$10 Chardy

I probably should add that I watched Alfie while drinking a bottle of rather cheap wine - a fact that might explain a few of the confusing thematic leaps of the last two posts.

American booty

The previous post made me realise that 'the film of the 1990s', American Beauty, will suffer the same fate as Alfie. American Beauty is the Alfie of our time.

If you watch AB now, you'll see how it's one of those films that's already dated appallingly. Just think: when we were teenagers, we cared about the disintegration of Kevin Spacey's marriage. He is JUST like Alfie. Mark my words: the film will turn up in the 'well made Hollywood Bombs of the 90s' series - just beside cutthroat island.

What's THAT all about?

I just finished watching 'Alfie' with Michael Caine, one of my favourite movie stars, in the genuine sense of the word - i.e. someone with such a magnetic personality that you become obsessed with them against your will. e.g. Ben Kingsley isn't a movie star, he's an actor, while Michael Caine isn't really an actor (zero range) but he IS a movie star.

Anyway, 'Alfie' is about a hansome chap, who, due to a combination of looks & confidence, is able to have sex with lots of beautiful (& also homely) women. Hurray, you might say - but Alfie's life is as empty & desperate as yours or mine, perhaps even more!

Unfortunately, Alfie is a nasty, misogynist, extremely limited comedy that has gained its status because of the absolute magetism of its star, as well as its novel (for the times) themes and its clever technique of addressing the camera directly.

It's amazing, though, how tame it is compared to Hollywood films of the 40s. All 60s films are like this: hey folks, suddenly we're allowed to talk about issues! Let's talk about smoking dope and having sex with the next-door neigbour!

Of course, the problem with the above is that it dates really fast. The concerns of the central 60s Hollywood films (even The Graduate, which plays like a quaint, frivolous actor's showcase these days (a whole generation-defining film about having sex with the hot older neighbour? Wow, what a profound statement!). In this day and age, who cares? In contrast, 40s films noir are the closest thing that we 20th century moderns have to Macbeth (and I mean that seriously, not 'hey kids, I'm gonna be cool be comparing movies to Shakespeare!') It's only when a medium takes its subject matter seriously that the audience can become completely immersed in the work. The director of Alfie may have done so, but that doesn't mean that we have to.
What's it all about?
Sex, according to you, Alfie.
Who cares, according to the rest of us.

The Last Cricket Ball Artisan

It is said that dreams are the key to a person's soul. Very well, then, Dr. Jung: please explain what the corker that I had last night 'reveals' about my mind's innermost workings.

*
In this dream, I had started running a small shop in a busy arcade, selling only one product: cricket balls. These were not just any cricket balls, though - they were all hand-made by me. As the customers would walked into my shop, I would sit on a tall stool, lovingly stitching the meticulous seams. The balls were stuffed with straw, which I had harvested myself. For my customers and me, it was a pretty nice arrangement.

As I sat on the tall stool, I would sing a song to my customers. In a helpful bout of meta-commentary, the song was about the joys of stuffing and stitching cricket balls by hand. The song was sung to the tune of Outshined by Soundgarden (some things never change), and the first two lines went something like this:

I'll show you the cricket balls, I'd like to say
That they've all been hand-stuffed with hay. (Yeah)
*

Why is my brain thinking these things? Am I channeling a cricket-themed prophet? Answers, please.

Paintball Tycoon

Going to my friend's paintball-themed Buck's night was the best chance I'll ever have to make good on the dream of playing Bond (see 2 posts ago for the origins of this long-held, yet tragically destined to be unfulfilled, dream). The man in question is a Federal Police Officer.

Let it be known: there is something deeply wrong with a paintball hall.

Fill a derelict warehouse with approximately 50 men, all in the advanced stages of foaming bloodlust. The closest Australia comes to Cledus's family on The Simpsons, hardcore paintball fans look, well, different to the rest of us. It's the expression of pure joy that spreads across their foetal-alcohol-syndrome-ravaged faces that does it, I think - it's the type of joy that I only experience when I open the freezer door and realise that I've forgotten to consume the litre of Toffee-Pecan icecream that I bought the night before. It's far, far worse than you think. I am talking about a place where it is deemed necessary to politely remind the patrons of the following in the instructional video:

Please do NOT bring real firearms into the venue.

I just love the 'please'.

As soon as I was given the regulation snazzy 'outfit', I realised that paintball was not for me. Paintballs are small, hard and very painful when they hit you at speed. Yes, that is the idea. Very well - but it is a deeply flawed idea, and it's important to understand that. It is not, despite what the evolutionary psychologists might tell you, in our genes to express our basic urges in this way.
*
I have the rare talent of vagueing out at the most important moments of a conversation. Before the paintball shoot, everyone else heard a detailed analysis of the hazards of paintball. But I heard:

"Vitally important that you....necessary that your mask remains on at ALL times, or massive trauma will...vital that genitals protected to avoid haemoraging...under no circumstances...otherwise your testicles will be reduced to rubble..."

A guide said something vitally important about the safety catch - either to NEVER leave the orange bar showing or to ALWAYS leave it showing - and we were off. My team hid behind a big wooden barrier. I went out to have a look - a reconnoitre, as I wittily told my team - and got shot in the neck. It really, really, really hurt. 'Fuck!' I said.

Then I got shot in the nuts. I didn't say anything then, because I was bent over in silent prayer, thanking the Lord that I spent the $8 on a box protector. This was an optional extra. Pay some money and 'choose' to keep your reproductive organs intact. Excellent choice, sir.

I have to mention that I am a lover of films that resolve themselves by violent means. Not modern ones a la Tarantino; I mean Westerns & films noir - where the law of the gun is an accepted part of life. But that day, I found out that I wouldn't make a Western hero - I couldn't pull the trigger on someone.

So if a Western were made of my life, I'd be the city journalist who tags along with the hard-bitten gunmen saying things like 'golly!' and 'that'll be a scoop!', peeing his pants when the actual fighting starts. In this way, I identify with the Gary Cooper/John Wayne, WW2-dodging model of manhood: big fan of on-screen violence, not so much the real life sort. I spent the rest of the day in the paintball bar.

Best. Movie Blurb. Ever.

"Where's Dolph Lundgren these days?", I hear you say.

People, at the video shop yesterday I found the answer to your question.

Missionary Man
Full of vengeance and out for justice, a mysterious stranger with a score to settle rolls into a small town unannounced, forever changing life for its citizens caught under the oppressive thumb of a local tyrant. Armed with his Bible, his motorcycle and his thirst for revenge, the stranger faces down the evil dictator in true vigilante style, proving that justice still packs a mighty punch.

Written, directed by and starring Dolph Lundgren (from Rocky IV), Missionary Manis an action-packed, modern-day Western in the tradition of films like 'Walking Tall' and 'Roadhouse'.


Now we know who Bush's policy adviser was.

P.S. I did not make the above film synopsis up. Honest.

Living tissue over titanium endoskeleton

I wasn’t allowed to see Terminator 2 when it was released. Due to my natural abject subservience to all authority figures, in what was possibly the worst decision of my life I obeyed my parents and went to see a Richard Greico vehicle entitled If Looks Could Kill instead. (When I say 'vehicle', I'm talking 'Holden Camira'). I’ll leave it to future anthropologists to mull over which work of art was more enduring.

The T2 ban didn’t deter me for long – I had already seen part one on video, and had gotten the taste for robots. Rather than sneaking in to see the movie, however, I decided to do something even better – to become the Terminator.

This is a difficult task for a primary school child. Actually, I repeated the same mistake I had made with Bond: I got it into my head that my then pre-pubescent facial features bore some uncanny resemblance to the Terminator’s. (Those who are sniggering – not very kind).

In art class one day, while the other students were making printed t-shirts with pretty patterns that resembled what Jackson Pollock might have come up with had he been forced to use a spirograph, I came up with the following design:
• A disembodied pair of sunglasses in middle of T-shirt, topped with a menacing cactus-like crop of spiky hair.
• Within each lens of the glasses: the red, glowing furnaces of the Terminator’s electronic eyes.
• Under this portrait, I had written the words: ‘Hasta la Vista….Baby!’ (Actually, my T-shirt originally said ‘Asta la Vista…Baby!’, but my art teacher despairingly corrected me, perhaps figuring that teaching a cretin who spelled correctly was better than teaching a cretin who couldn't).

The t-shirt was made slightly less menacing by my grade 4-6 propensity to draw the dots over my I’s and J’s as little circles. (Fortunately, we weren’t using puff paint that day.) I also drew a wavy green double underline under the word ‘baby’, which might not have been altogether wise for someone trying to cut a figure as an unstoppable titanium killing machine.

My t-shirt was made even less menacing by my choice of clothing accompaniment during my utterly sartorially retarded youth:
• A bow tie (navy blue, with red polka-dots)
• Corduroy pants
• 2-tone grey and black zip-up shoes

Even thinking about me in this getup makes me want to punch myself.

But a mere t-shirt wasn’t the piece de resistance of my youthful Terminator-ness. I also used to entertain the notion that I could complete the terrifyingly unsustainable Tim=Arnold illusion by creating a kind of electronic device to simulate a glowing red Terminator eye in my own head.

This was done with:
• a pair of gigantic wraparound sunglasses
• a 9-volt battery
• a battery connector
• an LED from a Dick Smith electronics set

To terrify and astound my vulnerable younger brother, I put on my newly Terminator t-shirt (ignoring the fact that real Terminators would be unlikely to wear white t-shirts featuring crude texta drawings of themselves, let alone bow ties). I hooked up the battery to the LED, fastened it with blu-tac, and started walking slowly, colossally and robotically towards my supine brother. To take care of all possible contingencies, I asked my mother to utter the following brilliant line to him just before I showed up:

“Have you seen Timothy recently? Well…I think he’s a robot.”

This was supposed to be delivered in the half-crazed tones of a parent who had just realised that they had been rearing a little Terminator in their nest for the past twelve years. So, the plan went as follows:

1. I would shuffle towards brother, LED-eye glowing furiously.
2. Brother would scream, become scarred for life, contract PTSD.
3. Mother would begin to wonder whether they might, in fact, have been some deep truth in her words…

Unfortunately, the mini-Terminator forgot one crucial fact: it is physically impossible to utter the words, “I think Timothy’s a robot!” without laughing. I lumbered toward my mother and brother, both of whom were doubled over. “You didn’t say it properly!”, I screamed at my mother, furious with robotic indignation.

There was a lesson learned from the attempt, though: I quickly found out why people don’t place Dick Smith electronics kits extremely close to their eyeballs. The battery wires had gotten so hot that I was lucky not to have permanently blinded myself with my pseudo-robot contraption.

I won’t be back.

The Bonds of Childhood

As an impressionable youth, I saw the opening sequence of a James Bond film. I don’t know which one it was, but it was definitely my first Bond, and mighty exciting it was too. Bond was running around a jungly obstacle course, being attacked by people with paintball guns for some reason. Bond rolled, ducked and dived with such Bondlike efficiency that his pursuers never had a chance. At the conclusion, Bond opened his violin case (he was carrying one for some reason – perhaps auditioning for the Philharmonic after the casual slaughter), pulled out a Tommy gun or something similar, and started brutally killing his paintball opponents with it. Hurray! Not very nice, not very fair – but dynamite when you’re four.*

I was very excited when I discovered that the Bond role was something of a moveable feast – in time, anyone could, in theory, get to play Bond. (If you’re white and male – which I fortunately was). Being of an impressionable primary-school age, and prone to massive egotistical delusions, I thought that perhaps…I could play Bond one day!

Of course, some natural disadvantages were working against me – if there’s a spinoff series featuring weedy 5’7’’ Bonds, I’ve yet to see it – but that particular fantasy stands as concrete proof of my fertile imagination.

Still waiting by the phone.

* I know there's probably no Bond movie that starts remotely like this. I was four, for god's sake. Cut me some slack.

This could be the very last AC/DC post

‘Rock and Roll Train’ Reconsidered

How is it possible for two AC/DC songs to be pretty much identical – in terms of chord structure, timing and thematic focus – and yet the first song is good, the second almost unlistenable? Such is the mystery posed by Rock and Roll train, a superficially simple – yet deeply awesome – track at the beginning of AC/DC’s new album Black Ice.

I seriously underrated it on the first listen. It’s not sexist (much, really); it’s not even nasty – it’s a chunky, hearty throwback to better times.

But it's more complicated. Rock and Roll Train has completed the journey begun by AC/DC over 30 years ago, i.e. it has entirely evacuated the referent from the lyrics.

The lyrics aren’t about anything at all.

I hear you, cynics, naysayers and curmudgeons: AC/DC perfected that years ago. Yes, granted. But there is a kind of purity about the intense nothingness of R&RT’s lyrics. They are about the following three-part process:
1. Picking up a thing
2. Moving it somewhere else
3. Putting it down again.

In R&RT, Brian Johnston sounds like a cross between an overenthusiastic building site manager and Deepak Chopra. Lines such as:

‘Pick it up and move it, baby give it all you got,’

speak for themselves. Brian doesn’t say ‘try really hard, folks!’ or something lame that your parents would say when they wanted you to take out the garbage or some crap. Instead, he says:

‘Shake it up, move it, Jammin’ up the agency.’

Let's be honest. Who the hell wouldn’t want to jam up the damn agency if they had a chance? That’s what men do (and plucky women, too!): They jam up the agency – and then refuse to un-jam that agency until the job’s done.

Seriously, though – there are a lot of great songs on this album.

Exhibit A: I am now listening to a song called ‘Smash n’ Grab’. It should be a typical, late-career throwaway AC/DC piece of crap. Its chorus runs:
‘Smash, grab and take it.’
It’s silly, wrong, boneheaded and irresponsible, yes, and children probably shouldn’t be provided with the lyrics sheet. But it just works.

If you don’t want to purchase the album, here’s a brief summary of the content by track listing:

Track 1. Trains are cool (Rock n Roll Train)
Track 2. Thunderstorms are cool (Skies on Fire)
Track 3. Bigshots are gonna get killed one day (Big Jack)
Track 4. Poor guys can get rich and get the girl (Anything Goes)
Track 5. War is scary, yet cool (War Machine)
Track 6. Shoplifting is cool, and essential for a healthy society (Smash n Grab)
Track 7. Fighting is cool, and fun too (Spoilin’ for a Fight)
Track 8. Fast, illegal cars are cool (Wheels)
Track 9. Loud music is cool (Decibel)
Track 10. Thunderstorms are cool (Stormy May Day – see #2)
Track 11. Sex is cool because it’s sort of like rock n’ roll (She Likes Rock n’ Roll)
Track 12. Money is cool, but work sucks (Money Made)
Track 13. Rock and roll is cool (Rock and Roll Dream)
Track 14. Rock and roll is cool (Rockin’ all the Way – see #13)
Track 15. Causing grievous bodily harm is cool (Black Ice)

I recommend Black Ice to everyone. It has reaffirmed my conviction that there are only two types of people in the world: AC/DC fans, and AC/DC fans in denial.

Which are you?

The Criterion Collection Audiobook Series

At Criterion, we are dedicated to presenting you with the finest in World Cinema. That is why we have decided to release several masterpieces of the 1990s in Audiobook format. Purchase the leather-embossed collectors' edition boxed set today.

The Criterion Audiobook Collection presents:
The Films of Michael Bay

Volume I: "Transformers"
Novelisation by Jodi Picoult
Narrated by Sir Ian McKellan

*

I...am Sir Ian McKellan, and I will be your raconteur for tonight.

For tonight...you will hear a story of robots. Good robots. Bad robots. And robots...in between.

(Sir Ian sighs contentedly before continuing).

Optimus Prime stretched his full, blue, metallic arms to the warm caress of the morning sun. Delicately brushing a loose patch of rust from his gleaming, robotic forehead, he looked fondly at his human assistant sitting cross-legged on the plump duvet below.

Optimus: You...helped me, John.

Thick, dark tears rolled very slowly down Optimus's precisely machined steel cheeks.

(And here I must affect a working-class American accent, listeners, so do forgive me.)
John: Yo! It ain't nothin', Opt!

(And here I must remind the listener that Optimus knew that this child was not worthy of his majestic protection, yet to the very end, he did not shirk his duty).
Optimus: It meant the world to me. How you saved us Autobots from certain destruction. And if...

(Optimus pauses, then haltingly continues)

...if love between a human and a robot is possible, then I believe we have gone some way towards achieving that love, John.

*

Other titles in this magnificent series:

"Con Air", from the novelisation by Rick Moody; narrated by Ralph Nader

"The Rock", from the novelisation by E Annie Proulx; narrated by Harold Bloom

Price:

$199.00 (cloth bound)

$599.00 (Moroccan goat chamois)

Please note that gold edging is $49.00 extra

Barack Toughens Up

Over the past month, Barack Obama has been undergoing an intensive training regime at the hands of his newly-elected Vice President, Joe Biden. The following is an edited transcript of one of the training days.

In deference to the White House transcription convention first established by Richard Nixon, all expletives and potentially incriminating remarks have been permanently erased from the tape.

BIDEN: We’re gettin’ creamed out there, Barry.

OBAMA: If we tell the truth, the public will –

BIDEN: That’s bulls**t, Obes. F***in’ bulls**t! Howya gonna take this old man on, man?

OBAMA: By methodically and systematically dealing with his points as they are made, preferably in an official setting.

BIDEN: Oh, f**k me. [He picks up a piece of wood]. See this?

OBAMA: Yes, of course, Joseph. I – [Biden smashes the wood violently across his knee.]

BIDEN [satisfied]: God damn! That’s what I’m talkin’ about! See how that p**sweak Motherf***er shattered like a b****h? That’s what ya gotta do to the old man, Barry!

OBAMA: I hardly think that –

BIDEN: Just… pow! Can’t ya feel it runnin’ through ya?

OBAMA: I’m not sure I fully –

BIDEN: You gotta talk the talk, Baz. I talked to a buncha Hicks yesterday, Baz. Know what I said to ‘em? I said:

“If that Barack guy tries to take my f***in’ guns, I’ll kick his skinny little ass. I got 6 fully auto 9mm Berettas under my pillow. My mattress is stuffed with the f***ers, too. My kids use ‘em to shoot bullies and teachers who give ‘em s**t. F***, I’d shoot my own dawg if he barked too f***in’ loud! Goddamn I love shooting stuff!”

Ya just give ‘em a little red meat, Obes. That’s what ya gotta learn.

OBAMA: Just where is this all coming from, exactly? I didn’t have an inkling of this when I nominated you.

BIDEN: Gotta get mad, man. Hicks f***in’ love mad. And we love Hicks – cos we need ‘em. And if you talk to a Hick right, he doesn’t know you’re sh***in’ him. ‘Bitter’ my ass.

OBAMA: That’s hardly a respectful attitude to take to our constituents, Joseph.

BIDEN: Respectful? These guys gave us eight f***in’ years of Monkey nuts in the Oval Office! Have you seen ‘Bloodsport’?

OBAMA: Is that the delightful Daniel Auteil comedy where –

BIDEN: It’s Van Damme, Barry. VAN-god-damn-DAMME! And that’s the last European name you’re gonna utter during this campaign. You gotta get Bloodsport on McCain. Dip those f***in' kid gloves in broken glass!

OBAMA: Do you mean…physically?

BIDEN: You know those goddamn town hall debates they make ya do? Poke him in his sunken chest. He won’t be able to touch ya, ya wiry b****** - he can’t even raise his arms, man! Vietcong got those, you gotta go for the rest. Ya gotta crush him, man – you seen ‘Karate Kid’, even? S***, you even watch TV? Just keep pokin’ him till he explodes. Like Ralph Macchio.

OBAMA: This is ridiculous.

BIDEN [Holding piece of wood aloft]: I wantya to destroy this, ya raky wimp.

OBAMA: Are you serious?

BIDEN: Just snap one of those little girl hands down on it. (Sniggers). That oughta do it.

OBAMA: That’s a sexist slur.

BIDEN: Girl hands.

OBAMA: That’s quite enough. I’m beginning to think you were a bad choice of –

BIDEN: Girly hands.

[In a sudden rage, Obama splits the plank of wood with the edge of his palm].

OBAMA: I… don’t know where that came from.

BIDEN: That was beautiful. You just won South Carolina with that psycho s**t. Now: I’ll be McCain, and you can be you. [Clears throat]. Why the hell should the American people let you run this country, you dainty little p***k?

OBAMA: Because our tax policy will –

BIDEN [Whispers]: You f****in’ crazy, Baz?

OBAMA: The Democratic Party will reform –

BIDEN [Aside]: F***! You wanna lose this or somethin’?

OBAMA: In these uncertain financial times –

BIDEN [Whispers]: One last f****in’ warning, Dead****.

OBAMA: Call me that one more time, and I’ll rip your f***in’ ornamental arms off, McS**t!

BIDEN: Woah! Yeah!

OBAMA: Shrivelled old Mother*****.

BIDEN: Woof!

OBAMA [coming to]: I can’t understand it. Please don’t make me angry like that again.

BIDEN: Channel it, baby, channel it! Red meat, pal!

OBAMA: Kindly desist.

Broken Connexion

Flinders St station is bedecked with billboards saying something along the lines of:

‘We are making this station carbon neutral’.

Well, thank you for lighting the vending machines with fluorescent globes, Connex. I’m sure that’s a much better way of saving the planet than purchasing enough trains to prevent the disintegration of the Melbourne rail system. But that would be expensive and hard. I'm sorry for even mentioning such a proposal.

Never fear - these seemingly intractable problems are nothing that a pretty girl with a windmill won't fix!

The most annoying part of the ad is the woman on the poster, who looks like the type of person that would have confidently ticked ‘human rights lawyer’ on her year 7 vocational questionnaire. The courageous, defiant expression on her face evokes Abraham Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg address, rather than (as it should) a feckless shill for an incompetent transport company.

Her dignity is further undercut by the fact that she is holding a lightglobe in one hand and a small plastic windmill in the other. Now, pardon me for being skeptical, but I have seen few – in fact, no – wind turbines under construction on Flinders Street station’s roof. I can only assume, therefore, that the customer will have to bear the windmill cost.

CC, I hear you say, you’ve got it wrong. Connex is using that powerful image to illustrate their energy plan – to purchase more of their electricity from renewable sources. The girl holding the little windmill is only a powerful visual representation of this fact.

But this ad is not a representation of Connex’s new energy plan. It is their new energy plan.

*

SCENE: A young man of 29 walks up to the ticket counter in order to buy a train ticket.

YM: I’d like a weekly zone 1, please.

Ticket Guy: Certainly. That will be $34. And here is your small plastic windmill. That will be $150.

YM: $150 for a plastic windmill?

TG: It is a regulation Connex windmill.

YM: What is the difference between this windmill and, say, a regular plastic windmill that I might purchase at, say, a school fete?

TG: This one has been painted in Connex’s colours.

YM: That seems a bit steep.

TG: They are hand-painted by the girl in the ad. Her painting is so exquisite that she can only do 3 windmills an hour.

YM: Why are you selling me a plastic windmill with my ticket?

TG: It will help us to meet our greenhouse target.

YM: How does it work?

TG: When the train is in motion, we would greatly appreciate it if you could stick the windmill out of the window.

YM: Why?

TG: This will enable the small windmill to generate electricity.

YM: For what?

TG: Enough electricity… to power this light globe! (Ceremoniously holds out light globe and extension cord). The light globe is $45. The extension cord is free.

YM: Huh?

TG: Stick the windmill hand out of the window – right or left, it doesn’t matter – so that the lightglobe can function. The faster the train goes, the brighter the lightglobe gets.

YM: That’s a bit counterproductive, don’t you think?

TG: Whatever do you mean?

YM: Well, these windmills aren’t doing any good. They’re not powering the train, are they?

TG: Powering the train?

YM: Isn’t that the aim?

TG: The point, actually, is to offer a purely symbolic contribution to global warming in order to distract customers from our appalling level of service.

YM: That was a remarkably honest answer.

TG: I was fired this morning. This is my last day.

Cruel Inventions - Part 2

Household inventions are the cumulation of a long process of gradual perfection. They have been improved incrementally, and these improvements can be undone at a stroke.

Unfortunately, not all inventions are capable of wreaking vengeance as effectively as our friend the pyramadine grater. Here is a short list of everyday inventions that have been destroyed by designers' meddling hands. For your reference, I have also included the specific ways in which I would use these inventions to harm their wretched progenitors.

1. The Torqueless Fork

My workplace possesses forks whose handles have a perfectly round cross-section. Now, forks usually have a handle that is somewhat flat. This allows for manoeuvrability, allowing the user to apply torque to the handle, in accordance to the formula Torque = Force x Distance. As the distance across the handle is about 0.005 cm, and the force applied by an average human hand is around 30 Newtons (I made that up, but it sounds good), the torque generated by a regular fork is 0.15 Newton Metres (Nm).
PHWOOOOAR!, as a reader of 'Street Machine' magazine might say.

But with a circular handle preventing cross-fork leverage, a fork generates no torque. It is the Toyota Celica of forks - a hairdresser's fork.

Vengeance method: Designer to be forked repeatedly.

2. The Nubless Tap

My parents use to possess taps with perfectly smooth, round handles. Again, the evidence suggests that the inventor had not tested invention thoroughly enough: taps worked fine in the dry, but lost traction in the wet.

Vengeance method: Put a well-soaped designer in a small room which is gradually filling with water. The only means of turning off the water is by means of a nubless tap, the handle of which has also been thoroughly soaped. Get out of that one, McGuyver.

3. The Unnecessarily Complex Corkscrew

If, like me, you often wish to empty a bottle of wine of its contents in a hurry, you will be in no mood for corkscrew shenanigans in this time of need.

Corkscrews are simple machines, made even more delightful by their resemblance to a Robot doing starjumps. (Try it at home, and see how many starjumps you can make the little robot do in an hour.)

The complicated corkscrew is designed to increase the status of the head male in the house by making him the sole person capable of understanding its fiendish complexity.

*FLASHBACK*

YOUNG ME: Dad, can you please open this?

DAD (dripping scorn): Can't you open it? Simple turn camshaft A until it re-engages with the friction plate. Then, rotate notched cog B until it initiates the starter relay sequence.

*
Vengeance Method: Inventor is made to walk through desert with a knapsack full of water-filled wine bottles. To overcome thirst, inventor must successfully operate corkscrew. As this is impossible, inventor will perish.

Cruel Inventions - Part 1

Whenever I come across a humdrum household object that has been needlessly 'updated' in order to make it more 'interesting', I become utterly consumed with the idea of causing the inventor's untimely death - with the very object that they have so foolishly destroyed.

I once had the pleasure of owning a pyramidine cheese grater (most are oblong or cylindrical, for those readers who have their cheese grated for them by servants). 'Cool!', I hear you say.

No. It is most definitely not cool. It is not cool to destroy a useful object in order to serve the whims of fashion. There is a reason that graters are oblong or cylindrical: i.e. to prevent cheese from becoming stuck in the top of the grater. As I think of the impending, violent confrontation with the black-clad, turtleneck-wearing grater updater, catharsis rushes through me.

*

SCENE: A late 19th-century inner-city warehouse, converted into a trendy clutch of studios. Aforementioned black-clad designer sits in original 1960s egg chair at a lustrous Nicholas Datner redgum table. He is talking on his mobile phone. It is, of course, an iPhone. You are supposed to hate him.

DESIGNER: ...And so I said to her - 'Wheatgrass is amazing for your Chakras.' Well, I have to rush, Pantene - I have an appointment with my Iridologist. What's that? No - the cat's still at the acupuncturist. Yes, he's doing quite well. I really do believe that animals respond best to non-invasive techniques.

(THE massive Victorian-era wooden door is forcefully kicked open to reveal a lone figure standing silhouetted against the windswept street. His expression is not visible under his low-brimmed hat. He coolly smokes a cigarillo. The street lights halo the smoke around his head. He looks angrily at the floor, as if to repress some violent inner torment. Losing composure, he advances to the table. His metal heels clink eerily on the floorboards; his poncho swishes behind him like a tattered victory flag.)

DESIGNER: Uh - can I help you?

MYSTERIOUS FIGURE: That's for you to decide. You most certainly have not helped me in the past.

DESIGNER: Who...are you?

MYSTERIOUS FIGURE: I am the angel of vengeance. I speak for household objects that have no voice.

(Mysterious figure unsheaths glittering object from his utility belt.)

MYSTERIOUS FIGURE (Holding grater aloft): And - this? What is this?

DESIGNER: I-I-I-I-it's a grater.

MYSTERIOUS FIGURE (in low, guttural whisper not unlike Batman's): That's what it said on the label. What's wrong with this picture?

DESIGNER: I don't -

MF: It. Doesn't. Grate.

DESIGNER: But it's -

MF: Ok. It grates. All right. But there's a problem.

DESIGNER: I don't underst-

MF: BRING ME A BLOCK OF CHEESE. You do have cheese here, dontya? Hmm?

TERRIFIED DESIGNER: Y-y-yes. (Departs, and re-emerges with CHEESE).

MF: Grate it.

DESIGNER: But I've never-

MF: That's right. You've never grated cheese in your life. Grate it. Grate it. Grate it.

DESIGNER: Ok, ok, I'm grating! (He GRATES).

MF: Enough. Pick up the grater and remove the cheese.

DESIGNER (Shaking and tapping grater: It's not working, sir.

MF: That's because you destroyed something beautiful when you made that grater. (Background music swells: Barber's Adagio for Strings.)

DESIGNER: I had no idea.

MF: You have become death, the destroyer of graters. You took something perfect and you crushed it. And now: it's time to get to know Mr Pyramidine grater just a little better.

FADE TO BLACK. SOUND REMAINS:

DESIGNER: What are you doing? Stop - ouch! He's grating me! He's grating me!

MF: The only thing that's grating here is your hubris.

END

Phonetic Riff Transcription System

Let's face it - the riff is in terminal decline. The 70s, 80s and 90s were all generously served by the bespangled riff gods - but today's bands seem to think that designing a riff is as simple as following one chord by another. Like most of the world's problems, this is mainly U2's fault. What's the matter, 'The Edge'? Your distortion pedal broken or something? Badass nickname, by the way. (I sincerely apologise for just having alienated the entire Noonan family with that comment.)

One of the main problems with riffage is the lack of an objective method of comparison. Fact: the best bands have the best riffs. So, it shouldn't be too difficult to come up with a notation system that allows you, the consumer, to evaluate riffs on the page. This will allow you to make an intelligent and informed purchase: i.e. to choose the albums with the awesomest collection of riffs.

Fortunately, I devised just such a system while on the train today. My system has an advantage over guitar tabulature: it requires absolutely no musical knowledge to understand. In fact, the less musical knowledge you have, the better.

What follows is a transcript of ten of my favourite riffs, using my patented 'Phonetoriff' system (patent pending).

1. Black Sabbath, Paranoid

Intro:
Bow, wow, wow, do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do!
Bow, wow, wow, do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do!

Main riff:
GUG-gug-gug-gug-GUG-gug-gug-gug
GUG-gug-gug-gug-GUG-gug-gug-gug
GOG-gog-gog-gog-GOG-gog-gog-gog ba-ba, BA. (ba!)

2. AC/DC, Back in Black

Ba. Ba-da-da. Ba-da-da.... Be-do-be-do-be-do-be
Ba. Ba-da-da. Ba-da-da. Bompow, bompow, bompow, bompow,
Ba.

3. Rolling Stones, Jumpin' Jack Flash

Intro:
Nung, nung, nung; ving, ving;
Nung, nung, nung, ningningning ning, ning;
Nung, nung, nung, ving, vinggggg;
Nung, nung, nung, ningningning ning, ning
Nununung.
Nununung.
Nununung.
Nununung.

(Jagger: Onetwo!)

Main riff:
BAAMP BAAMP, ba-na-na, ba-na-na, banana
BAAMP BAAMP, ba-na-na, ba-na-na, banana...

4. Metallica, Bridge from 'One'

Dubodabudobadah. Dubodabudobadah. Dubodabudobadah. Dubodabudobadah.
DubodabudobaDAH-NAAA, DubodabudobaDAH-NAAA, DubodabudobaDAH-NAAA, DubodabudobaDAH-NAAA,
Dubodabudobadah. Dubodabudobadah. Dubodabudobadah. Dubodabudobadah.

5. Jimi Hendrix, Voodoo Chile

Intro:
Wuk-o-wuk-o-wuk-o-wukka-wukowuk-a!
A wuk-wuk-wok-owuk-o-wuk-wuk-wukko!
Wuk-wuk-WUK-o-wuk-a-wuk-wuk, ah!
A-wuk-o-wuk-o-wuk-o-wuk-o-wuk-wuk-

Main riff:
Beowwm, ba deoww-deoww bamp-wamp wanna-wanna
Beowwm, ba deoww-deoww wanna. (Wicka)
Beowwm, wa deoww-beoww bamp-wamp wanna-wanna
Beoww, wa beoww-deoww wanna (badoom-chish)
Beowwm, ba deoww-deoww bamp-wamp wanna-wanna
Beowwm, ba deoww-deoww wanna.
Beowwm, wa deoww-beoww bamp-wamp wanna-wanna
Beoww, wa beoww-deoww deeeuuw deeeeuuw dreuuuuw woo...

6. Soundgarden, My Wave

Rababa.
Rababa.
Rababa-screee!
Rababa-screee!
Rababa-screee!
Ranana BA.
Ba, ba, da-wa-na
BA. Bap, bap, da-wa-na
BA. Bap, bap, da-wa-na
BA. Bap, bap, da-wa-na...

7. ZZ Top, Tush

Vam-va dumva-dumva, va damva dumv-aaaa,
Vam-va dumva-dumva, va damva dumv-aaaa,
Vam-va dumva-dumva, va damva dumv-aaaa,
Vam-va dumva-dumva, va damva dumv-aaaa....

8. Guns n' Roses, Paradise City

DUG-a-dug-a-DUG-a-dug-a-DUG-a-dug-a-DUG-aaaaaaaa,
DUG-a-dug-a-DUG-a-dug-a-DUG-a-dug-a-DUG-aaaaaaaa...

I am also developing my patented bassline transcription system. Here are 2 prototypical examples:

9. Pink Floyd, Money

Bom, BOM-be-dom, bom pom bom pommmmmmm
Bom, BOM be-dom, bom pom bom pommmmmmm
Bom, BOM-be-dom, bom pom bom pommmmmmm
Bom, BOM be-dom, bom pom bom pommmmmmm
[Guitar in]: Waaab-waaaaba!

10. Curtis Mayfield, Superfly

Dommmmdo-do dom dom,
Dommmmdo-do dom-dom,
Dommmmdo-do dom-dom,
Dom.... DOM!...DUM!

If anyone would like to use my system to transcribe their favourite riff, they are most welcome. Royalties will be waived during the 30-day evaluation period.

The Large Hadron Collider

The recent debate within the scientific community (or to be more precise, between the scientific community and a couple of mescalin-snorting hippies who happen to own lab coats) sounds suspiciously like an episode of Futurama. For those who haven’t been paying attention, they opened a machine today called the ‘Large Hadron Collider’. (This is not to be confused with the ‘Large Hardon Collider’, an equally imposing structure which had its funding cancelled at the last moment by anxious parenting groups).

The LHC is the biggest particle accelerator ever built, straddling the French-Swiss border. It is therefore the most exciting thing to come out of Switzerland since the Kinder Surprise. As far as I can tell, it is basically a racetrack for atoms, half of which are driving the wrong way.

The aim of this machine is to recreate the conditions that existed at the beginning of the universe, some 14 billion years ago. (Previously, the most accurate means of doing so was to imagine John McCain as a small boy).
With luck, the resultant explosions will generate a hitherto-unproduced particle, called a Higgs Bosun. Scientists’ enthusiasm for this particle is remarkably undiminished by the fact that its name sounds like a drunken Scottish sailor.

If such a particle is able to be produced for the first time on earth, I predict that it will soon be co-opted by the fashion industry:

Rich Lady 1: Esmerelda, I couldn’t help but notice – your scarf – is it…Higgs?
Rich Lady 2: It’s one hundred per cent bosun, Martine! Organically farmed, too! And your blouse – (shocked) oh, it’s –
Lady 1: (downcast): Yes, I'm afraid. It’s *sigh* just cashmere.
Lady 2: Oh I’m so sorry – but if your husband can’t afford bosun, it's time you found one who can!

The debate between the two professors on Radio National this morning was interesting: to say that they held ‘divergent views’ would be like saying that Paris Hilton and Osama bin Laden hold ‘divergent views’ on the virtues of miniskirts worn without underpants.

To summarise this healthy disagreement:

Professor #1 thought that the Hadron Collider was ‘perfectly safe’, and

Professor #2 thought that the Hadron Collider would create an exponentially expanding black hole that would suck the earth up its own orifice in an micro-instant.

Listening to each über-nerd state his position, I couldn’t help but feel a little cheated at my choice of university course. My lunchtime conversations were never quite as important as the professors’, e.g.:

Me: Do you think that Dickens’ novels warrant a deconstructive reading?
Colleague: No, not really.
Me: Oh. Could you please pass the cheese slices? Thank you. I quite like these.

The particle physicists’ lunchtime conversation, meanwhile, may have gone something like this:

Professor #1 (to roomful of lunching scientists): The collider is perfectly safe.
Professor #2: Don’t listen to him!
Professor #1: The collide…is perfectly…safe.
Professor #2: He’s lying!
Professor #1: His words mean nothing. The collider will crush you all like the insignificant ants that you indeed are.
Professor #2: See! I told you! He must be stopped! (Lunges at #1).
Professor #1 (effortlessly sidestepping attack): Crush you, I mean, in a perfectly safe and efficient manner. Fools! Midgets! Untermenschen!
Professor #2: It’s hopeless. Nothing will save the world now. Seize him! (Grabs brass candlestick from science lunchroom mantelpiece) – We must immobilise him and destroy the collider before it’s too late!
Crowd of supportive, lunching Professors: Kill the Prof! Bash his brains! Smash his quarks!
Professor #2 (charging bravely at #1, brandishing candlestick): Yaaaaaargh!
(The heroic Professor #2’s words are cut off suddenly as he accidentally rushes past Professor #1 and flings himself headfirst into the open collider, which has been sitting quietly by the water cooler. In a burst of flame, he explodes dramatically into his constituent atoms.)
Professors: Oooooooh. Aaaaaah.
Professor #1: I think we’ve all learned something today.
Crowd: What?
Professor #1: Particle colliders are cool.

All aboard!

Someone told me something really scary once: people's taste in music doesn’t change significantly once they hit about 20. How horrible, I thought at the time – fancy being stuck with your late-adolescent musical taste for the rest of your days!

Now, though, I realise that this advice was wrong. My taste in music stagnated once I hit 14. Radiohead, Jeff Buckley, the Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, Soundgarden. All of these bands were meaningless distractions from the real deal. The band. I'll give you a clue: there's only one time signature worth worrying about in music, and it ain't 5/16, you fancy-arse Conservatorium graduates.

Today's headline on the Yahoo! email website was:

"The new AC/DC album, ‘Black Ice’, will be released next month."

Now, my often-bored friends will tell you that I’m not the most enthusiastic person about anything much at all. But this event excited me in ways that less important ones, such as Russia's recent invasion of Georgia, failed to do. I realised how deep my affection for AC/DC went when considering how excited I was about the superficially unpromising material at hand. Let us look, for a moment, at the thin soil from whence my newfound happiness sprang.

The new single from Black Ice is called ‘Rock and Roll Train’. This title is, to be polite, not particularly promising. ‘Rock and Roll Train’ (henceforth R&RT) is the type of phrase that a lenient mother might be mildly proud of - mildly, mind you - if it was the very first phrase formed by her beloved two-year-old infant out of alphabetic fridge magnets. It is the type of phrase that one might expect to be created if the Teletubbies formed an AC/DC cover band, with Tinkie Winkie on lead, La-la on vocal duties, and Po smashing the skins into the ground. (I thought of it first). Even the neglected Bon Scott classic ‘Big Balls’ ranks higher on the grammat-o-meter. Lynn Truss, and other grammarians, would choke on their Royal Doulton cups of camomile tea at the mere mention of this song. Noam Chomsky may have considerable difficulty applying his theory of universal grammar to this song. It is, in short, a brain-slayer of a song.

Other titles from AC/DC’s back catalogue have their charm. ‘Rock n Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution’, for example, sounds tough and old-school working class – something a blackened Pittsburgh steelworker might say when his poncy, starched boss asks him politely to turn down his portable radio. (“Hey – screw you, man. Rock n’ Roll ain’t noise pollution, man.” Cue whistles & cheers.) ‘Rock and Roll Train’, meanwhile, brings to mind a dim-witted yellow cartoon boy pulling a large plastic train behind him while yelling ‘I choo-choo-choose you!’

But despite these rather deep-seated structural difficulties, R&RT succeeds quite nicely on its own terms. It’s good to know, too, that the band haven’t become slaves to fashion. That is a slight understatement: Brian Johnston still dresses with all the panache of someone who might expose himself to schoolchildren in a public toilet. Angus Young still dresses like someone who may fall under the 'high risk' category of being flashed by Brian Johnston in a public toilet. And the other people in the band, whoever they may be, still look like Australian Pub Band Extras from Pugwall (look it up). So – all aboard the Rock and Roll Train, kids!

Those who know me will realise that the above statement is not meant to convey disrespect in any way. R&RT succeeds excellently on its own terms. But more importantly, AC/DC’s terrifyingly genuine air of moral degeneracy – i.e. the feeling, when looking at publicity photographs, that something is actually ‘wrong’ with them in some fundamental way – make the current batch of 70s Rock-revival bands seem about as immoral and dangerous as the Obama Family Barbershop Quartet.

The lyrics. Well, I think it’s safe to say that Peter Carey needn’t look too nervously over his shoulder at this year’s Miles Franklin awards ceremony. I have only heard the song once, but I will try to recreate some of the magic (it helps here to think of R&RT as AC/DC’s Finnegan’s Wake, as compared to Back in Black’s Ulysses):

Well, I’m on a big train (real big train)
A really fast train (real fast train)
It’s a big, fast train (big big train)
It’s a rock and roll train (rock and roll train)

CHORUS Rock and rock and, rock and rock and rollllllll…..
Train. (Train. Rock and roll train)
Train. (Train. Rock and roll train)
Train. (Train. Rock and roll train)
Train! (Train! Rock and roll train!)

While the second verse violates the UN charter for the protection of the child, it is also the lyrical highlight.

Now schoolgirls wear short skirts (real short skirts)
And they wear them on the train (train. Rock and roll train)
They wear them till it hurts (hurts. Rock and roll hurt).
I like going on the train (train – the rock and roll train!)

REPEAT CHORUS 13 TIMES, TO CODA.

Here’s the link to the song:

http://www.acdcrocks.com/

Comments welcome.

Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence

I was having a conversation with my dad the other day, who tends towards the optimistic end of the spectrum as far as scientific progress goes. He was arguing that computers are bound to acheive self-awareness in the near future, given that they are advancing at such a great rate. I've included my response below, for anyone who's interested (be warned that many of the thoughts therein are pilfered from Raymond Tallis, Kenan Malik, Nicholas Humphrey and other techno-skeptics). Also, be warned - it's pretty long....

The conversation that we had about computers got me thinking: it was difficult to think on the run about the computer intelligence issue, so I’ve refined my thoughts on it a little.
I think it helps to think back to the first calculators. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that in 1950 there was an autistic maths genius who could calculate pi to 100 decimal places in only 3 seconds. This was a lot faster than anyone else in the world.
Then the first decent calculator was invented. It could calculate pi to one hundred decimal places in 2 seconds. When everyone heard about this, they were terrified. A computer had knocked man off his perch, threatening all that made him superior to the beasts!
Soon, though, people realised that they were mistaken. The calculator was better at calculating pi than the maths genius, but this did not make the computer ‘human’. The computer and the maths genius were performing an identical operation: feeding numbers into a simple algorithm. Using an algorithm is not a human trait; a computer that can do algorithms quickly cannot be said to be ‘human’. (It also shows how easily human-type words infect how we think about computers, making them seem more human than they are: the calculator wasn’t ‘feeding’ anything into anything, because it has no agency. Its ability to get the answer was simply the result of electrons being forced through a bunch of switches in a chunk of silicon by the laws of physics.)
The chess case is more complicated than the pi case, but not for the reason that I first thought. The reason why a Grand-Master-beating computer freaked everyone out so much is that the computer and Gary Kasparov – unlike the calculator and the maths genius – were not playing the same game.
Kasparov was playing chess. The computer, however, was only playing ‘chess’. To all observers, ‘chess’ was indistinguishable from chess. There was a real chess board in the room, with real pieces. Every time the computer printed a move on the screen, the attendants would physically move the chess pieces on the board.
‘Chess’ also looked like chess because Kasparov was in the room, sweating, becoming increasingly agitated, and generally acting human. We are used to seeing human-like things interacting with human-like things. So, by inference, the spectators assumed that Kasparov’s opponent was also a human-like thing.
But in fact, for a computer, playing ‘chess’ is just like calculating pi: numbers are fed into an algorithm. The computer, in a sense, did not beat Kasparov at chess, because it was not playing chess at all. It was only playing ‘chess’.
Kasparov, however, was playing chess. If he was playing chess against another Grand Master, his success would rest largely on his ability to second-guess his opponent several moves in advance. To win at chess, chess masters must construct a psychological profile of their opponent. This requires an understanding that the opponent is a thinking being, with his own self-contained intentions and desires. Only conscious entities can do this.
When two chess masters play each other, there is a circulation of thought between them:
‘If I do X, he will do Y; but if I do Z instead, he will still think that I am going to do X, because I know that he doesn’t know that I know that he will do Y if I do X’. This is not just number-crunching: it requires multiple levels of intentionality. Not only do you have to understand that your opponent is a thinking being, but you also have to understand that your opponent knows that you are a thinking being. And so on. This requires empathy with your opponent.
If the players know each other beforehand, this circulation of empathy becomes more obviously ‘human’. So, the famous Bobby Fisher vs. Boris Spassky match in the 1970s was highly dramatic, because each player knew the other, and could use their previous knowledge to second-guess the other man’s technique.
But even if the players don’t know each other, they have to quickly construct a complex, evolving sketch of the other player’s mind. This requires building a set of assumptions about the opponent’s future behaviour that can be violated if the player does not meet expectations. For example, if I know you as a reckless player, it may take me some time to realise that you are playing cautiously.
It’s true that chess-playing computers can use strings of human-like moves that seem to demonstrate an understanding of human psychology. But such moves have been put there by human programmers. In these cases, the computer functions as a simple container that has been filled with the products of human creativity (i.e. millions of moves). The computer uses an algorithm to select the most suitable string of moves, and uses that string to do the job: just like calculating pi.
The difference between Kasparov and Deep Blue was also invisible because humans are hardwired to ascribe intentionality to objects. We rely for our survival on interacting with other people, and we have an innate tendency to ascribe consciousness to non-conscious things (e.g. the wind blows a potplant over, and I think there is an intruder). So, we assume that Deep Blue was doing what Kasparov was doing – i.e. constructing a psychological profile of its opponent – but it wasn’t. They were doing totally different things.
Kasparov, meanwhile, couldn’t obtain a psychological profile of his opponent, for the simple reason that the computer has no psychology. A computer doesn’t ‘change tactics’ in order to psychologically intimidate its opponent – it just crunches more and more numbers. Another reason for the confusion is that the language of chess is hopelessly biased in favour of human agency: the computer is not really performing a ‘move’; it does not really put Kasparov in ‘check’; it is not really playing ‘aggressively’. All of these human terms are illusions based on our past experiences with humans. The computer is not ‘playing’ chess: it is performing algorithms.
Another reason that Deep Blue’s victory was seen as overly important is because of the strange nature of the game of chess. Chess comes with an incredible amount of cultural baggage. The powerful imagery of medieval battles gives chess an emotional dimension that it does not really have.
Imagine if chess pieces were identically shaped, and distinguished only by number. For instance: all the pieces are numbered squares. Call the Knight ‘piece no. 3’. Rule: Piece 3 can only move in an ‘L’ shape. Call the bishop ‘piece no. 4’. Rule: Piece no. 4 can only move diagonally. The game would be exactly the same, yet much of the effect would be lost. The rich connotations of battle are not part of the rules – we bring these feelings to the game because we are human, and are affected by the emotional connotations of battle.
This change to the game of chess would make the nature of the computer’s ‘victory’ a lot clearer. Computer chess is distorted by the same illusion that makes a Windows operating system seem more ‘human’ than a Dos system, even though they are performing identical operations.
This makes me think that the predictions about increased computer ‘intelligence’ have come to exactly nothing. Computers are faster at calculating pi than they were in 1950, because humans can now cram more logic gates on a silicon chip than they could before. But that is all computers are better at. They are no closer to achieving consciousness now than they were when the Chinese invented the abacus a few thousand years ago. Same principle, same result – just more beads on the abacus being flipped faster. The illusion of ‘intelligence’ is all in the interface: we supply the ‘human’ dimension and falsely ascribe it to the computer.
I can’t see how a supercomputer could be seen as anywhere near as ‘intelligent’, in an emotional sense, than, say, a mouse. The false promise of AI is even clearer when you think of how much better computers are than mice at lots of things (e.g. mice can’t calculate pi), yet how much worse they are at others. A mouse can experience a primitive form of affection for its carer – not because it can do more algorithms than a computer, but because it has a dim awareness of the existence of another being with separate intentions, even if this awareness is very limited.

Post-life

Some months ago, my friend – who is turning out to be a frequent source of unconventional wisdom these days – gave me some advice about managing anxiety. True to form, the advice was pretty much out of left field; when I first heard it, I was inclined to take it with a rather large chunk of salt. But as I think more about it, his theory sounds more plausible. I’ll paraphrase him here (although, due to my partial memory of the conversation, he’ll just have to grin and bear it if I heinously misquote him).

“A few years ago, I noticed that I was having quite a few panic attacks. When I spoke to my friends – who were also in their mid-20s at this time – it turned out that they were having similar experiences. For a while there, it seemed like everyone I knew was suffering from panic attacks. This made me realise that our mid-20s are a pretty intense time for such feelings.
This got me thinking: why is it, at this age, that anxiety hits people so hard?
I began to realise that this type of anxiety could be caused by our growing awareness of our mortality.
In our teenage years, we think that we’re pretty much invincible – and by and large, we are. But when you notice yourself aging a little bit, you begin to understand that this kind of attitude can’t be sustained. We all get older, of course; when we start understanding that we’re on a continuum with our elders, rather than being totally separate from them, we suddenly stop thinking of ourselves as a ‘special case’.
I stopped feeling anxious about the future once I began to think of mortality differently. When I was younger, I thought about the fact of death a lot differently than I do now.
In our teens, we find it hard to think of the fact of death in a genuine way. It’s simply that we don’t really understand it. We all have moments when we – even fleetingly – imagine what it would be like if we were no longer around.
The difference between then and now is that these imaginings of the end of our lives are based on a failure of imagination. When we are feeling very sorry for ourselves (for instance, when we feel unappreciated by our peers) we ask ourselves the question: ‘what would they do if I wasn’t here?’ This idea is based on the selfish idea that all children have – i.e. the world won’t be able to function without me.
Although it may not seem like it, this is a comforting thought. But it’s also a destructive one.
When we are young, we find it impossible to think of a situation when we are ‘not here’. This is because we can’t help seeing it from our own perspective.
Think back to when you were a child, when you were angry with a parent or friend for not appreciating you. You probably thought, ‘what would they do without me?’
If we travel forward in time until after our deaths, we sometimes tend to imagine people grieving for us at our funeral. It is a type of revenge fantasy. The people in attendance will be saying, ‘I wish I appreciated him when he was around.’ In this common childhood daydream, we are watching our friends as they mourn for us. We feel validated by this fantasy, because we are able to maintain the same perspective that we have in our everyday lives. We stick around as observers, just so that we can say, ‘I told you so.’
But if we can only think of death by including our own subjectivity, we have not properly faced up to it. The challenge of mortality, for an adult, is to think of life going on without you. This doesn’t mean thinking of life going on while you are watching it from a nice spot in heaven. The conventional Christian idea of an afterlife is flawed, because it can’t take the ‘self’ out of the equation. When we imagine ourselves in ‘heaven’, we are still ‘alive’ in the sense that we retain our own identity. It is a comforting denial of the fact of death, rather than an acceptance of it.
Thinking of death in a purer sense is more difficult, but it helps to dispel anxiety about our future. We have to be able to think of the time after we are gone as lacking our selves, not just our bodies. Getting rid of the ‘observer’ also rids you of the thought that your friends and family only have meaning in relation to you. Forcing yourself to imagine a state of the world where you no longer have a perspective to view things from may sound scary; however, I found that it was a very effective way to come to terms with the limitations of my own existence.
After I learned to jettison the notion of ‘afterlife’ as a time in which we can only helplessly observe the world, I found that my anxiety was no longer such a problem. You can only accept your finite lifespan once you realise that the end of life also entails the end of subjectivity.”

Not bad for a half hour at the pub, eh?

Latent Content Warning

Earlier this week, after sleeping soundly on my friend’s superbly comfortable couch, I awoke from one of those dreams that I am convinced only my brain could think up. I have included a transcript for your amusement.

* * *

FRIEND: OK, Tim – just a few points about the house before you go to sleep. Now, it’s true that we’re renting, but the rent only really includes the furniture.
ME: What do you mean?
FRIEND: Well, we rent the furniture, but the floor is on a time-share arrangement.
ME: Ah. Hmmm?
FRIEND (Energetically picking up a chair in each arm): Well, we share the floor with another family. They have half the floor area, and we have the other half.
ME (Baffled): Right. So how does that work?
FRIEND: It’s complicated. Although they have half the floor area, it’s not always the same half.
ME (With bafflement rapidly intensifying): I’m lost.
FRIEND: OK. Well, here’s the diagram (unfurling immense blueprint on kitchen table): Now, you’ll see here that on Monday nights, the ‘floor rights’ change throughout the evening. It’s about nine o’clock now, so we have access to here – here – and here.
ME (Miraculously understanding complex schematic blueprint): But...we don’t have access to the piece of floor right underneath us.
FRIEND: That’s why I have to move the chairs.
ME: Where are you taking them?
FRIEND: (Pointing to blueprint): Here. We are allowed on this, this, and this piece of floor at this time.
ME: Do we have access to those pieces of floor all of the time?
FRIEND: No. It changes hourly. (Friend puts both chairs down on vacant floor section. While he is doing so, the floor area on blueprint starts moving, thus redistributing floor ownership rights).
ME: It just moved!
FRIEND: Oh. It does that sometimes. Where is our available floor space now?
ME (helplessly pointing): Where the chairs were before.
FRIEND (admirably taking situation in his stride): OK. I’ll move the chairs back there, then. Can you please grab the couch and move it to that other piece of floor over there?
ME (Warily): OK.
As I drag couch to available floor area, I nervously glance at kitchen table. Blueprint design continues to move of its own accord.)
ME: It did it again.
FRIEND: Did what again?
ME: Um, now the bit of floor that we’re allowed on is where it was before.
FRIEND (suspiciously): Are you sure you’re reading the blueprint correctly?
ME: No, not really.
FRIEND (In tone that strongly suggests that it was all my fault):
Just help me with these chairs, Tim.

* * *

Although this dream probably lasted minutes, it seemed a good bit longer. When I woke up, I felt as if I had been moving chairs for hours. I walked across to the nearest chair, grabbed a firm hold of it and thought: “so, it’s 6am: this chair goes….where exactly?”
And it was only then that I felt really stupid. (I sincerely hope that I wasn’t moving the chairs around in reality while I was asleep, but I can't completely rule this out.)

So, brain, my question to you is this: Just what the hell are you playing at?

Reposting 'Graffiti Junction'

I took this article off because it was mean and unfair. But now I've decided, with the help of a friend's advice, that taking posts off blogs just because you don't like them anymore is chicken. So here it is again. I'll get the hang of this blog thing eventually.

* * *

I saw an article the other day about a man whose house had been graffitied. Or, to use the singular form, he discovered a large Graffito on his wall. Of course, he wanted to do what most of us would – i.e. scrub it off – only to find that it had been heritage-listed in the interim. (That’ll teach him for holding fire with the Karcher!) Accompanying the article was a picture of the ‘redecorated’ house. Sure, the graffiti was colourful; it might even be called ‘competent’ if you were feeling generous. But the fact that people were seriously proposing protecting an afternoon’s misadventure with a spraycan seemed a little odd to me.
This isn’t a paranoid argument about all the 'thugs who are threatening our private property', as Andrew Bolt might say. I don’t really care about the man’s house, and anyway, the Graffitied wall looked perfectly OK. But I want to discuss why our expectations are so gutter-level low when it comes to assessing the aesthetic merits of Graffiti, to the point where a marginally competent glittery logo on someone’s house can spark a call for its preservation.
Anyone looking for a rock-solid argument against artistic relativism is invited to visit a place in St. Kilda called ‘Graffiti Junction’. It is a comprehensive refutation of the wishful argument that if we only provided legitimate places for graffiti artists to express themselves, our surroundings would be awash in colour and beauty.
Let’s be blunt. ‘Graffiti Junction’ is a piece of irritating crap. (Go on: admit it to yourself as you’re forced to walk through it. Hating a piece of bad art will make you feel better, I promise.) Despite their lack of talent, its contributors have achieved quite a feat: they have made something significantly uglier than the butt-ugly concrete underpass it conceals.
To figure out why this is, it’s important to remember that Graffiti Junction is actually an ‘artwork’ in two distinct parts. The (tiny) ‘Jekyll’ part looks like a typical mural painted on the inside of a train station walkway. You know the ones I mean – they’re all pretty much the same, even in the US and England, and probably everywhere else in the world. The archetypal ‘train station mural’ is painted with honourable intentions, bright primary colours, and (usually) comically crook execution. Diego Rivera does not, at any stage, spring to mind when looking at it. But despite this, train station murals actually improve most people’s lives. This is because they are painted by good people, with sincere faith in humanity, for good reasons. TSMs are nearly always about one of two issues:
a. Saving the environment, and
b. Achieving worldwide racial harmony.
Both are obviously noble causes. TSMs won’t win any prizes for artistic excellence, but they are uniformly honest, positive and direct. And faith in humanity is sorely needed when you’re being squeezed through the godforsaken bowels of Sydney’s Central Station.
Graffiti Junction Part A. is part of the TSM school. It contains a cartoon version of a tram, an Aboriginal flag, and (from memory) assorted Australian flora and fauna. It reminds you what a nice city Melbourne can be; makes the underpass look more cheerful; and perks you up when your hangover threatens to destroy you. Job done.
Graffiti Junction Part B. is a very different beast. Here, we have the graffiti ‘artist’s’ dream – finally, a legal place to express one’s inner thoughts, within the cosseting embrace of a government-funded social improvement project!
It’s probably too kind to call Graffiti Junction B a two-dimensional representation of a Technicolor Yawn. Walking through the brain-fart-art of the underpass is oppressive to the point of nausea.
There is a glimmer of artistic hope in a figure that looks like the Monopoly Mascot, complete with cigar, bowler hat, and monocle, standing pompously against a wall, brandishing a whip. The sentiment’s inane (Capitalism’s bad, m’kay?) but I like the Monopoly man.
But the rest! Did a vast graffiti artist convention pass an unbreakable decree that its every member must paint like a degenerate? The walls of the underpass are full of that bubbly, bespangled lettering that has somehow become the official letterform of the Graffiti movement.
The standout picture - and I mean that in a bad way - depicts a comely, green, be-warted Martian woman in a low-cut haltertop top commandeering a personal flying saucer, which she controls via a ‘Space Invaders’ joystick. Remember: an adult painted this.
I have come up with a theory on why people praise Graffiti ‘art’. When you’re on, say, the Frankston line, and you see an ornate tag – such as ‘Wozza ‘D4ZA!’ or some other witty jibe – why are you impressed?
It’s not because it’s good. It’s because such art forces us to imagine the circumstances under which it was produced. i.e. the spraypainter’s manic foray at the wall before fleeing from the cops. And we think: ‘Wow! Just imagine what he would have had time to do if he wasn’t a criminal!’
But at Graffiti Junction shows, more time doesn’t help. Ripping off the bandaid of criminality only exposes the suppurating wound of basic artistic incompetence. Seeing Graffiti as a rebellious act makes the juvenile, emotionally stunted, glittery crap that constitutes ‘Graffiti art’ seem much better, ‘edgier’, than it really is.
For now we know what happens when Wozza gets the chance to express himself. Gaining an outlet – a patron, I guess you’d say – doesn’t improve on the first products of his artistic urge, i.e. carving of ‘I H8 Fags’ in his school desk with a rusty compass. The official version of Graffiti looks shoddier than the rushed, illegal version, because you know that the artist wasn’t dodging Police when adding the last sparkle to the ‘A’ in ‘Wozza’.
Perhaps I take the Graffiti too personally. But I have friends who are seriously talented fine artists who take immense care with their work. I don’t hear, however, any arguments saying: ‘Just imagine what they could do if they had a massive piece of government-funded, weather-protected canvas to express their views!’ Sure, perhaps my upper-middle class background, and that of virtually all of my friends, is clouding my empathy for the misunderstood graffitist, but I doubt it. Criminality is Graffiti’s reason for being. It automatically turns an illegal act into a political and/or artistic statement. (The officially-sanctioned pseudo-rebellion of the title ‘Graffiti Junction’ is a desperate attempt to maintain an antisocial pose in the face of government-funded evidence to the contrary.)
But there’s also the ‘different in kind’ argument, which distinguishes noble, exulted Graffiti from mere ‘tagging’, the pastime of degenerates. This false distinction is based on the idea that adding borders, three-dimensionality and basic shading to illiterate slogans is sufficient to ‘art-ify’ it. The difference between a tagger and a Graffiti artist is one of degree, as both art forms exist for the same sole purpose: to escape law enforcement. (Granted, some graffiti displays a level of low-level dexterity – but so do compulsive masturbators, and I don’t see anyone giving them government grants. Perhaps that’s because they’re all in government themselves.)
Lest I be accused of being an elitist bastard, I want to finish with a case in support of stencil art, a phrase which I’ll allow to escape my terrifyingly sharp scare quotes.
Unlike graffiti, stencil art enriches its surroundings. This is because stencils are created, of course, away from the ‘scene of the crime’, giving the artists time to craft something of aesthetic worth before illegally depositing it. There is not the same obsession with naming in the stencil as in graffiti, where the perp’s greatest wish is to let people know that he has metaphorically pissed in a spot he shouldn’t have (I’m using the male pronoun out of respect for women). The stencils around Melbourne often suggest that their creators are capable of thinking a more complex thought than ‘Tracy = Slut’ or ‘Lebs: Go Home’.
To sum up, then: stencils = art, while graffiti = mild scourge. Society isn’t duty-bound to provide a ‘space of expression’ to everyone, least of all people whose sole claim to artistry is the possession of an opposable thumb to grip the spraycan with.
Posted by Timothy Roberts at 9:04 PM 0 comments

Early misgivings

It struck me, when reading over the last two posts, that the tone of this blog is overly grumpy. Doing a bit of research on Graffiti Junction, I read the following:

"Work on 'The Junction' started in April 2005 with over 100 individual stakeholders involved in the project. Especially deserving are the 50 volunteer artists. These included primary school students, members of the local indigenous community, respected Melbourne Street and Stencil Artists and the young people in Whitelion juvenile justice system serving community orders."

I've decided that in light of this, my comments on the graffiti wall were unduly harsh and mean-spirited. So, from now on, I'll try to tamp down the cranky and rachet up the crackpot.

Stupidity on Tap

There's been a lot of talk recently about bottled water, the latest cause celebre of the Australian media, for some inexplicable reason. It’s been amusing, in a tragic sort of way, but – enough! Let’s end the bottled water ‘debate’ here and right-bloody-well now.
Bottled water is disturbing in the way that it reveals how some factions of the environmental movement (all the ones that write for newspapers, apparently) can develop severe ADD at moments when their attention should be on genuinely terrifying problems, like the possible ensuing destruction of the entire planet by negligent Governments who cheerfully let us burn whole valleys of brown coal to fuel our knick-knacks.
Anyway, ‘experts’ at The Age and the SMH have recently discussed the environmental impact of bottled water as if it made a detectable, even alarming, contribution to global warming. Their argument goes like this: the bottles that entomb retailed water are made from oil – true. Also, the fossil fuels needed to transfer this heavy product from, um, mountain to shop, cause further damage. This is trivially true – as Dad always told me, a cubic metre of water weighs a whole damn tonne) – but utterly negligible by any reasonable definition. It makes as much sense as attacking shoelace manufacturers for their industry’s devastating contribution to land degradation caused by the cultivation of cotton
More importantly, the above bogus argument overlooks the clear benefits of bottled water, which performs a valuable service that is almost never discussed in polite circles. Like homeopathy – a highly sophisticated, soothingly ancient and completely non-invasive system of medicine which is also 100% water-based, and therefore useless – I see the bottled water industry as an indirect system of redistributive taxation which steadily takes money away from the cretinous, eventually making it available to the rest through stimulating the economy. (Admittedly this trickle-down effect, so to speak, must occur via the overstuffed coffers of unscrupulous multinationals, but let’s look at the positives for now).
The fact that someone can voluntarily pay for this stuff is one of the quirkiest aspects of modern life. Sure, we don’t have nearly enough water in Oz; but, at least in urban areas, it gushes prodigiously out of that wonderful device that we blithely call ‘the tap’. (A free pearl of wisdom for bottled-water connoisseurs: there’s one of these magnificent oracles in your kitchen…and another in your bathroom, O happy day!)
Even funnier than watching people buying the clear stuff for exorbitant prices is watching advertising companies trying to flog it – which they do with spectacular and depressing success. The meagre clutch of arguments deployed to this end can be broken down into a few distinct groups:
• The ‘healthful’ argument, i.e. bottled water is better for you than tap water. This argument is easily demolished due to its being such out-and-out bullshit. Bottled water is tap water. And putting it into a bottle doesn’t make it magic – only Jesus can do that, children. (Biblical scholars please note that His disciples, bless their pragmatic souls, became awed only after He turned water into wine. Working the miracle circuit would have been much, much easier for JC if the shindig at Canaan was populated with today’s water-purchasing yuppies. He could have easily convinced them of his Godliness in a jiffy, simply by pouring water from a large amphora into a slightly smaller one. End of miracle. Cue gasps, applause, cries of ‘Why, that was a good one, Lord!’)
• The ‘tasty’ argument, i.e. bottled water tastes better. Sorry: it doesn’t taste better, it tastes worse. Much worse, actually – almost as if it’s been distilled from the synthetic urine of a gigantic inflatable llama.
• The ‘picturesque source’ argument: the bottled water that you buy is taken directly from pristine sandstone repositories in the [insert photogenic mountain range here]. Bullshit again in most cases, I’m afraid: most of it comes out of the good ol’ tap, augmented with a bit of Capitalist wand-waving to provide it with its shiny commodity-aura.
• The ‘portability’ argument: although this is by far the most hilarious tactic, I often become stricken with worry for the human race when I wonder if this has ever actually influenced anyone’s buying habits. This quasi-Dadaist selling point emphasises the fact that the bottle of water you just unforgivably purchased for 3 bucks ‘moves with you’. (What’s the cheapo alternative, I wonder? A bottle of water that stays on the counter when you leave the shop?) As I found out to my intense disappointment, so-called ‘portable water’ still requires you to physically carry it, rather than, say, gliding serenely beside you on a velvet-lined Rickshaw held delicately aloft by a bevy of nubile Arabian Princesses. Oh well.
• The ‘lifestyle’ argument (also featured in every other ad ever made for anything): Drinking Brand X bottled water will make you sexy. (Tried it. Didn’t work. Beer is infinitely better for this, and for most other purposes to boot. The best thing that can be said for water in this respect is that it doesn’t Provoketh the Desire while it Taketh away the Performance, as I learned in my Year 10 English class.)
So, next time you see a misguided person serenely sipping the elixir of life from their translucent-blue Mt. Franklin bottle, don’t lecture them on their implicit support for the Military-Industrial Complex. Spend the money that you save on Beer, the real elixir of life – then laugh drunkenly at their precisely-measured, acetic, spuriously-carbon-neutral sippings from the other end of the bar, preferably while passionately making out with a beautiful, and equally tipsy, person whom you just met.
Them Yuppies’ll break eventually.

Urinal Etiquette

What’s that, ladies? An oxymoron, you say? Not a bit of it: just as exquisite tendrils of bathroom mould can flare up violently behind sodden towel rails, unexpectedly intricate social mores can bloom in the most inhospitable of places.
So it goes with urinal etiquette.
While having a Monday night drink with a friend at a cosy Fitzroy pub, the more delicate branch of my excretory system reached its endgame. Now, a striking fact, of which few women are aware, is the strange effects that ‘personalised’ urinals (a.k.a. ‘horizontal basins’, if you will) have over the communal, stainless-steel variety (a.k.a. ‘hog troughs’, whether you will or no). I will try and explain this concept to you as clearly as I’m able, using my own experience as a template.
On entering the men’s room, I was forced to wait for one of the three uri-cubicles (i.e. a personalised, wall-mounted urinal – ‘uri-cubicle’ is my second, preferred coinage for this heinous invention, the formal name of which escapes me).
The first person to finish was the occupant of the middle uri-cubicle. (I hope you are paying attention: you may think this detail is insignificant, but you would be dead wrong.)
Thus begins the first impossible trial of The Soon-To-Be-Urinating Man: i.e. to discreetly position himself between two currently urinating men while not seeming intrusive. A hard task at the best of times, this is made infinitely more so when dealing with Uri-Cubicals. (This effect has something to do, I think, with the fact that each man’s Uri-Cubicle effectively becomes his ‘private property’ when in use, while Hog Troughs derive from a more Marxian tradition. But I digress).
On moving into the middle position, the two men flanking me moved slightly, grudgingly sideways, crablike, as you would if a new, hostile urinator in town – The Urinator With No Name, if you will – had positioned himself between you and your buddy.
Things continued quite uneventfully for a few seconds. (A blessing. No news is good news at this particular time).
And then problem #2 arrived. (It gets a little complicated here, so please pay attention – it may help if you draw a (tasteful) diagram for your own reference.)
If the middle urinator arrives at the uri-cubicle after the left and right urinators, they will of course tend to finish before he does.
But the ‘changing of the guard’ ritual forces the urinator-intruder to commit a second imposition even worse than the first.
For if one of the outermost urinators leaves his uri-cubicle before the other (which is usually the case, unless the two outermost urinators are perfectly synchronised, which is unlikely.), the two remaining urinators – the newcomer-intruder in the middle and the remaining veteran on the edge – find themselves in sudden, unwelcome proximity. (The distance between them of course remains the same, but it feels closer, due to the loss of the counterbalancing force of the recently-departed outer urinator. That’s relativity – although I forget whether it is the Special or General theory).
Anyhow, who is blamed for this situation? Why, the urinator-intruder, naturally – even if his motives be as pure as the driven (yellow) snow!
But, I hear you say, surely there is a way out of this impasse. Yet state your case, and I will refute it.
There is, of course, no chance of either one of the unwillingly adjacent urinators relocating to the outermost uri-cubicle at this late point of the game:
As for the middle urinator, a hasty relocation is deeply suspicious – possibly disastrous, if the execution is bungled.
For the rightmost urinator, relocation is logically impossible, as he already occupies an outer position in the uri-cubicle complex: how would it benefit him to move around the central urinator?
The intruder, on committing his second faux-pas by no fault of his own, is falsely viewed as the willing cause of this awkwardness.
Finally, bladder capacities being equal, the remaining of the two initial urinators eventually leaves his post.
But the final – and most egregious – indignity suffered by the middle urinator-intruder has yet to occur. For remember: both outermost urinals are now vacant.

The following scenario commonly ensues. Two friends, both soon-to-be urinators themselves, enter the room. In a perfect world, they would each take up an outermost uri-cubicle, leaving the middle uri-cubicle vacant. (A vacant middle urinal makes conversation between men possible by minimizing genital proximity).
But of course, the initial urinator still occupies the middle uri-cubicle. His presence beside the two usurpers, brief though it is destined to be, achieves three things, all undesirable from his perspective:

i. It cuts off the possibility of conversation between the two friends, again causing the middle urinator to become the (hopefully figurative) target of resentment on both sides.

ii. It introduces an element of unanticipated genital proximity that strains the jovial, yet emotionally remote, atmosphere that is essential for a thriving uri-cubicle atmosphere.

iii. It forces our protagonist, the middle urinator, to perform a delicate ‘reversing’ movement in order to extricate himself from the middle position without committing an unnecessarily exhibitionistic ‘swivel’ manoeuvre.

(N.B. It is important to remember that our hero is no longer a urinator-intruder in relation to the two newcomers. It is they who are the urinator-intruders; although in the bitterest injustice of the whole experience, it is he who is treated as such.)
So, the interloper – who has now been thrice-disgraced for a single transgression! – must slink out of the uri-cubicle (a cruder, but not strictly inaccurate, writer would have said that he must do so, moreover, with his tail between his legs).

So please take note, ladies. It is not all beer and skittles when you are a member of the privileged gender that is permitted to fart with relative impunity at ceremonial occasions.

DISCLAIMER: Do not, under any circumstances, on the basis of the above article, attempt to verbally remind the two outer, replacement urinators that it is you who are the rightful and original (yet obviously still temporary) occupier/overseer of the uri-cubicle complex. Doing so may result in the painful and unexpected loss of urination apparatus.

Swede vs. Turnip

I like to think that I’m the sort of chap who is quite at ease with seeing Gay couples shopping in supermarkets (or anywhere, for that matter.) In fact, to commit a massive generalisation, there is nothing that says ‘Domestic Bliss!’ quite like two men going supermarket shopping together. (Conversely, heterosexual couples always look so damned miserable in supermarkets. Why? I, for one, always seem to have gone supermarket shopping with someone shortly before breaking up with them. Is there a connection? Now there’s an interesting thesis topic.) I realise that this impression is hopelessly superficial, and based on a very small number of cases. But this is all the better for the story.

Yesterday, an apparently blissful Gay couple were at the checkout in front of me. I noticed them immediately, because one of the men resembled Elliot Gould in the Robert Altman classic The Last Goodbye, with a sprinkle of Sir Bob Geldof thrown in. I envied his world-weary, jaded handsomeness, and unsuccessfully tried to find a vein of similar ruggedness in myself, gazing longingly at my reflection in the semi-polished metal strip of the checkout conveyor belt. The other man looked like a young Jean Reno in a trucker cap.

So. Geldof-Gould dropped a mini-tin of Dine Cat Food on the floor. I picked it up for him without even mentioning my view on the stupidity and waste of buying such a small tin of food for a cat, when the cat wouldn’t know anyway, unless you got it accustomed to Dine by weaning it off Snappy Tom, in which case you’ve only got yourself to blame – and you only get one serve per tin, as opposed to at least four from a regular can.1 (Actually, this tin of Dine was so comically small that at first I thought it might be some kind of high-end Paté supplement that people scoop onto the top of the regular blob of Dine, like a garnish for cats! But then I thought: hey, that’s insane. Only Blofeld’s, or Dr. Claw’s, cat are pampered enough to have a garnish, and they’re both fictional.)

I said nothing, in any case – I just handed Bob back his funny little can. He smiled appreciatively. It was a nice moment, and I briefly thought about being less judgemental about people who purchase premium brands of cat food.
Sadly, this synergetic moment was shattered by the sentence below, which was spoken by the checkout guy while holding an unidentified root vegetable aloft:

Excuse me – is this a Swede or a Turnip?

Because neither man was listening, he had to say it again; this time with feeling:

Excuse me, Sir – is this a Swede or a Turnip?

Now, Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, is this not an intrinsically funny sentence when one lives in a heavily industrialised country in the 21st century? In fact, I’m willing to bet that the last period of history when this sentence wasn’t funny was during the transition from serfdom to industrialised farming in 18th-Century England – shortly before the Swede/Turnip differentiation permanently lost its pressing relevance to the general populace.2

Oh, sure, there are modern exceptions: the Russians would have had plenty of opportunities to say something like this in earnest during the Soviet Experiment. (Even in pre-Revolution Russia, one of Chekhov’s late short stories was called Is This a Swede or a Turnip, And Even If we Knew, What Would it Matter Anyway?) But nevertheless, both of these foodstuffs are now utterly removed from our everyday eating experience that the distinction is rarely an issue. (Incidentally, the whole thing got me wondering: how can a swede and a turnip cost significantly different amounts? If they’re so similar as to be indistinguishable to a supermarket employee, I bet it would take an identical effort to grow either of them. Surely a resourceful employee would have just scanned a swede as a turnip, or vice versa? Who would know?)

The more I thought about this taxonomic confusion, the funnier it got. I started shaking with silent mirth, causing Jean Reno to glare at me murderously. I realised then that he probably thought that I thought that the sight of two gay men in a supermarket was intrinsically funny, when I actually thought that the sight of two gay men in a supermarket arguing over the provenance of an archaic root vegetable was intrinsically funny! (Actually, the sad irony is that it would have been just as funny if they were a man and a woman: the gay part was a red herring – but Reno the Trucker couldn’t have known that).

The problem was, I couldn’t just blurt out the following explanation:
“Oh no, I don’t have a problem with you two – it’s the turnip, you understand, and how easily it can be confused with other veg – oh, never mind.”
Instead, I had to outstare Reno the Trucker and learn the difference between a turnip and a swede. It was a fun and educational trip.

FOOTNOTES

1 N.B. I don’t actually say this to people in the Supermarket under any circumstances – God forbid! – but I do think about it at length.

2 In this period of history, this exchange would of course have taken a somewhat different form, i.e.:

DISTINGUISHED, YET MOST PROBABLY LECHEROUS, LANDOWNER: ‘Prithee, my faire Wenche, canst thy pray take the Trouble to tellest me whether yon vegetable possesseth most strongly thy features of thy gentle, nurturing, swede, or of thy robust, healthful turnip?’
BUXOM PEASANT GIRL, TILLING FIELD (WITH SLY, KNOWING SMILE): ‘Why, Sire, I know not! The taste of each is much the same to me ‘umble palate, it is though, so God ‘elp me.’

D'oh! D'oh!

I have just signed up with Dodo – a company so appallingly incompetent and ruthlessly cynical that I think it may actually be a sophisticated money-laundering operation with a small and unconvincing Telecommunications front, probably run out of a small office in a men’s toilet in the basement of a Hungry Jack’s. (Moral: Do not sign up with companies named after extinct animals. I should have learned this from my past experience with Giant Two-Toed Ground Sloth Mortgage Brokers.)

After expressing my dissatisfaction, Dodo put me through to a section called ‘Finance’, which is obviously Dodo code for ‘unleash second-rate Mafia Goon Impersonator onto the under-prepared and increasingly nervous customer so that we can keep all our money’.

What follows is my reconstruction of our conversation.

Me (cautiously optimistic): Hello, I’d like to get my money from Dodo refunded, please.

Goon (slow and menacing, yet somehow also stilted – similar to how Christopher Walken might sound if his acting career stalled and he had to take a second job as a Dodo telephone sales representative): Oh. (pause). Why would…you want…to do…that?

Me (faux-chirpy, foolishly expecting empathy from Goon): Well I purchased a wireless Internet card, and when I tried to install it, I found out that the password had been used.

Goon (switching to the “I am the Plenipotentiary of Total War” tone): So you… want another…

(gratuitously long pause, in my opinion) – password.

Me (helpfully seeking to redress misunderstanding): No, I would like my money back, please.

Goon: And why is…that? (Last word of Goon’s utterances invariably drips with scorn and half-heartedly repressed violence).

Me (in chipper, Gatsby-esque, “Well, isn’t it obvious, old chum?” voice): Because I am no longer confident that Dodo will be able to meet my requirements.

Goon (audibly ruffling his (presumably) irrelevant and/or pornographic sheaf of papers with his (presumably) terrifyingly strangle-hardened fingers¹ as he shifts his (no doubt) mean, pinhole-sized,² illiterate³ eyes lazily over them while (presumably) intricately picking his (no doubt) hideously misshapen nose (from his illicit and unsuccessful boxing career)⁴ and (quite possibly) eating its contents as well)⁵:

But according to our records, you signed a…contract with us.

Me (rapidly sensing lines of escape being cut off by part-time criminal): Yes. That’s true. But my experience over the past week suggests that these mistakes –

Goon (switching from his Walken impression to his “I’m the dumbest, and hence the most blissfully psychotic, member of the Corleone Family!” voice): Are you satisfied with the outcome of this call?

Me: What do you mean?

Goon: If you choose not to honour the contract that you have signed, then… (B I G – B L O O D Y – P A U S E, followed by Goon audibly shrugging a Cheops-sized pyramid of dandruff off both shoulders of his (presumably nylon-polyester blend) suit…well, that’s up to you.

Me (apprehensive): Uh, ‘well’ what?

Goon: Well, if you break the contract, and the service continues to be charged to your account…that’s your…choice. (The word “choice”, in this case, is pronounced like evil scientists in 1930s Hollywood/Universal horror films always utter the phrase “World Domination”).

Me (now confused): My choice to what?

Goon: To break the contract. And your contract is. For. Two. Years. (Pronounced as someone instigating a protection racket would pronounce the line: “Real nice store you got here. Be a shame if anything happened to it.”)⁶

Me: Um –.

Goon: Thank you for calling Dodo.

¹ Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

² Ibid.

³ Ibid.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Unlike the above, this is not a genetic trait, and hence comfortably falls under the umbrella of ‘inappropriate behaviour.’

⁶ I think this sentence may be taken from Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought. Thanks, Steve. Don’t sue, eh?