Old Farts

The worlds oldest joke is a fart joke.

I cannot disguise my glee at such a discovery. In 1900 BC, Sumerians were flailing about, finding flatulence funny.

History does repeat. Like a good Indian curry, it repeats loudly and often.

Woodside’s obsession with gas led to the destruction of the Burrup and removed any possibility of us finding an older joke there. And that isn’t funny at all.

But thanks to the University of Wolverhampton, we now know that the oldest joke in the English language is in fact not John McCain, it’s a joke about John McCain. It could be about any dick though, to be fair.

The Liberal Party of WA have expressed their disappointment at only being a comparatively young joke.

Read more at the ABC

Condi’s here!

Condoleezza Rice is here.

In little ol’ WA!

She gave an address at Mercedes College for wealthy white girls today – just around the corner from my office (today’s office anyway).

But I missed the chance(!) to put to her the following:

Condi is from Alabama.

Alabama still electrocutes people – one of five states in the only country in the world that still uses Ol’ Sparky.

If these students in New Zealand are successful in arresting her for War Crimes, will they allow her to be sentenced in her home state?

In the good ol’ USA, the War Crimes Act of 1966 says that the sentence is death if the perpetrator is guilty of “willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health.”

So Condi could get the chair?

Yes folks, in Alabama they could indeed be serving… Fried Rice.

Motorbike!!

After yesterdays post, it seems prudent, that for the record I state clearly and unequivocally that I’m a motorcyclist.

No matter how fast your car is, it still gets stuck in traffic. You still spend an unpleasant amount of time encapsulated in a metal cage, in close proximity to other metal cages, rolling along on concrete or bitumen. Many people force torture upon themselves with hideous noises from commercial radio designed to send you further down the path of insanity. Most people choose to do it in solitary confinement.

Commuting in a car is like a (just barely) mobile version of Guantanamo Bay.

I live close enough to all four of my current workplaces to walk, or bicycle. But today, for the first time in weeks, I rode my motorcycle. I wheelied, stoppied, sped and slid my way around to my various destinations with joyous abandon. I enjoyed the instant camaraderie with a fellow motorcyclist that comes at red lights and disappears when they turn green. I arrived everywhere I went with an irrepressible post-mischievous grin.

My Yamaha R1 has been raced, crashed heavily on three occasions, stolen and recovered twice, and looks like a real bunky shit-heap. But it has just recently been given a new lease of life with some bolt-on go-faster goodies, and tuned to perfection. It is quite simply the most fun you can have with your pants on.

Yes, I’m a climate criminal. I operate a vehicle purely for the indulgent joy it gives me. I take the long way home. And when paired with an MP3 player (humanity’s second-greatest invention) on an empty road, I am quite sure I get a glimpse of what a day in heaven would look like if I was going there (instead of hell for being a climate criminal).

I love riding in winter – even in the pouring rain. I especially like the looks on the faces of the middle-aged Tarago drivers stuck in the traffic, their windscreens all full of fog, and their ears all full of screaming child and bickering partner. Their expression conveys exactly the same sentiment I feel – ‘Fuck – thank god I’m not stuck in that situation’. They have no idea just how much fun I’m having.

This winter however has brought an insight into a terrible future. My own personal post-apocalyptic future. A future without a motorcycle.

I have a bone and joint disease that manifests in an identical way to rheumatoid arthritis. For no apparent reason, my joints ache or sear with excruciating pain, and can’t support my weight. I lose the ability to walk (if it is my legs) or do any regular daily activity (if it is my arms or shoulders). And it comes on suddenly, especially in the colder months.

A car is a tool operated by control inputs. But a motorcycle is an instrument played with the whole body. A slight shift or twitch has an effect on the direction of the bike. You don’t steer by turning the handlebars; you steer with your whole body.

So while my unable-to-bend legs or painful-to-use arms may be uncomfortable in a car, they don’t preclude me from operating it except in the very worst cases. They do prevent me from riding though.

When this illness first began, it was just a few days of the year that I couldn’t ride. Now it seems like whole months of my riding life are lost, and it’s become painfully clear that my time left riding is finite and disappearing fast. I have only a few years of motorcycling left. (Assuming of course that I am not wiped out on the bike in the meantime…)

Thus this post is a warning to all of my friends – I will be a bitter, miserable inconsolable prick on the day that I have to bid farewell to my favourite activity and in the days, weeks and months afterwards. Even more than usual. Please accept my advance apologies, and be gentle with me as I curl up into a ball and rock back and forth in the corner, staring into space and sucking my thumb as I ponder how cruel the world can be.

Electric Dreams

I read an interesting piece today about how the car industry could learn from Apple’s example in marketing the iPhone.

It spoke of a niche, creating demand and desire. Allude to a making high-end product just-about attainable for the average person.

This is the method that can and should be applied to electric cars. In petrol-thirsty boom-town WA, an appeal to consumers’ climate sensibilities isn’t going to have much impact. But in the race to have the next gadget, a bigger and better toy than the neighbours, there is an opportunity to save people from themselves.

The neighbourhoods that the mortgaged-to-the-hilt fly-in-fly-out young families are living are the very same parts of Perth that will suffer most in the fossil fuel crunch that is only just beginning. These suburbs are by their very design, forcing their inhabitants to rely on their cars. Nothing is within walking distance, and the service from public transport is laughable.

They are locked in to car ownership for at least another decade, if the state government were to act now. So the reality is more like twice that.

And herein lies the dilemma. Rampant consumerism of all varieties is the primary antecedent of climate change, yet some further consumption has to take place to combat it…?

The fact is, these people are going to need new cars. So the challenge is to instil in them a desire for the right kind of new car, and make it available, while their high-paying mining job is still viable, and before their outer-suburban housing estate becomes a crime-riddled ghetto.

Almost every innovation in the automotive world entered the market as a premium feature – from performance components like anti-lock brakes to safety features like airbags – and then trickled down to the larger consumer market. Because such things began life as premium features, they created desire for them in the mass-marketplace. It gave the opportunity to one-up the Smiths across the road.

This is why the widespread introduction of electric technology will only succeed if it is done from the top down. Notwithstanding that there is a growing market for ‘green’ products across the board, if we’re going to shift the largest market forces we have to shift consumer desires.

Make electric cars sexy. Make electric cars aspirational objects. Make electric cars the pinnacle of automotive engineering. How much faster would development advance if Bernie Ecclestone decided that as of 2010, Formula 1 was going to be entirely electric? How many more people would lust after an electric car if they looked less like Priuses, and more like Tesla Roadsters or Lightning GTs?

How many cynical performance enthusiasts would be swayed by the Shelby Ultimate Aero EV?

These are the vehicles that are going to change the way people think – they’re the vehicles that are going to have a V8-loving speed demon drop the notion that electric motors are just for golf carts.

And the car company that gets this right will join renewable energy industries as the ultimate 21st century examples of business success.

Visitation rights

When I was a kid, I was often an instrument to further the arguments of one or the other of my parents.

I think as an 8 year old child, watching a disagreement about whether I should button my shirt up from the top down or the bottom up deteriorate into a full-blown shouting match, made it clear to me that my parents had some unresolvable issues.

Fortunately, they didn’t fight too vociferously about physical custody, but there were plenty of occasions where the visitation rights of my father were disputed. In the end, due in no small part to his vitriolic tirades about my mother that would last all weekend long, myself and my siblings stopped visiting. Nevertheless, he was able to pursue a legal avenue to ensure that he had access if he wanted it.

Unfortunately, those laws aren’t nearly as comprehensive as they should be. I say this because I have been enlightened with an alternative perspective recently, as the parent.

Of a sort.

You see, I miss my ex-girlfriends dog. A lot. Sadly, (or mercifully) more than I miss her. And I’m quite certain he misses me too.

Now if we (me and the former partner, not me and the dog) had a child together, I could retain the services of a lawyer, and after proving that I wasn’t a total psychopath (hey, I can pretend for a while, OK?), I’d be granted the legal right for weekend visits. Even if the child was from a previous relationship, I’m quite sure that humanity and sanity would prevail, and a strong connection would be allowed, even encouraged, to continue.

But that is just not the case with pets. And in this instance, because the dog was in her life before I was, I can’t even lay claim to him being partly mine. Even if I did teach him most of the bad habits he now displays.

So I just sulk, and hope that I bump into him on the street one day.

Breaking up really sux sometimes.

Maybe I’ll get a cat.