The stapler
The stapler can be a weapon of mass destruction if applied with malicious intent. It should not be allowed on aeroplanes.
The stapler is controlled by a malevolent spirit, possibly the same demon responsible for socks and pens.
The curse of the insidious stapler is that it fails to serve its purpose in times of acute need. Sure, it pins papers together when you don’t really need them, but in times of administrative crisis the stapler goes missing. Examples:
- You need to staple 30 pages together, but the flimsy plastic stapler on your desk barely chews through half of them;
- Conversely, you employ a heavy-duty metal stapler to join 100 sheets together and it leaves a mini cannon sticking out the other side;
- When you’re in a hurry, the stapler inevitably runs out of staples.
I’m frequently in a rush, but I also have quiet moments, and I can never recall a stapler running out of staples in one of those. In peak times, not only do you run out of staples, but you can’t find any new ones. Staplers are cursed.
Newspaper novels: The truth will make you fret
There aren’t many novels about newspapers. Stories involving print journalists are far fewer than those about lawyers, soldiers and police for example.
That’s a little surprising when you consider that journalists are writers. But when you think about it, we are craftsmen while novelists are artists. We ply a trade while they follow their creative spirits. We have responsibilities, they don’t.
Three good books about newspapers come readily to mind. PG Wodehouse wrote Psmith, Journalist in 1915; Evelyn Waugh wrote Scoop in 1938 and Terry Pratchett published The Truth in 2000.
In Wodehouse’s classic, Psmith arrives in New York on a cricket tour and becomes involved with the home entertainment weekly “Cosy Moments†which he transforms into a hard-hitting investigative journal. He rides the bumps of organised crime and American politics along the way.
In Waugh’s story, scribe William Boot is mistaken by the publisher of the Daily Beast for a war correspondent. He is uprooted from writing country garden features to covering the civil war in Ishmaelia. Both novels are cleverly satirical.
Pratchett’s The Truth is a typically fantastic work from the author of the Discworld series. The hero in this case is William de Worde, who teams up with dwarfs to print the first newspaper in Ankh-Morpork.
As usual, Pratchett offers some tremendous insights into human nature. His observations of the newspaper profession are also very sharp, suggesting excellent research or personal knowledge. For instance, he offers a rare literary tribute to the unsung work of sub-editors.
I’ve just finished reading The Truth for the second time. I found the focus on hired assassins to be distracting and kept wanting the story to get back to the trials and tribulations of The Times.
There are some great one liners, like when the dwarfs make a typesetting error with the newspaper’s logo, which becomes: “The truth will make you fretâ€.
I related personally to the serial pest who kept coming into the office with remarkable vegetables. Anyone who has worked on a country newspaper will know there are people in most towns who like to show off their giant tomatoes or funny-shaped parsnips.
I admit it’s one of my long-term ambitions to write a satirical novel about newspapers. I started taking notes of strange but true incidents last year, like when one of my reporters disappeared while on the trail of visiting Mongolian detectives.
I have heaps of material; just need the time to write it.
Monkey business
According to BBC News, the deputy mayor of Delhi has died after failing to defend himself from a horde of wild monkeys: 
SS Bajwa suffered serious head injuries when he fell from the first-floor terrace of his home on Saturday morning trying to fight off the monkeys. The city has long struggled to counter its plague of monkeys, which invade government complexes and temples, snatch food and scare passers-by.
It’s not too hard to imagine an Australian equivalent for politicians being attacked by animals. For instance, the way the pork barrel is rolling around in the current election campaign, Kevin Rudd and John Howard are both at risk of being trampled in a stampede of pigs.
Cooking a cockroach
I tried cooking a cockroach tonight. Well, I didn’t really try; it was more an accidental event.
We were preparing for a barbecue at home and after lifting the cover a cockroach crawled into the grill. Juliet wasn’t worried, she thought it might add some “flavor”. I think she was joking, but we both believed the roach would sizzle.
I was curious to find out though, because I’ve heard that cockroaches are the only creatures to survive nuclear explosions.
And so it was. Forty minutes later, while the sausages and chops were sizzling, the roach made its escape from the fiery depths.
The changing face of communications
The way we communicate has changed dramatically in my relatively short lifetime.
When I did computer studies at school in 1983 it was all programming theory; we didn’t have any actual computers in the classroom.
When I started working as a journalist in 1987 we used typewriters, the office didn’t have a fax machine and there was no such thing as a mobile phone. Read more
My cricket career
I had a hit of cricket with Michael Jnr at the local school nets this morning. I know I’ll be sore tomorrow.
I’ve always enjoyed cricket, but never achieved much in the sport. I regret that to some extent.
If I was being immodest I’d say that I was a bully of bad bowling. A fairer assessment might be that I was a handy batsman, and if I had applied myself I might have done alright. Read more
Council elections
Local government elections have just been held in Western Australia. There has been some debate about how the elections were run, so I’ll compare the electoral system with what occurs in Victoria.
Firstly, councils are generally smaller in Victoria, with just five to seven members in most cases compared with the 10 we have here. Mayors are not directly elected, which I think is not as democratic as the WA system.
The mayor embodies the council and voters should be able to cast their verdict on the council’s performance by expressing confidence or otherwise in the mayor. Read more
WA speed limit debate
The Office of Road Safety in Western Australia has released a discussion paper which proposes reducing the speed limit in regional areas from 110kmh to 100kmh.
The Monash University (Victoria) experts who prepared the report say that lowering speed limits will reduce the number of traffic accidents.
They are right, of course, but as letter writers to the Kalgoorlie Miner and others have suggested, having a man walk in front of cars waving a flag will also reduce the number of accidents.
The report says: “Rezoning a 110kmh open road to 100kmh would only add five minutes to a 100km trip.”
That’s true, but for the 600km journey from Kalgoorlie to Melbourne it will add half an hour.
The feedback I’ve heard in the local community has been overwhelmingly against the idea. So much so, we made it the front page story tomorrow in the Kalgoorlie Miner.
Most people would prefer to see road improvements, increased police presence and better driver education instead of a lower speed limit.
Flock browser beta
I’ve been checking out the new beta version of the Flock web browser. It’s the best version of this Mozilla-based browser that I’ve seen so far.
While the others had easy access to Delicious and Flickr, so did Firefox via addons.
The new Flock also integrates seamlessly with social networking giants Facebook, Twittr and You Tube.
Once you login you can see your latest activity (and your friends) in a sidebar, switching between the various services with one click. Very impressive.
Spam filter
I’m using a new spam filter on this site and it has blocked some legitimate comments. Two were from Delmer and one was from Bob.
The spam tool is Defensio and I tried it because Spam Karma and Akismet were holding too many comments in moderation, and they were all duds.
It’s a fine line: hold spam comments for review or block good comments for review. I was hoping that Defensio would clear Delmer after I approved his first comment, but that didn’t happen.
I’m not surprised or concerned that Bob’s political throwaway comment was blocked. He gave his email address as bobhawk@google.com and a search engine for his web address. That took guts; he must be proud of himself.
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