Public displays of grooming

Adjusting your hair seems to be acceptable, for example when people come inside after being outside and they flatten it down, doing it with the compulsion of an 18 year old cheerleader or Kevin Rudd become awkward for everyone. Pulling out a bottle of Evian water and shampoo to wash your hair in the kitchen sink over morning tea is a definite no-no!

Other public displays of grooming (PDG) that vary in their acceptability include maintaining ones nails. Scratching off a little dirt from on top or underneath of finger nails sure, if you are subtle about it. It is not acceptable to start scrapping out a build-up of grime and gunk from every nail. Neither is as full manicure. It is never alright to be doing any PDG involving toe nails.

Never chew your nails. Never chew your nails and then leave the off cuts on the desk. Never. This includes toe nails!

Picking your nose, it is the eternal question immortalised in Seinfeld was it a pick or a scratch. In the privacy of you your own home go elbow deep, but in public the cuticle is the depth marker. If the cuticle is still exposed to the open air then it is a scratch. Of course fake nails can distort this rule, in which can the tip of the actual finger may now be the indicator.

Also, the three-strikes you’re out rule should apply. If there have been three attempts to remove the nasal irritation and it persists then it is time to stop the PDG, find a private space and go your hardest.

When it goes to make up, it is simple. Touching up existing lipstick/gloss is acceptable PDG. Foundation, blush, eye make up – any other make up really, it is time to head to a bathroom.

Ears, rubbing/wiping back of the ear fine, the fleshy part of the front of the ear, sure. However there should never ever be PDG inside the ear canal. Unlike the nose there is no acceptable depth of penetration. Using a key or a pen lid, despite evidence to the contrary does not make the ear PDG better.

Underwear, always needs to be adjusted. It rides up, twists and slips. We get it. Here are some basic but important rules to which everyone should abide. Tip of the finger under the edge of the elastic only. No digging. No cupping. No breaking stride to effect the manoeuvre. Again the three strikes you’re out rule needs to be strictly enforced.

Having commenced with a discussion about hair, this piece will be bookended by more PDG rules relating hair. This time related to plucking.

Nose hair. No.

Ear hair. No

Neck hair. No.

Butt hair. NO – I can’t believe this needs to be stated. In fact extend this rule to any part of the body that would be described to a child as the “private parts”.

Freakishly long hair growing from an eyebrow, mole, or limb. Yes, because that is funny for everyone.

Getting the Band Back Together

Apparently all we ever want is a reunion, until it happens. Blues Brothers has given everyone false hope that getting the band back together is going to be a roaring success. In reality they are more police cars at the end of the most famous cinematic car chase.

Have we learned nothing from catching up with high school reunions. Despite all of the cliques and power struggles of our youth everyone has turned out pretty much the same. The high school athlete, the prettiest girl at school and the academic super star are all now middle aged, over weight and. slightly balding. Even the magic from your closest friends has gone. The rapport, the timing just isn’t quite there any more.

Despite this, the media and some fans are desperate for any former television show with either a cult following or high ratings in its prime consistently call for the cast to reunite.

Hey Hey It’s Saturday should be a warning to us all. It was a rating juggernaut in its day and every international celebrity gracing Australia with their presence would want to be book onto the show. Saturday nights did not start until 8.30pm.

Then after ten years off the air, the cast reunited for a series of shows in 2009…crickets and tumble weeds.

What was fast, improvised and sharp-witted was now awkward, forced and cringey.

The chemistry was right for its time. But times change and even with the greatest sense of nostalgic anticipation, the reboot is never quite like the original.

The latest call is for the cast of Married With Children to reunite after they all gathered to celebrate Katey Segal’s star on Hollywood’s walk of fame. Ed O’Neil whilst still a great comedic actor is now looking a lot older, heavier and balder. Would the politically incorrect, misogynistic and exploitative humour still get the same laughs from either the live audience or the laugh track? Or would it soon appear to be a bit worn and same-same.

I personally have wanted a Seinfeld reunion since the day the final episode first aired. I loved the mini reunion between Jerry Seinfeld and Jason Alexander/George Costanza for an episode of Jerry’s web series, Comedian’s in Cars Getting Coffee. It was great, very funny, but relationship was only a shadow of its former glory. The timing had slipped. In the show Jerry played himself, and Jason played George. In this reunion Jerry was playing Jerry playing himself and Jason was playing Jason

playing George. As desperate as I was for this to be one of the great moments in entertainment history, what I got was more like an impersonation of one of the great shows in sitcom history. Don’t get me wrong still it was still miles ahead of any sitcom being produced now

Along with being older Jason was also fatter and balder!

Arrested Development was ground breaking and won critical acclaim. The 2013 reboot series was critically dismissed.

Friends was a stalwart of television through the 90s into the early 2000s and is another show that regularly gets touted for a reunion   Depending on the timing of any reunion Matthew Perry will have either gained or lost a lot of weight.

series. This would raise the other awkward challenge of a television reunion. The casts careers and personal lives have taken vastly different trajectories. Apparently, for some of them, no-one told them that life was going to be this way.

At least the actors, if not their careers, are still alive. Unlike the cast of Golden Girls. Sophia, Dorothy and Blanche are now in the Golden Palace in the sky. On the upside they no longer have to worry bout their weight.

Things that go ping in the night

 So the black box no longer pings. We can make a box that will survive almost any disaster that befalls an aircraft but we cannot make a decent battery. We can land a man on the moon but we can not make a good long life battery. Maybe that is why the moon land conspiracy theorists are so dogged. It would make more sense, the other way around. We can not make a battery that holds its charge, no wonder they had to fake the moon landing.

It may also calm the nerves of countless iPhone users the world over who are continuously frustrated at the battery that does not last 24 hours



Thankfully Courtney Love has also stopped pinging in relation to this disaster mystery.



A “ping” is important. With out a ping, table tennis is just pong and there is a reason why it is now hard to find a version of this1970s arcade game. Without a ping the 1933 children’s duck-related fable would be merely The Story About…”



Monty Python’s Meaning of Life made famous machines that go ping. In that case it was to impress the administrator of the hospital that the medical team were doing a good job. I personally have never worked out in a hospital whether you want to be attached to a machine that goes ping, or not. If you are do you want a machine that pings when everything is going well or one that pings when there is a problem?



As Kramer suggested in Seinfeld: The Heart Attack you do not want to end up with a hose coming out of your chest attached to a piece of luggage.



What is unusual in the search for MH370 is that there does not appear to be any debris in the search area as identified by the “pings”. Not one piece of the aircraft itself, no wing tip, nose cone or food service trolley and not a single piece of luggage.



Ukraine has reportedly trained dolphins and other marine mammals to plant sea mines and kill frogmen. Famously in Russia’s take over of the Crimean peninsula the dolphins have changed nationalities. It must be difficult for a dolphin not to smile in its passport photo. Perhaps these military training sea creatures could use their natural sonar and tracking skills to find the lost plane, its passengers and cargo. Maybe then Putin would have something really worth Pinging about.


Just quietly part of the problem might be that they are look for a box box whilst the in-flight recorder is neither black nor a box!

Faking It

Seinfeld Season 5 Episode 1 "The Mango"

Throughout the ages the concept of faking it has been debated between the genders. Generally, it is accepted that sometimes it may occur, and we are ok with it. Not everything in life is as easy to fake. Well not in a convincing way.

Take the man who provided “sign language interpretation” for President Obama’s speech as Nelson Mandela’s memorial. It could be argued that it was the truest form of interpretation – as it was basically a man improvising hand movements with no relationship with what Obama was saying, and no resemblance to any actual sign language signs.

Driving a formula one car would be difficult to fake, in race conditions. Though I would like to see one of the pit crew jump on the back of US$7million machine and take over the steering, like an attendant in a dodgem car rink for the one person who inexplicably can not get their car out of the corner.

Brain surgery, sure anyone could get a garden drill and bore into the back of someone’s skull. To do it with the precision required so that brain matter does not wind its way back up the drill bit or that the drill bit does not hit the spot that would make the patients leg spasm like a dog getting its belly scratched.

Australia’s most recent collection of Prime Ministers have proven that it takes more than merely winning an election to actually lead a country. The programmatic specificity required in the top job proved too much for both Rudd (twice) and Gillard, and if Abbott’s approach to international diplomacy and employment in the car industry are anything to go by things have not changed for the better post the recent election.

Ben Elton proved that writing funny and entertaining television is difficult to fake, twice. In 2011 his Australian show Live from Plant Earth survived just 3 episodes. In 2013 his UK sitcom The Wright Way was blasted by critics and viewers alike.

Personally I have demonstrated that fine handcrafted wooden furniture is difficult to fake. Even average handmade wooden furniture takes some talent. The aquarium stand I made required the weight of a full fish tank on it to square it up enough for all four legs to touch the ground simultaneously. The surface of the coffee table I made, a glass or mug could only be filled half for risk of spillage the angles were so great. 

Every generation will lament the next generation of musical artists for faking their musical ability. It is part of the parent handbook to complain to one’s offspring “that’s not music, there is no tune and I can’t understand the lyrics”. In the case of Bob Dylan it is the children complaining to the parents.

Earlier this year the zoo in Henan Province, China demonstrated it is difficult to fake animals. A Dog no matter how big and hairy is not a lion, nor a wolf, not even if it is a Tibetan mastiff, and a fox is not a leopard. For that matter a sea cucumber is also not a lizard.

Being a fake stunt person could present some challenges. Sure the crashing of the car, jumping from a burning building or participating in a gun fight whilst riding a wild horse through a forest, down a steep incline into a river might be easy to fake. The staying alive whilst doing it is the tricky part.

Control Freak

Live is not like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. All of the buttons levers and knobs needed to steer through the array of adventures and challenges that crop up with seemingly endless regularity are not displayed in a orderly fashion on a large desk. It is also worth noting that it is often the knobs that take control of the buttons and levers.

Humans are always wanting control.

Relationships it is said is about equal partnership. Lies. We all know it is about who is wearing the metaphoric pants. Who makes the decisions about chores, décor, television channels, meals, friendship priorities, sexual positions? It is always the person who is in control. Occasionally the other person will get to make a decision but only because the person in control has let them.

Why are single people are looking for relationships? Companionship, possibly; sexual release maybe; control definitely. Wether they are looking to control the other or to be controlled. BDSM is taking this to its extreme and if that is your preference, then good luck to you, just remember your safety word!

Work is the same, albeit the language changes. In the corporate world organisational consultants will use language like about autonomy, leadership and motivation…they mean control.

Regardless of where someone’s position sits within the organisational hierarchy everyone wants control. Even if a person does not have any control about which tasks they have to do and sometimes there is also no choice on when the tasks must be completed. People do want the chance to add their personal flare to the task. Like an artist who signs their completed canvas everyone wants their work to be immediately recognisable as their own. A good boss will allow her or her staff to add their signature – real or otherwise – to their work. Sanctioned or not signatures will be added.

Welcome to the world of sabotage. We have seen the clips of fastfood staff bathing in the kitchen sinks, recently the former manager of Jamie Oliver’s restaurant Fifteen was jailed for flambéing the building. American postal workers are famous for their murderous shooting sprees. It is all about control.

When architecture moved from discreet offices to open plan working areas the amount of personal decorations, photographs and gadgets on peoples desks increased. Control of space.

In primary school we would use out rulers to push neighbour’s pencils back when they strayed “onto our side”. In the Brady Bunch the boys divided their room in half using tape on the floor awkwardly leaving Greg no access to the door to the room and Bobby and Peter with no access to the bathroom. Thankfully no-one uses the bathroom in a G-rated American sitcom.

Family is another control battle ground. Psychologists will hypothesise ad-nauseum about sibling rivalry labelling each position within the family; oldest child syndrome, middle child syndrome, youngest child syndrome. Surely we can all relax now knowing that each position has issues, and it is always about control. Control of space, toys, past times, fashion and parental affection. And what better way to exert your dominance but to fart in your siblings face.

In the animal kingdom biologists will discuss pecking order and being the dominant or alpha member of the group. Again, control. In this instance the control is about territory, food and sex. The territory is of course defined as the area of land in which the dominant animal controls the access to food and sex.

Food and sex, the two things we need to control sustaining life. Food sustains us in the now and sex (procreation) sustains us for the future. In the modern world food is not limited to what one can hunt or gather but rather what we can purchase which is why control at work is so important: work = income = food. Sex, its frequency, style and choice of partner, at least in its base level of attraction, is often determined by superficial elements such as fashion and possessions. Therefore work = income = sex. If you can combine the food and the sex then you are in ultimate control. As George Costanza in Seinfeld said “the kitchen is the most sensual room in the house.”

Control is about choice. So if you do not like the food and sex in you life make a choice. Take action. The choice might be to change jobs, to change partners, to change diet or exercise. The choice might be to simply wake up 10minutes earlier.

Only an idiot does the same thing the same way but expects different results.

Oh and the bridge on the Enterprise was fake, the buttons, levels and knobs did not really control anything. The crew only survived each adventure by getting off their arse and taking action. It’s a choice.