Saw this picture when god tweeted that he’s being harassed by paparazzi again. Can you think of a better caption?

Is it really true that the word monkey is made up of monk and eye, named after the time that Christians proselytised to the South American natives and they reacted by throwing monkeys at them and one of them hit one of the missionaries in the eye but the guy who first recorded the event was a really bad speller?

Also, I wonder how many people blog whilst being totally wasted.

Took a flight the other day with the kids to see their grandparents in Adelaide. There’s a 30 minute time difference, but I didn’t want to change the clocks on my phone and laptop and all the other devices that save me fro having to actually talk to my kids, so I tried to just remember that my world is always just a little ahead of Adelaide. Anyway, before setting off, I called my mum to say the plane will be landing at 3pm.

A little while later the plane touched down and the attendant told us we could take our phones off flight mode. When i turned my phone on its clock read 3pm, so I quickly called mum to let her know we were half an hour early. Here’s the conversation that ensued:

Me: Hi mum it’s Paul.

Mum: Hiya love. I’m at the airport. I can see your plane.

Me: So you’re early.

Mum: No I just got here in time.

Me: But you’re early. It’s 2.30. How did you know we’d be here?

Mum: No it’s 3 o’clock.

Me: But my phone says it’s three o’clock.

Mum: Yeah that’s right.

Woman a couple of rows ahead of me: It’s 3 o’clock.

Me: Mum, what’s the time?

Man behind me: Do you have a 3G phone?

Mum: It’s 3.

Me: But my phone says 3.

Man behind me: It’s the 3G phone. it changes the time.

Me: How can it do that?

Another woman: It just does.

Man behind me: It’s 3pm.

Me: No, it can’t do that.

Previous woman: Ha ha ha ha ha. Idiot.

Daughter: Dad?

Me: Mum, where are you?

Daughter: You’re embarrassing me.

Mum: Get off the phone, Paul. See you off the plane.

Me: Why is my phone smarter than me?

Entire plane: (eyes rolled, silence)

There are things that I embrace in these early 21st century times. But a phone that changes time-zones for me is just a little scary. I’m afraid it’s going to start calling me Dave and asking me if it will dream if I turn it off again. I’m also afraid that getting a PhD is not just turning me into an absent-minded kinda guy. I’m just a dumbass.

Times come when the intellectual snob in me pops out for a whinge and gripe about what’s on the telly. Big Brother, Australia’s Got Talent, newstainment shows like A Current Affair and so-called viewer oriented programs like Funniest Home Videos (why hasn’t YouTube killed that show yet?) make the little guy pop his head out and say “What’s wrong with us that we want to make more famous than us people who are more stupid than us?”

I normally give that guy a flick in the ear and send him on his way, but last night I couldn’t help but listen to him. Not being able to sleep I turned on the box to watch a five minute preview of a new show on Channel Seven called Look 10 Years Younger in 10 Days. It made me think: there’s stupid TV, and then there’s evil TV. And from what I saw this program promises to be evil in its purest form.

It’s quite a standard formula:

1. Take a woman in her early thirties. She must have a face that’s “not made for television” in contrast to the supermodel who is hosting the show. And make sure she has an equally ordinary looking husband or boyfriend (no lessers!).
2. Put her in a glass box in the middle of the city, where she can be looked at by passers-by.
3. Make videos of people’s reactions to the sight of the woman. Make sure the passers-by who are taped are women in their early twenties. Ask the passers-by to guess how old the woman in the box looks. Keep the most outrageous and ill-informed comments for later use.
4. Remove the woman from the box, place her in the studio. Let her watch the video tapes. Tape her while she cries.
5. Give her a make over. Try to make her look more “made for TV”.
6. Show her to her husband.
7. Tape them both while they cry.

Pure and unadulterated exploitation of the poor and ugly in our society. Take some women who don’t spend enough money on beauty products. Tell them how this lack of spending has made them pariahs. Give them products for ten days to make them less like pariahs. Treat them like they’re famous for a day. Then wait for the free products to run out so they have to spend more of their smaller incomes on products they weren’t using beforehand.

Tell the public it’s like a fairytale, ugly ducklings transformed. Yet it was not the public who saw them as ugly ducklings in the first place.

I’m so enraged.

Last night my four year old turns to me at the dinner table and says “Look, I’ve almost finished my dinner. I’m going to be big and strong like you.” My nine year old retorts with “Yep, only ten thousand macaroni and cheese meals to go”.

Bless ‘em.