Clutching at straws

Labor hasn't been a bad government but they are on the nose with the electorate.  The last time they were on the nose with the electorate was 1996 and in the last week of that campaign, in desperation, they made some inaccurate claims about future Howard government cuts.  From memory this involved Treasurer Ralph Willis being duped by letter supposedly written by Jeff Kennett that supposedly outlined planned cuts to be made by John Howard, but which was in fact a forgery.  It seems that now, with less than two weeks to go before the election, and being in a similarly parlous position, they've gilded the lily again, this time trying to question Opposition costing figures, but the bureaucracy has called them out.  As a Labor supporter and voter, I would have hoped they'd remember the mistake they made late in the 1996 campaign, when they overplayed their hand.  Admittedly they were going to be beaten then, but that monumental gaffe cost them seats.  Subsequently they just lost the 1998 election, which might have had a different result if they hadn't had so many seats they needed to win, after the 1996 landslide.  Labor, when losing power, federally, remind me of the gambler who, having had a bad day on the punt, increases his/her stake as the last race of the day beckons (the 'get out stakes' it is known as) to recover their losses, but they only end up in a worse losing position than would otherwise have been the case.

Search for meaning

I saw something recently that initially encapsulated the tendency to angst, the obsessional wondering about what is coming next, or to put it another way, the yearning clamor, concomitant with modern day life.

This visual perceptual prompt asked me something of a general nature, but before I could try and find a response to its inquiry, I believed I needed to work out more precisely what was being sought by this query.  I pondered this interrogative device.  It seemed to be putting me on the spot and leading me to plot a path to the heart of the matter.  It was an uncertainty that highlighted an imperative for certitude or at least demanded a way forward.  How it went about seeking a purposeful, knowing reaction from me was confronting.  It was insistent that now was the time for finding the truth; it was a declaration that there was an information void that needed to be filled with something meaningful.

I looked down and peered intently at it.  As I stared harder, it gradually dawned on me that the answer was staring me in the face.  This poser was not only the interviewer: it went beyond tentative suggestions, past a firming up of hypotheses, to a declaration of verisimilitude.  I realized I had found a meaning in my life!  I had seen and absorbed the full impact of a thick human hair in the shape of a question mark, a profound piece of punctuation, alone upon a toilet seat.  

Tattoos, cosmetic procedures and varicose veins

When I was in my youth (1970s), tattoos were largely taboo.  The two most commonly specified criteria in personal advertisements were "good sense of humour" and "no tattoos" .  I haven't read personal ads recently, but I wouldn't be surprised if "needs to have tattoos" was a requirement people asked for, or at least something that, once introductions were out of the way, gave you some sort of advantage in the mating game.

I guess you can never say never, but I'm highly unlikely ever to get a tattoo - I can't even bring myself to to draw on my skin with permanent marker.

In Darwin recently, I noticed lots of people had tattoos   My travelling companions said this apparent abundance of tattoos was because of the heat: people were wearing fewer clothes, so more flesh was on show with its attendant body art.  But I reckon there were still more tattoos on more people, in this tropical outpost, than is the norm.  Of course the prevalence of 'tatts' in the Top End could be because there are more young people up there than 'down south' and that particular demographic is prone to dabble in the permanent daub.  Unfortunately the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) doesn't collect data about such things.  Despite the lack of ABS data, it can be said, unequivocally, there are more tattoos nowadays than back in the 1970s.

On a slightly different tack, but still in the realm of bodily modification, again when I was in my youth, I remember older people talking about women of middle and old age having their veins done.  This involved the removal from legs of varicose veins, which were deemed unsightly.  I don't know much about current varicose vein removal rates; it's not mentioned much nowadays.  I would guess it's done at the same rate that it was done years ago - again no ABS data.  But as a phenomena, it seems to have receded from view.  I suspect that other cosmetic practices have overtaken it in prominence.  Things like getting botox and having your breasts done or even rhinoplasty.  I've even heard of people having their eyebrow hair permanently removed and then getting eyebrow lines tattooed to their forehead, as a form of cosmetic enhancement.  What I can be sure of though (no need for verification by the ABS) is back when I was young and also nowadays, no one is getting tattoos on their legs of varicose veins.