big break on Neighbours is the best way to go.

As it turns out, Grylls had already penned eleven books, and has thrived in achieving numerous completely insane feats that defy human ability, so kudos to the big fella.

Mud, Sweat and Tears describes the gruelling training Grylls underwent to be chosen for the British SAS. He leaves no stone unturned, give or take some names, details, places and SAS operational procedures that cannot be released for security reasons.

I can't think of a better word to describe the selection process than gruelling, although this term doesn't even come close to a fair and appropriate account of the intensity of the program.

I love the positive messages that are ingrained in military training; camaraderie, skill, humility, endurance and character. Technically parents should be ingraining these messages into their kids, but what do I know.  I guess many parents didn't get the memo, or maybe it's just the places I frequent that are replete with bastard children causing all manner of chaos.

Special Forces are renown for their ruthless efficiency and professionalism, and anyone wanting to join them has to be mentally and physically unflappable and resilient, as the selection process ensures that only the soldiers with a lotta ticker make the cut.

These soldiers are deployed to locations and situations that the rest of us don't even want to imagine. And they somehow endure it, because they have evidently been exposed to awful, worst case scenarios in the selection process and training procedures, which makes the stories in Australia's military history of inexperienced kids heading off to war all the more heart-breaking.  My dad went to war when he was too young. They were all far too young backin the day. But it is what it is.

A few years ago through my family history I found out about 21-year-old Alfred Ernest Tarrant, who was sent to Gallipoli.  He wasn't a soldier, he was a school teacher.  None of them were soldiers; they were just young men.

Tarrant's 12th Battalion was part of a landing party that arrived at Anzac Cove at 04:30 on 25 April 1915.  He survived. His Battalion fought in the bloody Battle of Lone Pine in August and Tarrant was killed in action at Shrapnel Gulley on 11 November 1915, just weeks before the Anzacs were evacuated. He is buried in the Shell Green Cemetery in Gallipoli, Turkey. 

I write of this because it’s ANZAC Day, and it’s important to be thinking about and commerating and never forgetting all those men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice for us.  We all try to understand what those kids who went to war experienced, and what all the men and women who go to war endure; but we’ll never understand. What we can do is never forget it.

Ned Kelly's Chai Latte

I'm not very big on road trips.  Ever since I can remember, I have been a lean, green queasy machine when it comes to travelling shotgun or as a backseat driver in roadgoing vehicles over long distances.  I'm a little better than I used to be, but I still prefer to be hurtled through the air via one of Qantas' metal tubes than drive to far flung destinations.

Having said that, I have just travelled in a car from Canberra to Melbourne and back again, which amounted to about 14 hours of mild nausea.  The reason for this insanity was because I was visiting people in country Victoria with some family members.  When I say country Victoria, I mean the outer suburbs of Melbourne.  

The trip from Canberra to Melbourne is horrendously boring, as it is throughout much of regional Australia.  In addition to my boredom and queasiness, this journey was made worse by my inability to sit still for more than five minutes. 

It has been years and years since I drove through Ned Kelly country in Glenrowan in Victoria.  There is a sign that advises unsuspecting tourists that Australia's favourite serial cop killer was born in the area and that there is a shrine in the place of his Last Stand, where he gave the police some lip and refused to get into the back of a paddywagon while yelling 'don't you know who I am?!'  Unfortunately for Ned, the sign shows a man flingin' his pistols like he was the missing Wiggle in the silver skivvy.

I bet it wouldn't have been his Last Stand if he had been in possession of a Navman or a Navsheila.  "You. Are. Entering. A. Trap!  Turn. Right. Now! Turn. Right. Now!" 

The Navman we were using was so old that it possibly could have been from Kelly's era.  If you don't update the maps, your SatNav is just a clueless, annoying British woman.  I wonder how Big Ned navigated his way around the place anyway?  Did the Kelly Gang have walkie talkies? Did he do what tourists do when their Navmans aren't working and just follow the big M's?  Why doesn't Wikipedia give me the answers I really want?

McDonald's should do a McNavman, given that Australians just travel from Macca's to Macca's anyway when they travel distances.  I wonder what type of coffee Ned would have fancied from McCafe?  Perhaps a skinny, half-strength chai latte.  Or maybe he would have chosen something slightly more bushrangery.  I can certainly imagine him popping in for a McHappy meal during a hard day of gruelling bushranging activities.

At least a road trip through country Victoria would have been vaguely interesting in 1870, with a high possibility of being mugged by a horse-bound criminal with a tin bucket on his head.  Rather than contradictory nanny state signs screaming at me to "Rest NOW!" and "Micronaps KILL!" on the same stretch of road, country folk back in the day probably would have had "Watch out for bushrangers for the next 20 kilometres" or some such.

Kelly has been glorified in the media over the years as a bit of a rockstar, but, in reality, he is one of those blokes who robbed a 7-Eleven, shot the sheriff and ended up on Crime Stoppers.   I'm guessing he wasn't that bright, given that he wore a tin can on his head.

I didn't go to Kelly's last shootout lookout, because I figured it had been turned into a tourist trap courtesy of a McDonald's sponsorship or a contract with the Wiggles.  Maybe I'll check it out with my supersonic binoculars the next time I'm soaring over country Victoria on a jet plane.

My mum tells me that she and her friends used to ride their bikes up these mountain ranges back in the day for something to do and they would steal oranges when they got to the top for something else to do. This is how you solve the so-called obesity epidemic.  Build more bikes and plant more mountain ranges and orange trees. Alternatively, monitor what your kids eat and kick them outside to the backyard occasionally.

Kokoda

Over the last few days, I have been reading Kokoda, Peter Fitzsimons’ epic narrative of the battle to hold Australian territory in Papua New Guinea in 1942.  I am ashamed to say that my knowledge of the battle those young men faced was rather limited a few days ago. I knew they had been incredibly courageous in the face of great adversity, but I had no idea the extent of their courage and no idea of the degree of their adversity.

The book made me so proud, and also made me laugh, and cry, and, most importantly, explained to me, in great detail, what those men did for Australia. Heroic barely begins to describe the type of diggers that fought, and are still fighting, for our country. And our soldiers haven’t changed; they just have better management (anyone but Macarthur is better), and access to resources, food and ammunition these days.

This afternoon I went for a walk around the mean streets of my locale and reflected on the book so far. Without any exaggeration, our country is what it is today in no small part due to the actions of those men, and all the other soldiers who have fought and died for this country.

During my walk, right on cue, a carload of teenage hoodlums catcalled me while hooning through the neighbourhood, like a bunch of wannabe Michael Schumacher’s without the car, talent or Monaco oceanview apartment.  In that moment, I thought that perhaps it would be best if they drove straight to the closest Defence recruitment centre they could find, so these young idiots could learn a bit of discipline and respect and how not to be an annoying Gen Y waste of space.  If anyone can learn them those skills, the Army can.

The problem for these misdirected youth is that the courageous choose to fight for their country. I know that’s probably a little unfair to the brain dead morons in their stupid suped up cars, and I know that times were different back then, but it doesn’t change the way I feel about it.

A family member recently told me that a distant relative died on the shores of Gallipoli. He was just 22-years old. I like to think that I would do anything to defend my country and my values, but could I voluntarily take up arms and go fight in a war for her?  In my eyes, this decision, this choice, makes soldiers all the more heroic.

West Coast sojourn

I've just returned from a work junket trip to Perth to attend a conference.  It's hard to believe that you travel for five hours (or six if you fly via Sydney for some unfathomable reason) and are still in Australia, albeit right at the end of it.  The flight over was okay.  Just the usual stuff; flight attendants constantly interrupting my reading of my London Walks book by speaking unintelligibly into a distorted PA system between opening cans of diet coke.  Did you know that the Thames is one of the cleanest urban waterways?  It's true; because it's tidal. 

My taxi driver from the airport gave me an entire rundown of everything I needed to know, including things I have never cared to know, about Western Australia.  Topics covered on the 20 or so minute drive to the city included miners, the mining boom, shark attacks, tourist attractions, town planning, housing, etc etc.  As a result, I began a lot of sentences that week with, "My taxi driver said...."

Perth is nice. And clean.  But I suspect the reason they sweep the streets several times a day has less to do with community spirit and more to do with the fact that Her Majesty the Queen is making her way out west very shortly to open the exceedingly boring and generally pointless CHOGM conference, where Commonwealth leaders take tea with each other and discuss light and fluffy topics rather than things that actually matter.

I'm sure the HM has an ADF person with her at all times during her Australian visits who points out things of interest to nobody her that will distract her looking down a certain street, for example, that could do with a bit of a spruce up.


I walked around Perth city on my second night there with a work colleague and commented that it seemed like a 'fake city', because there weren't any homeless people or irritating out-of-control youth prowling the city streets.  Perhaps they were shipped to a shittier part of town prior to the arrival of world leaders in the next few weeks.

Apart from the days spent at my work conference, which amounted to the most thrilling days of my life, I visited Kings Park - an area overlooking the city, and went out on a speedboat in Fremantle Harbour, where I got doused with sea water over and over again, but it was terrific fun.  A trip to Fremantle Prison - which closed in 1991 - highlighted the need to continue my current pattern of not breaking the law in my everyday activities.

Queanbeyan Quartier français

The French Quarter, Queanbeyan. On exquisite April mornings in Le Dodsworth Hauteurs, I like to ride my bicycle into la ville de Queanbeyan, taking in the impossible tranquillité of the hurlement (yell) of cockatoos and the subtle répercussions of the idiots locaux automobiles, as they prepare to head into town for a petit pisser du jour.

On my ride, I take in the délicieux scents of freshly cut herbs, foie gras, bird excrement and other various non spécifié odours, and I snort in admirablement at other feisty smells as I near the l'avenue de fromage moisi et graisse (avenue of moldy cheese and grease). The dewy dawn air blanchits my breathe as I bid my bonjours to a local mademoiselle, who wanders the gouttière (gutter) collecting various fresh produce from the local boite (trash) dotted along the pittoresque route on the le boulevard de bogans.

“Bonjour Mademoiselle!”, I wave frantically while flicking my tasselled handlebar bell.

“F*%#@ off”, she grunts.

I have always loved La Queanbeyan. It reminds me of a grande country town, with friendly human visages and petit amigos everywhere you go.

While the monsoirs like to while away their day in the gaztrillion pubs, many of them remain in le populaire establishments until late in the evening; preferring to walk home along the queanbeyan rivière at the fraiche dawn, away from the harsh polluer des joueurs (foul players), or get a lift in the chariot de paddywagons.

I whizzed onto the bustling Grand Rond (big roundabout) on the Route du Bungendore, chiming my bell and directing traffic on the circle de suicide.

“GET OFF THE ROAD YOU STUPID F%#@!!!”, says one of locals, greeting me in the usual quoi que manner.

“Oh yes, good day to you, monsieur!”, I said, waving back.

The townsfolk and I would exchange pleasantries all day if we could.  I love the hustle and bustle of this part of the Secteur Obèse (fat quarter), with its shiny, riche asphalte surface and boulevards bustling with idiots de village and classe ouvrière, heading off to collect their welfare profites from sécurité sociale and participer in some early afternoon combat de pub.

I park my bike on the la maison de vélo (home of bike) and enter the razzle éblouit of the l'arc d'or (arch of golden) into the jaune and rouge brick building that houses the la maison de hamburgers, owned by the famous cuisinier Monsieur McDonald.

I enquire about the fresh products of the day to the young monsieur behind the compteur, with an eye for a de graine de sesame seed (bread roll) or lasagnes d'escargot or les pommes de terre ont cuisiné dans le vin with 12 herbes secrètes (potatoes cooked in wine with 28 secret herbs).

“Fresh? Um, the sweet and sour sauce packets arrived in a box yesterday?”, monsieur says to my delight.

“Oh, lovely, may I take ten please?”

“Whatever.”

Full of de joie after my brisk and savoure purchases, I positively skip out the l'arc d'or and allow the succulent l'odours de village to direct me to my next destination on the l'avenue de pépites (avenue of nuggets).

I often leave the village with a grand trolley brimming with l'homme a fait (man-made) fresh fruit and veg and various delicat knickerknackers that I don’t need or want, but provide équilibre in my trolley and ensure I will look tres faux and pertinent yet blasé on my journey back to the grand maison.

The Queanbeyan peace accord

So, I'm back in Queanbeyan territory, where the men have mild mental retardation and the women are all related.  Literally, just one big, happy family.  I first moved to struggle town back in 2005 - a move inspired by the wildly successful advertising campaign  - "city benefits, country living". In reality, it's more like "welfare benefits, deadshits live here".  I moved out of Queanbeyan two years ago when the realtor sold the house I was renting without asking me if I wanted to buy.

LJ Hooker Queanbeyan - you're the best.  No, you are; you're the best at screwing your tenants over.  Nobody does it better.  And now I am back here for two weeks housesitting, in the house I used to live in.  Yes, that's unusual, but the house is next door to my sister's, so it's not that weird.  And the new owner is lovely, so it's all good.

Back in the complex, and it doesn't feel like I ever lived here previously; it feels like a completely different space, which is a little odd really.  Although, I do keep doing things subconsiously that I used to do - like reaching for a towel on a hook that doesn't exist anymore.  The furniture is different, and nothing feels the same, which is good I suppose, because I was sad to move on.

I am here looking after a neurotic cat called Cat, more formally known as Neurosis, but thankfully she answers to Cat, as it would be awkward yelling "Neurosis!" into the night.  She is a rescue cat; ie. suffering from a range of psychological disorders, and she is rather disgusted that I am in her space.  Cat and I agreed on certain things at first - like I was to leave the room when she sauntered through, and I was not to make eye contact with her.  EVER.  However, I have been here for five days and she is coming around to me, bless her little white sock paws.  And she really is so thoughtful.  I checked my diary the other day and she had added a new entry - "clean my litter box".  So very thoughtful.

There is a stray cat called Dusty that comes around for food.  He is a gorgeous little cat, and I'm told he has a home, but I believe he has the worst owners in the world, because Dusty sleeps outside this house, eats outside this house, and probably shits outside this house.  I have now de-wormed him, so maybe the poor little bugger won't be so hungry all the time.  

This is Daisy.
Her identity is protected.

And my sister has two cats - Daisy and Meg - so relations seem to be a little frosty here in Catland.  To be honest, things are less frosty in the Middle East when it comes to keeping the peace.  Cats really need to learn to get over things and stop being so psychotic and obsessive.  Muslim extremists should also take heed: get over your clan shit and stop ruining the world for everyone else.  And stop hijacking our media to garner support for your insane ideologies.  Our media is reserved for Paris Hilton and the Australian Cricket Team.   

This afternoon, when three of the cats were staring each other down, I thought it was such a beautiful day for the beginnings of a new peace road map for the complex.  So I started to go all Ban Ki-moon on them, but relations soured when Daisy decided to scrap her cease-fire and started hissing at everyone else.  You only need one Gaddafi to ruin everything.  So then I went all-Obama on them, and simply denounced the violence and walked back into my nice, cushy, ivory tower oval office where I didn't need to deal with all the bad things in the world.