I can’t believe it. It’s the fourth of January, and it’s taken me this long to surface after New Year’s – I must be getting old. It’s funny – I can remember a time not so long ago that going out for a boogie, and then staying up all night and all the next day drinking beer wouldn’t have even blipped on the radar. But this time around, and I’m not feeling so good. Even after a couple of days of doing not much - if you count lying on the couch drinking ginger ale (with a little bit of scotch in it… just to flavour it, of course) and watching the cricket as ‘not much’ – I’m still feeling weak. Like a kitten. Which leads me to my first observation for the week… and, indeed, for the year.

1. Cats and small birds don’t mix    

Pablo got stuck into the light beer for Xmas.

 

Dear little Pablo Escobar… she doesn’t like birds. Since moving in to my new place, we’ve been settling in slowly. Being a cat, Pablo has spent most of that time sniffing around every square inch of the new apartment. It’s been a wonderful time, with her learning how to cope with life without any carpet. It’s been endlessly amusing watching her come to grips (or not, as the case may be) with life’s little upsets, when life lacks the grip that carpeted flooring provides. It’s like watching a cartoon – one of those stupid old ones where the characters don’t find it odd that they run on the spot for a good three seconds before going anywhere. Pablo’s been doing that – and for the first time, I understood why. She’s been making friends with the willy wagtails that nest in the tree outside my kitchen window. They, in turn, have been taking every opportunity they can find to attack her, causing her no end of grief. I’m not sure how things will end up, but being the believer in Darwinian selection, I’m prepared to see how this one pans out. I’ll let you know, once Pablo unhooks her claws from my leg/face/scrotum and calms down a little. If anyone knows of a form of valium for cats, let me know. Please.

2. Family Christmas is a frightening thing.  

A giant ham. Big enough to live in.

Before I get started, I beg the forgiveness of my family for the inevitable unkindnesses that follow… anyway: this year, it was Christmas at my parent’s house. Imagine, if you will, 16 or so people crammed into a small, un-air-conditioned suburban living room, with a spread of food so vast that even with the number of people that were there, it virtually guaranteed that we’re going to be eating ham – and nothing else – for the next six weeks. I lay the blame for this at the feet of a few people – first of all, my employer for providing me with a Christmas hamper that makes those advertised on telly look like a trip to the snack bar on $5 Tuesday at the movies. Secondly, my mum, whose instructions to one of my cousins to ‘bring some ham’ weren’t quite specific enough to stop her from providing a whole leg of ham. That I could barely carry. Not that I’m complaining too loudly – I’m quite partial to a spot of ham every now and again, and even Pablo is learning to like it. And if anyone else would like some, there’s half a leg of ham in the fridge at my house. I’m fairly certain that it’ll be beyond redemption in about a week’s time, at which point I shall be launching it off the balcony in a spectacular protest against the excesses of Christmas in this country. I would advise caution if you’re thinking of traveling through the inner-west of Sydney in the next seven days. If you hear the phrase ‘Pigs in Space’ being broadcast at high volume, seek shelter.

3. Ants are awesome   

Argentine ant - a sure bet to win the Hopman Cup

It’s 2:18am, and typically I can’t sleep. So, in the interests of stopping myself from heading out into the populace to start a small fire (just to see what happens), I was watching TV, and I happened upon a show called The Most Extreme. Aside from being the most extremely shit piece of television I’ve seen in a while, it was also educational – the two things, I’ve since learned, not being mutually exclusive. Anyway… I learnt about Argentine Ants – those of you old enough to remember might cast your minds back to the great Argentine Ant scare of my childhood. I would have been about six or seven years old, and the word on the street was that there was a bounty on Argentine Ants. This is separate to the bounty that was supposedly on offer for cicada wings at the chemist, which was a persistent rumour of my childhood that ultimately turned out to be false – much to my friend Martin’s dismay, having spent an entire summer divesting the noisy bastards of their wings and keeping them in a shoebox for a rainy day.

Anyway – Argentine ants are truly awesome, being the only type of ant that doesn’t take part in inter-colonial warfare, choosing instead to work together to steadily take over the world. The way I see it, they’re unstoppable. And we’ll be well and truly fucked the day they learn to write things down.

4. Skydiving is dangerous  

The woman on top stowed away in the wrong backpack.

Well duh... of course it is. I cannot fathom the reasoning behind leaving the relative safety of the ground, let alone choosing to fly to an obscene height, and then leaping out of the plane, hurtling towards the ground and putting your faith in an oversized novelty clown hanky that someone else has stuffed into a backpack.

Sure, I understand the concept of an adrenaline rush – I ride motorcycles at speeds that some would consider excessive, but I rationalise that by pointing out that I am in control of the machinery upon which I am precariously perched, and that if something were to go wrong, it would be entirely my fault.

But recent events in Queensland point to the fact that even the air travel component of skydiving is dangerous. What I can’t figure out is how a plane full of people who were perfectly prepared to jump out, simply didn’t when a golden opportunity presented itself.

Too soon? Probably… but admit it – you laughed.

A quick digression, for which I am unapologetic. Pablo just climbed on the keyboard and typed this:

xcl.fg[dfp;re-f45trf.trfgv ,fvc,dsx,v /.jkm,xc ldcxf,dxck,fcmx xjknm,

I’ve checked her food supply, water levels and cleared the poop from the bog mine, so her usual causes for interrupting my work are covered. If anyone can decipher cat, I’d be appreciative.

5. Cricket is bad for the soul   

Alan Alda is loving his new career at the cricket

Summer in Australia is a time fraught with danger. If the box jellyfish aren’t stinging you to death whern you go swimming up north, or the crocodiles and funnelweb spiders aren’t ganging up to take over suburban swimming pools to eat children and make life unlivable for the rest of us, there’s cricket to contend with.

Televised cricket, I’m sure, is getting worse. I can remember being fascinated by it as a kid, when the late great Kerry Packer took over the wicket and launched his World Series Cricket and I, like the rest of the viewing public, voted overwhelmingly with my viewing habits and tuned in for just about every match. But these days, it’s like watching paint dry. The interminable commentary that makes little or no sense to the punters, the long, drawn out matches that they say go for five days, but seem to last months to the untrained eye – it’s all a terrible con, a cruel hoax of a sport designed to dull the senses and make us all vote Liberal at the next election. No wonder John Howard loves it.

It’s funny – I would have thought that the technological advances might make the spectacle of cricket a little easier to palate. Sadly, no – it’s not the case. Between hawkeye and the abundance of statistics that are now just the push of a button away for the commentary team, I’ve been subjected to a hellish display of when television goes wrong. I haven’t been this bored by TV since my last trip to the US, when I actually sat through an entire game of baseball in my hotel, just to see what the fuss was about. And, despite stabbing the room service clerk at the bottom of the fourth just to break up the boredom, it was still one of the least interesting evenings of my life.

Something needs to be done to cricket to make it better. I know they’ve launched the Twenty20 version of the game, but even that, I fear, won’t be enough.

So I propose that the game be made full contact, with points awarded for beaning the fielders with the ball or the bat, or whatever the batsmen can smuggle onto the field. Batsmen, in turn, can be kinghit by the fielders when they’re not looking, and the umpires are allowed to call stumps, at which point the last fielder to impale himself upon something upright is considered ‘out’. All players are to arrive on the field by way of a large cannon from the dressing room, and the team whose players land closest to the middle of the ground gets a ten point head-start. That would make it watchable. At last.

That’ll do for this week. I’m obviously suffering through lack of sleep, and no one needs to see that. Again. Hopefully by next week the soporific state brought about by two weeks worth of holidays won’t have dulled my senses to the point where I cannot remember how to finish a sentence, instead preferring to go on and on and on…