All posts by Princess Sparkle
ACMI Dessert Island Flicks Tootsie
ACMI Dessert Island Flicks High Tide
ACMI Dessert Island Flicks Lost In Translation
ACMI Dessert Island Flicks Mary And Max
Two and a Half men will kill your brain
The first thing you notice about Two and a Half Men is the laugh track. Hard, fast and involuntarily. That laugh you have when a primitive button deep inside is pressed that reveals something we try to hide to everyone, including ourselves. The laugh track encourages people to join in, not to feel alone. The second thing you notice is Two and a Half Men is on every weeknight and three times on Tuesday nights. The fact this phenomenon sucks in up to half a million Melburnians a night made it worthy of an investigation
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Mary MacKillop.
Now everyone’s had their say about the canonisation of Mary MacKillop it’s time for the final word from me. And Zoo magazine. Go with me people.
When I heard Mary MacKillop was becoming a saint, my first thought, like any Melbournian was, “I didn’t even know she was in the draft.”
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Private school thugs. Nothing new.
Did you read about the boy who may lose hearing in one ear because a Melbourne Grammar boy threw an egg at him during a muck-up prank gone wrong? Did anyone else feel sickened but at the same time not at all surprised when the principal of Melbourne Grammar said in an interview: “[The injured boy’s mother] asked for help because . . . her son was not able to gain access to a surgeon. I was able to, through contacts, get him an appointment with a surgeon the very next day.”
Through contacts – those were the words that made me sick. Through contacts. How kind and noble it was for the important man from the privileged school to help the boy less fortunatethrough contacts.
Through contacts – those were the words that made me sick. Through contacts. How kind and noble it was for the important man from the privileged school to help the boy less fortunate through contacts.
What’s astonishing is the stunning lack of insight those two little words revealed. What does it say about a school when the principal brags about queue-jumping? Through contacts. Celebrating a two-tiered health system that leaves one person to wait in pain simply because they have less money.
What kind of values does a school have to acknowledge an inherently unjust system and brag they can rort it? What’s the school motto? ”Who you know. Through contacts”, ”Meeting the right people. Not those wrong people.” Perhaps its mission statement is: ”It’s not through merit people will be rewarded, nor the society being one of equity we want to promote. We are committed to reinforcing discriminatory hereditary privilege and attracting insecure parents who tragically use the school their child attends as social currency. We suck in parents with fear, dazzle them with hype and comfort them with social apartheid, gender segregation and elitism.”
PRIVATE SCHOOL VALUES TWO
Last year I wrote about a private school contacting me to mentor one of its year nine students for its ”year nines are privately mentored by professional writers” part of its sales platform.
When I asked what the fee was, they said I was the first to ask and they hadn’t thought about payment. (Their school values did not extend to paying people to increase their company’s profitability but did extend to attempting to covertly shame people for asking to be paid for what they do.) I explained I was happy to do charity for charities, but I couldn’t afford to work free for businesses. Long story, but in short I suggested a $200 donation to the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre as payment.
I mentored a student and it was fabulous.
The school approached me again this year and I agreed to the same terms. I had contact with the young lad, he was bright and keen, and we were looking forward to working together. Before we got down to work, I asked the school to send me confirmation of last year’s donation.
The contact stopped dead. Countless emails and phone calls and I haven’t heard from the school or the student since. That was three months ago. I called the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre. It had received no donation from the school. Ever. The school is now building a new wing that looks like a project by Denton Corker Marshall.
A high-profile Australian writer told me he was approached via his publisher by the same private school. When the publicist asked about a fee, the English co-ordinator responded: ”I’ve not considered a payment, to be honest. The only person who has asked for payment in the past has been Catherine Deveny (GREEDY BITCH) and we (WE? YOU MEAN I) managed to come to a settlement involving a donation to charity.”
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2010 Atheist Convention
Showing the kids a good time
I took the whingeing, nagging little maggots to the show for the first time yesterday, because, quite frankly, kids these days aren’t spoilt enough. They don’t get enough sweets or junk food, never go anywhere except church and Nana’s, and certainly don’t have enough plastic crap that’s going to be trodden underfoot, eaten by the dog or sucked up the vacuum cleaner by this time tomorrow.
When they wised up to those big fat lies, I said that because so many people want to go, you’re only allowed to go once every 26 years, when the first initial of your surname comes up. (Mmm, what’s that smell? That’d be my pants on fire.) Seeing as the Crowleys went last year, it was D-Day. I had no choice but to brace myself, mortgage the house and pray I died in my sleep the night before.
Woke up. Still alive. Spewing.
”OK kids. One showbag, two rides and no ‘unhealthy food choices’, because they’re not a good way to love you. Fruit, water and sandwiches – and a packet of sultanas if you’re good.”
By 10.30am, we’d scoffed toffee apples, fairy floss and coloured popcorn, and we were on to the battered hot dogs on sticks. ”Mum, you’re awesome!” Some call it buying love, others call it quality time.
Parents these days are so uptight, with their organic carrot stick treats, bicycle transportation, bucket flushing and only carbon-neutral food, toys and experiences. But at the show, all bets are off.
”Chairoplane without a seatbelt? Sure! A bag of Mars Bars for lunch washed down with a can of Coke? No worries! Several non-biodegradable plastic bags full of stuff that could choke you, rot your teeth, encourage violence, reinforce outdated and unhealthy stereotypes, cause psychological damage and destroy the environment due to obscene amounts of lead, all made by three-year-olds in sweatshops and transported with non-renewable fossil fuels? Absolutely!”
As much as my kids are crazy for agriculture and livestock (yeah, right) they have an acute leaning towards the stuff that costs money, is made in Third World countries by slave labour, is chockablock full of artificial colourings and sugar, or is something you can’t experience unless you are more than 130 centimetres tall, not pregnant and haven’t had surgery in the past 12 months.
To the question, ”What do you think of the pigs?”, the little one replied: ”They totally sucked.”
There’s always a sense at the show of the country folk showing the townies how it’s done. Which is lost on my kids.
”Woodchopping? Why don’t they just buy it cut?” ”Whip-cracking? What’s the big deal? What else do whips do?” ”Birthing lambs? So what? We can develop our own species from a microscopic organism and develop it through to a creature capable of interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture on a computer game.” ”You can ride a horse? Big fizz, I can invent one and cross-breed it with a stegosaurus.”
In an attempt to remedy their underwhelmedness with all things rural, I tried to interest them in the animals, but they just kept laughing at the words ”bitch”, ”cock” and ”gobbler”.
Plenty of things have changed. The quality of carnies has improved (several of them had all their teeth and at least one didn’t smell of groin and cigarettes) and sushi and espresso coffee are readily available. But, in fear of encroaching on Kyle Sandilands’ world of offence, what’s with the 12-digit numbers written on every kid’s arm? ”That’s the parents’ mobile phone numbers, Mum,” explained the six-year-old.
Some things do stay the same. The only things that smell worse than the animal pavilions are the portable loos. The guy who rides on the back of the Dodgems still looks like he has the coolest job at the show. And the Country Women’s Association pavilion is always worth a visit – not only for the scones but to buy a copy of their cookbook, featuring dishes such as Refrigerator Biscuits and Cherry Ripe Wreath, a festive dish that involves a ring tin, six chocolate bars and cream tinted with green food colouring.
