Winning

The self-esteem of the average Australian male is dangerously connected to the success of Australian sporting teams. This may seem stupid but I think there are very valid evolutionary reasons why we personally take so much from spanking the Poms in the Ashes.

I think we can trace it right back to the apes. In ape society, the ape who wins the fights  becomes head of the pack and gets to have sex with all the lady apes. It is a pretty simple system. As we have evolved and civilised things have become a tad more complex.

For the modern man fighting is frowned upon and generally lands you in gaol. Hence we have had to develop sport. Unfortunately becoming the best in the world at sport generally takes a lot of time and effort, so instead of us actually doing it ourselves we outsource this task to others who represent us.

Critical reasoning would suggest this is stupid. It is however remarkable that whenever I'm overseas and tell people I'm an Aussie they instantly assume I'm an awesome surfer. All I can say is good work Mick Fanning.

The fact that my cricket representatives are better than some English bloke's cricket representatives allows me to feel that on an ape level I would be the powerful ape who is happily rooting all the lady apes while the English bloke is somewhere far away masturbating in a tree.

Needless to say I am really enjoying seeing us humiliate the Poms. 

Vision Personal Training

Dear Vision Personal Training,

This morning I was having a lovely dream where I, along with the Dalai Lama, Michael J Fox (appearing as Teen Wolf), Kurt Cobain, Mr T and most of the Australian cricket team were playing a game similar to water polo that involved riding around on mermaids. This dream was undoubtedly better than anything I have seen at the movies for the past five years. Unfortunately just when I was getting the hang of riding my mermaid I was rudely awaken by one of your trainers who was loudly screaming at those running up the road directly below my apartment.

I looked at the clock, saw it was 6 am and tried to return to my awesome mermaid dream. Instead I got a rather erotic dream where Beyonce and all her dancers were naked backstage and we were playing spin the bottle. Before the bottle had even gone through three rotations I was again rudely awoken by the same yelling below.

I somehow managed to return to the dream but Beyonce and her dancers had been replaced by the randy inhabitants of a nursing home. Their wrinkly skin was sticking to the vinyl chairs and one of them had a catheter attached to a wee bag that held liquid of a disturbingly greenish tinge. There was of course more yelling from below so I didn’t have to endure this dream for too long.

I’m really not sure why people are so imbecilic that they can’t work out how to run up a hill for themselves. The fact people pay your organisation to tell them how to run up a hill still confounds me.

I also really don’t understand why so much yelling is necessary. Could you not just gather your gormless clients down the bottom of the hill and quietly instruct them? Something like… “See that hill? Run up it as fast as you can until you spew. Then when you’ve done that wipe your chin and walk back down.”

If they are too stupid to understand basic instructions perhaps you could just place some electrodes on your clients and give them little jolts by remote control to encourage them up the hill. It would certainly be preferable to having someone disturbing the sleep of the entire neighbourhood.

If you know anything about health you will know that sleep is incredibly valuable. As an organisation supposedly dedicated to health it seems ridiculous that you are negatively affecting the health of everyone within shouting range.

I ask that you see sense and discontinue the practice of loudly yelling in Young Street. This would be better for my health, the health of neighbours and the health of your personal trainer. I mean this because next time it happens I’m going to go out on my balcony and start throwing anything handy at the man with the stupidly loud voice.

Body Corporate Nazi

When old people who haven't achieved much in life end up living in apartment they take out their frustrations by joining the body corporate and becoming Nazis. There is something about the position that just attracts angry, bitter old biddies.

For some incomprehensible reason our body corporate Nazi has decided that we shouldn't put bins in the bin bay but instead store them in our own garages. She confronted me telling me that local dogs were just mad for the pooey baby nappies held within the bins. The fact I don't have a baby didn't seem to matter to her.

I have begun my campaign against this stupidity with this letter.

Dear neighbour,

You are no doubt well aware of the recent edict that bins be stored in private garages rather than in the bin bay. While I’m sure this decision was made with the best of intentions I believe it to be extremely ill-advised.

Consider this scenario.

It is Thursday evening and Jill is lugging her heavy bin from her garage to the curb. The plastic is cutting into her hands, her dodgy back is twitching and with the big bin blocking her vision she can’t make out exactly where she is putting her feet. The rough sandstone stepping stones are slippery from recent rain and a little leaking garbage juice. Suddenly Jill slips, wrenches her back horribly and smashes her face on the corner of the dis-used bin bay. Poor Jill lies there unconscious, bloodied and surrounded by spilt garbage.

Eventually Jill is rescued however she faces many operations and ongoing therapy. Unfortunately Jill’s back is now the shape of a question mark and her once angelic face has been transformed into a horrific mess that frightens small children.

Jill sues the strata for gross negligence and wins full damages with the judge agreeing that this was “an accident waiting to happen”. The strata scheme is then bankrupted and we have to give up the plastic plants that so enliven the foyer.

While this is indeed a distressing hypothetical scenario, I believe it important to be mindful of safety issues and potential liabilities in a world where litigation and back problems are extremely common.

Storing bins in garages is also inappropriate for another reason. Cars go in garages. When you attempt to squeeze a bulky bin in there, suddenly not all cars will fit. This renders the garage essentially useless for its purpose.

If we assume the average rental for a garage is $80 per week, this means occupants are paying over $4000 a year for what has essentially now become just a garbage storage facility, whilst parking their car on the street. This seems rather ridiculous considering we have a purpose-designed bin bay.

People need to use the storage space in the garage for their own things. Many choose to store their winter clothes there. I cannot however imagine anyone wanting to store their clothes next to a bin containing prawn heads, overripe bananas and nappies full of baby crap. It would seem far better that bins be stored well away from valued personal possessions in a space where the malodorous stench can at least be carried away by a fresh breeze. Again, the bin bay sounds like the better solution.

I realise there are concerns about dogs getting into the garbage but there are certainly other avenues we could take to eliminate this problem. One suggestion would be for the unit block to get a pet tiger that guards the bin bay. While tigers are undoubtedly cool and would probably scare dogs away, I fear this solution could be as legally fraught as making people trudge about with heavy loads on uneven stepping stones.

A more boring solution would be to get bins with latches on them. Dogs are yet to evolve to a point where they have opposable thumbs, rendering them quite impotent in the face of a latch-fastened bin. Despite not being as awesome as the tiger idea it is relatively cheap, should not cause any legal liabilities and does not waste people’s valuable garage space.

While this is undoubtedly a stupid letter I hope it is taken seriously. No one wants to see hypothetical Jill or anyone else injured. Clearly it will make life safer and more convenient for everyone if we can rethink the current policy and arrive at a sensible solution.

Merry Christmas to everyone!

The saga continues

I got a letter in return from the Nazi calling me an idiot and a mouth-breathing word-by-word reader. This was perhaps the most pathetic insult I have ever heard. The letter nit-picked various aspects of my letter but did not really address the central safety issue.

It said that rather than taking the outdoor route the garage I should take the internal route which involves two flights of stairs and two locked doors (not exactly convenient or safe).

I continued to store my bin in the bin bay and was today again confronted by the Nazi. I pointed out that I had studied health and safety and having people carry bins down stairs was in fact unsafe. She retorted telling me that she was 80 and she could do it, so I should be able to.

At this point I noticed she had a massive bruise all the way down her arm. She stormed off so I didn't get a chance to ask if she had got the bruise from a fall. Nor did I get to point out that people aged 80 plus are the group who most commonly die from  falling down stairs.

Normally I wouldn't wish pain on anyone but part of me really hopes she falls down the stairs while taking out the garbage, breaks her hip and has to move out. It would be such delicious irony.

To piss her off a little further I am going to make stickers with the following picture and plaster them all over my bin.

Colour

Society has become dull and conservative.

People paint their houses grey, then put on a grey suit and get in their grey cars to some boring office with ceiling tiles. It's all very depressing.

The top selling colours for cars are white, black and silver. Even the new iPhones aren't selling because colour is so scary for most people.

For the sake of joy we need to fight back against dullness. I thought I would start this fight on a local level with an inappropriate letter to a neighbour who had painted some very dull colour swatches on their house.

Dear neighbour,

Using my Sherlock Holmes-esque powers of deduction, I’ve deduced that you are considering repainting your house and I must say I am a little disappointed by the colour options you are contemplating.

Currently your home is a very cheerful pastel green. It is the colour of a mouth-watering lime sorbet, the water in some far-flung tropical paradise and the lingerie worn by that shapely lass on page 16 of the summer ‘92 Grace Brothers catalogue. I mean really, what on earth could be better than ice cream, tropical paradise and a very hot woman wearing a very minimal amount of clothing?

Instead of this fabulous vision you appear to be considering painting it some horrifically boring shade of grey. Really, why grey? What do you recall when you think of grey? For me it conjures visions of disease-ridden pigeons, the sky in London, John Howard’s stupid eyebrows, miserable corporate slaves in business suits and ridiculously expensive luxury four wheel drives that try to run me down every time I’m on my bicycle.

Maybe you like your business suit. Maybe you like driving a grey Audi. Maybe you have a secret John Howard eyebrow fetish. I really don’t know.

Maybe all you care about is money. If that is the case, I’d encourage you to look inside your wallet. All those notes are beautifully colourful. Just choose your favourite one and paint it that colour! Of course, if the $100 note is your favourite you don’t have to do a thing. Your house is already green. What a win!

I and the rest of the neighbourhood look forward to seeing what decision you make.

Yours sincerely,

Some bloke down the road

Investing in fucking up the economy

Australian politicians do a great job of pretending to care about the cost of living, yet each year our government spends billions of dollars to make the cost of living more expensive.

Negative gearing is mind-blowingly stupid. It basically involves us paying rich people to make poor investments. In the 2010-11 financial year negatively geared investors lost $13.25 billion dollars. These losses were claimed as tax deductions. 

As well as costing us billions each year in forgone tax revenue, negative gearing has massively inflated the cost of housing. These inflated housing costs flow through the economy. To meet the basic need of having a roof over their heads, workers require higher wages, which means businesses have greater costs, consumers pay more and Australia becomes less and less internationally competitive.

If we still wish to throw money at property investors, we should at least limit negative gearing to landlords who purchase new properties. This would increase the supply of properties and mean first time buyers have a fairer go when bidding on the run down 1970’s apartments that are actually within their price range.

If we wish to provide incentives for investment, we should be far more thoughtful about where we direct the money. Rather than artificially propping up property prices we should be encouraging investors to put their money in areas which actually improve the country.

How about incentives for investing in science and innovation? Or incentives for investing in environmental projects? Oh wait, we have Abbott for prime minister. I blocked that out. Maybe we could just have incentives for investing in more toll roads.

Parched

I went to Woolworths and discovered their new trolleys have built-in drink holders. Have there been a lot of people dropping dead of dehydration while slowly ambling down the aisles in air-conditioned comfort? I doubt it, but I do think people are scared to go more than 50 metres without a drink bottle these days.

In the eighties no one used to get dehydrated because we didn't really know what that word was. We got thirsty and sometimes we got bloody thirsty, but no one ever got dehydrated. Cars back then didn't have drink holders because car designers assumed that sitting down doesn't take much effort and that people just tootling around probably didn't really need a drink.

Somewhere in the 90's women's magazines started telling us that we needed to drink 20 glasses of water a day and soon after we started seeing a whole lot of power walkers with drink bottles poking up from their bum bags. Were they too busy flailing their arms to stop at a bubbler? I'm not sure.

Then Gatorade came along and spent a whole lot of advertising money to tell us that if we were thirsty we were already dehydrated. They did a good job of making being a bit thirsty seem scary, whilst also making people think they would like like an elite athlete if they drank their fancy cordial.

With the public shit-scared of ever being thirsty, marketers then got really clever and started selling bottled water. They realised that people were now so petrified of ever feeling a little parched that they would willingly fork over $2.50 for stuff that comes free in a tap.

Now we are encouraging consumers to consume more even at the point that they are walking around buying things. Maybe the next step will be to put in a popcorn holder next to the drink holder on the trolley. Or may be we can just have a chaff bag like horses?

High vis

I was playing golf next to a school playground yesterday and noticed all the teachers on playground duty were being forced to wear high vis vests. Why? Teachers were pretty easily identifiable when I was at school. Generally they were all about two foot taller, at least twenty years older and not dressed head to toe in grey. Are kids really getting so dumb that they need a high vis vest to work out the difference?