Salt and corrosion

The thing about the Olympics is that it's not just athletes who go. It's also our most irritating television personalities, so, unless you live in the host nation, you can wander the streets safe in the knowledge that [insert your own most irritating television personality] is out of the country. On the downside, it means that if you want to watch the Olympics, you can't get away from them.

I don't normally watch breakfast television, but this morning I thought it might be nice to see if anything interesting happened, Olympically speaking, overnight. Apparently, some Australian swimmers didn't swim as fast as some other countries' swimmers, so I was treated to an interview with one of these slow swimmers, and the incredibly irritating interviewer said to him, 'So... what happened? We were expecting a medal.'

To his credit, the slow swimmer didn't hurl a cushion at her and shout, 'You think it's so easy? You have a go, then!' Honestly, stupid woman. They don't get a medal just for turning up, no matter how good they are on paper.

And that's why I don't normally watch breakfast television.

Then I read this, which is about a different variety of stupid person.

Today I heard a joke. It's for fans of Eldon John and/or vegetable-based humour.

( Why doesn't Elton John eat cos lettuce? )

Here are some instructions from the Australian Tax Office:

Post your tax return to the following address:

Australian Taxation Office
GPO Box 9845
IN YOUR CAPITAL CITY

The address must appear on your envelope as shown. Do not replace the words 'IN YOUR CAPITAL CITY' with the name of your capital city (unless you are lodging from outside Australia). Because of a special agreement with Australia Post, there is no need for you to include the name of your capital city or a postcode.

If you are lodging from outside Australia, replace IN YOUR CAPITAL CITY with SYDNEY NSW 2001 AUSTRALIA.

It's pretty good, but not up to the standard of their statement that you don't have to give them your tax file number to talk to them, but if you don't give them your tax file number, they won't talk to you.

While I am on the topic of officialdom, there was an article today about rules at (mining company) BHP's new offices in Perth. Eleven pages of them, including these: No eating soup at your desk! Only eat cold soup at the communal hub on each floor! Only eat hot soup in the special hot soup zone on level 45! No 'nibble food' at your desk! No photos bigger than A5 on your desk! And only one of them! Or a framed workplace award! Doesn't that sound like a fun place to work? Each of those things is probably quite reasonable in isolation, but all together they sound like somewhere to stay well away from.

Australia has a new carbon tax as on 1 July. So that's exciting. We are starting to get reports of businesses putting their prices up unnecessarily, using the carbon tax as an excuse. This includes a chain of bakeries, whose internal memo saying 'increase prices and blame it on the carbon tax' has been leaked. That's not all that interesting, granted, but I really liked the way the ABC presented it:



Well done, headline writer.

While I am putting pictures in, consider this: I get a regular email from a charity. I am on a bit of an email-clearing binge at the moment, unsubscribing to things as they come in (if they are respectable organisations, not spammers who will take any response as a sign their emails are being read). So I clicked the 'unsubscribe' link at the bottom of the email and was taken to a page with this on it:



I have read this over and over and I don't understand it at all. Do I have to click that box and put my address? Or just put my address, leaving the box unclicked? Or did clicking the link automatically unsubscribe me, and doing anything else will resubscribe me? I tried all those things, and none of them resulted in a 'you have been unsubscribed' email, so I will have to wait and see if I get another newsletter.

I normally avoid the sporting part of the news, but I saw it tonight. There was a story about a man who used to play for a football team, who now plays for another team, and this week he will be playing against his old team. 'He knows what to expect on the field,' said the reporter. 'Verbal ribbing.' Oh, no! Not... verbal ribbing! How will he cope?

I am in one of my gloomy fits about work, so I am thinking again about doing a Master's degree. Today I got as far as seeing what I had to do to apply. Apparently the university needs a copy of my birth certificate to prove that I am me, even though it gave me a bachelor's degree without it. That makes no sense to me. As it happens, I don't have a birth certificate; I've got this far in life with just an extract of it. So I thought, even if I don't apply, it wouldn't hurt to have a copy of my birth certificate handy. I looked up how to get my birth certificate from the Northern Territory. I can get it in person, but that seems a long way to go just to get a piece of paper. I could mail or fax my application, which would require getting certified copies of other proof of identity. Or I could just fill in this simple online form, no questions asked. So I did that. It seemed a bit too easy.

I have a new pair of blue suede slippers. They have a delightfully springy sole and a sequinned bow on them.

My little cactus, which has sat like a spiky green blob for about four years now, has some little pink spots on it, which I think are going to be flowers.

Today I needed a lemon and I picked one off my tree. This is my second tree: the first one died after years of doing nothing, and this one had a rocky start to life. But here we are, two years down the track, and I've finally got a lemon. It was delightfully lemony.

So that's what's going on today.

1. In Ancient Empires Before Alexander, one of the Persian kings has just been murdered by a person or persons within his own palace, who got him drunk and gorged with food, then put him in an ash bin to burn while he slept it off. So that was creative. And horrible.

2. But this is nice: baby endangered stick insects. Is it baby endangered stick insects or endangered baby stick insects? It's the stick insects that are endangered, so I'll stick with my first choice. They're also known as land lobsters.

3. The stick insects/land lobsters are from Lord Howe Island. When I was at school, there was a TV show that claimed for comedic purposes that the standard greeting on Lord Howe Island is 'Lord Howe are you?' That joke did not get old for a very long time. Actually, I still think it's pretty funny. I would like to go to Lord Howe Island one day, but I probably wouldn't try that joke on the locals. They've probably heard it.

4. My mother has decided she would like a beanie to wear when she goes out for a walk during the winter months. Apparently her ears feel the cold now she is older. Or, I suggested, she wears her hair shorter. One of them. Anyway, I volunteered to knit her a hat and she has found a pattern she likes and all should be well, but the City by the Sea's specialist wool shop closed last year and the big craft chains only have basic and novelty wools. Cheap, but not nice. Hmph.

5. I thought I had five things to say, but I don't.

It's been a while since we had a fashion suggestion from the magazine in the Sunday paper. ( So savour this )

From a piece about the people remembering the sinking of the Titanic:

Some participants in the memorial events - many of them history buffs or descendants of passengers of the doomed voyage - came with personal stories about how the Titanic touched their lives.

Wendy Burkhart, a British Columbia resident who crossed the continent to attend the ceremonies in Halifax, said James Cameron's 1997 movie about the tragedy was a trigger for her marriage to college sweetheart Jerry Evans, who reminded her of Titanic star Leonardo DiCaprio.

"I was struck by his resemblance to Jerry when we were younger," she said.

"Right there, I vowed to someday get back together with him."

That's... that's not really anything to do with the ship sinking, is it?

When I was out and about during my lunch break yesterday, I found the alleyway I wanted to go down blocked off by a firetruck. Further back, I could see another firetruck and three police cars. The police and firies were just standing there having a good old chat, so whatever action was all over bar the milling about. Today's paper revealed it was because of an underground gas leak. So that was a thing that happened.

I am in a RAR! sort of mood today. I wasn't, but... Angela. That sums it up. This is part of an email she sent me today. I am fairly sure she doesn't mean to sound patronising, but, well, she does, doesn't she?:

This is the link for those wanting to enrol for 2013 - our bread and butter!
If you take the phone call from future applicants you may wish to be a little informed.

Thank you, Angela. I've only had that link for a month, and I've only been taking those calls since 2005, so I wasn't sure what to do.

There was more to it, but I've been trying to play nicely this year, and that includes not grizzling about her here. Much.

But I will put that behind me now. The City by the Sea has a new piece of public art, which I have shown below with the inspiration for it:



I like it.

You know how you don't hear about something for ages, and then it crops up several times in quick succession? That happened to me today. My mother has just received an invitation to a wedding in Mackay later this year. After she told me that, I saw this story, which the internet tells me is within walking distance of where she'll be staying. So that will be exciting for her.

Shocking news: Rich people are more likely to take lollies from children. And that's why they're rich: all the savings they make on lollies.

I passed a poster on the street today, advertising a play called Undercover Boss by William Shakespeare. I doubt that he's written anything new, so which of the existing plays could be retitled that?*

I am feeling particularly smug today because it's still only February and I have all my professional development points for the year. Well, no, I haven't. I've booked and paid for the seminars, though. Salary packaging for public benevolent institutions: don't you wish you could come too?

Chinese White is last colour in my tin of pencils, so I won't be able to write any more entries until I think of a new theme for my titles. I was going to do 'Baffling notes left for me by my mother', but she's only left three since I thought of it. That will have to wait until I get a few more.




* I looked it up. It's ( Answer ). So now we all know.

My mother mentioned the mandle/mandel/whatever mystery to one of her friends, who said that her son had a mandle tree. She duly took a cutting off it and gave it to my mother. So here it is:



Does that look familiar to anyone? I think it looks a bit like a passionfruit, maybe. I don't know. Mum's friend didn't know anything more about them; not even if her son ate them. So we can't really declare that mystery solved.

There was an article in today's paper about a 'billionaire Florida polo mogul'. That's quite a collection of words, isn't it? How do you go about being a polo mogul, do you think? Is it something I could do? This particular billionaire Florida polo mogul, aged 48, has adopted his 42-year-old girlfriend. It's a financial dodge, obviously. I'm surprised it's even possible to adopt an adult.

I have moved on to my next old book: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions: Volume 1 by Charles Mackay (1841). It's a retelling of some of the biggest financial scandals back in the day. I think we all know what my next few entries are going to be about. Tulip fever and the South Sea Bubble are in the contents list. I know what the South Sea Bubble was – I've written essays about it – but whenever I see it written I imagine a big bubble floating off an island. I bet everyone else does too. Look out, it's the South Sea Bubble! It's possibly the thing they shoot those Coca Cola commercials in.

Anyway, I've just finished the first popular delusion: the Mississippi Bubble that destroyed the French economy in 1720. People got so excited about the potential success of a company in Louisiana they created hyperinflation in France. Fun times were had by all. John Law (known as Lass to the French), the Scottish chap who was running the bubble, had thousands of people camping outside his house, wanting to sign up as shareholders. A local hump-back made a fortune hiring himself out as a human desk for jobbing stockbrokers on the street. It's good to know French hump-backs had job options other than bell-ringing. A woman who wanted to be a shareholder followed John Lass around in her carriage until an opportune moment, when she ordered her coachman to overturn the carriage. John Lass went to her rescue and she told him, ha-HAH, I just want shares. She got them. Another woman went to a party he was at and shouted that there was a fire; in the chaos, she attempted to get John Lass alone and get shares. She didn't get them.

Eventually the crowd got so big, John Lass had to move into the palace and the stockbrokers were moved to a local park. The prince who owned the park leased them tents, turning over the equivalent of 10,000 pounds sterling a month. That's 1719 money, by the way. Shares were so sought after that people were assassinated for them. The Compte d'Horn stabbed some poor chap for his shares, but was caught, tried and executed within six days. They didn't muck around with lengthy trials back then, did they? He was executed by being broken on the wheel. I don't know what that is (I don't want to know what that is), but his family appealed for the 'kinder' option of beheading, so it can't have been good.

The palace got so greedy for paper money, they outlawed holding coins. This panicked people, so they started investing in jewels and plate, and smuggling them out of the country. The company turned out not to be as profitable as expected. The bubble burst. France's national debt was 124,000,000 pounds sterling. John Lass, once the hottest ticket in town, couldn't go out without the Swiss guards for protection. His carriage was mobbed in the street. A contemporary report says that a politician was so excited by this he went into parliament and said:

Messieurs! Messiers! Bonne nouvelle!
Le carfosse de Lass est réduit en canelle!

He may have said something similar, though I doubt it was quite so poetic. But how much better would modern parliamentary debate be if politicians had to do it in rhyming couplets? They'd certainly be a lot quieter.

Mackay does that thing where when he quotes people, he puts the introductory bit in French, assuming his readers can understand the basics, then changes to English for the complicated part. I get why he does that, but it does sort of give the impression that French people just say 'Bonjour' to each other, then do the real business in English. Apart from that, I like Mackay. His introduction to the book said these bubbles were like a man rowing from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario: the river is wide, the going is good... and then comes the cataract. That is a great image.

As always, old books are educational. Today's new word: 'malversation', or corrupt administration. It's a crime, apparently.

The office manager at my work was in a bit of a tizz yesterday. Her son is getting married on Saturday, and she bought a dress to wear months ago. She liked it, obviously; she showed her son and his fiancée, and they liked it. She duly put it in her wardrobe, pleased to be all sorted out so early.

Tuesday night, she thought she'd better try it on, just to make sure that it was all in order. Her husband took one look at it and declared it to be frumpy, like something his nan would wear. He suggested that she wear an old dress that he liked, and was surprised when the office manager explained that the mother of the groom really shouldn't wear white at a wedding. Hence her tizz yesterday, rushing around trying to find something. Well done, husband of office manager.

Of course, she couldn't find anything, partly because she was panic-looking and partly because just after the sales and in the middle of tourist season isn't the best time to find something. She was nearly in tears when she came back from lunch.

Anyway, last night she sent a photo of herself wearing the dress to her daughter, who pronounced it 'classy'. So the dress is back on and today she went out looking for shoes. So that was a saga.

Another saga has been running hot in the local paper. A family had a dog called Ted. They went away on holiday, leaving Ted in the care of a friend. Ted went missing one day.

What had happened to Ted was this: someone had found him and taken him to the local animal shelter. He wasn't chipped or registered, so they held him in the shelter for the required length of time, then put him up for adoption, from where he was taken in by a new family.

So the first family came home from their holiday, and started searching for Ted. After a week, their vet told them Ted was at the shelter and had been adopted. The vet acted as an intermediary, but to no avail: the new family won't give Ted up. So the first family went to the local paper, and now everyone in town has an opinion on the matter.

I think they should get together and see who Ted wants to be with.