The Best Australian Humorous Writing (14 page)

One of the permanent lodgers in that graveyard is the great philosopher Wittgenstein, whose key principle was that we shouldn't be seduced by language. He wanted us to say things so clearly that our meaning couldn't be mistaken. But he could only dream of that, because in fact we
are
seduced by language.

The world couldn't work if we didn't spend most of our time being open to persuasion on subjects that we will never personally investigate because we lack either the time or the talent, and usually both.

Everybody knows there are too many plastic shopping bags. You can see millions of them decorating the hedgerows. Everybody knows that it's a good sign when a supermarket puts a sign on the side of its plastic bags saying that its plastic bags are recycled from other plastic bags.

But where most of our recycled non-compostable garbage gets sorted out, hardly anybody knows. I was recently told that most of it goes to China, but I can't believe that their economic boom depends on reprocessing our tin cans, and that they won't produce rubbish of their own, and lots more of it.

There are good reasons for cleaning up the mess we make, but finally it's what we make that makes us an advanced culture, and only a highly developed industry knows how to keep itself clean.

At Bhopal in India a chemical plant once killed at least 3,800 people, but that was because it was badly regulated.

Loose supervision made it lethal. Very few nuclear reactors even in the old Soviet Union have ever gone as wrong as the one at
Chernobyl, or even the one at Three Mile Island in the US, but that's because they have regulations to meet, and the regulations themselves are the product of an industrial society.

There was a time that Japan's burgeoning post-war industry was poisoning its own people with mercury. The industry that did the poisoning found the solution, because it was forced to. But a law to suppress that industry would have helped to produce a society less able to control its own pollution, not more.

As far as I can tell with the time I've got to study the flood of information, which is less time than I would like, the green movement can do an advanced industrial society the world of good by persuading its industries to spread less poison.

Whether or not carbon emissions really do melt the polar bears and kill the baby seals in the rain forest, the pressure on industry and even on government is already helping to persuade Hollywood stars that they should drive hybrid cars, and finally we'll do what Leonardo di Caprio does, because we'll be seduced by language, not because we know very much about how carbon dioxide keeps in the planet's heat.

The other day I met a carbon dioxide expert who said that his favourite gas has already reached the density where it can't keep in any more heat, but I did notice that he was sweating.

It was probably when Sir David Attenborough noticed that the bottle-nosed dolphins were sweating that he finally gave his illustrious name to the campaign against global warming. That would be enough for me even if Prince Charles hadn't joined in as well, having already placed his order for a horse-drawn Aston Martin.

But I don't really know they're right. I'm just guessing. The only thing I do know is what won't work, because it shouldn't.

We shouldn't expect the less fortunate nations to cut themselves off from industrial progress in the name of a green planet.

It wouldn't be fair even if it was likely, and anyway, we aren't civilized by the extent to which we return to nature, only by the
extent that we overcome it. I wish I'd said that. It was Sigmund Freud, actually, when they showed him the blueprints of the very first wheelie bin.

When push comes to shove, he wrote in German, this thing could still save male pride even if it can't save the planet.

PAUL MITCHELL

Did you get my email? No, where'd you send it? To your work address. I'm not on that address. Are you on your home address? Yeah, but I didn't get a message. I got your text. I didn't send a text. Yes you did. The one about your message. What message? The one you left on my work phone. Oh, but I left one later on your home phone. I didn't get that one. Have you had your mobile on? Yeah. Did you leave a message on it? No, but I sent you a text. I didn't get that text. Was it the one about your email? No, that was the one about my phone message. Which one? The one on your home phone. Oh, I only check my home messages from my work phone. Can I leave a new message on your mobile? Yeah, but don't use my work mobile. Can I text to that one? Yeah, text to it, but don't call, you can call and text to my home mobile, but remember I sometimes turn it off. Can I come to your home? Text me first to see if I'm there. Or email me. Okay, I can do that from my phone when I get to the door. It's been good talking to you. Great to catch up. Talk to you soon. Yeah, okay. Wait on … What? I'll take a picture. Can I pxt it to you later? Yeah, but not to my work mobile. I'll email it to your hotmail. Cool.

KAZ COOKE

Some stuff you just know is going to be good. Watching Amanda Vanstone block and parry Kerry O'Brien on the
7.30 Report
until he doesn't know whether to smile or scream (I wish they'd bring that back), eating at a third generation Italian restaurant, seeing a BBC natural history documentary.

The second series of BBC's
Planet Earth
is running on the ABC, and next Sunday the focus is on jungles. I don't know how much this series cost, or how many camera folk were paid for months to stake out places where no complimentary shower cap can be found (middle of the Congo, anyone?). It's so brilliant, I almost don't care how it happened.

Incidentally, I can hardly believe there was talk recently that the ABC natural history unit might be disbanded. It's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. It feeds into history, geography, national pride, conservation, and tourism. Has anyone checked out how popular Animal Planet and similar cable stations are going, and how much product they need? Please don't leave it to Bindi Irwin's manager. If the ABC could regularly make stuff like
Planet Earth
I'd pay a licence fee and stop whingeing about that uber-amateur
Collectors
program.

Planet Earth
puts the audience in a meditative state and then amazes and educates it. Accordingly, the music is sometimes a bit like the calm Enya-esque stuff piped into a salon when you get a facial, and then uses the whole drum section when the elephants heave into view. The music is all original and played by an endangered species called a real orchestra.

Even with the exquisite high-definition photography, it's hard to feel empathy with, or sympathy for the insects. Even an ant that has parasitic fungi growing out of its brain. Yeah, yeah, I know the spiders are crucial to the food chain, plus they can abseil. But euwww. It's unfair, but cute wins, especially the wide-eyed colugo, like a possum with a flying cloak—although the English call it “the flying tea-tray”.

Although the quintessential narrator, David Attenborough, doesn't stomp the point, we all know that the biggest threat to all these places, and to all these creatures is us. What's climate change going to do to a place that has 2 metres of annual rainfall? Indonesia, Malaysia and Pacific islands are ripping down forests, is Papua New Guinea far behind? What about all those countries in Africa that need money and roads? Logging companies will promise both.

As we cut up the toast soldiers, knock off the tops of the boiled eggs and sit down on Sunday night to watch
Planet Earth
with our children, we can't promise them any of the stuff on this episode will still be around when they grow up. Incidentally, if you are watching with the kiddies before bedtime this Sunday, you might wish to turn it off for about five minutes after the chimp posse attacks a neighboring clan. The sight of them in victory eating the recognisable extremities of a youngster is … let's just say, pretty indelible.

It's this scene which brings to a gibbering halt my ineluctable musings over the similarities between creatures and humans. Dominating “bully boy” capuchin monkeys could remind you of the recent Australian cricket team. The prancing, sex-craving, costume-parading
birds of paradise are reminiscent of Prince on stage. A dowdy but powerful female looks a suitor over, gives him a withering glance and sweeps away. Hello, Judi Dench. Pitcher plants (LA nightclubs) lure and gobble up gangly insects (starving young socialites). A frog in the darkness surrounded by diverse calls can hear only the warbles of its own kind (Tony Abbott). Slimy, bottom-feeding parasitic fungi; that ex-boyfriend who … okay, this is getting kind of personal.

Thanks to this team of camera and sound folk, editors, producers—and the BBC having the money to do it—we can now “be” so close to an elephant we see every wiry hair on its crinkle parchment hide. That's why, in this episode, we see right into the eyes of those chimps, read their faces, can't dispute how similar they are to humans. Further evidence is their after-school nit check, their binge-eating of figs, and the unprovoked pre-emptive territorial attacks, right up until the “hey, you can't eat that guy's arm!” cannibal bit. They are not us. Will we protect their habitat and let them live anyway, even though they can't fund a lobbyist?

The following week,
Planet Earth
is going to take us underwater to see a flashing electric clam, sneaky sea snakes (try saying that after an eggnog), surfing dolphins, “rampaging” starfish and the “head-butting pygmy sea-horse”. I don't think you can see better-crafted television than this. Not that includes headbutting, anyway.

 

The ABC closed its Natural History Unit in 2007 without a public announcement.

BARRY COHEN

When she told me her name was Blackadder, I should have fled. But always the adventurer, I pressed on.

“What I require is a mobile phone. I don't want it to take photographs, tell the time, play music, provide weather forecasts or make coffee,” I said. “If I can make or receive calls and record messages, that will do just fine.”

“No worries,” the young lady replied without sounding remotely like Rowan Atkinson. The nonsequitur should have sounded the alarm bells but the anticipation of acquiring my third mobile blinded me to reality.

The previous two had been devoured by Hamish, our border collie, who was lucky to celebrate his first birthday. As a septuagenarian I am neither digitally nor electronically literate. The mere suggestion that I should purchase some new computerised gim-crackery is enough to feel the icy claw grip my innards.

I try desperately to look interested as the saleswoman explains in great detail the wonders of the latest masterpiece of electronic gadgetry. Instead, the eyes glaze over. “This is the TU550, megapixel, three-speed, four-gear, 100-gigabyte, aerodynamic, intergalactic firkin that will change your life completely.”

Unfortunately, all it will change is my blood pressure. And not for the better. Staring blankly ahead, I hand over the credit card, gather up the masterpiece and head, with what little is left of my shattered male ego, for the hills.

Arriving home I open the book of instructions, which is a mere 90 pages long in a type guaranteed to make my ophthalmologist throw a party.

The early pages are devoted to warnings: to avoid car crashes, choking children, damaging your hearing, aircraft interference or blowing yourself up by using your mobile phone near refuelling points or chemicals. After this reassuring introduction one can start learning how the device works.

A sample: “Depending on the support or not of SAT (SIM application toolkit) services on the USIM card the menu might be different. In case the USIM card supporting SAT services this menu will be the operator specific service name stored on the USIM card, for instance ‘special' …” Piece of piss, really. What concerns me is that there are people who understand and are paid for writing this tosh.

I am consoled by the fact I am not alone. Our great and glorious former leader E. G. Whitlam informs me that he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, digitally speaking.

What lunatics compose such rubbish? The least LG, Harvey Norman and Telstra should do is put you through university first.

Let me share an experience I have had on two occasions in recent years with everybody's favourite provider.

First at Calga near Gosford on the NSW central coast, and in January this year at our idyllic rural abode in Bungendore on the outskirts of the national capital, I discovered the telephone cable had been cut or broken down for some obscure reason. Our telephone was dead.

I phoned the always reliable Telstra on my trusty old mobile. In lightning time—40 minutes to be exact—I got through to
Mumbai, where I was fortunate to converse in Hinglish with my three favourite Indians: Sachin, Harbhajan and Peter Sellers.

Two phrases dominated these conversations: “excuse me” and “I beg your pardon”. It apparently hasn't occurred to Telstra's supremo, the lovely, talented and extremely well-paid Sol Trujillo, that if their service personnel speak the same language as their customers, problems will be resolved much more quickly and with less angst. Maybe angst doesn't translate from English to Mexican to Hindi and back.

With great persistence I got the message through, “the line is down”.

I was told “not to worry, sir, we will be transferring your calls to your mobile phone”. As the alternative was to be cut off from the world for days, I agreed.

The arrival of the January bill for the mobile reminded me of my previous experience at Calga. My monthly package had increased by 30 per cent because all calls in or out were charged at the mobile rate, which, as we all know, is set by Ned Kelly.

Rather than wasting another day talking to Mumbai, getting carpal tunnel syndrome pressing buttons, and phone rage, I wrote to Telstra, the Telecommunications Ombudsman and the Minister for Communications, asking each the same simple question. “If Telstra's infrastructure goes belly-up, which will happen to the best equipment, is there any reason why I should bear the cost, rather than Telstra? If so, is it not in the interests of Telstra to have the equipment break down as often as possible?” I await with interest their response.