Fucked up Society II: Christmas Cards from your pet

I was innocently shopping for Christmas cards today when I was confronted by a new product that made me realise how sad the world has become.  A shop in Leichhardt has lots of specialised Christmas cards for those special relationships in life…. a Christmas card from mother to son, from son to father, from brother to sister etc etc…. but where did we completely lose the plot by having Christmas cards that come from a cat or dog to thier owners??

I can verify that there were no dogs or cats wandering around the aisles of the newsagency, trying to pick out a Christmas card for the human beings that they have to live with. 

If a cat was going to go to the newsagency, they would be browsing for the latest issue of “Birds” magazine, or maybe the latest issue of “Aquaruim Fish Monthly”.  Cats would never buy a Christmas card for their owner, as they are far more interesting in investing in new properties near national parks that have an abundance of birdlife.

Dogs are too dumb to understand any concepts related to Christmas cards or gift giving.

I am trying to imagine the type of person who would buy a Christmas card from a cat or dog to their owner.    It is so sad to think about someone waking up on Christmas day and feigning surprise at the fact that their cat has given them a Christmas card.  It’s just so sad.

Forget the War on Terror – the War on Wombats is more important

I am very grateful that we have an incredibly far sighted government in NSW, as they are fighting a new war against a formidable adversary.  Forget the war on terror, as NSW also has to deal with native animals who are resistant to change.  I now realise that wombats are a formidable enemy to Australian people, especially after reading about their ability to decrease property values in the Southern Highlands:  The war on wombats. Another part of me makes me realise that we are living in the most fucked up society when we are sanctioning the use of firearms against cute native animals like wombats.  People in other countries would be horrified at the concept of killing innocent native animals, but alas, we live in NSW.

The NSW government is giving working families the ability to have a gun and shoot these nasty wombats.   This is a fairly standard response from an Australian government.  Wombats are digging holes under fences and maybe building burrows underneath someone’s garden shed.  Forget the fact that these animals have been living here for thousands of years, it is far more important to reduce your maintenance expenses on your new fence or your McMansion.

When will Australian people actually realise that we need to live in our natural environment? 

I think I might be accused of being a subversive influence here, but I would generally support any underground movement by the wombats of NSW, if they are trying to fight a war on the people of NSW.  Most of the built environment in NSW consists of lots of ugly buildings, sparse suburbs and grey industrial estates, with a generous splattering of McDonalds, KFC and used car sales yards… they would be doing us a favour if they burrow their way through the majority of property throughout the state.

However, I do support the war on wombats if they ever burrow their way under the Sydney Opera House.  That might be worth protecting.

Fun at the Dentist

This financial crisis thing is making me appreciate the simple things in life a lot more, and to always enjoy life at every moment.  It’s great to get back to basics and realise that you don’t need the latest i-phone, and maybe you don’t even need to go out and see the new movie “Australia”.  It’s a good time to save money for a rainy day, but also to spend on those special little treats that make life worthwhile…. so I went to the dentist today for a bit of fun…

A piece of tooth fell out my mouth the other day.  The dentist confirmed that I had to have a filling of a filling to fix this up.  I’m usually a fairly reasonable patient at the dentist, but today I developed a morbid fear of the needle that makes your mouth numb.  It was unexplainable.  It was so awful, because I am usually OK with dentist needles, but I just freaked.  I completely froze and it took the dentist three attempts before she was able to get the needle into my mouth, let alone anywhere near my gum.  I was almost hyperventilating.  I felt like a 12 year old school kid.  She was so patient, but the whole episode would have made a good comedy show.  After the needle thing was done, I was fine, but the dentist was all flustered because I kept raising my hand whenever the water was choking me (like every three seconds).  It is always so uncomfortable.  The dental assistant was not very good at the suction thing, and I could tell that the HR department should also give the dentist some counselling on how to deal with subordinates.   I wanted to give both of them counselling on how to work like a team, but my mouth was full of cotton wool, lip clamps, suction sticks, probes and the dentist’s drill.   At one critical point, a piece of equipment was dropped on the ground as it was passed between the dentist and her assistant… then the dentist’s swivel chair went smashing into the side of my head as she raced to pick the implement up.  Then I got the giggles (much to their horror)…. not a good thing when there is a drill, two probes, five pieces of cotton wool and a suction tube all in your mouth at the one time… we had to stop and have a break, while I laughed and she was earning $400 an hour.  Not that funny when I think about it now.

Anyway, after 90 minutes, the filling was completed and I have another additional security problem whenever I fly, as my mouth will set off the bomb detectors at the airport. 

Also grateful that this whole episode has re-affirmed my disbelief in this silly Christian concept of “intelligent design”, where there are claims that human beings are created to be perfect by the intervention of a god.   This god must be a comedian or a total sicko, as teeth are the most troublesome awful part of the body that give you nothing but grief.  God has a very dark sense of humour, by seeing the misery of people through the ages as they die from a rotten tooth that causes blood poisoning…. these days you can pay to go to the dentist for a wonderful experience like mine.   I like to think that Charles Darwin might have a valid argument… after a few more billion years, we will evolve into creatures that do not have teeth.

Two faced Cats – A result of GMO?

I normally like cat stories in a newspaper, but one story today made me feel rather unwell. 

My cat is a global citizen.  He came from Singapore, but he is quite at home in Sydney.  As a global citizen, he eats fusion food.  One of his favourite treats is vegemite and cheese on rice crackers.  It allows him to connect with his Asian heritage, while also affirming his new found love for Australia, in addition to pigging out on his favourite food – cheese.  He obviously has some Dutch heritage as well.

A cat with two faces was born today in Perth.  It is quite a yucky story, especially since I have been reading an amazing book by Jane Goodall, who is a respected scientist in animal behaviour.  Her book deals with how we get our food, and issues like GMO (genetically modified food).   GMO is largely untested, as we have not had enough time to realise the full implications of modifying molecules and genes in everything that we eat.  Jane Goodall highlights that some of the testing that has been done on GMO in the past has had nasty impacts on rats and other laboratory animals… but somehow our governments and regulators don’t take any action on this issue by making it mandatory for companies to disclose whether products have been genetically modified. 

Science is quite revealing.  Animals like rats and cats have a very quick life span, so it makes sense to me that GMO food would have a big impact on them in a fairly short time frame when compared to people – their genes are passed on to their children very quickly.  This makes me worry when I hear about cats being born with two faces.  Has this happened before?  Did the cat’s mother eat lots of GMO?  What does this mean to people in the future?  Are we going to see people being born with two faces?

 

It seems like GMO is being thrusted upon us, and we do not have a choice.  Surveys consistently reveal that people would not buy GMO food if they have a choice.  So I am quite disturbed that governments do not mandate a requirement to disclose when a food has GMO.  Give people a choice.  If people want to save a few cents/pennies on GMO food, thats fine, but people need to know what they are eating.

I think we also need to think about the precautionary principle, especially when we look at things that have been thrust upon us in the past.  Asbestos is fantastic for building products and motor vehicle brakes, but look at all the health issues that we are dealing with now.  Not to mention other problems like aerosols and formaldehyde.  Companies that made these products have been able to avoid taking any responsibility, as they are no longer around or they have devised legal structures to avoid prosecution. 

If any companies are thrusting GMO food in our face, rules should be in place to ensure they take responsibility in the longer term.  Make them pay a percentage of their revenue into a fund that can pay for future problems.  More importantly, they should be made to disclose exactly whether their products contain GMO… so we can have some real choice.

Otherwise, who is going to take care of the people who have two faces 20 years down the track – physical faces!!

Even more importantly, lots of people are two faced already, and they fuck me off.  I cannot deal with four faced people….

Warning: Random Penis Pics

I am so glad I do not own an i-phone, as it has the ability to take nasty pics of your dick.  People should not carry the i-phone in the pocket of their jeans…. even more importantly, if you are going to cheat on your wife, don’t take pics of your dick and send them in an email… another example of complete stupidity in this age… the wife is even more stupid, unless she is gathering evidence for a really good settlement in the divorce case…

Click here to read about a completely stupid guy….

The long lost sister

I learnt something today.

I used to think that St George is a very hazy, undefined area of Sydney that is more famous for it’s football team and hospital than it is for having a postcode that is recognised by Australia Post.  Or maybe St George is a bank that used to be a big strong dragon who loved Julie Anthony, but now it is about to be disabled by a sticky Wetpatch in a nasty orgy of corporate seduction… Sorry… I mean Westpac made love to the Dragon…  Or maybe St George was some significant figure in English History….

However, I am truly enlightened now – there is also a town in Queensland that is called St George.  It is out in the country, and it has it’s own mayor, whose name is Donna Stewart.  Donna got voted as mayor of the Balonney Shire Council with 1,694 votes.  Balonney Shire Council includes St George.  Maybe it also includes other towns.  But they are less significant than St George.

You may wonder why I am interested in Balonney & St George.  I was amazed to see the mayor of Balonney, as I think there is an uncanny link to the Sydney’s mayor, Clover Moore….  Take a look at these pictures…. it raises so many potential issues….

There are a few possibilities:

a) Clover Moore is moonlighting as the mayor of Balonney, as well as being the mayor of Sydney and the state member for Sydney;

b) Donna Stewart and Clover Moore are long lost sisters;

c) Australian people are smart enough to vote for the best woman or man for the job.

My interest in St George and Balonney shire was sparked by an intertesting story that examines how the mayor of Balonne is fighting to prevent the Federal government from buying water rights in the Balonne region.  Even though less than 2,000 people vote for the mayor of Balonne, they use more water than the whole of Sydney each year.   Irrigators in Balonne Shire use over 700 gigalitres of water every year.  In the meantime, the whole of Sydney’s 4 million people use less than this amount of water per year – around 630 gigalites.   Admittedly, Sydney is not a farming community, but it is quite horrifying to think about a community that is using water to such a huge extent, when there is such a huge water shortage in this country. 

The people of this community should not be blamed directly for this issue, but it would be good to see community leaders working together to fix the bigger problems for the whole country.   It seems like this community needs some outside help to develop new industries that do not need so much water.  700 gigalitres is nearly the equivalent of 2 Sydney Harbours each year – that is a shit load of water…. especially when it is highly likely that water will dry up over time in the next few years.  It seems to me that it is sensible to start cutting back on water use.  But as an entire community across the whole of Australia, we also need to look at how we an help these communities in the longer term… especially if the people have had the wisdom to vote for a Clover Moore protege!!….

$6 billion for cars – an ungrateful reflection

• “Cars are just silly, and nobody with any brains would make anything so clumsy and dangerous, and nobody with any sense would ride in one.  Cars that have to keep to roads are bound to run into one another pretty often, and cars should be made so they do not run into one another.” (Quote from “Chocky”, John Wyndham, Science Fiction Writer, 1958).

It is not very reassuring to hear that Australia is going to blow $6 billion on creating a local “green” car industry when we are relying on support from overseas American companies to also contribute to the effort.  The local industry lost $400 million this year… but none of the so-called economic experts seem to have an issue with throwing good money after bad… no wonder we are in an economic mess. 

The local industry relies on American comanpies, GM and Ford, who are on the brink of bankruptcy – it is not too clear why they would want to invest any money in an Australian industry, especially when there is so much pressure on them to maintain local investment in the US.  The other major player, Toyota, has been spending many more billions of dollars on fuel efficient cars like the Prius since the 1980s, so Kevin Rudd’s stimulus package will just reveal that Australia’s leaders are dancing to the beat of Thompson Twins or Alison Moyet - give us a new tune to dance to!! 

If Kevin was PM in 1908, he would probably give $6 billion to blacksmiths and horse carriage manufacturers, in order to prop up an industry that is ready to die.  It’s a shame that we cannot think about the bigger picture.

$6 billion would go a long way towards developing new industries that could be long term winners.  Australia has lots of sunshine, and there are incredibly good researchers in the field of solar energy.  But spending in this area is dismal.  Despite the potential upside.

Why do we buy a car?  To get from A to B.  Public transport is a joke throughout the majority of Australia, so people need to have a car to get from A to B.  If people could get to work/school on public transport, they could start thinking about whether a car is necessary – it is feasible to eliminate cars in big cities, particularly if the price of petrol rises.  Governments should look at spending $6 billion on building good public transport infrastructure, so hopefully we can get to a point where we do not need to have a car.  Public transport is a longer term investment that will last well beyond 3 to 5 years for an individual car.

It is a shame that we are so concerned about industries that are entrenched in our society, when we should be looking at what the world will be like in 50 years.  $6 billion equates to $300 per person in Australia.  This would go a long way towards creating new sustainable industries and improving local public infrastructure.

For now, I will pause and reflect on all the blacksmiths who did not have Kevin Rudd as PM back in 1908.    May they rest in peace and bless him.  They would still be in a job if we had our current political leaders at the helm.

Green Fingers and Rainbow Lorikeets

As the days get longer in Sydney we have the benefit of daylight savings.  We all know that daylight savings is fantastic for plants as they get an extra hour of sunlight every day.  A person from Queensland wisely told me how daylight savings is probably the real cause of global warming, but it is not such as issue as the majority of people in Queensland do not believe in global warming anyway.  They have always been fried by the sun for many generations, and it’s never done them any harm, right?   An extra hour of sunshine is bound to cause things to warm up!

I digress.

So all this extra sunlight has had a really good effect on my latest little project on the balcony.  A few months ago, I planted these really tiny plants that were allegedly tomato bushes. This morning I woke up and was amazed by an incredible sight on the balcony.  Much to my amazement, I have actually managed to grow a small bunch of tomatoes – they are really really tiny, but I am hoping that they may actually become full sized one day.

There are a couple of ecological issues that could arise now, as I have become aware of these ferral little birds (shown above) that are eyeing my tomatoes (also shown above).  I used to encourage the rainbow lorikeets to come up to the balcony by feeding them honey, but it is a totally different matter when they are spying on my tomatoes.  In any case, they are native birds, so they should eat native things – tomatoes are Italian.  I am quite concerned as I suspect that they will have a feast one day when the tomatoes finally turn from green to red – the rainbow lorikeets of the Inner West of Sydney probably have a much more exciting life than rainbow lorikeets in the country.  They can pop over to Leichhardt to feast on eggplants that are being grown in a community garden for breakfast.  Lunchtime will consist of buk choy and high protein lentils from the gardens of Asians and lesbians around Marrickville.  For dinner they just look for some university students who will feed them some magic mushrooms… and the pattern continues.  It’s a much more exciting life than the poor birds that live in the countryside.   They have a very boring diet of wheat and sorghum all year round.  No wonder there are more rainbow lorikeets moving into the city. 

I only hope that Thomas the cat keeps and eye on them when I am at work, and that he doesn’t get so hungry that he eats the tomatoes as wellll.  I’ve invested a lot of time and emotional commitment to the tomatoes.  Additionally, I also went down the the local nursery and bought some liquid manure that stinks out the whole balcony, but apparently the tomatoes love it. 

Hopefully I will be able to make a tomato salad for my family on Christmas Day, as long as the feral rainbow lorikeets keep their greedy beaks away from my balcony.

For the Term of His Natural Life – sentenced by the low Aussie dollar!

“For the Term of His Natural Life” is the title of a classic Australian book.  I have not read it, but I do have it in my book collection.  It looks really fab on my new bookshelf.  I’ve been advised by friends that it is about a bloke who gets convicted for stealing a pencil in London back in the olden days, and they get sent to the warm sunny climes of Australia as a punishment.   A modern liberalist interpretation is that they are stuck in Sydney due to socio-economic conditions at the time.   This is very ironic, as this is also the fate of Australians nowadays.

A new pattern is emerging in Australia again, where hard working Australians (like myself) are having our wings clipped, much in the same manner as the battlers who got stuck here in the first place.  The bloody Aussie dollar has fallen again, which basically means that I may have to think twice about popping off to Finland for Christmas Day, enjoying a brief ski in the French Alps, before heading off for a sail around the Greek Islands and finally visiting the ice sculptures in Japan over this Christmas New Year break.  Even places like Thailand look expensive as the Aussie dollar tumbles further and further every day.  What a person to do when the Aussie dollar is heading south of the Russian Rouble??

Its a bloody travesty.  It’s obvious that we are about to become a nation of people who are stuck at the arse end of the world again.   We will need to cut down on overseas travel going forward.  Holiday choices will now be based primarily within the state, with the lucky few getting the chance to jet off exotic locations like Proserpine or Mildura.  Overseas now means doing a trip to Tasmania.

As this is supposed to be a grateful diary, I am grateful I did the Trans Siberian trip back in June to August, - this was the best time to spend those Aussie dollars, as shown by the graph above.  Even Hong Kong was cheap, but if I ever return there, I will never be able to afford anything, except a dish of oily fish noodles out in the suburbs of the New Territories.  It would not be worth the bloody suffering on economy class flights!

So now we probably have to stay at home in Australia for holidays.  Future holidays to get some tropical weather will involve intolerable experiences in Queensland, where lots of old old people with reptilian skin pile their plates full of reheated prawns at the “All you can eat” buffet on the Gold Coast (especially on a Monday or Tuesday night).  I don’t think I can play the game of pretending that Melbourne is like “Europe”, especially when the sun is beating down with 44 degree heat and the only way to escape is to drive into a clogged underground freeway – at least by the time you get back to the surface, the weather would have changed to the point where Melbourne could pass as a provincial corner of Siberia in the middle of winter.   Instead of going to Asia for exotic culture and good food, we will have to settle for the Kingsgrove RSL Chinese Restaurant, or perhaps a trip to Temasek in Parramatta if you want to get your fill of Malaysian.  I’ll just try to ignore the sound of poker machines in the outdoor garden terrace, as I contemplate higher buddist thoughts.

Indeed, we have been sentenced.  Bugger the interest rate issue…. let’s raise interest rates to boost the Aussie dollar!!

F***ed Up Society I: Rude people who Cultivate Little Monsters

I generally like kids, so I would not want people to take this posting the wrong way.  There is nothing much that a mom can do when a child is playing an incredibly tantrum in the supermarket, for the most insignificant reasons.  I’m not the sort of person that frowns on this sort of behaviour, even on a long flight from Sydney to London.  The majority of parents are good people who understand that there is a world outside their family and their little darling offspring, and they generally try to do their best when little kids are being anti-social.

However, on the weekend I witnessed an incredible example of inept parenting where a child was encouraged to vandalise public property and destroy nature.  Saturday afternoon at the food and wine show.  Little girl darling Lucy and younger little cute boy kid Adolf are out in the park with mom and dad and a big group of chardonnay sipping mother club at the food and wine festival.  Sometimes I think parents should have to stay at home. 

Lucy and Adolf start off some good fun by picking a couple of flowers from the flower bed in Hyde Park.  Cute little gasps from mummy and daddy… ahhh… ohhhh… isn’t that cute.  To further push the boundaries, young Lucy decides to go on a stomping march through all the flowers and small shrubs that have been cultivated over the past few months.  Rather than making any attempt to stop the little vermin monsters from destroying public property, mummy tells daddy to rush and get his digital SLR camera so they can capture the Kodak moment.  In the meantime the group of chardonnay sipping fat-arsed parents are giggling away at this spectacle – their lardy arses were so big that it would have taken a crain to lift them off the grass, let alone running over the pick up the kid and get them off the flower bed.

These type of parents are fortunately not the norm.  Do they realise that they are cultivating little monsters who have no idea of what is right and wrong?  What happens when these kids go to school?  They probably never need to share anything (god forbid!), and they are allowed to do anything they want.  I wonder how these kids will grow up, and how they will react when the face the realities of life.  Probably really self centred and unable to function in society.  I wonder if this small display of very poor parenting is just one of example of how the world is gradually becoming more and more fucked up and people have no concept of considering anything except themselves.

This little incident does remind me of a saying I once heard about parenting and pet ownership.  You need a licence to keep a cat or dog, but you don’t need a licence to be a parent.