A sign of things to come

I am jumping into the word of blogs because Jules constructed the Barne Yarn, named it, offered to continue with the administration, will promote it on FB and took full graphic design control. For my part, Julia told me to post some of the rubbish lying round my hard drives and use it as an outlet to store future literary flights of fancy; writing with out a purpose pieces being given a purpose.

So what are we going to pen up in the Barne Yarn? Firstly my hard drive archive is a scary place. I have driven Jules spare making her read, correct and most importantly laugh at what I’ve written regardless of whether she thinks my stuff is funny or not, that is what good marriages are built on. The archives are mostly filled with work newsletters, footy write-ups, my contributions as secret (if badly kept secret) writer of Skippy’s Droppings*, holiday memories and exploratory free form trains of thought.  I concede that most of these pieces have needed me to provide Julia with a fair amount of background in order for her (the person who knows me best) to understand. I also concede that any audience that the information is relevant to has already seen it so the writing has served its purpose and should be left to rest in peace. So why the hell would I post these long buried relics? Well I don’t know why, but I’m posting small snippets of the archive anyway. While this does not bode well for visitors to the Barne Yarn I will make sure to edit for relevance, add context and remove specifics to make a more accessible article and protect the guilty.

*disclosure: an idea stolen from a more creative person years earlier

 For once I have done some homework to see what other nobodies post on blogs and from my very limited knowledge I have decided they fall into a few distinct categories a couple of which I will emulate.

Thankfully a lack of knowledge doesn’t seem to be a barrier to many fellow bloggers. Bloggers often seem free to deliver uninformed opinion and do so with a superior self-righteous air. This is a style I’ll be sure to slip into on a regular basis. 

It is an oft-repeated truism that people seek out anything that will support their own biased world view. Very few of us choose to increase their knowledge and/or gain a new perspective by chasing challenging, thought provoking or even simply varying opinions. In fact I recently read about a study that suggested political bias impaired peoples ability to interpret simple information. In the study people where given a set of made up data and asked to interpret what the data was telling them. When the made up data was manipulated to conflict with the test subjects firmly held political view they couldn’t correctly interpret the data. When the test subjects were told the information referred to a benign topic they had no trouble correctly interpreting it**. So there is no point trying to change your mind about important topics even if I am unequivocally more right than you. I am clearly far better off providing indignant, angry and humorous rants on safe topics most readers will agree with. To do this I’ll need to establish certain prejudices build an agreeable audience and run rampant along that line of bias, gleefully harvesting the goodwill of the like minded. True independent, fact based thinkers that challenge convention are truly heroic characters but they are also extremely easy to make fun of. Rather than changing minds it is far easier to go with conventional wisdom and treat unpopular independent thinkers as simple-minded buffoons put on this earth to be lampooned by the sheep like masses. You can rest assured if this blog was written in the dark ages I would be cheering the burning of witches,

LMFAO at anyone claiming the earth is round and posting links to alchemists web sites. In other words you won’t learn anything from visiting the Barne Yarn, but you should enjoy having your prejudices reinforced while freely laughing at anyone who disagrees with us geniuses. I make no bones about preferring to be a jolly court jester than a serious political prisoner, I can always change sides when the winds of change start blowing.     **No I’m not posting a link to the study, just take my word for it.

Others blogs are all about daily life with little pearls of homespun wisdom in a dear diary style. Inevitably these blogs are great fun for the writer and cripplingly boring for the reader… the exact style of blog you will find at the Barne Yarn. This proves I won’t listen to good advice even if it is my own. My advice to you, which you can take or leave, strap on the vomit bucket the Barne Yarn will be brimming with sickly sweet family stories.

The common alternative to the dear diary is is the cynical, sarcastic style that mines that rich vein of comedy gold about men being domestically and socially hopeless, women as insane, emotional whirlwinds and kids being equal parts cute and frustrating. I don’t know the Barne Yarn password and even if I did how to post this stuff so Julia will be quasi gatekeeper. This will no doubt impeded my ability to cash in on the plethora of Mars and Venus inspired jokes that are so easy to come up with or steal. The upside is if I did have a fully independent blog I would definitely be pursuing the cheap exploitive laughs. This would send me on the road to divorce in a few years time when the family eventually stumbled across the blog and get hit with an avalanche of built cheap jokes at their expense.

 

So irrelevant articles from my hard drive, rants designed to reinforce your bias and personal family insights will form the bulk of the low hanging fruit you’ll be served up in The Barne Yarn.  Other styles of blog all seem to require something I haven’t got.

Professional writers with something to say or celebrities with a profile to keep clearly can’t be emulated by me.  Instructional, helpful or inspiring blogs have goals that I have neither the ability or energy to pursue. Other blogs have something to sell hidden subtly in the text or rammed straight down your throat. Unfortunately the current and projected level of readership does mean advertisers would be better off slapping an ad on a lamppost than asking me to insert their product into my pages. I am also above selling out, actually scrub that, I have a beautiful 2.5 seater couch and two recliners for sale. They are in a plush electric blue velour and would be a compliment any room. The only danger in buying these magnificent pieces is that you will miss all your favourite TV shows, because once you’ve found your way into their caress at the end of a tiring day you are just seconds away from the land of nod. Contact Jules on facebook to purchase, but hurry they won’t last long. 

Dealings with an old profession

Julia read that Ipoh had a large red light district, and so was automatically on the look out for signs of ladies of the night and their associated activities.  Everybody was a suspect and my job (I guess) was to agree with her assumptions.  We would be walking along and if it was a female:

J “Oooh she could be one”

L “Maybe”

If it was a male

J “Oooh bet he’s looking for one”

L “Dirty bugger”

Couple

J “Ooh wonder if he’s wife knows”

L “Could be his wife”

J “Nah, she’s at home in the country looking after his 25 ratbag kids and his charging the entertainment to his company”

L “Hard to argue with insight like that”. 

Malaysia- 09    

(Stuck in Madrid in Volcanic Ash event April/May? 09)

Julia's favourite part of Madrid was the 'prosti' mall where the 'girls of the night' actually plied their trade at all hours of the day. We must of walked down the street a hundred times, conducting transects (7 ladies per 15m2), mapping the regions (African girls bottom end, southern Europeans in front of fancy hotel, Russian/Eastern block top end), and taking photos (heap of me in the corner of shots with 'ladies' and the occasional punter behind me)...... Finally Qatar Air came good with the tickets to a flight home. I don't know if it was just me but the long suffering employee Lorena seemed as chuffed as us. We had even bought her choccies as thanks. It appeared she had tears in her eyes when we handed the gift over, I didnt think they were that bada brand, Jules also looked a bit teary, I didnt know she was that attached to chocolates, I'm a man so I looked pretty cool and tough. We woke up on our final morning overseas, next stop Melbourne. Julia took one more walk down 'prosti' mall to say goodbye, and probably took the best photo of our trip. Beautifully framed with just a hint of my shoulder in the corner there is a little 5ft tall, greasy looking middle aged man, bargaining with a 6ft plus, platinum blonde, Russian  beauty. We waved goodbye to the ladies and headed for the plane! 

A lesson in AM and PM

Dad dropped us off at the airport with hours to spare so we were in no rush, just had to cruise on in find the Air Asia desk, check in then relax for a few hours.  I couldn’t seem to locate my flight on the departures board, but I knew it was only because I was too early.

We lugged our bags up and down the terminal searching for the elusive Air Asia desk, Bear Grills (Man vs Wild) would have been at the drinking urine stage if he had to carry as much weight as far as we did.  Julia was keen to ask someone but my plan was to walk back and forth another dozen times until the desk appeared magically where it hadn’t been before.  Jules pointed out that some flights scheduled for departure after mine had now appeared on the board, I panicked a little, took a glance at my ticket and relaxed,

L “Don’t know why it isn’t up there, Air Asia are probably to cheap to warrant a mention.

  Julia then collared a passing airport worker:

J “Excuse me do you know where the Air Asia desk is?”

AW “Usually opens up over there, but it looks like they’ve closed for the day”

J “That’s funny, Lock’s flight leaves at 1.20”

AW “Are you sure? Can I look at the ticket?”

L “Sure, see Melbourne airport, not Avalon, 29^th Jan”

The airport worker took a look at the ticket, Julia looked sick,

J “This isn’t good Lock”

L “What”

AW “Oh”

At this stage I’m the only one who hasn’t realised I’m about to either blow the holiday budget or the holiday altogether.

J ”Look at the time!”

L “Yeah, 1.30”

AW “Left this morning mate, 0130…the Air Asia office is upstairs if you want to speak to them.”

Bloody low cost airlines just don’t wait for anyone!!.....bastards.

I looked at Julia sheepishly,

L “Can’t believe I didn’t look”

J “ What are we going to do?”

I tried more wandering back and forth waiting for my flight to appear to no avail.

Julia looked as stressed, I giggled: They say if you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs maybe you haven’t grasped the seriousness of the situation.

We decided to see if I could get a seat on Julia’s flight.  This provided Jules with the first chance to tell her new favourite story about how I didn’t realise there was an AM as well as a PM in every day. Jules didn’t have long to wait for the second telling as we went around to book a flight at flight centre.  It did make me feel better when the flight centre staff said they get a bit of business from jokers like me.  Got the feeling they didn’t have many jokers laughing as much as we were.   

(Except from Malaysian adventure- 29th Jan 2009, Melbourne )