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).

What is with the cheer squad?

I got the rugby league football finals fever. Night fever, night fever… don’t sue me Bee Gees.

Symptoms of the strain of finals fever that I have contracted include feeling hot and sweaty, shivering, and shamelessly jumping on the bandwagon and riding it all the way to the stadium, presumably stealing a real fan’s ticket along the way.

Well it pays to hold onto some of your dole payment and give it to Ticketek rather than to Dan Murphy, doesn't it. Yep, first stereotype - there will be more. The thing with stereotypes is it’s not allowed to be funny unless it is being acted out by someone who is a member of the group being stereotyped, so now I'm just a monster.

 
I went to the Canberra Raiders versus Penrith Panthers final at GIO Stadium last night. It was a great night’s entertainment, and the league fans were nowhere near as bad as union supporters (or just about anyone else) make them out to be. Maybe I just Steve Bradbury’d my way through it all. I don’t know.

I’m not technically a Raider’s enthusiast. I have heard of them, I’m from the same city as them and I recognise the worth of all the shades of green - accept not really at all the Raider’s preferred shade of green - so we have a lot in common right off the boot.

Every team in the NRL has a cheer squad. They are the Shiny Things. They are designed to distract you from all the fist fights, drive-by shootings, traffic violations and other misdemeanours in your seating location. The Shiny Things are most excellent at stereotyping themselves, which saves everyone else from doing it. 

I’m quite sure the Penrith Panther cheer squad would heartily agree that the respectability of the females on the squad would improve immeasurably if they didn’t wear black latex dominatrix outfits. I mean, REALLY? Is that a good choice??

Unexpectedly, I didn’t take issue with Canberra’s Shiny Things, presumably because they weren’t prancing around in front of children while radiating sadomasochism. Also they seemed to have modelled themselves on Sandy’s cheerleader outfit in Grease, and who would be opposed to the fresh-faced innuendo of that icon.

When the players ran out onto the field at the start of the game there were flames thrown into the air. Everyone loves flames being chucked around everywhere. It’s so captivating and dangerous. Except it’s not. It’s a really precarious situation. Especially when the Shiny Things could have gone up flames with their synthetic hair extensions flapping in the wind. I suppose it would have kept us supporters at a fairly moderate temperature for a while during a typically fickle spring/winter (sprinter) evening.

The Shiny Things could distract you from a plane nose diving into the middle of the field. They stand and stare at the crowd, for ages, waving their pom poms and exposing elaborate fake smiles with nary an awkward twitch. It’s classic sociopathy, and leads me to wonder whether somewhere inside them lurks the capacity to suck someone’s brains out with a straw. 

The P.A. system regularly bosses everyone to report anti-social behaviour to a special anti-social hotline. Um, I'm gonna go with the cheerleaders behaviour? 

It’s often kind of hard to tell the difference between anti-social behaviour and what is just normal to some people. A guy near me was screaming and caterwauling for his team. Most people in and around this sport seem to be anti-social, and also ideally equipped with a tattoo advertising either their toughness or their promiscuity. 

I'm not sure the Terms of Reference for anti-social behaviour in this context but it seems to be a pretty loose sliding scale.

So, anyway, 'my' team won. Go Raiders!

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.

Emergency Bogan Plan

I was sitting at the traffic lights today, minding my own business, as much as I ever mind my own business, when a rogue teenage hooligan (is there really any other type of teenager) ran from behind my car toward the car in front, apparently engaging in some type of ritualistic car musical chairs at the traffic lights.  As you do.  And it occurred to me that I really was not prepared for a potential carjacking.  It happens, you know.

Like any self-respecting girl-about-town or femme fatale serial killer, I tend to carry a bunch of things in my car that can be used as weapons, just in case one of life's bogans decide to Toyota-jack my little red car, channel their delusional road rage in my direction, or break-in to tag their name in the dust on my dashboard.  The latter is a bit of a stretch; how many bogans know how to spell their own name?

I've carried a concealed hockey stick under my passenger seat for years - and an old blood-stained hockey ball - for security and, let me tell you, I sure as heck know how to use them.  I played high school girl's hockey, during high school girl's hockey's Underbelly years, and I often practiced selective hearing when it came to the referee's whistle. 

So it has been brought to my attention that I might need to get in some practice of my emergency bogan plan, which will involve whipping out my hockey death stick and shoving it into the adam's apple of a six-foot tall hypothetical bogan with four teeth and a brown mullet who is standing at my window yelling random, unintelligble bogan slogans at me.

I think I will need to rehearse this.  At the traffic lights.  In peak hour.  You can never be too careful about which direction the loonies are going to come from.  Safety before sanity, I always say.  I might pop over to bogan-filled Charnwood to see if there are any volunteers to stand-in as the lone carhacker/jacker.  I can't see how that plan can go wrong.

I've recently added a jar of Aldi's Bockwurst to my collection of vehicular self-defence weapons.  Yes, I have some German sausage in a jar, in my car.  I found it rolling and carouseling under the driver's seat.  I think someone gave it to me ages ago.  It may save my life one day.  One can apparently boil them in five minutes for eating purposes, or chuck them at the very temple of boganism, for the purpose of serving the local community. You're welcome, Canberra.

Bogan Vista

I am currently babysitting a house while its owners are skylarking around the countryside. Babysitting a house is much more pleasurable than babysitting an actual baby, given that this place has yet to poo its nappy twenty times a day, scream for hours at nothing in particular and the plants don’t vomit water onto my shoulder after feeding time. Well, so far so good anyway.

The house has a beautiful deck out the back that I completely intended on using as a backdrop for my plethora of reading material that I have insisted on reading over the Christmas break. Which would all be well and good if the neighbours over the back fence weren’t complete bogans who, I have decided, must be avoided at all costs. Why is it that bogans can’t seem to do anything quietly?

I don’t like the fact that bogans exist at all let alone having to converse with them about bogan subject matter that are of no consequence to me and my books. If I wanted to talk I wouldn’t be reading a book, would I? I wish they would take their bogan music and bogan motorbikes and general bogan hysteria and buzz off.

Thus, I am currently sitting at the gorgeous teak (or some other type of glamourous wood) dining room table, which sits just moments away from the alluring, inaccessible back deck, with its mountainous views, if you can overlook the more immediate bogan-inspired vista. Fortunately there is a lovely cool breeze coming off the mountains which sates my desire to be outside communing which nature.

Bogan gingerbread housing estates

It is widely acknowledged that I am somewhat obsessed with all things Christmassy, but there is one thing that really gets my goat.  Gingerbread.  There's nothing like the smell of fresh gingerbread cooking in the oven.  It's been over twenty years since I last ate gingerbread, when I was suffering from glandular fever and hepatitis-A, and I must say the aroma still makes me want to run and barf into the nearest garbage bin.

The odour is utterly, utterly repugnant to me.  You may smell sweet, sweet candy; I smell warmed up old garbage bags full of vanilla and cinnamonny grossness with a hint of burnt hair.  I don't much care for the taste either.



For some unfathomable reason, people who like to rampantly bake things think it's a super idea to make mini-me houses from gingerbread and other confectionery at Christmas time.  I call this out as a stupid tradition. 

Although this dirty little baking activity would improve immeasurably in my eyes if they instead created bogan housing estates and the like, rather than pretty stand-alones in the suburbs.  Everyone knows the 'burbs are densely populated with middle-class bogans and not marshmellow men with carob bud garden beds.  Let's keep it real, Martha Stewart wannabes.

Given the tremendously traumatic experience faced by those two young hoodlums, Hansel and Gretel, you'd think that baking edible housing estates would be discouraged, and you'd think their self-inflicted tale of terror would be used as an example to show the kiddies that eating apartment blocks will make you fat.  The timely message is right there, ready to be rammed down the throats of those little cake overeaters.  Educating kids on obesity; you're doing it wrong, Federal Government. 

The Christmassy lollies that have me in a dither at the moment are Cadbury's Electrical Chocolates, which contain insulated conductors that are used to produce a charge through your brain when you chew them.  Totally true story; I wouldn't make this up.  Cadbury calls them Magical Elves, but I like my name better.  The current batch have a particularly high wattage due to what Cadbury determines as 'popping candy', but I think they are wrong and it is due to some super duper electrical wiring.  



I'm not letting this wattage thing go, Cadbury, so it's best you come clean on your sugary secrets.  It's probably a bit negligent of me to discuss these electric powered chocolates, given that Cadbury has copyright on magical elves, the ellipse device, the colour purple and probably the word purple for all I know.  I'm like the Julian Assange of the confectionery world.  I better watch my back or I'll be kidnapped by gingerbread men in licorice balaclavas.  

And while we're on the subject of confectionery, I'd like to make a comment or two on Cadbury's lack of attention to detail when making their Flakes.  I have been one of their clients for many a year; indeed I imagine my purchases of their products have put some of their CEOs children through years of private school education.  But I to say that my disappointment - my DISMAY! - in their packaging has boiled to the surface.  The Flake bits FALL OUT IN MY HAND!!!  They are making my life a misery.  Can't they teach the people in their factories to seal the foil properly?  How hard can it be?



You callin' me a fackin bogan aye?
Gingerbread this, aye!