100 Miles and Runnin'

A return to rambling.

Although I may not have looked much like a gangster from the ghetto at the time, what with my blotchy, pimply skin and unmanageable red hair; a school uniform comprising a three-toned striped tie with matching cricket blazer, long shorts and long socks - back in the early '90s, sixteen year old Donkey and his private school chums, like their compatriots growing-up in 'The Projects', were pretty obsessed with hard core American rap music.

This was just before Las Angeles erupted into flames and was flooded with more military personnel and hardware than East Beirut.  It's by no means not clear why we were so fired-up by the likes of Public Enemy and Ice Cube – perhaps we'd somehow confused the neatly clipped lawns, white-washed mansions and European cars of Melbourne's Southeast suburbs with the boarded-up shopfronts of Southeast LA (for sure, an easy mistake to make).  Whatever the trigger, we'd become all consumed with pimps, bitches, ho's, drugs and drive-bys, and were on a head-on plunge down the amoral slope towards hard core sexism, racism and anti-authoritarianism (although to be fair the latter amounted to little more than one of us – and certainly not me – once pissing on the tyre of a parked, unmanned postal truck).

For me, personally, my biggest influence here had been NWA, the Niggaz With Attitude.  Sure, it was probably tracks with exciting, risqué names like Fuck the Police that got me listening in the first place, but what I really came to love was the theatrics of many of their tracks, and in particular, the great story telling.  My favourite was 100 Miles and Runnin', which took us on a super-paced, action-packed prison break following the 'Niggaz in Black' as they high-tailed it out of the Federal Penitentiary on their way, so FBI sources informed us, for their home base, Compton.  A fantastic, high-speed yarn indeed, although it did always seem strange to me that if the FBI knew where the Brothers were goin', they might have saved themselves the chase and just headed straight over to Compton to round them up...

The main event – Back in the Pac.

S'nice to be back in a small pond again; seeing the same faces in the stores, restaurants and bars each day; the same protruding butt cracks and flabby bellies crammed onto the only open, accessible beach on a Sunday afternoon; being privy to all the juicy social scandals within moments of an illicit wink, kiss or haphazard lover's retreat out the backdoor while one's partner walks in through the front. 

Even more enjoyable is returning to a place where, simply by virtue of the size and proximity of the population, one is so much closer to the [only slightly] higher brow happenings of Government and big business.  And Mrs Donkey is in her element with not one, but two Z-class local newspapers; she's resisted the urge thus far, but I can tell she's only one typo, sexist or racist remark away from a semi-publishable (but sure to be published), outraged letter under some translucently flimsy pseudonym.

But it's not all palm trees, pina coladas, tea-on-the-lawn and cucumber sandwiches.  In fact, even before The Donkeys - now with new edition completing the full nuclear configuration - left for the sunny skies of Port Vila, the pre-departure briefing notes supplied by Donkey's new employer flagged the following security concern:

Prison breakouts have occurred.  Crime rates may increase in the period following a breakout.  We advise you to pay close attention to your own security, monitor the media for events that may affect your safety and security and follow the instructions of local authorities.

Mrs D and I nearly choked on our daiquiris upon reading this - such an odd addition for something that 'has occurred', we laughed.  But we've now been here for two months, and there have been no less than three mass breakouts from the same prison.

Upon a breakout, the fun starts immediately.  First the rumours shoot through the town, followed by email warnings confirming the rumours, and successfully designed to spread abject panic amongst the expatriate citizenry (especially the yanks – they seem to absolutely lose it).

For the most part, at least for the casual, but very interested observer, I find these breakouts kinda fun.  Let's face it, we live on an island, and everyone knows each other, so where are they gonna go?  They bust out, find themselves with no long-term plan, so decide to go on a bender of wine, women and song, and the first thing they need to get them there is cash.  The houses immediately surrounding the prison get done-over for money, jewellery, phones and iPods within moments of the perpetrators having gained their liberty, and ten minutes later, the gear is sold for a song and the fugitives are at one of seven bars in town throwing back beer and whisky faster than country kids attending their first University O-Week. 

It's a game, and for the most part, is relatively harmless.  Just three weeks ago, about eight inmates went 'over the top' (I didn't mention that the high risk prison facility in town, known colloquially as 'Container City' consists of cells made out of converted shipping containers surrounded by a single, standard, rusting cyclone fence with gaps beneath as wide as those between the gates).  The authorities seemed thrown for days, being unable to work out where they could have escaped to, only to discover the answer when the fugitives all turned themselves in a week later. 

They'd been 'hiding out' ... with their families ... two suburbs away!  With the help of their community leaders, they released a statement to the press describing their whereabouts and explaining that their escape had been designed to draw attention to their poor living conditions and inadequate meals.  As I said, a game.

But things took an ugly turn this week when the latest mass escape saw twelve hardened criminals disappear into the urban expanse one evening.  As usual, the rumours started, then the disturbing emails; this one from a colleague;

Was on the bus with a policewoman this morning and she mentioned they were last seen early this morning around 4am at Beverly Hills area - Ples blong ol Man Ambrym [description of a location].

Beware, Beverly Hills and Belview residents! Stay safe, 

Ha!  Did I mention this feels like a game?  If it wasn't for the fact that the Donkeys had only just moved into a house at Bellevue and stocked it full of all our worldly possessions, I'd be pissing myself about the way this piece of intelligence was leaked to the community – not by official FBI-type sources, but by a police woman riding on a bus (note: there are not enough police cars).  And the other thing to note is that these suburbs are literally only a 5 minute drive away (OK, 10 minutes on the bus) for the cops to get there and round 'em up ... but I am getting ahead of myself here.  As I mentioned, immediately upon breakout, first come the rumours, then the panic-provoking emails, and eventually the press statements earnestly urging residents to be alert, not alarmed, and to be assured that Vanuatu Correctional Services will apprehend these felons lickety-split;

Good Morning all.

[Faithful translation] Just a short message to let you know that 12 high risk prisoners escaped from Container City at around 10pm last night.  Ensure your families and property are safe.  We will be deploying soon for a recapture operation.

You all have a nice day.

And I kid you not, that was the sign-off.  Uh-ha, oh-kay, now that I know for sure that they are high risk prisoners, and that after twelve hours, Correctional Services are still bumbling about trying to find a car with enough fuel to take them 5 minutes down the road, I feel much better about the situation.  Thanks, I will have a nice day, especially as I've also received the attached, angry-looking mug-shots of 'The Disgruntled Twelve' (as we're now calling them in our suddenly less-secure-feeling Bellevue house).

I guess that if the LAPD couldn't work it out to skip the chase and meet NWA at their known destination, I shouldn't be all that amazed that the Vanuatu Police Force remain the last people in town to know that The Disgruntled Twelve are at their mothers' homes right now chowing-down on some baked taro before hitting the town for some grog-fuelled booty action.  I guess this post going live is testament to my laptop remaining in my possession, so hopefully that means the VPF have finally wizened-up to the game ... it is good to be back.

Fortunately for the VPF, they'll not have to push much past 3 ... but still they probably won't make it.  Pic: http://www.nwaworld.com/lyrics/

They ruin your life

 Man, I wish I had a buck for every time a heated political argument amongst long-time friends was silenced with phrases such as, "Well that's all very well and good for you, but I've got kids, and I need to think about their future".

Compared with the majority of my peers, I was a bit of a late bloomer in the Family Expansion Department, and it always pissed me off when the same people who I'd grown-up with in the outer suburbs, who I'd gone to school with, who I'd rebelled against familial and social stereotypes with, who I'd moved into inner-city doss houses with, who I'd drank in the same inner-city pubs with, and with whom I'd debated politics and popular culture, would suddenly (coinciding with marriage, offspring and an exodus back to the Outer East) execute a complete 180 and change their age-old lines of argument and values in favour of bog-standard, Channel 9-like conservatism.

This particularly hit home to me about ten years ago when one of my friends who had pursued many social and environmental causes over the years (including a two-year stint being abused by errant teenagers while inside the Wilderness Society's koala costume) informed us all during one of his rare nights-off from familial duties, that he would be voting Liberal in the forth-coming federal election because only 'The Libs' were offering to extend the Eastern Freeway!

Of course, this ridiculous misunderstanding of state versus federal political responsibility was immediately and enthusiastically leapt upon by our gathering, and before long, this once politically-savvy and proud crusader for human and animal rights informed us that we all needed to grow-up and take some responsibility for ourselves if we ever expected to live in homes without cracked walls and warped floor boards.  He added that neither of us had any significant life experience upon which to make informed decisions about future generations, and until we did, we should keep our naive political opinions to ourselves.

Of course this aggressive challenge would never do, and the conversation became increasingly heated before it concluded with my old friend jumping to his feet, gathering his coat and letting fly with, "Until you guys have kids, and have to think about their future education and employment opportunities, you'll never have any idea about the political and economic realities of the Australian electorate".  Following which he stormed out of the pub.

So that's it, hey?  Kids change everything ... or is it just that the kids were the factor which 'forced' him back to his politically-affiliated, geographical roots?  Isn't it telling how your life circumstances can dramatically alter your values and beliefs?

It's true.  We all know the cliche of the mate who's out with you and your other mates six nights a week, getting drunk and trying to pick-up women, until on one rare occasion he happens to be successful with the latter and immediately his drinking pursuits are replaced by rom-coms and flower shows, and his mates never see him again.  Clearly that guy's circumstances changed his views on what was important; his priorities had altered from his mates and beer in favour of companionship, love or at the very least, getting his end away on a regular basis.

I can relate to this a little (well, not that last bit, obviously).  I used to be right into outdoor packsports, and nature and wildlife conservation; for a good while I much preferred heading off into the bush with everything I needed for a few days and sitting alone on a rock all afternoon contemplaying myself and my surroundings, rather than attending garden parties and making polite small talk with friends and their new girlfriends.

When I finally did meet the love of my life, my rugged, outdoor pursuits were promptly replaced with rather more sedate, beachside loitering, and before long, I was no longer pining for the deep solitude of the remote wilderness.  So it would indeed seem as though chicks change everything!

Interestingly, in those days of being a vocal advocate for wilderness protection, I harboured a visceral hatred for zoos.  I recall being physically ill once while visiting the zoo with my nephew, and watching in horror at the dilapidated, Victorian-era surroundings that the seals had to parade around in before crowds of jeering, screaming children.

I stayed away for many years after this, and only recently returned to the zoo with my son, Hambones, thanks to one of these annual subscriptions which allow you to visit as often as you like.  I have to admit, I love it!  I find the enclosures much more respectful of the animals than I remembered, and as long as I don't think too hard about the climactic differences between a Bengal Tiger's natural habitat and Melbourne in May, I usually come away feeling OK about the experience.

So I guess it's not quite that cut and dried.  Is it chicks?  Or as stated by my friend of old, perhaps it really is kids who change everything.

In my newfound enthusiasm for caged and tethered wildlife, which has seen me visit the zoo about three times a week since we got the membership pass (gotta get me money's worth – my notorious tight-arsedness is one entrenched value I suspect is never going to change), I decided to take Hambones along to the Adelaide zoo over Easter, and there found myself almost winded by what I saw.  Clearly my decade or so of avoiding the zoo was time enough for the Melbourne zoo management to get their stuff together towards a more humane approach to caring and providing for their animals such that I am no longer horrified by what I encounter.

Not so the Adelaide zoo, at which some of the exhibits appear not to have changed very much since families ventured-forth on Sunday afternoons in top-hats, tails, bonnets and holding sticks with which to poke the frightened animals through the bars of the minute cages.  This place was terrible!  A real throw-back to a bygone era in which there was absolutely no ambiguity over who was the real king of the jungle.

To look at Adelaide zoo on its own, I would again advocate for the abolishment of such institutions throughout the world.  However I also understand the work that better zoos, such as Melbourne's, are doing to protect endangered species, and to educate the community about the factors which threaten their survival, and importantly, what can be done to address these.  I think zoos have their place, but standards need to be developed and adhered to.  And Adelaide, you certainly do not cut the grade!

What all this has taught me is that using kids, or partners, or indeed any other life circumstance as an excuse for changing your long held values and beliefs is nothing other than a selfish, ignorant and lazy sell-out.

I am working on a new bumper sticker, which at the moment goes something like this; "I have a wife, and a child, and I live where I want, and I believe in protecting human and animal rights, promoting social justice, and protecting the environment for my children's children's future".  The only catch is that I'd have to completely sell-out and buy a Merc with a bumper bar big enough to stick it on.

South Australia: A Brilliant Blend (of Dickensian animal rights and modern-day admission prices).  Pic: http://www.old-print.com

Undercover Donkey

There's this gawd-awful show on the tele at the moment called Undercover Boss, whereby some corporate high-flyer dons the company duds and goes and stands alongside his unknowing minions at the cash register, or behind the wheel, or digging ditches (not, I notice, cleaning toilets!).  I must confess I haven't watched this show, but judging by the ads, it seems that each episode ends up as a heart-warming, gut-wrenching, tear-jerking sob-fest as the Boss' ice-cold, ass-kicking corporate drive is melted in the face of the hard-luck stories and sheer anguish of his employees, with their terminally-ill kiddies, their animal shelters and their community service to struggling migrants.  Big Boss gets a free lesson in the "real values of humanity", and proceeds to handover cash and hand-out promotions as reward for their previously unrecognised, selflessness.

Honestly Channel 10, as if The 7PM Project wasn't bad enough!

Anyway, although not the boss of anyone or anything (and for good reason), I have recently found myself as Undercover Donkey in my workplace, but the only tears being jerked on this occasion were my own tears of excruciating pain and/or embarrassment.

I work on a hospital campus, and although I'm pretty far removed from the patients during my work day (again, for very good reason), I do skip-along to the horrors of the hospital cafeteria for lunch most days.  Now aside from the absolutely disgusting food that is served-up, the trouble with having lunch at a hospital caf is that you're sitting down to a plate of greasy, oily, barely-edible fare with a bunch of people carrying just about every communicable disease known to ape and man.

And the thing about hospital patients sitting down to a feed beside or across the table from you is that they're usually "wearing" hospital garments.  Why the inverted commas, I hear you ask?  Well because the thing about hospital garments is that ... well, they just aren't that conducive to being "worn".

Take the old man in the wheelchair who sat opposite me today.  He was attired in a pair of hospital-issue, one-size-fits-all pyjama pants – you know, the ones with the massive fly that leaves his Old Fella hanging out for all to admire.  I'm telling you, a sight like that can really put you off your rather limp, hospital cafeteria bratwurst!

And the same goes for those poor folk who come down from the wards wearing nothing but one of those white hospital gowns that "do up" at the back (inverted commas again, as there's a lot of space between those tie-up straps).  So again, try tucking into your hospital cafeteria carpaccio when some homeless-looking man's hairy arse-crack is winking at you through the substantial chink in the starched, white curtains!

Like most aspects of the public hospital system, one finds oneself coping with these kinds of horrors with humorous attacks on the kinds of people these semi-brain dead patients must be to get around in such an undignified fashion.

But then, I became one ... twice!  And I soon learned that their lack of dignity is not self-generated, but rather a dastardly bi-product of a cruel, uncaring public hospital system.

The first time I experienced this was during the birth of Lil' Hambones.  When Mrs Donkey was kitted-up in smart-looking, green, ER-type hospital scrubs and sent off to theatre, I was thrown a pair of white overalls by a midwife and told (with a barely-concealed smirk) that they were one-size-fits-all. 

Uh oh!  That phrase again ... one of two, standard features of all hospital-issue attire ... the other being that said attire can't be done-up.  So there I stood, in a tight, white, full-body suit, successfully parting my testicles in the kind of camel toe you'd expect to see on a deformed camel with a congenital, cleft toe, and just above these separated global hemispheres, the suit opened out, right to my shoulders!  Honestly, I looked like a cross between a young Sean Connery and Borat in his mankini.

"You're taking this piss!", I remarked to the midwife in a quivering falsetto, to which the sadistic bitch giggled that it was all they had and we had better get to theatre immediately.  T'was a good thing that the hoary old chestnuts had done their work, for they mayn't be the same again after the birth of Lil' Hambones.

And then again this week, I became Undercover Donkey, and again I came to have my heart softened towards my fellow demented, semi-clad diners.  This time I was heading back to theatre to have the scar left over from the removal of my festering alien parasite removed.  By the time I got to theatre, I was delusional from not having eaten (or more to the point, not having drunk coffee) for about twenty hours, so I didn't really take much notice of what they dressed me in before sending me off to the knife.

But when I awoke afterwards, with the usual early morning, post-slumber, anatomical male processes unfolding downstairs, I was mortified to discover that the smiling, caring, and not-unattractive recovery nurse by my side had been witness to the whole depraved scene thanks to my having been attired in hospital-issue, so-called "disposable underpants" which when adorned, being one-size-fits-all, was tantamount to wearing a tube of stretched, translucent, elastic gauze.

So no heart-warming, gut-wrenching story from this Undercover Donkey!  These hospital linen services are completely taking the piss!  It's a breach of patient dignity ... a breach of human-bloody-rights!  As they say in the States, I'm taking this all the way to City Hall! 

These old folk in big pyjama pants deserve better! 

These homeless folk in poorly-fastened gowns deserve better! 

And these recovery nurses definitely deserve better! 

It's time to take a stand against this blatant disregard for patients' dignity.  C'mon Julia Gillard.  C'mon Barak Obama.  C'mon Ban Ki-moon.  Give us zips!  Give us Velcro!  Give us buttons!  And please, give us something in our size!

Out, damn'd spot! out, I say!

Mrs Donkey's currently on the Indian subcontinent enjoying her fill of the leering eye and twitching moustache – ah yes, the South Asian male; small in stature, but large in virility!

Meanwhile, I'm holding the fort and attending to the (occasionally, unreasonably high) demands of Little Hambones. He's got this new, incredibly hilarious breakfast, lunch and dinner schtick goin'-on which sees projectile mush, toast, fruit and milk bouncing off the walls, table and floor to the soundtrack of hysterical infantile belly-laughs.

More and more, with each passing day, the house's interior resembles the blood-stained hands of Lady Macbeth; it seems no matter how well I scrub at the soiled surfaces, when I turn my back they are immediately smeared with a replacement coat of partly masticated foodstuffs.

So after a week of this, I figure the only way to manage the edible air traffic control in the dining area is to brave the chill and get the hell out.

Fortunately, the sanitary, public thoroughfares of the developed world are conducive to the recreational and safety requirements of young families, and there is a myriad of parks and public spaces to shoot for within a ten minute walk from Donkey HQ.

This was not the case for us a couple of months ago, when we were living in Samoa. There, the competing demands of poverty reduction, health care and a selective, user-pays education system selfishly consume government attention and public spending to the detriment of safe, public play equipment, leaving Hambones with little more to enjoy in his recreation time than a plastic bottle full of rice to shake, shake, shake.

But here in the land of milk and honey, where there is just too much money floating around to know what to do with (Heaven forbid that we'd ever put it towards a public health system!), one not only has a myriad of play options to choose from, but you can be sure that each one has a range of equipment that meets as many safety standards as it has won international industrial design awards. Hang the expense! - it's the safety ratings that are all important, especially given that the equipment is provided by local governments hell-bent on re-election and the avoidance of childhood injury compensation payouts. These multi-coloured, plastic pleasure palaces are so safe that you won't find a right-angle within 50 metres of them!

What you will find, however, are truly unique constructions erected on small green patches dotted across the urban landscape, and these are great for kids in most respects, except that they are all so incredibly Freudian; each piece of equipment resembles some kind of body part or function. Take that long, purple slide over there [womb], or those pendulous swings [breasts], or that weird, red plastic ring on rusting rollers that squeals when rotated [a giant sphincter after last night's dodgy curry] or that massive, purple and blue rocket [penis] or that dark, red, ominous-looking tunnel...

This is all well and good – I mean, no small child's ever going to notice, right? But it's not so much what the equipment resembles, but what they make some people do that's the problem. Take yesterday morning, for example. Hambones was driving me crazy with the Great Breakfast Tornado, so off we went into the bitter morning in search of a playground on which he could run it all out of his system. As we approached one of our favourite little haunts, the extra litter strewn around the place didn't register with me, as it's not uncommon for a few empty cans of rocket fuel to be discarded by the regular midnight teenage bingers.

So over to the playground we went, and I am just about to put Hambones into his favourite, yellow-swirly-cup-thing which, now that I think about it, looks suspiciously like a toilet bowl. I reached in to remove some paper from its innards when I noticed that the aforementioned litter all over the ground was white ... and brown. Bog roll! ... and ... urgh, Maaaaaaan!

That's right. Someone had taken a massive dump in the yellow-swirly-cup-thing-which-looks-suspiciously-like-a-toilet-bowl. One might immediately suspect the midnight teenage bingers, except that the evidence of toilet paper everywhere suggested that this had been no accident - no unfortunate octogenarian with irritable bowel syndrome accosted by urgent pains while taking a nocturnal constitutional around the park - but rather a pre-meditated act of defecation!

And I'll tell you something else for nothing. It is not easy to stop a curious Little Hambones when he's set his mind to picking-up an unusual-looking piece of litter!

My sharing this little story with you has been inspired by a similar one I read over at Burb Central. Clearly this is not an isolated incident, and yet, there is hardly a peek from the media concerning this most concerning issue. While travelling recently, I was accosted by a hotel cook demanding to know why Melbournians hate Indians enough to want to injure and maim them (he'd been reading all about it in the Indian press) and I have heard that news of late night, alcohol-fuelled violence outside Melbourne's nightclubs has reached the genteel folk of Sacramento, California.

So how is it that the international media can be all over these minority stories and painting them as typically Melbourne, while not one media commentator has even touched-on the out-of-control public pooing escapades occurring en masse during the dark hours across suburban Melbourne? Looking for an election issue to get people interested in State politics? There it is right there - certainly puts a new slant on the term, 'smear campaign'.

Did I not mention that the yellow-swirly-cup-thing looks suspiciously like a toilet bowl? Pic: Hagas

How long is forever, Daddy?

I remember asking my father this over and over again when I was a youngster; one of many such questions which, whilst being but a small child with little emotional and intellectual capacity, I knew instinctively were the source of grating annoyance to all adults.

Other such examples which I personally delighted in, were "Are we there yet?" and "Caniva [insert whatever you like - ice cream, lollypop, balloon, t-bone steak...]?".

But, "how long is forever?" was one that Dad seemed to pause upon, ever-so-slightly, before offering his usually, entirely unsatisfactory (and perhaps, like a seasoned sparring partner, deliberately, equally abrasive) reply, "Go and ask your mother".

Interestingly, the particularly unusual pause before answering seemed to signal that some truthful answer existed somewhere deep within him, and the fact that it remained unspoken perhaps hinted at some regretful, or even shameful element. Perhaps it was that which kept me asking ... or perhaps it was just that I was an annoying brat.

Outwardly, however, the question remained, for me, unanswered ... until recently, when faced with the responsibility of raising Little Hambones. I can assure you now, after experiencing it on a number of occasions in the last four months, that infantile sleep apnea has finally answered that often repeated question. I can now confidently assure you that the time taken for your baby's next, sleeping breath can seem like forever, and forever can be a very, very, very long time.

Maybe not Hawaii – more like the back-seat of the Kingswood on family holidays. My parent-given nick-name seems to have moved up in the world. Pic: www.myspace.com/kingofhawaii808

It’s a boy! … and we’re back and runnin’

…hopefully.

Three months ago, after an arduous ordeal spanning a-day-and-half, I was again, for perhaps the third or fourth time in my life, fortunate to find myself on the receiving end of that most joyous of life’s lessons; where one’s fate can alter from seemingly utter despair to hope and good fortune in the blink of an eye.

In the harried confusion of surgical masks, scrubbing-up and calamitous crash trolleys, I was fearing the worst. Just when I began to give up hope, and thought I was about to lose the greatest gift of my life, a sudden gasp, a splutter and a wail, followed immediately by two great, big hands being flown over the top of a surgical screen towards his Mummy and Daddy’s astonished faces, my life changed forever; bestowing upon me two fabulous gifts, namely Mrs Donkey - safe, happy, healthy … and a mother to the bumper-sized new addition, a largish, but completely healthy, baby Donkey (henceforth, owing to his advanced, athletic physique, referred to as “Hambones”).

Since that day, I’ve been busting my ass in an attempt to successfully implement the only job in your life for which no academic course, on-the-job training or subcutaneous patch exists with which to prepare or assist you. I’ve been wandering around in a sleep-deprived, semi-lucid state trying to look after my new boy-o, and have had absolutely nothing extra to add to society but a vacuous gaze and a stupid, proud father’s grin. Certainly no creative juice left in the tank with which to direct towards this decrepit, forgotten by-lane on the information super-highway.

But I must say, despite a lack of parental experience or direction, I’ve discovered some kind of inherent, naturally-selective, guiding quality within; a force which leads one to love one’s own child unconditionally; a force which can turn even the most irresponsible individual (yours truly) into a diligent guardian, entirely committed to protecting his child from whatever evils may darken his horizons, no matter how threatening or cruel.

I remember a Warner Bros cartoon where the drunken stork drops the wrong babies off at the wrong homes, and when he sobers-up and realises his mistake, he heads to the top of the bean stalk, where the Daddy giant is trying to change the nappy of a tiny little baby with the aid of one of those old-fashioned jewellers’ eye pieces. I always thought it was touching how Big Daddy clearly loved his family’s tiny new addition, even though the wee babe was perhaps not quite what he’d signed up for. Fiction, as always, is built on basic truths, and I can attest that there’s definitely something there between a parent and his newborn … something magical … and despite the severe lack of sleep, it’s a wonderful feeling.

Aside from a lack of creative energy associated with multiple, nocturnal nappy changes, the other reason for the poor frequency of despatches on this blog has been my mistaken understanding that I’ve got nothing interesting to say to the masses these days, seeing as though Junior’s arrival has temporarily put paid to exotic locales and unusual work practices – after all, who wants to hear about living in the inner suburbs next door to grammatically challenged “drug deelers” (sic), across from a Polynesian truck driver with an anger management problem, who takes it out on his drug-addled trophy-wife to the sound of The Eagles’ Hotel California on a weekly basis? Or how two of the biggest nerds in the barnyard manage to fit-in with the brown-cord-wearing funksters (read: wankers) of inner-Melbourne’s fastest emerging, hippest slice of urban bohemia? Or Donkey’s foul-mouthed, daily exchanges with bicycle-ignoring taxi drivers? Or office antics with a bunch of colleagues comprising alcoholics, bogans, Antarctic explorers, drug abusers, mad scientists and psychotic feminists?

Clearly I’ve got nothing to write about! Unless, of course, people are actually interested in hearing about the neighbourhood vigilantes’ ruthless campaigns against the resident, although poorly educated drug deelers (sic), and what it’s like living across from the street from Eti the truckin’ maniac and his very own Judy Garland (circa 1947, when Jude was dallying fairly heavily in the nose candy), and how two geeks try, but fail pitifully to fit-in with the funky, ‘latte-sipping hoards in their designer, recycled brown, and Donkey’s daily, crotch-ripping defeats by the barely-discernible verbal taunts of immigrant taxi drivers, and the various conflicts and intrigues of an eclectic mix of colleagues comprising functioning and non-functioning alcoholics, heavy-metal tragics, second-rate, illegal airplane pilots/Antarctic explorers, drug users and abusers, mad (although not-quite-qualified) scientists and psychotic feminists … and y’know, I was thinking to myself today that maybe there just might be enough material there to get me started.

So I’m gonna give it a go … parental duties permitting, I’m gonna pour my creative talents back into this literary pillar; apply iron-hard self discipline and commit myself to regular, insightful commentary into the daily machinations of this inner city barnyard; stand fast in the face of suburban mediocrity … QOIJWDiqjgvriweirjgikdWQAjidwiQJNJIUJIIK … slurp!

Whoops, sorry, I just fell asleep on my keyboard and will have to turn it upside down for a while to let the saliva drain out and … hang on, what is this milky vomit in my hair? Urgh! OK, so I’m not entirely sure how this is gonna go.

Wish me luck.

Donkey.

The big baby has arrived Pic: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/

Putting the “fun” back into the fundus

There’re laws for everything these days; where to walk, where not to walk; where to stand, where not to stand; what to eat/what you’re not allowed to eat (eg: people, dogs, cats); what trees to plant and where/what you’re not allowed to cut down; laws for housing; laws for building; laws for waste management and even laws which tell you where you can take a dump/where you can’t (eg: train carriages, street corners, department store fragrance counters); laws about having to go to school and where; there are even laws about who can marry/who can’t/what to marry (eg: boys vs girls vs Chihuahuas).

So many laws … covering so many things … and each one (supposedly) developed and enforced both in the best interests of society today, and for its future development. So tell me why, with all of these stringent boundaries directing us towards a better community and nation, they are still letting idiots breed?

Given that Mrs Donkey has been “in foal” of late, and ready to burst any day now, we have been touring the parental rapid training circuit for the past few months and have discovered that we are surrounded by a world of humourless, insular, self-obsessed dim-wits with nary an awareness of the world three blocks away from their hovels between them, and all of whom are soon to release/inflict similarly soft-baked offspring onto a society with, in my view, inadequate mental health and rehabilitation services to cope with the onslaught. Surely something needs to be done immediately to address this scourge which looks liable to set the development of this nation back a couple of decades?

I can tell by your sceptical frown that you think the recent nights I’ve spent sleeping on the floor in order to accommodate Mrs Donkey’s expanding (and aggressively demanding) bed-space requirements are sending me a little fruity, but before you click back to YouPorn, allow me to describe some of the cretins (oops, I mean) characters from our prenatal classes.

The fun kicked-off immediately in Session #1, when in response to a question from the midwife, “What will each of you bring to the birth?”, this one guy, either an imbecile or a comic genius, replied in a cocky manner and without so much as a hint of a smile, “My Mum!”. Both the midwife and Donkey displayed super-human powers of self control to stay upright on our chairs and to smother our chuckles and guffaws as it became clear from his confusion and bemusement moments later that he was actually deadly serious … as was his partner; and she was staring down the barrel of 24+ hours of pain, puffing and panting, all in the company of her mother-in-law! I mean, this was the stuff of crappy ‘70s TV sitcoms, and yet there was not a self-deprecating smile in sight!

The midwife’s response to all this, after 20-odd years of circumventing the unenlightened chauvinism of over-bearing fathers-to-be, was to repeatedly remind the clearly misguided partner of this Mummy’s Boy at every possible opportunity over the following 5 weeks that she didn’t have to have her partner’s mother helping her son ‘down at the business end’ during the birth if she didn’t want to, but on reflection, I think she may have been a-few-ova-short-of-a-conception herself, and never quite grasped the implications of her feller’s maternal dependence.

As I mentioned, this revelation from Little Lord Fauntleroy emerged only minutes into Session #1, at which time I suddenly grew fearful that I may have stumbled into a real-life zombie scenario, so in order to preserve my life, I resolved to pay a little more attention to my fellow prenatal class mates, only to discover that I had unwittingly stumbled into a real-life zombie scenario!

At the time of our first prenatal class, Mrs D and I were the least-baked of all the attendees – most of whom were expecting within the following three months. The maternity outfits of the ladies were tightening into a myriad of multi-coloured beach balls, and one might have expected their lads to have had some ideas and plans for what to do come beach-ball deflation time. On the contrary, a quick look at the male faces around the room revealed a mixture of either blank surprise and wonderment, or the tight-knit brows of a gathering of super-sleuths executing elementary deduction in an effort to ascertain a) how they came to be in this room, b) how long it had been that their partners had been walking around looking like beach-balls (and why), or c) how they could convince their partners to allow them to invite their mothers to attend the birth.

Honestly, these guys, (allegedly) the fathers of six-month-old, unborn children, looked genuinely, acutely shocked at their situation - sagging eyes, slack-jaws, white knuckles gripping the arms of chairs. It was as though they’d only just found out, on the way to the class, that their missus was knocked-up.

This observation was confirmed immediately thereafter when, in response to the second question of Session #1, “What would you do to support your partner during labour?”, at least three of them answered that they’d probably stay out of the room so as not to get in the way of the experts, while two others said they didn’t know, “…and that’s why [they’d] been forced to come here tonight!”

Hang-on a minute, these are the people who are having children?!

As the weeks unfolded, these nit-wits learned that there are resources such as the internet and books that one can (SHOULD) access for information which can help them prepare for having a baby (“Wot, are we having a bay-bee?”), but overall, very few of the half of the participants that Donkey ended up having to talk to had any insight into their situation, and absolutely no interest in dwelling-on any of the opportunities for humorous exchange to which the presented material lent itself, such as one of the pregnant participants referring to her post-natal self as a milk-factory, or one of the male participants worriedly asking when his partner’s figure would return to normal, or when one couple asked in unison when they could get their hands on the government’s baby bonus. C’mon people, this is funny stuff; comedy gold! How ‘bout a chuckle at the ape who just wants the baby out so that he can climb back on board, or perhaps a disbelieving snort at the prissy social-climber who refuses to breastfeed in case she will no longer be able turn the heads of the ball-boys down at The Club.

You may have guessed from these observations that Mrs Donkey and I didn’t quite endear ourselves with our fellow classmates. Our constant giggling and chuckling as we joked with each other about strategically placed mirrors and women down on all fours grunting like a barnyard animal may not have been everyone’s cup of tea, but hey, Australians are culturally-renowned for using humour to help deal with fear. At least our approach (we think/hope), which requires one to have intellectually confronted one’s fears in order to turn them into something amusing, reflects a certain spark of intelligence; an admirable contrast, we think, to the stinking, viscous muck oozing about inside the skulls of our compatriots.

Which brings me back to my earlier comments regarding laws. We have laws for and against so many things in this society, so how come these morons are allowed to stick their appendages into each other and create offspring? Shouldn’t the long-term best interests of society prevail here? Couldn’t the money currently spent by the government on baby bonuses be better employed in the purchase of a bulk-order of Ginsu knives with which said appendages could be liberated from their intellectually-challenged owners?

Something needs to be done … and fast! I don’t want to inflict Baby Donkey on a social group whose favourite pastime is picking lice from each other’s back hair and cracking them in their teeth. I want more for my child; literature, art, music, dancing and above all, humour … not football, motor sport, World Wrestling and The Biggest Loser. But if our pre-natal classes are anything to go by, I think that’s all she/he’s going to get.

I’m calling for a major judicial overhaul. Remember former-Prime Minister, John Howard’s famous anti-immigration battle-cry some five years ago, “We decide who comes into this country and the circumstances under which they come”? Well there’s a whole generation of new arrivals who’ve come-in through the back-door (not literally … but you know what I mean), and it’s high time we turned the same, tough stance we’ve committed to border-control upon our home-grown stock. Selective breeding, people, the time is most definitely nigh.


The scene outside Donkey's prenatal classes just the other night. There goes the neighbourhood. Pic : http://www.revok.com/zombie.html