The hottest new show on TV
Feb. 26th, 2009 09:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyI can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but I'm going to do some post-graduate study in health economics this year, half paid by me, half by my work. The university year starts next week so I was doing some preparatory stuff today - writing due dates in my diary, that sort of thing - when it hit me: this is it. This is what I do. I mean, it is what I do, but up till now I've seen myself as a jobbing accountant; in the future, though, any new jobs I look for will be in the health system like my current one. Which is not a bad thing, but it just sort of crept up on me.
I watched an episode of Time Team yesterday. They must have dug up half of Britain by now without ever finding exactly what it is they've been looking for, but happily finding something else instead. I'd like to pitch a TV show called Tax Team, in which a team of specialist accountants (including: Phil, capital gains tax; Jenny, fringe benefits tax; and Cam, wine equalisation tax*) audit the financial affairs of various historical figures to see how much they would have owed the Tax Office - or would they have got a tax refund? Dun dun DUN! You can't tell me that won't rate.
My boss was reminiscing yesterday about the summer job he had a teenager as the lifeguard at the Cobden (pop. 1,400) swimming pool, and how it was burgled twice one year. 'They didn't take any money, though,' he said. 'Both times they took all the lollies, including the Lions Mints. That's Cobden for you.'
When I was little, every Labour Day (the second Monday in March) was spent glued to the TV, watching Melbourne's Moomba** parade. Oh, it was brilliant! Businesses and government departments had themed floats on the back of trucks, using crepe paper and balloons with gay abandon, and in between were pipe bands and ethnic dancing groups and teeny tots doing calisthenics and two ghastly old clowns called Zig and Zag and it was all overseen by a local celebrity who had been crowned Moomba Monarch. To a small child, it was great; as an adult looking back, it encapsulates the essential dagginess of Australia in the late 1970s and early 1980s (they don't do the parade any more). I thought of the Moomba parade the other day, when I saw these photos of Mardi Gras. Not because of the similarities (ha!), but because I thought that if young me was impressed by a truck decorated with crepe paper and tin foil, then Carnival would have blown my mind.
* A dream of mine when I was a public accountant was to have a client who had to pay this, just so I could find out what it was. A dream that's been abandoned now that I'm Alicia of the Health Care System.
** Moomba being Melbourne's annual festival of fun***. The story goes that the people who came up with the idea went to the local Aboriginal population and asked what would be a good word to name a festival. 'Moomba,' they said, 'which means "let's get together and have fun".' And then snickered as generations of Melbournians celebrated a festival that's actually named 'backside hole'.
*** I've just discovered that you can download a free 40-page history of Moomba here. It's... well, it's caused me to waste a good fifteen minutes finding out amazing Moomba facts. The 1969 King of Moomba, an Italian tenor named Tito Gobbi, wanted to abdicate after receiving letters threatening to pelt him with eggs during the parade. The 1977 King of Moomba was, controversially, Mickey Mouse and his spokesman was, bizarrely, Ugly Dave Gray (non-Australians wondering who Ugly Dave Gray is: he is a purveyor of old-fashioned mother-in-law jokes and lewd puns and is basically the last person in the world that modern Disney would let anywhere near Mickey Mouse.)
I watched an episode of Time Team yesterday. They must have dug up half of Britain by now without ever finding exactly what it is they've been looking for, but happily finding something else instead. I'd like to pitch a TV show called Tax Team, in which a team of specialist accountants (including: Phil, capital gains tax; Jenny, fringe benefits tax; and Cam, wine equalisation tax*) audit the financial affairs of various historical figures to see how much they would have owed the Tax Office - or would they have got a tax refund? Dun dun DUN! You can't tell me that won't rate.
My boss was reminiscing yesterday about the summer job he had a teenager as the lifeguard at the Cobden (pop. 1,400) swimming pool, and how it was burgled twice one year. 'They didn't take any money, though,' he said. 'Both times they took all the lollies, including the Lions Mints. That's Cobden for you.'
When I was little, every Labour Day (the second Monday in March) was spent glued to the TV, watching Melbourne's Moomba** parade. Oh, it was brilliant! Businesses and government departments had themed floats on the back of trucks, using crepe paper and balloons with gay abandon, and in between were pipe bands and ethnic dancing groups and teeny tots doing calisthenics and two ghastly old clowns called Zig and Zag and it was all overseen by a local celebrity who had been crowned Moomba Monarch. To a small child, it was great; as an adult looking back, it encapsulates the essential dagginess of Australia in the late 1970s and early 1980s (they don't do the parade any more). I thought of the Moomba parade the other day, when I saw these photos of Mardi Gras. Not because of the similarities (ha!), but because I thought that if young me was impressed by a truck decorated with crepe paper and tin foil, then Carnival would have blown my mind.
* A dream of mine when I was a public accountant was to have a client who had to pay this, just so I could find out what it was. A dream that's been abandoned now that I'm Alicia of the Health Care System.
** Moomba being Melbourne's annual festival of fun***. The story goes that the people who came up with the idea went to the local Aboriginal population and asked what would be a good word to name a festival. 'Moomba,' they said, 'which means "let's get together and have fun".' And then snickered as generations of Melbournians celebrated a festival that's actually named 'backside hole'.
*** I've just discovered that you can download a free 40-page history of Moomba here. It's... well, it's caused me to waste a good fifteen minutes finding out amazing Moomba facts. The 1969 King of Moomba, an Italian tenor named Tito Gobbi, wanted to abdicate after receiving letters threatening to pelt him with eggs during the parade. The 1977 King of Moomba was, controversially, Mickey Mouse and his spokesman was, bizarrely, Ugly Dave Gray (non-Australians wondering who Ugly Dave Gray is: he is a purveyor of old-fashioned mother-in-law jokes and lewd puns and is basically the last person in the world that modern Disney would let anywhere near Mickey Mouse.)