The Bucket

Remembering

Lest I forget.

Tomorrow, ANZAC Day, is when we remember the Australians who served in all theatres of war since World War 1.

I sit here today with my Dad's five war medals beside me.  
They were the only thanks he received for participating in World War 2 in Ceylon and the Middle East.
His personal legacy of service was having to live the second half of his life classified as Totally and Permanently Incapacitated.

I also think of my gentle-natured teenage mate who at age 20 drew the short ballot straw and was sent off to fight in Vietnam.  He saw and experienced things there which took away his sense of fun and humour, and sent his mind to a place which never again needed my close friendship.

Additionally, I have enormous gratitude for all the young Aussie men responsible, under appalling conditions, for repelling Japanese invasion forces in WW2 at our front doorstep, on Papua New Guinea's Kokoda Track in spite of inept high level military command and support.

My allegience to Australia does not however preclude me from also giving compassionate thought to the 100,000 Japanese young men who died in the PNG conflict.

They, just like our own front line soldiers, were simply pawns in the ugly game of human conflict.

Franchise opportunity of a lifetime

I have spent much of my life being appalled at one thing or another.

This week, together, we have already sorted out the doctors, and we now feel a great deal healthier having vented our grievances.
 
Now I would like to turn my appalling attention to the alternative health care industry.

In Australia it is apparently open slather for any old quack or charlatan who decides to set up business as a Herbalist, Acupuncturist or Naturopath.

The Australian Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine Association estimates that of the 100 acupuncture practitioners in South Australia, 50% have either no qualifications at all, or received inadequate training.

Apparently the only qualifications an entrepreneur requires to attract the rich and gullible is to preferably be of mature years, with an IQ matching the number of those years, and possess a bespectacled serious demeanor, enhanced with a stylish grey beard.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I proudly introduce;

The GOF Naturopathy Clinic

No appointments necessary.

Discreet off-street parking for clients and hearses.

Modern facilities with the latest technology.

Phone; 1800MALPRACTICE

Menu of Services and Fee Schedule
          (refer illustration below)

1.       Silicone breast enlargement.
          Left Breast.....no charge.  Right breast $1975

2.       Emasculator services.  For pets and gentlemen.
          (discount gift vouchers available for Fathers Day)
          Single; $125  Double; $200

3.       Apothecary. Herbal mixtures and remedies.
          $75 per batch plus payment of fines if we are caught.

4.       Realigning and unblocking Chakras.
          Chakra leverage;  $100 per hour plus
          depreciation on crowbar $5

5.       Lucky dip surgery including "Specials of the Day"
          Refer to chalkboard out the front.

6.       Liposuction and head lice removal.
          $105 per kilogram and $0.05 each.

7.       Bone spur excisions.
          $50 without anaesthetic, $1754 with.

8.       Body piercing.
          Ear $10.  Nose $15. Tongue $20
          Nipple Male; $35  Female; no charge
          Belly button $37.50
          Any lower; go find someone else. It is wrong. Wrong!
         
9.       Correction of cardiac arrythmia.
          $150 per amp/hour of battery discharge
          plus connection fee $20.

10.     Stomach stapling
          GOF's special staples which dissolve into
          harmless ferrous oxide.  $175 each.
          

Precision instruments

Franchises available!

Your $20,000 franchise fee, (payable in used bank notes and collected in person by my caring clinic assistants Big Bruno and Luigi the Lip,) will include this entire range of precision instruments, together with a sterile bright white pharmacists smock with epaulettes, nametag, and instructions on how to effect a condescending smirk of superiority.

Training will consist of a one-hour online seminar, satisfactory completion of which will entitle you to the GOF University Doctorate of Organic Healing.

This just has to be your lucky day.

 

"Adverse events"

Occasionally I get urges.

Today I have one which will see me sink my critical yet professionally unqualified commoner's boot into the medical profession.

I acknowledge that the vast majority of doctors do not lack compassion, competence or dedication, yet their services (despite Australia's generous health care rebate system) are increasingly unaffordable to many of us.
 
The "Doctor Industry" however, still insists upon retaining it's unethical and incestuous business relationships with pharmacists, pathologists and pharmaceutical big business.

In coming years because of their unaffordability not only to us as individuals, but also to the nation as a whole, they will be forced to take a long hard look at themselves.
Either that or the Government will probably need to do it for them.

The concept of "elective surgery" is not something that I understand.
 
I will never "elect" to have someone stick a knife into me if there are softer alternative treatments available, or modifications which I can make to my lifestyle to alleviate a problem, or preferably prevent it from occurring in the first place.

Last year Australian Health officials were unable to deny the claims of an insider that there were "more than 10 jumbo jets-full of adverse events in Australian hospitals each year."

For "adverse events" please read "unnecessary deaths".

The whistleblower also suggested that we should never schedule surgery for January or February for this is the time of year when new anaesthetists and doctors were most "unfamiliar with equipment".

Even proponents of elective surgery admit that whilst such procedures can bring about great improvement in health, they may also result in disability and death, especially in weaker patients.

There is consistent evidence to suggest that when unnecessary surgical interventions cease, the overall death rate in communities decreases.
Such was the case when doctors went on strike in Israel in 1983, then again in 2000, Finland in 1984 and for a period in Toronto during 2003 when all elective surgery was cancelled at 4 hospitals because of the SARS epidemic.

Until now, doctors seem to have been afforded immunity to prosecution for surgical ineptitude, because of their long entrenched powers of influence within successive Governments.

For the first time, at least in my memory, a doctor is now facing the courts in Australia charged with killing people by surgical malpractice.  He was eventually extradited to Australia after hiding out under the protective skirts of America's medical fraternity and legal system for some years.

I hope that a satisfactory precedent will be set with this trial.

For far too long doctors have remained unaccountable for their mistakes, and accordingly behaved with an aloofness, arrogance and air of "untouchability" which is no longer appropriate or acceptable.
 

Secret men's business

What follows is culturally sensitive information.

It includes profound wisdom and enlightenment as provided by an elder of the tribe to a young man as part of the rites of passage into adulthood.

Accordingly it is inappropriate for it to be seen by women, so I would kindly request that you, should you happen to be of the feminine persuasion, toddle off to your favourite blog while this discussion is taking place here.  
Thank you.  I have constructed an impenetrable barbed wire fence and, at great cost, employed a security guard with dog to deter those of you with a disobedient disposition.

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Security patrol

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                                                       STOP
.+++++++++++++++++++{ Sex check boom gate}++++++++++++++++

GOF the Elder;   Good evening young Alvin, and what are you up
                             to tonight with your flashlight and clobbering-stick
                             in hand?

Alvin                    I was just on my way to check out the koala,
                            numbat and kookaburra traps we set today.
                            It's roast dinner day tomorrow and Mum's short of
                            meat.

GOF                   Good work young fella, but why the long face?
                            You look scared.  What's the problem?
                           
Alvin;                   GOF, I just passed by Grandma's house and I
                            overheard her and some of the other women
                            telling frightening stories about some "Man of
                            Paws".
                            It sounded scary and I was afraid that I might
                            meet up with him tonight in the dark.

GOF;     Alvin, you have very good reason to be scared, but
              unless you make a serious error of judgment by succumbing
              to the advances of the cougar with big boobs next door,
              this thing should not confront you for at least 30 years.

              What the women were talking about son was something
              called menopause. It is a temporary seasonal condition
              which affects the women of our village during the early
              Autumn of their lives.
              Relief for them is only gained by unloading all the pain,
              misery and frustration onto us men of the tribe.

Alvin;     GOF, Sir, (Alvin is very respectful of the elders in his
              village) is there any way I can avoid this bad thing
              happening to me?

GOF;     Yes Alvin, there are three ways.
               Please come and sit down.
               You see that big mountain in the distance silhouetted by
               the moon?  Well, you can choose to go and live the rest
               of your life in celibate isolation in the big cave near the
               top of that mountain.

Alvin;      What is "celibate"?

GOF;     Let's just take one step at a time Alvin and deal with one
               bad thing before moving on to another.

Alvin;     O.K.  What are the other two ways to avoid this
              unspeakable happening GOF, elder of mine?

GOF;     Well, you can either wait a very long time until you are old
              and wrinkly, then marry a girl at least 40 years your junior,
              OR become gay.

Alvin;     Bugger!, Damn! and Holy Hell!

GOF;     Watch your language please Alvin.

Alvin;      Sorry GOF, I don't know what came over me.
               Big Bertha taught me those bad words.
               What exactly is this menopause thing?
 
 GOF;     Menopause is like........well it's hard to explain.
               Imagine you owned a railway line which went
               all around this huge continent of Australia, and then you
               found a brand new steam locomotive to drive on
               these tracks of yours.
               Your loco is of course now in perfect running condition.
               Groovy painted exterior, a well oiled piece of machinery and
                it goes like the clappers, and doesn't rattle or make too
                much noise.
                In short it runs like a  dream......well at  least on average for
                27 days every month anyway.

Alvin;      Ooh yes! I'd like that Uncle GOF.   I like trains.

GOF;     Well Alvin, after 30 odd years of faithfully choofing around
              Australia, your loco will lose a little exterior gloss after
              having collided with a few old cows and other feral animals,
              then become quite squeaky and noisy, and even begin to
              exhibit some startling and peculiar behaviours.

Alvin;     Like what GOF?

GOF;    Well, primarily you will notice that the boiler regularly tends
              to overheat when least expected. When this happens, it is
              best to leave it alone completely and give it lots of time to
              cool down.

Alvin;     What if I stay, and play around with some taps, dials,
              levers and other things, and talk nicely to it and try to help?

GOF;    Very bad mistake Alvin.  I have seen some terrible things
              happen.  Some of these old locos have been known to
              spew forth steam, smoke and embers enough to drive a
              man completely into another occupation. 
              Occasionally some of them have even been known to
              fly completely off the rails.
 
Alvin;    It seems to me then GOF that when it happens I should
             pretend to be a wise monkey.....plug up my ears with some
             Eminem in the iPod, shut my mouth, cover my eyes, and
             most importantly never touch my loco until combustion has
             diminished and taken it's natural course.
             What happens then GOF?

GOF;   What happens eventually Alvin is nothing short of a miracle.
            The locomotive resumes it's travels as if nothing had
             happened, with a renewed sense of purpose,
             happily blowing it's whistle before every level crossing and
             train station, and startling all of the bystanders who happened
             to witness any of the previous malfunctions..

Alvin;    These locos operate in peculiar ways, don't they GOF.

GOF;    Ahh yes son, indeed they do.

Alvin;    Now, what's this "celibate" thing you mentioned.
             I notice you've been trying to avoid the issue.

GOF;    Celibacy, my dear Alvin is what is known as the
             "greater of two evils."
         
             
.

.

(Ed;    For his own safety and protection GOF has been sent on
           sabbatical to a remote monastery in Tibet.)

The missing pictures

from the previous post.....due to "Vox technical difficulties".

Lake Barrine is a volcanic crater lake (hopefully extinct) on the Atherton Tablelands.
It, and the surrounding tropical rainforest is a National Park.

Lake Barrine 1

Lake Barrine 2

Lake Barrine 3

Thoughts about someone special

Yesterday was a significant milestone for me.

It was Mr and Mrs GOF's 30th wedding anniversary.

Please hold back the applause because my Child Bride might not be as enthusiastic as I am about the passage of so many years.

Our celebration (lunch at Lake Barrine ) was just as understated as our wedding in 1980 out the back of a cheap motel in Townsville involving the minimum quorum permitted by law.....five.
This, at around the time when the world was watching the fairy-tale marriage of Prince Charles to The Lady Diana Spencer on television.

I am proud of our achievements together, but it is not a time when the truth as I see it should be compromised in order to write an embellished love story.

I do not believe couples who announce to the world that they have lived thirty years or more in "wedded bliss".
Thirty years of negotiation, compromise, mutual caring, consideration and respect for each other, with occasional blissful moments I will however believe, because I have walked that walk.

Successful partnerships require the surrender or modification of certain behaviors, personal independence and many of life's opportunities.

With this in mind I must now pay tribute to Mrs GOF, and probably the majority of Australian women of my generation who sacrificed more than their fair share of educational and career opportunities, as well as close family connections, just to follow their man and his dream.

Mrs GOF gave up more than she should have for our partnership.
This is entirely my own assessment, because she has never openly expressed regret for her 1980 decision.
These days I try my best to make amends for this perceived imbalance, and give her as much relief as I can from the
GOF-anchor she has been dragging around for all these years.

We are the original odd couple. Opposites in many ways.
No-one thirty years ago would have given us a snowflake's chance in hell of having the predominantly happy, caring, rewarding and enduring relationship which it has proven to be.

I am however thankful that Australian society today no longer expects our own daughter to sacrifice as much of her individual potential and independence as her mother did just to be with her chosen partner in life.

.
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GOF the Entomologist

DAC

In January 1965, I was one of a hundred pimply-faced teenage boys who entered the portals of Dookie Agricultural College in rural Victoria, to be unceremoniously delivered, like lambs to the slaughter, into the hands of senior students for 2 weeks of bastardisation initiation and orientation.

This practise was to be outlawed a few years later when some
do-gooding spoilsports pointed out that teenagers were actually being killed during similar rituals elsewhere in Australia.
 
Death, as they so cogently suggested, was more often than not, a deterrent to satisfactory completion of a course of education.

One of the less radical methods employed to ensure that we got very little sleep for 14 nights in a row, was the allocation to each one of us, by our masters, of an unusual and bizarre research subject, about which we were required to write one thousand words.

A week later, one at a time, we stood in front of our assembled peers and a panel of terrorist judges up to midnight and beyond, to read our discoveries out loud.

Anyone detected smiling or otherwise enjoying an oration was immediately sent on a four-mile run to the bottom corner of the bush paddock to sing our newly-learned College Song to a big old gum tree which had probably witnessed this sort of juvenile shenanigans for at least the previous 40 years.

My special research subject was;

"The mating habits of flies on heat".

Now I don't know about you, but my knowledge of this subject at the time was infinitesimal.  You are now older than I was, so you probably  know a great deal more.

After writing 1000 words on my topic in the studious sarcasm-free style to which you have become accustomed here in The Bucket, my total knowledge about flies bonking was still somewhere around zero. 

Accordingly, I stood on the rostrum to deliver my poorly-researched discourse with some scholarly authority. 
Unfortunately at some stage during the performance a judgment was made that my face had betrayed the brain's serious intent.


Natural history does not record whether the Old Gum Tree, or the nocturnal creatures resident within it's boughs appreciated my 1 am solo baritone interpretation of the College Song, two verses of which were;    

"Godiva was a lady,
 Who through Coventry did ride,
 Upon a snow-white horse
 To show off her lily-white hide. 

 The only ones to notice,
 That she was upon a horse,
 Was one blind man, the MG boys,
 And the Dookie boys of course."


Well OK, I know this is not Chaucer, Wordsworth or Frost, but hey this was an Agricultural College, not some hallowed seat of learning for English Literature.

Credit where it is due.

At least wherever I travel in the world and come across naked women riding horses I am doubly well versed on appropriate etiquette and how to behave with propriety.

The Cardinal and the Bishop

Bishop Fisher

Can I come out now?

Is it safe to stick my head up?

GOF has been huddling in the bunker at the bottom of The Bucket for the past week taking shelter from the fusillade of vitriolic verbal missiles which were aimed at my godless little ears by Australia's church leaders during Easter.

Catholic Bishop Fisher, apparently blessed with greater maturity, wisdom and worldly experience than I, in the spirit of charitable  Christianity chose the occasion to announce a list of atrocities for which my athiest beliefs are somehow responsible.
 
It included "Nazism, Stalinism and Pol-Pottery", but as good luck might have it, made no mention of paedophilia against altar boys, sectarian killings in Northern Ireland, and the prohibition of contraception, all of which apparently must be the fault of some other very naughty people.

Cardinal Pell, reinforcing Bishop Fisher's opinion, also went on to hit me with this profound Easter observation;

"we find no community services sponsored by athiests".

Perhaps dear Cardinal many of them are simply too busy
co-operating with people of all faiths during their daily volunteer firefighting, surf lifesaving, school pedestrian crossing duty, Meals on Wheels and State Emergency Service activities.
 
They probably don't care one iota about those who choose to adorn themselves in splendid regalia and shout out their irrelevant divisive religious messages from the rooftops to an increasingly disinterested, and disenchanted audience.

Bishop Jenson went on even further to accuse my quiet unobtrusive acceptance of the ultimate power of nature and evolution as being an "assault on God".

Bishop, I am sure that despite having to function within the mental straitjacket imposed by your church, you are a good man, but please also have the good grace to accept those of us in the world who have chosen different beliefs, and cease using us for pontifical target practice.

Me assaulting God?
 
My dear Bishop, please let me tell you a story.
It is perhaps similar to one you might relate in one of your sermons, only mine is shorter and it does not conclude in the realms of theosophical fantasy.

Our Organic Chemistry lecturer at college after a few months of unsuccessfully trying to teach us the difference between alkanes, alkenes and alkynes, one day became terminally disgusted with our disinterest and apparent (and possibly real) lack of intelligence.
He threw his arms up into the air in a gesture of surrender, and with reference to our lack of brains, declared in his broad Scottish accent;

"How can I work with something that isn't there"
 
Similarly Bishop, I am unable to assault something that for me, based on the lack of evidence, isn't there, and does not exist.

Gentlemen, how about a little more tolerance and acceptance of the beliefs of others next Easter.

The world desperately needs it, and I am sure Jesus would approve.

One wet season day; snapshots

Rainfall at GOF's Place

March 2010                   838mm        (34 inches)

Progressive 2010       2180mm        (88 inches)

I'm happy to round that off to an average of one inch per day, for the entire year so far.

There is still no-where else in the world I would rather live.

However, as we have not seen the sun for 20 days in a row, my solar batteries are now
depleted.  I will resume blogging when the weather improves.

Wet can be hauntingly beautiful

Highway to GOF's place

Traffic hazzard

Where once was a road

Black mould on every surface.

Laundry which never dries

The often inadequate 10 inch raingauge

Stirring up some scientists

I am convinced that one day humans are going to evolve into large blobs of cerebral matter encased in sallow skin with a texture like tripe, where all means of self propulsion have been lost through neglect. They will be totally reliant upon mechanical locomotion.

"Rumination genes" will become dominant, and "common sense detector genes" recessive, while all of our accumulated artisan and practical physical skills will be lost forever.

The early signs are evident.

Our world is increasingly populated by philosophers, cogitators and theorists who would not know a grommet from a gimlet, or be able to identify a wigwam for a goose's bridle even if it came up in broad daylight with sirens blaring and bit them on the arse five times in a row.

Furthermore, many of those with all the brains are wasting their lives by concentrating on minutiae.

I, of course, have an example for you, just to annoy any critics who might like to suggest that I write nothing but unsubstantiated rubbish.

Three researchers spent 5 months at the MacFarlane Burnet Institute in Melbourne cooking up the following piece of intellectual swill;

"Longitudinal Cohort Study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research Institute"

Motivated by the regular disappearance of teaspoons from the tearooms in this boffin sanctuary, the erudite trio wasted somebody's money determining eventually (with a statistical significance P=0.88) that indeed 80% of teaspoons disappeared from the tearooms during the trial period.  
Spoon replacement cost; $A100 per year.

So what practical recommendations or solutions did this educated-beyond-their-intelligence lot come up with?

None. Zero. SFA.

Instead they provided one little gem of bureaucratic equivocation;

"Development of effective control measures against the loss of teaspoons should be a priority."

Now this piece of academic drivel was published in the highly respected British Medical Journal, (whose motto incidentally is; "helping doctors make better decisions") and presumably doctors all around the world made the stupid decisions to read it when they could have been doing something useful...like treating patients.

So, for the benefit of the three geniuses who were bereft of practical solutions, please allow GOF, the intellectual mouse, to help you out.

1. Anchor the spoons to some anvils, wall studs or concrete pillars
    with short lengths of towing chain welded to the spoon handles.

2. Superglue the spoons into the ends of 6 foot long broomsticks.
    If you see someone who looks suspiciously like the Wicked
    Witch flying out the door after work you can make a reasonable
    assumption that she probably has one of your precious
    teaspoons tucked between her legs.

3. Buy a hundred battered teaspoons from the Lifeline Opportunity
    Shop, then further disfigure them with my 12 inch fencing pliers.
    Then you can waste another 5 months longitudinally and
    cohortionally studying just how many of them your light-fingered
    staff knocked off in comparison to all your poncy silver
    fancy-pants $100 a year cutlery.

4. Compulsory strip searches for all staff leaving the tearooms.
    (Any volunteers? Prior experience and knowledge of what a
    teaspoon looks like and the places where they can be hidden
    will be viewed favourably.)

5. Provide plastic spoons or wooden stirrers.  Or is that beneath
    your collective over-educated dignity?

Sheesh!  Why do I bother.

Now, in what nook of our cave did Mrs GOF hide my spears this week.

I'm going out on a very long trek to see if I can catch me a hairy mammoth for dinner.