NOT NEW YEAR ALREADY!

2013 Suggests 2014 Back Off

My doctor has told me I have suffered a bad case of 2013.  She has advised me to avoid 2014 altogether.  I asked her how I can possibly do this without Dr. Who's Tardis and she really has no idea.

When you think about it, the older you get, one year becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of your life.  For example, when you are a one-year-old, a year makes up 100% of your life.  When you are five, one year is 20% of your life.  No wonder it seems so long for Christmas to come around.

Then when you're thirty, one year is 3.3% of your life.  Spins round a lot faster, doesn't it? Barely time to make money to pay the bills and buy your children their long-awaited Christmas presents.

OK for those of us fifty and over one year has plummeted to 2% and decreasing, of one's lifespan. How to solve this predicament?  The various states may go in for daylight saving, but I don't think anybody is going to approve of relative year lengths according to age. Therefore, if you are fifty, say, no one is going to make one year equal to ten for fifty-year olds so that you feel the same excitement on reaching Christmas as you did when you were five. No one would be capable of correlating the various calendars for the corresponding years anyway.

It's as mind boggling a thought as Einstein's Theory of Relativity.  In fact, it's about relativity and so there is no way it's going to catch on.

No, the sad thing is that the older you get the shorter the years become.  Compounding this is the fact that your time is growing shorter and at an exponential rate of progression.  It will seem like you'll be dead and in the ground by the end of the week even if you live another thirty years after turning sixty.

We all want to reach old age save the rock star who sang "I hope I die before I get old".  The problem with this is, you don't stay young.  Wouldn't it be great to live to eighty years and not age a bit over twenty?  This would lead to some problems, like the man of twenty who brings the hot chick of eighty home to meet his parents.  Their only succour would be that she'd be dead before the wedding took place.

Then, of course, what would kill us?  Would we just drop dead at a certain age?  A bit too much of a let down if you still feel and look twenty.  I suppose this is the only thing that makes old age viable.  We're winding down to the inevitable.

I am beginning to resent the speed at which the years are passing but I'm also turning into one of those people who is glad to have been born when I was.  I don't much care for the way the world is going and the speed with which things are changing with no one, apparently, in charge of what changes we can and can't accept.

I worry that people have too many children without thinking of the consequences and then the poor darlings are turned into worker drones to support the macrocosm the world and technology has become.

Another thing that bothers me is how confident the youth are, how little they respect experience and yet, how they don't seem to think about where they're heading and what it's all about.  Never fear, when their percentages start to drop they too may have an epiphany.

By the time they are forty they probably think they'll have access to 3D printed kidneys and other organs; they may even have access to 3D printed offspring if they miss their fertility window.  Why have in-vitro fertilisation when you can print out a little darling according to specs?  Well that's a little far ahead, but it may happen.

What are Baby Boomers, who just want a mobile that's a phone without the Internet attached, going to think of 3D grandchildren?  Not much, I can assure you.  What youth forget is that the Boomers are called that for a number of reasons.  We were there at the start of the technology boom.  That's why we're sick of it.  We can take all the new technology in, we just don't want to anymore.  It doesn't have to get smaller and smaller and faster and faster for us to appreciate it.

Some things are worthy in themselves.  When I had a dinosaur of a computer, my stepson said it was slow and out of date.  I said that if a cave man saw it, he'd be pretty impressed. It's all relative you see.  You can keep pushing down the pedal of a car's accelerator until you reach exorbitant speeds, but what's the point?  You are only human after all.  That too may change, sadly, but until then, let's just enjoy the good things we have.  The tortoise won over the hare after all and he probably stopped along the way to smell the roses.

END

CHRISTMAS STUFFING.

Santa After Christmas Stuffing

Why do we wish each other "Happy Christmas" as if there is some doubt it will happen;  a fifty percent chance of it going awry?

Chances are it will.  There is so much expectation surrounding the enjoyment of the day; so much negotiation between couples as to whose family to visit when and for which meal.  There are definite odds of a stomach ache following a self-induced stuffing that would, were the turkey still alive, make it feel a lot better about what's been done to it.

I haven't put up a Christmas tree since my son moved into his own home.  For many years now the thought of Christmas approaching has filled me with a foreboding much akin to someone facing execution.  When the Christmas trees go up in shops two months ahead of December I begin to get aggro.

This year I am mending my ways and attempting good cheer.  I decided I was only making myself miserable.  There may be a reason for my attitude.  I have the rare honour of having been being born on Christmas Eve.  As a child I felt, and still do, rather special.  No one forgets my birthday.  When I was very young other children envied me because I had presents to open the day before they did.  Then I had more to open on Christmas Day.

I do remember the sheer joy Christmas arouses in every child.  As adults it is our duty to give our own children that thrill, even though it has passed for many of us.  I rather admire adults who still approach Christmas with that thrill intact.  I don't know what's wrong with them, but I wish I had some.

It must be lovely to be in a cold country at Christmas.  Down Under we insist on eating a hot Christmas lunch when we are hotter than the food.  Kitchens reach Hades-like temperatures as hams are glazed, turkeys and chickens roasted, oven vegetables turned and browned, gravy simmered on the stove, plum pudding warmed over a steamer and custard in a Bain Marie.  The sheer logistics of this exercise rivals an army's preparations to invade an enemy country.

When finally we sit to eat we take time to view the overladen table and realise, with sinking hearts and perspiration dripping from our foreheads, that it is our duty to force feed ourselves, even if moving on to another family feast for dinner.  It is as if we a geese being force fed in preparation for our livers being harvested for foie gras.

There is something exhausting about eating a meal with numerous relatives and friends.  There are too many people to serve the food on plates in the kitchen so everything is placed on the table and the dishes passed around as people fill their plates.  Christmas bonbons must also be pulled apart and toasts made.  The food may have been hot when it left the kitchen but is now cooling just to the point of encouraging salmonella.

Christmas Day in Australia is quite often a heatwave no matter in which capital city you live.  I grew up in Sydney and a Christmas heatwave always finished with a Southerly Buster.  At around four p.m. ominous black clouds would blow in from the south accompanied by torrential rain, lightening and thunder.  The temperature would plummet to a delicious cool.

One of the things that brings on a Christmassy feeling in me is the sound of cicadas.  Their song fills the air in the month leading up to Christmas, their throbbing chorus pulsating  in air that vibrates with heat. They are The Little Drummer Boys of an Australian Christmas.

I blame the British for the way we celebrate Christmas in Australia.  At the peak of their power I'm sure they deliberately set out to colonise every hot, inhospitable place on earth just to escape the cold and damp of home.  I damn them for this as I have purely Anglo-Saxon ancestors who all conspired to come to Australia and, over time, combined to make me.  They must have liked the heat and isolation.  I do not.  I am a post-penal prisoner of this country.  Had I had a choice, I would have been born in the south of France or even Italy.

But here I am stuck when others still come voluntarily; immigrants and refugees from Abidjan to Zaire come to this wide, open and hot country.  They have brought with them their cuisines.  The Australian palate has changed so much in forty years it is now truly international.  Except at Christmas when it reverts, like a recessive gene, to traditional British fare.  It is as if the Union Jack is stuck in our gullet, which is much the way we feel on Boxing Day.

I miss a Christmas full of people; the ones I had as a child.  I married and moved with my husband to where work took him.  Our son grew up only occasionally knowing the kind of big family Christmases his parents had enjoyed.  When my husband and I divorced, our son's Christmases became smaller still.

I feel I've let him down but now he is married to a girl with a large family and they are making their own happy Christmases.  I must say they do it with a vengeance.  Now with a baby son, they deluge each other and the family in gifts.  I feel like an outsider, but I'm happy he has an extended family now.  He missed it for so long.

The worst Christmas of all is the lonely one.  There are so many who would give anything to be a part of the chaos of a family Christmas.  I've had my share of these.  Such people aren't alone in being alone.  They are a kind of family in their own right.  For the rest of the year, the lonely can cope with it but on that particular day it becomes so much harder.

So enjoy your 'stuffed to the gunnels' Christmas.  Revel at the aches in your stomachs and heads.  You have done Christmas proud and those aches are much better than the pangs of loneliness.  I guess that's what Christmas is all about, and a lot of stuffing.

END

PLEASE EXPLAIN.

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN THE PHENOMENON OF SHOES HANGING FROM ELECTRIC WIRES?

Quite often when I'm driving down a street, I see a pair of jogging shoes hanging from the center of electric wires.  No matter what city I'm in, there will be a smattering of these across numerous suburbs.

No one has been able to explain why this is.  So, I am going to put forward some theories of my own.  I am eager to hear from anyone who cares to give their explanation.

1. Is it a sign of an alien abduction?

2. Do possums have a secret agenda?

3. Is it a clever nesting place for birds in order to hide their chicks from other predatory birds?

4. Is it a political statement?

5. Is a cult behind it?

6. Is it subliminal advertising designed to make you think about buying shoes?

7. Is it a secret code?

8. Why do the shoes always end up at the center of the wires?

9. Was someone in them at the time they were put there?

10. Why waste a good pair of shoes?

11. Did the shoes stink so much that throwing them onto the wires was the only place to get rid of them?

12. Were they thrown by a drunk who, in spite of inebriation, had superb aim?

I really want an answer to this question as it causes me no little mental anguish.  Actually, none at all, but it is curious. 

PEEK-A-BOO ! (For my grandson.)

PEEK-A-BOO!

                                                          I am quite new

                                                          All I do is eat, sleep and pooh.

                                                          Sometimes I cry,

                                                          I don't know why.

                                                          I came into the world quite dumb,

                                                          but soon I learned to know my Mum.

                                                          My life is really pretty snug,

                                                          'Cause I'm wrapped up in a rug.

                                                          I don't know that there's more to come,

                                                          for now it's all about my tum.

                                                          The blob of custard in my skull

                                                          will gradually become less dull.

                                                          From then on I'll find more to do

                                                          than eat and sleep and coo and pooh.

                                                          But one day I'll look back and find

                                                          that life was best with a little mind.

BLOGLESS (aka CLUELESS)

BLOGLESS.

 

It's high time I added a post.  I've been trying to get the Blog header's image right and add text to it.  This has proven very difficult.  One good thing about computers: they work the mind.  They are like a contrary spouse; you have to do things their way or not at all.  But that's not a put down to contrary spouses; they teach you things.  If you survive them, you get stronger and savvier.

 

But now I'm Blogless.  I only like to write when I have something to say, a bit like "Mr. Ed the Talking Horse".  I have a son like Mr. Ed.  I wondered if he'd ever learn to talk.  It turns out he was just saving it for when he had something to say.  When God was handing out tongues, I got two and my son got a lot less.

 

So, what to rattle on about today?  I had a thought that I should rate the films I've seen this year.  Don't you love those '100 best films to see before you die' things?  When they add "E.T." and leave out "Gone With the Wind", I just don't bother to read them.

 

I should add, not that it really matters in any way, that I obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in Communications, with particular emphasis on the study of media: that is, cinema, television, radio and newspapers.  Even more particularly the media studies on cinema were based on Australian Cinema.  I was subjected to many showings of Australian cinema and learned its history.

 

Now, I'm not crazy about a lot of Australian films but its history is interesting.  Australia was the first country in the world to produce a full length feature film.  However, while it had creativity in great globs, it lacked business savvy.  The U.S. bought up all the distribution rights in the Pacific and it was bye bye to Australian cinema.  The U.S. film industry went to California and churned out films to an already captive Pacific and who knows where else and they were darned good at it too.

 

Isn't it a kind of just retribution that the U.S.A. is now getting a lot of its major stars from the land Down Under?  I believe it's because Uncle Sam became so productive, so efficient, that it forgot its soul.  They had to look elsewhere for inspiration and the Oz film industry, so delightfully unaffected by commercial success, was still creative.

 

From this dearth of pecuniary success, the Australian industry still worked at producing actors and directors and from these came Peter Weir, Fred Schepisi et al.  It was like a definitive moment in evolution that creates a type.  Hollywood, paying attention to this new evolutionary step forward, immediately imported it.  Once ensconced the Australian directors must have asked probably the whole of, NIDA's (National Institute of Dramatic Art) graduates to Hollywood.  While an American cannot do an Australian accent without permanently damaging their tongue, an Australian actor can mimic the American drawl as easily as throwing a prawn on the barbie.

 

As this was happening Australian television took the hint.  For years it had made shows like 'Homicide', 'Skippy' and 'The Sullivans'.  The actors, although perfectly normal looking human beings, were not glamorous or, even necessarily, good looking.

 
"Neighbours" started the push to pretty people.  Even Kylie Minogue with her, then, appalling Australian accent, killed off her dreadful eighties hairdo and, with a little help from Britain, rounded her accent and became quite dazzling.  Many stars from that equally appalling (in my humble opinion) show were then chosen for their physical spunkiness.  What else, after all, could have kept it going?  Many somehow made it to the US and stardom.

Where am I going with this?  Actually, I have no idea.  I think I was about to give a rating to the movies I have seen this year; that is 2012-2013.

One I really liked was a strange, eclectic little film called, "Moonrise Kingdom".  It just keeps coming back into my mind when I have forgotten so many others.  Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand, Bill Murray and Harvey Keitel all play curious under-stated roles.  I won't explain it.  If you like curious, memorable little films, it's worth watching.

 

"The Heat", with Sandra Bullock was actually really funny.  Her foul mouthed co-star helped make the film, about two very different policewomen, a real winner.

 

On the other hand "Gravity" with Bullock was awful.  Some fool thought a hand held camera would work even with the extraordinary special effects.  George Clooney floats off into space to die as if he's going down the street to buy something.  He doesn't seem to mind at all.  He reappears as sort of a ghost in Bullock's mind but, having given her a pep talk, disappears again to his next movie.  The final scene with Bullock is obviously an analogy to life beginning on earth.

 

The appalling remake of "Carrie" with the actress who should have known better, Julianne Moore as her mother, also uses a hand held camera.  No one, absolutely no one, and I can speak for everybody, likes films made with a hand held camera as if they are trying for the realism of a documentary.  So why use one on a big budget film?  Is this a new trend or is someone cutting costs?

 

The only other interesting things to watch this year have been the television series, "Game of Thrones" and "Hannibal" .  I can't believe the producers of "Game of Thrones" finished it at Season 3 and left us in limbo.  They are still making Season 4.  So too are the producers of "Hannibal".  I hope, that after all this waiting, we're not left with a feeling an anti-climax; so long the case after you wait too long for something.  It's like you work up too many digestive juices waiting for a meal and, having eaten, get a stomach ache.

 

To ease my distress during the wait I've tried watching a few new shows.  "The Blacklist", with James Spader, is so-so.  Spader was one of the cutest, sexiest men in movies.  He is now slightly overweight and bald.  He's grown as an actor in every respect.  I really miss cute Spader.  Older Spader is nothing to look at and the show is entertaining but predictable.

 

I tried watching "Elementary" with Lucy Liu as Dr. Watson and someone who plays a modern Sherlock Holmes.  I yawned and turned it off.

 

Then I found "American Horror Story".  If you saw "The Twilight Zone" in the Sixties, this is its worthy grandchild in the Tens (2010's).  It's quite different to "The Twilight Zone" but is also very spooky and it's great to see an older Jessica Lang really acting.  It's a suite of stories; three to be exact; each with about eight episodes.  The same actors play different roles in each suite.  If you've got the stomach, I recommend it.  This is really different television, but don't let the kids or the easily spooked watch it.

 

OK, that's a post.  I'll have to label it something; maybe Film and TV Critiques.  Yes, that'll do.

 

END