Take that, Mr Taxman
Hello. Happy leap day.
Sunday is Big Grocery Shop day for me. I’ll usually wander down to the local fruit market-ette (it claims to be a fruit market, but really it’s just a quadruple-sized greengrocer) with the kids (detour to park on the way) and a cloth bag and pick up the fruit and veg for the week, lugging it (and maybe a loaf of bread) back home in the sunshine. Well, provided there is sunshine. Nice way to spend a Sunday.
Then later on Sunday afternoon I’ll take the car to Safeway and stock up on everything else. I must have been short of a few expensive items today, because the list was written on a small scrap of paper, but it ended up being some $84.44. And it fitted into just three cloth bags. Mind you, I nearly broke my arms carrying them from the trolley return thingy back into the car.
Anyway it was with some satisfaction that I looked at the receipt and noted that there was only GST on 3 of the items. Two of them were chocolate, so that’s probably fair enough*. The other one was laundry liquid. GST, of course, was meant not to be charged on basic living items. I know the feminists were (quite rightly I reckon) a tad hot under the collar that feminine hygeine products weren’t GST-free. Did they ever reverse that decision? Well laundry liquid isn’t GST-free either. Apparently clean clothes are a luxury, not a basic living requirement. Must remember that when I next notice the whiff of a tramp walking upwind. S/he’s just avoiding GST.
So, the Taxman only made 81 cents from that $84 bonanza of shopping. Closer to 1% than 10%.
Oh well, they’ll probably make more than enough to compensate from the next few restaurant meals I have.
*Wait a sec — are they trying to claim that chocolate is not a basic living requirement?!
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Clothes dream/milk
I had a dream a couple of nights ago that I got into work, and instead of wearing my usual shirt/tie/trousers/shoes, I found myself wearing shirt/tie/jeans/runners, which looked very odd, to say the least. A somewhat incongruous mix of clothing styles.
Mind you, one office I used to work in had a bloke who regularly wore runners to work with his trousers/shirt/tie. I know it’s common for some women to wear runners on their commutes, to minimise the effect of their painful high-heeled PowerShoes, but for blokes to wear runners — let alone in the office — just doesn’t seem right.
This guy had another quirk. For the sake of argument and anonimity, I’ll call him Geoff, though his real name is… oh, wait, shouldn’t say that.
He kept his own special milk in the fridge. I’m not sure why the varieties supplied (full cream 4% fat, Rev 2% fat, Skinny 1% fat) were inadequate, but perhaps he had a particular taste or dietary need. Perhaps 1.5% or something, though I suppose you could get that by mixing Skinny and Rev. Might taste horrible though.
All this became apparent one time when he came into the kitchen and asked somebody to pass the milk.
Somebody replied. “Which milk?”
“Geoff’s Brekky Milk”, he replied, in the kind of voice which made it sound like we should be impressed. And yes, he referred to himself (or at least, his milk) in the third person. (Or should that be third carton?)
The somebody looked in the fridge door, and sure enough found a cartoon with a big label which said “Geoff’s Brekky Milk”.
And yea, the milk was passed.
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Never…
Never try and rush through a sliding door.
I have a headache today. Actually I’ve had a headache the last few days, on and off. It would appear during the morning, reach a peak about 10am, then fade into the background for the rest of the day. One of those headaches that you can feel throbbing through most of your head, from your teeth upwards to the top of your skull. This morning I could feel it coming on again, and took some aspirin to head it off at the pass, as it were.
A little later this morning, realising I was running late, as I came out of the toilet to head for the shower I pulled open the sliding door, which jammed on something behind it. I must have been having one of my more uncoordinated moments, and rather than sensibly stop and adjust the door, instead I kept going, trying to fit my head through the rather inadequate gap that had opened. Bang! Head bumped on door jamb. Triffic. How much of an idiot did I feel? (Lucky there were no witnesses, so nobody will never know. heh. heh. heh.)
Still, it seemed to make the headache go away for a time. And I’ve been meaning to get a haircut, but now I’m quite pleased I haven’t got around to it, since the sizeable bump on my forehead is concealed behind my ever-expanding coiffure. I can still feel the bump. Not painful, but undoubtedly tender to the touch.
And that’s why you should never rush through a sliding door.
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G rated?
The question of what’s suitable content for kids is an ongoing one that has plagued the entertainment industry for decades. To guide people, we have the classification system — G, PG, M, MA, R — which I think most of the time does a reasonable job of warning people about what they can expect to find. But sometimes it seems like it slips up a bit. You’d hope that the Office of Film and Literature Classification would be fairly consistent in how they rate things, but it seems they aren’t always.
For instance, “ET” — one of the biggest kids’ movies of all time — originally had a G rating. The re-release, which included such changes as making the government agents carry radios instead of guns, landed a PG rating, with the qualifier “Some scenes may disturb small children”. Hmm. Okay.
Now take the Doctor Who story “The Two Doctors”, from the now infamously violent Colin Baker era of the show. This was originally aired on TV in the mid-80s in the early evenings, and I suspect some of the more excessive scenes were cut for the Australian transmission. I was somewhat surprised to find the DVD release (and the earlier VHS release) was rated G. I wasn’t sure about this, so when I bought the DVD last week, and decided to watch it myself before letting the kids have a look at it. There are certainly some stories I have been deliberately avoiding showing them until they’re a little older, and perhaps this should be one of them.
I was right to be suspicious. Apart from the numerous explosions, shootings that are pretty much de rigeur in any Doctor Who production, there is also the somewhat bloody use of knives, culminating in the scene in the restaurant in Seville where alien Androgum Shockeye refuses to pay the bill (after a meal of Mr Creosote-esque proportions) and stabs Oscar to death with a knife.
While you don’t see penetration of the knife into Oscar’s chest, you certainly do see Shockeye threaten and approach Oscar with the knife, Oscar’s reaction as it goes in, the blood stain on his white shirt, his final words and then death. It’s pretty graphic stuff (as well as being dramatically pointless), and I honestly find it hard to believe that the OFLC people sat through all this (as well as Shockeye’s subsequent death at the hands of the Doctor using Oscar’s butterfly poison, and the deaths of the other alien baddies) and then said “Yep, that’s a G”.
What on earth can they have thinking? To my mind it’s at least a PG, and if “ET” is the measure for PG, it’s probably closer to an M. (The Brits’ BBFC rated it PG.) Perhaps they assumed that since it had aired (probably censored) in G time on TV, it must be G rated — but that is inconsistent with their other Doctor Who classifications.
Violence should have only a low sense of threat or menace, and be justified by context. — Office of Film and Literature Classification guidelines for G rated material.
I did eventually decide to let the kids watch it, because a) they love the series, b) it’s only a handful of scenes in a two and a half hour long story, c) it’s mitigated just a tad by showing the consequences of such the event, including the grief of those witnessing the death and d) well maybe I can justify it by pointing to a lesson in the dangers of sharp knives. Shaky ground, I know.
I was sitting by with the kids as this scene came up, prepared to talk it over with them as necessary. Because that’s what Parental Guidance really is — not just deciding what the under-15s can watch, but also guiding them, talking them through it.
What I didn’t expect was Isaac’s unprompted reaction, which in itself says a lot. As Oscar got stabbed, he piped up “This shouldn’t be rated G. It should be rated PG.” He’s right, and I’m having second thoughts about it all now. Not that I’m about to start ranting like those cranks at CapAlert, but I may change my mind about letting them watch it again until they’re a little older. Perhaps standards have changed since I was growing up, but my conclusion now is that Doctor Who is not just for kids.
One of the things that saves the arts from over-aggressive censorship is a good reliable ratings system. If people know what they can expect in the way of sex, violence, drug use, etc, before they turn on the TV/sit down in the movie/theatre/whatever, then (within reason) the arts and entertainment industry are free to produce what they want without expecting it to be cut to ribbons for public viewing.
But it is critical that those responsible for deciding the ratings get it right. And if even an eight-year-old viewer is criticising a rating from the OFLC, maybe that rating needs to be reviewed.
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Milk gone
The plethora of milk formerly in the fridge at work (which at one point topped 25 one-litre non-long-life cartons of various varieties) has been pared right back, and now totals a mere 2.5 litres of Rev. Luckily for me, Rev is my preferred variety of milk. Not that it matters much since I’m only using it to top up my tea.
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Adventures of a Londoner in Australia
I used to watch The Bill religiously, but haven’t for some years — not since it went soapie. So I was most amused when one of the toys to arrive for Jeremy’s sixth birthday a couple of weeks ago was a The Bill policeman action figure, courtesy of my Uncle Kevin in England (aka UK in the UK).
So, what has this unnamed “Male PC” (it says so on the box) been up to since arriving in Melbourne? Well, take a look for yourself.
 Checking car rego stickers |
 Guarding important buildings |
 Directing traffic |
 Patrolling public transport |
(Thanks to Kevin for sending him, Jeremy who owns him, Marita for the idea. By the way, he must be a character from the old style pre-soap Bill stories, because the kids checked, and he has no genitalia.)
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Careful now
A lot of Melbourne’s bloggers are taking things a little more cautiously at the moment, following Jenjen’s sacking (just after she gave notice anyway) due to the alleged content and work time involved in her blog. For my own part, I’ve scrupulously avoided naming where I work or going into too much detail about my colleagues. And I think posting only from home is the order of the day.
Obviously it’s a difficult issue. I’d like to think that most companies take a realistic view of their employees using Internet access for non-work purposes, as long as it doesn’t interfere with work. Indeed, the same applies to any resources at work – phone calls, Post-It notes, e-mail. As long as you’re getting your work done, what does it matter?
Yeah, I sometimes send personal e-mails from work. And use the phone. And run out on errands (ho boy, did I ever today!). But then again, I make work calls on my personal mobile, interrupt home activities for work, connect to the work computers from my own PC at home (using MY electricity, dammit), and even use sometimes use my own pen and ink when writing work-related notes. Gasp!
I don’t know if it all balances out or not, but so far my bosses seem to be satisfied with me getting my work done when it’s needed. I do the work. They pay me the money (except what the taxman takes). Everyone’s happy (especially the taxman). Well, I hope so, anyway — it’s worked for three years in this job so far.
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I feel like…
…a man on death row, the night before his execution. Well, just a little. It’s going to be a busy day tomorrow. It’ll probably start around dawn, which is fast approaching. It can’t be stopped. Better get some sleep while I can.
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