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Musing on Sydney's news
22 December 2006
2006 Report Card. Verdict: Hot stuff!
Another year passes and I have been increasingly remiss in updating this site. If you've read my Quitting Smoking Blog, from December 2005 to February 2006, you will know that I had my hands full with Dad for a while. Thankfully he's back to his obnoxious, domineering self - the Dad we all know and love. Still, he's taken the opportunity to introduce me to Da Family Business and I'm starting to feel like Michael Corleone in drag.
The turning point for him was when the doctor ordered him to play tennis again (he'd stopped because he thought he was no good any more) and his health and state of mind improved dramatically. Of course, we'd all been suggesting this to him this for ages but, as a conservative, the authority of a doctor carries more weight for him than mere family.
Of course, lots of us have been telling George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard for years that the Iraq invasion was insane, yet only Tony has admitted that it was a complete and total cock-up. The brilliance of the Coalition's Iraq strategy was highlighted by the resultant rise of Iran's nucular [sic] program, which of course elicited some familiar sabre rattling from foreign policy genius, Dubya. The US government's other genius, Donald Rumsfeld, finally fell on his sword after another year of wild sectarian violence in Iraq. It's a shame Borat didn't get to interview him before he left. I'm sure there would have been some gems.
Still, it was great to see the Daffy Duck President become a Lame Duck in the mid-term elections. Meanwhile, at home Johnny managed to dodge enough Iraq and AWB bullets to see off Big Kim Beazley yet again, replaced by the supposed 'Dream Team', Kevvie Rudd and Julia Gillard. Kevvie, alas, is a god-botherer, as if we didn't already have enough of the blighters in Parliament.
Whatever, what I think doesn't matter, even if I am now 2/3rds of the way through a post-grad certificate which will see this unlettered old cow transformed into a lettered old cow. Personally, I'd rather be lattéd.
Still, I have learnt one important thing from the course; that original work is punished by way of rotten marks and regurgitation of course material is rewarded with Distinctions and HDs. As a hitherto unlettered swine, impressed by the mystique of university, I thought uni work would be about advanced thought rather than unthinking acquiescence. Silly me.
Speaking of cerebral happenings, The Wiggles lost Greg to illness. However, the Bananas in Pyjamas suddenly became hot property after Cyclone Larry shredded our main banana farms. Suddenly Eau De Banana was more expensive than a 100ml bottle of Chanel! I, and many others, stopped eating bananas. Maybe we are now suffering from a national vitamin B deficiency, which may explain the extraordinary neuroticism that seems to have crept into Australian life, especially when the word 'Muslim' is mentioned.
Talking of bananas, we all went bananas when Australia staggered into the second round of the World Cup. However, as the tournament progressed, I got confused because it started looking like the Olympics diving competition after the first round. The evil Italian villain, Grosso, did a dive that would have warmed Greg Lugarno's heart after a clumsy but innocuous challenge by the spunky Lucas Neill in the last minute of our match with the eventual champs (Zidane's famous headbutt notwithstanding). Off we went, crying "we wuz robbed!". Can you imagine the hate mail if Grosso was a Muslim!
But it was great to see sport once again mirroring life. I've long banged on about the fact that justice doesn't exist, except as a happy accident, and this was just one more tiny example. By the same token, that somewhat dumb and naive thrill seeker and soldier of fortune, David Hicks, seems to be getting his "justice"—being sent slowly mad in Guantanamo Bay without trial.
It bugs me that we're not the good guys any more. Actually, it bugs me that there don't seem to be any "good guys" in a national sense any more. It also bugs me that finding deep compatibility and long-term commitment from a good guy seems as elusive to me as justice. I mean, bed buddies are all very fine, but not that fine.
That part of my life unexpectedly intersected with tennis mid-year and my realisation that, at my Methuselah-esque age the adage "if you don't use it, you lose it" lead me back to regular enthusiastic play with furry balls. My brief flirtation with comp tennis was thwarted by too many tantrums from over-serious opponents, so I'm sticking to social play. It seems that the increasingly disproportionate seriousness of professional sport is infecting weekend sportspeople (not to mention psycho parents shouting at their kids to "kill" the opposition). In the end, it is just playing with balls. Some would call me unAustralian for this. but then again, everyone and everything is unAustralian these days, including Australia itself.
2006 will be also remembered as the year that poor old Pluto was demoted by Walt Disney and is no longer considered to be a planet (he maintains his cartoon dog status, however, along with such luminaries such as Goofy, Snoopy and Scooby Doo). The other major dwarf star, UB313, is now called "Eris" (it was originally to be called 'Erin' after the discoverer's daughter, but after the secretary made a typo they all went 'whatthefuck' and went for drinkies at the Solar Bar).
Pluto's demotion created outrage in some circles. I'm not too happy about it myself. Think of all those books that will need to be destroyed and reprinted! Can we afford to keep wasting resources in the year that our ostrich politicians started pulling their heads out of the environmental sand and acknowledged that global warming really is happening? A few reports and ongoing drought seems to have finally gotten the message through. Never mind that they have been told about this for decades. Like my Dad, it seems that unless you have 'credentials', you don't have a voice. Welcome to the Noughties ...
Now it seems that a lot of people are touting nucular [sic] energy as the way to go to reduce the greenhouse effect. At this rate one day we will be able to to watch the destruction of Earth on YouTube (taken over by the now-ubiquitous Google). Rainwater tanks and solar energy continue to be the elephants in the room that keep being ignored. Why would we invest in a hugely expensive technology that could be superceded at any time and produces hugely toxic waste? Computers were once room sized. Now they are pocket sized. Is there any reason why solar cells can't go the same way?
Ironically, as we (arguably) watch the decay of civilisation as we know it, we can at least also watch the birth of the universe; since some of the early moments of the universe's formation were recently captured on infra-red camera by scientists. The reasoning is that the further we look out into space, the further back in time we go (space-time really does my head in). The universe's baby photos look a bit like posterised vectorisations, but they are thankfully quite colourful. I'd hate to think that we started existence in dull monochrome.
Also colourful was our Shane—Warnie—who has just retired from text messaging ... or was it cricket? Whatever, he's not doing something any more. Shane's bowling coach said that his heavy workload, resulting in severe RSI of his thumbs, may have had something to do with his premature ejectulation from the game. Whatever, I refuse to make any jokes about 'bowling a maiden over'. After all, any sensible maiden would go for Lucus Neill or John Aloisi over Shane.
Another colourful character to pull up stumps was our Thorpedo, who has cut and run from black line fever. This would be been a terrible loss if he had not been such a spoilsport by wearing that frustrating cover-all swimming cossie. Ian, with his size 17 flappers tends to make one wonder about the supposed correlative relationship between shoe size and that of a man's pride and joy.
While we're on the subject of pride and joy (well, pride anyway), MySpace, has been touted as a symptom of the obsessive "Me Generation" and people's fame-lust and their concomitant loss of interest in privacy.
Trouble is, I can't remember a time when teenagers ever valued privacy over notoriety, apart from desperately hiding from their parents the fact that they are doing exactly what their parents did at their age. Still, all this furious blogging does create an identity fraud risk, so my advice to MySpacers is to bullshit as much as possible. (Oops, they're already doing that).
Whatever, there's been so much bullshit floating around (even sometimes ellegedly on Wikipedia) that a little more can't hurt. But let's face it, if the government can call a workplace program which straightjackets workers 'WorkChoices', then I can call myself anything I like. In fact, I think I'll call myself Elle Macpherson and no-one—and I mean no-one—can stop me HOOHAHAHAHOOHOOHAHAHA!! *cough cough*
You know, life in 2006 has been living ... Elle. Did someone forget the ... Elle-phant in the room? It seems I am ... Elle bent on squeezing all I can out of this lame pun.
Someone please Elle-p me!
As you can see, I have taken my own advice about bullshit. Still, as this troubled, turbulent year of 2006 draws to a close, it leaves us with a final, salient question—if the north pole melts will Santa still be able to do his job? And if he moves operations to the South Pole, does that mean we'll get our presents in Australia sooner?
Merry everything, my (possibly non-existent) readers
Grea xx
PS update: James Brown died on Xmas day—a totally funked up situation :(
Oh, talking of deaths, I had neglected to mention the deaths of Colin Thiele, Australian author of books about rural life, Steve Irwin the crocodile hunter (more accurately, a crocodile landlord) and Peter Brock, racing car driver. While the media increasingly eulogises dead celebrities almost to the point of cononisation, it would be nice if we could also spare a thought for the less newsworthy people who fell off the perch in 2006.
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