This will hurt me...

A view from the toilet. Mayfair Plaza, Sandy Bay. November 2011. Theme Thursday already, and today's post comes from INSIDE the toilet here in the complex where I toil away. There are a few options if you are in need of a lavatory during business hours, but I prefer this dunny . For one, it is close by. A quick nip through the car park, and you're in the privvy! Secondly, how many times can you say that you've enjoyed the magnificent (and not at all repetitive) artistic styling of Stark (Sandy Bay's answer to Banksy) while sitting on the can ? Certainly, other johns might not be so decorated with the detritus of urban decay, but I find those loos , khazis and latrines far too cramped for my style. Honestly, who wants to go about one’s business like one of those calves penned up in a veal factory farming enterprise? Not this little black duck! If I have to use a bathroom INSIDE, I need space. I need to be able to stretch my legs out lift my arms up and roar like ...

Ezra did his bit for the world today, with two vaccinations - chicken pox and swine flu - to give YOU [and me and Henry and Jen and your kids and their kids and their kids etc etc] safety from a number of preventable, but potentially deadly, diseases. Jen and I joined him in the fight against tetanus and whooping cough (plus swine flu); and Henry (a long supported of vaccination) went with the swine flu on his own. If the little grinning bloke above can do it, you can too! [I have spoken about this before , of course ...]

I have been dismayed to read much of the comment around the Commonwealth’s plan to raise taxation on ‘alcopops’ in an effort to curb the risks associated with binge drinking. While there should be no surprise that the opposition have rubbished it and alcohol industry groups are unhappy , the general critiques that I've seen are very poor. As ever, of the commentaries, the Herald Sun leads the way in outrage . One that really got me riled up (enough to post about it here), was a piece in Crikey titled ‘ Voodoo tax policy on alcopops ’. In it, Bernard Keane speaks of ‘handwringers’ and ‘wowsers’ with a set against kids having fun. He claims that “we’ve still yet to see any evidence that binge drinking is now any worse than in the past”, and makes particular note that the tax ‘attacks’ young women unequally. In not sure where he has been looking, but a quick note of the stats around alcohol-related hospital admissions, alcohol-related family incidents (mostly domestic violence), al...

I have something to declare up front. I have never worn, and intend to never wear, a necktie. I did wear a bow tie for my Grade 10 school ball sixteen years ago, but it did have a clip, which I think renders it null and void. The history of the necktie can be traced back to the Thirty Year War when Croatian mercenaries in the employ of the French, roused the interest of Parisian high society with their traditional small, knotted neckerchiefs (which were more like cravats, to be honest). From here various kinds of dandies and posers have utilised neck ornamentation of various forms for various purposes, not one of which has any actual utility value. This is the first of two key reasons that I am so opposed to neckties. As a child of modernity, I have embraced the notion of "form following function" in the case of clothing. The necktie, to my mind, stands in the company of high heel shoes and facial piercing. It serves no practical purpose and merely hinders individual perfo...

I was wondering what to post on the blog, and I thought that maybe I would do something music-related. Now I love music, and am prepared to listen to just about anything. But what to write about? There's so much to choose from. So I've been thinking about this for a while and then yesterday a song that I like came on the ITunes shuffle (with somewhere around 14,000 songs, it could be just about anything), and I found myself dancing around the living room along with Henry, singing out aloud the words to one of my all time favourite tracks. Let me make it clear: I've loved the song Cecilia for as long as I can remember. It's a happy, jaunty little number that was released as a single off the mega-selling 1970 album Bridge Over Troubled Water , and reached #4 in the US charts. Given that I have known the song for my entire life, I'm not really sure when the lyrical content first struck me as, well, interesting . Now, I can remember that the shift from referring to key...