Pigeon holed

I bet Peter Garret thinks that the worse thing about going to a "P" party dressed as a proctologist is that despite the jovial reception his gag generates on arrival, there's nothing funny about having to spend the rest of the night wearing latex gloves smeared in vegemite.

Pic: http://paradigmoz.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/peter-garrett-flag.jpg

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

Space travel just got a whole lot easier

There was a big push in the 1980s to try to explain and demonstrate scientific principles to kids using everyday, household objects and activities.

Probably the main protagonist here was Paul G. Hewitt; very much the darling of my high school physics teacher, who himself was the kind of guy who clearly had spent most of his university years developing complex mathematical formulas to determine the probability of whether he was likely to ever get a root while at college (and not of the squared kind !). Anyway, this asexual nit-wit was enamoured with Hewitt’s quirky, avant guarde approach to teaching high-school physics, which regularly saw him smashing household furniture or blowing-up kitchen appliances, and as a result, we students were forced to sit through 24-episodes of Hewitt’s irritating, a-tonal, New York drawl on scratchy, BETA video tapes, hoping that someone would one day produce an axe in class with which we could demonstrate the concept of inertia on Mr Austin’s bland skull.

But while I wasn’t that taken with the US-style learning, I did develop an appreciation for the very Australian, The Curiosity Show, on which two nerdy, washed-up hippies from the 70s “made science fun” by encouraging us to make various toys and gadgets with bits and pieces found in and around our homes, and through this, demonstrated scientific principles.

I remember learning that if I set a tea-bag alight, I could watch it rocket towards the sky, and that I could make a cotton-bud fly across a room towards a target thanks to a crossbow constructed of a clothes peg and a rubber band.

On reflection, this was clearly a pretty good way to get kids to show initiative and to develop the skills of invention, but whether a result of a thirst to learn more, or simply a limited attention span, I was prone to upping-the-ante a little, which usually got me into trouble. For instance, there’s only so much one can learn from burning all the tea bags in the house, but what I really wanted to know, was whether the same technique could launch a cat into space. Poor old Fluffy definitely copped the brunt of it, and eventually Dad refused to pay the vet bills to have all the cotton-buds surgically removed from the cat’s arse. Not surprisingly, he also decreed that The Curiosity Show was to be permanently switched-off in our household.

Without the nerdy, TV hippies to help me understand my surroundings, I soon learned to develop my own techniques for demonstrating scientific principles in the home. Foremost amongst these was the method I devised to understand the speed of light. At school, we’d been taught that light moves really fast, but the figures they gave us to demonstrate just how fast, with all those zeros hanging off the end, were just too conceptual for my Donkey-sized brain to process. They also told us that planets etc are so far away, that it takes many, many years for the light from them to reach Earth. It was all too difficult to fathom, and without The Curiosity Show to put me straight, I was in danger of becoming completely ignorant.

Instead, I sought answers through rigorous experimentation under strict, scientific conditions, and I came to the conclusion that the speed of light was slightly faster than the time it took for me to reach my bed from the light switch – and, I can assure you, given an extreme fear of the dark, that was pretty fast. Thanks to my experiments, I now understood a concept which I later discovered takes astro-physicists many years of research to master, and through that knowledge, I came to understand other concepts, like why space travellers in movies always had to be put to sleep for years and years while journeying through the cosmos.

But now, after all these years, I can feel the ground shifting beneath me, thanks to breakthroughs in technology which are causing me to re-evaluate the laws of physics. The technology of which I speak entered our home a couple of weeks ago, thanks to a ridiculous loophole in international economic and environmental policy.

We received a visit to our home from a local business man who, for absolutely no charge, replaced all of our standard light bulbs with expensive, energy-efficient bulbs. The carbon credits his business accrues through this free service are sold (for a considerable fortune) to energy inefficient corporations, in order that they can claim carbon neutrality.

As ridiculous as this sounds, rather than global authorities forcing high-volume polluters to reduce their carbon emission, they instead endorse this ludicrous, highly involved process, and somehow everyone (except dolphins, whales, penguins and Pacific Islanders) is happy; the unethical, polluting corporations can pretend they are saving the planet, the business man can sit pretty on a great, big pile of cash, and even the Donkeys are saving some money on their electricity bill … completely ridiculous, really, but it’s that kind of world.

But despite the cheaper power bills, these new light bulbs are challenging the very basis of my scientific beliefs. Since their installation in our home, I can flick a light switch on my way through a doorway, and be well inside the room before darkness is expelled.

It appears that man-made technology is getting the jump on nature and the turning of the universe, and the speed of light is slowing down. This has major implications on what we know to be true, and more than likely, should this trend continue, we may no longer need to be put to sleep when we head out to explore that final frontier. Good for space exploration, perhaps, but not so great for young teenage boys trying to get a glimpse of a buff, alien-killing Sigourney Weaver in nothing but panties and a crop-top. I never did trust technology.

Energy-saver light bulbs - taking the thrill out of adolescence. Pic: http://www.comicbookmovie.com

Trash and treasure on the South Seas

Keeping up with the Joneses is difficult, no matter where you live. Out in the McSuburbs, there’re ever expanding flat screen TVs to be purchased; mandatory upgrading to the bigger, faster, louder, redder Holden Commodore to be managed; and children’s birthday party entertainment to be sourced which out-does Little Johnny’s surprise visit from Dorothy the Dinosaur’s illegitimate offspring last summer. It’s relentless, exhausting and mind-numbing, not to mention economically crippling.

But killing yourself slowly just to fit-in with the neighbours is not peculiar to the identical, pastel dwellings on the urban fringes. Even when you’re a funky couple of kats like Mrs Donkey and I, living in the uber trendy, fur-hat and petticoat-wearing, latte-sipping pockets of the inner north, the pressure to ‘fit in or fuck off’ is just as insipid. However, when doing so means sourcing the finest second-hand clothing the early ‘80s can offer, it’s not as simple as firing up the V8 and chugging down to the local Megamall for new pair of daks.

Far from it! Having an eye for a piece of risque, second-hand fashion that hasn’t yet been picked over by the hoards of freaks on Victoria St is an essential survival skill. Hesitate over that Shanghai silk dress with the ridiculous slit up the back, and you may just find yourself with nothing funkier in your wardrobe than a mink coat and a pair of purple, sequinned thongs/flip-flops to wear to the café – a “so yesterday” look which’ll see you shunned to the dark tables down the back, beneath the staircase where only the work experience waitress will occasionally dare to visit on her way out to the bogs for a smoke.

It’s a slippery tightrope; that of social acceptability in the cut-and-thrust world of unwashed bohemia and having ready access to a steady supply of ridiculous, second-hand threads is commensurate to one’s need for oxygen. Fortunately for us, my being notoriously too tight to purchase new clothing unless it comes with a sweat shop-sized price-tag to match the age of its maker, and Mrs D’s expert eye for eclectic, exotic threads complements well with our local area boasting the highest ratio of second-hand clothing stores per capita in the known world. It even works for lil’ Hambones, who, much to his grandparents’ collective derision, has never worn a new item of clothing in his short life. So to date, all three of us have managed to hold our own as we cram onto a single, uncomfortable wooden box on a frigid, Sunday morning winter pavement, sipping our lattes and offering a rigamortis smile to our equally uncomfortable, yet outwardly content, fellow funkies.

It’s a pretty recent phenomenon, this rapid rise in the social acceptability of second-hand clothing stores. Wearing someone else’s used duds has certainly not always been well received. Back in the day, it was a mark of upwardly, socially mobile suburbanites to clear the cupboards every spring through a donation of last-season rags to the poor and destitute. This convenient means of getting rid of unwanted garments had the added bonus of filling the donor with a great sense of satisfaction at their civic contribution, but strangely enough, it was generally assumed that the charities which received these clothes directed them towards dressing the poor and street-living folk; an odd assumption given that no one in my neighbourhood had ever seen homeless women getting around in pink, backless evening frocks or elbow-length white gloves, nor had anyone witnessed unshaven, urine-smelling drunks lying in the putrid back-alleyways wearing full-length, paisley smoking jackets!

Such is the nature of western charity, since the days of the Victorian poor houses, that once disposed of, the moneyed classes rarely gave much thought to their donation … until recently, when the sale of second hand clothing exploded into a multi-million dollar industry!

You can imagine the talkback radio-led outrage of the masses when they came to learn that charities, rather than using out-dated tuxedos and feather boas to clothe the homeless, were actually making a buck out of other people's [unwanted] donated gear (albeit a buck which was then used to pay for food and lodgings directed at the poor and homeless). Of course, despite their impotent frustration, the moneyed classes were unable to argue with the fact that the poor were still receiving a benefit from the donations (at least, they weren’t prepared to argue about it in plain daylight, but the issue burned for weeks thanks to the anonymous lens of talkback radio), and the issue eventually faded. People became used to seeing the funkies (and subsequently, TV soapie stars) getting around in used threads, and the industry took off.

But before all this recycled commerce came the fore, what was never recognised was what the charities did with all those crap clothes in order to make the money to help the poor BEFORE we had embraced second-hand clothing stores. The answer to that, my friends, is the Pacific. Throughout Melanesia, Polynesia and I presume Micronesia, it is not uncommon for an entire village to pool their resources and purchase from some third-tiered middleman, a huge bale of used Australian women’s, men’s and children’s clothing, and, come arrival day, to almost rip each others’ jugulars out in a mad scramble to nab the best gear with which to clothe the family for the following year.

As mentioned previously, the moneyed folk of Australia’s urban sprawls tend not to give anything appropriate away, however, only what they don’t want, so as a result, one recognises some pretty strange (and hauntingly familiar) fashions on the Islands.

For instance, it’s a pretty regular sight throughout Polynesia to witness a buff, young, tattooed, cropped-haired tough-guy strutting through a village wearing a t-shirt with a fluffy pink dog painted on the front. Or an old man wearing a thread-bare, child’s nightie baring a sickly-smiling, Strawberry Shortcake! About the only island folk who ever end-up looking the part are the grotesquely masculine transvestites, their obese legs and shoulders (and machetes) crammed into pink or pale yellow, sequined, backless, full-length dresses.

And you'd be surprised at just how close to home it all gets. Late one night in 1999, I came across a security guard manning the guard house of the National University of Samoa wearing a t-shirt from an Australian student association I was a member of in 1993, of which there would have been only about 100 t-shirts printed at most!

Freaky coincidences aside, the other great thing about unwanted Australian clothing ending up in the Pacific, is a) that a considerable number of inappropriate garments get shipped abroad, and b) that what is inappropriate in Australia, is not always perceived so amongst the 'English-as-a-second-language' islanders. So it is therefore not uncommon for a man to be standing in a Samoan church on a Sunday, all dressed in pristine white and beaming a beatific smile, and across whose chest is plastered one of a number of rather suspect phrases such as "I've seen God and she's black" ... and no one seems to mind.

My personal favourite, however, was an elderly, wrinkled, hunch-backed Solomon Island woman hobbling along the streets of Honiara wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with a sprightly Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli, trade-mark thumbs in the air and twinkle in his eye, issuing the speech-bubble caption, "I just fucked your girlfriend!". Magical stuff!

More recently, it appears that wearing clothing which sports inappropriate English phrases in non-English speaking cultures is becoming very fashionable, so much so that it is being extended beyond dumped, second-hand clothing, to new clothing produced locally. A perfect example seems to be the preferred head gear of high school students in Lhasa at present, who in order to protect their scones from the intense, Tibetan sun, are sporting American-style baseball caps with the rather obscure, priceless phrase, "I Fuck the Fakeshit". I dunno what it means ... and most likely, neither do they (or their teachers), but it has been widely embraced, and I just wish I had have had the guts to wear one to school when I was a lad!

Caption seen on an elderly Solomon Island woman's t-shirt, circa 2005. Pic: http://media.photobucket.com/image/Fonzie%20fucked%20your%20girlfriend/RKCFonzie/Fonzie.jpg

The power of metaphor

The Populous Security Bureau bugging devices must’ve been popping like cherries at a B&S ball the other night as I sat in one of the world’s highest restaurants discussing the history and current political situation in Burma with my high-altitude colleagues.

You can imagine the freedom I felt after a week (and in their case, a lifetime) of being careful about everything one said and did, so as not to openly express any opinions or attitudes at odds with the government, openly discussing in a public place the activities of an undemocratically appointed, unlawful military regime, imposed upon the people, and which restricts religious, political and social freedoms, whilst deliberately and systematically culling huge swathes of the population, from the urban intelligentsia to the rural peasantry.

You might also imagine what was going through the minds of these colleagues as they lapped-up information about events and government processes in this neighbouring country; happenings which, although having never heard about them before, must have seemed so very familiar. Occurrences such as the systematic and aggressive persecution of monks, violent military responses to peaceful protests, restrictions upon the populace in terms of their freedom to worship according to their religion, lengthy incarceration of citizens without charge or trial, the unspoken and unexplained disappearance of generations of loved ones.

It is no surprise that they were so interested in asking questions and listening to what I knew of the happenings in “Burma”. I wonder if they wondered why they’d never heard this before?

I also wonder about the poor drone up there in the communications control tower who was deciphering our monitored conversation, and writhing in anguish and indecision as to whether they should bring the discussion to the attention of their superiors; whether they would be praised for their diligence, or chastised for wasting the time of their betters on a conversation about another country’s irrelevant activities. Being a bureaucrat cog must suck.

We all thought it would lead to change - again this sounds oh, so familiar. Pic: www.apheda.org.au

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/

This raging life

What happens at 9.30 on a Saturday night? 

Well about an hour ago, the kids of the neighbours next door sold 2 grams to the even younger kids from down the street, and with their spoils have headed off to the nudie bar up on Sydney Rd and are currently getting a private show from the freshest young thing on the menu who just this week arrived back from Bangkok with her new pair, which have been workin' a treat for her now for five nights running.  Right this minute, as she's blowing a bubble with her grape-flavoured gum and shaking her new acquisitions in front of young Aristos' slavering leer, she's trying to work out how many more weeks of bucks' parties and footy club break-ups she's got before she's able to pay off her investment.

Not all that long ago, I would have been down at the Evelyn by 9.30 on a Saturday night, already with six or seven pots under my belt and watching Matt Healey from The Fireballs bashing-out psychobilly power riffs whilst hanging upside down from one of the designer-unfinished-ceiling beams.  As I swayed and staggered back and forth across the sticky carpet (occasionally in time with the music), I'd catch the eye of one of my fellow revellers; an eclectic mix of piercings, fedoras, acid wash denim and faux fur-trimmed parkers, and give a conspiratorial nod which would be returned with a welcoming grin.  The Evelyn Hotel's always been a bit of a freak show, and back then, I was as much part of the circus as anyone.  At 9.30 on a Saturday night, the front bar of "The Ev" was a scene of tribal belonging, in which I, with my pains-takingly scuffed and muddied work boots, slashed jeans and skin-tight, Albert Einstein t-shirt, was as much a member of the community as anybody.

But things change.  Tonight at 9.30pm, I was on my way back from the convenience store where I'd been charged with the mission of procuring life-or-death quantities of chocolate.  I was in a tremendous rush to get back for RocKwiz, because sitting at home in front of the box watching people enjoying themselves at the pub on a Saturday night is about as close as I get to it these days, and I couldn't afford to miss even a minute of the fun.

In my urgency, I unthinkingly broke one of the after-dark golden rules of all discerning inner-suburbanites, and executed a short-cut down one of the sinister, cobbled alleys along which the night soil men once executed the householders' sanitation requirements in the wee, small hours, but along which decades of decay and misuse had left nothing behind but uneven, broken blue-stones and fetid microcosms of breeding parasites.  As if staying-in on a Saturday night and watching TV wasn't enough of a signal of the inevitable ebb of time, the contrast of my current circumstances with the good ol' days at The Evelyn was brought crashing home to me when a misplaced step into one of these breeding sites, from which my trusty, Saturday night work boots may once have spared me a pedal dowsing, saw my sandal-shod sock suddenly transformed into a stinking, slimy mess. 

I cursed as the mucky ooze blended with the tinea in my inter-digital spaces, and I staggered blindly around the corner of the alley before catching my dry foot on something soft but solid, and sprawling onto the dirty stones.  "Fuck off, will ya old man!" howled a female teen with pin-point pupils who was down on her knees in front of her male companion who, with equally narrowed, yet un-focusing eyes, was grinning slyly at me.  Clearly the afore-mentioned "even younger kids" had successfully cut their 2 grams into something a little more voluminous and were out here in the alleys making their product work for them as only crack can.  Shocked, disoriented and curiously embarrassed, I mumbled some lame apology for my disturbing presence in their nocturnal habitat, and I soggily and groggily hot-footed it back home with my chocolatey spoils to hug my wife in a fierce embrace which silently shouted, "Don't make me go back out there again!".

There's oh-so-much going on at 9.30 on a Saturday night, but that doesn't mean we all have to be a part of it.  There's a place for everyone, and being locked-up tightly behind security doors and shuttered windows, with a beer and chocolate and watching make believe junkies and whores in far-off America on CSI is definitely mine.

Don't go near Mebourne's alleys after dark if you're an old, yeller suburbanite.  Pic: http://farm4.static.flickr.com

Underbelly III: a tale of no bollocks

If it had’ve been a young Donkey that had wound-up on a deserted beach with all the other scamps in that classic “survival of the fittest” tale, Lord of the Flies, I would certainly have been the first to have had his legs hacked-off with blunt stones by the other urchins in order for them to have something to rub together in aide of a fire, over which my tubby torso would’ve been slowly roasted in my own, succulent juices for the delightful consumption of the conch-holding bully-boys.

There’s no question – I would have been the odds-on favourite for a first-night bastin’. It’s a scenario which is about as natural selectionist as it gets; I was what Darwin had in mind when he was banging-on through his tobacco-stained beard about krill being the most likely organism in the sea to get its arse kicked. I am, and have been a spineless, snivelling Mummy’s Boy, ever since the days of my early childhood.

But it wasn't my fault; I blame my parents. Y'see, back in the hey-day of the corner store, before the advent of a 7-11 every 4.5 metres; back when no self-respecting suburban estate was complete without a decaying brick shopfront above which one dysfunctional, single parent family after another traded living quarters every four months and outside which a gang of six or seven tough-looking boys could be found, from midday until late in the night, loitering, fighting, sneering at passers-by and clumsily flirting with the other mandatory feature outside of any suburban Milk Bar, a solitary, early teenage girl with a penchant for Hubba Bubba, who’d recently discovered both thick, black eye shadow and that she and her parents just didn’t get along. Back then, I was completely smothered by my parents' over-protectiveness, and denied all exposure to danger and confrontation.

All through my early childhood, I was strictly forbidden from going anywhere near the Milk Bar and its undesirable entourage, so by the time I was four years old, I'd decided that I was man enough to subvert Mummy's strict instructions for the very first time, so I nicked five cents out of Daddy's change bowl and headed to the Milk Bar for some lollies. Geez I was tough!

Full of piss and vinegar, and with a heavy, echidna-branded five cent coin in my hot, mischievous hand, I skipped along down the road (in a masculine, the-world-is-mine-for-the-taking kind of way), and with a deep, excited breath, I rounded the corner which marked the furthest of my permitted boundaries.

As the Milk Bar came into my view, however, so too did I come into the view of none other than Johnny Butler; the biggest Neighbourhood Tough since Slobodan Milosevic assumed supremacy of the pre-school sandpit by burying the head of his rival, Antonije Bojan, in the corner where Sooty the cat always took her early-morning constitutional. Johnny Butler's reputation for cruelty and torture was legendary throughout the five streets of our suburb, and he was to be strictly avoided by any self-respecting youngster with an aversion to physical pain and suffering.

Seeing Johnny Butler positioned between me and the entrance to the Milk Bar, I immediately discharged a discreet, rabbit-sized poo in my Spiderman underpants, and turned to flee back to Mummy's skirts with a full confession and a promise to stay in my room for the next twenty years (how prophetic!), but by a stroke of extreme misfortune, as Johnny Butler turned his gaze from ogling the Bubblegum Goth beside him to taking-in my trembling form on the corner, the shiny five cent coin in my hand caught the afternoon sunshine, announcing to all gathered at the Milk Bar entrance that I was a well-heeled citizen carrying a substantial Booty.

Johnny Butler, far from shouting something menacing at me, rather called out to me in a friendly, welcoming voice (by name, mind you - man, this gangster was good). He asked what I was doing with that sparkling fiver, and when I told him, he asked if, seeing as though we were friends, he could have half of the lollies I intended to procure with my ill-gotten fortune. By this stage, I was so numb with fear that I could only nod in reply, so I walked through the front door of the Milk Bar with the murderous hand of Johnny Butler firmly gripping my shoulder, and trembling with abject terror, I proceeded to point out to the bored shop-keeper which lollies I wanted in my little, white paper bag.

After gobbling down the spoils of his protection racket, Johnny Butler took me under his wing, and for the rest of the afternoon, I became the second most important person in the neighbourhood. Johnny Butler talked to me of his hopes for the future; today this Milk Bar, tomorrow the one on Fraser Street, "and who knows?", he mused aloud, "maybe one day we'll be hanging-out at the Shell up on Springvale Road!" And then he looked me straight in the eye and told me that if I played my cards right, I could be there with him.

Imagine that! One of Johnny Butler's crew! Ignoring the disgruntled scowls of the other lads, I allowed myself to be taken-in by this juvenile delinquent's dream, and I too looked towards a future of being Johnny Butler's right-hand man, breathing in the heady heights of life at the top of the heap, terrorizing the young and the innocent.

But it was all too good to last. I was soon to learn that fame and fortune can be fickle companions, and that the green light wasn't all beer and skittles.

For Johnny Butler wasn't prepared to just hand over half of his terror network to any old would-be bad boy with two-and-a-half cents worth of mixed lollies to his name. "Oh no, Little Man," he said sternly, "I gotta be sure you're gonna be here for me when I need ya". Of course, by that stage I was fully hooked on the taste of power and privilege I'd enjoyed over those few hours, and I swore I would do anything he asked. So off we went, me and my new gang, to the nearby playground on Woodlea Drive (pretty tough, hey? Woodlea Drive was another place I wasn't allowed to go to).

As soon as we arrived, the other toughs and the Bubblegum Goth formed a tight circle near some trees at the back of the park, and Johnny Butler took me by the elbow and led me into the middle of the circle, where we both stood, shoulder to shoulder, and looked down at a completely unfamiliar object - what I now know to be a used condom. "Pick it up and give it to me, Little Man", he ordered. I slowly bent and reached for the oozing dinger, wondering as I did what it was. I hesitated slightly, but after gulping down a great, viscous lump of fear, I resolved to do as my new Master bade. But just before I grabbed hold of the sticky sheath, one of the toughs sniggered.

My hand froze, and I looked up at Johnny Butler, who was grinning down at me with a glint of cruelty in his narrow eyes. "Pick it up, Donkey, or I'll bash ya", sneered Johnny Butler. I stood up straight and ... did I actually shake my head defiantly, or was I simply trembling with terror? Regardless, Johnny Butler clenched both fists as he lunged towards me, and I sobbed in terror, before sounding-off a piercing howl that caught the attention of young Mrs Cherney, who was approaching the park with her two-year old. "What's going on there you kids?", she bellowed, and that was enough to put the wind up Johnny Butler and his crew, who hot-footed it off down Woodlea Drive towards the safety of their patch outside the Milk Bar.

And there it was. My big, life choice; do I pick up the greasy dinger and become one of Johnny Butler's crew, terrorising the neighbourhood youth before moving onto organised protection rackets, illegal poker halls and eventually leading a life of luxury on stinking, ill-gotten cash, socialising with society's most wanted, professional footballers and dodgy accountants, and snorting lines of coke off a prostitute's arse through a rolled-up fifty three times a night? Or do I defy Johnny Butler's orders, and tell him to stick his fawning sycophants and all-pervasive neighbourhood power where it fits, and head back to my homely existence with the family I love, who cares for and nurtures me, in good times and bad?

I'd like to think I actually made my choice that day, but the truth is I never had the balls. As Johnny Butler lunged towards me, I'd lost it, pissed my pants and cried like a baby. Mrs Cheney had saved my arse and held my hand as she walked me all the way home. I had survived, sure, escaping a bashing and possibly a sexually transmitted infection-induced skin rash into the bargain, but it hadn't been a survival of the fittest; my dignity and pride had been destroyed that day in the park on Woodlea Drive, when I had gone from being Melbourne's newest crime boss to being a snivelling mess in the space of a heartbeat, and the stink of failure and weakness has remained with me ever since; a stench which can be sensed immediately by any opportunistic predator who comes my way.

There's a lot to be said for the old adage, "We've gotta toughen you up son, it's a jungle out there and you'll get eaten alive." Too true.

"Hey Bitches. Hey Hos..." Jay and Silent Bob, two regulars outside the Quick Stop, were not as threatening as Johnny Butler, but equally as opportunistic. Pic: http://arcticmonkey.files.wordpress.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

Gaggin' for a shag

S'no wonder I'm such a sexually and emotionally repressed Donkey, I've been deprived of the basic human right to an education! Let me explain, I'm not talking about the usual, reading, writing and arithmetic kind of education here (believe me, I've had Shakespeare, spelling bees and calculus coming out of my whatsit for years!). No, I'm talking about the fundamental building blocks of education which exist in the form of children's fairy tales.

Now before you hit speed-dial to dob Ma and Pa Donkey into the child protection authorities, I must clarify that I did get the usual, Mother Goose-style fairy tales from my folks, such as Hansel and Gretel, Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk etc, but what I didn't get were the "real" fairy tales, as compiled by the good Brothers (indeed very Grimm by name and nature).

Such as the one I've stumbled across this very early morning while struck with an almighty, new year's hangover and unable to sleep with Mrs Donkey snoring away beside me. The story's called Old Hildebrand, and features a silly peasant whose saucy wife's having it off (I kid you not) with the fat parson. The two illicit lovers, in order to get Old Hildebrand out of the way so that they can "...spend a whole day happily together...", concoct a scheme in which the trusting peasant is sent by the sly, randy, old Churchman on a holy pilgrimage to Italy.

Of course, thanks to the wily intervention of a travelling egg salesman (who has no doubt been around the block a few times himself), Old Hildebrand comes home early, where he finds that "...everything was already very merry...". Very merry indeed! It seems Old Hilde's Missus and the dirty old Man of the Cloth were well into things by the time he got home, described by the Brothers G as follows;

"...The woman had already had nearly everything killed that was in the farmyard [a euphemism, if ever I've heard one], and had made pancakes [ooh err], and the parson was there, and had brought his fiddle with him [I'll bet he had, the dirty old bastard!]".

Why didn't anyone tell me about this before? How is it that the real world was denied me so callously? How different my adolescence would have been if those brave princes looking upon an enchanted, sleeping maiden, or up at a flaxen-haired beauty trapped in a tower, had done so, not with a melting heart, but with a raging erection! How different Sunday school might have been if I'd known of Old Hildebrand's saucy minx of a wife and what she and her kind get up to with Father O'Flannagan in the pantry out the back of the Presbytery (I almost certainly would have had a different answer for Father McNaughton when he tapped me on the shoulder and put the vocational question to me if I'd known it was all about "making pancakes" with the parish ladies while their hubbies were at work, and almost certainly, were this knowledge available to the young Catholic lads of Australia, the dwindling numbers of recruits in seminaries across the country could have been prevented right from the outset).

And by far the best thing about the story of Old Hildebrand, unlike those told by the fusty old Goose with the straw hat and wire specs, is that, just as in life, there doesn't have to be any great moral message at the end of it. In Old Hildebrand, there's no "don't talk to strangers", no "even ugly people have hidden qualities", no "respect your elders and loved ones". Rather, far from having to be portrayed as some moral crusader, when he learns of the treachery against him, Old Hildebrand gives the parson a flogging and then throws his leg over the Missus for a bit of pancake-making himself. Great stuff! There should be more of it ... much more, in fact. I'm as angry as all get-out to have been deprived for so long; blinded as to the true nature of children's fairy stories. I've missed so much, and need to make up for some pretty serious, lost time. Please excuse me, I'm off to church...


Why didn't anyone tell me it wasn't all virtuous chastity? A few more learning aids like this wouldn't have gone astray. Pic: http://www.measureformeasure.co.uk