The senseless census

Every five years the citizens of Australia are asked to fill in an excruciatingly detailed form called the Census. It’s basically a nationwide head count by the shepherd of his sheep.

But ever since the creation of data bases and statisticians the powers that be have discovered they have a novel way of making mass generalisations about an entire nation as well as targetting untapped holes in the consumer market.

Those well behaved amongst you would have sat down on Tuesday 8 August, census in hand and scribbled obediently. The back seat of the bus types would have had a little fun with it. When asked your ethnicity, it’s your chance to be anything from Egyptian to Croatian with just a dash of Kiwi. Of course, it’s also a wonderful time to improve your finances.

The form actually asks you how much money you earnt last week. I was brought up never to ask those sorts of questions.

According to my census, I pulled in $300,000 last week. I told them I was still on the dole, and I could refer to my occupations as ‘Drug Dealer’. When it requested birthplace, I just wrote ‘vagina’.

One is also asked to recall where they were living when the last census occurred, and in an addition to the question, what they were wearing. I remember it well. A navy pair of trackie bottoms with white piping, flesh coloured knickers, imitation Ugg boots from Best and Less and a sweater I’d appliqued myself a la Tonia Todman of John Howard in the doggie position taking Janette for a ride.

The damn thing is so personal. It’s like a financial pap smear. The entire nation on it’s back, legs in the air with the government collecting our private details. Am I single, am I married, how much do I earn, can I wipe my own bottom? How many sexual partners have I had in the last five years? What’s my favourite position? (On the couch) Have I ever faked an orgasm, and if so was it with someone born in Australia?

I was horrifi ed. Why do they need to ask so many questions? The accompanying booklet provides cheery little stats that are sure to bring the average woman to her knees.

For example, did you know that in 2001 there were approximately 350,000 more single females aged 18 years or over than single males ages 18 years or over? It’s depressing enough when you can’t pull a root, do we really need to know that it probably won’t ever happen?

They promise confidentiality, but then ask for name and address. Apparently no personal information will be released to any government bodies. Yeah right, and I won’t peek at my Christmas presents or read my daughter’s diary. Right now all my personal information is sitting on my doorstep awaiting collection.

I feel very protected. I’m testing their ‘non release’ of information. It’s a tad seditious, but I’ve listed ‘Osama Bin Laden’ as having a sleepover on census night.

Hating Paris Hilton

WHAT EXACTLY IS PARIS HILTON?

Why am I continually subjected to photos of this vacuous overpaid legume arriving and leaving various openings, parties and events? She stands for everything that shits me about the way young women are targeted by pop culture.

Paris is famous because she is rich. She is famous because she is skinny. She is famous because she lives a fabulous life doing sweet fuckall. Paris Hilton is not carbon neutral. She is the glamazon for a generation who won’t stop consuming. In fact I’ve often wondered if that orange glow comes from days on the sun bed or the fact she’s punched a sunroof in the ozone with her binge shopping.

She’s the ultimate Self-Interest Barbie with a constant stream of accessories that include interchangeable heads for best friends and dress up dogs. I mean, if you have started licking the urine tray of your own dignity, why not start screwing with someone elses? When you find yourself dressing your pooch you know you have a problem.

The woman does nothing. She smirks. What’s the point of expensive teeth whitening if you never show your teeth? She does that little girl thing where you put your head on the side and look down at the camera with that soft porn expression of a coquettish vixen in long white socks and mary-jane’s on her way to her next blow job.

And what’s with the sunglasses? When you have an empty brain cavity it’s important to keep the sun from drying what’s left of your cerebral matter into a raisin. Little girls in big sunglasses. Giant heads. Tiny bodies. Shopping Bags and Mobile Phones. Constant chatter on mobile telephones about, you guessed it: Nothing.

Paris Hilton is the poster child for Nothing. The generation who did nothing and fucked their planet. And when they fucked the planet, they took a secret video and leaked it onto the internet.

I look at women like that and wonder if they’ve ever had a thought that didn’t involve a credit card. She’s the kind of bimbo who’d go to Ethiopia and start giving fashion advice. Next time you saw the Eurovision ad, all the starving Africans would be wearing giant sunnies and hanging out with Nicole Richie. It’s the ego out of control.

John Singleton has just paid her $5 mill to launch his stupid beer. They’ve given her the key to Bondi. Maybe they should have given her something unusual and unique that she has never had before: like a book, or an original thought or perhaps they could have simulated a feeling like: compassion.

Paris Hilton is evil. She must be destroyed.

I urge fledgling feminist terrorists to seriously consider flying a plane into her. The giant glittering Hilton, falling to earth like a broken mirror ball, in a soundless slump.

She’s not actually real. She’s CGI. And sadly, your attempt to destroy her would fail, because like the thousands that have come before you, you’re not the first to try and blow up a Hilton.

Global Terror Alert : Happy people don't shop

OVER THIRTY years ago the tiny province of Bhutan decided to use Happiness as its measure for progress separate to the globally accepted GDP.

Gross Domestic Product it’s not as its name would suggest a rather unattractive substance found oozing from your home. It is in fact the economic ruler used to decide which countries are flourishing and which are doing poorly by looking at a gross tally of products and services bought and sold, a kind of MYOB tally of ingoing and outgoing expenses for the whole nation.

It assumes that every monetary transaction will add to the general wellbeing, including gambling addictions, oil spills and crime waves. Because hey in our glorious capitalist system, one person’s misfortune could be another person’s fortune. ‘Wanna buy a banana? Cheap for you, only $200 a kilo.’

Just as accurate a measure might be a GMP or gross musical product, where one’s social decline is measured by the marked increase in boy bands. I think we’d note that America would be doing pretty poorly.

Being Buddhists, the Bhutanese are committed to subjugating the wants of the individual for the good of the society, something that fills our botox injecting Coca Cola consuming culture with horror. The closest thing Buddhists have to a boy band is the Gyuto Monks, and they’re certainly not crooning self absorbed tunes like ‘What about Me?’ or gyrating around about their lovely monk like Humps.

Bhutan has become the world’s first non-smoking country. The borders are going to become like the outside of public service buildings, with people loitering in the shadows, drawing in a few puffs and then rushing back through customs. Will there suddenly be a black market in Horizon 50’s? Apparently not. The average Bhutanese smoker has taken the cheaper option of using ‘the greater good’ rather than a nicotine patch.

So how do you measure national happiness? Is there a sudden decrease in the sale of Self Help Books? Do people stop getting sick? Do people eat less? Do they suffer less from depression and other related anxieties? Do we see a marked drop in the consumption of anti-depressants and mood enhancing drugs?

If we are happy do we stay at home more, drink less alcohol, buy our kids less compensatory ‘I love you, sorry I never see you’ toys? And, more frighteningly, do we stop shopping?

Happy people don’t shop. When that metaphysical hole is full of glee, there’s no need to cram clothes, and shoes, and couches, cars and McDonalds burgers in it.

My god. Happiness could destroy the entire capitalist system. Marx thought we needed a violent revolution, but perhaps we just need to cheer up.

Night and Day

I often find myself driving back from gigs at 2 in the morning. I’ll search for an ABC talk back to keep me awake and I am amazed by the number of callers, still up and pottering around in the wee hours.

These are people still up for a quiz or a chat - many of them elderly, as alert and awake as a 21 year old on crystal meth. According to a recent study, night people are more creative than morning people.

I used to be a night person. I’d be up till 3 in the morning wandering around with a paintbrush, labouring over my journal’s secret scribblings, listening to Nirvana... But I was 26 and I was probably stoned. Sure, I was creative, but the work was shit.

Having once been a night stalker, I know the attraction. There is an incredible quiet, a universal ambience, that just seeps through your pores – a desire to connect and communicate. To translate that euphoric melancholy that exists in the dark silences into something tangible.

I reckon Vincent Van Gogh was a night guy. And Basquiat. And Whiteley. All the great dead and talented depressives wandered round their studios at 3am in their undies, contemplating their next major work of genius. Sadly I never woke to genius.

Every morning I’d be faced with a reminder of my own mediocrity. Oh I went to bed trembling with excitement, certain that I had written the next opus or painted my Mona Lisa, only to awake to a cross-eyed self portrait fashioned in lipstick and mascara on the carpet of my rented room.

Yes, it took me places. Usually to new accommodation. I am no longer a night person.

With three children it’s pretty hard to keep your creative channels open until 4am and still be up for the 7am breakfast call. Having kids opened my eyes to things I never knew existed: like morning.

I couldn’t believe that nestled on the corners of my dark night was this wonderful pearl like awakening. Wow. It was truly mind blowing to witness the soft smudgy beginnings of the day, the morning dog walkers, the joggers, the birds, the wet grass. I had no idea.

I am now very much a morning person. In fact, I haven’t slept past 6.30am for over 10 years. And I would argue that morning people are in fact very creative. We just don’t have the time.

You see, we are too busy cleaning up, or holding down jobs to support all you frigging self indulgent night freaks.

Killer Crocs

THEY’RE EVERYWHERE.

Every time I catch a glimpse of a foot these days it’s covered in a large plastic resin repository.

It’s Croc season. And they are out to kill. These rubbery predators don’t just take your life, no that would be far too simple. Instead, they attack the fashion sense, and within a period of weeks any chance of rehabilitation is hopeless.

Twelve months down the track and you’re likely to find the victim deeply embedded in a pair of polyester track pants pushing a cart in K-mart, or dancing in Uggies outside the local bottleshop.

Those caught wearing Crocs suffer instant delusion. As soon as the shoe hits the foot all rational and analytical thinking stops. Independent studies have shown that Crocs affect the frontal lobe, which in time, will take on the same colour and consistency of the aforementioned footwear.

Who needs reason, when you’ve got resin? Fashion impaired, Crocverts start to think they look good. And then they start to think they can team the Crocs with any outfit. This devilish infiltration by the evil footwear sees victims turning up in gorgeous designer frocks and giant orange flippers.

Like smokers, the Crocs addict feels driven to justify the unattractiveness of the shoe with a mildly aggressive outburst: ‘But they are so comfortable!’ Yes, and so are flannelette pyjamas, but I wouldn’t be wearing them out.

My mother finds extreme comfort without her teeth and I’d prefer to grow a moustache than be waxed. Comfort doesn’t always equate with a pleasant aesthetic.

Sadly I’ve seen many of my once fashion conscious friends fall prey to the Crocs. Their tender little tootsies, cruelly malformed by the propaganda of the technicolour paddle.

Middle aged adults suddenly donning the footwear of a toddler. It’s obscene. They are Crocs of shit. Crocs are expensive, ugly and comfortable. As were Birkenstocks. (The rye bread of the shoe market).

I wonder whether it’s the comfort that sees them so market friendly or the simple fact that they seem to have become a fashion fad. I predict that in two years, the proliferation of the paddle will dwindle, and not because it is any less comfortable, but simply because it’s no longer Crocs season.

There is sure to be an even uglier, even more expensive comfy shoe ready to hit the market. Until then, my friends, it seems the Crocs won’t be happy until there’s a pair on every Byron prayer mat.

For god’s sake people, you look like giant ducks. The Crocs not just a shoe, it’s a cry for help.

Driving Miss Lazy

In the eighties a self-help book for women came out. It was titled "Women who love too much" and targeted the growing generation of female love addicts who sought approval and devotion in dysfunctional relationships.

What woman at some time hasn’t fallen to her knees in the driveway and crawled through the gravel chafed and sobbing after her man: ‘Why don’t you love me?’

These women have now matured, they finally settled on a partner and popped out a few kids.

Where they once sought love and approval from their alcoholic/junkie/work/sex addict boyfriends, they now find themselves grovelling for loving acknowledgement from their kids.

I call these women: ‘Women who drive too much.’

You can see us out there every day after 3pm. We’re driving our swimming champs, our dancing divas, our karate kids to their afternoon activities.

We’re the idiots sitting in the car outside a church hall somewhere staring vacantly into the middle distance, trying to fill those 15 minutes before you pick up Precious from guitar, drop Snot Nose up to the pool, pop into Woolies, pick up the sequins for the ballet costume for Surly while slipping in one of those Mumsy chats with a woman you have known for 4 years but whose name you still don’t know.

But then, identities aren’t important when you’re a driver. We’re like chauffeurs talking shop. Mums of teenagers drive their kids to the movies only to drag themselves back for the pick up a few hours later, a bleary eyed blimp in a tracksuit.

She wanders past a shop window, glances to catch her reflection, only to realise, where there was once a vibrant glossy haired girl, there’s now a shapeless smudge.

This is what labour pain prepares you for: the endless hours of thankless driving. There’s weekend ferrying between towns so young Miss Supre can socialise with her big sunglass wearing buddies, or Surfie boy can compete in his championships.

Here I am, an intelligent, talented, warm and compassionate woman working the streets as an unpaid cabbie. This generation of parents is possessed with the need to fill every waking second of their child’s time with recreational and skill building activities.

A free afternoon where the Mum leisurely waters her garden fills her with guilt: I should be enriching the potential of my children!

My Mum suffered no such condition. Her idea of afterschool activities was emptying the chook bucket, getting the clothes off the line, peeling the potatoes for dinner and doing my homework.

I never attended a single ballet class. I could have been a great dancer. (Sure, a 6ft 85 kilo woman is gonna be hard to lift, but they have cranes for that kind of stuff.)

It’s not a coincidence that ‘driving’ is the metaphor used when describing the feeling one experiences when teetering on one’s emotional precipice.

‘You’re driving me crazy! Stop driving me up the wall! And my fave: You’ll drive me to an early grave!’

We don’t do it because we love driving. We do it because we love them. All that’s required, is the very very occasional: ‘thanks.’

Creature Discomforts

We have become far too comfortable.

Flopping onto our L-shaped suede couch in our silk leisure suits, we sip our chardonnay and reach for the remote. Summer snakes under the door, and as the rest of the country burns, we adjust the aircon to a very pleasant 23. We screen our calls, shop on the internet, and a cleaner scrubs our s-bend. It's a passionless life of effortless luxury.

Just this morning I stumbled into the economic matrix: more money equals less discomfort. I had this epiphany as I walked to work in my 4 inch wedges. From years of wearing badly made but fashionable shoes I have developed foot pain. (I imagine it's karmic for all the nasty things I have said about Croc wearers.) In fact, there are some shoes in my wardrobe that require 2 Neurofens before an outing. So there I was hobbling down Dalley St, 6 ft 3 in a black dress on a hot morning. It was excruciating. But as the stabbing pain shot through my calf I thought: I am in the moment. Comfortable people don't get that. They are somewhere else projecting into their even more comfortable frigging future (usually at the cost of more discomfort to others.)

It's important to maintain daily discomfort. I believe it keeps you humble - for centuries the Catholic church has attested to the significant spiritual benefits of suffering. I'd like to share a few tips from my personal spiritual practice.

Wear your underwear a size too small. If you can't feel your bra cutting into your back than it's not tight enough. Undies should make a cracking sound as you pull them on. The same goes with clothing. The smaller the better. The feeling of constriction keeps us in touch with our own limitations and intensely self aware. There is enlightenment in the sudden exposure one experiences when the seams give way and one's frock is suddenly torn asunder. Always wear polyester on a hot day. Mow your own lawn. At midday. Throw away your mobile and start using a public phone. If you've had your Hep injections you should be OK.

Don't pay your bills on time. Wait for the disconnection notice. Better still, wait for disconnection. Take cold showers in Winter and hand sew the kids' school uniforms. While a dishwasher may feel like liberation, it's actually whitegood enslavement. Standing at a sink full of suds will bring you face to face with your issues. It's an instant rage locator. Trade in that leather lounge for a vinyl one. If your legs ain't stickin then you ain't thinkin! Put on weight. Not a huge amount, just enough to make you ungainly and breathe heavily while performing mundane tasks like turning on the light.

Remove the aircon from your car. While you're at it, remove the seat belts and replace them with the old EH Holden hand straps. Invite people you don't like over for dinner and charm them with your witty repartee. Have 10 children. Live in a house with 2 rooms and only 4 beds. Marry someone who hates you. Go to church. Ignore toothache until ulcers appear, and tumour like lumps can generally be disguised with a band aid.

Refuse drugs in labour. When anyone asks for volunteers, volunteer. Are you feeling it? That pinching sensation at the base of your being that says: I'm fucking uncomfortable, irritated, angry... and alive! Who needs bungee jumping for a fear based adrenalin surge - a family Christmas dinner should bring that on. It's the Desiderata of discomfort. I hope you get something you hate.

xxxMandy

Confessions of an Ecky Eater

It's been a devastating week in Australian sport. Andrew 'Joey' Johns had to fess up to being a rampaging Ecky addict, the racing industry is in shutdown with horse flu forcing gambling addicts back home to their families and it's the end of my first season as the under 10s netball coach. Crikey, I'm surprised it hasn't been declared a State of Emergency.

There's a wonderful irony in the fact that our most brilliant sporting heroes are drug-fucked party boys.

King of Cricket, Shane Warne was renowned for his penchant for the love drug and free-balled his way around the globe taking out wickets and women at lightning speed. He'd barely left the pitch and his dick was out. He was Lord Spin. So why did the media get all moralistic about his off the field behaviour? It's not like Warney was receiving blow jobs between overs. As long as he was on his game who cares about Simone? Frankly, if I was married to Simone Warne I think I'd root around as well.

I hate sport. I particularly hate cricket. Yobbos like Shane Warne make it mildly entertaining. If a fella can bonk himself silly and still take wickets then great.

The latest victim of media moralising is poor old Johnsy. I think the fact that anyone who can smoke, drink, snort coke, drop ecky and the occasional tab of acid and still manage to play football is remarkable. Actually it's more than remarkable, it's frigging Australian. Jesus, it's not like it's performance enhancing. Sure Ecky might make you a bit of a love machine in the bedroom (well at least in your own mind) but when it comes to violent physical sport like footy poor Joey Johns has been at a significant disadvantage.

Anyone who's ever popped a party pill knows the chemical fry that sets in days later. Ecky Tuesday is not a pretty sight when you are being pursued by twelve 100 kilo men. Neither is professing your love in the changeroom and asking for a cuddle. The Telegraph even carried a story of a Newcastle mother of 3 who thought that Johns should be punished more severely for the possession of one measly ecstasy tablet. (Fuck, isn't being born in Newcastle punishment enough?) She claimed that he had failed the kiddies as a role model.

Bullshit, teenagers all around the country might suddenly start attending football if they think it's going to turn into a rave party at half time. Role models are people too. They are not two dimensional Sunday liftouts. They're blokes sitting at home in their undies pulling a bong in front of MTV, weeping into a blank form guide wondering why success is suddenly so meaningless... but they never print posters of that.

As for the horse flu. I think it's all a sinister coverup. It's not just footballers, horses are using drugs too people. Makybe Diva was seen with Johnsy at the London nightclub. In fact, it's been alleged that the mare was the one who planted the tab in his trouser pocket.

xxxMandy

The Secret is Out

After months of smug sideways glances from those who have seen the 'Secret' I am finally in the know.

Today I watched the 'film' and it confirmed something I only previously suspected. People are a lot stupider than we give them credit for. The content was as nauseating as a weekend with Oprah, and if I was a bulimic, I would suggest that 2 minutes of The Secret is more effective than fingers down throat.

It should come with a viewer warning: 'This film contains extreme self indulgence and rampant individualism. May require bucket.'

How could so many people be so influenced by something so spiritually corrupt? And these so called experts her purport to be guardians of the sacred knowledge...what a bunch of disingenuous, arrogant tossers. I wouldn't want to share a sandwich with them, let alone a Secret.

The Secret is a spiritual manifesto on how to acquire 'stuff'. It asks people to visualise the car they want to drive, and then feel the feelings. What about the planet you'd like to live on? The Universe has become a ride for one, so unless you're prepared to push in and jostle your way to the front, you might as well forget it. It reminded me of the ironic saying: 'He who dies with the most stuff wins.' How have we arrived at a point in our emotional and psychological development that we measure a life well lived by possessions?

I instantly felt one of those emotions The Secret refers to as a 'bad' feeling. It was called sadness. How have we become so disconnected from the human condition that the most we can use this so called wonderful gift of personal manifestation is for expensive cars, young wives and 8 bedroom mansions. (The more empty rooms in your house the richer you are. In third world countries, everyone sleeps in one room and a visualisation of a bowl of rice is generally called a meal.)

And by the way, if you suffer from depression, it's your fault, and you jolly should change your thinking. Instead of focusing on the negative, concentrate on something that makes you feel good like: a kitten with a Twistie packet on it's head. Finally, a cure for mental illness.

Why don't the exponents of The Secret talk about focusing on peace or compassion or a sustainable future for our kids? The key indicator for measuring the success of those who use The Secret is money. If you have more money you are more aligned with positive thinking practice. One dude even asserts that it's no accident 1% of the population hold 96% of the world's wealth. They use the Secret. It's no Secret, it's called DNA. The same wealth has been with the same families for a long time. And I'd be hazarding a guess that just because they are loaded doesn't guarantee that they are (a) happy or a (b) very nice. Apparently that doesn't even matter.

One fat little bald bug eyed monster even blurts: everything you experience in your life you have created. I'm like, why don't you go home and create some hair buddy. I don't believe a bald man telling me you can create what you want in life. Are you telling me, that somewhere deep down you didn't desire hair? Go manifest that rug Kojak and then maybe I'll believe you.

The Secret has the same pop culture pitch as The Da Vinci Code. It even uses parchment maps for background to create some visual link with real historical authenticity. The Secret makes Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code look like a work of genius. So what is the lost Secret?

The Law of Attraction. That comes right after the Law of Shopping. Hello, is someone making up universal laws here? They even compare it to the Law of Gravity. Excuse me. But you can't just go around making up 'laws' by dropping esoteric apples and asserting they have some scientific basis. According to this dodgy law, you can attract anything in your life. Great news for stalkers, who spend half their life visualising intimacy with their victim. Not so good for the victim. 'Your honour, the victim actually created the attack...with her thoughts'.

The Secret is dangerous. It's like capitalist brainwashing. One 'expert' tells the viewer not to align themselves with causes or groups that are against anything, as just the thought of the thing will create it. Great. So now we no longer oppose poverty or war or cruelty. Well buy me some jodphurs and Heil Hitler! And while you sit there manifesting your frigging ozone destroying carbon munching Mazerati let me remind you of one thing. Contrary to popular belief, earth's resources are finite and the Universe is not a frigging catalogue.

Here's The Secret I am marketing. It's called Thinking. Sadly, it's just not catching on fast enough.

xxxMandy

10,000 words for Beige

Eskimos are regaled for their understanding of the nuances of white. In fact, it has been rumoured that they have 1000 words for snow. Although strictly speaking these tend to be lexemes. Oh what's a lexeme you might squeal, desperate to enter another bit of google friendly information into that grey matter that powers the flesh-bot.

A single lexeme for instance is a word like 'speak' which gives rise to inflected forms like speaks, spoke and spoken. Now the English lesson is over, let me propose that whilst an Eskimo has 1,000 words for snow, on reading a Home Beautiful mag in the doctor's surgery the other day, I have come to the conclusion that stylists have developed 10 000 words for beige. It's Lexeme Sport.

To me, beige is middle of the road. It's the 'please don't notice me', the shy conservative wallflower of the palette. It's the colour without a conscience. Beige would have no problem in locking up David Hicks or scheduling a pre-election release. Beige always fills in tax returns. Beige sponsors a World Vision child, but secretly fears the aboriginal family who moved down the road will affect property values.

Beige is polite. Beige is efficient. Beige is quietly powerful. And while you are at work, Beige sneaks into your bedroom and screws your wife. Beige is evil. We must rid ourselves of the pale evil in all it's inoffensive, mild mannered incarnations. There's Gnu Tan, Fiji Sands, Beige Royale, and for the public servant who's about to jump from the 16th floor, there's Self-destruct.

Oyster Linen has been very popular, as has Chick Pea for vegetarians, and the cops have been choosing Hog Bristle (it's piggy friendly). Puddle was a sensible choice for the incontinent, Jodhpurs for the horsey type, Bird Seed for Chicken Flu sufferers in Quarantine and the perenially popular: Camel Train. I got a little confused on my latest reno and had my lounge painted in Camel Toe. It's confronting and exciting at the same time and leaves one with an unsettling desire to adjust oneself.

The list goes on. There's Pale Parchment, Curd, Grand Piano, Magnolia. It's all still fucking beige. 10,000 words for boring.

What about a little truth in advertising and naming these varying degrees of beige for what they really are. I have emailed my suggestions through to Dulux and am awaiting a reply. There's 'Fence Sitting Beige': ideal for people-pleasers, 'Villawood': perfect for people who like to keep to themselves and 'Apocalypse Now': for those who plan to sit out the end of the world in air conditioned comfort. Beige is the colour of our first world obesity, the giant fat roll that threatens to envelope and suffocate the globe.

Ban the Beige. Have the courage to be coloured.

xxxMandy