Unimpressed By Facebook

Yeah, I know. All of you who have linked to my Facebook site know that I'm listed as female. And my birthdate is wrong. And the photo/avatar is the same little pirate guy you see pretty much everywhere for me.

And why would that be? Simple: because I didn't like the look of Facebook from the outset. Too much information. Too little ability to control it. (And of course, it was as random and scattery as a mad dog's breakfast. I mean... I can play Dwarf Fortress, but it still took me over a week to figure out what the hell was supposed to be happening with my stupid Facebook page.)

Anyway, the cat's pretty much out of the bag on Zuckerberg's attitude to online privacy. Now admittedly, the Net makes virtually all your public-domain information accessible in short order, yeah. But by and large, it doesn't make a business out of aggregating every word you print, every site you visit, every single thing you link to and turning all that into an aggressive marketing nightmare.

I stuck my nose in Facebook this morning and discovered that the very few things I'd listed as 'stuff I like' had now become an either/or option. Either I could link to pages created specifically for these things, and have my connection to them broadcast far and wide -- or I could simply not like them on Facebook at all.

No middle ground. No way to share stuff with friends only.

Well. Like I said, I never gave Facebook much to play with anyhow. I wouldn't actually mind letting the world know I'm fond of "The Princess Bride" -- except that when I'm not given a choice in the matter, I tend to get bolshie.

So - don't bother contacting me via Facebook. I'll keep a minimalist involvement there because it has helped me reconnect with four or five people with whom I'd lost touch. But I won't be updating, posting, Farmvilling, Mafia Warring, Hugging, or doing any of the rest of that intrusive, irritating, time-wasting shit.

And I will be keeping a very, very close eye on the following:

Diaspora

It's a project run by some interesting folk who want to create an open-source social media network that places a real value on privacy, and on personal control over the information. If they stick to their principles, I'll be there as soon as they've got the goods online. And at that point, my 'Facebook' involvement will consist of nothing but a redirection page...

Not Dead. Just Bored With Social Media.

Huh. Where does the time go?

I suspect I'm becoming more cynical and less social with time. I like my hillside here. I like the exertion of digging holes to put in posts so I can create a secure strawberry bed. I like the quiet effort of filling a wheelbarrow with mulch, and pushing it over the soft, uneven hillside ground so I can lay a protective layer around my new blackberry plants, and around my trees. Sure, I've got a trailer, a tractor, and a 4wd, and I could shift all this mulch a trailerload at a time... but I don't want a trailerload at a time.

And I don't want all the frigging around with hitches and towbars. I don't want to drive the tractor or the 4wd around the place with a trailer on the back. I like the sound of the shovel in the mulch-heap. I like the effort of pushing the full barrow downhill, and unloading it. I like the exercise of pushing the empty barrow back up the hill to refill it.

Do a job; see it done. Dirt under your fingernails. The musty, living scent of damp, new-turned earth. The sweetness of ferment from within the enormous heap of woodchips. Autumn sun on your back, sweat in your eyes, vagrant breezes: fresh mountain air.

It's real. It feels good.

Last week I helped some folks move house. Only a day's worth, because I'm so very tied up with other stuff, but it was heavy work, and useful, because they needed the help and there was nobody else with the time, the energy, the spare vehicle and trailer. My daughter and the little girl from the other family ran around with each other all morning, while her father and I shuttled in and out. We carried an enormous refrigerator, and wondered why they don't build handholds on such machines, as we shuffled and nudged, and eked our way around tight corners. We hefted a vast washing machine, delighted to discover that the designers actually DID build handholds into the side of it. Points to LG for that one, yes. But points deducted for the fact that the handholds are too goddam shallow: you can only get the last joint or so of your fingers into them, and after a while, if you've been heaving furniture all morning, your muscles get tired.

But again: do a job, see it done. Sweat in the sun. Rope and tie and tarpaulin, load and offload, drive slowly and carefully between one small town and the next, watching to see that the tall, tall refrigerator doesn't wiggle too much over the shoddy, bumpy roads, with the winds of travel blasting at it.

And it's real, isn't it? When you're done, something good has happened. A family is closer to being in their new home. Order emerging from chaos. Sore muscles and sweat, but with good cause.

I've been meaning to get back on here and chronicle, because this is my way of writing down my life for my children. At least part of my life; certain parts of it remain in posts that I don't put online. But the act of keeping in touch here helps me keep the momentum of writing this day-to-day stuff, and if I leave it too long, it starts to lose urgency. Mustn't do that.

So, what else? A lot, really. Hopefully I'll find time to write more. There was a truly brain-bending movie with the Cool Shite team last week. Really. Japanese horror flick from 1977 - "Hausu", or "House". Not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination. But... brainbending.

Then there's a game I've been hearing about online for a while: "Dwarf Fortress". I tried it once before, but the learning curve was too steep. Following posts appearing in BoingBoing and elsewhere, though, I thought I'd try again, with the help of a proliferation of tutorials and wikis online. I'm still using version 40d, which isn't the latest -- but this time it's working. I have dwarfs, and they have a fortress. It's called "Alebaldness", and it's the successor to the ill-fated "Razoredwheels". I'll have to write about that, as well.

Also: it appears we're going to actually get a holiday this year, as a family. This is a rare event. Even more rare: we're getting organized, and going somewhere unusual. Borneo, in fact. And so, I have been ordered to cease and desist on Spanish for a while, and brush off my high school Bahasa, so the family will be able to order food, ask where the toilets might be, and bargain for stuff at the markets. This should be fun...

But for now, I have to go. Behind on too many projects. And this afternoon, I teach ju-jitsu again. Meanwhile, outside the autumn sun is golden after a day of rain. I could finish putting in the posts for my strawberry patch, couldn't I? No... too much else to do.

And I really do have to say something on Facebook sooner or later, right? Bleah.

The Curse of Tuesdays And Thursdays.

Seriously? Getting beyond a joke.

As you know, I supposedly have two days a week childfree in which to work. And if you've been round here for a while, you'll be aware that when shit happens at chez Flinthart, it mysteriously seems to happen on a Tuesday or a Thursday.

Let's take this week, shall we?

On Tuesday, the phone call came at 1000, while I was hard at work. It was the school. The Mau-Mau, it transpired, was poorly. Now, I knew she'd grabbed a wasp the day before and suffered a sting as a result. And indeed, her hand was swollen. But she was in pretty good shape when she left -- so what was the matter, exactly?

Oh, well... she complained of a sore tummy. And her hand looked swollen. And maybe she had a fever.

Now, I don't blame the school or the teacher. You don't take chances with a four-year-old, and the Mau-Mau can really turn on the whingery when she wants. Sure as shit I wouldn't want her in my class when she was really having a whine. So I sighed, and I went and collected her.

Well, the 'sore tummy' vanished at the offer of a bag of cheez and bacon balls (a luridly awful food habit she learned from, and shares with, her mother). And her general malaise disappeared the moment a Godzilla movie came into the discussions. And the swollen hand? Well, yeah. It was still swollen. And hot to touch, yep.

But you couldn't really call her sick.

So, I had her underfoot for Tuesday.

Now let's talk Thursday. On Thursday. the phone call came at 0930. Elder Son had to play his cello at an Anzac Day assembly at school... and he'd forgotten his bow, hadn't he?

Up to that point, I'd been studiously trying to avoid that assembly. I'm all for Elder Son and his music, but school assemblies do very little for me. Natalie, on the other hand, pines furiously for them. She speaks lyrically of her terrible disappointment at missing the performances her little dears put on, and sighs loudly, and says very pointed things like "Well, I'd just love to go if only I could!"

So there is, in fact, a certain pressure on me to attend. Even though I do rather feel like missing the little dears' performances is not unlike missing a prolonged bludgeoning. But this time I was determined to ignore Natalie's pointed hints -- until that phone call.

And so I got the bow to the school by 1000 so the practice could occur. Then I did the grocery shopping. Then at 1100 I attended the assembly. I did cheat, and leave as soon as Elder Son's class finished their gig, I admit. But by then, there were only two and a half hours left before I had to collect the kids again, and get them home, then suit them up for Scouts, etc.

So it goes.

Now I know next Thursday is Targa -- the yearly race that zooms past our door, and shuts our road down from 0715 onwards for some hours. So the kids'll be here for that. Yep. But so far, Tuesday has nothing painted on it -- except a big bullseye target.


Makes me wonder what will happen this time!

Further To The Mac Attack

A commentator raised the point that Macca's menu has altered. He also suggested my antiMac rant was 'a bit 1990s', so I figure he's earned a little gentle return fire. But I also figure that the fellow in question is quite a clever chap, and if the McMenu changes have shifted his opinion, then it's possibly worthwhile raising a few points for all to consider.

I'm aware of the changes to Mickey's menu. I'm also aware of the degree to which they were essentially cosmetic, at least initially. For example: when they started bringing those 'healthy salads' on board, they served 'em up with more fat than their regular burgers carried. (It was in the dressing, and the mayonnaise.) Oh - and the Heart Foundation Tick is a bit of a sad joke these days, I'm afraid. There was some argy-bargy over their standards a few years ago, and to cut a long story short - it's a whole lot easier to get a HFT than it used to be, I have been told. The excuse, I believe, was that they were hoping to motivate people to take small steps, at the very least. The original HFT standards were just 'too stringent', and apparently people weren't motivated to make healthy choices as a result. Or something. Either way - Mickey Dee makes a lot of noise about scoring its HFT. But they don't talk very much about the health downside of their other menu items, do they?

In any case, for me the underlying problem is the approach of the chains to their customers and to food in general. Micky Dee and the Colonel and their ilk aren't actually about feeding you. They're about channeling and herding you into a branded corporate 'experience' that (they hope) you will wish to repeat endlessly. It's a very hard sell they've got going, and behind the very, very hard sell, behind all the advertising, behind all the toys and the movie tie-ins and the incredible amount of branding aimed at children, the actual "food" isn't particularly good. Or cheap.

It's the taking-aim-at-children that pisses me off, and it's that aspect which moved both Natalie and I -- and presumably Birmo -- to 'cheat' and misdirect our kids until they were old enough to make their own decisions. It's one thing for an adult to talk up the 'healthy menu items' and decide to have a 'salad and a bottle of water'. It's entirely another for a kid to overlook all the chips and the ice creams and the milkshakes and the toys and the colourful packaging and the commemorative movie-character plastic cups, etc.

I can't buy time on every kid's TV programme to advertise the quality of home cooking. I can't get the licensing rights to must-have plastic toys that match all the latest kids movies. I can't raise iconic signs that stick up higher than 'most anything else for kilometres around. I can't muster tens of thousands of franchise outlets in hundreds of countries around the world. I can't afford to sponsor major sporting events. And most importantly, there is no way I can hide all these things from my children. Even in rural Tas, in a township that has no clown, no colonel, no dancing goddam tacos, no Pizza the Hutt -- even in a place like this, you don't escape the branding, the advertising, the toys, and the massive corporate push.

They don't permit the advertising of tobacco to children. They don't permit the advertising of alcohol to children. This is because, as we all agree, most children are not particularly good at critical thinking. They don't have the necessary experience to make complex, value-weighted judgements about issues which (for example) strongly affect their long-term health.

Current research suggests that the 'classic menu' stuff from the clown and the colonel is actually very, very bad for you indeed. Some of the papers coming liken the severity of long-term effects of heavy McEating to the damage done by heavy smoking and drinking. And even if you don't believe the research, take a look around you. There's a full-on epidemic of obesity out there, folks.

Think back to when you were a kid in school. How many 'fat kids' did you see? My memory is clear and sharp. I can remember the 'fat girl' in my grade 1 class. I also remember the 'fat girl' in my grade 3 class. Try as I may, I don't recall a single significantly overweight boy in any of my classes in the little country schools I attended.

In my first high school - Cairns High, 1200 kids - my year eight class had one boy who was overweight by the standards of the day. (You wouldn't look twice at him now.) I can remember seeing a handful of other kids who were overweight. Not many, though. They stood out. People noticed them.

My second high school was quite small - maybe eighty kids. But I remember the one overweight boy quite clearly, and the two girls who were heavier than they ought to have been. (One of the girls was aboriginal, which definitely has bearing on the issue. Obesity among the aboriginal population in Australia is an even bigger problem than in the white population.)

I went to school between 1972 and 1981, in the Cairns area. There was one KFC outlet, and no clownage at all.

Do I blame the clown and the colonel for modern lardy-arsedness? Hell, no - at least, not entirely. There are plenty of other dietary disasters and lifestyle changes that have come down the line since my school days. But there's no denying there are an awful lot of fat kids around now. And no matter what you may wish to say about the new menu items at Mickey Dee -- as far as I can tell, they're essentially 'gateway drugs', or 'enablers', designed to quell parental anxieties.

Because how many parents are going to order only the 'healthy' salad stuff, and tell the kids they can't have just a small bag of those hyper-advertised fries as a treat? (Go ahead. Close your eyes. How many different TV images can you recall, extolling the virtues of those 'fries'? Pervasive, aren't they?) And how many kids aren't going to ask for maybe just a soft drink, or even just a little ice-cream after their nice, 'healthy' salad?

"A bit 1990s"? I don't think so. The epidemic of morbidly fat, unhealthy, inactive kids looks very much like a 'today, right now' problem to me.

I have absolutely no guilt, no shame, and no regrets about keeping my kids away from the clown and his pusher buddies. And I'm not in any way impressed by 'fig-leaf' tactics involving salad items, Heart Foundation Ticks, or press releases extolling the healthy qualities of the new-look menus. Behind the lip-service to health, it's business as usual, and for those corporations, 'business as usual' means acquiring my children's reflexive eating habits as early as possible.

In fact, if you want to talk "1990s", I think you need look no further than the corporate culture of the Colonel and the Clown. After all, we're supposed to be savvier consumers these days. We're not supposed to be brand-loyal any more (except maybe for Apple addicts. They're weird.) The era of the 'captive audience' is supposedly over. Theoretically, modern corporations survive by responding to the needs of their market -- not by dictating to that market, and drowning any possible alternatives in an ocean of advertising money and media tie-ins.

Or maybe it's even older than 1990s, eh? St Francis Xavier and the Jesuits: "Give me the child until he is seven, and I will give you the man." Seems to me the Colonel and the Clown are thoroughly aware of that adage, and judging by the amount of money they spend targeting small children, they're acting on it. And by the decreasing number of children who qualify as 'small', they're having a lot more success than they deserve.

There's a lot more to this argument than I've covered. The more you dig, the more complicated and nasty the whole thing becomes. You get into issues of factory farming, of massive antibiotic usage to keep animals free of infection under crowded, unhygienic conditions. You find questions about land clearing, and about corporate farming practices in general. One example: here, where I live, a friend of mine leased one of his paddocks to a grower who was producing potatoes for McChips. The grower had to use a very, very specific variety of potato -- the only one the corporation will use. And further, only potatoes of a very specific size range were acceptable: anything too large or too small was simply left abandoned in the field.

As a result, when the season was done, my friend went out into his field and collected over a tonne of potatoes which had been left, deemed unacceptable. Initially, my friend thought this was quite the windfall. And it really does seem like a lot of wasted food, doesn't it?

It wasn't, though. We tried cooking those potatoes. They were the most extraordinarily tasteless things I've ever tried to eat. Didn't matter what you did to 'em -- it tasted like you were eating plain flour. Just starch. In the end, he composted most of 'em. (As I understand it, the 'fries' get flavouring added during the processing. McD is very, very careful to ensure that their 'fries' taste exactly the same the world over, after all.)

Still, tasteless or not... there were an awful lot of those potatoes left lying in that field because they don't meet cosmetic standards. That's a considerable investment in energy, in arable land, in fertiliser and manpower. Multiply that one little field by all the tens of thousands of fields all over the world that are needed to supply the Clown and the Colonel. And then glance across at all the places in the world where there's not enough to eat.

This has been a long post, triggered by a short comment. I accept the original statement wasn't intended in any hostile sense, and in writing this, my intent isn't to target a light-hearted, offhand remark from one person. But as I said: the person in question is no fool, and in his opinion, the 'new menu' represents a noteworthy improvement. To me, that suggests it's worth raising a few of the deeper issues. And at the very least, hopefully it explains my perspective as a parent just a little more clearly.

A Small But Satisfying Victory. And Some Vomit.

Today was chilly and gloomy. I got some writing done while the Mau-Mau took in a bit of quality ABC kids TV. Then we played the harp together for a while. No - I'm not kidding. I own a small Irish harp. I'm not particularly good, but it's nice to play, and I'm introducing the Mau-Mau to it because a) she loves her some harp music (her favourite bedtime music is Arianna Savall) and b) her small hands suit the delicate instrument more than mine, and c) she can sing with it, and d) she likes playing it with me.

A lot of laundry got done too. And a very unfortunate amount of back-and-forth to Scottsdale. Delivered the boys to school in the morning, with their instruments. Went back at lunch to get the shopping done, and check the post - and deliver unto Elder Son his forgotten school bag, complete with lunch. And finally, late in the evening, yet another trip all the way through Scottsdale and out to Bridport, to collect the boys.

You see, they had one of their orchestra days today, and orchestra practice is in Launceston. But we've discovered another local parent with a kid in the orchestra, so we're dividing up the inevitable trip-back-and-forth routine. So I had to duck down to Bridport (where the other parent lives) when the boys came back.

The Mau-Mau stayed at home with Mum. But because Mum was on-call, we had a couple neighbours over, just in case Natalie got called away while I was off collecting the boys. This is the kind of convoluted nonsense one has to go through to have a life when one is married to a country GP - but that's just how it is, so no complaints.

Anyway, I drove off and reached the designated house about ten minutes before the Other Parent made it all the way back from Launceston. Had a pleasant chat with her partner - admired their rather nice house, discussed their new puppy... nice, human stuff like that.

Then the boys arrived, along with the Other Parent and her two kids. And right away, I noticed two things: first, that Younger Son was a rather nasty shade of pale green, and second, that they were carrying McDonald's Happy Meal bags.

Oh dear.

I did actually prep the lads for this. Y'see, they've never eaten Maccas in their life, and I had a half-idea that there might be a post-orchestra McFood stop. I also figured it might constitute a bit of a treat for the other kids, so I told mine not to complain: just to order something with the cash provided, and just suck it up.

Apparently they had Chicken McNugget Happy Meals. Or... part of 'em, anyway. Elder Son managed most of his, and put together his How To Train Your Dragon toy with the wings in the proper position. But Younger Son only managed a couple of nuggets, and half his chips... and his toy wasn't looking too sane, either. But that's nothing new, really.

We fetched him a bucket pronto, and gave him some ginger and lemon tea. And I explained as nicely as I could that the boys just weren't used to Mickey Dee - while trying not to sound too damned precious about the whole thing. And to be fair, the other family aren't regular McSuckers. It was a matter of convenience and speed, and a bit of a treat, and that's perfectly understandable -- and they weren't to know that my boys have been on the wrong end of some devilish Anti-McFood Psyops from both their mother and myself since they were quite small.

Once Younger Son returned to a more normal colour, we headed homewards. The little guy was still feeling pretty sorry for himself, though. Just sat there, all curled up on his seat in the dark. I had a long chat with Elder Son about the whole McFood thing: explained that his Mum and I weren't by way of forbidding the stuff - just that we wanted the boys to be old enough to make decent decisions about their food before they really sank fang into anything trademarked by Ronald McDonald or the Colonel or their ilk.

I explained the business model of fast food franchises. I pointed out that thinking of the McFood people as 'food providers' is a mistake: they aren't in the business of feeding anybody. They're in the business of making money by creating a rapid, convenient, and highly repeatable experience designed to bring people back by offering them a lot of fat, sugar and salt, which (as animals) we're geared to desire.

The boys seemed to take that on board, which is good. Of course, their very fresh McExperience must have played a part. When I said that the McFood was concocted in a fashion designed to bring people back, Younger Son opined in a low, pained voice that it didn't work very well. And he further suggested that they probably shouldn't be called "Happy Meals". He offered "Angry Meals" as an alternative.

Shortly after that, he made some garbled noises to indicate we should pull over. Then he got out of the car, and spraypainted the countryside in various shades of Half-Digested McFoody Chunks With Chopped Carrot.

It wasn't particularly pleasant, and he was quite a sorry lad by the time we made it home. Happily, I'd made some soup stock during the day, so I put together a quick bowl of hot noodle soup with fresh, crunchy veges and thin-sliced marinated beef, and the boys got a bit of real nutrition into them.

Best of all, Elder Son took the time to thank me -- and his mother -- for keeping him away from the McFood people when he was too little to know better, and thanked us again for introducing him to all the food he's learned to enjoy over the years. And you should have heard the appreciative noises he made over that bowl of soup!

Flinthart 1, McFood Culture 0... in your face, Ronald McDonald!

Sh*t Happens.

Today was Thursday. In theory, on Thursdays the kids all go to school and I get a few hours on my own. What usually happens is... different.

Sometimes it's power failures. Our local power company is really big on dropping out on Tuesdays and Thursdays, for some reason. And of course, it's entirely coincidental that those are the two days of the week the kids are all at school.

Sometimes it's other stuff. Life marches on. Errands. Tasks. Stuff.

Today was a 'stuff' day.

The Mighty Earth King had to have its regular service today, and under terms of the contract, it has to have its services in Launceston. Yippee. They wanted the car from 1000 through to 1600, and since there was a running crack in the windscreen, I put in a claim with our insurance people to have it done at the same time.

This was all supposed to happen last week, on Wednesday - but with visiting relatives and gastro and changes to Nat's roster at the last minute, I had to cancel out. So it got dumped onto today.

Now, normally if for some reason neither Natalie nor myself is available at the right time to collect the kids post-school, we can shunt 'em off to Amazing Neighbour Anna and her Mighty Half-Swedish Brood. But as of this very afternoon, Amazing Anna and much of her mob were off to Darwin for a flying visit.

And so it came to pass that I loaded all three kids into the car, and set off for Launceston to spend six straight hours entirely on foot in that small, but determinedly hilly city. Not my idea of a jolly good time.

We handed over the vehicle at the appointed hour. Then we spent two hours running errands of various sorts -- replacement for my missing firearms license; cable for Nat's iPod (she's lost two already. Steve Jobs is getting rich off her - iPod USB cables are $20 each); microphone for Nat's iPod (did I mention Steve Jobs is soaking Nat? $80 for a pissy little plug-in microphone?). New flannelette sheets for all the beds in the house for the upcoming winter months...

All of this involved a shitload of walking. The kids were troopers, though, so once we'd done all that I took 'em for a tasty lunch, and then (sigh...) we watched How To Train Your Dragon in 3d.

Fruuuuuuucckkk I am SICK of those stoopid fruckin' 3d glasses. The whole 3d thing can disappear up James Cameron's capacious backside for all of me. The 'added experience' of a limited illusion of depth to the onscreen image does NOT counterbalance the irritation of spending two hours blinking and straining through specs that even Buddy Holly would have rejected... and that AFTER he died.

The movie? Oh. Yeah. I guess it was all right. I think I was more entertained than I was during Clash Of The Tight'uns. Probably. Maybe. But it was all a bit American Teenage Formulaic for me. Had its moments, yeah, but I wasn't laughing out loud anywhere, and nothing really came up that caught my interest. If I was reviewing it, I'd say 'mostly harmless'.

Attendance wasn't exactly massive. It was a midday showing on a school day. There was one (1) person other than the kids and I in the cinema. Since I was hoping for a phone call from the mechanics, I asked the other attendee if she'd mind if I left my mobile phone on. She opined that she wouldn't be at all concerned, so long as I agreed to ignore the illicit food and snacks she'd sneaked into the cinema. I felt that was an acceptable compromise, so we went back to sitting at near opposite ends of the theatre and ignoring each other.

The kids liked the empty cinema, anyhow. With a further nod from the Random Other Person Making Up The Entirety Of The Audience, they were given permission to wander about. Crawl under a few seats. Play a bit of hide-and-seek. Nice for them, I guess. And they enjoyed the movie, too.

One note: I have now seen the trailer for the upcoming Marmaduke movie twice. And I don't really know where to begin. They bothered to film Marmaduke? I mean -- fruckkk! The one and only comic I've ever seen that rivals both The Family Circus and Fred Basset for sheer brain-melting unfunniness. And... Owen Wilson voicing the main animal? Sure, yeah, Wilson's made some dogs -- but this is really going too far.

Rarely, if ever, have I been so completely repelled by a film trailer. I already hated Marmaduke, the comic. But based on this film trailer, it's quite likely I would prefer to tear off my own head and eat it rather than watch Marmaduke, the movie.

Anyway, after the film we still had two hours to kill. So we went back and collected our sheets from Harris Scarfe (where they'd kindly held them for us, so I didn't have to carry all the bags into the movie.) Then we dropped into the gun shop, and I applied for permission to get an air rifle. (Starlings. Natalie doesn't like me using the .22 around the house, 'cos it's loud. But I don't like starlings: nasty imported pests that drive out the native birds, raid our fruit, and make a lot of noise and mess. So: air rifle time.)

After that, we walked another few blocks back to the mall, and tried to get a new watchband for Elder Son's wristwatch. It was no-go at the jeweller ("we only provide bands for the brands that we carry, sir..." So sue me. My not-yet-ten-year-old son is wearing a downmarket, generic-but-tough-and-waterproof wristwatch, not an expensive fashion label. Listen, this kid can barely remember to wear pants. You think I'm gonna put a hundred-dollar wristwatch on him? Screw you!) so we went around the corner to the shoe-repair place.

Well, they didn't have a wristwatch band either. But they DID have lava lamps at half price, and the boys remembered that Natalie has been pining for a Lava Lamp for aeons. Who the fruck pines for a Lava Lamp? My wife, that's who. I tried buying her one once, but I completely failed. The one I got was full of slow-moving glitter instead of hideously gluggly lumps of wax... and apparently that really wasn't good enough. So when the boys spotted real, honest-to-Cthulhu Lava Lamps for sale at only $13.50, there was no stopping us.

Couple more blocks walking. We drop in on our favourite secondhand bookstore. Twenty minutes and seventy dollars later, we leave with a bag of books and comics. And walk another five or six blocks to a park.

And there we stay for the last hour. The kids have swings and rocky-horsey things. I have books. There is grass, and shade. It Is Good.

Finally, just shy of 1600, I called the mechanical folks and they allowed as we could have our car back. So we walked another two blocks, paid the bill, collected the car... but still no home for us, oh no. Quick stop at the supermarket for dinner makings. Yep. And naturally, when we finally made it home at about half past five, I jumped straight into the cooking.

So that was my Thursday. I can only wonder what marvels my next 'day off' will bring!

Credit Where It Is Most Lavishly Due

It's rare that I want to sing the praises of a retail outlet. But these guys are above and beyond:

Shogun Martial Arts

They're a Sydney based store, supplying gear to martial artists. And they're goddam brilliant.

When I needed to buy a bunch of very expensive mats for the dojo, these people helped me bring the price down to a reasonable level. And they provided valuable advice on which mats represented good quality, and value for money. And they managed to minimise shipping costs by bundling the mats in the most cost-effective way possible.

They've never, ever been other than super-honest and cheerful and friendly. When I ordered a couple of bokken with saya, or scabbards, they sent me an email telling me they'd run out of the model I ordered... so they sent me the next model up the quality chain, at no extra cost.

And this time? Well, on Monday I finally remembered to order a couple of new re-breakable boards for the dojo. I don't really have a lot of time for all that board-breaking stuff, but I will say this: kids love it, and they really get a sense of accomplishment out of it, and they will work very bloody hard and concentrate fiercely to get their technique and form into shape so they can carry it off. You can spend endless hours trying to teach a kid to throw a proper hammer-fist and get absolutely nowhere -- but if you have a rebreakable board, that same kid will do virtually anything to figure out how to smash it.

At about $75 each, they're not cheap. But when it comes to motivating kids to learn how to throw a strike properly, and giving them a super boost of confidence when they realise that they can actually do this, there's nothing to beat 'em.

I had the ultra-beginners board already. It's white in colour, and a good sneeze will break it. I let the five-year-olds work out their kicking techniques on it. It makes 'em happy.

I also had the brown and the black, which are more or less equivalent to pine boards respectively 5cm and 7cm thick. But those aren't much good to kids under the age of fifteen or so. It takes a respectable strike to break those things.

So on Monday, I put in an order for a Yellow, and an Orange - the next two up from White. I put in the order via the Internet.

On Tuesday, the Shogun people phoned me to clarify credit card details, and to ask me if I wanted them to store my credit card details for future use. We had a friendly chat, and passed the time of day.

And today -- being Wednesday -- the boards turned up in the mail just before the regular class.

Personalised service. Overnight post. Total customer care. I am totally not used to this kind of thing... and it's brilliant!

If you happen to want anything of a martial arts sort of nature, you really need to talk to these folks. If they haven't got what you're after, I bet they can help you find out who does.