We're all dead

i just got an email from the Australian Conservation Foundation: the leading environmental organisation in Australia. The email requested me to join a 'people who care about climate change' website where all you gotta do is just put in your address and email address and you show up on a google map of Australia where you represent one of the little dots that care. It costs nothing and takes about 2 minutes.

But heres the thing. I don't know how long this website has been in circulation, but given that the ACF is such an eminent foundation i expected the number of people who care (as featured on the map) would be fairly substantial. It was 8,704.

So lets do some mathematics.
(8704/20,000,000)*(100) = 0.04352%

Using the total population as 20 million (a conservative estimate by any means) 0.04% of Australians care about climate change, according to this website. thats less than 1%.

Whats even more alarming, is that as part of joining the website you tick a range of boxes indicating what you have done to minimise your carbon footprint (solar power, switching off powerpoints, offsetting car ommissions etc).
I ticked no boxes - and i'm supposed to be on the map as someone who cares.

what about the other 99.95648% of the population?

The case for smoking

After 4 decades, a hundred scientific breakthroughs and a thousand messages from the Surgeon General - has smoking changed?




It's easy to understand why Marilyn Monroe and James Dean smoked because that was the norm back then, plus the health dangers weren't known. Today, smoking seems more taboo than exposing yourself to small furry animals, unless you have a beaver in which case you are simply reintroducing a species back into the wild. Yet despite exhaustive efforts to paint smoking as something of a disgusting, inconsiderate habit saved for the cast of Trainspotting, smoking is still -and always will be - timeless and classy. Why? Well, look at the pictures below and ask yourself, honestly, how can Brad Pitt, Mischa Barton and Scarlett Johanson all be wrong at the same time?





They can't, because smoking is just too sexy to not do it. I mean, what's more sexy - being a spontaneous individual who can handle the risk of terminal cancer in a shrug of perennial cool, or someone who runs in the opposite way at the first sight of danger? Sexy isn't just a function of confidence, sexy is an attitude, sexy is standing on the edge of the Tower of Babel and laughing back as you take a step off. Smoking is sexy, its plain and clear. And fuck,if they do it why shouldn't we?
So kids, if you're looking for a quick way to enhance your rep. Believe the hype and buy yourself a pack today.

Handsome Charles

Prince Charles isn't exactly a dope dude, he's a royal - a member of a strange pack of ridiculously over-priviledged arseholes living in a bubble of superiority. Not a stretch of a yarn either, to say that 99% of the population probably agree with me - except for royal observers (who are in themselves also a strange pack of arseholes). But let's not write him off immediately - he has some redeeming characteristics...

The Prince of Wales is an accomplished horseman and in the 1980s rode in a number of competitive races, and even came second on Long Wharf in the two-mile Madhatters Private Stakes on 4th March. His horse was 13-8 favourite. He's also mad into Polo, talks to his plants, Schralps the gnar in Switzerland with his skiing buddies, loves a chat about modern architecture and thinks David suzuki is "brilliant".
He also helped build a planned village named Poundbury in Dorset, with all utilities buried underground (that means no electricity posts and lines). With the idea being to build a town for people not cars, parking is located on the outskirts and there is no commercial zoning so small shops mix with high density english style houses - Amelie poulan style. Bringing it back for posterity - i like that.
To add to all of that he heads an organic food organisation and has wings like a weathered Cessna. Pretty dope dude? Not in the slightest.

Excuse me, sir?

Some things just really please me.
It's so easy to be average, passable, to make up the numbers: so many of us just try to get over 50, say that'll do or do it tomorrow. The net result is a world that desires to just cross the line, with the least-cost method. The least amount of time/money/effort for a satisfactory result. So when something comes along that is just a bit better than what is required, the world benefits. We like things that have more to offer. Buzz cafe is like that. A modest not-so-typical-menu and nice coffee complement a unique atmosphere that makes you forget for a moment that you live in a world that is solid all the way through.
The owner didn't have to go to so much trouble to make it different, but he did.

When people do that little bit extra, the result is often magnified to the positive. All it takes is for someone to be half bothered. I could have ridden a bike to Buzz like the one above - which actually isn't mine but a dope one which i found on google images - but at extra cost to both me and the environment i chose to be lazy and drive: accruing the expense forward and not really helping anything.

Its not easy being twenty

On Friday Erin turned twenty. She got a pair of jeans and a digital camera so she can take photos of herself when she gets drunk or stuck inside myspace.
Later, and by pure coincidental serendipity, a case of glasses appeared on a table. Partially inspired, i then went searching for a pile of wood - after many moments and quiet emo sighs did i find one - reaching from floor to ceiling, and almost haunting if it weren't for the reassuring Mr. Ed voice inside my head.

"easy Chris, its only a pile of wood"
"stay out of this Mr. Ed"
"i'll do what i want"
"fine"
"fine"