Wireless

Have you noticed that during the 7 o'clock news bulletin preceding AM on Radio National the newsreader has commenced announcing “9 minutes past seven"? It’s rather out of the blue (or should that be random?) and then the newsreader finishes bulletin with a very brief weather forecast.

What is with this "9 minutes past"? Could it be that the bulletin had been cutting into A.M’s time and Tony Eastley got tooshy? Did T.E. demand that AM start on the dot of 7.10 to allow sufficient time at the end for the witty banter baton exchange with Fran Kelly?

Does anyone care?

And Charlotte Glennie is back! Reporting from Brisbane but back nevertheless. I wonder if she is good friends with Christopher Pahne? Someone has to be, well apart from Lexie Downer.

Double ignominy

For the past month I’ve been doing a battle against some tedious low grade virus which incapacitates me for two days per week.

Whoopee zing and a hot motherycockadoodledoo, I know. S’winter after all. However, when LGV made its last special guest appearance, Thursday and Friday all day and a l l night, I decided that it was time to see a doct-err . Perhaps I had the Epstein-Barr virus (all that living and loving and learning in the vibrant varsity campus of life) or could it be that I was suffering from such ennui that I am now imagining these illnesses. As if!

Unfortunately my preferred medical practice was booked out so I had to go to the local medical centre. Quack-a-rama. Upon arrival I was instructed to wash my hands and wear a mask so as not to spread my disease despite not having ‘flu or cold symptoms. As I sat in the waiting room flicking through a mag, and wondering why other patients were permitted not to wear a mask, I surreptitiously slipped the mask’s hoops off my ears allowing the mask to slide from my face when a doctor arrived and barked at me to put the mask back on. It was quite the rebuke even though not clearly audible for doctor was sportin’ a mask. Lawks was he swine afflicted?

Eventually I was summoned from the waiting room to my appointment. It was with the very doctor who had chastised me. Oh brother. Doctor began his consultation with another tirade about the importance of the mask sportage and instructed me to have it on until I left the surgery!! I gulped some air and proceeded to enumerate my symptoms. He sneered and enquired whether I was a smoker. I exclaimed no, pulling down my mask to convey my injury to such an insult, rapidly returning the hideous, smelly, fuzzy fibrous cloth to my face before i was further admonished.

Dr Cockfoster scowled and then took my temperature and said it was fine and that I didn’t have the ‘flu. But…I never said I had the 'flu. Waaaaaah. I suggested that he check my ears and the glands around my throat as they were tender, oh what about a blood sample, sugar, but he refused. Perhaps he couldn’t hear owing to the mask muffle but it's more likely consequential to a no temperature, no illness philosophy. He did however recommend that I use garlic and ginger in my cooking, which I so already do, and provided a medical certificate advising that I am suffering from a medical condition (?!) and unfit for work/school for Friday 10th July and that "she states that she has been unable to attend work from 9th July.”

Not quite Smiler

I was looking for footage of D. Waterman playing William Brown in the BBC series but found
this .

A tawdry image shared is a repressed memory spared.

Stick to your flaming knitting!!

In this time of the GFC and the Great Recession one is ever so humble to have a job and continually tugging one’s, never anybody else’s, forelock .

Nevertheless this does not mean that one, or even you, should have to put up with the most ridiculous, dicky and utterly trite language.

Comrades (Hey, it is EG Whitlam's 93rd bday today after all) you are making my ears bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeed.

Sitting hunched over my keyboard in the corner of my delightful workstation/cubicle I am stirred from my diligence by the words “Knock, knock” wittily uttered by unctuous Splodge(tautology?),who then issues me with an imperative tagged with the conditional!! What a technique and what a *&^%!

Two things about the dickiness that is ‘knock, knock’:

(i) what is wrong with ‘excuse me’?! I promise not to retort with ‘you’re excused’. Oh office banter you are so cute and drole, I now pronounce you Mickey Office-Banter.

(ii) When utterer is actually standing beside a door!. Dear colleague there’s no need to be coy, you can rap your knuckles right against that door’s hardish mock wooden surface. Oh yes you can! Actions speak louder than words, woopsy I've almost come over Mickey O-B.

And as for the language in the variety of formal bang-on sessions - vexation exclamation marke centrale!! Let's face it, that is the goddamn 'elephant in the room'. Oh my godfarva, if only there were an elephant in the room, i'd mount the darling and yell a hearty 'charge' !

From the ever present desire to be on the same page to people saying that they’ve been having ‘side bars’ with others (no doubt these 'others' are grassroots stakeholders or summat.) Then it's on to worry about ‘siloing’ and ‘lockstepping’, intentions to ‘socialise’ certain concepts before 'roll out' not to mention requests that we have a 'quick'n'dirty' (oh the crudite!) overview, 'park ideas', ‘press pause or rewind’ mid-discussion. I myself personally would not be averse to pressing ‘stop’ or perhaps something totally out there such as ‘stop’ and ‘eject’ simultaneously. Woah mama!!

However the dickiest expression of them all is yet to surface at my bureau. A friend told me of some Jargonista who regular peppers her parley with the term ‘real estate’ to refer to new equipment. And worst of all when said Jargonista wishes to convey that her team/unit is going to focus on its key responsibility and/or area of expertise she says “we’ll stick to our knitting”.

Ludicrous!!

"Cheer up, it might never happen”

chirped some irritating senior dimpling and jigging before me as i attempted to pass (not stomp by, mind) in a station underground shopping complex at 3.45ish yesterday afternoon.

Well, sweetheart, from looking at you it possibly had.

Cannot these troubles in kitbag packers just zip it. Furthermore, there really is nothing more disgusting than someone over 10 behaving cute.

Glory you’re a senior, sir get a bit of dignity about you and embrace your inner curmudgeon.

And really why in the bejesus do I have to smile while I stroll. I’m sufficiently decowative as it is, I mean, I’m a liberated woman! Life may be a flipping cabaret but it certainly cannot always be chuckles centrale.

And one other thing cuteswutsey senior perhaps I was actually worrying about someone who is sick, mourning a loved one or puzzling over friends behaving in fashions most bizarre. And yes I possibly could have been but it was more likely I was wondering whether I’d turned off the iron, what was causing my foot to ache or why no-one sold jam doughnuts in the ceebeedee. Possibly all three so is it any wonder I looked so glum chum.