Choosing a Pizza is More Important Than Choosing a Government

"A day off". Is there any more pleasant phrase in the English language? Well possibly, "its on the house" and "I'll let myself out" run it close but still I think "a day off" is pretty good. Its night on the second and last of my days off, rain is pouring down and amazon.com has just deposited their back catalogue of books on my doorstep. My neighbour believes I'm opening a library. In actual fact I'm opening parcels.

It's slightly pathetic but I get quite excited at opening parcels even when I bought them and I know what's in them. Actually I get more excited in that case because I know I'm going to like the contents and I know how much the purchaser spent to get them. There was a time in my youth when a letterbox was a persons connection to the wider world. Now all that comes are bills and flyers for local pizza delivery stores despite the presence of not one but two "no junk mail" stickers. The little cards from the post office telling me I have something too big to fit in the letter box are always a pleasant addition to my opportunity to get an anchovy and echidna gizzard pizza at half price if I buy two.

Gourmet pizzas give me the shits. Why must people take something as intrinsically boring as a pizza and try to make it interesting. If I was interested in gourmet food then the chances are pretty high that I wouldn't be buying a pizza anyway. This is what goes on a pizza; tomato paste, mozzarella, ham, onion and capsicum. If you want to be a little fancy you can add pepperoni and pineapple. Anything else on a pizza is simply trying to put lipstick on a pig, and that makes the pig taste funny.

I'm not sure why I started raving about pizza, I intended this to be an insightful, nay visionary, entry about Australia's upcoming election with shrewd analysis and witty banter to lighten my undeniable political points. Hmm, screw this, let's have a pizza.

For most people in this country making a decision on the type of pizza they're going to eat is likely to have more impact on their future lives than their voting decision. I live in a safe Labor seat which means I can cheerfully vote for anyone I like confident in the knowledge that it won't actually matter. How people who live in marginal electorates deal with the responsibility I don't know. This relative handful of people will decide which coterie of politicians will mismanage the public weal for the next three years (give or take). In the meantime the airwaves are flooded with advertising and the media attempt to give some brightness to what is essentially a long winded festival of the bland by chasing politicians all over the country on the off chance that they might actually say something.

Fortunately it will all be over in a few weeks. Unlike America where they essentially conduct a months long autopsy of their political leaders while they're still alive our election campaign will be over before Winter becomes Spring. When the green shoots sprout we will have a new government to lead us confidently forward into a future that will probably look very much like the present. This is the wonder of democracy, millions of people get up, vote, select their government and nothing changes very much. Which is good because when politics gets interesting it is generally a sign that things have gone horribly wrong.