Surviving Christmas?

Many of my readers have written in asking for some tips about 'surviving Christmas'. Actually I lie, no one reads my blog so you can all act like tukeys get stuffed. Kidding, just kidding.

There are a few factors that work together to make Chrismas what it is, and seemingly there are a few factors, or should I say 'knob jockeys', out there that try to make Christmas as enjoyable as a Tabasco sauce enema. I am fortunate enough to have two families that believe in Christmas whole-heartedly, I am also incredibly wise and hence am able to cruise through people's minor misdemeanour's than it is to get bot rot sitting on a plane in pleb class.

I have two Christmases each year so I have twice the practice.

These tips are for any alcohol-fueled social event, just sing them to the tune of 'Jingle Bells' or something:

1. Do not drink more than any one else. Target a sensible relative as a drinking buddy and follow their lead. I chose to vary this method this year by employing the wonderful assistance of my four year old niece. Every time she asked me to play or read her a book I asked her to get me a beer. I read lots of books.

2. People are emotional and alcohol is a truth syrum. Make other people drink more because the results can be quite hilarious. If it starts to get out of hand whip out the video camera and get a Youtube account. If you have a grudge against someone be very friendly towards them and make them drink a lot as they are sure to embarrass themselves.

3. Eat food before you get too drunk. The drunker you are the less you will eat and therefore you will get even drunker and stoopider. Even if it means hogging into the chips and dips, do so. Eating also reduces the hangover the next day. Food also makes you shut up.

4. Occupy yourself with a task. Fart around setting up the table, or take the dips around to the relos. I played with my niece and read lots of books.

5. Have good time. People get too wound up by what other people think and say. Who cares, have fun. You don't have to drink more to do this either. If someone is a pain in the arse, let them be. If you have a video camera, turn it on, film yourself punching Aunty Dora and post it on Youtube. Film cousin Jack talking to God on the porcelain telephone. Film your sister being a complete bitch and send it out to the world.

Generally my Christmases are trouble free because there is a lot of love in my families and so I write these tips for you out there. Trust my words of advice, I have survived seven Coles Christmas parties, so I understand what goes on. All too well...

How to Destroy a Country Town in One Easy Step

One of the strange things about living in a country town, and lets admit it there are quite a few, is that nothing seems to happen until you blink. In that split second that it takes to close your eyelids and reopen them something major will have changed. don't know whether my town is different because it is so close to that megalopolis known as Canberra, or because it just chooses to be different.

I believe things happen this way because, to most Canberrans 'Bungendore is the town you turn right at on the way to the coast'. Braidwood, in case you are wondering 'is the town you turn left at on the way to the coast'. Batemans Bay is 'the town you stop at when you get to the coast'. Things only happen here the moment before an observant person drives through. That is why there is a flurry of 'happening things' just before Christmas time. Most other months our little time/space anomaly is unaffected by outsiders as very few people drive through. In fact it is hard to get anything done.

My loopy little theory goes as thus:

1. Before a person drives through Bungendore something has to change within Bungendore and/or its environs.

2. If two people are going to drive through, three things have to change. The extra 'change thing' is because one of the people might not notice one of the 'changes' because they are a foolish person talking on his/her mobile whilst trying to kill an innocent family. See here for other examples of clever things to do on the road.

3. If a whole heap of people drive through (i.e. Easter or Christmas) some moron will decide that building a completely unneccesary, kitch, and irreversibly ugly shopping centre in the middle of the heritage district will be required.

Yes, it is true, some goose wants to come in and build some lump of crap right next one of the oldest pubs in Australia. Not to mention knock down a few historic buildings in the process. Nice one. Would you like a clap for your cleverness, or does the echo inside your empty skull rattle your blackened heart and make you cough up cancerous fumes?

Were you dissatisfied that the city planners in Canberra knocked you back because of your obtuse vulgarity?

Look at the photo above; do you see the little cottage next to it? The little thing on the left? I don't know if that is part of the 'destruction plan' but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. It is the blacksmith's shop, I think it is around the same age as the pub. 1850s I believe. The thought of a fake heritage building makes me, and a lot of other Bungendoreans, shudder. Why don't we knock down the Royal and replace it with an Ettamogah Pub? I am sure that would fit in with the whole theme park idea.

I didn't move to Bungendore to live in a kitch Canberra suburb. I moved here because I like it the way it is. Yes development has to happen, but if you are going to vomit, do it elsewhere. Take up on the hardware's example and do it on the outskirts of town. We already have a woodworks shop, a lolly shop, a handful of craft shops, two nurseries, a supermarket, a bottlo, a leather shop, a couple of bookshops and a host of other things. We don't need anymore. Go away and screw up Iraq or something.

Jum

The End as we Knew It

I thought it was pretty obvious a few years ago, in fact a lot of people thought the same. No one listened because they didn't want to hear the truth. Places like Cubby Station were making too much money, and besides, who wants to pull someone's head out of their bum for the sake of a few million litres of water? It is pretty obvious now, and there is no point harping on about it either. We really are up the creek without a paddle. State Governments point the finger at Federal Government, and Federal Government points the finger at Iraq. No one puts up their hand and says 'sorry fellas, I stuffed up'.

I don't care who stuffed up - just bloody well fix it. Get rid of that massive irresponsibility called 'Cubby Station'. Get rid of all the other ones like it. Australia is not the place to grow cotton. I swear some people would try to farm Polar Bears in Broome if they could.

I suppose you don't understand why I have tied Cubby Farm to the current bushfire crisis. The answer is simple really. You cannot put bushfires out without water. The next fire will be along the Murray and the Murray won't exist after that. No Murray Cod. No water. No paddle steamers. No life. No future.

I don't mean to sound depressing but this is the truth. Thank god Rudd is in now and we can beat the idiots.

Jum

The: Perennial, Whinger, the end; of the world!

Punctuation: I know, I am quite crap at punctuating. I probably use it. Too much. Enough so. That it gets: annoying! "Aaaaaaaargh!!!".?

My lesson for the day is
How to Punctuate: Use those buttons with the dots

in my line of work i receive a large number of queries from people that havent finished year twelve looking for an easy way out of their essay question i find it really hard to answer them because they cannot be bothered to use a full stop or a comma is this a generational thing or is the world particularily australia becoming more and more illiterate or am i missing the point do we need to punctuate anymore do we really am i dumb and incapable of picking up the intended inflection in the sentence if you could call it a sentence james joyce would wet his pants i wet my pants in frustration and want to ask them who brung them up i mean really if people couldnt be bothered trying to ask a question properly they are going to get a link to here

If you couldn't get the gist of the paragraph above do not be concerned. I have become an old cranky bastard and I have become SICK AND TIRED of paying taxes for people who couldn't be bothered. I am 'Generation X', my wife is 'Generation Y'. The new group coming through should be Generation :)

How fortuitous, those little squiggles and dots make a face that smiles and winks ;)

J::::::;,./-=u/';,]{}m|||\\\

The Weather will be the Death of Me

Returned home to crap weather again. Possibly the only draw back to this town is the god-forsaken wind. Everything else is beautiful. Except for the drought. If you check out the bottom part of this link (scroll a long way down) you will see how windy it is. This is from a highly unreliable(too many beers), yet amusing source. Bungendore isn't far from Tarago and suffers very similar weather patterns.

The rule out here is 'always take a jacket with you to your Christmas Parties' (thanks Mike). The days are always hotter than Canberra, and when 4.30 rocks around it is like god has switched on an air-conditioner. Set to freezing. With the fan on 'stupidly high'.

The weather out here makes it that much harder to grow a garden. We get frosts up until now and the wind dries everything out. The wind also makes everything look bendy. Nothing is helped by the fact that bugger all people in our area (we are like a tacked on, modern extension of Bungendore) want to grow any trees. Instead they do their best to destroy the environment and the world with their big bloody lawns, and ugly, insignificant shrubberies. Were they conceived while their parents were watching 'The Holy Grail'? It would explain their silliness.

Get out there people, do us all a favour and plant some trees! It slows the wind, creates shade and stops us all from suffocating. It also hides your ugly house.

Jum

Where for art thou Pauline?

I promised I wasn't going to carry on about politics, but in the world we live in today who can help it?

I would just like to say, actually I would love to say, how happy I am that Pauline Hanson is back. What an incredible woman. She single handedly (I admit with aid of the other champions in the One Nation party) represented a part of Australia that should have disappeared with Brillo hair cream back in the 1950's. She reinvented the redneck and she gave people that shouldn't have been born a voice. If she could give them two voices, one for each head, she would have.
Even though most of her supporters couldn't write - either through lack of opposable thumb or the fact that mummy couldn't give them an education 'cos she was too busy immitating a tipped over turtle - she gave them the opportunity to be seen on television, with her, talking bullshit.

Pauline, you wonderful creature, you woke us up. We had nearly forgotten about the crap people in our world. They had nearly slipped into obscurity, and we were going to move on as one wonderful country into the new millenium and prove to the world that we weren't racist, xenophobic, uneducated bigots.

We got scared and elected a mole (the blind creature that digs holes) for PM.

Thank you Pauline Hanson, for again you have come at a most impressively important time. What is your opinion on Iraq? Surely you must subscribe to the notion that ''if they continue to blow themselves up in cars they will soon run out of people"? What about the massively un-publicised AIDS crisis in Africa? Is your opinion similar to that of Iraq, that they will eventually die off? What are the two things you want to focus on? Oh, thats right; immigration and water.

Pauline: If we don't let immigrants have water they won't come here. That way we have more water and no smelly immigrants.

Kerry O'Brien: That doesn't make any sense at all...

Pauline: I am going to raise the pitch of my voice and sound more and more upset until people focus on the TV and listen to me because I am a Dalek and you will obey and WE WILL GAIN SUPREMACY!!!!!!!!!!!!! (deep breath) I do not need to answer your question, Kerry, because there are enough numbnuts in the world that will follow me.

Kerry: But...

Pauline: NUMBNUTS KERRY! OVER A FUCKING CLIFF KERRY!THEY WILL FOLLOW ME!

Editor's subnote: Jum of Bungendore apologised for his ill-tempered and overtly graphic textuality. He has promised me that he wouldn't write about politics ever again. He insisted that I say one final thing for him and it goes as follows: "Thank you Pauline for finally taking the focus off the Labor Party. They need the rest."

The Opiate of the Masses

I am addicted

I have to do it more

And more

I can't help myself

I have to blog

Once you get started you can't stop. You have to write your self-indulgent bullshit. You also have to pretend that you are clever (thank you Paint for being simple to use, and thank you Anita O'Day for having such a stupid album cover).

Sorry Mum and Dad, I have found a good drug.

Even with a reduced bandwidth at the moment (I got a bit carried away with downloading stuff this month because I gotta new computer that works) I have to get on the B. Oh, the B. Yeah, oh yeah.
Even if I have nothing to say I still have to type. And type. And B. And B like there is no tomorrow. Oh, god help me.

Yes , egocentric bullshit. I love it. And that is the essence of Blogging. People talking about themselves, their opinions, the fact that they are always right, and how gosh-darned cool they are. Hunter S Thompson is in so many ways one of the original bloggers. Aldous Huxley, in 'The Doors of Perception' wrote about his experiences like it was a blog - he also came to the same conclusion as myself when he observed the self portrait of Cezanne: '"Who on earth does he think he is?" The question was not addressed to Cezanne in particular, but to the human species at large. "Who did they all think they were?"'

We can all write about who we are. Some of us choose to write about how we write about ourselves and some of us just write.

Soon the days of heroic journalism will be gone; individuals sacrificing everything to get out there and experience the world - selflessly reporting back to us boring individuals about the situation in some obscure country about some significant, although irrelevant problem. We can do it ourselves. I mean - for crying out loud - I just typed in 'Iraq blog' (please do not get me wrong Iraq is neither obscure or irrelevant) and this came up along with dozens more.

Soon no one will be a hero. It will be you and me in a battle of words and constantly competing rankings in technorati and the like. The world is full of journos. Even now the commercial stations have started hiring 'hot beatches' to 'sell' the 'news'. Sorry to all you 'old' journos. Get a boob job.

Will the excitement disappear as fast as Alexander Downer's foot into a fishnet stocking? No, it has just started. We can now vlog, so soon you will have to put up with me looking at you as well as talking crap. Nice. I will wear my hat just for the ladies out there.

Take it easy,

Jum