Ok so pacing up and down a room of adolescents doing purportedly one of the most important tests of their lives is not exactly front row action in all that silence, dread panic and very clear instructions not to talk. So what do you do when you’ve planned your day, counted the lefties (9) and spotted the OCD students carefully spelling out the words “help” in 13 shades of Cerise pencil.

So you look. It’s a writing task. On Gold. Walking too fast to read the stimulus on the coloured printed pages without looking like a cheat or a sicko. So, OK, a writing task. “GOLD” and twenty five minutes to go. So I did what any sane, 40 year old Chemistry teacher would do.. I wrote a poem *shiny grin*. Maybe Jason Boyce could mark it and send it to me secretly, lest I would fail the test that I swore to 109 students would be “dead easy”!

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:  Au⁷

my QCS writing task supervision poem, an attempt to link the seven deadly sins to the stimulus: GOLD!

Au⁷

The golden curl, dainty loop

swinging low on ivory neck

As that gaze

Amazing pins him. Heck.

His tarnished ring alerts. Now in darkened pocket

drops.

He flirts and saunters over, rising as the man he was stoops..

His ticket bought, ritual weekly.

Life on hold for chance

Vain vapour hope of increase

He’s saved his dreams, her dance.

She clasps his hands. Yellow ping pongs fall,

Nicely

His future fixed, ‘Her freedom’, she whispers, meekly.

In hidden green and red, tiny jewelry,

Fruit mince pie crumbs on the floor

The paper rip

eclipses carols…adore

the hyperactive shiny band, inscribed with someone else’s

name.

His pallour stark, next to her fury..

Butter bright and gliding, tails melt.

Sizzling across the pan

Another dozen cookies bake

Making up for absent man.

The girth increasing. Adipose tourniquet,

tight.

Lemon lard, A broken cardium, felt.

Solar disk on wall, resplendent.

Swansong recognition, proud.

Muted hearing birthed of crashing cymbals

Symbol of a younger crowd.

Rock King, a god amongst adoring fans,

mass.

Hollow history, ego, id now codependent.

Crunching warm canary beach at noon

Another late-start nameless day.

His board at home uneaten dole check feed

needs met, his ganes strays.

Aimless leaden body worships, faithful skin

Bronze

As the days pass quicker to the final tune.

Spadeful praise the sister saves neatly

Smart and wise, dutiful daughter.

Familial standard lofty, lucky, creepy.

heaps coals on ‘you know you oughta..’

Raining streams of light from butthole,

Pure

You wish her dead, or gone, discreetly. 

I go to thinking recently about ants. Proverbs admonishes us to “go to the ant, you sluggard!”, though is less specific about what one should do once there. When I go to ants, I find myself wasting inordinate amounts of time just watching the little buggers and wasting even more time. Yes, I am happy to admit it, going to ants makes me MORE of a sluggard.

Ants have a Queen. It’s a fairly straightforward feudal system with one obese, constantly egg-laying, queen and thousands of serf-like ants whose job it is to basically get anything edible, carry away tiny ant poo-poo, feed the young ants, answer emails to the colony, provide good PR for the colony to keep up profiles for the economic outlook and some to make sure that all ants are paying the appropriate levels of tax. Ok, maybe I need a little bit more time with David Attenborough before writing articles like this.

What if ants discovered other forms of government? Would it work for them? What if some group of ants worked fast enough to spend a few spare minutes, ok, years, to learn German, get a hold of The Communist Manifesto by Komrade Karl himself (and maybe a couple of hundred ant-friends to turn the pages for him)? Could they rise up against the bourgeoise and demand smoko breaks, leave loading and sensible grey clothing?

Would it work? Could we see each ant with self-determination in a matrix of worker-friendly general groovy feeling towards each other translate into a place where all ants could feel respected rather than expoited. Well, the first problem I could foresee is that someone has to have the baby ants or the experiment is far to short-lived to ever catch on in the insect world. I really don’t mean to be sexist here.. well, actually, yes I do because the female ants have got to do it, really. In the Ant Queendom, the Queen’s job isn’t really that crash hot. Hell, she’s more Catholic than pure monarchy in the procreative sense. Never gets out in the sunlight, always coping with morning sickness, cravings for lamb chops and custard and  knows for damn sure she’s never getting into those ‘pre-pregnant’ jeans ever again.. Not with a bot-bot approximately 45 times larger than it was!!

No, the job of the boss, in this system at least, is not so much that of largesse  as ‘Large S’ (as in Sucks, with a capital s). I often say to people, the job above you always looks easier than it is!

The second problem is one of orienting goals. A decent communist society needs societal goals. Like maybe going to the moon or marching in large numbers with your feet high in the air or parading the fact that you have lots of very destructive penis-shaped objects that strike fear into other ant mounds (rather than generous amounts of material for budding ant-comedians!). What could be such a goal for ants? I guess colony-wide efforts into Ant-railways would be pretty cool. Making lots of comrade issue antboots might cut down a bit of chitin-damage on the delicate ant-footsies (they do have six, you know) but really, they need a loftier goal and it is here that ants have no chance in the sabre-rattling stakes of insect superpowers.. You see, as many humans in tropical environments are aware, you have ants and then you have white ants. A more lethal insect superpower you have never seen.

These little bastards EAT HOUSES. Human houses. Lots of them, all day every day. They are single-minded with their goal: to eat every bloody stick of wood in the entire world. Not bad. Not bad at all. No amount of black (or green or red with purple polka dot) ant propaganda painted in those deep dark tunnels is ever going to generate enthusiasm for a loftier goal for their civilisation, unless, of course, they took a shady little leaf out of the English playbook in Jardine’s era and encourage a healthy trade in addiction to flourish.

You see, early trade in the ‘orient’ as it was quirkily referred to, in the 18th Century was very much one-sided. the Chinese had cool stuff but thought that Eurotrash gear was, well, just that. Not to be dissuaded from sound principles of crude capitalism, the English did what any self-respecting supporter of capitalism of the time would do… it started drug dealing Opium. This led to the locals getting high and the Mandarins (not those small orange things, silly, the shortish, funny-collared things) to get higher and mightier. Consequently, the Mandarins lost, the English got Hong Kong (and free reign to continue drug dealing).

Now, what if those cunning ants were able to secure a product which termites could not resist, which would render them exponentially more dangerous to mankind and present a very useful bargaining tool? Well according to a reliable source (well, not so much a source as an advertising campaign from the Coca Cola company) we already have that product, a legal stimulant simply called ‘V’. Termites go WILD with it!

So our ant communities have a noble goal of V production, with a stated species-wide threat to unleash their powerful product on their Rogue-Ant cousins unless humankind can meet the demands of the more ethnically-coloured ant species. Maybe, ‘you give us food, flavoured beverages (except Budweiser.. or ANY American beer for that matter), tiny ant couches and teach us how to develop Premier League football competitions and enormous 42 millimetre televisions or we feed the white ants…..V!!!!!

This could work. Ants would no longer need to work doing much at all, once the stocks of (unused, unopened) V was plentiful enough. They could get fat and drunk and watch football and enjoy the fact that humans are working their tails off for ants while other ants are still munching on the houses they go to work to pay off.

Some amongst you might cynically suggest that this form of government is perhaps closer to the Cosa Nostra than it is to Utopia. To those same cynical people I might suggest that perhaps our ants not fiddle with their governments too much after all, since I seem to recall a country that has gone this route in a manner far too close to this allegory.

Just a thought *wink*.

Now we really ought to hear about Chile more often but we just don’t! Our regular readers will expect, very soon, the obligatory quiz, oh, here it is (how’s THAT for timing, huh?!):

Which of the following is REALLY the Chilean Flag?

A)

B)

C) 

One of the most interesting things about Chile is that it is the longest, thinnest, country in the world. Yep. If Chile was a supermodel it would be draped in the finest Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Versace instead of stripey Alpaca ponchos. It is remarkably svelte! Now this actually causes some safety issues as well, you could imagine the problem if you lived up on the Andes somewhere in Chile with a long driveway and a dubiously maintained handbrake. It would come as a shock to see your car down the driveway and sitting awkwardly in the Pacific Ocean below. Your Alpaca would not be impressed to be the second most important mode of transport either…

Of course, Chile is known for lots of things. Football? Not so much, really. Food? Meh. It’s really hard to go past a decent Mexican taco or quesadilla. Chileans do manage a peculiar dish or, more correctly, way of cooking called a Milcao du Curanto which involves digging a big hole, sticking a fire in it and chucking in heaps of mashed and ground potatoes, sausages, seafood, old boots and the odd weird uncle that you tend to get at family gatherings. I have some extremely unreliable evidence that long before the Spanish Conquistadors introduced funny hats and severed limbs to the Incas, a boatload of Maoris on holiday had a nice hangi on the beach.

So the legend goes, some particularly hungry Incas crept out of the hills after the Maoris left, drunk, singing and telling Hawaiian jokes to each other. They found only a warm mound of sand, under which the Maoris had sensibly thrown their rubbish, after the Hangi. In it, of course, were the usual sausages, too burnt for even a hungry Australian to eat, Prawn heads (George Colombaris was not present to explain how to extract Crustacean Oil) and the ubiquitous amounts of potato salad (that apparently every culture on Earth appears to make too much of at barbeques!). Well, suffice to say, the Chileans loved it. Previous to that their best dish was a cake purportedly make out of dirt, taro and Alpaca droppings. To the virgin palate, this is, remarkably, what Milcao du Curanto tastes like.

Chile has beautiful beaches, cool, spectacular mountains, truckloads of culture, ruins, classy hotels and places where you can buy souvenir wooden alpacas (or real ones, given a big enough bag and indiscriminate customs officers in your country of origin). So why don’t we hear more about it? Ah, readers, this is the part of the show where we do the fabulous country makeover.

It would be remiss of us to go any further without discussing the merits (or otherwise) of the nation’s motto which translates as “By reason or by force”, which sounds curiously like parenting advice to one with petulant toddlers. It’s just too gubernatorial. You really need to show that you have a laid back vibe when your whole country is really one bloody long beach. Don’t go getting heavy man. What are you forcing us to do? I’m not touching that Milcao crap with a barge pole buddy!!!

How about a far vibier (it’s not a word but seriously should be, man) motto? Hey, since writing articles for Belgium, Portugal and that other country, their column inches in some publications has gone up measurably, according to a vague statistic I manufactured especially for this article. A truly great motto would be: “Life’s a beach, and then you fry!”. Which not only sounds about as laid back as you can get but also explains the inordinately high rates of skin cancer and eighteen year old girls that look like unwrapped Egyptian Mummies.

Here at File 13, we generally recommend a flag makeover and Chile is no exception. The correct flag in the quiz was this:

Yawn. Sorry, this flag always has this effect on me. It honestly looks like the scraps on the cutting room floor when they designed the US flag. One star, half a white stripe and then a red one. Really? errrgh. It’s an embarrassment, man. My proposition is to kill two important birds with one important stone (actually just an ordinary stone would do, it’s only a metaphor for those into animal rights wanting to kill me with, in that case, a particularly hypocritical stone). Let’s do a flag that looks funky AND shows people how to pronounce your country!! Here are some options, mainly because I am honest enough to admit I don’t know the correct way to pronounce it:

Flag 1:

What a great flag, right?!! Chilli:Chile.. how cool (or hot) is that? Even the bloody country looks like a chilli (albeit, long, dried out Chilli but let’s not split Alpaca hairs, right?). Now, if I am not correct with the pronounciation, then this might be a more suitable flag:

How COOL is THAT, for a flag (can you believe our country makeover service is FREE here at File 13!!!!). It screams, “CHILL, EH?”.. with an Eric Estrada-like chilled out dude on a retro chair. I wish it was our Australian flag, man. I’m saying man a lot in this article. It sounds a little sexist. It might well be. If I could find a chilled out woman, I might say woman, but I haven’t met one yet. Of course, from a female point of view, ‘chilled’ from a male point of view could really just be ‘lazy’ from a female point of view.. as in “get off your chilled out arse and put those 16 day old underpants in the wash, YOURSELF!”. I reckon this guy has been SO chilled for SO long that his underwear may be attached to the chair… this could be a problem.

There we have it. New flag, new motto, thrill rides down to the sea in cars with faulty handbrakes and Alpaca rides.. what’s not to love? Well, we might have to recommend fasting whilst visiting, otherwise we really need to develop a new national food. Chilli-icy poles anyone?

There are, however, certain key differences:
1. It appears that he has two proper ears (thought the right one does look quasi-deformed on Heston).
2. He is a living cooking legend. I can merely feed people well.
3. He is insanely successful, presumably rich and gets embarrassing emails from ladies. I am, on these criteria, not even modestly successful, nowhere near rich and generally get emails reminding me to buy milk. Which, more often than not, I forget to.

Now, having finally seen this guy on TV last night on Masterchef for the first time, it is clear that God, as previously suggested, has a great sense of humour, or is running out of ideas, creation-wise. I like to cook, have no formal training, like to introduce ‘science’ into my cooking, love the bizzarre and tricky when making recipes and, I am told, have the same wry sense of humour.

Now, using the same cutting-edge technology employed in my previous post on Chewbacca, we can splice the two photos above into the composite below:

Hmm.. perhaps we are not really THAT alike..

Anyway, this blog also contains a recipe which I am drinking as I write this, inspired from the pressure test/challenge last night on Masterchef. I give you: “Mickovich’s Maleshake”, an adult twist on a yummy kid’s idea!

Mickovich’s Blokeshake

Ingredients:
600mL of Guinness Stout Beer
600mL of full cream milk
4g NaHCO3 (1 tbsp Baking powder)
4 tbsp sugar
10g 85% Cocoa dark chocolate (grated)
4 tbsp malt (malted barley/horlicks also works)
4 tbsp honey
400g of premium high buttermilk vanilla ice cream

Method
a) Making honeycomb
1. Put hob on moderate heat and in low, small frypan mix 1 tbsp honey and 4 tbsp of sugar, stirring constantly.
2. Mixture will go from crystalline white, through yellow bubbling (as water evaporates out and sugar oxidises), keep stirring until it reaches an amber colour with tiny bubbles only.
3. Take straight off heat and immediately mix in 1 tbsp NaHCO3 very quickly, mixing thoroughly (takes 5-10 seconds max). Pour onto greaseproof paper, allow to rise and cool.
4. 15 minutes later, when cool to touch and just solid, put into freezer for further 15 minutes.

Method: Beer mixture

1. Open cold can of Guinness and pour very slowly on a 45 degree angle into a glass bowl.
2. Warm 600mL of Guinness in a warm water bath (80 degrees outside), stirring with a thermometer slowly. Allow all bubbles to evaporate out whilst keeping the temp below 37 degrees Celcius (heating higher will denature complex proteins from beer).
3. In a separate glass, mix 100mL of boiling water, remaining honey and malt until fully dissolved. Allow to cool to 40-50 degrees.
4. Combine malt mixture and cooled Guinness and place into freezer.

Method: Making the shake!

1. pour Guinness/malt mixture into milkshake cup to 1/3 full.
2. Add full cream milk until 2/3 full.
3. Add a generous dollop of Icecream
4. Mix until thick.
5. Smash 1/4 of honeycomb in a bowl with 1/4 of dark chocolate (grated).
6. Roll a ball of icecream in mixture until completely coated.
7. Gently drop ball into milkshake
[Note: because the Guinness is heated only to below 37 degrees, this drink has not fully evaporated the ethanol and remains alcoholic. I imagine, for some of you, this is good news, but it IS an 'adult milkshake' so don't go serving to your children, even if they won't go to sleep any other way!!]

I hope you enjoyed this recipe. I’m thirsty and am not driving for a while, so I may make another one!

cya!

GenericOracle

For the best part of four decades, these noisy little boxes that have long taken over from the hearth in the loungerooms of our middle class homes are the portal to covetousness. The world of TV shows us how to live our lives in excess and then, what to do when the guilt, fat or loneliness catches up with us. A recent conversation with an Australian Army Serviceman confirmed the tragedy of this fascination with that ‘other’ world. It appears that the US is installing grid electricity throughout villages in Afghanistan to places that have never had it, whether they like it or not. Why? He asks, with some good reason.

The Afghanis have lived without it thus far, have relatively small carbon  footprints compared with any English-speaking visitor to their village and have no use for it, skills or safety awareness to maintain it, and have little desire for, perhaps, the most common use of it in the developing world: the Television.

Indeed, from shanty homes on the infamous ‘smoky mountain’ rubbish dump in Manila to the vast hectares of slums of Kolkota, briefly thrust into Western consciousness in the movie ‘Slumdog Millionnaire’, TVs are slowly creeping into the homes of the up and coming poor around the world. The result? Chiefly some A-grade envy, from the sounds of it.

You see, without television, the poor have no real idea what is apparently possible in terms of lifestyle. Unfortunately, because the images come through television, they still don’t, but gee it sticks in their gourd! Happy poor can become miserable, despondent and deeply resentful poor. Far be it from me to suggest that the world’s dominant culture desires to implement its most potent weapon of mass cultural destruction through history’s most potent advertising means in the war torn piece of rugged dirt known as Afghanistan.

In the words of Bono, “Am I buggin’ ya? I don’t mean to bug ya!”

After participating in what is colloquially known as the ‘refugee run’ at Crossroads International in HK during December, and another simulation simply known as the ‘paper bag simulation’, the plight of the poor overseas has become just a little clearer. Here was I, in the heartland of the Australian middle class, thinking that the Middle Class had dibs on the concept of running to stand still. In a place where the financial axiom that “a middle class mortgage will always grow to accommodate the repayment capacity of its owners’ holds truer than Pythagoras’ theorum, we see hard work terminating in garage sales, meal replacements and private health insurance to offset the expensive medical bills.

What had been less clear is that the world’s poor do precisely the same. With the one key difference that if they stop running, they die. Is there a solution?

No, but there are hundreds. Can we live more simply? Can we eat less, keep fit (without plugging in exercise equipment to lose it) and consume less? Can we buy differently? Would you visit the truly poor? Would you lend time, money, compassion, your own bedrooms to someone that needed it? Would you handle affordable accommodation in your street without protesting? Would I take ANY of my own suggestions?

I’m not sure, but I’d like to think so. 2308 times in the New Testament taking care of the poor is mentioned. Mostly by Jesus. I don’t think for some time that I have been comfortable professing Christ whilst doing so little for the poor. This has gradually, albeit belatedly, been changing over the last decade and I plan that it would change more.

So my treadmill stands in the corner of my loungeroom, a shrine to our propensity to run just to stand still. It would be nice, in 2011 to move at least an inch. Bless you all.

While we are on the topic though, why do World Leaders continue to insist on having hilarious names. Must I, every time I see a news story on SBS (at least twice a year), be subjected to the head of the United Nations whose name only makes me think of Westpac bending over?? Let’s not get started on Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. His name makes Ronald Raygun seem positively cartoon-like.

Answers later, so you don’t cheat!

As usual, I digress. For today we have the honour of recognising a nation whom I am quite sure you have heard of but 13% will believe that this nation is in Africa, with all the other ‘funny sounding ones’ but you’d be wrong. Yes, we are speaking of the glorious nation of Venezuela!

You’ve heard of Angel Falls, the Andes, the Amazon Jungle and Pabellon Criollo right? Ok, three are places you can visit in Venezuela and one is not actually the Presidente but a shredded beef dish. If you thought the dish was Angel Falls you should visit your Geography teacher and give them a serious punch in the nose.

Venezuela wallows in its unenviable relative anonymity for much the same reason as other countries discussed on this blog. It is simply TOO representative of South American countries. Invasions by people who ate paella back sometime before football was invented, morbid fascinations with military dictatorships and Zorro. Hot jungles, Cold mountains, women with G-strings on beaches and.. whoa. Back up! Brazil? Anyone? OK, so some South American countries have made their way into the International Sovereign State Celebrity list, it must be possible.

So what has Venezuela got going for it? I’m glad you asked! A cool flag for starters:

I really like China. Its people are pragmatic, yet principled, capitalists almost free in a socialist state. At once, they are intensely private people and yet spend almost all their waking hours in public.

It was about 3AM on whatever time my iPhone happened to be keeping at 35 000 feet over the Pacific Ocean. My hopes for decent sleep on a flight were, as almost always, unfoundedly optimistic. My attention span was nowhere near long enough for an episode of “King of Queens”, let alone a feature film. So I thought “Stuff it! Can’t sleep, I’m going to write a poem!”.

Here, therefore, is:

Beijing:Dusk to Dawn

Kaleidoscope air chokes.

Blanketing smog wields

icy fingers which poke

at barren inch fields,

Awry.

Chestnuts on her grill cook.

Heavy laden smiles,

Chattering nieu Borgeoise look,

willing winter-philes,

In awe.

Hutong gates clatter brittle.

Children barely wakened huddle,

brash bus clearing skittles.

Traffic in a muddle,

it pours.

Noodles, greasy, steamy

through the grimy window. Gazing

at the gazer. See me

through the veil of glazing.

Our eyes.

Poetry, perhaps like contemporary art, may seem to many not actually in the industry as having lost its way. There is always the debate about technique versus expression. Can you really say you are an artist if you can’t master the techniques required to produce something which at least resembles something in the real world? Apparently, you can. The ‘Alamo position’ defended by such an artist is “Aha! ..but I DID it and you didn’t”. I’m prepared to give them that one, moreso than $10 000 hard-earned for a giant red square or poop sculpture.

Similarly, with poetry, I think it is fair to say that since virtually-free-prose has taken over as the dominant form, the popularity of poetry has perhaps declined. Certainly, most men wouldn’t be caught dead reading poetry, let alone writing it, without a gorgeous woman in pursuit. OK, I have no woman in pursuit these days through I think I’m pretty comfortable dying with some John Donne or Robert Frost in hand. Let’s just pray that it’s a long time from now and that I’m wearing a little more than cartooned boxers!

However, I really like poetry. Reading it and writing it. At the risk of feeling like I have just made the first step of twelve, allow me to explain. I like to see that a poet can work within limitations before breaking them beyond recognition. The piece above is an example of what I like to do with poetry.

Perhaps my biggest criticism with High School English was not the material, but the criticism (or is that “analysis”? I could never much tell the real difference). You see we’d read, then highlight photocopies of commentary on the text which apparently told you what it meant. I was, therefore, rather shocked early in my first year of senior English to learn that such commentaries were not written by authors! I found it hard to comprehend that others could inform the ignorant about meaning which is scarcely more than guesswork. Apparently my view was wrong.

So, since this is my blog, if you’ll allow me, I’ll take all the literary magic away and explain this poem, from an author’s point of view. With a disclaimer akin to the scores being shown for the AFL for other games also being played: “if you don’t want to know, look away now”! That last reference assumes a knowledge of AFL culture AND an interest in poetry???!!! Eternally the optimist!

OK, I guess I intended this one on three levels: structurally, semantically and symbolically. I like the challenge of working the text like gouache within a tight framework. Here, the poem is four stanzas at five lines a piece. The rhythm of each is 27 syllables (plus or minus two). The rhyming is relatively straightforward, terminal at lines 1/3 & 2/4, though the last line of stanzas one and four also rhyme, as do those in stanzas two and three.

I should note that I liked the use of the dominant syllables in these last words/phrases. “Awry” and “Our eyes” not only sound very similar but semantically are linked in this poem. Awry can mean “out of place” and certainly “our eyes” is a cultural reference, perhaps the strongest in Chinese culture which draws fundamental differences on the basis of eye shape to determine ethnicity. Westerners are “Round Eyes” whilst Easterners are “Almond eyes”. Attitudes, expectations and even prices are determined on this one key difference. So, yeah, the words worked this concept with a certain synergy, I guess. The author is certainly “out of place” as determined by “our eyes”.

There are many references semantically here that those less familiar with China could easily miss. I will just point out a few here. Firstly “Kaleidoscope air”, I feel accurately describes the scene you typically see in a Chinese environment. The Chinese embrace the duality of deep tradition with rapid change and probably do lights better than anyone. However, you find a Chinese urban landscape has a dynamic quality of light and colour, they like constantly changing colour, thus no two photos will ever be exactly the same of the same street at night. Just like the image through a kid’s kaleidoscope.

“Barren inch fields” is a reference to exposed skin, particularly since the Chinese are not endowed with as much body hair, exposed skin tends to get “poked” a bit when it’s blowing well below zero!! I also liked the macro (the whole atmosphere) meeting the micro (tiny portions of exposed skin) and still causing a reaction!

Hutongs are traditional courtyard villages, usually gated, that used to be very common in Chinese towns and cities. There is sense here of order, family, community in the massive urban sprawl.

Finally, I like glass. It is, despite the myth that it is a slow-flowing liquid, quite solid but has the remarkable ability to look anything but at times. The extreme cold and the overbearing warmth within, combined with years of half-hearted cleaning in a cheap hole-in-the-wall dai pai dong (sorry, only have the Cantonese, I have no idea what the slang is in Mandarin) leaves greasy streaks that the condensation runs down. Thus, it looks more like a curtain in the breeze, affording an incomplete and obscured view.

It is in the last stanza that the symbolism is best summed up. “We only get an obscured view of a culture when visiting, even though the mind tends to take the fragment to create the whole picture as it wants to see it. To somehow make sense of a world too foreign to completely grasp at once.

At its most brutal, cultural differences can be dichotomous. Black, white, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Christian, round eyes, almond eyes. This is not even necessarily a wrong thing, it is not morality discussed in this poem. Purely that in order to comprehend the world through another’s eyes we often contrast the differences with our own, even down to the ‘camera’!

You’re still reading? Wow, this is probably the most self-indulgent blog I have written on this site thus far. If you are still here, you are either: a) on holidays, b) a poetry lover, c) have no wet paint to watch or d) well, you get the picture.. how do I know why you are still reading, but thanks!

Oh, and Merry Christmas, whatever your particular eye-shape is!

Now, there are some dimensions to people we all know but haven’t explored fully and, well, if you’ll permit me (ok, I don’t have the patience to wait or the technology to do so) well I’m just going to do it anyway. Ladies and gentlemen: Exhibit A

Chewbacca the Wookie, pilot, smuggler and mobile shagpile rug.

Now, with the forensic technology available that has been used to recreate anatomical constructions of deceased historical figures we are, for the first time on the internet, able to apply these same principles to see what Chewbacca would look like with a good old fashioned barber shop “shave and a haircut”! If you will, Exhibit B:

Pretty slick, huh? Theories abound regarding the reasons behind Lucas’ decision not to allow Chewbacca through make-up on the set of Star Wars: A New Hope, though most sources involved suggest that Harrison Ford was not particularly happy with the competition as far as sheer charm went. Indeed, it has been suggested that more than one sneaky snog was had with Leia and Chewbacca in the Cantina set whilst filming. Chewbacca was known to be moulting at the time (since most scenes were shot in summer) and some long, incriminating ginger hairs are clearly visible in the trash-compactor scene on Leia’s white royal jumpsuit in the second act, along with a discarded Afro Comb.

Now, our forensics team has also been able to piece together a future profile of this fine actor, who has long since disappeared from the Hollywood Celebrity radar. Upon return to Kashyyyk, Chewbacca starred in no more blockbusters and instead was reduced to bit parts (cameos in Year 1 and Hair, the movie), extra work (Ice Age 3 as a background Mammoth) and Stunt work (Over the Hedge).

As a result, he apparently turned to both Oreos and Crime in equal measure and this could be a reconstructed profile of Chewbacca today:

A sad turn of events for one of the world’s most loved hairy creatures with limited communication skills. We  know more about the mating habits of wookies now than we ever have. This is, of course, a great pity because what Wookies consider de rigeur with regard to procreation is not only frightening, messy and involves much blow-drying, plaiting and hair-conditioner, it is also just plain disgusting. We will, for the sake of our readers, omit such details and suffice it to say that the young born of Wookies take on a far more Constanzite vein of hirsutism. In fact, here, our forensic scientists were happy (well, compared to recreating two Wookies having a romantic evening with Barry White on the Stereo, Grizzly Adams reruns on TV on a bright pink Flokati rug for us) to show what Chewbacca might have looked like as a toddler:

Aww.. just before he ate his first raw Ewok.

Now we can see that by peeling back the layers of people we can find all kinds of things about them but eventually we royally screw up their integumentary system and leave them rather drafty around winter-time, so it is more of a summer-time forensic psychological activity, with a lot less risk of ankle-sprain than nudie twister.

I hope you have enjoyed our informative article and this piece has been sponsored by Gilette and GHD W5000 Wookie Hair straighteners.

The first of these is purely an economic issue:
“If I were him,
I’d know your birthday.
Just what to get.
The colors you wear.
We’d borrow bikes.
We’d ride on Sundays.
You’d review.
The books I sell.”

Ok, the guy sells books. I get that. Cool job, ‘got time to lean got time to glean’ and all that, however he is obviously no serious businessman… he would have to borrow a pair of bikes for them both to go for a Sunday ride? Mine cost $69 at Big W. I would have serious concerns about such a guy. He’s only a whisker away from selling The Big Issue on streetcorners, baby!

The second issue I have with the song is not that it blatantly lifts riffs from the Beatles, nor that this guy is contemplating “cutting another man’s lunch” which Daryl Kerrigan would most certainly not endorse, but the fact that the guy is a little creepy:

“And I know takes 22 steps.
from the walk to your door.
Takes 22 steps.
‘Cause I’ve tried it before.
And one day I’ll knock.
But just not yet.”

Ok, hang on, so this guy, at least once has had a go at walking up to your door slow enough to count the steps and then not knock?? Right. In my state you could get yourself arrested for that, or, at the very least invited to have an assessment for Asperger’s.

Now, finally, I take issue with our fine Oiriche friend in a metaphysical sense:

“If I were him.
I’d buy the rain coat.
The orange one.
That he forbade.
We’d wait for rain.
We’d walk by his house.
In the front.
Not by the lane.”

I confess, I have dwelt on this petite stanza for many hours (I blame the poor quality of free to air TV in Australia). I am closer to solving the Rubic’s cube than I am of understanding this enigmatic epithet. Oh, by the way, I am really crap with Rubic’s cubes.

My mind has a hard enough time getting around the propositional gymnastics of hypothetically being a man who who intentionally buys something that he simply hates for his girlfriend to wear so that he could really annoy himself by having her parade past his own house in it. Remember, he’s him! The real conundrum is that the slightly odd stalker who writes the song would rather be this complete twister than the comparatively benign creepy self. Yeah, and we thought George Costanza had problems!!

The curious thing is that if the writer were actually relationally attached to the interest of his affection then parading his new girlfriend in her new orange raincoat is likely to only reinforce the guy’s suspicions that:

a) If he had harboured any regret over the break up on the grounds of how attractive the girl had been, seeing her in a bright orange raincoat with her creepy new boyfriend could serve only to comfort him about his fine decision-making.

b) Only complete twats would be out in weather like this, whilst complete dickheads, like her new boyfriend have no raincoat at all.

c) His ex-girlfriend is indeed going out with a tight-arsed loser, whose idea of a date is to walk in the rain past her ex-boyfriend’s house.

d) His curtains were far too transparent if his ex-girlfriend can see him through the window snogging on the bearskin rug  in front of the fire with his new flame.

Yes, we can rest assured that this girl, whether or not she has indeed made a sensible choice of current mate, has most certainly made the correct choice not to have anything to do with the writer of this particular song. He should be commended however, for winning the prestigious prize of “worst use of the double-negative” (since Pink Floyd held the title for decades with the line: ‘we don’t need no education’ ironically giving strong evidence to the contrary for that particular proposition):

“And I’m not so sure
That you would not say.
Get out, don’t step in.
I will never try again.”

Socrates himself would have needed to spend a considerable amount of time in the water closet pondering the logic of this one (rumour had it that he was not, in fact fond of vegetables and did, in fact spend a great deal of time there!). Yes, this little tidbit of indecision would give this fine lass all the evidence she would need to keep this poor (in every sense possible) insecure git firmly on the other side of that shiny brass peephole.

Why Damien couldn’t sing about the joys of nucleophillic substitution is beyond me! A remake of the Dexie’s Midnight Runner’s classic “Come on Arene!” perhaps? Craig MacLaughlin’s one hit wonder “Ammonia, Amm, Amm, Amm, Amm, Ammonia”, anyone? For the kiddies, a Sound of Music standard “How do you solve a problem like Urea?”. So much scope and far less of the metaphysical pretzel bending!

Next, we dissect another classic one dimensional hit: “500 Miles” by the Proclaimers.

Women dutifully left the factories, shops, government offices and schools where they had all but taken over from 1939-1944 whilst the menfolk were either killing each other, running away or getting perhaps a little too close to prostitutes on their R&R. This is not to suggest that the army of feminine labourers were saintlike after hours, with a good number of flat-footed, cross-eyed and mostly deaf men getting far more than their usual share of attention.

In the 50′s, middle-class men could expect to come home from the drudgery of fairly uninteresting work to a well-cooked meal, some slippers and the evening paper and, if he was really lucky, well, let’s just say life wasn’t half bad.

Well, it couldn’t last. Fair enough really. The women didn’t take too long to realise that these “Kings” weren’t really doing miracles in the workplace any more than they had done during the war years AND they had to look after the house as well. Many women, completely justifiably, felt that the playing field should not so much be levelled as made a little less like playing hockey on the slopes of Mt Everest. The mountain-levelling earthquake variously known as “equal opportunity”, “Affirmative Action” or “gender equity” had hit these Himalayas. Of course, each of these terms had slightly different meanings, in much the same way that “Communism”, “Socialism” and “Social Democracy” do to the average punter (to the similar Chagrin of the Che’ crowd).

Just about the only bit men were fond of was the off-chance of seeing a woman get her bra off and burn it, but truth be told he would be more likely to cop a biff in the eye than anything remotely pleasing if he stood too close.

In the 70′s gender retreated like linoleum tiles as it seemed that people, like houses, were keener to sport wall-to-wall carpet and it was notoriously hard to even determine gender in many cases. Men and women, it seemed, could have any hairstyle imaginable and even the merciful patch of facial hair as some kind of male identifier was not failsafe in some parts of Eastern Europe. But unisex, like pretty much anything with the prefix “uni” fairly quickly loses its appeal and you tend to grow out of it.

In the 80′s tribalism took root in manhood and some men came out of hiding with all the tentativeness of a monster truck on top of a clapped out caravan. Punk was not dead, they just smelt that way. Indeed, anarchy found poultry in the most unlikely of fashion statements; angry men were back, and were somewhat dangerous. Skinheads thrived. The football lout raised his ugly head (but not much, since most were not endowed with a neck).

In Australia, the “Yobbo” was ubiquitous and found safe havens to the side of barbeques, with stubby holders that, when the time invariably came, needed to be surgically removed. The Australian man could laugh well, communicate poorly, watch cricket for days on end and spend, according to a study in 2003, ten times less than his french counterparts in lovemaking (a meagre 9 minutes compared with 90). Hardly surprisingly, many Australian women tend to set their sights a little higher than your average yob.

The paths diverged further, with the evolution of the sensitive, new-age guy, who was either a hippy with a haircut or an urban heterosexual male with an enterprising mind for this wide open female market, or simply just a poof.

Nevertheless, this crowd that could leave all kinds of fascination with balls behind (including both scratching and watching balls, or occasionally, simultaneously) to talk art and music and how much they adored kids and women and gender equity had women temporarily spellbound. However, if you happened to marry one, you might find them more inclined to play “Doom” ad infinitum, go out to see (yet) another band, go shopping or rifle through Architect digests than swat that bug, open the jar lid or hang some new shelves in the laundry. Dual sinks in ensuites also became de rigeur in this era as women realised finally how frustrating it was to wait in line for the sink when you are trying to get ready to go out. “Just HOW much of that $25 mousse is this guy going to use to go out for a coffee??” she found herself thinking.

The 90′s saw a sophistication of this creature into the “Metrosexual”, which was really just a very expensive version of the snag, though taking away some hard-won ground from the gay movement in the process.

The twenty first century then has left us with, what appears to be on the surface anyway, indefinable maleness. Actually, it is a good time to be a man.

These days we realise that many of the heroes of the screen from the 50s were not only fictitious but many of these “macho” men got their Saturday night dates without straying far from their own changerooms. The idea of one stoic hero against all odds saving the planet in time for tea is more fuel for parody than inspiration nowadays. Equally disdained is the foppish, pasty white almost-man that lacks wildness, drive and the ability to pursue women for the prize that they are.

No, the modern man, if there is such a beast, is, above all, authentic.

He can watch a chick flick on the odd occasion with his wife. He admits he can’t dance but he’ll have a red hot go because his wife loves it! He wrestles with his kids on the front lawn, cooks a great lasagne, thinks to bring the washing in before it rains and enjoys a cold beer and an afternoon of AFL with his mates. Some of these men might step aside for their wive’s careers, or pHDs and choose to live in places better for raising kids than climbing corporate ladders.

These men can rejoice that they are not women, celebrate their manhood and not consider passing wind in public an obligatory rite of passage (excuse the pun!). These men can laugh heartily, occasionally land themselves in risky situations and somehow come out alive and work to live, not the other way around.

If they are overweight, it won’t stop them getting on boogie boards with the kids in summer. If they are bald? Hell! Shave it ALL off!! Bald and proud, dammit!

The best lovers? Who’d ever know? Any woman who manages to find most things in the last three paragraphs in a man is far too wise to tell him anything other than he is awesome. As long as he takes longer with his lovemaking than he does watching the evening news it must be a pretty good start, eh?