Bully for You

Most of us probably experienced the odd bully during our schooldays. Some of us would even have had the experience of having some kid who was a foot (by that, I mean approximately thirty centimeters) taller than us, coming up to us in the playground and demanding our treasured peanut butter sandwich or our rare sultana cupcake, backed up by the threat that “My farver’s a policeman, an’ he’ll get you, uvverwise.”

Usually, this sort of bully grew out of this attitude to life when one or all of the following things happened: 1) somewhere along the line you became a foot taller than them; 2) you came to the defiant stance that their father could do nothing to you if you were in the right; 3) they came to the realization that their father was not going to use his position to bail them out on ill-founded trivialities; 4) a few quick left hooks to the snozzle made them re-think their tactic; or 5) they just grew up into socially responsible young adults.

The sad part is that not all bullies grow out of it, and not all older bullies started their bullying careers as young bullies. Some older bullies develop their tactics because they become greedy, avaricious or power hungry. Others develop their bullying stances because of some developing delusion that they are somehow smarter and more powerful than anyone else and/or that their own particular brand of god has, in his or her wisdom, personally invested in them an inviolable right to supremacy.

We’ve all had the misfortune to see the results that adult bullies have reeked. History has filled its pages with such fiends. In more modern times, we have had Winston Churchill, Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Idi Amin and Pol Pot, just to mention a few. In present times, we have had the southern hemisphere tainted. This southern hemisphere, which was always ranked in the top two hemispheres of this great planet, has been stained by the likes of Augusto Pinochet and Robert Mugabe.

Not all stains upon our great hemisphere, though, come from world renowned despotic bullies, and some of the stains are locally produced. As an example, we have the current case of two elected representatives taking on the mantel of political priests who have been ordained to command their flocks to obey their orders that have been ratified by godly processes, and to punish disobedience by having transgressors banished from their shelters against the fiery ravages of hell. At great fear of having my tongue excised from my ugly, but still serviceable head, I name these two bullies as Jack FellaBoxer and Belittler Genuflect.

It behoves all of us cranky Aussies, whether we be old cranks or young cranks, to carefully watch the developments flowing from the alleged bullying tactics of this pair. It is important to do so for numerous reasons, three of which are: to nip in the bud, another potentially dangerous political rampage by elected representatives; to shout loudly and clearly the message that we will not tolerate liars, thugs and bullies in our parliaments; and to afford justice to the victimised staff of the Goanna Night Club.

Our schools, our communities, our parliaments and our world need no bullies.

Crankyfella

Let's Play Doctors and Nurses

Flattered (and bewildered) as I was to receive an invitation to be a regular cranky old woman, I’m not always like this you know. I try to be happy, serene and content. But it’s sometimes very hard not to scream with frustration.

I recently had surgery on a little finger that was never going to get any better without intervention, and the admitting sister asked me a lot of questions. I patiently responded, although I had answered all these questions on a sheet of paper which I mailed to the hospital a couple of weeks before. Then I answered them again the day before, when someone from the hospital rang for pre-op checks. So all of my responses had been recorded at least twice. But they’re trying to ensure no errors, so I went through the answers for the 3rd time, and reached the stage where I had a giddy set of colourful bands on my RIGHT wrist: a white bracelet giving my name and other personal details; a red bracelet saying ALLERGIC TO MORPHINE and a vivid orange bracelet saying NO BLOOD OR OTHER PROCEDURES ON RIGHT ARM.

I could see this might cause a problem since the surgery was on my left hand and the other would be more convenient, but she assured me they could use my leg for their procedures, and then promptly put a blood pressure cuff on my right arm. I removed it, stared at her, pointed at the orange bracelet and said gently, No, no procedures on this arm, remember? Oh, she said, I forgot. She forgot? We had had a long conversation about it, she had selected a bracelet to warn the doctors, and then promptly forgot.

Now I read that good old Dr Kevin Mudd wants nurses to take over some of the work of doctors to ease the burden of the medicos. Sorry? We don’t have enough doctors? Let us train some more. Let’s choose the best of the nurses and put them through medical school to qualify as doctors, and then, hmmm, this is the hard bit, we’d have to PAY them as doctors.

Don’t get me wrong here, I march every time nurses fight for more pay. They are among the kindest, most thoughtful, careful, caring and patient people I have ever met, and they are much better at giving injections than any doctor. But they are not doctors, and they are not qualified to take on medical evaluation, diagnosis, and prescribing of medicines. I know many of them are capable, but until they have qualified as medical doctors I cannot rely on them. I won’t rely on them. And they won’t diagnose me.


Ana Thema

The Bitter End

Yesterday, I’d had a pretty AOK day for one of my cranky disposition. I’d played with my PC for a while and leanrt how to handle PDF documents. My only genuine complaint was that I had a headache that had been worsening over the previous couple of weeks.

After a nice meal, I watched the highlights of the ARL on my TV for a bit and then put on a stimulating DVD about the KGB and their atrocities. However, the headache worked itself to fever pitch. I felt like both ends of my head were meeting in the middle. In an attempt to offer sympathy, my wife suggested that it might be PMT.

This morning, I’d had enough. I decided that I would take me off to my GP. That would have been simple enough, but I needed some cash to pay him with. So I limped, with my head between my hands, down to the main street. I needed an ATM, but found myself hardly able to decide between two of them; one with the NAB and the other with the CBA. I painfully chose the CBA in the end, because I used to be a shareholder back in the good old days when it belonged to the commonwealth. An MSS guard standing nearby thought that I was robbing the stupid machine, but did not persist when I explained that I was just banging my head against the screen for relief from my headache.

Eventually, I obtained the wad of notes necessary to pay my GP, who, like so many of them, charges like a wounded bull. As I stuffed the cash into my pocket, A close neighbour saw me and said, “What’s wrong, Crank, you look RS!” I explained about my headache, in between groans, and told him that I was off to see my GP who had only recently given me an ECG and sent me for an MRI when the headache was only a pup of the mongrel that it now was. I excused myself, saying that I was off to catch a SRA train for two stations, if only I could manage it.

“Don’t waste your time going to a GP,” he says, “He’ll only want to put you on an NSAID and see you again in a month.” I thought that there was probably merit in what he was saying, especially since he had a lot to do with doctors as he was a TPI as a result of WWII injuries. “Tell you what,” he continued, “why don’t you do as I do, and go straight to the ED at the local hospital. Come on, I’ll give you a lift.”

So, like some sort of insipid sheep, I hopped into his BMW, and after only a short pit-stop at the BP service station, we lobbed up to the ED at the hospital. I only had to wait four hours to be triaged by an RN, and another seven hours to be seen by a JRMO who took my BP, gave me a PR examination, and sent off some blood for PSA, FBC, ESR, UEC and LFT’s. When the results came back, he deliberated like a learned judge and then declared that he was stumped. So, he asked the RMO to have a gander at me. The RMO promptly ordered an urgent CT scan, and within a few short hours, he, too, went into deliberative mode and then threw up his hands, saying, “I’ll need to get the VMO to see you.”

The VMO was as clever as his title was grandiose. He stepped into the semi-private becurtained cubicle, and within one microsecond, exclaimed, “I know what’s wrong with you! I was just reading about cases like you this AM in the BMJ. You’ve got ANTS.” “Ants,” retorted my good self, “I haven’t been troubled with ants since I bought a four gallon drum of DDT.”

“ANTS,” he repeated with the look of a Nobel Prize winner on his physiognomy. “ANTS, Acronym Neurological Torment Syndrome!”

Simultaneously, I felt an exacerbation of my headache, but also a profound sense of relief. This VMO, this erudite student of the trivial, had been able to put a name to my condition.

“Thank you very much indeed, Doctor,” I gushed, “You’re either a genius or you’ve got fantastic ESP.”

Crankyfella

The Writing is on the Wall

Almost everyone over the decrepit age of thirty years grizzles about a particular style of artistic effort by those younger than themselves.

Some people who are very well heeled, pay very big bickies to travel to remote areas to see examples of wall and cave paintings that have endured for centuries or even millennia. Upon their return to their urban dwellings, these people are often the first to decry the brilliant examples of wall, floor, window, fence and carriage art that will, in its own right, be marvelled at in millennia to come as the defining expression of twentieth and twenty-first centuries culture.

What was it that urged ancient man (man in the common gender, that is) to relax after an exhausting day of hunting whatever animal happened to be in culinary fashion, or gathering whatever fruit or seed happened to be trying to secure its own existence on the planet at the time, and make his or her mark on the world with some pigment or other? What ran through the minds that dwelled in tired and weary bodies to express themselves by making marks on the valued refuges that were their homes and social gathering places?

The driving force of such ancient expressions was no doubt the same as the driving force that impels our present-day young folk to take to the walls and other physical components of their built environment with paints and brushes and more recently, preferentially with paints of all hues that are available in aerosol form in conveniently portable spray cans. That force, that single force is that of the artist who wishes to express an idea of beauty or a notion that is best communicated by graphic means. Some artists express their souls by music, some by sculpture, some by poetry, some by literature, some by photography and some by making pigmented marks or representations on portable pieces of canvas, wood or bark. Many of our young artists feel the need to express themselves by spraying paints on fixtures such as fences and sides of buildings, or upon mobile but hardly portable structures such as railway carriages. Their canvas may be different, and the subjects of their works may be different, but they aim for artistic release just the same as all of the other artists who have gone before them.

Many more traditional artists of the past and present have strived or are striving to convey messages to their publics (all of those people who will view their works immediately or even millennia into the future) which are perhaps unacceptable, grotesque, sacrilegious, or perverted at the time of their actual expression. Our young graffiti artists are no different. Some of their expressions are highly idiosyncratic and cryptic, but the strength of the motivation for their expression is enormous. For many young graffiti artists, their message is so powerful and compelling that they are willing to take great physical risks to their lives and limbs in the execution of their works. Some of the artists are actually willing to run legal risks and imprisonment risks in order to satisfy the profound urges of their insightful souls.

Unlike most of their contemporary fellow artists working in other media, our young graffiti artists eschew the attractions of monetary recompense for their works. They do not pervert their calling by sullying their souls with the evil cash nexus. They maintain purity of purpose. As well, they eschew personal fame and acclamation by doing their artistic efforts mostly during the dark, unwitnessed hours and by ethically restraining themselves from gracing their works with their signatures which might potentially make some art dealer very rich at some future time.

Our graffiti artists are often despised and cursed by most, but are actually our unsung heroes who selflessly make their colourful contributions to enrich our culture at no monetary charge to us as viewers. Let us all take time in our busy, conservative lives, to pay tribute and thanks to our graffiti artists, our cultural warriors.

Battler

No Strings Attached

Every time I apply for a job, be it part-time or full-time, and by a miracle of fate, I actually get to the interview stage (which, once upon a time was the only stage) I am told that I am not suitable for the job because I don’t have the required IT skills, or because I don’t have a post-graduate degree in office management or a diploma in virtual reality relationships.

I am not completely stupid. I know that these lame brained rejection excuses are only rationalisations by secretly directed human relations specialists (who once would have been called staff clerks.) I know, and fully appreciate that they are certainly not rejecting me because of my grey hair, or my wrinkled skin, or because of my unfortunate diminution of lean muscle mass, or even because of my odd but well concealed lapses of memory for names of prime ministers or the interviewer’s company. I know the real reason!

After many pre-sleep hours of detailed consideration, I finally stumbled onto the real reason for my unreasonable rejections. The real reason is that I had been wearing the laces of my brand-name joggers carefully tied into bows with meticulous equality of the lengths of the loops and end strands. I had purchased these brand-name joggers specifically to add a touch of carefree youthfulness to my very best safari suit that I reserved for job interview situations. That was a big mistake.

In order to rectify my mistake, I have been practising walking around, and bounding up stairs, with my laces completely undone and flinging in great arcs around my joggers and ankles. I have cracked the code of conspicuous youthfulness.

Unfortunately, this has exposed yet another covert plot of discrimination against those of senior calendar years: the infantalisation of those of us who are unfortunate enough to have had purely accidental trips over our shoe laces and have ended up in public hospital orthopaedic wards!

Battler

Stifficate Watfour

Yesterday afternoon, I was meant to have a wonderful day out on the foreshores of Sydney Harbour.

After an enjoyable perambulation to Bennelong Point, where I pondered on the fantastic abilities of Bennelong himself, that remarkable indigenous leader of early colonial times, I felt the call of nature. So, I did what I was wont to do, and headed for the facility at Circular Quay that is run as a service to the public and at public expense.

Upon arrival at that august alimentary adjustment post, I headed for the entrance passage like a milk cart horse heading for its chaff bin. Alas, I had not put one foot into that passageway when an official-looking man in a sloppy-looking uniform, drew me to a quick halt whilst he sat on a tall stool behind his newly installed lectern. “Certificate!” he demanded. “Certificate?” queried I. “You’ll need at least a Certificate 1 in Trouser Fly Technology to go in there,” says he. “But I don’t have a Certificate 1 in anything,” I explain, “and all I want to do is a good old-fashioned bowel movement.”

“Sorry, sir,” he said in a voice of authority and loud enough for even a concentrating busker to note in detail, “but no appropriate Certificate 1, 2, 3 or 4, and you can’t enter. You only need a Certificate 1 at this stage, but from next 22 September, you will need a Certificate 4 in Genital and Perineal Hygiene as a condition of entry.”

“Look,” I pleaded, “I now rather urgently need a bog. On the way down here, I had set my mind on it and now there is no turning back. I know what to do once I get into one of those cubicles. My mother taught me at a very early age by grasping me from behind around both thighs and holding me out over an enamel pot whilst extolling me to do big jobbies.”

“Sorry, sir, standards are standards,” he pontificated.

“Well,” says I, “I’ll take my business elsewhere.” Little did he know, but I had another part-time private cubicle in a very clean building in Martin Place. So, I strode off to the bus stop.

“You beaut!” I said to myself as a 399 bus pulled up immediately. I dunked my pensioner ticket in the impersonal ticket inspection machine, but “Certificate, please sir,” came from the driver. “What, what, what,” I stammered. “You’ll need at least a Certificate 1 in Bus Step Safety before I can let you travel,” politely came from the same driver.

Two hours of tap dancing on the spot later, I did an uncertificated number two at home.

What fool or tribe of fools dreamed up all of these certificates that are now mandatory for performing functions that we old fashioned simpletons and our forebears have always been able to carry out without problems, risks, mishaps or law suits?

Methinks it is time for those of us with a trace of sensibility left in our souls to follow Dylan Thomas’ imperative to “rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Crankyfella

A Tinfull of Daylight

When I was a schoolboy battler, I had a beaut money box that was shaped and looked like the Commonwealth Bank building in Martin Place, Sydney. Incidentally, that was when we, the people, owned the Commonwealth Bank, and two-way traffic used to go up and down Martin Place.

Every Tuesday, at primary school, we used to be able to operate our bank accounts. We could open accounts, make deposits and make withdrawals, with the headmaster acting as the teller. Upon opening an account, we received a free one of these money boxes, and if we filled it, we could take it to school or the bank, deposit its contents, and receive a free replacement money box. I used the money box to house any spare pennies, ha’pennies and threepences that I might have. When family finances would allow, I was able to deposit the odd sixpence at school and then swell with pride when I saw the entry in my fabric-paper covered passbook. At one stage, my balance actually reached ₤2-2s-6d (two pounds, two shillings and sixpence.) This gave me a reserve against which I could draw, on special occasions, to buy little novelty gifts for my family members.

Now, even in primary school, I did not consider it rocket science (even though I had never heard the term, “rocket science”) that savings were something that you put aside in a safe place at times when you had a surplus (even if a very modest surplus) so that they could be drawn on at later times of scarcity or special need.

In adult years, I have been the unwilling, kicking and screaming victim of the greatest hoax ever perpetrated against a population, and especially against the sub-population to which I, personally, belong. That sub-population is the 25% of us who are “night people.” We prefer to go to bed a bit later and sleep in, in the morning. The other 75%, of course, are “early risers.” I do not represent them in this argument. However, the logic of what I have to say applies to all. The great hoax, to which I refer, is none other than the Great Daylight Savings Hoax.

The half-wits who dreamed up this hoax, forgot to dream up a mystical daylight hours money box. Even if they had thought of this in passing, they still did not dream up a way of truly putting daylight time into this money box and a way of making withdrawals of some or all of these daylight hours in times of scarcity or urgent need of daylight.

What did the half-wits do; they compelled people who did not have a morning surplus, to displace some of their daylight onto the afternoon which already had a surplus. This way, they deprived us “night people” of a decent night’s sleep, because the business day had already begun by the time we were trying to wipe the sleep sand out of the corners of our eyes. “But, but, but, you’ll have time to have a round of golf before tea,” they argued. Well, I don’t play golf; I can’t afford it, and in any case, even if I could afford it, it would still be a gross waste of time. So, why would any reasonable person with at least three neurons to rub together, want to save daylight from one period just to completely waste it and squander it thoughtlessly in another period. That is not the way that savings work!

If that were not bad enough, the half-wits committed another crime against humanity in the process. Well, by humanity, I mean the sub-population of us (no, this is a different sub-population, but sometimes the two overlap) who are what the politically correct buffoons like to label “pigmentally challenged.” By that, I mean that even if we spent 106 hours per day in the “saved up” daylight and sunshine, we would never get a tan. We don’t want or need extra daylight hours, no matter where they are stolen from. What we need is less daylight, so that we can walk the streets like everyone else and have the security of not getting sunburnt.

Daylight savings half-wits can rot in hell, where there is permanent, total, non-interruptable daylight.

Battler

A Penny for Your Thoughts

“What’s that funny looking thing that that man’s riding, Grandpa?”

“That’s a penny-farthing bicycle, Young Pat. See the size of the wheels, one big and one small, just like the size of the coins that used to be used.”

Back in those days of pennies and farthings, millionaires were rare. Those who had a million pounds were very wealthy indeed.

Although the farthing went out of circulation in about the late 1920’s, the ha’penny (half penny) stayed in use until the hand-over to decimal currency in Australia in 1966. At that time, most of the currency denominations, which had been in use throughout Australia’s white settlement, were re-incarnated in decimal coins of equal value and usage. The penny virtually handed over its baton to the cent, which was only marginally higher valued at 1.2 pence. Otherwise, values were handed over in direct equivalence. The cent coin was joined by its big brother, the two-cent coin, and both enjoyed everyday usage. Things such as lollies, could be purchased using just one of these coins at a time for transactions.

Things went relatively smoothly in 1966 and the official hand-over period that followed. With a few feats of mental arithmetic, people were able to carry on as they had done since the demise of the farthing. However, instantaneously, on 14 February 1966, Australia gained a massive group of new millionaires.

At that time, many ordinary suburban houses in metropolises such as Sydney, were able to be purchased for prices between $8,000 and $20,000. Thus, for an average income of around $2,500 per annum, a working man was able to buy an ordinary home for a bit over three years’ earnings, or buy an exceptional quality home for about eight years’ earnings. Since then, though, in comparable locations, the cost of an ordinary home has escalated to about 12 years’ average earnings, and the cost of an exceptional home to about 20 years’ earnings.

For an ordinary family, nowadays, that has somehow managed to pay off a heavy mortgage and own their own home, have furniture in it, and perhaps have a car, they are, at least, approaching millionaire status. For families doing well in the earnings and real estate departments, a very high proportion will have reached or significantly exceeded the criterion for millionairehood.

If things keep going as they are (or even vaguely close to it) in five years’ time, we will have 75% of the Australian adult population being millionaires.

The poor one cent and two cent coins have long ago been made redundant, and the five cent coin is all but useless. The ten cent coin has virtually become the lowest ranked member of the coin brigade.

This example of dealing in large numbers in real estate, is just one among very many in the field of commerce, business, governmental spending, taxes, and the like. The fundamental point is that we are now required to deal in and to record and to do arithmetic in, huge, huge numbers. Moreover, this situation is going to get worse and worse as each five years goes by.

What cheeses me off, is that our Federal Government chooses to ignore this ridiculous situation. How long do we have to wait until we have federal parliamentarians who can view the nation that they represent with a wide gaze, and notice some of the housekeeping things that need to be done?

Blind Freddy, if the dear old Police Commissioner were not buried at Randwick, would be able to see that even by issuing “new dollars” where one “new dollar” equalled ten of our present dollars, would bring things back to sensibility for the time being, and allow us to once more think in terms of our lowest denomination of currency, not the good old cent, but the “good new cent”!

Then it would be, “Welcome back to earth, you ex-millionaires.”

Crankyfella