Aversion Therapy

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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

TV and advertising: no respect for the market

Is it just me, or has TV advertising become completely tired and jaded lately?

Aside from the sharp suits, cool demeanours and sassy women of 1950s Madison Avenue, below the surface of TV's Mad Men, one can't help but be fascinated and appalled at the rapid growth of a wholly unsavoury and immoral industry designed to make shitloads of money through the blatant manipulation of people's thoughts and actions.

These advertising firms are the origin of things which have not only become commonplace in our lives, but have done so in such a way as to convince us that they've existed for ever.  Such as the fat, jolly, bearded fellow who "Ho ho hos" his way down the chimney every December, and whom a few of us can still remember was once known as Saint Nicholas.  It is a false assumption that he always wore red and white – even though this stylisation from the Coca-Cola 'family' can't be more than 60 years old!

Same goes for the 'age old tradition of sending greeting cards' – Hallmark's deliberate, massive scaling-up of an otherwise unnecessary 'tradition' resulting in a multi-billion dollar empire.  Or the introduction and subsequent integration into people's lives of a whole host of 'must have' products such as disposable nappies, frozen vegetables and paper towels.

It's true that this commercially-driven, mass brainwashing didn't happen without firm intent, considerable expense and subtatntial elbow grease, at least metaphorically.  The efforts which advertising agencies went to in order to understand their clients' markets was extensive, utilising focus groups, behaviour modelling, surveys and even illegal, hidden cameras and wire-tapping.  It's fair to say that these processes, honed to perfection in pursuit of the advertising dollar, are now available and utilised today to inform less morally corrupt enterprises such as customer service standards for community or government services, for international aid programs, for disaster and humanitarian responses and, I guess, for international espionage.  So while they are processes which can occasionally benefit society, they were definitely developed to generate masses of wealth.

But regardless of whether or not you agree with the motive, or the method, the intention of the advertising industry to learn about the wants and desires, behaviours and practices of the market is evidence that a certain level of respect for that market exists.  The market is not taken for granted, but rather the individuals and groups which comprise it are viewed as highly legitimate, and their thoughts and ideas important.  Sure, this desire to hear from, and understand them precedes a merciless attempt at mass brainwashing, but up until that point, there were great efforts made towards engagement and learning, and this is what is to be admired.

This is the way it has been for years, not only on Madison Avenue, but here in Australia, also.

And as a result, although we now better understand the evil intent, there have been some pretty wonderful, enjoyable and truly entertaining advertising campaigns over the years, not only from the hallowed agencies of Madison Avenue, but also from our own, home-grown pretenders.

Remember the Four-n-Twenty hot stuff ad from the 70s?  Fantastic ambience! – which could have only been possible through in-depth study of who eats pies, and why.  Interestingly, one of my favourite ads of all time was also from Four-n-Twenty, this time from the late 90s.  This was a tremendous demonstration of the advertising agency getting 'back to basics'; everything, including the slick Holden sliding past at the beginning, being clear evidence that it was developed after very close and respectful consideration of the market.

Australian Coke ads were also pretty great over the years, with their big 'blow-up things' over tropical shore lines, on which young people were having about the best time anyone could with their clothes on (although admittedly only barely on), demonstrating that the advertisers' knew what it was that people really want from their fizzy beverages.

Speaking of which, the Big M Girls were a leaf out of the old 'Sex Sells' book.  They were eventually retired to the mechanics' shop walls once the smouldering remains of the last bras sputtered out on the pavement.  But this vehicle boosted the sale of chocolate-flavoured milk to a receptive, even wanting market for decades.

These days, with the advent of u-toob and internet-based social marketing tools, advertising has taken an entirely new direction, with sometimes feature-length ads being developed using CGIs and other home-editing goodies and being spread throughout the world in seconds like supersonic viruses.  But again, someone has done their homework, and aimed this stuff just right.

So with consumerism at an all-time high, and the responsibility for worldwide economic recovery lying squarely on the shoulders of recognised, multi-national brands producing lots of shiny 'must have' stuff that nobody needs, why has the decades-old commitment to understanding the market and targeting advertising accordingly suddenly been dropped?

Or have we, the market, finally 'evolved' such that we are now so brain-dead that we will buy whatever shit is going, for no other reason than that it is there?  My case in point was a TV ad I saw tonight (during prime time, not at 3am) for a jewellery store; an attractive looking, female model in an expensive-looking evening gown opens a jewellery box and says, "This reminds me of Spain".  This is followed by close-ups of a couple of diamond rings and a necklace.

Hmmm ... why Spain?  No reason?  Yeah, that's what I thought.  Tck, tck, not good enough, Madison.  Lift your game or we, the market, might just decide to start thinking again, and decide that we really don't have need for the John Wayne commemorative plate set.

And while we're on the subject of the poor state of TV, a post I read today over at www.clementineford.com.au about the way reality TV promotes nasty, social hatred and bigotry, reminded me of how powerful those horrible, negative lessons can be when such programs go viral and global.

While facilitating public consultation with groups of community, civil society and government stakeholders about the new national health promotion policy in Samoa last year, one of the senior government officials, in complete honesty, asked me, as an Australian, to explain to the gathering about the benefits of "that great, nation-wide public health initiative on Australian television, The Biggest Loser", and to convince the audience to consider such an approach for Samoa.

"Yes, Your Excellency", I replied, "Indeed, public health research has shown that the best way to make obese people lose weight is to expose them to public ridicule by having them wear bikinis and work-out until they throw-up on national television".*  And with that, The Biggest Loser has been adopted as national health promotion policy in Samoa for the next ten years.

It is no wonder the US, through free trade agreements, are so keen to ensure that other nation's TV is rife with their content.  The unsuspecting can be so susceptible to political, social and even religious views and ideologies they see on The Box.  Very concerning indeed.

* - just to be clear, I said nothing of the sort!

The Big M Girls, keeping a nation hooked-up to chocolate milk for decades.  Pic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDk26MtUq94&playnext=1&list=PL8F060F10E3A34F87

Road trip III: Sex is everywhere, but no where around me

Like the TV series, MASH, which ran three times as long as the Korean War in which it was set, this Road Trip story is reaching Cecil B. DeMille-esque proportions, greatly out-distancing the actual trip upon which it is based.  I'll see what I can do about wrapping it up.

My last waking act before leaving Windy Wellington was to return to one of the hundreds of coffee outlets I'd been churning through over the previous few days, to buzz my brain a little more while I sorted out some onward accommodation using the free Wi-Fi.

After many false starts, bogus postings and rude landlords refusing a two-night stay, I eventually got onto Frank, a beach house property owner from Napier who answered the phone with, "Awwr shut! ... ah, hello?  Frank speaking...".  Frank's engine had exploded moments before I'd called, and he was swearing blue, kiwi murder as he stood stranded on a country road.

"Yeah, thut should be no worries ... fuck ... just come up and we'll sort everythung out when you get here [boom!] ... shut, nooooooo... [click] beep beep beep...".

So with a gullet full of caffeine, a well-rested Hambones and Mrs D wrestling with a plethora of chords as she tried to get the sexy Kiwi GPS navigator working, we started on our way out of Welly ... just after a final supply run to the ironically-named 'New' World.  In no way is New Zealand more like 1980s suburban Melbourne than in its supermarkets; when I was a wee one, Coles supermarket was known as Coles' New World, and walking through the doors of the Wellington New World, the surroundings immediately had me reminiscing about climbing into one of those hard plastic trolley seats, and taking a massive dump in my daks.

The setting was flawless 1980s; tins of food were stacked in precarious, delinquent-child-attracting pyramidal displays, the trolleys were massive, deep and without the modern child-safety straps, and there was a tobacco counter up front at which stood four or five old ladies in plastic shower caps trying to buy cartons of ciggies with loose change.

Mrs D and I went crazy with the nostalgia of it all and filled that stretch-limo trolley with all kinds of stuff you haven't been able to buy in Australia for 25 years.  As we approached the checkout, we were more than a little sheepish in anticipation of the expected whack this was going to make in our savings.

The first pleasant surprise we received at the checkout was a surprisingly pleasant young man ringing-up each item with a smile, a laugh and a generally amiable disposition (something we haven't experienced in Australian supermarkets for at least two decades), and the next wonderful gift was that the African-famine-saving haul of 1980s groceries we'd just procured totalled exactly what it would have back in the '80s!

Are you kidding me?  All through our trip in NZ, all we ever heard from people we met, or on the radio, TV current affairs programs or in the papers was that Australians' salaries were 40% higher than Kiwis', and that economists were tipping this inequity to rise in the next year by 20 - 437% (depending on the disgruntlement of the person relaying the story – "Err, it's not fair.  You Australians get it easy.  We're thinking of leaving and going over to live in Aussie 'cause it's just too expensive here").  And yet there we were, with the biggest hoard of groceries since Henry VIII decided he was going to up-size Christmas dinner, costing only about 40% of a regular grocery bill back home!  Get some perspective, Kiwis!  We might get paid more than you, but it costs you nothing to live, eat, own a vehicle or an ocean-view property.

So with that warm feeling one gets from having a wallet still full of cash, and with our mouths full of pineapple lumps and 'chocolate fush', we nudged out of the New World car park, and thanks to the seductive, dulcet tones of 'Dulcie', the sexy Kiwi GPS, we were on the highway and heading-off on the Road Trip proper with some classic Black Seeds dubbing it up on the stereo to help us on our way.

Within moments, sophisticated, windy old Wellington was behind us, replaced by stretches of farmland dotted with periodic communities of New Worlds, McDonalds-es and Bunnings Warehouses.  The suddenness of the city's disappearance reminded us just how small this country was, and while musing over this, as if to hit the point home, we emerged from a deep valley and were looking out over a spectacular, sun-swept bay with dramatic, mountainous islands shooting-up out of the sparkling water.  The road along the shoreline was as tight and spectacular as our own, much-lauded Great Ocean Road, with the adrenaline-pumping bonus of no safety barriers, and we were thoroughly pumped as the dramatic views and Salmonella Dub's Dancehall Girl created an expectant air of exciting adventures to come.

As we passed through Palmerston North, university town to many of our Kiwi friends, I exhaled a deep sigh of relief that I had stuck to my guns and refused Mrs donkey's demands that we book a night's accommodation here.  Apart from Massey University, the only other thing Palmy is famous for is that at least one of its residents features on the evening news each night, usually for having beaten, killed, raped, eaten or been practicing polygamy with a neighbour and/or family member.  I quietly locked the doors as we cruised down the main drag, and gunned the Epica through the red lights to ward-off University pranksters and/or armed car jackers.

As with Wellington, we were through Palmy in a jiffy, and before long were hurtling along a windy, barrier-less road through a spectacular gorge at ridiculously dangerous speeds thanks to a massive cattle truck balling down on our arse.  This deep canyon seemed to be the sluice via which inland communities emptied their refuse into Palmerston North, and before long we were cruising though the quaint little town of Woodville, where we stopped for a break, a leak and an ice cream.

The latter was sourced from a wonderfully, 1950s-looking dairy in the main street, and we took our 30 cent (!) treats a block down a side street to a magnificent local park.  What I have failed to describe to date is the great contrast between the colour of the Australian countryside and that of North Island New Zealand – NZ is so spectacularly green!  And this public park was just incredible.  Reverently we each took off our shoes before tiptoeing onto the fluffy, emerald carpet, and then grinning guiltily, we stood waiting for some old Kiwi, Mr McGreggor-type to come running over to us waving a shovel and shouting, "Git off the grass, wull yous!".  But we soon realised that this lush, well clipped and rolled public lawn was fair game for all, and judging by the indifference being displayed by the bike-riding teenagers wandering across the furry floor over yonder, such facilities appeared reasonably commonplace.

We stuck around in that park for about two hours, lounging back on the soft grass beneath the swaying oaks, and watching Hambones amuse himself on the gravity-defying, 1950s safety standard play equipment.  After a while we also came to take a little interest in the other park users, and to notice certain behaviours and circumstances that bound them.

Firstly, over the course of an hour, a gathering of young teens swelled from three to about twelve, comprising tough, fit, young white boys in low-slung daks, and similarly-conditioned girls in cut-off denim shorts and crop tops.  They would move from one set of play equipment to the next, flirting and laughing together, almost touching and then breaking away again.  They seemed intimately familiar with each other and ... well, bored. 

From time to time, one would call out to similarly-aged citizens walking along the park's periphery, or through the middle on the immaculately curated paths as they pushed prams containing wee, crying babies.

The original group continued to wander from the swings, to the slide, laughing and flirting and occasionally splitting off in couples to hold hushed conversations beside the thick oaks, before outing a shrill laugh and re-joining their friends.

As we packed-up and headed-off to join potty-mouth Frank in Napier, I reflected that despite the lush surroundings of Woodville, like so many small towns the world over, there was very little to occupy young people such to prevent the kind of boredom which can rapidly slide into circumstances which may ultimately anchor them in the very place which offers them so little stimulation.  I had no doubt those swinging teens (no pun intended) would soon be joining their park-traversing compatriots during infant-sleep-inducing perambulations.

Fine green grass might keep the mid-week golfing ladies busy, but for the youth of Woodville, it's not quite enough to steer 'em clear of the rough.  Pic: http://www.hickerphoto.com/putting-green-shot-oliva-nova-golf-course-valencia-12635-pictures.htm

Park Life

I much prefer being at the park with Hambones when the prevailing activity around us is other young families with children playing on the equipment ... rather than transactional sex!

Visiting the local parks for a daily play on the equipment is new to me; as a kid, my parents were all, "You must not go to the park by yourself or with your friends ... only with us".

"OK", I would nod uncertainly, understanding the instruction, but not the sentiment behind it.  "Can we go to the park?"

"No!".

So there was pretty much no park at all for young Donkey, but we lived in the outer 'burbs anyway, and compared with the postage stamp that Hambones has to run around in today, our backyard when we were growing up was as big as any park going.  Still, one always wants what one can't have, so I continued to nag.

But to be honest, compared with today's facilities, the park in those days wasn't really that fantastic; just a couple of metal-coloured, metal bars and a metal slide baking in the harsh midday sun (and guaranteed to cook my young, supple Donkey butt into a couple of toasty-burnt muffins).

So while I could appreciate that the park was pretty boring, and a little bit painful, I didn't really understand what my parents had against it.  When I was a bit older, I suppose in an effort to put an end to years of incessant nagging, I was told that the park was to be avoided because, "it was a dangerous place where strange people went and did dirty things".  Unfortunately for my folks, this off-hand explanation ended up causing a bit of a social scandal within the local primary school community and had to be publically retracted after our driving past the park one day and me seeing Sam D'Mond (one of our neighbours' kids) playing there on his own.  I went to school the very next day and told everyone that my Mum had said that Sam D'Mond (already a bit of a social outcast due to a penchant for the taste of his own snot) was "a weird little twerp who did dirty things at the park!".

Still, despite the red-faced retraction, I remained unaware of the dangers of the park.  As nearly as I could ascertain, apart from a burnt ring, boredom and Johnny Butler and his gang alternating between dishing-out common, schoolyard, Chinese-burn-style bullying and experimenting with cigarettes and soft porn magazines in the bushes in the back corner, there was not really all that much to fear from the park.  Besides, Mrs D'Mond didn't seem to mind old 'Snot Muncher' playing there on his own!

But as I mentioned, the facilities and surroundings in today's parks are another thing altogether, and especially here in the high-density, inner city, it's no surprise that families turn out in droves to play on the colourful, non-heat-conducting plastic slides, rubber swings, flying foxes, non-splintering wooden beams and airborne-child-cushioning, bouncy-floors, all situated beneath wonderful, shady oaks and gum trees, and surrounded by well-manicured, grassy lawns.

In most of our parks, there are also free gas barbeques and picnic chairs and tables for the public to use, as well as necessary, disability-accessible public lavatories.  Our friend Mr Belfast still can't believe the barbeques, "If this was in England or Ireland, people would piss and shit all over them - there's no way I would use one of those things!".  "Ha Ha", we laugh, humouring his European naivety.  He clearly doesn't understand that such things don't happen here in Australia – no, Australians would never shit on a public barbeque in a park when there is well-moulded, designer play equipment easily on hand!

Recently, while playing at the park, we were approached by a gentleman whose firm had been contracted by the local council to survey park users about the facilities.  T'was an interesting experience to be approached by this supposedly impartial surveyor, and to watch him get increasingly animated and agitated as the survey unfolded;

Surveyor:          How would you rank [1-5] the cleanliness and tidiness of the park?

Donkey:            Yeah good.  It's pretty clean.  I'd say 4.

Surveyor:          A 4?  Are you kidding me?  What do you call that over there?

Donkey:            Oh yeah ... there's some rubbish.  OK, a 3.

Surveyor:          You don't think a 2?...

Surveyor:          How would you rank [1-5] the state of the play equipment?

Donkey:            Oh.  Really great.  4-5, I reckon.

Surveyor:          Were you aware that a child broke her arm here last week?

Donkey:            Um ... no.  Maybe a 3?

Surveyor:          [smiles and nods].

And on it went for about half an hour.  He said that this was his first day of surveying, and that he was going to be there all week (obviously I stayed away for the rest of the week), but no doubt he was, through his Woody Allen-esque neuroses and generally judgemental disposition, single-handedly responsible for the play equipment upgrade just a few weeks later, which included a quaint little cubby house with chairs and a little table ... just perfect for little kids to sit in and share a picnic and, as it happens, also a pretty tidy place for young people to start experimenting with each other's bodies.

Look, I'm all for a bit of experimental teenage safe sex, but it might be nice if they could deposit these 'Agents of Protection' in one of the nearby bins when vacating the premises – after all, what we don't know won't hurt us ... or our tea-partying toddlers.

So maybe these were the kinds of goings-on at the park that our parents were trying to protect us from all those years ago ... or maybe it was something else again ... maybe it was what Hambones and I were exposed to yesterday afternoon.

As we approached the empty park, I noticed a couple of people about fifty metres ahead of us wandering towards the recently established disability-accessible public lavatories.  I wasn't really taking much notice, but only became aware that something was not right when, on arrival at the play equipment, neither person was in sight, and the only sign of life was the urgent blinking of the red "occupied" light on the lavatory door, silently screaming out like an emergency distress beacon pleading for assistance, "Danger!  Warning!  There are too many people in the loo!  Please assist.  Danger!".

But you know how you get all irrational when you're scared?  I thought to myself, "Oh look, Donkey.  I am sure it's all legit.  He's probably a man with end-stage colonic cancer and she's his carer, and they've gone into the disability-accessible lav so that she can help him to change his colostomy bag".

Time dragged on and on, and still no one emerged from the toilet.  While others may have viewed this as suspicious, I took it as further confirmation of my very plausible scenario.  "You're onto it, Donkey," my delusions continued, "Those bags can be pretty tricky to get off ... and sometimes they leak and have to be cleaned-up.  It's all good."

After about half an hour, by which time another couple had arrived at the play ground with their infant son, the carer emerged from the toilet looking every bit the qualified health worker that she obviously was; a big-haired, gum-chewing "lady" in a professional ensemble of dirty white crop-top above (which showed-off her massive falsies) and low-slung black tracksuit pants with matching runners below. 

Seeing the park occupied by playing children and wholesome young families, she immediately turned to go back inside, only to find the door locked.  "Can ya hear me?" she shrieked to her patient within, "We better get going".  

About five minutes later, out stepped the tumour-ridden gentleman; a dirty, lanky and very skanky dude in jeans (no belt), runners and a long pony-tail, and would you believe, he was actually scratching his [no doubt, greasy] nuts!  "What the fuck are ya yellin at me for?", he politely enquired of his carer, and off they took themselves (walking along the fence-line, rather than on the designated path), conversing (read: arguing) loudly to each other.

"I guess those anti-cancer drugs can make you pretty narky", I thought to myself.

Within moments of their departure, the park was full of oblivious families, laughing and playing with their children on the wonderful equipment, in the shade of the swaying oaks.  That's Park Life, inner-Melbourne style!

Breaking Bad's Wendy the Crackwhore demonstrating her new career caring for terminal cancer-sufferer's in Donkey's local park yesterday. Pic:  http://remotelyinterested.blogspot.com

Random Observations of Lhasa

Golden ice.

While the freezing temperatures ensure that every man and his Tibetan mastiff pissing against random brick walls less offensive than, say, in a stifling New Delhi summer, it certainly plays havoc with a freezing Donkey trying to negotiate the already treacherous cobbles of Lhasa’s sidewalks in the early morning darkness; the golden, icy slicks sending him sprawling unceremoniously onto the filthy stones every couple of metres, much to the delight of the similarly rugged-up, although considerably more nimble youngens making their way to school.

Did somebody say dark?

As if it wasn’t bad enough that Tibet operates on a Beijing time zone despite being at least two hours ahead (in real time) of the distant seat of power, the Party Regime has seen it fit to dictate that all of Lhasa’s street lights be switched-off at precisely 7.55am, which happens to be approximately one hour and thirty minutes before dawn.

Under cover of darkness.

The opportunistic urbanites of Lhasa use this veiled, pre-dawn window to their advantage, thumbing their noses at Central Government directives to make Lhasa “a model National city” through forced clean-up campaigns, by disposing of their nightly waste water directly over the footpath.  While such practices might be great for keeping the street dust at bay in summer, in winter the frozen slicks encrusted with toothpaste, noodles, slimy vegetables and worse (given what goes on behind the greasy curtain hanging in the back of most of these shops), in addition to posing a potential public health risk, again make negotiating perambulation rather difficult.

Speaking of sex…

Adorning the many shops in Lhasa which sell ladies’ “intimate apparel” are larger-than-life hoardings of Western lingerie models sporting skimpy designer bras and panties in a range of fashionable hues.  You don’t have to get up too close to notice (although one has been known to do so) that despite the advertising, inside these stores you won’t find anything smaller than ankle to neck, cover-all undergarments in a range of fashionable beige; an inventory more likely to appease a grim Victorian school ma’am than a sultry seductress with come hither eyes.

And while you’re licking your chops over that one…

…you may like to join the thousands of Buddhist pilgrims who flock to Lhasa from the remote countryside in their crazy, fluffy headdresses, braided locks and bejewelled faces each winter to worship and prostrate themselves before Tibetan Buddhism’s foremost holy temples, monasteries and shrines, and while they are here, to visit the roadside dental stalls which specialise in gold caps and whiter-than-white pearlies (ridiculously white, really … I guess a mouthful of Clorox will do that for ya).  I can assure you it is quite a shock to be wandering along with the crowd and a sideways glance towards an open doorway revealing a short man in a grubby, blood-spattered (formerly) white lab-coat, cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth, holding aloft an enormous horse-needle poised for insertion into an old woman’s gums while her family strain to clamp her arms to the chair.

Almost as shocking as what you’ll find in the adjacent store, separated from the “dentist” by nothing but fly-blown air; the meat locker, filled to the ceiling with half-frozen, butchered yak carcasses.  Don’t believe me?  Well have a shifty at this.

The Lhasa Meat Locker.  Pic: Hagas

Road Trip

We're off on a road trip.  So we load-up the massive boot of the brown Kingswood with chips, biscuits, bread and sauce, an Esky full of beer, Coke and sausages, fishing rods and cricket bat, ball and stumps, strap the boards to the roof racks, load the tape-deck with the best mixed tapes of the year, throw the guitar and some cushions in the backseat, pick-up the girls (tight denim shorts, tans and bikini tops) and hit the highway in search of sun, sand, surf and who knows, maybe the odd bit of sex?!

Whoo hoo!  It's summer, I'm 19 and I'm off on a road trip with my best mates, some smokin' hot babes and a boot full of piss...

Hang-on, I'm not 19!  I don't drive a Kingswood anymore ... is this some kind of memory throw-back to the mid 80s? 

Hang-on, there were never any smokin' hot babes in my car when I was 19 ... is this some kind of morphing of my memories with youth-targeted TV and U-Toob advertising for clothes/mobile phones/flavoured-milk/pre-mixed vodka drinks?  Exactly what the hell is going on here?

Road trip?  What? ... now? ... at this age? 

Oh right.  Yeah, New Zealand ... North Island ... just me (no mates), smokin' hot Mrs Donkey (tan and denim, but a bit light-on in the bikini-top department – mind you, Wellington was only 2 degrees in the sun), Hambones strapped into the child safety seat in the back (no guitar, no cushions ... barely enough room as it is for the bairn and a folded-up porta-cot) and the boot of the respectably suburban Epica (a far cry from the Kingswood aesthetic) full to bursting with suitcases, stroller and jars of baby food (not a chilled beer or aorta-blocking sausage in sight). 

Road trips have indeed changed since I was a young buck hitting the road full of adventurous anticipation ... or at least since I was a young, luckless, awkward, acne-ridden virgin, sitting down in front of the TV and watching advertisements featuring beautiful young things looking cool and sexy at the beach and on country roads up and down the east coast, and realising the closest I was gonna get to that lifestyle was buying a carton of chocolate milk and drinking it on the bonnet of Dad's station wagon.  But I digress ... New Zealand.

New Zealand?  What would I wanna go there for?  It's exactly the same as here, only thirty years behind.  Let's get this straight - I grew-up in the outer suburbs in the 1980s, and I've spent the last thirty years decisively getting as far away from it as I could, both in time and space.  So why the hell would I want to return to orange Laminex tables, mission-brown carpet tiles, culinary home delights such as "beef and noodles", vegetables boiled to denture-friendly mush and tinned "two-fruits" for desert, or for that formal family occasion, the local "Chinese" specialising in sweet and sour pork, prawn toast and steamed dim sims (considerably more exotic than their less-authentic, fried compatriots available from the fish 'n' chip shop next door).

And while we're at it, I have to say that nostalgics are definitely the stereotype which I find the most irritating (next to New Zealanders, of course).  They bang on and on about milk bottles, 6-o'clock closing, hot chips served in newspaper and about how everything was simple, and tasted better and was cheaper "back in the old days".  How bloody ridiculous?!  Who wants to wake up at 5am every day to the sound of some arthritic old bastard with a smoker's cough tinkling bottles of curdled, unpasteurised milk outside your front door, or to rush like an idiot after work on a Friday to buy bread from the shops before they close for the weekend, or to have permanently tattooed hands and tongue from the combination of scalding chip-grease and lead-based newspaper ink?  Nostalgics are dishonest scumbags who can be annoyingly self righteous as much as they like, smug in the knowledge that no one will ever be able to call them on their wistful reminiscences because no one ever wants to go back there ... 'cause it was shit!  So again I ask the question ... why would anyone want to go to New Zealand?

But as is so often the case, despite my concerns at the idea, my machismo behaved true-to-form and I quickly caved to Mrs Donkey's "suggestion" that a trip to New Zealand to catch-up with some long lost friends would be just what we needed.  So one lovely, warm, spring afternoon, we set off in blinding sunlight for bleak, bleak Wellington, where the sky sits two inches above your head, where the shrieking rain falls sideways and where the trees don't sway in the breeze; they shatter in the sleet.  "Urgh", my stomach sank, "who'd live here?".

The answer to that is our good friends, E, J and G, who were waiting excitedly for us in the arrivals hall, their thick woollen coats, scarves and beanies a comical contrast to our shorts, t-shirts and chattering blue knees.  But their embraces went some way to warding off the forbidding chill as we headed off to see what this country was all about.

However, as would become a reliable feature of our New Zealand road trip, there were delays.  Donkey had been defeated in yet another round of persuasion from Mrs D and had forked-out a hundred kiwi dollars for a so-called "NeverLost" navigation device.  Unfortunately, the helpful instructions don't start until you can get the thing switched on, so we sat in the airport car-park for an hour with the howling wind threatening to blow the car into the adjacent concrete wall (like so many in NZ, decorated with a local artist's lame attempt at a life-sized scene from Lord of the Rings) plugging chords into various sockets and pressing buttons here and there to try to get the thing started. 

Upon achieving success, we started out on the highway towards the city.  In days to come, this device would signal a new era of ease and argument-free road travel, but during that first twenty minutes on Wellington's hectic motorways, our enthusiasm for GPS technology was dampened by Pythagorean feats of concentration in order to decipher the irritatingly grating whine of the Kiwi computer geek's wet-dream - a digitally-generated, sexy female voice with an accent straight out of West Christchurch; "Orr yup, Baybee, tiern luft ut mai luft nupple.  Orr yup, thut's ut.  Thut's toatully Choice, Bug Boy!".

By the time we rounded the point into Oriental Bay, however, things were starting to look a little more promising.  The sun was shooting down through the clouds in gorgeous, golden shafts onto the silver water, and a hip, cafe-lined promenade wound along the shore, along which, despite the wind, people lounged at tables mounted with tantalising, steaming mugs and glasses of chilled white wine.

By the time we'd made it to the hotel, I had passed a large proportion of the 17,000 cafes which contribute to Wellington's reputation as having more coffee outlets per capita than New York.  Add to that a tonne of cool-looking bars and restaurants, and our trip was starting to look up – perhaps New Zealand wasn't quite the 80s suburban throwback I'd been expecting. 

But tasting some of this coffee – the real proof of a nation's developing status – would have to wait just that little longer 'cause breakfast was near E, J and G's digs in Lyall Bay, and to get there, we were forced to get all Lord of the Rings and "...journey beside the silver bay before passing through the dark tunnel beneath the Mountain of the Old Queen, and there you will find the Bay of Gold".  Honestly, New Zealand, the sooner you get over this Peter Jackson crap, the better for all of us – call it what you like, but Mt Victoria is merely a hill, and a road over the top would have been a piece of piss – alright, Im just sayin'. 

While not quite golden, Lyall Bay was very pretty, and we wandered through its lazy streets, past white-painted, weather-board dairies which could well have passed for the suburbs in 1985, down to a rickety-old boat house with beaten-up, peeling wooden walls reflecting a century of sand-blasting, au naturel.  Definitely not the most promising locale for a decent feed, but my casual, and (let's face it) hilarious enquiries of our friends about where a bloke could get some smoked kippers for breakky, "Just like back in the Ol' Country" were being met with daggers from Mrs D, so I decided to put a sock in it and see what New Zealand was going to serve-up.

The building's forbidding exterior was merely a mask for what we found upstairs, however; a bright, warm, furious cacophony of rushing waiting staff weaving through laughing crowds of über cool Wellingtonians packed into tables, benches and onto bar stools as the hissing shoots of steam from the espresso machine and the shriek of frying bacon punctuated the gut-trembling bass of the Kiwi dub booming out over the sound system.  Everyone was happy and chatting to each other, and even the cheerful staff seemed in on the joke.

But the real winner for Donkey was not so much the convivial air, but rather what was being lumbered across the floor in shiny white crockery, and landing in front of the salivating sophisticates; possibly the finest, punchiest organic coffee this increasingly sheepish chump had ever tasted, followed immediately by Martian-transport-sized plates of tasty, organic, eggy goodness atop thick, sourdough toast, plump, juicy baked tomatoes and garlic-bloated mushrooms, with mouth-bashing basil pesto on the side.

By now ol' Donkey was supplementing this fine fare with a considerable serving of humble pie, and while this would have convinced a better man to re-assess his perceptions about what to expect from New Zealand, it should be understood that there are few lumbering hulks more difficult to rein-in than the irrationality of an egomaniac trying to avoid embarrassment.  Sure, others might have suggested that the throng of hip and the platefuls of yum in the room were undeniable proof of a progressive, culinary culture, and yet my ill-placed dogma continued, "But this might have been just a bit of luck; and perhaps E, J and G have deliberately guided us to the best place in the city for our first feed". 

More coffee was going to be required before any definitive conclusions could be drawn ... and beer ... wine'd be good, too.  Ice cream anyone?  Yeah.  I'm no soft target to be won over with a single, outstanding breakfast.  I grew up in the suburbs in the 80s.  I know what I'm in for ... let's get out of this funky cafe ... it's time to check out the real New Zealand.

Next stop ... the 'Real' Wellington.

Donkey's expectations of modern-day New Zealand ... stay logged-in to find out just how canny he is.  Pic:  http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~jdumas/berendo/berenfot.html

Back in the Barnyard

In the movies it always comes out of a person's abdomen, but in my case, the alien arrived last week out of my left shoulder; a massive, three-headed, mucous-oozing extra-terrestrial with white-hot fangs and razor-sharp claws thrashing at my Garnier-perfect, Donkey skin. Three hours later, having been seduced by a Grey's Anatomy-type medical intern wearing a pair of cut-off, denim micro-shorts, three-inch heels and a performance-enhancing halter neck who just wanted to get her inexperienced hooks into a bit of Donkey's meat, I found myself drugged and lying prone on an operating table, my erection mashed painfully into the solid bench-top, while the Playboy Bunny gouged the offending alien foetus out of my back by and deposited it into a formaldehyde jar destined for the inaccessible vaults of the CIA's alien research bunkers, deep below the city's streets.

Just my luck, really! For two years now, Mrs D and I have been holed-up in Melbourne preparing for, and then facilitating the arrival of Little Hambones, and doing nothing much more exciting than sniffing the baby's bum every 20 minutes, changing his nappy and nicking up to the swings for a play between poos, feeds and sleeps. And now, on the eve of an all-new, South Pacific adventure, I get abducted in my sleep and done up the bum by a load of randy, Martian holiday-makers from an orbiting cruise vessel, and before long their foetid offspring is making a b-line for the sky through my left shoulder blade, effectively delaying both our intended arrival in a tropical paradise, and therefore by extension, my having anything useful to write about on this blog.

It's been 11 years since Mrs D and I met while working in the wonderful, tropical ideal that is Samoa, and now we're heading there again for a couple of months (this time with Hambones in trail) to work with our former colleagues, and to hopefully re-experience what it is like to really LIVE; which is what it really felt like amongst the most incredible, and yet disturbingly dysfunctional and absurd individuals ever to find themselves confined together on such a small rock.

We'll be interested in returning to see if the Religious Zealot is still managing the National Finances while swelling the borders of his already massive plantation interests (which at last check, totalled almost two-thirds of the country's landmass). We'll be interested to see if the Minister for Transport is still calling the shots, after he moved the centrally-located town bus station 25Kms out of town in order to make room for his new business; the country's only McDonald's restaurant (conveniently for the fortunes of his family, this happened just weeks before the Government slapped a restraining bill on the introduction of foreign fast-food franchises).

We'll be interested to see if the taxi drivers are still requesting to be paid in blow-jobs on Sunday mornings by transvestites skipping church, whether inmates of Her Majesty's Prison Service are still allowed to go home on the weekends so that the guards don't have to work, and to see whether the police still enjoy lying under the mango tree all Sunday afternoon, completely drunk out of their brains, while everyone else in town prefers to be behind the wheel when in the same state.

Yes, we'll be very interested to see if much has changed at all, and I'll be working on making sure, through the re-ignition of DonkeyBlog, that you all get an opportunity to meet the many colourful folk of Apia who prop-up the tropical bars and talk the legs of the stools, or who sell drugs and sex on the sea wall, or who sleep around with this teacher, that pastor or that politician while outwardly condemning their brothers and sisters of the congregation for doing likewise.

Samoa is a hoot; and as soon as this shoulder gash stops weeping fifteen different varieties of pus, I'll be arriving on its sunny shores, and dispatching regular updates. I hope you enjoy them!

The view of Donkey's shoulder just over a week ago. Pic: http://www.bigcheesepress.com.