Category: Personal

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Perfectly normal poo

I’m pleased to report that despite the scary “one of our cats might have a tapeworm” news last week, the pathologist reports that my stool sample was perfectly normal.

Just think. Someone’s job is to spend all day working through a rack of little plastic jars full of people’s poo, pulling it apart and looking at it carefully under a microscope. Now what sort of perspective on life would that give you?

My cholesterol’s up a bit though. There go the chocolate biscuits…

I have chosen not to illustrate this post with a photo.

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A Night of Politics: grubby, grubby…

The entire evening was filled with politics yesterday and the chafing this morning is quite painful and I learned a lot.

Christian Kerr, the national affairs editor for Crikey, was promoting his book “in conversation with” Antony Green, the thinking woman’s crumpet — a combination too good to miss! We went for dinner afterwards.

I didn’t realise I’ve actually met Christian before, until he saw me. “I know you,” he said. “You were the first person to play me I Like It Both Ways with Shaun Micaleff at 5UV.” I have no recollection of this event, Your Honour. However Christian recalled sufficient details for me to be convinced the event probably did happen. Somewhere. He knew certain obscure hand gestures. Stop asking questions.

In a preview of the federal election and subsequent conversation I learned:

  • Christian thinks that the election won’t be fought over industrial relations, as many pundits are saying, but over the economy. It’ll be about the Howard government’s “sound economic management” (as they describe it) versus the It’s Time factor.
  • Unless something changes, it will be a Labor victory. For all the talk of “the polls are all over the place,” Antony Green says this is the most consistent series of polls he’s ever seen.
  • There is a Big Yabby in Alexander Downer‘s electorate, at Goolwa, which is symbolic somehow.
  • Malcolm Turnbull could still win the federal seat of Wentworth thanks to his Fabulousness Factor.
  • No-one seems to understand why John Howard won’t support gay-related issues. And I’ve just finished reading his biography — nothing there gives a clue either.
  • Mattresses.
  • Iguanadons.

Now where’s that moisturiser…?

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Slagged off nationally: I’ve made it!

Crikey logo

Monday’s piece on the Citizenship Test generated some intriguing comments in Crikey yesterday and here too — but this one takes the biscuit.

Adrian Ridgway writes: Stilgherrian must be an idiot — my eight year son old got thirteen of the sample questions right — without referencing the booklet! My guess Stilgherrian must have gone to Grammar or one of those other special schools where the only skills necessary are football and socialising with the right sort of people — he’s probably a lawyer or stockbroker these days. Or maybe an immigration broker. Latte-set liberals (small l) need to pull their heads in — being invited to become an Australian citizen is a privilege — not a right, just as Stilgherrian probably exercises the right to invite who he chooses to a party in his into his home, we as a society should be allowed to exercise the right to determine who, and under what circumstances, immigrants are allowed to enter Australia. The point of the test is not to put up a barrier to anybody, but to enshrine in law as part of the process Immigrants understand they are joining an established society, not establishing colonies. (Many apologies to Aboriginal Australia — we knew not what we did at the time).

Just how many ways can one paragraph be wrong? And I’m not talking about the typos…

I love it!

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Failing the Citizenship Test

Excellent. On the basis of the Draft Citizenship Test Resource Book released yesterday I’d fail Australia’s new Citizenship Test. And if a privately-educated 5th-generation Aussie-Anglo like me can’t do it, I reckon few other Australians would pass either.

But that’s OK, because a multiple-choice “Citizenship Test” is meaningless. Let’s remind ourselves what happened when Apu went for US citizenship in The Simpsons. “Being American” was reduced to a cliché.

And the booklet itself is a gorgeous piece of political propaganda that’ll achieve the following:

  • The bitter old Alan Jones listeners Howard thinks he needs to placate will be relieved to see an emphasis on the UK as the biggest source of migrants and Christianity as the biggest religion. They’ll think this will stop the “wrong” people becoming citizens. Once more, Howard is Big Tough Daddy protecting them from the woggy bogeymen.
  • It’ll cause Howard’s much-hated “elites” — that is, anyone capable of using logic, analysis, multi-syllable words or joined-up thinking generally — to run around in circles for a week or two, losing focus on real election issues.
  • Howard gets another chance to moisten over all those “achievements” he personally considers important but which he could never achieve himself — being a soldier (because of his hearing problem) and playing cricket (because he’s completely bloody hopeless).
  • It’ll create a minor black market in the answers to the test, which will appear approximately a week after the first potential citizens are processed.

What’s remarkable is how backward-looking the booklet is… and how biased to Howard’s personal interests.

The words “science”, “physics”, “medicine”, “genetics”, “aviation”, “satellite”, “solar” and “film” don’t appear at all, despite Australia’s renown contributions in those fields. “Beer”, “ale” and “lager” are completely absent. “Literature” appears just once. “Computer” only once too — in the context of the test being computer-based.

Who was the first Prime Minister of Australia? Who cares? “George Washington,” suggested our Korean cleaner this morning with a laugh — but of course most Australians would indeed know more about the US system than our own. Do we really need to know where Phar Lap’s heart is? Will the Opening Ceremony of the 2000 Olympics really be of any relevance in 5 years time?

Are we choosing Australian citizens for the 21st Century, or putting together a geriatric pub trivia team?

One question really makes me laugh, though. Who do members of Parliament represent? This is a trick question, right?

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What is my degrading media designation?

Author John Birmingham writes (well, of course he writes, he’s an author):

I recently saw myself described as an ‘overrated misanthropic pot monster.’ I liked that so much I’m thinking of getting a tee shirt printed. It made me think of [writing a column] on the topic of media tags, you know — adjective adjective noun. But I couldn’t get four hundred words out of it. So I thought I’d throw it out here. Invent your own degrading media tag.

I like the challenge. I haven’t thought up one for him. But I’m wondering… What would be a good “degrading media designation” for me? And, for that matter, for the Prime Minister?

(On the latter, “lying rodent” doesn’t count. It has to have two adjectives. Even though a Google search on “lying rodent” gives you… well, look for yourself.)