Smiley Virus

Who the fuck is Miley Cyrus?

A few weeks ago I lived in a Mileyless universe, but now she pops up everywhere. What is weird is that I’d never heard of her a couple of months ago.

I chanced turning my radio away from RTR, and there she was. I went to a different video shop, and there she was. She’s on my friend’s blog. She was in my friends toilet. I couldn’t even pee in peace, such is her insidiousness.

I don’t need to know that she’s the Achey Breakey Heart guy’s daughter, or that she cleared Disneyland out for her 16th birthday party, but I do.

I am offended by the name she was born with – Destiny Hope. For god’s sake, didn’t her mulleted moronic father inflict enough pain on the world?

Sarah Palin is gone – wiped from my field of vision. So why, oh why does god now serve up a mini Disney Palin?

Annie Leibovitz and a pregnancy rumour couldn’t derail the relentless god-fearing takeover. Instead, all we have is a seatbelt controversy.

If only they’d crashed. And died. Horribly.

Miserable weak

My grandfather’s funeral endured an attempted hijacking by a sad old man from his army unit, who had trouble comprehending that 63 years of life after military war service was actually relevant and important to my grandfather. God forbid, it took precedence. Further insult was added when it became apparent that – gasp! – women were conducting the service, women were among the pallbearers, and the only family member to speak was a young woman.

This man’s fixation on military ceremony absolves him of the need to engage with his emotions. Why cry when you can salute? Why support a grieving widow when you can admonish her for doing things incorrectly? (at this point it is important to note that I did not kick him in the balls, glass him in the face and repeatedly kick him while screaming out ‘urban warfare has changed a lot in 60 years, fucker!’ but yes, it’s fair to say I was tempted…)

My sis flew home for a day, and is now back under the loving supervision of Captain Paul Watson, who needs a ship full of minions to transport him southwards, so that he can block harpoons with his ego. This does not demand consideration for the welfare of his team. Such things do not matter unless you’re a celebrity crew member.

Colin Barnett has announced that uranium mining and GM crops can go on ahead in WA. Idiot.

My ex – authentically lovingly I might add – texted me for the first time in many months, with unfortunately cruel ironic timing; I was engaged in what may prove to be the terminal conversation of my current relationship, the one with the woman I adore. So the reminder of how painful it can all get was especially beneficial and uplifting.

I have a cold. Colds give many people aching bones. I already have aching bones, so as anyone with a similar condition could tell you, a cold delivers me excruciating pain and renders me immobile for two or three agonising days.

If you’re looking for me, I’ll be the guy full of mirth, merriment and optimism about the state of the world, dancing with joy.

If you’re really looking for me, bring opiates, heat packs and thick skin. And if you really need me for something, best you find someone else for a while.

Pissing Contest on a Grave

I loved Six Feet Under. The human drama aside, the whole demystification of the funeral business was endlessly amusing.

It’s big business. Everybody dies. And the inevitability of death means that it infiltrates everything. I’ve just spent the last couple of days assisting with the logistics of my grandfather’s funeral…

After unsuccessfully pursuing a gramophone recording of that song he waltzed to at some time in the 50s, I was instead tasked with the design and composition of the funeral programme. Not having done this before, I went searching on the internet for an example.

Not only were there examples everywhere, but there was even a template for use in Microsoft Office. Having recently migrated to the new version of Office, I was spared the appearance of the pesky “office assistant.” I assume, however, that it probably would have looked like this.

Morbid humour is everywhere. At least it is for people like me looking for it. One helpful site was called lovetoknow – a generally helpful site for all manner of useful information (for women apparently. But unless Stephen Conroy gets his way, they’ll never know I have cock, so I use them for their information, then heartlessly dump them). In most instances, it seems perfectly reasonable: bookshelves.lovetoknow.com. But in this case, the address was dying.lovetoknow.com… Thanks, yeah. I’m stoked. I’d really love to know.

One thing I have learned is either people’s grief manifests in really strange ways, or my extended family have serious mental health issues. Or both.

“Which photos do we include in the slideshow?”

“Well what about this one?”

“No, we can’t because standing in the background is Doris, and you know that Doris and Gregory haven’t been on speaking terms for the last few years because of that whole incident with Bernice’s cat and the hedge trimmer, and Gregory will be seated near the front because he regularly talked to your grandfather’s neighbour Albert, who was an alcoholic and…”

(Names, places, types of animal, types of gardening implements, varieties of chemical dependences and whole situations have been changed to protect the identity of nobody at all, but it is keeping me from calling people I see once every few years who I’m supposed to be nice to “complete fuckwits”, and it’s also amusing me a little too)

I think it is the furious competition between people trying desperately to prove just how much they loved the now-deceased that irks me. I know it isn’t particularly fashionable, but it makes more sense to me if they had expressed such sentiment while he was still breathing. Particularly when he was in agonising pain for the last few months of his life as he was literally disassembled.

Even more insidious are the attempts by some to try to retroactively prove how much they were loved by him. This apparently is demonstrated by a photograph of them with the dead at the funeral. Or indeed, just by a photograph of them.  Absolution through megapixels. Who knew? Oh no! I’ve been high-speed shuttered out of the will…

The funeral is Thursday, after which I may or may not be needing an entire new family.

Admit it, mine is the sort of charm and grace you’d love to have at Christmas dinner, isn’t it?

To Be a Man

That great philosopher of our time, Quentin Tarantino, once remarked that “all boys without fathers seek father-figures.”

After the separation of my parents, in my early teenage years I attempted to understand what it meant to be a man. I sought guidance from a motley assemblage of men,  consisting mostly of whomever I could find. Teachers, my friends’ fathers, older friends of my own, my wonderful stepfather.

It didn’t really occur to me until he became ill that all along, my image of what a man should be had been best represented by my grandfather.

Of all of the men that have come and gone in my life, his is the example I have, I do and I will continue to aspire to. His capacity for love, strength, and integrity, always steeped in the gentlemanly dignity of his generation, had such timelessness to it. Those sorts of values never go out of style.

But it was his ever-present wit that ensured every shared moment was joyful. From sardonic and sarcastic, to playful and precocious, and everything in between – these were the moments when his powerful mind and the richness of his life experience were on full display. These were the moments when a roomful of people were in the palm of his hand; charmed, intrigued and transfixed. These were the moments when the twinkle in his eye never seemed to fade.

Years ago, my mother had a conversation with my brother and I that turned to the subject of national service. “What would you do if that time ever came?” she asked.

My brother replied, “Well if I didn’t, how could I ever look my grandfather in the eye again?” Never were truer words spoken. And yet – thanks to my grandfather’s generation – my generation, so comfortable in the spoils of affluence, is blessed by needing not to confront such immediate horror. We have no world war. We have no great depression (yet?).

Our great challenges lie elsewhere. And as my life increasingly focuses on working to address that which we do face, I can only hope that he would approve of my efforts. I can only hope that some measure of the strength and wisdom he possessed will come to me when it is needed. Above all I can only hope that my generation proves worthy of the legacy of his.

In so many aspects of life, he was the instrument by which I measured myself. “What would your grandfather think?” were among the few words that resonated when my behaviour was at its worst in my teenage years. Those same words echo in my mind to this day and will continue to guide me until I draw my own last breath.

Stoic and courageous to the end, for me Donovan Francis Murray will always epitomise what it means to be a man.

Donovan Francis Murray

18/5/1921 – 13/11/2008

In conference

All terribly jet-set, me. Never mind the carbon footprint of people descending on a remote city for a conference of environmentalists, we’re saving the world here people. After witnessing the mundane, mendacious and mumpsimus meanderings of this group, it’s a wonder there’s been no fatalities. From suicides.

In my defence, I’m only here out of convenience so I can visit my sister. So whilst I could be accused of being here voluntarily, I’m not really here. Yes, thankyou, I will keep telling myself that…

I have witnessed proceedings from a detached observer’s viewpoint, which has allowed me to deduce that the principal aim of these events is to assist embittered octogenarians desperately attempting to bring meaning to their lives. They absolutely dominate proceedings, seemingly unaware that if they haven’t done whatever they’re trying to do by now, they’re not ever going to. I’m fairly sure this is what dying with dignity legislation was designed to address.

How is it that earnest young people with the best of intentions enter into this field, only to emerge years later looking and behaving like Emperor Palpatine? Well, I guess in a few short decades, I’ll be able to tell you…