John Cleese and I

On the weekend I went to "A Night With John Cleese".  He sat on a stage and talked about his life, where he came from, who his family was and how Python and other great collaborations came about.  It was an excellent night.  I really enjoyed seeing his skill in manipulating an audience and talking about some personal material.  He talked about the death of his mother and father.  Graham Chapman and David Frost's death as well as his progression from school right through to falling into writing and acting.

I lucked into a great seat about 8 rows back, had a
clear view of him all night!

I have my humour set heavily in the British side of comedy.  Irony, sarcasm, dry humour that is full of silliness.  In fact, I realised during the concert that my humour is not only influenced heavily by Python, it practically is Python humour.  It is then no wonder that I have idolised these old skits and movies to this very day.  If you asked me my favourite comedy movie it would invariably wander from Holy Grail or The Meaning of Life largely dependent on my mood at the time.  If you asked me which skits I liked the best it would probably be The Secret Policeman's Other Ball although Little Britain comes a close second.

I have also been a great fan of the Goodies and I always thought that they kind of grew out of the Python craze.  I was amazed to find out on the night that both Tim Brooke-Taylor and Bill Oddie were both all tightly involved with the group largely before they became Python!  John Cleese showed us the Fish Dance skit which the Monty Python crew voted their most silly skit of all time and I recognised the Goodies quite clearly in it.

My son, Ethan, is also hanging on to the same style of humour.  While he is not into Python as yet (he is a bit young) he is deeply enamoured by the Goodies and much darker humour.  This makes me very happy.  In fact, my whole trip to see John Cleese has made me a lot happier too.  It has gotten me in touch with my inner self again, when I was a lot happier in general.  It made me realise again that life is for living and laughing just as much as it is for working, bill paying and the intrusion of the darker things in life.

So, there you have it.  To the readers of this blog, try to work out what style of humour really works for you and visit it often.  Do not let a chance to catch up with a laugh or two ever as it is just as important to you as it is to those around you to see you laugh and have a good time!  Thanks for reading!

Election Time

So it is election time in our little wilderness state of Tasmania, Australia.  In little under a month the goodly Tasmanian's will be called to enter little booths with pencil and paper to commit our state to another 3-4 years of governing from one of the political parties.  I am a little depressed about this coming election as there is no-one that I clearly want to vote for.

40 Year old me!  I see a wrinkle!

This past 4 years has been governed by an alliance of two minority parties who largely have conflicting goals.  The Premier of the state is the  a  complete nonce who likes to have a photo op rather than have something important to say.  In the past 4 years our finances have been flushed down the toilet and she has the gall to say to the opposition that they can't make promises because there is no money.

But the opposition is just as poor a choice.  Here is a guy who I am fairly certain thinks he already has things won.  He pays too much attention to the polls me thinks.  he has made promises of payments to various sectors but all politicians do that.  Besides, I really don't think that anybody really gets the real issues here in our state anymore.

Finally, there is a new party on the scene.  they don't really say much about anything unless it is derogatory to the other parties.  They say "Hey vote for us because we haven't caused any damage, not like X party" and I think that is largely because they have not made it in to government yet.

I am fairly certain that when I go to vote I will still be as confused then as I am now.  Not one of the parties want to speak about the real issues.  Escalating depression and suicide rates.  Increased mental illness, alcoholism, drug and gambling problems.  Jobs going overseas at the rate of the thousands.  Laws that allow the rich to get richer, the middle to just scrape by and the poor to be forgotten.

We are facing our worst challenges everywhere in Tasmania on a social level but not a single party wants to speak about this.  What they want to do is talk about money and where they can put it for a short term boost in employment or revenue.  This is part of the problem but none of the parties have a holistic view when you need it.  In fact, I cannot think that any party in operation is working for the good of the people any more.  They are simply working for the good of their party.

Everything is about money.  The focus on every minute detail is ridiculously revolving around the planet of the dollar when in reality the money is a symptom of deeper issues.  Ask yourself, do you know your neighbour?  Have you done anything for someone recently and expected, nay WANTED nothing in return.  Why do we turn our back on people in need on our own streets and yet sponsor people in need in other countries.  Look to what you can do to improve the lot of life of people in your community.  Prove to them that you want to help them and that you can be reliable and open.  If we all acted in this way and took a moment away from our own needs and wants, this State of Tasmania (and the world) would be a much better place.

Well, that is what I have been thinking about any way and this is the view from my window after all!  Have a good week everyone.

The Downgrading of Society

So, enough about my personal issues.  I put up the last posts so you can understand me and see where I am coming from and why I am a depressed so and so.  But that is not necessarily what I wanted this blog to be about.  This blog is more about my opinion on certain things in life and what I think we need to do as a society to pick things up and return to a better style of living.  This post I have been dying to do actually and I think it is an important thing to speak out about.

Globalisation.  The internet has pushed the world into a period of never before seen access to other countries.  Even in the early 1990's when the World Wide Web was yet to show its face the other side of the world was what you heard about in the news, and then only when something major had.  But the internet has now created an environment where I spend a good deal of my time discussing things in a live environment with people on the other side of the world.  This is a great thing but there are things that globalisation has destroyed in our society.

Act local, think global

It is a mantra that has become a catch phrase in Tasmania, especially with politicians and it is partially this mantra that has led to the loss of skills and manufacturing in this country as well as the growing financial problems that it seems almost everyone faces.  It started with a thing call de-regulation as the Liberal Federal government called for open trade in the interests of globalisation.  Prior to this the government invested money into industries so that they could be competitive in a global environment.  When this happened it seemed like a great thing.  But at what cost.

This is very pertinent to me at the moment because in the past week a massive chain hardware store known as Bunnings opened here in Burnie, the local city about twenty minutes away from home and everyone thinks this is one of the best things ever.  Except me.  Bunnings is a store that is owned by a company called Wesfarmers.  Wesfarmers also controls Coles Pty Ltd, one of the two largest chain supermarkets in Australia.  Bunnings stores follow the same style of approach as a supermarket but with hardware.  So why would I not be excited?  Let me use Bunnings as an example of how globalisation is ruining our communities but it is not just Bunnings.  It is Spotlight for crafts, all sorts of new car dealerships like China's Great Wall model and the like.

Think of a local hardware.  Your local hardware of ten to twenty years ago.  In all likelihoood the hardware may have been a franchise but it would be a franchise owned and run by a local community member.  Of course it might actually be a completely independent hardware store.  You walked in to the hardware and if you were a little handy it is likely that they would recognise you.  Over time it may even be one of those places that your children get a go at their first job because the guy/girl that ran the store is part of the community and he/she wants to be connected to the community and help it grow.  The prices may be a little more than the big city hardware BUT they don't have the community the same size as the big cities so they have to mark the prices up a little 

Then imagine you hear your local council approves a massive development for one of the largest supermarket giants to put in place a hardware store that prides itself on being the cheapest they can.  They can be cheap because they have the financial clout behind them to buy containers and containers of stock up front.  They can cater to people who look only at cost by buying inferior quality stock from countries where the labour force demands little in the way of pay and conditions.  They can also buy the higher quality stock but know on the whole that the highest sellers will be those that are the cheapest goods.  The proprietor of the local hardware has good reason to be fearful.  You see, they only have a small quantity of poor quality products from inferior producers and they do not sell much of them.  They don't because they give good advice and point people to the products that sell the best.

They look to the other stores of the same company that opened and they see that their own bottom line was hurt at the same time.  They can no longer afford to put little Jimmy through his first job because their profits are reducing all of the time as they try to bring back their customers.  Even the local store opening of the chain store that is two hours travel away it hurts them.  As time begins to tick down fewer and fewer people come through the door and it is all they can do to keep the doors open until three months prior to the opening of the new store.  Then they cross their fingers and hope that they get employed in the new superstore.

So, what is going wrong?  De-regulation has not only allowed free trade with companies that can under sell us because they have nowhere near the overheads that we do in an over-governed society but it has also allowed the sleeping giants like our monopolised supermarkets to start to create monopolies in other industries.  The people that will serve in these stores will have guidance based on the business model of a supermarket as opposed to the skilled testimony of the local store owner who checked the devices before selling them.

This happened in Burnie.  I look at the newspaper and it is all about the celebration of the new store opening.  It closed five local hardware stores and Burnie itself had NO hardware store for over three months.  Now I look at photos of people walking out holding cheap products made in under-developed countries.  I sat at a birthday party and heard them let off what must have been at least $25000 worth of fireworks celebrating this.

Australia is losing its manufacturing industries at an alarming rate because we cannot compete with other countries labour costs and under developed working conditions.  We have come from a position where everything is over regulated and all that Australia has done is taken away the regulation of trade restrictions but now work on modernising our working environment is ignored.

These conditions are not sustainable.  I can see the effects of these problems on a daily basis.  It does not only hurt us at the hip pocket but also as a community.  These stores will argue that they put money back into their community and they do.  But that money is at a superficial level.  The executives of these companies behind the scene is where a lot of the money really ends up, and you can guarantee that these peopl do not live in the community.  Unlike the people that they have displaced, who still live in these communities.

But who is to blame?  Is it the companies?  Is it the government?  No, it is the community.  the world revolves around money now and this is why globally countries are finding themselves in difficulty.  Their economies are beginning to collapse. It truly is looking like a dystopian future if we do not work out these issues.  I do everything I can to buy locally and support stores that are not yet pawns for bigger companies.  I implore you to do the same.  Until we as a community start to reject these stores they will continue to destroy local economies and lives.  

I so want to write a lot more on this issue but I hope that I have gotten my point of view through.  I hope that many of you can see the same thing as I am and that enough of us eventually start to act on this knowledge.  To restore a community, we must first become one.

Weird But True - further into my reasons for depression

I had stated in my previous post that things were a little weirder in my family, particularly on my Mothers side.

My grandparents had three children.  Don, Diane and Marilyn (My mum).  Each of these children got married and had two children of their own.  Don had Angela and Sandra; Diane had Jane and Martin; Marilyn had Michael and myself.

Sandra was born with cerebral palsy and was not expected to live much longer than her teens.  Apart from that everything was pretty straight forward in my generation, at a glance anyway.  My brother Michael and my cousin Martin were born only a couple of days apart in the same hospital.  Martin grew into a strong, strapping guy who played rugby and rowed for his school.  He was healthy like an ox.  But just before he was to turn 18 Martin got hit bad with an illness.  The Doctors flew him from Tasmania to Adelaide when they realised Martin had a hole in his heart and his heart was enlarged!  No one could really believe what was happening.  This strapping kid was very unwell.

They treated Martin and hoped that he would be able to make it home for his eighteenth.  It was never to happen though as Martin made it through all the surgeries he was required to undertake and then was killed by a heart attack caused by a Golden Staphylococcus infection.  The family were literally stunned at this.  It is completely overwhelming and unthinkable that this happened to him.  Something completely out of the blue.

Life continued for us and in time the pain eased and I would think fondly of the times that I had with Martin.  But then another tragedy lurched into being.  My cousin Sandra (Sandy) had survived well past her teens and she was in her thirties.  She was such a funny spirit.  Wild and spirited with a mischievous humour much like her father she was a joy to be around.  She was at home by herself when an electrical fault in her wheelchair caused a fire.  I cannot bear to think of what she went through and I hoped that I would never learn what it would be like to lose someone in such a circumstance.

But of course you may have read my last blog and know that I did.  My brother killed by a one in a million circumstance.  I llok at our family history.  Three children of one generation; each had two children of their own; each lost one child to circumstances so unlikely as to be considered one in a million events.

I look at that and wonder two things.  Firstly, is our family cursed?  Secondly, is it proof of a greater pattern to things?

I cannot say for sure but I can tell you one thing.  It sucks.  I hate even that I have to think like this, or that my mind is conditioned at looking at things this way.  I know there is greater pain and suffering of others out in the world but this is so personal to me and it is part of the complicated relationship of my depression.  I do feel that without this repeated pattern of loss I may have healed from the loss of my brother but with the added losses I feel like I was set up to fall in this hole.

Thanks for reading.