Grumpy Old Man


OK, so I do stupid things from time to time. More so of late, it’s true, but I feel I can blame senescence for that.

Recently I strayed from my usual brand of shampoo. There was nothing wrong with it at all, it was perfectly OK. It’s just that some strange gremlin took over my shopping faculties and made me reach for a an exotic new thing on the supermarket shelf…

“You should try different products” the gremlin said, “Rather than just mindlessly use the same brand over and over…”

“Okey dokey gremlin,” said I, forgetting that gremlins are hardly ever up to any good.

I picked up a bottle of this Palmolive ‘Aromatherapy’ Lavender & Geranium scented stuff. Sounded reasonable. How bad can they get with a bottle of shampoo anyway?

Shampoo Front Shampoo Side

The first time I used it I knew there was something wrong. The bottle was disturbingly thin… it felt kind of like it had already been squeezed in the middle… Erk. So weird.

OK. I guess. Some kind of fancy design thing. Can’t see the point myself. Didn’t they test this with a focus group? Surely someone would have pointed out how clumsy and stupid this design is…

Anyway, I used it for a while and the pre-squeezed thing became more and more irritating. Not only was it unwieldy in the shower and unstable on the bathroom shelf, it was really difficult to reliably measure out a set amount of… uh-oh. Yeah, right, now I get it.

The whole thing is a complete swindle. I looked at the bottle. OK. It’s wide and tall, and looks BIG on the shelf, but the thinness of the container makes the volume of shampoo inside about half what it appears to be. Combine this with the frustrating inability squeeze out just a sufficient amount of the contents and you have a perfect example of ripoff marketing.

I’m sure the Palmolive marketing people think they’re very clever coming up with this idea, but I honestly don’t understand how a company can believe that this is a decent way to treat their customers. Maybe I’m naive, but I like the old fashioned idea that if something is actually any good, people will buy it. This kind of money-grubbing contempt for the folks that keep you in business is shabby.

Personally I think it puts Palmolive in the same Circle of Hell as spammers.

The Sheep Train

In another first for The Cow, this post comes to you live from the inter-city train that runs between Sydney and Melbourne. Well, not live, as such – there is no actual internet connection on the train, lest you think that Australia might be anywhere near that technologically hip – but I am typing it on my laptop ((You may think I’m that technologically hip.)) as we hurtle ((I use the word with irony.)) out of Albury Wodonga towards Melbourne, now about three hours away.

Being something of a fan of rail travel, and heading off to visit Violet Towne for a few days, I thought that instead of taking the usual ho-hum plane flight I might splurge the extra $20 ((That should really have clued me in… a 20 buck difference between Economy and First Class travel… )) and kick back in the luxury of First Class. Sure, the train takes about 6 times longer, but hey, First Class! You know: Leather seats; red velvet curtains; witty attractive passengers; crisp white linen table cloths and sparkling silver cutlery in the dining car. Orient Expressville baby! Get the picture?

Yep, it’s the wrong picture.

We head out of Sydney Central at 8am, late, but what’s rail travel without delays, right? The First Class carriage is moderately filled, but I have two seats to myself, and there is no-one behind me or across the aisle. Cool. Nice, quiet trip!

10 minutes out: Ergghh. These First Class seats are SO uncomfortable. They must be the only seats I’ve encountered anywhere in the world where reclining them increases their discomfort by a factor proportional to the angle of inclination (that’s not to say that they were comfortable upright either – I’ve sat on more luxurious seats in bus shelters). I marvel that anyone can have, even intentionally, designed something so back-achingly awful. I hope the designer, when he goes to Hell (for he surely will), spends Eternity in one of these seats.

20 minutes out: We stop at Strathfield Station, the last urban stop before we hit the country, and pick up a million extra passengers. Well I do exaggerate. But in a fitting demonstration of CountryLink ineptness, there are, in fact, more passengers boarding the train than there are seats available. Yippee. This causes more delays.

The seats around me fill up. With old ladies. Now I’ve got nothing at all against old ladies, but these are stupid old ladies. Stupid, loud, annoying old ladies. You know the kind of thing – everytime the train goes past a station one of them says “Oooh. Flemington. Oooh. Picton. Ooooh. Moss Vale”. One of them talks endlessly about absolutely nothing. In a very loud voice. For hours. I can’t even drown her out with my iPod turned up loud. I glare at her pointedly and screw my ear-buds in even tighter. She takes this as an invitation to turn her volume up from squawk to shrill. If I ever get that bad, someone shoot me.

The loudspeaker spruiks wares from the Buffet Car. Idiotically, I venture out for a cup of coffee (mostly so I can have some brief respite from the inane prattle which has now turned into a mix of racism and cooking suggestions). I come back with a scalding hot cup of weak instant sludge and a little container of UHT milk. I look at the these things on my cheap cardboard tray. Someone’s meddling with my sanity. First Class? Swill?

I try to console myself with the thought that if this is First Class, things must be truly hideous in Economy. Evidence of this is forthcoming pretty quickly. The First Class carriage is the second car on the train. The first car is a sleeper that has been converted to Economy seating for the daytime trip. This means the First Class carriage is between them and the Buffet Car.

Soon begins the long procession of Economy Class passengers intending to fuel themselves for the gruelling journey. The first thing I notice is most of these people hardly need fueling. In fact, dispensing with the train and jogging to Melbourne might be a good option for many of them.

There is one guy who has the most ENORMOUS belly I have ever seen. He’s not really a big man in other respects, but his belly looks like it composes the better part of his body mass. The most off-putting thing is that he chooses to highlight his asset by wearing tight jeans and an even tighter lycra t-shirt that allows the bottom of his stomach to sag out. The shirt’s slogan says ‘Buff Riders’. At first I thought it read ‘Butt Riders’ but I had ample opportunity to check. I don’t know which is worse when I think about it. He has no front teeth, and makes numerous trips back and forth to top up with Coke so he can remain that way.

Then there is the young, even groovy looking, guy in dark suit and sunglasses, who walks past clutching to his chest something that looks awfully like a carpet bag. Attentive to his threads he may be, attentive to his personal hygiene he definitely is not. A wave of overpowering body odour floods in his wake as he passes through. After his second trip, and the sense of disbelief that anyone could smell that bad has diminished, First Class passengers start to cringe pre-emptively when he enters the door at the far end of the carriage. For inexplicable reasons he makes numerous trips back and forth, always clutching the carpet bag, but never bringing back any food or drink.

From time to time the happy CountryLink staff keep us informed of where we are. Which wouldn’t be so bad except for the fact that every time they announce “Our next stop will be Goulburn”, the old ladies go into a flurry of repetition: “Ooooh, Goulburn! Next stop is Goulburn! Oooh…!” (I kid you not). I start dreading the click of the intercom that heralds the announcements.

So. Three hours or so to go and it’s getting dark.

I begin to really really wish this was the Orient Express. Not because I’m pining any longer for the crisp white tablecloths or the mahogany trim or the caviar and champagne, but because this First Class carriage is looking more and more like a very fitting setting for murder.

So anyway, Nurse Myra and I are heading off to have a coffee.

On the side of the road we see some people wearing red & white scarves. One of them is holding a football.

“Do you think they’re going to a Swan’s game?” she asks (instantly regretting it).

“Why don’t you ask me a question I can answer,” I complain, “Like something to do with Quantum Theory..?”

Around the inner-city burrough in which I live, the favoured method for getting motorists to reduce their speed is The Speed Hump. The Speed Hump is a plague upon humanity. It is up there with the Biblical Plagues: A Plague of Locusts, A Plague of Boils, and a Plague of Speed Humps. See how easily that rolls off the tongue? I really hate The Speed Hump. For many reasons, but among them:

1: Speed Humps do not seem to impede in the least all the 4WD owners, who are the worst offenders. Speed humps? Ha! That’s as close as they get to actually using four wheel drive! They love the speed hump. It justifies in their brain the reason they spend twice as much on petrol as the rest of us.

2: Speed Humps really screw up the suspension on tiny gas-saving cars like mine, which have small wheelbases and don’t have dead-kangaroo-height clearance. Every time I go over one my poor little Smart just bottoms out. Ker-thunk!

3: Speed Humps cause people to accelerate loudly once they’ve cleared the bump, effectively wrecking the concept anyway: “WooHoo, now I’m OFF the Speed Hump I’m going to really fang* it!!!”

But do not let it be said that the Reverend makes light of road safety! Yes, Speed Kills! and here at The Cow we endorse responsible driving so I am proposing a new concept in traffic pacifying.

Goats.

Yes, goats. I propose that we release herds of goats throughout urban traffic routes. You doubt my methods? Then read this†!

I rest my case.

___________________________________________________________________________

*An Australian term which I’m sure my US readers can figure out.

†Thanks Pil! (I love my readers)

Satan In The Sky


I’m pretty tolerant of religious beliefs, even if I don’t agree with most of most of them. As far as I’m concerned, people are entitled to believe whatever they like as long as they don’t indiscriminately inflict those beliefs on other people. Or expect other people to even take them seriously for that matter. Unfortunately the adherents of some religious groups are just way too pigheaded to realise when they are being offensive. Either that or they simply don’t care.

So it’s a beautiful Autumn Sydney morning, blue skies, crisp cool air, red and yellow leaves all over the road. I’m walking to work listening to my iPod thinking what a glorious day it is. And then I notice that some skywriting company is making the best of the still air and scribbling something across my field of view. During the next five minutes it becomes clear that the word they are writing is ‘Jesus’.

Now I really take exception to this. On two counts in fact: one because I don’t particularly want anything being written in this beautiful pristine sky, and two because I especially don’t want someone foisting their religious beliefs on me in this irksome manner.

I’m sure these zealots have some misguided self-righteous idea that we will all have a better day knowing Jesus has made his presence felt in our skies.

I bet they would get really ticked off if someone like me was to use skywriting for some judicious personal proselytizing.

Be afraid. Maybe I just might…

On my way to work this morning I heard a ‘comedian’ on the radio reciting a limerick. Not only was it not funny, it wasn’t properly a limerick. A nicely constructed limerick is an elegant gem of amusing poetry and the thing he coughed up was a leaden lump of clangourous word globs.

Herewith some rules for writing limericks:

The proper scan for a limerick is (where ‘a’ is a weak emphasis, and ‘B’, a strong):

a B a a B a a B (There was an old man with a beard)
a B a a B a a B (Who said ‘It is just as I feared…)
a B a a B (Two owls and a hen,)
a B a a B (Four larks and a wren)
a B a a B a a B (Have all built their nests in my beard!’)

There are some variations on the syllabic structure, but this is basically the plot. It’s really simple and you can easily feel it by clapping on the strong syllable (of course, to limerick writers this is the equivalent of moving your lips while reading to yourself, but I feel that if people started out by doing the clapping we would have far fewer terrible limericks in the world).

How, then, do people get it wrong so often? Consider:

There once was a young lady from Spain

This is incorrect. Can you see how it screws with the meter? You need to say either:

There was a young lady from Spain

or

There once was a lady from Spain

It is important to get the meter right in a limerick because that is one of the rules. You can’t just bandy any old thing about. Why? Because then it’s not a limerick. If you decide that you wish to change the rules, fine, but don’t introduce your effort as a limerick, but as a bad poem, which is what it will surely be.

Some other tips for writing limericks:

·Don’t start and end with the same line: this is an inferior form and should be avoided.†

·Don’t use the same rhyming word more than once: it shows a lack of cleverness.

·Rhyme properly: ‘time’ doesn’t rhyme with ‘dine’

·Avoid contrivance in language or rhyme: if it sounds forced it will not work.

Once you have mastered these simple rules, off into the world you may venture and with luck you may even create some jewels such as these:

From the depths of the crypt at St Giles,
Came a scream that resounded for miles,
The vicar said ‘Gracious!
Has Father Ignatius
Forgotten the bishop has piles?’‡

or

I sat next to the Duchess at tea,
It was just as I feared it would be
Her rumblings abdominal
Were truly phenomenal
And everyone thought it was me!

When you have mastered the proper form, you may then join the elite and become revered. Consider this masterpiece from Edward Gorey:

There was a young curate whose brain
Was deranged by the use of cocaine
He lured a small child
To a copse dark and wild
Where he beat it to death with his cane

Gorey is not only in complete control of the form, but he has subverted it by making the punchline grim and surprising, an effect that only works because we are not expecting that outcome (it is, of course, a very Gorey thing to do).

The most skilfull limerickists (I just made that word up) then really excel. This one uses expected rhyme for a superb piece of trickery:

There was a young lady from Bude
Who went for a swim in the lake
A man in a punt
Stuck an oar in her ear
And said “You can’t swim here it’s private!”

See how wonderfully funny that is? But it’s only funny because it breaks the rules. Otherwise it would just be surrealism. And to break rules, you gotta know rules, capisci?

From there, the possibilities are endless. How about this:

A limerick fan from Australia
Considered his efforts a failure
His verses were fine
Until the fourth line

Or one of my favourites:

There was a young man from New Haven
Who had an affair with a raven
After wiping his chin
He declared with a grin
“Nevermore!”

Next week, on Post Bovus Ergo Propter Bovus, we investigate The Haiku. Please sharpen your knives.

Whoops. Er… sorry that’s seppuku.††

*I realise that by introducing a topic such as this I risk another worrying poetry competition between jedimacfan and Polanski. Sigh.

†As in: “There once was a man from Japan… That silly old man from Japan” Tsk.

‡Limericks don’t have to be bawdy, but it is a grand tradition.

††Which is what the guy on the radio should have immediately committed, if he’d had any common decency.

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