'The Old Codger from up the road'
"I think therefore I am" - I think.

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30th July 05 (New Start) Oral History Tasmania maybe not:

Don’t confuse civilized with superior.

There is this lady who wants me to talk about Oral History. I suggested some sort of template or structured format so that I might prepare for the event. Her reply was mostly that she would allow my conversation to meander aimlessly and the recorded product should be informative to public scrutiny. Seems a bit like a bone-lazy psychiatrist to me. Some form of intellectual profiteering.

I could have a lot of fun at her expense. I could talk for many minutes about sitting and evaluating the competence of Black Jays’ eyesight. Their eating preferences and the reasons for their territory movements and their defences against competition from other birds or the restrictions of weather. I wonder how she would evaluate my indulgences in their importance for being recorded as reference material for future generations. Given that I have no Ornithological training and that I don’t particularly like Black Jays anyhow, I wonder if I should be considered biased or an unrepresentative free thinker. Or as I would assess my personal concentrations of diversions – just plain stupid.

If she really wants a rambling interview, I can ramble better than anyone I know. I could start with an original atom and expound that every living thing is related. Because of the evolution of atoms an molecules, every living thing is related to every non-living atom. The Universe is just an infinite number of atoms stacked in an infinite number of ways to form an infinite number of structures. Disturb one and you disturb the lot. Now we have come to accept that nothing like atoms exists in any form of matter. Now we accept that for every bit of matter, there are bits of anti-matter. All this stuff is held together by forces that we have given the name of Universal Gravitation but nobody presumes to understand. Any contrived concept we might have is poo-poo’d as ridiculous. Even infinity is said to go out, go around, and return in the back way.

Indeed everything in life is ridiculous and the sooner we accept this, the sooner we can enjoy it. Some people believe in re-incarnation. I don’t, because with my luck, I would come back as something already extinct.

32 20th July Majority Rule
What is ‘civilized and why do I have to spend my life trying not to be the animal that I am?

  So many words have appeared and established in the Aussie language usage.  Whetther unique or part of expressions, some jingle nicely and some jangle painfully. Some are welcome and others are distasteful. Some are naturally introduced as extensions of accepted social communications and some are contrived artificial buzz words. Some carry with them the tastes and sounds and smells of their country of origin. All words and their inherent inferences are part of the ‘advances’ in communications.  The baggage of progress. Actually more luggage - as in ‘to lug’. With these changes have come concepts to be recognised. Just new concepts and not necessarily improvements. For example, such notions as the assessment of self-esteem.

  To estimate esteem, one must ask – compared to what? Life should not be about comparing but enjoying and making the best of what we have.
If you are now confused, stay tuned.
A majority, of any magnitude, makes law. This should never be confused with that majority being considered 100% right. Thus by the process of majority rule, law is not by existence necessarily correct or even favourable. Fundamental lack of bias is just an accepted dream. A self deluding belief in a principle that the majority decisions must be the best. We have evolved to live by the law. Just as we can’t all be average, the majority is not necessarily essentially right.
A corner by any other name would still be a corner – Ch There are no corners in infinity – Ch.

31 30th June 03 Concepts
I suppose if I have enough ideas, then one or more may be of some use.
I don’t expect any genii ideas. Hoping here that "genii" refers to genius and not genial or genital. Anyhow, my ideas are original to me. That’s all that matters. I don’t propose to go in search of precedence.
One idea was displayed verbally by speed-brain Cox on ABC Mornings. I acknowledged that when cats fall from great heights, they always land feet down. Analagously buttered toast always lands butter side down. The idea trick would be to harness these two useless factual conceptions and make one useful creation. By strapping toast butter-side up to the back of a falling cat, the two concluded forces would cancel each other out. Thus the created contraption would hover mesmerized above the ground. By using a monorail as a guide, an enlarged model could supply friction-free transport.
This prompts me to consider with absolute wonder – the forces of natural magnetism. Electro-magnetism is an easier concept when you accept universal gravitation as it applies to the structure of atoms. In atomic Nature opposites attract and like repel. Pity it doesn’t apply to queer poofs and butch biddies. Just shows how having a choice stuffs up things natural.
Science is easily undestood if reduced to the fundamentals and then rebuilt to the final observation. And so endeth the lesson. I learn by theoretical demolition and construction.

Why did the chicken cross the road? Because it could.

30 29th May 03  On Writers

Writers it occurs to me are people trying to make sense of their lives. Looking to stumble on an idea, a phrase, a definitive thought that would be emminently quoteable and all-explanatory. There has been a splurge of blogs. Inevitable one might add. Blog, that comes from ‘web-log’: was a diary of visitations but now more of a personal diary come journal. Very fashionable until ineffective triviality controls the wasted efforts. A bit of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam which I know nothing about except for one small quote that emotes by naïve simplicity – ‘ the moving finger writes and having writ, moves on.’ Making sense out of nonsense by challenging boredom.
There is misplaced assumption that the reader will be able to concentrate either intermittently, spasmodically, sporadically or even continuously to some extent. An assumption that they will be sober, interested and not distracted.
I have all my ‘sophisticated’ notes on writing and writers. Sophistication is a word that justifies their complexity making the subject matter become only effective on a few and therefore qualifying as elitist. Sometimes I like to indulge in the delusion that I am elitist in literary interpretation. Comparatively I probably am but it is only because I have been able to force myself to concentrate. This melds with my definition of intelligence as being a quantity of awareness rather than uniqueness.
And thus, while I admire those that do something, anything – I also don’t wish to partake of indifference. I am Australian and I want to be on a team. Any team.
If you wish to be big don’t belittle.

29 18th May 03 My Computer
Where am I going with my computer? I am smitten with the tension that  anything for free can’t last. All the treasured little snippets that I compile ( or is that just ‘pile’ ), accumulate like a non-decomposing compost heap. It will probably remain in spite of me, or even to spite me. A tribute to my trivial desire to pass on appreciated thoughts destined possibly only to become half a sentence in some distant archived anthropology apology. Discovered thinks that seem important enough to be stored in the tentative hope that someone sometime will enjoy similar awakening encounters. I propose that it all adds to attitudes for the Minder in the person that is me. Adding more shades to the colours of my perception. Contemplative objectivity sparkled by collected inciters. I have progressed from a small boy who kept his new-found treasures in the pockets of his trousers, to the electro-magnetic storage unit called ‘my computer’.

I believe we all should declare a ‘pay-back’ time. A point that decides the beginning of old age. We all owe it to life to record in some way, the accumulated pleasures the have gone before to make the person that is me. Memories that are just memories are just using time until extinction. Even if the perceived as profound only becomes quaint, at least it is something and remains in existence.

So, where am I going with my computer? It is not the computer that I value as much as the Burner. If the discs were made of something more dependably lasting than plastic, I could rest in peace. Perhaps it’s time to clatter a hammer and chisel and chip my thoughts in stone.
Project: clone a dinosaur.

28 19th April 03 Moving on...
Distinctly Tasmanian.
Given the sense of helplessness after the so-called success of the taking over of Iraq, one can’t but help to ponder what to do.
At my age, I tend to often refer to ‘the war’, meaning – WW2. It quandries me when young persons ask – which war? It is new to my thinking that there are other wars that have affected people. I have concerns as any human does, but what to do?
Right or wrong, I have resolved to make strident efforts to appreciate more what we do have. A kind of success by disregard where the outcome is the evaluated. This emotional frustration has prompted me to establish yet another web-site. This one is to be restricted to a few criteria boundaries. My inherent passion is for matters Tasmanian with its three stages of History.
The first is the pre-man days. I don’t include the Aborigenes here as I believe they had more sense than to interfere with the development of the natural world. Then formally in 1642 white man intruder came to my Island. I use the word ‘my’ because Tasmania as it is now known belongs to anyone that loves it.
The intruders were shiploads of authority. Petty echelons of power dressed in flags and inappropriate uniforms. These were the portrayers of Vandemonian administrations. Punishers of miscreants against a source country out of control. A mish-mash of subservient limboage. This was the Vandemania that was to don a coat of introperceived respectability and become Tasmania.
The real and natural spirit of the island cannot be suppressed or clothed but soaks through with vibrant colours of simplicity alive.
The small island can be perceived as the elevated central pinnacle on the world surface. Alone and superior because of its retained simplicity of natural development. Where Nature stands puffed up and proud.
The web-site is born: The Island of Vandemania.
http;//vandemania.port5.com

27 5thApril 03 The Nudge
\Being old and having more time to be aware, or is that “more mature”, find it hard to know what to do to help loved ones, which is almost everybody. When looking at life, I find it easier to change virtual visual channels. I’m not introverted but just pensive. My philosophy is that of the nudge. Things will develop to their optimum desireability if allowed free evolving with a little friendly nudge when deemed necessary.
I cringe with eye-watering sourness of distaste when I view insane explosions of ego money polluting sound, visual and social atmospheres. Insane power-driven destructions while blind to the sensitivities of compassion for the blameless starving and the sick. Whatever I am and whoever I be, I am reluctantly moved to give appreciation that it is not “there go I”. Advancements in civilisation, however paltry, have never been accelerated by deliberate carnage.
I am primed but passive and available to help any other person in any way that I am able. I am motivated by quiet effectual evolution that only lives because of life. Take that away and I become moribund and just waiting for an end. My nudge system is ongoing and all-inclusive. It is what makes a me out of a mystic cluster of of personifications.
Being left to itself, the Nudge system must survive – moded this way there is no place and no need for winners or losers. Everything fits into place. It may come over as dreary and boring but as with any dynamic of life, the predictably unpredictable is exciting. The challenge and expectancy of the unknowing.
Analogies serve no function except to help with the explanation of the macro by jig-sawing together the micros. My son is anexample of raw enthusiasm in the swirling sea of opportunity. The ride of a surfer controlled in his vessel with wife and family - her as the sea-anchor. However, whatever, I don’t think she would appreciate being described as a bucket on a rope. My apologies to "she who can do no wrong".
Which herewith brings me back to Earth with a geological thud.

26 March 11th 03  Sex.
This time I am writing about sex. It’s good to get it out. Then you can get on without talking about it for a time. The simple word sex grabs your attention. It is with full knowledge that we choose to want to think the worst of the word. Real get down and get dirty stuff and not the clinical difference between male and female – whatever the ‘fe’ means.
Words are just tools. If you can modify them to work for you then it is quite legitimal. The popularity of words comes and goes with time and location. At the time of writing this, I am prompted by hearing – experiential. This has/had to do with learning experiences. I play with words a lot. Asssuming the reader is aware, sober and ‘switched on’. Then it is quite functional. Different circumstances may require simplified modification to enable more effect, functionality or grunt.
The correctness of spelling is proportional to whether it communicates effectively. Unfortunately I am hampered by my many years of being expected to comply with the dictionary version of words. To view a word that varies from this, jangles a sensitive nerve in my brain. Stand alone ‘sex’ grabs your attention. It would lose significance with repetition? Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex.

Sex
The sexual act should be a free and unfettered expression of a human need. If there is any price or any cost whatsoever, then it is not sexual satisfaction, it is prostitution. Now that I am old enough to be objective about sex, I must ponder on what the irrational feelings were all about. It goes without saying that it is almost impossible for the youngers to have cold anatomical observations. Why, you might ask, am I thinking thoughts of disfunctional functionality. Well it is because I can. Bit like the dog licking his penis.
I have always thought that with my luck, I will be reincarnated as something already extinct. Now I am elucidating that If anyone deserves a second chance at life, it is me. Not that I have made all that many mistakes or would change much, more that I have missed so many opportunities. If anyone deserves another go it’s me, perchance to ecstacize.Aaa-ha.
 Women’s sexual thoughts are the same as when they go shopping. They like to fantasize, compare, discuss and generally dilly dally until finally relinquishing a decision. Now men on the other hand also treat sex the way they go  shopping. They know what they want and go straight to it.
History has been the architect of the past. History has put women in charge of individuals’ personal development and therefore the evolvement of social standards. Why women you might ask. I do.
It is the male of the species that makes functional decisions - like using soap when they shave to show where they’ve been.

This month’s prompt:

A Japanese motorboat racer had a sex change and will now be competing as a
female instead of as a male.
Or as they say in the business, switching from an  outboard to an inboard.

25 14th Feb 03    What I have in common with inanimate objects is inertia

Iraq
  Anything I might say  here seems so ineffectual. Then if I say nothing, where does that place me.
  Being a fanatical believer that people must have an opinion. Any opinion. It behoves a claim on me that, to tacitly ignore matters of principle is at least deserving of criminality. This would all seem to signify a convoluted dispersed avoidance. To ignore what should be blatant is denying self awareness. There is no bravery in stupidity. Nor self-respect in delusion. Only the cold comfort of denial hallucination.
  The natural reaction to matters that overwhelm responses is diversion. The issues are too big for normal consideration. Myriads of facts are muddled with sensitive feelings of inadequacy and delusions of unfamiliarity. It has never been viewed of any importance to think emotionally on matters in a far off place. Floods, bushfires and accidents ar more approachable. They are more real by comparison. Even death can be confronted with acceptance.
  The thought of a child in maimed agony and being expected or desparingly battling to enjoy a future of civilized endeavour is far less able to be contemplated than death itself. Mortality is finite and there is an end. Lingering pain, hatred and appointing of blame are far less palatable to the extent of becoming unreal. Wafting in a mist of denial.

 

24 3rd Feb '03 Let's face it -Women
Let’s face it………

You probably haven’t thought about it but persons on this side of the keyboard have variant days too also. We have off days as well as more lucid days. Writers are professionally dishonest because they don’t let on how they are personally feeling at any one time. But that’s the nature of the beast.

It doesn’t behove amiably to suggest that I might know the answers to the World’s problems. However we have all had this delusive thought at some time. My pet platform is by necessity kept locked up. It concerns the other gender so I have to be careful when I say what I say. It’s funny peculiar how I can criticize any and all of the male gender and am ignored, but make one aspersion on the female and they want my guts for garters – whatever that means. As there is no-one listening or reading this, I can blissfully vent my spleen.

Families that I knew when I was a child, were all functionally organized and happy as a complete unit. Boys and then men all had their roles and expectations. The same for the girls and thence women and mothers. There were even expectations of the older people. They were to be the symbols of stability and historical continuance. Everything was bonza beaut and you could bet your hat on good times always being there.

Then…. What happened you might ask. Well women got sick of ruling the roost with a wooden jam spoon or crossed legs and started to find ways to talk to each other. They started to write letters, read magazines, listen to the wireless and generally convince each other they wanted something better than what they had.

A resigned contentment suddenly was not enough for the homely. They had discovered power. Real get down and get dirty power. A new beginning was to slither in. Not blatant and blaring but sneeky and insidious. The userper of all that society had built for itself. A basal festering rot. Males have no defence against targets that don’t pop-up present themselves.

Women had discovered procrastination – a nice way of saying an all-encompassing laziness. The self-esteem that females had in being constantly busilly envolved in their nestly duties was starting to fundamentally exhaust. They started to listen to each others opinions. What had been private thoughts and desires hidden under quilts of tradition were suddenly emerged as tactile attitudes dignified by recognition. The homely strictured constrained female suddenly had an opinion and was prepared to voice it. This was the beginning of the end of social order as a presumed function. The family unit of one was now split into fractions. Firstly the one became two halves. The old secure unit called marriage now became a partnership of two halves. Once this was accepted it then became a logical possibility for the fractions to fracture the unity of the unit.

‘Til death us do part’ became an intention rather than a vow. The rest is, and will be, history. The family unit of one has become percentage shares with a few vestiges of tradition remaining to give the male a fading responsibility of stabilizing his family. The former family unit that always was provided for by one financial income now requires more than two. As we smugly accept our acceptances, we should take time to ponder – “what have we done?”

Thinking without a conclusion is like copulation without an orgasm.

23 15th Jan '03   Socrates and Me

Well, I’m back again. Not that you would have noticed my absence. I have had a good ponder and have reached the decision to not make decisions. To ponder stir and let settle. It will all happen by itself and indeed has all been thought of before. I am no Socrates but know that he concerned his thinking with trying to define logic. He was of the opinion that it was logical to presume that nothing made sense. If you understand that then you’ll believe anything. Socrates’ inflated ego said – “  "It seemed to me a superlative thing -

    to know the explanation of everything,

    why it comes to be,

    why it perishes, why it is."

Times must have been good where he earnt his living making stupid statements and hoping that there would be one good thought that would stick to the historical blanket. Perchance to mean.

I don’t expect to always be right. But unless I have an opinion, there is nothing to be corrected or modified. Indifference and silence are not flexible and thereby in-capable of a considered conclusion. Conclusions should be open ended and therefore a contradiction in terminology. I will defend my opinion until swayed to a modified perception which will become the new opinion. I may be considered by some to be a clumsy thinker, but I try to get it straight.

Socially commenting cartoonists are frustrated philosophers who have had to resort to simplisms to carry their conclusions. This is more a comment on the observer and the means that have to be resorted to.

Heretic is a word I know imposes something wrong – but neither me nor anyone else knows what it really means. Remember years ago when the minister of the church selected a few words or a verse, dignified it with a reference number in the Bible and set thenceforth to expound on all and sundry things that gave him the schlits using the chosen text as a means to ratify his erratic expunctions. Just another form of cartooning really.

Socrates’ logic lucky dip is still the norm for the present. Now I really must propose that we take our lead from animals and create a mutualized society to naturally evolve in harmonious evolution without the need for speech or words.

Imagine that you are God and you are a Cartoonist. Show me your thoughts.

22 24 October
Little pond rules to Bull-frog Laws.

I am about to be a receiver of a Local Government decision to which, if I don’t comply, I go to jail. What sort of a community system is that? Centullions of dollars have been spent on feasibility studies and expensive study-reports all in the name of enlightenment. We have a system where if a decision might be a bit sus, then pass it on to Local Government where votes don’t matter and are squeaky-clean replaceable. If the dilemna still remains, "have a public meeting" and all will be exonerated. We have a bull-frog law of the swamp where you might hear a few disinterested croaks and all is forgotten. In Tasmania compliance is the game and even if the umpire is wrong, we still play on.

Public meetings have become an insidious tool used by local governments when they are unsure of the legality of their actions. To exonerate and supposedly justify the legalizing by public approval, however minimal or selfish the representation.

A small number of Boat Harbour Beach residents are to be inflicted with heavy financial charges regarding a sewerage scheme - whether or not they want it, need it or even use it. The charges are to be set in Law and will be a criminal offence if not paid.

For many years it has been illegal to dig, excavate or disturb the landform of much of the foreshore and surrounds. Suddenly this legality is to be ignored and no compensations offered to property owners for causing problems of any resulting land movements commonly known as Slip.

Too often Public Meetings are used to portray condonement when in fact it is only tentative ill-considered compliance. It has become an all-relinquishing defence – "….but we had a Public Meeting".

If Local Government needs a Public Meeting to exonerate its actions, then I must presume it suspicious.

21 10th October:
Paternal prattle: We have to be careful that our well-intended offerings are not perceived as interfering. What comes out is swaddled in memories and experiences that are not spoken. What makes sense to me may not be received that way. Sometimes we just know we’re right and there’s no need to explain why. To people that don’t know us, this can be construed as anywhere between wisdom pomposity and stupidity. Weolds are expected to be worldly wise and say nothing. If we say nothing how do they know whether we are wise or just dumb dumb? Reminds me of the forlorn amorous lonely dismal owl perched in the rain saying it’s ‘too wet to woo’.

Wisdom, which is a word made up of congealed experiences and memories seasoned with thoughts, reminds me that if you fall off your horse it is best to get back on straight away. It’s the same after bingleing your bike or clnashing your car. I have tried to impart this sparkle of insight but it doesn’t impress any malleable minds with any impact. My gracious listeners tolerate my ramblings and even return with their own reactive versions that kids get back on, bounce up, flatten their feathers or get on with it, in all kinds of sports. Especially the much aspersed surfing. Well you live and learn. The great thing about getting older is that we can slow down enough to be able to watch the doers doing. That which is not done is never done until it is done. Crikey that sounds profound. What thinks ye?

I lurv to fiddle-faddle with words. The English language is so filled with vagaries, contradictions, misleadings and general illogical turmoil, that we have learnt to learn by repetition and experience. In my old school days it used to be called ‘rote’ learning. How could I forget the twelve times table. Six sevens are forty two without a thought about it.

Our brains snap onto words and process them without questioning their possible meanings. The chains of the conveyor belt only jangles and screeeches to a hault when a word is mis-spelt, mispelt, missspelt, or hits a hump humph when it does not recognise a word.
I know what some expressions mean but if I think about them I start to drown in confusion. Try: "sour grapes".

20 1st October
The universe is bigger than I thought, I think. Crikey!

George W Bush - "to ignore them is to encourage them" – rolls off the tongue very nicely and sounds impressive. This would seem to be the essence of any good delusive advertising. However insidious. On pondering, it tells me heaps about the utterer and his kind. It prompts me to recall and recoil from the US American ethos.

I was brought up to sort of believe it was OK to activate delusions of grandeur when your own house was in order. Our lives were guided by following standards set by teachers, churchers, parents and past generations. Standards that had evolved by trial and error, natural selection and above all a ‘fair go’ culture.

Not the high falutin tootin American yahoo cowboy cop-that slap-happy splatting. Our culture is Ginger Meggs and Skippy. Not Mutant Ninger Turtles.

The aussie way of life is based on compliance and leaving things alone to develop naturally. All our reading, education and entertainment is based on the belief that straight up is straight on. Treat ‘em right and give ‘em a fair go. Speak when you’re spoken to. I look back and sigh at thoughts of the good old days. I suppose each generation has and will keep doing this. Makes you wonder about where we’re going. Whether its better to travel than to arrive or better still to slap ‘er in reverse and go back and have a good hard look.

Contemplate the lowly worm that lives its life un-noticed. It consumes all the dirt it can and enjoys the process. Nothing bothers it and it bothers no-one. I wonder if a thinking worm, perhaps a book-worm, contemplates the human pre-occupations and has an attitude to their conflicts. Or is it worth the worry effort. Is there one of the worm species called a worry worm or have they redundanted themselves. Does the worm process contemplate the busy-bee process or is it all too ho-hum.

So get your own house in order you U.S.- arians and stop yanking at things that are not your concern.


19. September 14th. 02
September 11 has been again. I remember writing about it a year ago but am not keen to re-read those notes. The quandry that lingers is whether to focus on the big picture or on specifics. The emotion that emotes me the most is cold disappointment. For thousands of years persons like me have squeezed the hope that confronting conflicts might cease. Like militant mushrooms, they keep popping up. Like festering oozing south-paws. I shudder a shrug and concentrate on the things that might please me.

History has made me what I am. If being an ostriche is my lot, then so be it. We are adept enough at removing good stuff without reverting to weaponry. There was a time when I enjoyed the ostriche concept and I refer to Ozzie Ostriche. A queer eventing not to be unexpected of any bird with someone’s hand stuck up their rear end. It was good to be able to laugh at stupidity.

Hey Hey sprung an automatic fun-filled smile in much the same way as an entry into a room by Bert Newton. There was a time when it was Mo or even the banjo-mandolin antics of George Formby cleaning windows. The mental pictures of Curley’s hair or Jughead and the Phantom or the thrashing machine in Coles Book Arcade.

Whole new generations are coming through who have never heard of Errol Flynn, Tom Mix, Esther Williams, Cyd Cherise, bowyangs, galoshes or gas producers. Now that I am getting old and reflective in my attitudes I have learnt a lot about a lot of things in lots of ways but nobody wants to know what I do and that’s my lot. I have spent my life accumulating influential memories only to be ignored. However, my history is part of the bigger history and that, nobody can ignore. So if I am muddled and befuddled it’s because every thing is higgledy piggledy. I think I think, I think.

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