They Do It Better In…

Generally we’re told that they do it better in wherever the speaker has been that you haven’t. If they are from an Old Country, the streets there were quieter, the people were smarter, and the bacon was crisper. It doesn’t matter which old country – just as long as the speaker isn’t there any more and they can’t extradite him.

The wise emigrant is a little cannier these days before beginning the brag. Once upon a time the local Australian listener was unlikely to have ever been in Lodz or Barcelona or Poughkeepsie and every place overseas could potentially be talked up as Faeryland. Nowadays cheap air travel may well have sent our locals through the very place that is being extolled and they have seen the fact that the streets were quieter because of the parked army tanks on the corners – or that the locals are smarter because the eugenic police have weeded out all the rest. And it is hard to brag about the bacon in Mecca…

To be fair, there are certainly places that do things better than here in Australia. We might learn from them sometimes…but we need to have all the facts about the supposed wonderland, and not just selected examples of glowing results at the end. We need to see the whole economic, cultural, and political picture before declaring it a paradise.

As a person who has not been shelled, gassed, taxed, mugged, or evicted recently – who can vote and read freely – who can afford food, water, shelter, clothing, medicine, and transport – well, I am pretty well satisfied with the portion of Australia I live in. If I cannot visit 500-year-old churches I shall not grieve – the attitudes and practices of the worshippers in those churches may also be 500 years old. If I am denied cobblestone streets and cramped cities I will make do with my own quarter acre of space and sunshine. And I need no political bragging at all – my own parliaments are as open to me as I need them to be. Without army tanks on the street corners.

 

 

Advertisements

The IQ Test – How To Fail Gracefully

Sparked by a website that purported to rank the world’s nations by their IQ…as a result of seeing  an amusing display of Ghanaian military equipment…I fell victim to a 40-question IQ test.

It was free and an amusing exercise in spatial and pattern recognition. I dutifully plodded my way through it into the very hard ones, and finally got to the point where they were going to tell me my IQ.

All I needed to do to learn this was divulge my name, email address, age…and they promised to never use it for bad purposes. I declined to do so and clicked out of the site.

I found out how smart I am by doing this…but I also discovered that I am not smart enough, soon enough – I should have recognised the thing for the data harvester that it was at the very start.

It now calls into question the entire premise of its ” Map Of World IQ’s “. I shall think better of the nations who scored poorly, in the absence of better evidence. If they were smart enough not to participate in the thing at all, they are smarter than I.

The Insult To The Intelligence

My own fault.

I knew as I poked the iPad screen that I was doing the wrong thing. But I had a half hour to spare while the rest of the family got ready to go out ( My dad once got to read War And Peace while waiting for my mother to get ready…) so I looked at a video that purported to explain the Philadelphia Experiment. A supposed experiment to make a destroyer disappear in Philadelphia Navy Yard.

It was eery, and ooey, and it was only when I noticed that the video footage seemed to be of French naval workshops and German torpedo boat destroyers that I realised that it was a melange of merde. I had read a suitably vague and corny paperback about the subject years ago – and got nothing out of it – but I didn’t realise that YouTube allowed people to make such rubbish in such spectacular form.

I always hesitate to use the term ” Fake News ” as my cousin, Donald Trump, seems to have gotten himself into a lot of hot water by using it so often. And this Philadelphia nonsense is not news anyway – not if it has spawned cheap paperback novels. My cousin, Barack Obama, once visited Philadelphia.  I think he called on my other cousin George Wallace…for political advice.

He could have asked me. But I don’t want to insult your intelligence with that…

For the record: The heading image is not an American destroyer in Philadelphia Navy Yard.

The Evidence Of Alien Landings in Managatang Has Just Been Removed By The Moon Conspiracists!

And wouldn’t you know? The legislature has introduced a new bill to ban discussion of it. DOESN’T THIS PROVE IT? EH? EH?

I always knew that the magazines you see in the news agency were put there as an Illuminati plot to poison our pure bodily fluids. This was more than evident when I got my sore leg. They knew where I lived.

You can scoff all you like at this, but no-one has presented watertight evidence that the TITANIC did not sink and was spirited away along with MH 370 and the crispy bacon we got before the war. They dare not. They know what would happen once the thought-surgeons got them.

I have been careful in my treatment of the Abyssinian Question up until now – It has all seemed Highly Salacious. But the truth can no longer be kept from the masses. The tombs uncovered when the Grand Canyon was mysteriously moved 5000 yds to the right were seen by too many people on Bus 78 out of Reno. And where is that bus now? More to the point, where are the passengers? No-one has come forward…

Thank goodness people are becoming woke…or is that waked? Wiki’d, perhaps…though the Ecuadorian embassy is running out of space and they’ve all been asked to leave. In any case, it can only be a matter of time before the clock is turned forward to the past. And I, for one, welcome it. My subscription to New Zealand Nutcase Journal is expiring in 3 months and I’m hoping for the Apocalyse before that so that I can save money.

The Guild Guide To Phone Scamming

A short introduction to the steam room.

a. When you ring someone, do not say anything for about 6 seconds.

b. Then cut in a background tape of the inside of a Bangladeshi underwear factory.

c. Announce that your name is Wayne O’Grady, or Anders Andreasson, or John Johnson. These are perfectly plausible to go with your heavy subcontinental accent. Avoid the use of the name Peter Sellers…

d. Say that you are from the technical division of Elfrubdhethic Solutions. If they ask you to repeat that say that you are from the technical division of Rathvictichoxz Corporation. You can cough while you do this.

e. Tell them that you have been monitoring their computer and that they have downloaded some viruses. Or solar cells for the roof. Tell them they have downloaded solar cells.

f. Tell them to go to the computer and turn it on. If you are feeling randy you can tell them to turn you on.

g. If they refuse to go to the computer threaten to have them arrested unless they buy iTunes cards. If they ask why, tell them that you will have them deported. If they still refuse tell them that you will be arriving on a sinking rowboat along with your 34 needy relatives and that you know where they live. If that doesn’t shift them, nothing will…

h. The timing of the call is all-important. Australians eat dinner at 6:00 PM. Make your call at 5:57 PM. Every day. For a month.

i. Never use the phrases ” Golly Gosh ” or ” Goodness Gracious Me “. Don’t ask why, just avoid them.

j. And the most important thing. Make your calls from an Australian mobile phone or land line phone that can be traced. It’s no good doing all this fine work and not getting credit for it.

Help Me Out Here…

a. Help me to understand the difference between the police speed camera monitors and William Bonney with a pistol. They both want money. They both present themselves in your face. They both threaten you. You pay up.

b. Help me to understand why they have two words for the same things; offal and awful.

c. Help me to understand why social media makes a two-day report of a man slipping on a fried onion in a Bunnings car park and the decision to put the fried onions under the sausage in the future. Could it be that social media is irrelevant nonsense? Say it ain’t so, Joe…!

d. Help me to understand why motion picture actors and stage singers  – trained to mimic emotions and mouth prepared speeches – are considered to be ingenuous gurus of political thought. It appears that honesty and integrity can be extruded and cut off in foot lengths…

e. Help me to understand how taking a picture of a politician eating anything advances any cause whatsoever – whether for or against the person pictured.

f. Help me to understand why people allow themselves to be persuaded to give money to telephone scammers when the knowledge of this sort of crime is now so widespread. We have passed by the Nigerian letter scams and the African fortune scams – surely we can advance past the Indian scams.

g. Help me to understand why new cars are not offered with colourful paint jobs. Blue, green, yellow, orange, and all shades in between are available in paint at the same price as white, black, and grey. Who desaturated the world?

h. Help me understand why the idea of  ” European ” is sold as better than anyone else’s culture. Is it because they made better wars in the 19th and 20th centuries? Or do they just have better propaganda machines?

i. Help me understand why I must bag and check out my own groceries while 10 checkout lines are not staffed. Am I to be offered a discount based upon the wages saved? ( I know the answer to that one and it is ” no “.)

j. Help me to understand why all the accents that singing stars emulate come from below the Mason-Dixon line…even if the singers are from north of Watford Gap.

The Easiest Way To Remit Money To The Moon

I note that there is an advertisement current on Instagram that seeks to have me send money to the Philippines. It does so by telling me that it is easy. If ease were the chief consideration, I could point out that I have a pair of scissors in the desk and can cut cash up into small fragments and blow it out the window. To much the same benefit.

I understand that there are perfectly legitimate reasons for sending money to Manila, or Managua, or Memphis, for that matter. Relatives. Rent. Ransom. I would be the last to stop people from pursuing international trade. But I am also equally sure there are perfectly normal agencies to do this that do not involve Instagram , Twitter, or Gofundme…or any other such marginalia. I also include the Indian grocers and 7-Eleven operators with money transfer signs on their windows in this category.

Folks, ANY bank in any shopping centre can do it, with a paper receipt for you and a real live teller behind a window that you can return to if you are worried. Your money may be destined to be tamped down a tropical rat hole when it gets there, but if you are dealing with the Commonwealth Bank or Westpac, or the ANZ you can at least be sure it will arrive at the rathole intact.