AAMI Park's leaky roof

Author's note: I was hoping to steer this blog away from letters of complaint for a while.  I can actually be quite understanding!  If I go around to a friend's place for a dinner of slow-cooked beef stew, but arrive to find out that the beef has only been stewing for about ten minutes, I say to my friend who is unable to differentiate between a microwave and a slow cooker: "don't stress about it, let's just get take-away".

But companies are another matter.  Following Woolworths' excellent customer service response to the "Chickengate" saga, I thought the below complaint would be met with a grovelling apology that would provide me with some much-needed winter cheer.

Instead, I was met with the oldest trick in the book—total silence.  My (unanswered) correspondence is reproduced below.

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Dear AAMI Park management

When I was growing up, my Mum bought me a VHS tape of old Donald Duck cartoons.  In vintage Disney style, these cartoons featured Donald getting into all sorts of amusing predicaments—for example, "Donald's Tire Trouble" depicted D. Duck's futile attempt to change multiple flat tyres after driving down an unsealed road.  Sadly, many of the finer points of pneumatic tyre comedy were lost on my eight-year-old self, having only driven dodgem cars at that stage in life.  

Instead, my favourite Donald Duck cartoon on the VHS tape was "Drip Dippy Donald" (please watch this short excerpt before continuing)—a true classic, equally enjoyable by eight- and eighty-year olds.  This brilliant cartoon generates laughs for all ages from a simple premise: a dripping tap makes it impossible for Donald to get to sleep.

I would always laugh, perhaps cruelly, at Donald's drip-fuelled misery, being lucky enough to grow up in a house with sound plumbing and attentive parents.  And even after I had grown up and moved out of the family home, I would still chuckle at memories of that old cartoon, having never been afflicted by drips in the night (at least as far as faucets were concerned).

I had no sympathy.  I didn't understand.

Until now.   

Or, more specifically, until Tuesday 25 June, when I went to AAMI Park to watch the Melbourne Rebels take on the British Lions.

As I made my way to Seat 258, Row F, Aisle 36, Level 1, I noticed the floor beneath the seat was quite damp.  "Odd", I thought, "it hasn't rained recently".  Never mind though—no sooner than I had sat down, the rugby began!

Because of the excitement around the stadium, I barely noticed what I thought was my neighbour spilling a few drops of his drink on my right leg.  About a minute later—plop!—it happened again.  "Not to worry", I thought, "accidents happen".  But, less than 30 seconds later—plop!—I felt a cold splash once again.  My patience had run dry.  Turning toward my neighbour and commencing to politely inform him that it might be best for him to store his beverage at ground level, I only got as far as "if you don't mind, old sport..." before I realised—he did not have a drink at all. 

What he did have, however, was a very damp left leg.

In an effort to distract myself from the increasing awkwardness setting in between us, I drew my delicious mid-strength beer toward my mouth.  If I could not have answers, I could at least have froth.  But barely had my lower jaw begun to unhinge itself when a cold, silver dart dropped down from the sky and—plop!—landed directly in my drink.

My gaze shot up into the cold winter air.  It was a cloudless night.  Glimmering amongst the black sky, another silver dart was falling, radiant in the glow of the stadium's light towers.  Plop!  This one just missed my leg, and instead struck my bag on the floor.  I looked up once again to see—plop! (this one hit my neighbour somewhere around the kneecap)—that a steady stream of cold drips were falling somewhere from the underside of the roof. 

As this roof was very very high, and I was sitting very very much near ground level—plop! (right thigh, mine)—it took a great amount of consistent staring to follow the trail of drips upwards through the air to their source.  This took a while, because if I broke my gaze—plop! (top of head, his)—in order to see where the drops landed and defend accordingly, I would lose the trail of drips.  Not only did I wish to avoid getting wet—plop! (this was mostly unsuccesful)—but there was also the small matter of a rugby match going on right in front of me that I had paid to watch; by nature I find paid sporting events much more interesting to watch than a slow stream of dripping water, with the possible exception of women's tennis.

Eventually I traced the drips to their source—plop-plop! (at times the wind would change and split the drips into two separate warheads, striking both myself and my neighbour with pinpoint Rumsfeld-esque accuracy)—a cylindrical duct attached to the overhanging edge of the stadium roof.  It appeared—plop-chuckle-chuckle-chuckle (by now most people in the vicinity were much more entertained by my own version of "Drip Dippy Donald" than the rugby)—that there was a leak in one of the ducts, causing a new drip to appear every ten seconds or so.

Fuelled by the particularly peevish kind of frustration that only comes through wearing wet denim, I resolved—plop! (back on the right leg again)—to write to AAMI Park to chronicle my ordeal.  While drafting up this letter, I had a look at the AAMI Park website, which is gushing in its praise of the stadium's roof.  One passage states that the roof "has been skinned in a triangular panelised façade that is made up of a combination of glass, metal and louvers, as well as potential for photovoltaic cells and rainwater collection [that] allows the stadium to 'breathe'." 

After reading this piffle, I am wondering: did one of your architects take the "breathing" stadium idea a bit too seriously, and decide to accurately depict the spit and sputum discharged from a breathing individual's mouth and/or nose during wintertime?  Does AAMI Park have the sniffles?

I would have written to you sooner, but—plop! (I realise that this "plop" is out of place seeing as I am no longer recounting the events of the night when your stadium's nose dripped on me all night, regardless, I have decided to leave the "plop" in as an artistic touch, in order to remind you that your stadium still leaks despite significant negative media coverage about the stadium's ill-constructed roof on its opening night over three years ago)—ahem, I would have written to you sooner but since being constantly dripped upon a fortnight ago, I have been beset by a strange desire to commit unscrupulous acts, change my name, flee to France and enlist in the Foreign Legion.  My doctor thinks it's Legionnaires' Disease.

Kind—plop!—regards,

Dave

NB: Given that I am impartial to rugby on the best of days (which this was not), the only real positive to come out of this experience was the admirable job my complimentary Herald Sun did of shielding my leg and bag from further innundation.  Bravo, Herald Sun, for actually preventing the spread of sloppy filth for the first time in your history.

"can I ride the tram?": a flowchart explaining melbourne's new myki ticketing system

Some of my favourite childhood memories from the late 1980s and early 1990s were our family trips to Melbourne.  We didn't actually move here until I started high school, and so before that time, every trip down here took on an extra-special aura.

More specifically, I loved riding the clunky old trams.  I'd dash straight up to the seat behind the driver, and kneel on the worn vinyl seat cushions to peer through the wooden-framed front windows, watching as the driver worked his magic with all manner of handles and switches.

Meanwhile, my Mum would be paying our fares by way of a rather quaint system, where she would say "two tickets please!" to a person selling tickets, following which cash would be exchanged for tickets and we would happily travel on to our destination.

However, these glowing childhood recollections have now been ruined by the state government of Victoria, which has spent more than $1,500,000,000 trampling all over my youth by implementing a new ticketing system.

Now, I could have been vindictive and written an article about how this new myki "smart" card is so plagued by bureaucratic incompetence and general nonsense that even Terry Gilliam would struggle to design a more convoluted system.

However, I'm not going to do that.  Instead, I've produced a handy flowchart that you can print out and stick up on your wall (or carry around as a giant scroll) to help you navigate the new system.  The flowchart also includes a comparison as of fifty years ago, in case you happen to travel back in time to 1963 and need to take public transport to get to one of the nation's eighty computers, perhaps to start the world's first blog.

Enjoy (click here for full-size version).

high school revisited, part 3: teenage views on the peoples of the world (read: racism!)

Over the past couple of weeks, I've delved into the "wilderness years" of my high school education by regrading and revisiting some of the most insultingly lazy work ever to come from teenage hands, covering everything from how to avoid paying for your drinks in ancient Babylon to a true account of NASA's duct-tape spaceships of the 1950s.

After reading these two previous installments, skeptical readers of this blog might harbour suspicions of exaggeration on my part.  Perhaps you might think I have taken liberties in describing the extent of my pubescent idleness.  Maybe you're of the opinion that I've neglected to describe the good, alongside the bad.

Before writing this post, I thought long and hard about how to best allay such suspicions, to no avail.  But then, I found this.

This is a screenshot of a text file I found in my hidden folder of high school "treasures".  As soon as I opened the file, I remembered exactly why this file had been created.

For geography class, we had to complete an assignment comparing the lives of Guatemalans, Mexicans, and Americans.  Unsurprisingly, I had barely begun writing when the due date arrived. So what did I do?  Did I admit my failure and ask for an extension?  Did I suffer my error with honour and accept a late penalty?

Of course not.

Instead, I concocted an elaborate story about how I had finished the assignment and brought it into school for printing, only to find that the file had been corrupted.  As proof of this story, I constructed, from scratch, the text file shown in the screen shot above as proof of this supposedly "corrupted" file.  I then loaded that file onto a floppy disk and tossed the disk around the room a little, just for good measure.

My plan worked!  The teacher bought the "corrupted file" ruse like an on-sale ham, despite the screenshot clearly showing that the alleged corruption of the file also somehow managed to remove all sentence structure from the remaining text whilst magically preserving the text's meaning in point form.

Anyway, I eventually completed the assignment, and it's with a few select quotes from therein that I'll open the "ridicule section" of this post.  At this point, I'm beyond the re-grading exercises of the last two weeks—I think today will be a simple point-and-laugh exercise.

Oh—this week's theme!  I almost forgot.  Today we're talking about the "sensitive six": multiculturalism, globalisation, poverty, immigration, indigenous rights, and refugees.  Who says our curriculum needs to be revamped to reflect the 21st century world?  Nonsense!  It's been good for years.  Sit back and observe just how much it taught me...

Immi-great expectations: Guatemala, Mexico, and the USA

Resources in Guatemala are very limited.  There is no technology for use by average Guatemalans, not even running water, flush toilets, or electricity.  The only technology evident is guns and cars. There are many shops and restaurants in Mexico, something that is unfamiliar to the eyes of many Guatemalans. 

It appears that I've developed a strange fixation with "technology", despite the fact that this assignment was supposed to touch on the sufferings of the Guatemalan people following their bloody civil war.

I wonder how technology compares elsewhere?

There is more technology on offer for most people in Mexico.  In the USA, one of the most developed countries on Earth, technology is highly advanced.  Even illegal immigrants get technology that is not evident in their home town.

Technology for all!!  Forget going to Mexico; if you are Guatemalan and sneak into the USA, you will get technology.  Your whole village will be playing Mario Party before you can say "green card".

But wait—technology is a double-edged sword; one that the Mexicans are not very adept at wielding:

In the example of Mexico City, the residents are buying cars by the truckload, and the factories are pumping out tons of noxious gases just to produce technology demanded by the Mexicans.  Pollution in Mexico City is the highest in the world, with children discouraged from playing outside, and many people wearing masks to work. 

The paragraph continues.  You'll notice I've emboldened a section of the following quote for the benefit of those who are not very good at picking out casual racism at first glance.

If the first world cut back on cars, and goods, then the third world will follow suit, as it is in their nature to follow the doings of those above them.

How, exactly, was this allowed to pass unnoticed through the school system?

An analogy, if I may.  When my brother was very young, he swallowed a button.  In order to make sure the button didn't lodge somewhere within my brother's digestive tract and cause irreparable harm, the doctor ordered my Mum to sift through his shit, night and day, until the button came out.

Where was the shit-sifter here?  The teacher who should've raised his/her hand, and said: "you know, headmaster, I just noticed something odd while marking the Guatemala assignments—don't think me crazy, but it appears that Joseph Goebbels has reincarnated himself as a young boy and is peddling his ideas about innate racial superiority to all who will listen in the ninth grade..."

Herr Stüdent continues with a discussion of an immigrant's life in the USA:

Guatemalan (or Mexican) immigrants are automatically at the lower end of society because of their race.  Employers can set any wages they want for immigrants, unlike white Americans who mostly know their rights.

Since writing this in 1998, I have watched a lot of Judge Judy; I can safely say that white Americans do not know their rights.  But I, apparently, knew a thing or two about the challenges faced by 16 per cent of the US population:

US born Hispanics face similar problems to immigrants because even though they are US citizens, they still look and talk like the immigrants, and therefore are considered to be the same.

Oh dear.  Let's see what other baseless (and borderline offensive) generalisations lie in my box o'mediocrity...

The global village (idiot)

After the Second World War, Japan was in ruins.  The occupation by the U.S. changed the Japanese economy and government to a western style, and Japan made an amazing recovery.  But this was only possible because of the tremendous work ethic the Japanese people possessed, something that sets them apart from the western world. 

I really wish, just for a day, I could shift my mindset back to a teenage perspective—not just to sell my brain to marketers, but to also find out whether I actually pictured the entire Japanese community as a race of frenetic nation-building automatons, as opposed to us sloth-like Westerners who do little else than sit around, eat bread, and debate the limits of media freedom (the "sandwich free press" movement if you will, har har har).

But I can't be so hard on the following quote.  This one can be put down (without blame) to the blissful optimism of adolescence:

In the USA, money made from resources is not hoarded by dictators or the military.

Oh little one, if only you knew.

"F*ck off, we're fools"

Let's bring things a bit closer to home.  Here's my 1998 attempt to summarise Australia's relationship with refugees:

Refugees are fleeing to Australia from Asian countries such as Vietnam and Thailand, and hope to have freedom and a better standard of living.  All the refugees come on boats.  There are sometimes hundreds crammed onto one boat.  Very few make it undetected to Australia.  The refugees that get caught are held in detention camps, where most of them are sent back to where they came from after a period of time.  Some refugees are allowed to stay in Australia if they can prove that their lives would be endangered if they went back.

Well, this is messed up, and I'm not referring to my laughable attempt to pick two random "Asian countries" in order to pretend I actually did research for this question—only to choose THAILAND, which actually takes in four times the amount of refugees that Australia does!

No, the above passage is bothersome because it parrots back (with alarming accuracy) the questionable messages spread by less reputable members of the Australian news media, including myths about a flood of boats and needlessly confrontational rhetoric about refugees being "sent back to where they came from".  And sadly, although this was written nearly fifteen years ago, it reads as if it could've been penned yesterday.

If I have kids, there'll be no tabloid newspapers, rap music, or videogames for them.  As the above passage shows, youth are attracted to populist ideas easier than a duck is attracted to bread.  Instead, I'll be locking my kids in a room with nothing but a lamp and a crate of Dickens novels.  My success as a parent won't be evident until later life, when my offspring command a pickpocket army of street urchins that will battle the Boy Scouts for control of the streets.

Tales from the book of Cook

I am going to conclude this post with a passage so absurd, it almost warrants the inclusion of a permanent disclaimer on this blog.

Around year 10 or 11, I wrote a research essay on the spiritual beliefs of Australian Aborigines.  Upon re-reading it, I was quite impressed, finding the essay interesting and well-written.  And then, in the middle of a discussion of the indigenous concept of the afterlife, I suddenly watched as the essay changed topic to THIS:

Aborigines possess very dark skin, which ranges from a copper colour, to a very dark black/brown.  A thick and short neck supports the head, which often has a backward lean.  Their head hair is curly and wavy, and is deep black in colour, much like the rest of the body hair.  The facial hair is quite abundant, large beards are often found.  The appearance and length of chest hair varies from area to area.  Although aborigines do not have a muscular appearance, they are quite strong for their weight.  They have small hands and feet, but both these appendages are notably tough, as they are used continuously in day to day life (Parker 195-7). Appendix A depicts barefooted aborigines clearing the ground of spinifex, a spiny, prickly desert grass that is native to Australia.  Also depicted are wind shelters.  The body averages a height of 5’7” for the males, and 5’1” for the females.  There still is extremities in height, with 6’ plus males being found all over the country.  The senses of aborigines are highly developed, as a result of the life they lead, where they must constantly remain on the alert (Parker 196-7). 

........................?!?!

What is this, which reads like a colonial-era extract from a ship captain's discovery log, doing in my essay?  What relevance, exactly, does the beard length or "tough appendages" of Australia's indigenous population have to an essay on spirituality?  "Appendix A"?!!  Neck lean??!  What in f***'s name is going on?

There is no way I made this shit up.  This has to be filler inserted out of word count desperation.  Despite all of my failings in my mid-teenage years, I was neither stupid nor motivated enough to come up with such patronisingly inane text for the purposes of an assignment.  This has to have come from somewhere else, I thought—and this citation to "Parker" might be the clue.

A check of my bibliography and a quick Google later, and I had my answer:

Parker, K. Langloh (1897), Australian Legendary Tales.

Eighteen-ninety seven!!!!   Holy shit.  I don't know what's more ludicrous—that I inserted a nineteenth-century quasi-racist physiological description of Aborigines into an essay on the Dreamtime, or that my teacher went right ahead and graded this without batting an eyelid.  What did I say about shit-sifting earlier?

Wikipedia has the follwing to say about Ms Parker, a reasonably well-known recorder of Aboriginal folklore and mythology:

...her testimony is one of the best accounts we have of the beliefs and stories of the Aboriginal people.  However, her accounts reflect European prejudices of the time, and so to modern ears her accounts contain a number of misconceptions and racist comments.

Mind you, would I, aged fifteen, have been aware of the bias inherent in using a text over a century old as reference for an essay on indigenous peoples?  No.  No, no, no.  Unquestionably, definitely, irrevocably—no.  I had not the slightest shred of such awareness.

Why?  Because in my final paragraph—after a nice summation of the longevity, global uniqueness, and depth of Aboriginal culture—I chose to end my essay with a quote.

From Captain Cook.
 
And that, children, is the story of how the irony became lost.

Did you enjoy this?  Through the magic of hyperlinks, you can read part 1 and part 2 of the "high school revisited" series now!

high school revisited, part 2: the code of hammurabi

The Code of Hammurabi is a foundational legal text of human civilisation and a crucial stepping-stone in the development of civil society throughout the ages.  Commissioned and promulgated in approximately 1772 BCE by Hammurabi, the sixth king of Babylon, the Code is one of the first examples of a written code of laws in history, and is famous in the popular imagination for its codification of the "eye for an eye" principle.

In 2007, I was lucky enough to see the largest existing copy of the Code on display at the Louvre museum.  As I stood alone in a small chamber in the back wings of the Louvre and gazed at the Code, I felt a small shiver run down my spine.  At the time, I attributed this to the feeling of desolate awe gained from staring at the remains of a long-gone people, empire, and way of life.

However, in light of my recent re-discovery of a forgotten cache of high school-era assignments and my efforts on this blog to chronicle this insipid phase of my existence, I now know that shivering feeling was no more than my subconscious attempting to block out the bubbling memory of an essay I wrote, aged fifteen, analysing the very Code I now stood in front of.
 
My subconscious knew what it was doing.  Unlike the re-discovered treasures of the ancient world, this essay deserved to be buried until the death of the universe.  Nevertheless, I will now re-grade and present to you this abomination.

For reference, here is a copy of the code for you to follow along with.  When I quote my essay, I'll do so in italics.  When I quote the Code, I'll do so in bold.  Easy.

We'll start with the very beginning of my essay.  You might think I would've opened with, oh, I don't know, a overview of who Hammurabi was, why he was important, and what he was doing at the time he created the Code.  Wrong.  How about some broad statements that levitate above the page, with not a fact in sight to support them?

When looked at in today’s society, Hammurabi’s code seems rather strict and harsh, compared to the laws we live under today.  And the code is also very solid and rigid – with no loopholes or cracks in it.   

Impressive.  Most people require entire essays or articles to get a point across.  I, however, within the space of two opening sentences, have made one thing abundantly clear to the reader: I have not actually read Hammurabi's code.  

"No loopholes or cracks"?  Really?  

Let's consider the humble ox.  Out of the 282 laws contained within the Code, seven relate to injuries commonly sustained by rented oxen.  Each law sets out the compensation that applies to the owner of the ox in each circumstance.  You might say ox owners are nicely protected under the Code—that is, until THIS:

high school revisited, part 1: jesus, clip art, the yorkshire moors and the space program

I've written previously (albeit briefly) about the golden age of my childhood. This was a boom time, full of wholesome achievements and natural, innocent curiosity. While other kids were getting busted smoking behind the local Boy Scout hall, I was most likely inside that hall, building model cars or assembling a moisture detector out of a DIY electronics kit. My mother never had to tell me to stop eating Play-Doh—rather, she had to tell me to stop simulating plate tectonics and continental drift with the Play-Doh, lest my dinner get cold.

Likewise, my teacher was equally baffled (but probably relieved at having to do less work) when I insisted on taking over an hour of class time to hold a mock staging of the 1993 federal election. I composed music on my Casio keyboard that was as least as good as all five songs in the keyboard's "demo mode". And as far as athletics were concerned, I won "most improved batsman" at my local cricket club, and picked up a bronze medal at my school swimming championships after the original field of five contestants in the 25-metre backstroke was reduced to three due to illness.

But around age thirteen, all the bubbles burst at once, and the flow of achievements abruptly ceased.

These were my wilderness years, where slackness reigned and not a single notable thing occurred between age thirteen and sixteen.  Take Thursday afternoon sport at school.  You signed up for a sport, you played it, and you went home. I picked golf, not just because table-tennis was full, but mainly because I had got my hands on a book of blank receipts that I could fill out myself as "proof" that I had attended the driving range for my weekly exercise—a receipt book that I may or may not have obtained whilst being forced to volunteer at the local Salvation Army.

In fact, the best achievement I could recall was the day I was attacked by a pony on my grade nine school camp.  This is not very impressive in and of itself, but slightly more impressive when you consider that had I not been there, another, more talented and motivated child would have borne the wrath of "Grommet".

Given all of the above, imagine my delight when I found a small, long-forgotten backup disk of high school essays and assignments saved from the old family computer. My memories of those slack years were confirmed—these assignments were terrible.  Let's revisit a select few. 

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Exhibit A: Confirmed sightings of Jesus Christ following His death
(click to enlarge)

At best, this appears to be a handout for some sort of history presentation on the Roman Empire.  At worst, it may actually be (god forbid) a completed assignment in its own right. 

Where to begin with this one?  Possibly with the very first line, which head-scratchingly suggests that Jesus was born "circa 0 AD", a year which does not actually exist.  I'm also not sure whether I understood that the abbreviation "A.D." is wholly correlated with the conception and birth of Christ, or whether I thought that Jesus by sheer stroke of luck happened to be born at the very beginning of the era bearing His name.

Neither do I seem to grasp the concept that the term "Christianity" and everything that comes along with it refers to the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.  Jesus did not preach "the Christian message" and become the "first Christian martyr" because he took a shine to the basic tenets of Christianity—he did these things because he WAS JESUS CHRIST.

I also would've liked to have seen more detail regarding Jesus' travels "around the area", such as an account of his dispute with Yaaqob (a local water-skiing operator) over exorbitant ski-hire prices.  It is rumoured that rather than pay the rental fees, Jesus instead decided to go water-skiing without skis, to the delight of the locals.  To further his revenge, Jesus later undercut Yaaqob's bustling bread-and-fish cafe by a substantial margin.  Sadly, none of this is included in my assignment.

But on the topic of historial facts, I do find it hilarious how the last two bullet points are written as a matter of absolute certainty.

"Rose from the dead"—FACT. 
"People saw him after he had risen"—FACT.

Somebody needs to telephone Richard Dawkins immediately, and inform him that he has been wasting his time for the last decade and a half—as atheism was actually convincingly disproven in the late 1990s by the writings of an imbecile.

Grade (if written for history class): D minus.  Only avoided failing by use of sweet clip-art.

Grade (if written for religion class): B plus.  Excellent justification given for resurrection and continuing immortality of Christ.

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Exhibit B: "Heathcliff!"

Just a short one here, being the introduction to an English essay:

Wuthering Heights (the novel) is set in a very isolated environment.  It is located in the northern moors of England, far away from any large settlement.  There is a small town nearby, but that supplies not much else other than food and church.

Grade: C plus.  Thankyou for clearing up whether you were writing about the novel or the Kate Bush song of the same name.  Regarding "food and church", I recall there being a doctor and a lawyer in the nearby town, but I suppose ghosts have no need for regular pap smears or trade mark protection.

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Exhibit C: The complete history of space exploration



Just as the primary schooler wrongly thinks he/she can fake an illness that can fool even the most suspicious of mothers, so the high schooler thinks he/she can get away with half-arsing an assignment by (a) gratuitous use of clip-art (see above), (b) hopelessly broad statements, or (c) letting a thesaurus do the writing:

“Man Walks On Moon” was the proud headline of the New York Times on July the 21st, 1969.  Neil Armstrong and ‘Buzz’ Aldrin were the first human beings to walk on the Earth’s moon, and for many, this was considered humanity’s finest hour.  But nowadays, our society has transfigured enough to change what was once headline news into a small article on the ninth page.

Hold on a second:

transfigured - past participle, past tense of trans·fig·ure 

1. Transform into something more beautiful or elevated: "the world is made luminous and is transfigured".
2. To give a new and typically exalted or spiritual appearance.

Sadly, our society has not become more exalted or luminous since 21 July 1969.  I personally blame energy-efficient lightbulbs, which have swapped the warm glow of incandescence for the cold, sterile hum of planet-saving.

But if "many" (being who?) did in fact consider the moonwalk to be "humanity's finest hour", this is for a simple reason—because we WALKED ON THE BLOODY MOON!  We placed human feet on an inhospitable rock separated from our own life-giving planet by the vast reaches of cold, inert space!

In addition, what exactly am I on about with this "ninth page" nonsense?  Am I referring to an actual "small article" on the ninth page of a newspaper?  Unlikely.  This requires work.  If, instead, I'm speaking metaphorically, I can easily explain to my fifteen-year-old self why space news is not on the front of today's newspapers: because we are not walking on any moons or planets right now.

I can guarantee if we landed on Mars tomorrow—front page.  What's that, kid?  You don't believe me that science still gets reported?  How about if we, oh, I don't know, discovered a new sub-atomic particle:

Unfortunately, that's not the end of it.  My space assignment continues onwards, and my use of generalities reaches galactic proportions as I try to cover for the absence of even a single dependable fact.  It's quickly becoming apparent that I have done no research whatsoever:

The human race is finally able to construct space stations, the dream of many early science fiction writers, however these stations, such as Mir, or the International Space Station are not really a talking point or an issue today.  In fact, the only event that got any real publicity recently was the Pathfinder expedition to Mars, and that is probably due to the sheer novelty of a remote controlled car driving around a foreign planet.  Even then, a remote controlled buggy was only interesting for a month or so.

I have a fair bit of gall to suggest that space news now belongs on the ninth page, and then go on to quip how a "remote controlled buggy" remained interesting to the public for only a month.  A month!  Any marketer, politician, do-gooder or ne'er-do-well'er would kill for month-long publicity!

But the (s)hits keep on coming.  The remaining quoted text all comes from a single continuous paragraph, which I've broken up here to allow for ease of commenting:

In space stations such as Mir or Skylab, problems are of great concern and are treated accordingly. 

Okay, makes sens...hang on, Skylab?  Where did that come from?  Am I actually suggesting that Skylab (yes, the same Skylab that was de-orbited in 1979) was actually happily falling around the Earth in the late 1990s with health and safety inspectors on board?

Measures are being taken now to make sure no accidents occur on the multinational International Space Station, for they want to improve on the generally poor space-station standard set by Mir. 

I take back what I said earlier—I actually did do research for this assignment.  I must've watched a lot of cartoons.  This is the only reason why I would suggest that Mir, the holder of the following records...

• first modular space station
• largest space station or artificial satellite (until the ISS)
• first long-term research outpost in space
• longest human presence in space (until the ISS)
• longest single human spaceflight

...was "generally poor" on the overall spectrum of space stations.  But enough about Mir.  In very general terms, let's get my young opinion on how NASA is doing:

After the 1986 Challenger disaster, the Shuttle was redesigned and cleared of many flaws, although there is still a 1 in 145 chance that a disaster may occur again. 

Remember that statistic.  It becomes important about, oh, two sentences later:

Nowadays, spacecraft are built and maintained to extremely high standards, with all the latest equipment needed for space travellers to survive.  Missions are not expected to fail nowadays, as the technology and therefore the safety is a step up from the rickety spaceships of the past.

What the fuck?  How exactly does a 1 in 145 chance of DISASTER lead to the conclusion that missions "are not expected to fail"?  If you offered me a 1 in 145 chance of the lottery jackpot, I would get my hands on a ticket faster than you could say "Yuri Gagarin".  If you offered me a 1 in 145 chance of death should I venture to work tomorrow, I would stay home and play Star Fox 64, thank you very much.

But the oddest and most ludicrously hilarious part of this entire assignment is the last line quoted above. "Rickety spaceships of the past".

Rickety spaceships!!

This is a comment so strange and absurd that it almost borders on the Pilkington-esque.  What exactly was my vision of early space travel?  Surplus Russian aircraft from WWII with rockets and solar panels duct-taped to their wings?  Wooden-hulled balls with extendable sails catapulted into the upper atmosphere by thirty elephants jerking a series of pulleys?

I, frankly, am speechless.

Grade: FAIL.  Many say there is a 1 in 145 chance your secondary education will clearly recover from the utter disaster that is this assignment, the Pioneer 10 mission being an example of such a thing, as society reflects.  The synergy of this is only matched by the "sheer novelty and according presumptions therein", said Neil Amstrong.

Join me next time in part 2, as I answer the question on everyone's lips: can a fifteen-year-old write a definite analysis of the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi without actually reading it?

Author's note: part 3 is now also available!

surprise foods (and shattered childhood dreams)

It is a truth of nature that certain foods are simply much more satisfying when they arrive unannounced—whether from a co-worker, a friend, or a mysterious benefactor.

At the top of this list is the muffin. The muffin is the ultimate "surprise food".

It is entirely impossible to go shopping for a muffin and return completely satisfied. No matter how (objectively) good the actual muffin is, it will never live up to expectations. There will always be something “wrong” with it. A muffin that you know is coming is the New Years Eve of food. Disappointing.

Why this is so remains one of the great unsolved questions of 21st century science. Researchers have noted that a muffin which test subjects envision in their mind is like a fond childhood memory—idealistic, laden with positive emotion, and brimming with hope for the future; in a word, perfect. It is simply impossible for a real-life muffin to match these expectations, with the phenomenon becoming more pronounced the greater the time gap between the envisioned muffin and the delivery of the actual muffin. Maximum satisfaction is only achieved when there is no gap between the expected muffin and the actual muffin—that is, when the muffin arrives as a surprise.

I can relate to these findings. My fondest childhood memory dates back to when I was around four years old. I used to love going to a place known as the "Bunny Park". It was my favourite place in the world. I can picture it now in my mind's eye: beautiful rolling hills, covered with lush green grass extending far beyond the horizon. A gleaming lake in the park, teeming with bird life, and crowned with a rainbow. A wee forest, where deer and goat(s) roamed unabashed. And of course, young rabbits, with stout firm legs and luscious fur coats, hopping about merrily in the gleaming sun, whilst children fed them crispy baby carrots.

Curse the Internet. Yesterday, out of curiosity, I googled the Bunny Park. Remember that scene in The Matrix where Keanu Reeves realised the true nature of the world?
I had a similar reaction when I saw THIS:

And then came the reviews.

“Not too many bunnies around anymore. Some of them looked quite sickly.”

“If you see a sick [bunny] please report it as sometimes they do not receive the care they should.”

“…a run down, poorly looked after and boring place”

“The place is in a disgusting state, no grass, animals look sad & like they have mange.”

With Wikipedia blacked out, I only had about two seconds to look at the page for “mange”, but from what I could gather in that time, it’s not an ideal thing for a rabbit to have.

“…the terrain is not really safe enough to let kids walk too far from you, especially near the water.”

I am very interested as to what constitutes “unsafe terrain”. Usually “unsafe terrain” involves a cliff of some description. Regardless, I read on… and found my favourite review of all:

“The Bunny Park is worth a once off trip if you are in the area, and have nothing else to do. Probably better to climb a mine dump.”

Well sir, I thank you for placing the last nail in the coffin of my fondest childhood memory—but seeing as “unsafe terrain” is apparently a consideration for travelling families, I might suggest that perhaps the “mine dump” is best avoided as a tourist destination.

Like dreams of a perfect muffin, my memories lay crushed. But hope remains.

The very antithesis of the muffin is the kebab.

The kebab tops the list of foods that you absolutely must prepare for in advance to maximise your enjoyment. Kebabs and surprises do not mix (aside from any surprises that appear in the toilet at a later point in time). If you don’t believe me, try bringing a tray of kebabs into your next 10:30am Monday meeting.

Kebabs are the Christmas Day of foods. Proper preparation is required, which, for eating a kebab, includes consuming 6+ pints of beer, thinking "I reckon I'll have a kebab tonight" somewhere around 1am, and actually purchasing the kebab at roughly 3am.

Plan your kebabs, take your muffins as they come, and if you have children—take them to the Bunny Park, and then never speak of it again.

wizards, magick, and innocence: microsoft office 2010

Back in November I wrote about the oddness inherent in the delegation of important Microsoft Word tasks to "wizards". Shortly thereafter, I upgraded my still-robust copy of Office '97 to Office 2010.

This was a bad day for talking paperclips, but a great day for smugness, as it enabled me to send .docx files to friends and colleagues with impunity, flush with delight at the fact that many recipients would be unable to open them.
But my joy was short-lived. Needing to write to the Lord Mayor about extremely serious business, and lacking an administrative assistant to set out the particulars of the letter for me, I set out in search of the mythical "letter wizard" to conjure up my correspondence. Given that Office 2010 required around sixty times the disk space of Office '97, I naturally assumed there would be an even greater range of wizards for me to to choose from than before. Perhaps there would now be good and evil wizards—one of whom would be perfect for writing a letter to your grandmother, the other of whom would be great for forging your grandmother's will.

Strangely, this flourishing community of wizards was nowhere to be found. Perhaps I was not yet worthy of their presence? Did I need to complete a tutorial in magick and memos before they would appear? Baffled, I hit "F1". I typed "wizard" into the help box. What I saw destroyed the last vestiges of my lost imagination:

What happened to the wizards?

After the Microsoft Office 2003 release, the wizards, such as memo wizard and resume wizard in Microsoft Word 2007 and 2010 and chart wizard in Microsoft Excel 2007 and 2010 were replaced with templates that are available on the Microsoft Office.com website.

Oh dear. They've killed them all.

Immediately I was reminded of that poignant yet heart-wrenching scene in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, where Jedi across the galaxy are in one fell swoop betrayed, murdered and annihilated by the dark lord Palpatine. The same fate had befallen the race of Microsoft wizards. As I was when I first watched that film, I was close to tears (but, let me reassure you, Star Wars III has not and will not make it to the vaunted list of Films Which Have Made Me Cry—those being Shrek, Shrek 2, and Beethoven).

As the wizard is replaced by the downloadable template, so is the bank teller replaced by the ATM, the corner store by the vending machine, the train conductor by the ticket barrier, and the supermarket cashier by the self-checkout station. With each of these changes we lose a little of our humanity—save for the self-checkout station, in which you can discreetly place your finger under the scales to score a 5-cent bunch of bananas. Here I am sure you will agree that the potassium gained more than replenishes any humanity lost.

Vale, the age of wizards. Here's to 1997.

the best thing i have ever done (which sadly involves word document "wizards")

Earlier this year I posted the following on Facebook:

"Why does the word document 'wizard' always ask so many questions? Surely a proper wizard would already know all the answers."

It attracted sixteen "likes", the most I have ever received.

This was a momentous occasion! No matter how hard I stretched my brain, I could not think of any other time in my life in which I had sixteen separate people congratulating me for something. All the memories dredged up from childhood successes—be they related to school, sport, boy scouts, piano recital, electronics club, state poetry championships, or construct-a-hat-based-on-a-nursery-rhyme-competitions—came with the realisation that only two to five "likes" would have attached to those achievements, varying depending on the amount of family members present.
Even my performance as lead male in my primary school Christmas play (read: Jesus) would not have garnered sixteen "likes", despite my insistence that I perform without glasses in order to portray a more "authentic" son of God (although I have doubts that Jesus ever had to improvise His lines due to an inability to read cue cards).

So, just like the well-known parable about the farming family who sliced open their magical golden egg-laying goose to find even more gold inside than they had previously dreamed possible, I will take The Best Thing I Have Ever Done and extrapolate further comedy from it likewise.

Onwards: why a "wizard"?

As already indicated in The Best Thing I Have Ever Done, these "office wizards" seem to be quite uninformed. Many famous wizards can read minds and see through time. The MS Word Letter Wizard does not even know what day it is.

Furthermore, the office wizards were brought into creation in order to help us lowly, mortal end-users, who do not know a professional memo from an elegant memo, or a return address from a carbon-copy. But most well-known wizards are not actually helpful! Observe.

Exhibit A: Gandalf. Highly egoistical. Has nasty habit of showing up to save the day at times very convenient for furthering his own glorification. Fakes own death. Wears cocksure smile throughout film series; as if to say, "I know what's going to happen, and I'm not going to do anything about it, baby".

Exhibit B: Wizard of Oz. Grade-A phony. Is to real wizards what the tomato is to vegetables, George Lazenby was to James Bond, and Pope Benedict XVI is to the papacy—an impostor.


Exhibit C: Merlin. Senile. Relies on an owl to get him from one day to the next. Sometimes goes by "Merlin the Magician"—weak self-promotion that suggests his actual wizarding prowess is underwhelmingly shocking. Is there a need for "Roger Federer the Tennis Player", or "Freddie Mercury the Singer"? No.

Exhibit D: Mickey Mouse in "Fantasia". Incompetence personified. The Greeks can manage an economy better than this 'wizard' can control even a single magical mop-and-bucket. There's a "bail-out" joke somewhere in all of this, and I'm going to let you find it.