How Politics Works

The politics of fear is, in fact, the only politics there is. Fear is the politician's prime motivation, greatest priority and defining characteristic. The only way to understand the progression of political life is to understand that the people we elect to govern us live their lives consumed by terror, and their every decision is informed, coloured and driven by their fear of losing the fragile grip they have on whatever amount of power and status they've managed to accrue up to now.

So this is how a politician's life goes:

1. They enter politics, full of enthusiasm and ambition, with big plans for what they can do to make things better and leave their mark on public life.

2. They discover that there are certain rules to the political game, and if you don't abide by the rules, you don't get to play. Realising that unless they are in the game, they will never get to implement any of their grand ideas, they bend a little, play by the rules, and get in the game.

3. They gain a little bit of power, and are all ready to start doing good, when they discover that if they try to start doing good right now, the power they gained will be threatened. Realising that unless they retain the power they've gained, they'll never be able to start doing good, they put the good stuff on the backburner, and keep playing the game, ready to really make a difference as soon as their position is consolidated.

4. They rise even higher, and are now in a position to put forward their grand ideas.

5. They find that nobody else wants their grand ideas, and if they push ahead with their grand ideas, they'll never rise higher, and someone else with less grand ideas will come forward to take their place. Offered the chance to pursue slightly less grand ideas, they take it, because they realise that unless they keep their position, there'll be no grand ideas at all, and what's the use of having grand ideas if you have no power to do anything about it?

6. Nobody wants the slightly less grand ideas after all - would they like to pursue something a bit less grand again?

7. And again?

8. And again?

9. Their grand ideas obliterated completely, they manage to take a tiny, almost imperceptible bit of action on something of little importance, and feel a warm glow of achievement. They have played the game and Made A Difference. For this they are rewarded with more power.

10. In a position of genuine, lofty power, they look back at all the plans they had to shake the country up and usher in a new age. But if they do that, they might lose that position of genuine, lofty power, and how can you shake the country up unless you're in a position of genuine, lofty power?

11. They take a look at their options, and discover that absolutely nothing can be done without threatening their position of genuine, lofty power.

12. Given that nothing can be achieved without being in power, they swiftly decide to do nothing, because only by doing nothing can they keep power, and only by being in power can anything be done.

13. And so, with a restful conscience, to bed.

You Wouldn't Read About It

It's hard to believe, but we did it! My valet Cam Smith and I hit our target, and we can now upgrade our podcast set-up AND get cracking on our revolutionary web video series!

Isn't this great?

(yes)

Before that of course we shall get to work on providing the promised perks to all who donated.

But before THAT, I would just like to use the power of blogging to thank everyone who donated. From both Cam and myself, enormous, passionate, wet, thrusting gratitude to:

Jason Wilson
Amanda Simpson
Joseph Briggs
Joey Kleptomania
Andrew Dittmer
beccythewalrus
Alexina Psaros-Clarke
dan_d_man
philippelperez
Kathleen McLeod
Anonymous
Tabitha Tate
Griffin Rhyne
Lucinda Horrocks
Flares Sportsman
Claire Connelly
Janelle Moran
Marieke Hardy
chelseahhughes
Alison Goward
nicholasbetson
Max
Julie Lenten
Shelley Stocken
Mike Stuchbery
Paula Johnson
Susan Carland
Anonymous again
Marni Cordell
Catriona Menzies-Pike
Umlol idunno
frh949
erinvk
xflamestillburnsx
Nick Porter
Helen Razer
Jake DiLucia
Michelle Edwards
emiliecollyer
Stephen Davies
lockhart.beth
Jo Thornely
Cameron Cairns
Paul Everett
Another Anonymous
Marcus Liddle
its.me.tif
robgoldy
Stephen Downes
Keir Paterson
Emily Maguire
Evie Pereira
Dave Gaukroger
Jocole1972
Bill Dennis
Rebecca Dickson
peskyfeminist
Alice L Pobjie
Anna Spargo-Ryan
Stair Keith
Elyce Phillips
Anonymous (!)
Elizabeth Aitken
Sarah Heald


Kisses!

EIGHT DAYS, my brain hurts a lot! EIGHT DAYS, that's all we've got!

That's all we've got until our Indiegogo Gather Around Me fundraiser comes to an end! Eight Days! Can we raise the remaining $742 (at time of blogging) in no more time than it takes to have a Cuban missile crisis?

With your HELP we can! And don't you enjoy HELPing people? People like me and my carer Cam Smith (pictured below)?

How can you say no to that face? You can't is what I am saying.

And don't you like the internet and seeing things on it? Imaging if you could turn on your internet of an evening and watch me conducting an interview with Tara Moss entirely in rhyming couplets! Or watch me and David Marr assign scores out of ten to pillowcases at Kmart!

ANYTHING is possible with a high-quality vodcast! And that is what co-pilot Cam and I will be delivering if we can reach our target! Our fans' generosity let us upgrade our PODcasting capabilities, but if you want us in vision AS WELL AS sound, we need just a little bit more. All donations are appreciated - after all, if 200 people give $5 each we're there and then some. And aren't there 200 more of you out there who love us?

Who love ME?

Who want to see me HAPPY?

Who want to see me SPREAD happiness to the world?

Don't take my word for it - ask Toowoomba's Kate Middleton how Gather Around Me makes her feel:

"I feel like a weird drunk princess!"

And we can make EVERYONE feel like that. Not just me and my step-aunt Cam, but ALL OF US together, because if you donate to the Indiegogo, YOU will share in our life's work and we will be a TEAM which will be just so lovely for everyone. O please won't you be on my team o please?

Go here to give generously, get fabulous perks, and become suffused with the joy of contributing to society.

Together, you and me, our future's so bright we need radiation suits!

Dance, puppets, dance!

HEY YOU GUYS!

Remember our Gather Around me podcast fundraiser, to raise funds for making our podcast bigger and better?

Well if you follow that link you'll see that Cam and I MADE OUR TARGET! Hooray! Thanks to the generosity of the early adopter GAM fans (thanks guys!) we hit $750 in the blink of an eye, and will now be able to upgrade our mobile studio to enhance the podcast experience.

BUT, you'll also see from that link that having hit the first target in about a week or so, we were left with three weeks of the campaign to fill, so we're shooting for the moon - our new target is $2222. Let's let my fellow GAMer Cam Smith explain what for:

The remaining money will be spent on video equipment to film a series of long form interviews with people both famous, infamous, and also not famous or infamous. But always interesting.

If you're anything like anybody, you probably long to see Ben Pobjie on the small screen, cracking wise with Tony Jones or passionately tongue-kissing Matt Preston. This will be the next best thing. You could even stickytape your computer to the television for the full effect. The magic of the movies.

Now, this won't be your run-of-the-mill, everyday, garden variety, Grandpa's Werther's Originals-type web series - this will be fascinating interviews, with fascinating people, and it will look like NOTHING YOU'VE EVER SEEN BEFORE.

"Wow, Ben," you're saying, "Does that mean we'll finally get to see you riding Shane Bourne like a mule, while firing a pistol into a flock of pelicans?"

Well like my idol Wayne Swan, I'm not going to play the rule-in rule-out game. But if it DOESN'T include that, it'll include EVEN BETTER THINGS. Laughter, tears, a little bit of inappropriate touching. The point is, you'll be seeing me entertaining you not just through your ears, but through your eyes - and in fact, through both at once!

Basically we're looking to create something super-special and original and fancy, to shake up this dead-end town we call "the internet". If you love me - you love me right? - you'll want to see this.

But we need your help. In the next 20 days, we need you, if you're behind us, to just chuck a few bucks - not a lot, just a LITTLE BIT - into our indiegogo kitty, as shown in the link above, and if we can hit the target we can get this beauty off the ground.

I'm excited. Are YOU excited? Let's be excited together! Remember, just like Andrew...

We work hard for the money

Since you read this blog you are no doubt avid listeners to Gather Around Me, the podcast I host with my associate/life partner Cam Smith, in which we discuss issues of importance to all generations in a humorous yet poignant manner. If you are NOT avid listeners, I am incredibly disappointed in you.

Probably as you have listened you have thought to yourself, "Gee I wish I could show my support of these wonderful men in a more tangible way".

Guess what?

Go on, guess!

Spoilsport.

OK, the point is, NOW YOU CAN!

Find the details here of Gather Around Me's special fundraising efforts to enhance the podcasting experience for YOU. And for us, a bit, but mainly for YOU! Basically we are looking for a bit of cash to upgrade our recording equipment and cover hosting fees, so that we can not only continue the podcast, but make it better, allowing us to go anywhere and bring in more special guests of the kind you love so well. Like, maybe one week we could interview Jason Donovan. Maybe the next week we'd have a chat with Senator Judith Troeth. The possibilities are limitless, if you support us through your generous donations!

And you'll be getting something out of it too. As the page linked to above explains, all donors of $5 and upward will get access to a SPECIAL DONORS-ONLY PODCAST! Only those who have donated will be able to listen to this podcast, which will undoubtedly be of a strange and juicy nature.

Also, donors of $15 or more have the opportunity to get a personalised poem written for them.

Donors of $25 or more can receive a personalised erotic fan fiction story OR personalised prayer just for them.

Also, donors of $50 or more can have a product of their choice plugged shamelessly on the podcast - we will shill for you, and we'll do it with a smile!

Not only that, but for the duration of the indiegogo campaign, we will be recording a short podcast EVERY DAY, to help promote our efforts. The subject of the podcast will be chosen by the Twitter follower who responds the quickest to our daily request for a topic suggestion. Thirty-one daily podcasts for the delectation of our listeners! You can't say we don't put in the hard yards right? The first daily cast is here and is on the subject of crocodiles. Mm, topical.

So there you go - we love our little podcast and we'd like to keep making it bigger and better. If you can sling some spare change our way that'd be lovely. If you can help promote the cause via social media, legacy media, telegrams, hand-written letters or shouting at people, that'd be lovely too. Thanks for your support!

How To Be Good

It is very, very easy to not be good. It's easy to slip up and let yourself be nasty, or rude, or selfish, or arrogant, or self-righteous, or mean, or unfair. It's easy to let yourself say the wrong thing, make the wrong decision, to carelessly upset someone you have no cause to upset. It's easy to forget, sometimes, that you're not supposed to be a dickhead.

And there'll always be people around to tell you when you slip up and stop being good, even for a moment. And there'll always be people who challenge your concept of what "good" even is, because I've found almost everyone has a slightly different idea of what it is to be good, and even when you think you're being good, there might be someone hanging around who thinks you're wrong. And whether they're wrong or you're wrong can be impossible to tell.

And maybe there's no such thing as "good" anyway. Maybe when we argue about it, we're not just looking from different perspectives, we're actually arguing about something that doesn't exist - an objective standard.

And I know there are people who don't even care if they're not good - who have other preoccupations and other goals and put "being good" way at the bottom of their priorities. And I kind of envy them, because it seems like I'd spend a lot less time worrying and looking at myself if I didn't think that being good was particularly important.

And I'd spend a lot less time worrying and looking at myself if I was absolutely certain what good is in the first place.

I have other goals too. I want to be rich and famous and admired and beloved and acclaimed and a great roaring success.

But those things would seem hollow if I didn't think I was good. To be a good person, to feel that you are doing good things, and that you're someone worth loving - without those things anything else I do is insignificant.

I want to be good. I think the vast majority of people walking on this earth want to be good too. It's easy to not be good. And it's hard to know exactly what being good means. But it's something we all have to keep trying at, no matter how many times we fail. And I think a good start is remembering that we're all together, tripping and stumbling through our lives, and we're all trying to be good.

An Unlikely Sequence of Events

Here is episode 103 of Gather Around Me, the podcast in which my associate Cam "the thinking woman's Nick Littlemore" and myself discuss matters of import and solve burning social issues of the day and yesteryear.

Why should you listen to this podcast?

Well just consider the ludicrous series of coincidences that led up to this episode:

1. I was born. Think about that. One precise sperm and one precise egg meeting each other at the precise time which would produce me, and not anyone else. Slightly different cells, at a slightly different moment, could have resulted in a completely different person being born. I might have even been...A GIRL! Ew, right? Vaginas and stuff.

2. I didn't die. Yes, I escaped SIDS, meningitis, measles, mumps, wayward drivers, carelessly-placed pillows, falling pianos, acid rainfalls, masked banditos, and dingo maulings, and survived.

3. I grew up. This means I was not only lucky enough to get bigger, and intelligent enough to complete a moderate education, but I gained the maturity to deal with other people in a calm and reasonable way without spitting at them. Hardly anyone does this - purest chance. What's more, as I grew up I was exposed to that unique combination of social isolation and sporadic bullying well-calculated to instil a desire to be a comedian and the concomitant sense of self-loathing.

4. I moved to Melbourne. Without moving to Melbourne I would never have become a GAMer. And I never would have moved to Melbourne if it weren't for my wife. And I never would have met my wife if she hadn't named herself Ausgirl_18 on Yahoo Chat, thus making me think, "Hello, she's in my country, here's a window of opportunity!" And I never would have been on Yahoo Chat if I hadn't become restless in my usual MSN chatroom, what with the guy who sent women wav. files of John Farnham claiming it was him singing and everything.

5. I met Cam Smith. I am not at liberty to divulge all the details, but suffice to say it involved poverty and desperation and hunger and sleep deprivation and multi-million dollar mergers and a wall of autographed cricket bats.

6. Cam didn't hate me to the point of physical violence. I don't need to elaborate how necessary/unlikely this was.

7. I began recording a podcast with Cam.

8. I kept recording a podcast with Cam.

9. Neither Cam nor I at any point during the podcast recording screamed "I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE YOU ARE SMOTHERING ME I NEED SOME SPACE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD" and rushed out sobbing into the night.

10. We kept this up for 102 episodes.

11. Neither of us fell onto train tracks before recording the 103rd.

12. We recorded the 103rd.


An amazing sequence, no? And now you realise how infinitesimally unlikely it is that we have reached this point, now you see the incredible nature of random chance and how it leads us to outcomes unexpected and delightful, now that you have been humbled by the tininess of all we cogs in the great cosmic machine...

Don't you think maybe you should listen?

Carbon: The Weightless Killer

A lot of people ask me, "Ben what is to be done about the carbon tax?" I often express surprise that they are asking me this, since I never told them my name and they were supposedly at the door just to deliver a package. But I recognise my civic duties and thus I do my best to answer.

The short answer of course is: nothing is to be done. It is a fait accompli: Juliar "Julia" Gillard and her mob of baying leftist tree-kangaroos have put the tax in place and we will just have to deal with it until such time as Tony Abbott, limbs flailing, double dissolutions us all to a better place, which may be in 2014 or 2015 depending on El Nino.

And obviously it is a problem, as already reports are filtering through that prices are skyrocketing like directionless petrels on the back of the carbon price. In some places bread is up 36 percent, and it also tastes worse because to cut costs bakers have had to put ground-up pine cones in the dough. Are you happy now, Steve Gibbons MP?

A short list of things that are now unaffordable:

- bread
- milk
- eggs
- some more eggs
- cars
- gondola rides
- rubber gloves
- petrol
- cans to carry petrol in
- diamond rings
- heroin
- legwarmers
- love

Life as we know it is over and so we must live a life as we did not know it but know it now unlike before. Confused? Not nearly confused enough, as Aragorn might say. But the carbon tax is not all fantasy novels and wordplay. It has real-life consequences for real-life Australians.

Take the case of Terrigal's Jean-Marie Hofspeck, who came home from work last Tuesday to find her prize-winning Pomeranians had been slaughtered and her eldest son was now a rabbi. The shock was enough to cause her to immediately build an in-ground swimming pool in her backyard. Perhaps the Australian Labor "Party" sees fit to wash its hands of responsibility for this, but we battlers know better. Do we not? Or is it?

What is a carbon tax anyway? Many people think it is a tax on carbon. But actually it is a tax on carbon dioxide, a colourless odourless weightless childless jobless gas which makes all life on earth possible. Fifty-eight percent of the human body is made up of carbon dioxide, and birds use it to grow wings. Scientists standing near the CSIRO estimate that a 20% reduction in global carbon dioxide levels will kill us all instantly. A dire warning indeed, and yet Julia "Vaginoplasty" Gillard sees fit to take this risk, simply to satisfy those to whom left-wing principles and Aboriginal land rights are more important than the air we breathe and steel refineries.

But what can you do to survive the carbon tax? First of all, hold your breath. Hold it...hold it...only let it out when you feel you're about to die. If you make sure every breath you take lasts this long you can cut your oxygen bills by 67% and have more money to buy solar panels, which will cut your electricity bills by 45% so you have more money to pay off your gambling debts which Labor wants to deny you the right to amass because of its nanny state agenda.

How will the carbon tax affect your everyday life? It will of course destroy it. In fact the legislation specifically mandates that life is no longer worth living. Political correctness gone mad? It seems so.

But still we must do our best. Carbon tax may crush us beneath its fragrant hoof, but that is no reason to give up hope. A far better reason to give up hope is this:

Thank you for your time.

It's been a while

I have not written a blog post for a while, which has probably caused you to get all in a lather, getting all judgmental and stuff. Typical.

But the reason I haven't is that I was on HOLIDAY. And on my holiday I learned these things:

1. If you drive for long enough, your foot literally falls off.

2. Luna Park in Sydney is overpriced and contains terrifying demons wandering around on stilts.

3. On the Gold Coast it rains all the time. Constantly. Any brochures to the contrary are a sick joke.

Oh right, I had a blog post to write. Um, I'll get back to you.

Go to Hell, Australia

Go to Hell, you preening dandies, congratulating yourself on your superior civilisation, your higher levels of enlightenment, your more advanced phase of humanity, constantly patting your own head with such single-minded enthusiasm it never occurs to you to ask yourself what you're contributing to this world.

Go to Hell, you superior preachers, lecturing away at the lower orders for their failure to think the right thoughts, read the right books, watch the right movies or know the right quotes. Go to Hell you pontificating sacks of air who'd rather spend a week scrutinising a sentence with a magnifying glass for traces of incorrect word usage than spend a minute improving someone's life. Go to Hell you sour, withered bags of bones who know nothing of life but how to suck the joy from it, and who know nothing of humanity but how to take offence from it, and who feed on moral superiority and outrage, and who measure life's wonders only in exuberance crushed, difference homogenised, and spirit extinguished.

Go to Hell you snarling halfwits who can find no relief from the sorrows of life except that comes from identifying someone to blame, whose only reaction to being spat on from above is to look downward to see who they can spit on in turn. Go to Hell you grasping trolls with your windy shrieking greed and your drooling envy and your demands that not a raindrop should fall upon the earth without a slice of it being deposited upon your doorstep, and go to Hell you hollow kleptocrats who build your own power on the sale of warning beacons to be lit whenever someone is getting something that someone else doesn't have.

Go to Hell you hidebound bubbles of self-righteous nothing, with your wailing laments for better times, times when life was simpler and folks were friendlier and the air was sweeter and your days were unperturbed by the anxiety of someone who looked different to you walking the streets without fear.

Go to Hell you savage-brained zealots whose lives are so devoid of pleasure and empty of purpose that your atrophied minds can find occupation only in the pursuit and degradation of those with the audacity to seek happiness in ways that you will decry as unnatural, out of nothing but your own tradition-gnarled loathing for anything that disturbs the slimy stagnation you've grown accustomed to. Go to Hell you slobbering apes, with your perverted sense of satisfaction at the violence you wreak on those whose species you are not worthy to inhabit.

Go to Hell you primeval thugs, who deny agency and pride to members of the opposite sex, lest they be given the unnerving impression that they might be human beings. Go to Hell you snivelling apologists for atrocity, you sniggering dogs of oppression, you sleek, grinning, gloating, hearty, human livestock, who bleat and bellow of equality and fairness up until the point at which your fellow citizen asks if you might be persuaded to share. And go to Hell you vomitous frauds who would throw a veil of dewy-eyed concern over your efforts to keep those you claim to protect in a permanent state of fear and inferiority.

And you too, can go to Hell, you hand-wringing hypocrites, who hide your cowardice and selfishness behind that weeping wall of self-righteousness, who feel the prickles of guilt upon your flesh and will not rest until the source of that guilt is nudged neatly out of your line of sight. Go to Hell, you who wail and beat your breast and dab prettily at your eyes over the tragic plight of those less fortunate, and propose as a solution that those less fortunate be made to stay less fortunate, lest they bother us any further. Go to Hell you self-sainted reptilian liars, who demand that we prevent the poor and the desperate from risking their lives on our seas, and insist that instead they risk their lives in their own countries, where we won't have to worry about them, who cry Compassion as your only watchword when proclaiming your schemes to save people's lives by denying them a life worth living, when lecturing us all on the necessity of cruelty in the service of kindness, and kindness in the service of indifference. Go to Hell you leering goblins of misery, and dig yourselves deeper with every oily, disingenuous word, with every fork-tongued proposal to build better fences to obviate the need to concern ourselves with how we treat our neighbours.

And go to Hell, too, you damnable bigots who cling gleefully to that map of the world that floats before your eyes, a world populated by brown puppets with strings to be pulled, and kindly white puppeteers with plans that are all for the best.

But most of all, go to Hell you lordly chiefs, who seat yourselves on high, atop hills of broken bodies and treasure piles of worldly pain, who draw power and wealth from all those mentioned above. Go to Hell you warlords who owe your position to the dissemination of fear and the force-feeding of hatred, to the fuelling of anger and the widening of divisions. Go to Hell you vampiric stormcrows, spewing darkness and terror onto the quivering masses below, because you know that without darkness and terror someone may catch a glimpse of the vacuuous toads you really are. Go to Hell you avaricious bottom-feeding insects who amass more and more at the expense of those who have nothing, who build your castles from the disappointments of those with not a hundredth your fortune, and a hundred times your worth.

Go to Hell, all of you, for your breeding of inhumanity and profiting from cruelty, your celebration of ignorance and destruction of knowledge, your contempt for the world and vendetta against those you share it with, and your lying, hateful, blustering, selfish, imbecilic rampage through life.

And go to Hell, all of us, who won't lift a finger to change a thing, safe in the knowledge that as long as we can find somewhere that's worse, there's no reason to try to make here any better.

We can all, safely and soundly, go to Hell.

How To Fairfax (and WIN!)

A lot of people have been talking about Fairfax and where it went wrong and where it can go right and what needs to be fixed and how far back in time we have to travel in our magical time-fridge to fix it. 

Now, I am in a unique position to address this issue, because on the one hand I am a Fairfax columnist, which means I am a moribund dinosaur just begging to be put out of my misery, but on the other hand I am a blogger, which means I am an agile, exciting citizen journalist taking my rightful place at the peak of the media mountain and set to make a fortune in promoting nappy rash cream. And on a freakish third hand, I have a keyboard in front of me, which means I am a seasoned expert in the media industry and corporate governance.

As such I, like everyone else in the country, know exactly where Fairfax failed, and exactly how it can succeed.

First of all, it needs to invest more in quality journalism. People want to read quality journalism and it is only by investing in quality journalism that money can be made. Nobody ever made money in Australia by not investing in quality journalism - just look at Solomon Lew. Look at him! Weirdly out of proportion, isn't he? You see me point.

Secondly, engage with readers on social media. This might mean "logging in" to  do twitters, or getting a Second Life account, but the important thing is to engage. News is better when it's engaged. A good way to engage with readers is by saying "Thanks for your feedback!" or "That was a good joke about how I'm losing my job! LOL!"

Thirdly, be bloggers. Bloggers are the people who report the news nowadays, not journalists, and being a blogger is the best thing to be. Bloggers are more flexible and intelligent and they are not straitjacketed by old-style notions of what reporting means, so they are free to tell the truth. If you stop being journalists and start being bloggers you will tell more of the truth and less of the not-truth.

Fourthly, stop being bloggers. Blogger don't know anything because they don't wear leather shoes and never hang around in bars with Paul Howes. Bloggers are fine for sitting around in their pyjamas and putting stupid captions on a photo of Tony Abbott in a shower cap, but if you want someone to break into the Watergate you need a good old-fashioned alcoholic, and bloggers will never be that, so stop being bloggers.

Fifthly, don't put up paywalls! What is the first rule of business? Give the customer what they want. Customers don't like paywalls - they will not pay for them. What customers want to pay for is free content. If you give readers free content they will pay through the nose - believe me, the minute you start charging for things, customers will stop paying for them. If you REALLY want to make a lot of money, you have to stop expecting anyone to give you any money. This is an Ironclad Law Of The Media

Sixthly, get a Kickstarter. Kickstarters are a way for Clever People in the Digital Age to make money by asking people to give them money for things. This is different from a paywall because it is crowd-sourcing and is the democratisation of information. What you do is, you set a certain limit that has to be reached, for example "If we raise $2500 I will tell you what the Police Commissioner said at his press conference" and everyone who makes a donation of over $50 gets a t-shirt reading "Journalists Do It Till You're Accountable". In this way everyone feels they have gained Ownership of things, and the media industry thrives in a post-factual world.

Happy Fairfaxing!

Somewhere

G

Racking Up The Century

Way back in 2009, when my old friend Cam Smith said to me, "Hey, let's do a podcast!" I never thought we would ever record 100 episodes. Mainly because I refused to do it, telling Cam in no uncertain terms what I thought of his shady schemes. And yet, I began to weaken when he explained he needed to do a podcast to pay off his gambling debts. And I weakened even further when he said he had my children in a secret location and would allow me telephone contact with them if I made podcasts with him. And so I enthusiastically joined in the fun.

We named the podcast "Gather Around Me", after our favourite movie, starring Mickey Rooney and Jessie Matthews, which told the story of an impoverished chorus girl who meets a wizened dwarf in the street who she beats to death and robs, thus finding happiness and wealth.

Since those humble beginnings, when we recorded our first 'cast, which mainly consisted of Cam switching the microphone on and off and whispering "test" for half an hour, we've gone from strength to strength. From episode 15, when we recorded the sounds of our vigorous lovemaking, to episode 28, when we killed a pig live in the studio, to episode 49, the infamous "cholera" episode, to episode 67, when special guest Ron Barassi drank three litres of Jaegermeister and turkey-slapped the microphone repeatedly while reciting The Highwayman; it's been a wild ride. I've loved/hated every minute of it.

To get to 100 podcasts is a massive achievement - not many people do it, or even desire to. But after lots of hard work and unidentified pills, here we are, the Derek and Clive of our generation, and I am very very proud to present to you all:

GATHER AROUND ME EPISODE 100 STARRING SPECIAL GUEST MULTI-MEDIA SUPERSTAR MARIEKE HARDY

Featuring discussions, among other things, of:

- Neighbours' racism
- Todd McKenney's anger
- Nemeses
- Time-travelling comedy
- Ann-Maree Biggar
- Being sober
- The follies of youth

Enjoy listening! If you're new to Gather Around me, why not browse the archives and subscribe on iTunes? It's free, and there are surprises around every corner!

So You've Created Human Clones: A how-to guide on identical twins

1. DON'T PANIC: The automatic reaction from anyone, upon seeing that they have spawned two creatures of identical appearance, is to scream at the unholy horror of it all and claw their own eyes out. There is NO NEED for this. Go for a brisk walk and calm down.

2. Be kind to yourself. You are definitely going to get them mixed up at some point. Don't beat yourself up over this: it is not your fault for being unable to tell the difference between your children; it is the children's fault for looking so alike. Just remember that children don't really understand anything that's happening until they're about six, and if in the preceding period they accidentally get their names swapped, no harm done. Alternatively, have one of them tattooed.

3. Do NOT dress them alike. This is very important, although there are exceptions: for example, those parents who would like the world to think of them as complete knobends may like to dress their twins in matching outfits.

4. Don't worry about them running into each other: latest research indicates this won't cause them to fuse together into Siamese twins.

5. Allow extra time for all public activities: you are going to be slowed down by the strangers who will stop you every two minutes to ask questions like "Are they twins?" and "Aren't they gorgeous?" and tell you long pointless stories about how their sister has twins.

6. Twins only have half a stomach each, so you won't need to buy any extra food.

7. Introduce them early to the eerie phenomenon of sympathetic twin-pain transference. Twins like to fight, so it's important to make it clear as quickly as possible that if one twin hurts, the other twin is going to hurt too.

8. Be PREPARED. You will notice, the first time both of them walk at you at once, calling your name, how much this resembles a zombie apocalypse. This can alarm the unwary parent: do NOT keep a gun in the house.

9. Be AWARE of their whereabouts at all times. They will on most occasions, when let loose, immediately stagger randomly off in different directions. Implanting tracking devices in their brains should help you keep tabs on them.

10. Know that they will be incredibly CUTE. Be vigilant at all times against their powers of cuteness, and remember the cardinal rule of parenthood: NEVER TRUST A TWIN




This post in honour of my own girls, and my most beloved grown-up clones, Jo and Shelley. Happy birthday ladies.

WORLD AFFAIRS! with Guest Blogger Kathy Lette

World affairs have always been a passion of mine - in fact, I've had affairs ALL AROUND THE WORLD, right? The ladies know what I'm talking about. But seriously, we live in a time of great international turmoil, and it's up to all of us to become better informed about the events that shape our lives. After all, most people believe that UNESCO is a new supermarket chain, am I right? So it's up to people like me and their clever writing to educate folk, and I'm great at educating - just the other day I taught Geoffrey how to do the dishes! Wowee!

Right now one of the greatest concerns facing the world is the Greek economic crisis, and it's no wonder they're in trouble, what with all the money they spend on plates! Whee! The real trouble is they can't pay their debts, which is a problem any woman can understand - how hard is it to pay off the credit card after getting a new pair of shoes, ladies? And what this means is they might have to default on their debt, which is always difficult - anyone who's married knows how hard it is to figure out whose "default" it is! This could result in Greece being expelled from the Eurozone. That probably doesn't sound like much of a big deal - most people probably think Euro is what coxswains yell out on the river! - but it really is, because that kind of financial contagion could easily spread here, a lot like crabs, and we wouldn't want Australia to get a nasty itch "down there"! Know what I'm saying ladies?

I mean look, I've always thought economics is a lot like having sex with Clive James - boring and depressing and taking up far too much space in the papers - but actually it has quite a big effect on lots of our lives, because without economics, we'll have no money, and without money how do we buy lipstick right girls?

Another big issue in world affairs is terrorism, which is a problem around the globe, although if they really want to see terrorism they should meet my mother-in-law!

Right?

Anyway, terrorism is a major problem, because a lot of people in Muslim countries want to blow us up, and who can blame them - have you seen the clothes they have to wear? I mean, get some colour into your frocks, girlfriend!

There's a lot of debate about the best way to deal with terrorism - personally I'd make all the terrorists meet my mother-in-law! Oh...wait...I already did that one didn't I? Anyway, many people think we should continue waging the War On Terror, which I'm all in favour of - let's start with those shoulder pads that the young girls wear nowadays! They sure terrify me! Oh sweetie are you a lady or a linebacker, is what I ask them! Talk about terrorists! Which we were, weren't we?

Yes, the War on Terror - what's the best way to go about it? Should we try to reason with them - any woman knows how hard it is to reason with a man when he's ready to explode! Or should we take a harsh line, including military action and torture? And any woman knows how effective torture can be - how else could we get our men to buy us jewellery! It's a difficult dilemma to resolve, a lot like whether to say you've got a headache or say you've got herpes.

But is it as big a dilemma as climate change? At our house we know all about climate change - the air gets really chilly every time I ask Geoff to set the table! But global warming is a serious issue and is caused by human emission of greenhouse gases, and I bet all the ladies out there know just how toxic gaseous emissions can be, especially when he's in bed, right? Oh men, what are they like?

But really we do need to take action on climate change, and it's difficult, because there'sso much misinformation out there - that's why most people think the greenhouse effect is what happens when your tomatoes are too small. And most people think tomatoes being too small is what happens when you take too many steroids. And most people think a steroid is something you play on an Atari! But I digress.

Point is, if we want to save our earth - and sometimes I wonder if we do, I mean men have pretty hairy backs - we need to take action NOW. I was discussing this just the other day at our place with our good friends and houseguests Julian Assange and Tim Flannery and Germaine Greer and Jose Ramos-Horta and Bob Geldof and Kofi Annan and Aung San Suu Kyi and Hillary Clinton - though with that hairdo she should be called Hillary ClintOFF, right? - and we all agreed that catastrophic climate change was less than desirable, a lot like a man who expects a roll in the hay after a day of not vacuuming the sofa.

Because after all, if we don't take care of the planet, what will be left for our children? Not that they'd notice what was happening to the planet what with all their iPod headphones and things, right? So it's up to use to take action before the earth becomes more inhospitable than Cher's vagina - hi-yo!

Look, there's plenty of world affairs I could run through for you - for example, sex: why do men think foreplay is how you start a game of golf? And feminism - most young girls today think Andrea Dworkin is a character from The Hobbit! And America - most Australians think Obama is what you say when you find out it's raining outside, but then again, once you go black you never go back right girls? I'd bunk down in those Baracks any old day! Right?

But time constraints prevent me from analysing (ha!) any further, so I'll say goodbye for now, and remember, STAY INFORMED!

A Most Befuddling Puzzlement

I am, I confess, confused. I was reading, as is my wont, Andrew Bolt's latest musings on the mores and manners that shape us as a people, in order to get a feel for the zeitgeist and become better-informed on the trends and dominant paradigms in our post-structuralist community, when I came across one certain article entitled:

HYPOCRITES HARM GAY MEN AND WOMEN

Now I found this interesting, as a fan of news, and I naturally read on to discover exactly what said hypocrites were doing to gay men and women. Beating them with sticks? Tripping them with wires? Hurling insults at them which can be very harmful because as Cher said words are like weapons they wound sometimes?

Imagine my surprise when I discovered none of these were the case. In fact Bolt was not exposing a worrying social trend of roving hypocrite gangs attacking stray gays at all, but rather commenting on a philosophical tug-o-war. To wit:

CONTRAST. In March, Australia's Human Rights Commission boasted it had entered a float in Sydney's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in "its campaign to allow same-sex marriage".


No fuss.
Last week, a board member of Victoria's Equal Opportunity Commission signed a petition "to oppose moves to 'same-sex marriage' ".
This time: screams, protests, outraged media and a resignation.
Pardon?

Ah, I saw the complaint being put forward by Australia's most-read columnist. He is actually complaining about the hypocrisy exhibited by so many members of the Australian left, in that they will happily acquiesce, or even applaud, when the Human Rights Commission engages in activities to promote human rights, but when a member of an Equal Opportunity Commission speaks out against equal opportunity, they howl in protest.

And it is indeed fair enough that Bolt - who has dedicated his life to exposing hypocrisy and humbug in all its forms - should highlight the inconsistency here, that so-called "politically correct" folk only protest against discrimination and people whose beliefs and actions are diametrically opposed to their jobs, but refuse to utter a peep against anti-discrimination and people who believe and act in accordance with the purpose of their positions. How, Bolt asks, pithily and with style, can the modern Left so fervently celebrate inclusiveness while utterly refusing to celebrate bigotry? What is it with the Left and its repellently brazen embrace of equal rights, so at odds with its fascistic opposition to unequal rights? How can one say he is in favour of equal rights if he opposes equal rights for inequality?

DOUBLE STANDARDS.

So in summary this was a very well-written article. But there is one part that troubles me, and I'm hoping that with your help we can unravel the mystery it poses. At one point in the piece, Bolt writes:

"After all, broadening the definition of marriage is not a question of equality, since gays are as free as anyone to marry anyone of the opposite sex."

Which is fine. As I am not a Leftist I am not trying to repress his freedom of speech, so write that sentence as much as you like, Mr Bolt, says I. But it raises a conundrum for me, which is: why did he write it? I am always interested in first causes and motivations, so the question of "why" is very important to me. My curiosity rages - there must have been a reason he wrote that sentence, and I've narrowed it down to the most obvious possibilities. I welcome any further suggestions in the comments.

Bolt wrote that sentence because:

a) He had recently suffered a severe blunt force trauma to the head, but was on such a tight deadline he had to complete and file his column prior to seeking medical attention.

b) Having suffered a crippling bout of writer's block, he sought to release the artist within via use of powerful hallucinogenic drugs, not realising such substances can have deleterious effects on one's perception of reality, causing the taker to believe in non-existent objects, sounds, or logic.

c) Bolt had recently triggered an ancient curse which caused him to swap bodies with a nearby five-year-old, and was forced to write a column using the mental capacity and personality of the child.

d) Bolt was toasting a fallen comrade in arms immediately before starting work but, unable to find any liquor in the house, had instead drunk several litres of lead paint.

e) Bolt is a merry prankster playing funny jokes with his readers by seeing if they're savvy enough to spot such sentences even when they are cloaked in the guise of something written by a functioning adult human being.

f) Bolt's parents were closely related by blood.

g) Bolt does not exist and is simply a nom-de-plume for a team of trained elephants who write his column by periodically sitting on a Macbook.

h) Bolt is very very very very very stupid.

Those are the potential explanations I've come up with for why he might have not only written the above but actually allowed it to be published in an actual newspaper, but I know there might be more. What do YOU think, readers? Let me know!

I Am Quite Proud

To have won a little prize: to wit, the Sydney Writers' Centre award for Funniest Post in the Best Australian Blogs 2012 competition.

The award was won for this post on the blog you are even now reading.

Congratulations to the other winners, especially Best Blog winner Eden Riley, and my pal Anna Spargo-Ryan, who won Best New Blog.

All the winners are detailed here.

Choose Your Own Adventure!

The story so far: you are an aspiring teen kickball player whose brother is not home by six. Armed with this information, you choose not to call Harold and instead accompany local halfwit "Lauren" to the docks, where adventure awaits...if you CHOOSE it to!

What happens next? It's up to you! Listen to the latest Gather Around Me Choose Your Own Adventure: The Terrorist Trap instalment, and decide what to do!

The TROUBLE with Government

Do you know what the TROUBLE is with our so-called GOVERNMENT?

It is that the GOVERNMENT is out of TOUCH.

Everywhere ordinary Australian CITIZENS are gathering around their water COOLERS and having conversations about the ISSUES which affect them PERSONALLY. These are ISSUES like:

- the high cost of living
- how much it costs to live
- the price of things
- prostitutes
- how much money you have to spend on items these days
- the modern problem of life being expensive
- Cabcharges
- LIES

But the GOVERNMENT does not UNDERSTAND these issues, because the government has no WATER COOLERS, and they are in CANBERRA, not the inner WEST where real people LIVE.

The government, in fact, thinks that LIES are FINE, because only LIBERALS object to them. So when ORDINARY people say, "hey government stop LYING", the government says, "this must be the work of LIBERALS!" This is a very OUT OF TOUCH thing to say. Also, they government believes the cost of LIVING is fine, and ordinary Australians need to stop WHINING, even though as Australians we have RIGHTS. If the government was IN touch instead of OUT of touch, it would KNOW this.

These are the issues the GOVERNMENT thinks are important:

- shaking the president of America's hand
- taxing the air in our Coke cans
- destroying wealth
- having sex with Bob Brown
- assassinating each other

These are not things the PUBLIC approves of. But as an ORDINARY Australian who works for NEWSPAPERS I am here to tell the PUBLIC that the GOVERNMENT does not care what it approves of because it is out OF touch.

The trouble is that the GOVERNMENT has never had a proper JOB. People in government don't WORK like you and me, they have STUPID jobs like union OFFICIALS and LAWYERS and political OPERATIVES who never see the sweat of their own hands upon their brows.

Here are some jobs that REAL Australians who UNDERSTAND issues have:

- journalist
- opinion writer
- television pundit
- coal miner
- royal watcher
- water cooler maintenance operative
- commentators
- steel worker
- John Farnham


Here are some jobs that POLITICIANS have:

- politician
- idiot who will one day be a politician


Is it any WONDER these people are out of TOUCH? The Prime Minister has never spoken to a NORMAL person in her entire LIFE. She has not even spoken to a marriage CELEBRANT because she won't get MARRIED and she has never spoken to an OBSTETRICIAN because she does not have CHILDREN. I have children and I can say that it gives you a PERSPECTIVE on life that people who don't HAVE children and are pathological LIARS do not have. That is WHY I am giving this free ADVICE to the GOVERNMENT based on years of EXPERIENCE as a real Australian with functioning SPERM.

I am sure the FAT cats in Canberra will dismiss this hard-hitting and HONEST article as simply another case of LIBERALS, but all I want is for the government to get in TOUCH with everyday battlers and REALISE just how much we HATE it when politicians LIE to use about how they paid for their SEX workers, and when they ask their ASSISTANTS to shower with the door OPEN. If the government does not stop being out of touch SOON, all our shower doors will be open and we will vote in the LIBERALS because at least they are IN TOUCH WITH US.

Please LISTEN to me, I am a JOURNALIST (see above).

A politician being IN TOUCH with ordinary Australians

One Hour One Life

Of course as you know depression is something I comment on from time to time, and I've just written a piece for news.com.au on the difficulties of talking openly about depression.

That piece is part of a campaign news.com.au is running in conjunction with Lifeline this month, One Hour One Life. Click on the link to find out all about it - basically there'll be a series of stories about depression and mental illness, in aid of a new Lifeline service, the Online Crisis Support Chat. This goes live on May 8. An hour of time on the chat service costs around $31, and Lifeline and news.com.au are looking for goodhearted folk such as yourself to stump up a little spare change to help connect people in need of help with someone who can give them some.

It is, I reckon, a pretty great cause, and I'm pretty proud to be associated with it.

Biblical Gaps: A Fill-In Story

The story of how a poor Israelite girl got herself in trouble: this was read at the Wheeler Centre Erotic Fan Fiction event, 26th April, 1012

Mary didn’t quite know how it had happened. She had been leaning on the bar in the Nazareth Hotel and Bistro when she saw Him, standing by the bandstand, swaying sexily to the band’s traditional Hebrew groove. He was the most beautiful creature Mary had ever seen – his shapeless white robe hung seductively from his shoulders; his toes protruded from his sandals with an impudent flirtatiousness; and his long white beard reached almost to his navel in a way calculated to get any impressionable young peasant girl’s juices flowing. And flow they did – she hadn’t felt this moist since the last public stoning. She had nearly squealed aloud when she saw that he was walking over to her, and when he spoke, she almost dropped her West Bank Cooler. Maybe it was the soft yellow glow surrounding him, maybe it was the fact that he was floating six inches above the ground, maybe it was the enormous robe-tent he was pitching, but somehow she had to have Him. Five minutes later they were in the alley outside, tongues writhing like serpents and His hands frantically exploring her forbidden fruit.
From there everything was a blur. She remembered things had got off to a rocky start, when he’d gotten over-excited in her bedroom and blasted a hole in the wall before she was ready. But after reassuring Him that this probably happened to gods all the time, and agreeing to His request that she call Him Father, things seemed to be going smoothly. At the time it had seemed slightly strange that He insisted she wear a pair of cardboard wings and bray like a donkey, but hey, she was a virgin, what did she know? Perhaps this was just what men were like. After all, Joseph could get pretty weird himself, with all his carpentry puns.
Oh, dear Joseph…what would he say? What would he say when he found out about that night of passion? What would he think of her when he discovered that she’d been riding the creator of the universe like a bucking bronco, screaming in ecstasy, “OH MY GOD!” and having him scream back “YES WHAT IS IT?” and then she would scream “OH NO I WAS JUST SCREAMING IN ECSTASY EVERYTHING’S FINE” and he would scream “OH I SEE” and she would scream “SORRY FOR THE CONFUSION” and he would scream “DON’T WORRY IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME” and she would scream “OH MY GOOOOOOOD” and he would scream “OH MARY” and she would scream “NO ACTUALLY THIS TIME I ACTUALLY JUST WANTED TO SAY COULD YOU MOVE TO THE LEFT A BIT YOU’RE ON MY FOOT”. And he would scream “OH YES SORRY SOMETIMES I GET A BIT CARRIED AWAY DON’T I?”

What would Joseph say when he heard all that? Would he be bored? She hoped not. She certainly hadn’t been bored as the ruler of all that is and ever shall be summoned angels to rub her feet, or when he lit up their lovemaking with a series of flashing thunderbolts, or when, slightly more crudely, he ate five loaves and two fishes out of her intimate portions. There were many words she might have used to describe these experiences, but “boring” wasn’t one of them. Well, actually, it was, but in a different context, less in the “watching paint dry” sense and more in the “you be the apple and I’ll be the worm” sense. She hoped Joseph wasn’t bored in either sense, despite the definite feeling that came upon her occasionally, when he was showing off his hand-carved doorknobs, that he could do with a really good hard boring now and then.

She wasn’t sure when it all started to go wrong. It was probably just after he’d yelled that he would “make a flood that would cover the entire earth”, and just before she asked him how he was managing to have sex with her while simultaneously standing outside having a smoke. It might have been the point at which he told her to get on her knees, and caused a rain of frogs to fall from the ceiling. But really, she knew the turning point was when she noticed two shadowy figures standing in the corner, high-fiving and giggling to themselves.

“Father,” she said, trying to ignore the violent motion and singing doves that He brought into existence with every thrust, “who are they?”

“What?” the Lord paused, mid-spank, and looked around. “Oh yeah, those are my crew.”

“Your crew?”

“Yeah, my boys. My gang. My posse.”

“Your WHAT?” Mary squealed over the sound of rhythmic heavenly thwapping.

“Posse.”

“Oh. Sorry, I thought you said…never mind. Look, why…ooh!” Mary was briefly interrupted by a massive shudder of pleasure running through her entire body, as God moved in a particularly mysterious way. “Why are they here?”
“Oh, we kind of do everything together.” From the corner, the two men gave her the thumbs up. Mary tried to focus, despite the beard strands flailing wildly in her eyes.

“Is…is one of them…a ghost?”

“That’s right,” said God, creating a car battery out of thin air and hooking it up to his nipples with His mind. “The Holy Ghost”. The ghost floated over to the bed and shook Mary’s hand. She smiled politely.

“Nice…to meet you?” She looked back at the Lord, who had assumed – rather uncomfortably for his partner – the form of a burning bush. “What’s going on?” she demanded, slapping at her pubic hair with a fire blanket.

“It’s the Trinity baby – we do everything together. Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”

“Son?” Mary looked at the third man, a young bearded fellow with a halo and large cucumber. “Come on – that’s just sick!”

“Sorry babe,” the Lord intoned, having abandoned his bush form and turned into a pillar of smoke, which proceeded to blow into some extremely intimate areas, “You do one of us, you do all of us.”

From there, things went rapidly downhill. Mary had already been slightly put off by God’s constant cries of “Thou shalt not stop” and habit of turning her breasts into piles of salt and back again; but that was nothing compared to the Holy Ghost, who was so insubstantial she could barely feel him, and simply sort of wafted over her making “woo woo” noises. Mary was also made uncomfortable by the impression that she was having sex with the Grand Wizard of the Klan.

If anything, the Son was even worse when his turn came around. Every time she moved, he drew a cross in the air and said “I forgive you”, and he kept breaking off to wash her feet, but what she found really creepy was when he finished and told her he couldn’t wait for her to be his mum. What the hell was that about? He also made a lot of a jokes about the Second Coming that she didn’t really understand.

And now, here she was. She hadn’t heard from God since that night – not even a phone call – and all she could think about was Joseph. He wasn’t going to take this well. He was a conservative sort of guy at the best of times. She did not imagine that he would react well to being told his fiancée had been gang-banging supernatural beings. But Joseph just didn’t understand what it was like to be a young girl, flooded with hormones, wanting to rebel, and easy pickings for any slick stranger with a full beard and a cheap source of wine. He didn’t understand how hard it was to resist a man whose tongue could literally cause earthquakes. He didn’t know the amazing feeling of having your Red Sea parted.

She heard the door open. “I’m home, dear!” Joseph shouted as he walked into the room. “And look – I’ve got wood!” he cried, waving a piece of four by two in the air jauntily. Mary rolled her eyes. Both Joseph’s carpentry, and his erectile dysfunction, had ceased to be amusing long ago.

She stood up and drew a deep breath. “I have some news for you, Joseph,” she said. “I’m pregnant!”

Joseph stared at her. The wood dropped from his hand. “Pregnant?” he gasped. “But…you’re a virgin! That’s, like, your thing!

Well, there you go,” Mary replied somewhat superfluously.

Joseph was aghast. “Who’s the father?”
This was the hard part. Mary knew her story was both hard to believe and absolutely disgusting, but she had to face the consequences of her actions. “It’s God, Joseph. God is the father of my baby.”
“God?” Joseph’s face lit up. “You mean, God has miraculously blessed you with child?”
“Not really. We just had sex,” Mary explained. “Like…a LOT.”

“Ah,” Joseph nodded. “You mean, he filled you with his holy spirit…”

“No,” Mary shook her head. “He filled me with his holy penis.”
Joseph’s face fell. “You mean…he nailed you?” He held up a small nail to illustrate, but his heart wasn’t really in it. Even woodwork seemed bitter and hollow now that he knew what his fiancée had been getting up to.
“Oh, Joseph!” Mary collapsed into Joseph’s thin, womanly arms. “I feel so…so dirty! I lost my head, I think it might have been the wine, or possibly it affected my judgment when God put his hand inside my brain. He used me, Joseph, and now I’m just a story he can tell to his buddies.” Little did she know that this was exactly what God was doing at that very moment, sharing a beer with Vishnu and telling him the whole story with accompanying hand gestures.
“It’s all right, Mary,” Joseph muttered. “I forgive you. Even without placing your sins onto the head of a third party who is then tortured to death in order to absolve you of responsibility for your actions, I forgive you, and we shall get through this together. We’ll raise this child, and he will work with me, making tables and little toy hippos on wheels whose mouths open and shut when you roll them along the floor, and we will be happy together, and he will never have to know he is the result of his mother’s wild night of bizarre kinky group sex with a trio of incorporeal perverts.”
“How did you know all that, I didn’t tell you – ”
“That’s not important right now!” Joseph cried. “What’s important is the future. We shall be married straight away, and our family shall be happy!”
“But Joseph, what about God? Every week when we go to the temple, He’ll be there…leering at me from above. I…I can’t take the humiliation!”
“Don’t worry Mary. You’ll never have to see that creep again. We won’t go His temple anymore. As of now, we’re converting…to Islam!”

Life - A Love Story

At a young age, I fell in love with life, and this tempestuous affair has continued ever since.

Many times my lover has infuriated me, driven me to distraction and despair and forced me to question my commitment to the relationship. At times it has seemed almost abusive, the way life would harass me and make me feel small.

I've considered leaving, I've thought about escaping this fierce love that terrrifies as often as it exhilarates. So many times I've felt that the relationship is just too much work, and quitting would be the only way to make things better. But always that love has kept me bound.

And no doubt it will continue in much the same way. The days when life and I are so attuned that colours blaze brighter and my heart swells with joy and exultation at the love I have found, will always be followed by the days when I feel out of love, when I feel that irreconcilable differences have widened the chasm between us to the point where there is nothing to be done. Days when my devotion to life is so complete that my only regret is that the time we're allowed to spend together is so short will be followed by days when everything seems dull and painfully eternal, and my wandering eye catches sight of the alluring alternatives, days when I may casually flirt with others and wonder if the grass really would be greener on the other side. The threat of these dalliances might always hang over us, I might always be subject to these doubts over whether I made the right decision committing to this affair that causes such pain and uncertainty.

And yet I can't leave. I must stay, and ride the peaks and troughs, and find out what happens next. Because I fell in love with life, and by now it is almost as if I cannot live without it.

A day in the life of a Podcasting Star

A lot of you are probably thinking, hey, I certainly love listening to the Gather Around Me podcast starring Ben Pobjie and Cam Smith, which I subscribe to on iTunes and totally listen to all the time, and I especially love the latest episode wherein Ben and Cam read a Choose Your Own Adventure book and invite ME to select where the story will take them next - but there are times when I wish I could know more about the process behind the GAM podcast and its wild popularity.

WISH. NO. MORE. Because here is:

MY DAY AS A PODCASTER BY BEN

6.05am: Arrive at the GAM offices, where I am greeted by Esther, our hard-working secretary. She gives me my daily iron pills and flirts outrageously with me, and we have a good laugh.

6.08am: Enter the GAM Control Centre, where Cam screams at me for being late.

6.09am: Cam, sobbing, begs for my forgiveness for being angry, and then takes a short nap.

6.10-6.30am: Catch up on GAM email. Delete spam and offers of marriage from men, move offers of marriage from women into special folder. Agree to every offer of corporate sponsor. Reply to sexy emails from Packed to the Rafters cast members with equally sexy emails.

6.45am: Cam wakes up. I subdue him with a soothing voice and pleas to drop the knife.

7-10am: Planning session for new podcast. We storyboard each episode meticulously on butcher's paper, then transfer the storyboard to our 3D clay puppet board. We then make a crude animation of the podcast, edit and score it, and play it back to see if we think it will fly as a quality Gather Around Me instalment. We do this several times until we have what we call "GOLD". We then record a rough guide vocal using this script, so our orchestra can follow it.

10-11am: Orchestra session. All the music is written by Cam, but in a strange code that only he knows, so he has to hum it to the orchestra and they play it back. Normally a recording session will be done in the nude, and Cam usually assaults at least six musicians before it's over.

11-11.30am: Meeting with lawyers to discuss Cam's defence for assault trial.

11.36am: Cam begs me to let him cut my hair. I refuse, but he goes ahead anyway.

11.45am: Cam starts sobbing again.

12pm: Lunch, eaten on opposite sides of a picnic table in a nearby park, neither of us willing to take our eyes off the other. Between bites of his salami toastie, Cam threatens to kill me several times.

12.45-3pm: Sex.

3-4pm: Recording of the podcast. Cam does the whole thing in a thick Russian accent, and insists on having his "manager", a 17-year-old boxer named Michelle, sitting beside him the whole time. Today's podcast is examining the issue of aged-care funding, but three minutes in we get sidetracked by wondering which sea animal it would be preferable to be raped by, and we never really get back on-topic. By the end of the hour Cam is incredibly drunk and claims he is my biological mother. he then beats me savagely.

4.15pm: Over-dubbing and adding of wacky sound effects.

4.30pm: Daily prayers. At GAM we have a new religion each week to keep things fresh. This week's is Shinto.

4.45-5pm: Sex.

5.15pm: Breakfast.

6pm: Cam asks for my hand in marriage, but immediately rescinds the offer, displaying crossed fingers. He then beats me savagely.

6.30pm: Esther screams with exasperation and hurls herself through a plate-glass window. Later on she confesses it was because "YouTube was being slow".

6.45pm: Wash dishes and genitals.

7pm: Kiss Cam goodnight and shampoo his beard.

7.30pm: Hit the streets, out for a good time.

8pm: Become caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse with international arms traders.

8.15pm: Dessert and bed.


That's SHOWBUSINESS folks!

Why not?

Why not vote for me in the Sydney Writers' Centre Best Blog Competition?

Am I right?

I'm right, right?

You'd be voting for a blog that:

- is number one in the world in regards to how-not-to-be-a-rapist tutorials

- has more blasphemy per square centimetre than all industry leaders

- is as cute as a button

- uses no child labour

- makes your breasts firmer and more inviting if read daily.

Vote now!

Or don't!

It's really up to you!

It is not my place to be prescriptive!

But vote now!

Unless you don't want to!

!!!!

The Night I Won Masterchef

*This story was read by me last night as a guest at the wonderful Fan Fiction Comedy at Melbourne Town Hall as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. It's a great night, there are only two more shows this weekend - catch them while you can.

It was dark when I stepped into the Masterchef kitchen that night. Filming had finished hours ago, but I had been summoned back by an anonymous note pushed under my door, reading, "Come to the kitchn. Urgent. Bring garnish."

As I looked around the empty kitchen, breathing in the aroma of capsicum, sweat and broken dreams, a voice boomed in the darkness.

"Welcome...to your final challenge."

"But I already did the final challenge! I made Heston Blumenthal's ice-cream pheasants! I made the liver parmigiana! I did everything you asked!"

"HAHAHA! No - nobody wins Masterchef without doing...the REAL final challenge!"

And with that, Matt Preston stepped out of the shadows. As always he wore his trademark cravat. As was less usual he wore nothing else.

"M-m-m-Matt," I stammered. "Your croquembouche is showing!"

He stepped forward, his spiced chorizo glinting in the moonlight. He leaned in close. "It's time...for the mystery box!"

With that he whipped open a wooden box on the benchtop, revealing three bananas, half a chicken and a riding crop.

"What can you make of this?" he whispered, his breath rich with the scent of lust and sun-dried tomatoes.

"I...I guess some sort of terrine?" I began, but I had no time to finish before I was pressed against the bench, Preston's chipolatas frenetically tenderising my sirloin.

"You...YOU'RE the hero of this dish!" Matt gasped, stuffing my fresh squab with his salted rolled pork. "The presentation leaves a little to be desired, but the flavours are all there! The bitterness of your rumballs, the sweetness of your glazed beef shoulders, and the firm filling inside your succulent creampie," he grunted. "Just needs...more SAUCE!" and with a mighty bellow, he covered my steaming platter with his freshly-made hollandaise.

From there it was a blur of baking and roasting and saucing and basting and stewing in each others' juices and the occasional random scream of "Schnitzel!" I found myself passed from chef to chef, as each one forced me to submit to their depraved culinary whims. Whether beating Gary Mehigan's eggs with all my might to produce custard for his crusty buns, delicately smearing white chocolate icing on Donna Hay's sticky date pudding, or drizzling Margaret Fulton's pungent fish pie with what she called verjuice bukkake, I did it all. Until finally, I was letting George Calombaris batter my dolmades, screaming, "We're nearly there, just ten seconds left, time to BOOM BOOM SHAKE THE ROOM!" and with a last spurt of honey mustard it was over, and I lay panting in a pool of my own foie gras.

"Now..." I pleaded. "Now am I Australia's next Masterchef?"

Matt smiled, a smile made of equal parts lasciviousness and macaron crumbs. "Not yet," he growled. "Because now...we're going to have sex."

Ode To Bob

O Bob where will we go from here without you there to soothe our worried minds and tell us everything will be all right?
Who will lead us from the darkness to the light?

O Bob how will we cope now that you can no longer show us the wondrousness of nature and help us understand the trees?

Who'll tell us about the birds and also the bees?

My eyes are blinded by darkness because the beacon of hope is gone

Gone from the Senate

Gone from my life

It is as if a candle burning in my bosom for so long

Has been snuffed out by a falling seagull

That is what it is like

O Bob

O Bob

Bob

Bob

Bob

Are you listening Bob?

Over here

Bob you taught us many things

How to save the earth

How to be a responsible citizen

How to tie knots and make simple yet nutritious meals on a budget

You taught me how to ride a bike and catch a fish

I'll always remember you for that Bob

For that, and for your amazing marksmanship

O Bob you killed sixteen Germans single-handed in a trench

How did you do that Bob?

And why?

How does grace and anger, poise and violence, peace and homicide

Co-exist?

O Bob

You will be missed

I will miss your voice and your laugh

Your kind words and your gentle hand

Your billowing cape and your flaxen hair

O Bob I love you

We all love you

Please don't go

Stay here and together we will stockpile canned goods

Forever and ever

O Bob

(fade to incoherence)

Hey You!

Yes, you! I got a few questions!

Do you like READING THINGS?

Do you like LAUGHING AT THINGS?

Do you like ELECTRONIC DEVICES?

Do you like - and pay close attention here - ME?

Hey, I know you're answering yes to all those questions! But I know that YOU'RE asking a question too!

You're asking, "But Ben, HOW can I satisfy ALL these preferences of mine for the INCREDIBLY LOW price of $2.99, in a convenient manner delivered instantly over the world wide web?"

OH MY GOD I HAVE THE ANSWER!



That's right! HANDY LATIN PHRASES!

Handy Latin Phrases is the anthology of stories and poetry, known as my equivalent of Woody Allen's "Early, funny stuff" that I self-published several years ago. You can still get it as an old-fashioned dead-tree edition, but NOW! FOR THE FIRST TIME! ON AMAZON! You can get it as a Kindle eBook! For $2.99!

Only $2.99? Why you'd be cruel and foolish NOT to buy it am I right?

Haha! Of course I am!

Go buy it NOW!

Trigger Warning: Lady Caves

This is the track listing of the upcoming album "Lady Caves" by my new band, Trigger Warning. To hear the tracks, go to www.myspace.com/shortstack.

LADY CAVES, by Trigger Warning

1. Dam My Man-River
2. Happy Birthday, Celia Imrie
3. Your Love Is The Hangnail On The Finger Of My Heart
4. Look At My Pants Please
5. Breasts Etc
6. Ode To Allan
7. Ladies Don't Gotta Be All Up In My Grill Yo
8. Stand Up Slutty Soldiers
9. Kiss On The Bits
10. Gemma The Peek-A-Boo Queen
11. Hope You Get Eczema
12. Lady Caves

"I'm here to scare the bats
Out of your lady caves
But don't worry baby
I have a torch"

- Trigger Warning, 2012

School's In!

Why should you come see me play the principal in the Bedroom Philosopher's High School Assembly at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival?

For many reasons:

1. There will be MUSIC.

2. There will be DANCING.

3. I will TALK at some point.

4. You are allowed to THROW things at me.

5. It is in a nice THEATRE.

6. It has nice COSTUMES.

7. There are JOKES.

8. You can sit on a SEAT.

9. After the show you might get to have SEX with someone you MET at the nice THEATRE.

10. I will CRY if you DON'T.

So I'll see you there.