Would You Eat Eggs From a Purple Chicken?

There is an open public space near Circular Quay railway station that I walk past in order to encase myself in a metal cocoon that, all things being equal, will deliver me walking distance from my home.  Like many open public spaces it is frequently occupied by various corporate publicity stunts (and the occasional melting bear).  The other week as I walked past cocoon bound I saw that it was the proud home of the Cadbury Egg Farm.

Up until this point I didn't realise that one farmed eggs.  I thought one farmed chickens (or possibly crocodiles) and the eggs just turned up.  Still as part of an ongoing campaign to educate children as to the source of the food this is pretty impressive.  Not only were there no chickens but it didn't actually look like there were any eggs.  There was a big screen that at least depicted chickens, or at least purple chicken-like things, living in what appeared to be large onions on sticks.  The almost chickens seemed pretty happy about that.

From time to time this bucolic farm scene was interrupted so that those passersby who insist on making idiots of themselves in public could perform the chicken dance.  Then the screen showed a big picture of said passersby doing the dance while the chickenish things crowded around the sidelines and flapped their, wings? (I'm guessing here) in approval.  At least one woman is going to regret not wearing a better fitting bra and possibly a turtle neck when she gets a moment for quiet reflection.

So; idiot bystanders doing the chicken dance that is broadcast on a screen liberally festooned with purple chickenish things.  I guess Easter must be coming (although what it's becoming is anybody's guess).  I may be being unfair of course.  It is entirely possible that somebody at Cadbury decided that children need to know where their food comes from and decided that having complete strangers do the chicken dance to the accompaniment of CGI pseudo chickens while pretty girls in purple overalls and white gumboots wandered around with their faces plastered in the kind of smile that can normally only be achieve by fifteen minutes in an electric chair was an appropriate way of doing this.

Now that we are safely assured that the education of our children is in good hands we can turn to the subject for which all of the preceding was merely a rather tedious preamble.  Eggs!  Aren't eggs great?  What other food comes with its own watertight packaging?  Snide jokes about the first person to eat an egg abound but I can actually see it happening.  Some caveman watched a chicken lay an egg and thought "OK, it came out of a chicken's arse but look how easy it is to pick up."  Of course I could be overestimating our ancestors.  Its possible that they just thought they'd found a convenient way of transporting chicken crap.  I wonder how many years went buy before anyone had the courage to actually eat one?  One thing I do know; if he had been confronted by a group of his supposedly evolutionarily superior successors dancing around accompanied by a group of purple almost chickens for the purposes of persuading children to eat chocolate as a form of religious observance he would probably have tossed the eggs aside and gone back to eating bugs.  Which are crunchy and full of protein.

A Cruise: The Holiday You Take When Suicide is too Quick and Painless

As I left my place of employment (I'm a little too honest to call it "work") the other day and strode vigorously (yet with a certain understated style) towards the railway station my attention was captured by what appeared to be an office block floating in the harbour.  I say my attention was captured, really it was beaten across the back of the head, stuffed into a sack and dragged off to parts unknown.  A second incredulous glance reassured me that building codes in Sydney haven't been thrown completely out the window.  What I thought was an office block on its side was in fact a cruise ship the right way up which had been cunningly designed to resemble an office block.

Apparently there is a certain type of person whose idea of a good time is to slowly wander the damper parts of the earth's surface in something so outrageously ugly that it probably gives the fish a heart attack.  From time to time these modern leviathans surface in the port cities of the world where they promptly make even the most ugly and ill designed city look understated and quietly elegant by comparison.  They are the floating equivalent of a Kardashian wedding.

Cruises are, I have heard, a relaxing and peaceful holiday.  These ships therefore must be ideal for the sort of person who likes to take a relaxing and peaceful holiday while surrounded by a hundred thousand tonnes of steel, heavy duty machinery and a few thousand other people who couldn't leave if they wanted to.  It must be rather akin to holidaying in a steelworks that has been cut loose to drift on the ocean currents.

Still live on the ocean wave must have some benefits; several thousand Somali pirates can't be wrong.  Which brings to mind one definite advantage these cruise liners possess; any pirate wanting to attack them will have to provide several hundred feet of scaling ladder just to get on board.  If you spent your entire life outside territorial waters you could probably also qualify for some kind of tax exemption.  There are island nations in the Caribbean smaller than the average cruise ship and probably with a lower permanent population as well.  It can't be too long before you will be able to register a ship as your company's official headquarters for tax purposes.

Finally I think these self propelled apartment blocks are good news for people worried about rising sea levels.  As Archimedes could have told you if you place an object into water it will displace the water around it.  In other words take all of the ocean liners out of the water and sea levels will probably drop by about half a metre.  That's got to be good news for the population of Kiribati at any rate.  Unless their economy depends on tourists from cruise ships of course.

Give Until It Hurts Someone Else

What are the benefits of donating to charity?  Is there a particular reason why, when approached by some complete stranger in the street, we should part with some of our income?  Many people deride charitable donations claiming it fosters dependence and generally helps people who should stop whining about starvation and investigate the benefits of cannibalism but I feel that such an attitude is thoughtless and inappropriate.

Take the people who approach you in the street, artificial smile plastered across their face as they do their best to be nice to people they really can't stand.  This actually helps them gain useful life skills, that smile and cultivated insincerity will be of enormous benefit to them when they try to get a real job.  Think of these poor people as they approach you, their plastic laminated ID and slogan bedecked tshirt adorning their bodies like the tribal markings of old.  What would they be doing if they weren't collecting for charity?  Probably taking drugs or representing the Greens in parliament.  Do you really want to carry that sort of responsibility?  Speaking of those tshirts, what happens if everybody stops giving to charity?  The tshirts will become redundant and in a stroke you will have thrown thousands of Bangladeshi children out of work.  Now they're going to need charity.

While we're on the subject of jobs let's not forget the thousands of people in this country who are quasi gainfully employed funnelling charity money, either voluntary or government provided, from one place to another.  Cancel charity and those people will be out of jobs, what's more since we just made the jobs network redundant they're not going to get another one anytime soon.  And since we just cancelled all the charities there will be noone to help them.  They'll form gangs and start preying on those of us who still have money.

At this point I can hear you crying "Neil, Neil, I don't give a crap about these unemployable deadbeats, tell me what's in it for me!"  I'm glad you asked.  The benefits of giving to charity are many and various.  Firstly of course there is tax deductibility.  It's an oldie but a goodie.  There is nothing like getting a reputation for having a social conscience while the taxpayer (or to be more accurate, other taxpayers) picks up the bill.  Let's not forget that social conscience reputation either.  That can be very handy.  OK, so everybody knows that you only made the donation to distract attention from the ugly court hearing, ongoing police investigation or media expose proving your company's business model relies on strangled puppies.  It doesn't matter, they can't deny that you donated and every little bit of smokescreen helps.  If you're really clever you will start donating long before the subpoenas are issued or the police are informed.  That will make the investigators look like they're persecuting a stand up guy.

There are other benefits to consider as well.  Depending on your particular political and/or religious affiliations donating to the right charity can be a handy way of funnelling money to the terrorist organisation of your choice.  If you're really lucky it will be tax deductible at the same time.  Finally don't forget the impact that donating to charity can have on yourself.  It can make you feel good about yourself, reassure you that you're not a particularly bad person even if your job does involve pitchforking strangled puppies into the back of a truck.

There is also the slight possibility that if you donate money to charity some of it might actually go to helping someone in need.  Personally I doubt it but you shouldn't discount the possibility.

That Man Who Buys You A Beer May Just Own a Super Yacht

Look! Out on the water! Its a seabird, its a seaplane, no; its a super yacht!  Yes, apparently the worlds oceans are so thick with super yachts there's barely room for water.  So much for the global financial crisis.  On every sea (and some of the more socially acceptable lakes) there are super yachts swarming like salmon in spawning season.

At least this is the impression I got from the employment section of the newspaper the other day.  "Join the fastest growing maritime employment sector!" the advertisement screams concealing for the moment the fact that in Australia at least the second fastest growing maritime employment sector is the navy.  It will probably come as no surprise to the discerning reader (assuming a couple of them have wandered onto this blog by accident) that this advertisement was not placed by employee hungry super yacht owners desperate to get themselves a crew.  No, it was placed by a company that apparently trains people to be crew members on super yachts.

Of course there are super yachts out there and of course they need crewing but I can't imagine it is such a burgeoning growth area that it will suck up the nation's pool of unemployed.  Also I'm not sure whether super yacht crewman would be such a great job.  Yes you get to see the world, or at least seventy percent of it.  Specifically the seventy percent that is water and lacks such basic amenities as anything at all.  When you do touch land it will be at the sort of place the owners of super yachts want to visit.  I'm sure they'll be nice but you might find that the purchasing power of a super yacht crewman's salary doesn't go very far.

Another concern is trouble in the workplace.  I'm not saying it will happen but if you have an argument with your boss you can't just storm out, not unless you're a very good swimmer.  Possibly the best description I can think of for super yacht crewman is "paid hostage".  The prevalence of pirates in some stretches of the ocean means that there is always a chance you can swap that status for "unpaid hostage".  I very much doubt if you could get the day off for seasickness either.

All in all crewing a super yacht is likely to mean lots of hard work while stuck in the middle of an ocean or tied up at shore surrounded by the type of people you would normally run a mile to avoid.  No wonder the training institute has to advertise; it won't be long before they resort to shanghaiing just to keep numbers up.  I think its time glass bottomed beer tankards made a comeback.

At Least There Isn't A Camel in my Apartment

A considerable amount of my spare time seems to be taken up dodging insects.  I've mentioned before that my apartment seems to be a kind of locus for the more mentally retarded members of the insect community and now we can add crickets to the list.

I like hearing crickets chirruping as I walk past parks or pieces of bushland in the evening.  The sound is rhythmic and soothing.  It's a lot less pleasant when the crunchy little bugger is inside your apartment less than a metre from your head.  The noise was driving me batty and I searched for a while trying to find the cricket and I will confess that my thoughts were not entirely pacifistic.  Just as I was about to give up the search the cricket cleared things up nicely by flying directly into my head and bouncing off my skull.  I'm not sure what happened to it after that but it stopped chirruping so I'm going to count it as a win.

Having liberated my apartment from the chirruping hordes I celebrated by having a bit of a tidy up.  I do this periodically, usually to give me somewhere to put something else down.  My apartment is predominantly mess with the occasional oasis of tidiness.  This oasis isn't static, it moves about depending on where I am and what I need to do at any given time.

On the subject of oases I can't help thinking that the real ones have been a blight on humanity ever since their inception.  What is an oasis after all?  Its a tiny patch of life supporting land surrounded by desert.  Without oases a desert is unlivable so people don't try to live there.  Add a few oases, however and the whole complexion changes.  Suddenly the desert goes from total death trap to just barely viable and that is all the encouragement that the human race needs.

Suddenly the desert was overrun with just slightly more people than its resources could sustain.  These people lived a desperate, marginal life winding their way from oasis to oasis fighting over the rights to these precious life giving specks in the vast emptiness.  Oh yes, and domesticating camels.  If there is one thing above all else that oases should not be forgiven for it is the fact that they prevented us from simply killing every camel on sight.  Camels must be the smelliest, surliest, most bad tasting animal on the planet.  I'm pretty sure they only allowed themselves to be domesticated in the first place so that they were better positioned to piss us off.  Let's face it, if any non domesticated animal behaved the way camels do we would have hunted them to extinction years ago.

So; poverty, tribalism, warfare and the continued existence of camels.  For all this oases are to blame.  Frankly they should be banned.

Note to Self: Only Piss on the Living

There was a bit of a furore recently about some video footage showing some US Marines abusing the bodies of dead Taliban fighters; specifically by urinating on them.  I agree it was rather gross but it does make me wonder about peoples priorities.  I, personally, would have been more disgusted if they had done it while their victims were still alive.  Apparently you can kill people, waterboard them, lock them up in Gitmo indefinitely but piss on one corpse and suddenly you're beyond the pale.

It has often occurred to me that we tend to treat the dead a lot better than we treat the living.  A group of corpses get a golden shower and its called an outrage.  If it happens to a porn actress its called an extra twenty bucks and a chance to wash up in a hand basin after shooting finishes.  Of course this is a grossly unfair comparison; the video of the marines doing their thing had much better production values for one thing.

There are cultures where it is traditional to eat portions of the deceased to ensure the continuance of desired family traits and give a beloved ancestor a form of immortality.  I can certainly understand those people being upset at pissing on corpses from a hygiene aspect alone.  Such cultural sensitivities aside I find it difficult to get too upset at such things being done to corpse while much worse things are being done to the living who might actually have an opinion about it.  Given a choice I would permit the whole world to piss on my corpse in return for a guarantee that they will check to make sure I'm actually dead before they start.

Before you get the impression that I'm some corpse abusing psycho I would like to point out that I don't actually support the wanton desecration of human remains.  I just think that if you have to wantonly desecrate somebody then a dead person is probably the most harmless place to start.  Judging by the reaction to the video, especially amongst those who might normally be expected to support the marines, I suspect I'm in a small minority (please don't send me links to internet sites, I'm not that interested).  Still I suppose on balance the reaction is a hopeful one.  If people can get that bent out of shape about atrocities committed on dead people it is just possible that one day they will extend their concern to the living as well.

Reality is the Place With the Food

Reality is one of those things we tend to put up with until something better comes along.  I have yet to meet anyone who was entirely happy with reality yet we endure it with varying degrees of reluctance and resentment.

One of the principal methods used to deal with reality is to get as far away from it as we possibly can.  The most common way of doing this is essentially to compartmentalise.  That is, slice reality into a small, self specific piece and focus completely on that interacting with the rest of reality only when absolutely necessary.  Others simply remove themselves from reality completely and operate according to an artificially constructed reality that exists only in their head.  I call this the Insane or Ideological approach to reality.  Such people while frequently gifted tend to be appallingly dangerous.

Something that has become increasingly popular in recent times is computer generated alternate realities; things like Second Life.  Originally thought to be of interest only to computer geeks and money launderers Second Life has become highly popular with a lot of people who probably wouldn't classify themselves as either (I'll wait for the jury's verdict before committing myself).  In Second Life people can take on different personalities, different jobs, build homes and generally behave as they would in the "real" reality.  Frankly I can't see the point, you can do all of that simply by living your life and you can save yourself the expense of buying a computer.  I suppose the appeal is in the nuancing, you can be yourself but that little bit sharper, smarter, sexier and happier than you are in real life.  Personally I find maintaining one personality to be hard work, I'm certainly not going to take on any more.

I think the idea of a leisure pursuit that duplicates the existence one is trying to escape from, albeit in idealised form, completely misses the point.  Slightly more understandable is something like World of Warcraft.  I emphasise the word "slightly".  In this game you wind up in a totally different world as (if you wish) a totally different species.  The sort of things you encounter are slightly more of a change than simply being a rocket scientist instead of an accountant.  Only not so much.  The situations may be different but the people aren't.  How could they be?  Short of a collective personality transplant any alternate reality is going to wind up pretty close to the real one because it is inhabited by the same types of people.  Finally of course reality wins because its the only place we can get food.

I personally live in a fantasy world during most of my spare time.  I rewrite, reinterpret and put a gentle gloss on my life to make it a little more acceptable to me.  However I never fail to realise that it isn't real, just a gentle self deception to make my life a little more bearable.  It might not be reality but you can see it from there.  I'm not divorced from reality, we've just come to a mature decision to see a little less of each other.