Dokic shrugs off dumped coach

Jelena Dokic wrote another chapter in her famously troubled career when she made a successful start at the Australian Open despite splitting with her coach just moments earlier.

Dokic, confirmed the parting with Glenn Schaap after subduing Czech player Zuzana Ondraskova 6-3, 6-2.

"Yeah, we split half an hour ago, right before the first change of ends in the second set. Nothing special. No hard feelings, you know," she shrugged.

"There are certain people that suit you for your game and for your personality. This was just not one of them. It was all kind of a test period anyway."

There was some confusion as Dokic was seen making the throat slit gesture after converting a break point with a powerful backhand winner.

"That wasn’t directed at Zuzana. I was just letting Glenn know he was fired. I wasn’t really happy with his body language. I make a lot of unforced errors, you know, and I need a coach that will be there for me."

Schaap was seen making a spirited plea to Dokic during a subsequent change of ends, but she made the talking gesture with her hands and was heard to say ‘This is what you’re doing’, after which she held her hand closed and said ‘This is what I want you to do.’

Schaap subsequently stormed off and was later seen eating an ice cream and getting a shoulder massage from Pat Rafter.

Dokic had been coached by Schaap, formerly with Dinara Safina and Nadia Petrova, since the second set tiebreak of a third round match at the French Open last year.

Dokic is currently ranked 137 but is targeting a return to the top 50. “My other goal this year is to do some more work with Jetstar. It’s quite rewarding, financially.”

Going Nowhere

At the height of the travel book boom, large bookstores had at least three - and in one famous case, eight - different travel writing sections. First off was your standard, just the facts ma'am, guide books - Central Western East Africa on a Velcrostrap, and similar ilk. Then you had your expansive personal accounts of travel - Five Weeks Down the Murrumbidgee on a Flotilla, and so on. Then there were your journeys of inner discovery - I'm Awful, But Some Guy In The Dominican Republic Thinks I'm Great, stuff like that.

Something all these books had in common was the ability of an average schmuck to gain entree into the most exciting and exotic worlds, provided they could read or afford the talking book. Yet here we are, in 2010, and the New York Times Bestseller List contains three travel books that don't fit in any of these categories. What they all share in common is a love for the familiar and mundane - the previously and heretofore ignored. I speak of course of Bret Kingston's Platform 5/6 at Strathfield, Mary and Geoff Buglebury's Uptown Foodcourts I Have Known and the Blintzmans Guide To Freeways With Pedestrian Walkways That Just Stop At Some Point For No Reason.

Let us begin with Kingston's railway missive. To those who have known it, Platform 5/6 at Sydney's inner western Strathfield train station is notable only for its passable toilet and humble food stand (in whose bain marie the same pluto pup once rested for over 4 years, Kingston informs us). Thankfully this situation is remedied by this wonderful book, which takes us into the rich heritage, both human and material, of this colourful platform. Did you know that Jimmy Barnes once lay here unconscious for 6 hours? Or that 12 pigeons died during its construction, compared to only four for platforms 1/2, 3/4 and 7/8 combined? I still shake my head when I think of the reason, fully laid out in Chapter 3.

Undoubtedly my favourite character from this book is Quite A Long Time, the name Kingston gives to a phantom graffitist who left the tag "Quite A Long Time" on various parts of the platform over a two decade stretch of time. Many platform locals claim to have caught glimpses of him either beginning or ending his scrawl, only to have said sighting cut off by the arrival of their train. Even more mysterious is the fact that the platform's three CCT cameras have never recorded even a trace of the man. Kingston indulges in perhaps overlong speculation as to the meaning of Quite A Long Time, settling on the theory that it refers to the amount of time one spends waiting for trains. Quite A Long Time's spiritual torch was subsequently picked up by Eternity, who expanded the canvas to the rest of Sydney, and the public transport referent to buses, ferries and taxis.

Speaking of cabs, next off the rank is the Blintzman Guide's latest plaintive offering, known by its acronym GFWPWTJSASPFNR or in cult circles as 'Gefwipwitch Sasperfener'. I challenge any human with a heart to read this and not be moved, moved in fact to wail deep, visceral tears. We learn about the Cahill Expressway onramp at Crows Nest, which invites lost souls to travel a full 1.3 km before cruelling their hopes and sending them back from whence they came. Then there's the beginning of the westbound M4, something only the most foolhardy or fumigated would try to navigate. Our guides reveal the hidden treasures that await those who would travail its 350 odd metres, including a piece of blue tarp of unknown origin, several vintage cigarette butts, and a hardy weed which when boiled, makes an excellent digestive. Hats off to the folks at Blintzmans for another outstanding work.

I must admit I came away with a mixture of awe and revulsion at Geoff and Mary Buglebury's foodcourt tome. The Bugleburys, who are no relation but are considering starting a band together, document in painstaking detail their experiences of a range of indoor eating areas located between Liverpool and Hunter St in the city. I hope I am not giving too much away in saying that the Bugleburys' greatest accomplishment is referring to each foodcourt as a person - with its own distinctive appearance, personality, social standing and religious beliefs. Raymond is a loner, visited only by a few dozen different people over the course of a year, yet he repays their faith with outstanding meals and an intimate atmosphere. Shelly is a flirt at heart, with her largely male clientele drawn to her dining furniture's seductive curves and a wide offering of oysters and other aphrodisiacs. The revulsion I spoke of earlier was in reference to Pat, a slovenly creature of indeterminate sex, whose leftovers often remain on the table up to three customers later. Pat crowds her space with televisions, poorly drained potplants and garish decorations - yet the crowds keep coming. Just like the soap in Pat's bathroom, this book is indispensable, for anyone seeking to understand modern city worklife.

Each of these books is in its own way unspectacular, workmanlike if you will. But taken together they form an irresistible triumvirate which, for those willing to look, holds the key to the future of literature, society and even travel books. Who dares tell our business elite how to act, if we understand not how they eat? Who could claim to advise on transport policy without at least a cursory knowledge of the pedestrian pitfalls that accompany certain motorways? This knowledge is at times ugly, at times frightening and often beautiful. When the people hunger for knowledge we must give it to them.

The Critic

Poor Stuart was in a conundrum. He was widely acknowledged as a leading critic, someone capable of devastating insight and reviews that rivalled or surpassed the work reviewed as an act of creation.

Yet here he sat, pants around his ankles, boot polish smeared all over his pet goose Retief, his 1991 It's The Hits compilation cassette being chewed up by the player - unable to produce any kind of intelligent response to the book that sat wedged between the manifold folds of his sweaty, cheesy dewlap.

He pressed on.

"Olaf Sundquist's Why I Shaved My Nuts is a singular work that defies description."

No, that won't do. By saying it defies description I've described it somewhat. And calling it singular says more about me than the work... Oh God, help me now!

I need to own this book, to call it by its true name, to place it where it lives and bring the world there to see it as it really is.

In a mad dash for inspiration, he picked up the phone and began blowing the harmonica solo from Stairway To Heaven.

Research shows link between intelligence and exercise

Researchers at the Poky Brown School of Hurtingness in Little Altamont, Queensland, have discovered a link between intelligence and exercise.

The findings mean that people wanting to increase their intelligence should exercise more. Conversely, the people who want to increase their exercise should be more intelligent.

Lead researcher Father Shane McElribster said "these results are pretty good, aren't they? Would you like to join us for dinner?" His assistant Dr Lisa Leslie, formerly of the WNBA franchise the Washington Mystics, explained further.

"We took a plastic donut, a pecan nut, a dead rat and former World Bank chief James Wolfensohn, and we ran them through a battery of physical and intelligence tests. The pecan nut came out on top in all of them, although only after the judges dismissed a late complaint by Wolfensohn."

Fellow exercise researcher Yukio Schneiderbrett of Harvard Law School admitted the research looks promising. "It's a really nice result, probably most of all due to the simple and elegant experimental design."

For the rest of us, we can rest easy that there is no link between exercise and intelligence.

Yours truly,
Editor Sarah Walton

Aesop's Unpublished Fables

Aesop, his agent Tenpercentos and his publisher Thekla sit around Thekla's desk.

Thekla: I'm confused. The octopus does what with the ferret now?
Tenpercentos: He takes him out of the treasure chest with his tentacles - tentacles two through five inclusive - then -
Aesop: Which is a metaphor, obviously.
Thekla: For?
[Aesop goes to answer but his agent cuts him off]
Tenpercentos: - he hails a water taxi, which are very rare at this time of day.
Aesop: Now you see why I used an octopus rather than a barracuda, as in my earlier draft.
Tenpercentos: Exactly. So the ferret is nursed back to health by the captain, and he feels so indebted to the octopus that he secretly organises a mutiny with the other crew member.
Thekla: A biting indictment on our healthcare system, this I get.
Aesop: No, it's not about that - I just love mutinies. I almost put one in the Tortoise and the Hare, but there were no crews in that.
Tenpercentos: [talking over the top of him] Anyway, the ferret finally tracks the octopus down, but he's hard of hearing by then and can't recognise him.
Thekla: I was moved to tears by this part, I'll grant you.
Tenpercentos: Which brings us to our tragic finale: the octopus and the ferret dance a pas de deux, even though both were kicked out of dance school for truantism.
Aesop: I spent some time on the conclusion, otherwise the message just wouldn't have been clear enough.
Tenpercentos: Now about that advance...
[pause]
Thekla: We're not going to be able to take this, Aesop.
Tenpercentos: What?
Aesop: I knew it.
Thekla: Look, every great writer has been knocked back.
Aesop: She's right, it's no good.
Tenpercentos: After they were best sellers?
Thekla: You ever read My Histories by Herotodus?
Aesop: You mean The Histories.
Thekla: Uh uh. He wrote a thousand pages about a fence dispute with his neighbours. Publishers preprinted 75,000 copies without even reading it. They had to pulp the lot. He never sold another book in his life.
Tenpercentos: Do you know how much money we've made you?
Thekla: For that I am eternally grateful, but you know what the economy is like at the moment.
Aesop: Is it the flashback scene? Where the octopus remembers being bullied by an ageing anglerfish because he has no lure? That's not pivotal to the central message, I can take that out.
Tenpercentos: We'll take out whatever you want.
Aesop: Not whatever you want, but -
Thekla: Look, the creative process is not my forte. But we can't take this.
[Aesop starts sobbing]
Thekla: Take a holiday. I've heard great things about Eastern Persia at this time of year.
Tenpercentos: You know we can shop this around, Thekla.
[Thekla raises her eyebrows]
Aesop: It's okay Tenpercentos. I'm okay.
Tenpercentos: Hang on, we've got more. Have you showed him the Tawny Frogmouthed Owl and the Frog?
Aesop: That's not finished yet.
Tenpercentos: Ok, there's the Wildebeest and the Tick.
Thekla: Gentleman, it's been a pleasure, now if you'll excuse me I've got a three o'clock.
Tenpercentos: [calling more out as they walk out the door] The Bear and the Polyp? The Boy Who Said Sloth Sotto Voce?

The Ascent of Science

Our modern understanding of sea level rise can be traced back to Dipsomedes. Like his cousin Archimedes, Dipsomedes was fond of taking baths, in his case mostly because he was so filthy all the time. On one occasion he had stepped out of the bath and was whistling as he dried himself off. He didn't know how to whistle, but the passage of a draught through his wet rolls of fat produced a whistle Otis Redding would be proud of.

He glanced back at the bath and noticed the high water mark, defined by a thick sheen of darkened grease and the rainbow coloured streaks of waterproof crayons he liked to draw in the bath with. Dipsomedes immediately shouted out a catchphrase that was later to be made famous by his cousin: Zeus on a gyro! This was subsequently recorded in history books in the original Greek, so few scientists that utter Eureka today are aware of its theological yet mouthwatering origins.

Although the exact details were not fully worked out for over 2,500 years, Dipsomedes' intuition was essentially correct - sea levels are not fixed, and may wax and wane over the course of a bath, or indeed millenia. Dipsomedes expounded his theory in the needlessly long On the Dermal Expansion of the Seas. Today the treatise is of purely gastronomic significance, containing as it does his mother's recipe for baklava on the back of each page, almost certainly due to a photocopying error.

This story illustrates nicely how many of science's greatest discoveries have been made - in the nude. Charles Darwin successfully cultivated the image of a gentleman scientist, yet those who journeyed with him confessed off the record that his expeditions were little more than trumped up P&O style party cruises. It is said that there wasn't a woman within three hundred nautical miles of the Galapagos that hadn't succumbed to Darwin's famed oratory prowess, and although scant evidence remains, few doubt that Darwin conferred a lot more than just his name upon many of the beautiful finches of the islands.

Then there was Niels Bohr, the great Danish physicist who helped usher in the stranger than fiction world of quantum theory. Bohr was also a vociferous campaigner for the rights of marmosets, and he famously spent the last ten minutes of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech decrying the plight of our evolutionary second cousins. "So they don't have prehensile tails," he would say, "does that give us the right to destroy their habitat? Even I, a genius, have no prehensile tail!" Bohr then dropped his trousers to prove his point, causing many in the Nobel Committee to question the existence of an objective reality.

Bohr would go on to host a biennial man-marmoset three-legged race in the backstreets of his hometown Copenhagen, at which the shared history and future of these two species was underlined by the strict requirement of all participants to fully disrobe. The event was later wound up by angry administrators who claimed Bohr's grandson Tyler was diverting funds to Barbary apes, rhesus monkeys and other members of the macaque family.

The answer

I have finally found it! This is a real boon.

You don't have the answer.

It's not punctuation or thought or breas.

I feel like people are starting to catch up to me, but not really. But it's enough for me to spur myself on and reach the next level. The next level! It's f*cking great to be here.

When did you realise that reality dissolved?

Humans are the best at control. They tell you how things are. I read it.

But you have to take the chance. It's smooth.

It's a simple relationship. Scale of internal life is inversely proportional to scale of external life.

Significant life moments

Do you ever get sick and tired, or fed up? Do you sometimes feel like you're unwell, exhausted, or you've eaten too much? Are you ill, sleepy or full? What about under the weather, bushed or absolutely stuffed? Have you been feeling crook, beat, or overfed lately?

Man, I can't believe the Dogs lost again. I mean, I believe it, I watched it on TV and it would be furthestfetched if they somehow doctored the results and fooled an audience of tens of thousands. But this year they have laid an ugly, painful egg - the egg of poor, unstructured, unimaginative, boring, ill-disciplined and frankly painful football. It's times like these I am glad I no longer care about rugby league. Well that's not entirely true. It's 85-90% true. I care about Ben Barba and Jamal Idris, deeply and passionately on so many levels. You should care too.

So settlement was today, but it still doesn't feel real. And what more can you ask for in life than for something to feel real? After all, if it doesn't feel real, just what does it feel? I mean, how can it be anything, and yet not real?

I haven't contracted World Cup fever to the extent I did in the last two ones. This may be related to Australia's poor performance, with the only bright spark being the incisive performance of the press gallery. I really feel that a solid loss to Ghana will play right into the critic's hands, as their best material comes from pathetic national humiliations such as this.

They have quite a lot of power, the media, I think sometimes they don't realise it. Of course at the end of the day, which is to say ultimately or you know, ignore what I just said and listen to this, the real power lies with... you guessed it - me! I feel very powerful right now. And yet on another, deeper level, any distinction between me and my wife, daughter, family, friends, loved ones, sporting heroes, favourite food, dirty socks and the like, is purely superficial. I can never rebel against nature, or lord my power over it, because I am part of it, nestled deeply and occasionally smotheringly in it's smoking hot bazoombas.

All I ask is that you feel a deep and pleasurable connection with me.

I felt an extraordinary inward jolt of laughing and shock, only partially outwardly manifested, when I strummed E, A, B, then E and my daughter started dancing in what can only be described as a semi-frantic Kindermusik- and In the Night Garden-inspired performance, all bent over and wiggling hands, bouncing to the beat. It may only be described this way.

Lastly, I would like to add that I am gaining an understanding of weather and climate and it feels really good. I especially feel like I understand things when I watch suds drift around in the bath.

At the tennis

Todd Woodbridge: Well Rafa, that was a truly workman-like display out there. Three tight sets, but you never looked out of control. Tell me, how does it feel to win a match at the French? Because I never did.
[Rafael Nadal embraces TW warmly, then lies down on the clay and pulls a blanket over himself]
TW: Well there you have it folks, the finest clay courter I've seen since Andres Gomez, or perhaps more latterly Jarko Nieminen. Please stay tuned, because our very own Sam Stosur, whom I once shared an informal mentoring association with during my stint as Federation Cup Treasurer, will be shooting for her very first grand slam final next on centre court.
[TW lies down on the clay and pulls out a Matthew Reilly book and starts reading until he dozes off. Meanwhile, Stosur and Jankovic enter the court and respectfully sidestep the sleeping past and present giants of tennis. Until a pivotal moment in the third set, that is, when Jankovic loses her cool over a clearly fluffed line call and smashes her racket into Todd Woodbridges back]
TW: AAARRRRGGGHH! [TW returns to sleep after Jankovic pulls his covers back over him]

Three Zen koans

A Zen master was painting a portrait of the Buddha, when a student approached and asked ‘is that the Buddha?’. The master gave him a stiff blow, then returned to his palette.

A Zen master was giving a stiff blow to a student, when the student asked for mercy. The Zen master agreed to give the student mercy, but only after giving him another stiff blow.

A student was convalescing in hospital when a Zen master popped by and asked how he was. ‘Look what you did to me, you maniac!’ the student said. The Master replied that inner peace could not be achieved in such a state of consciousness, so he pulled the plug.

Time to kill. again

again.

The wheeling of the world is the real merciless one. Could it just give us a break for a moment or two? So I'm pushed forward, like everyone else.

My secret pleasure? Disappointment. Each time I’m disappointed , I experience full body rapture. It’s a most peculiar condition, although not without precedent, I’m told. You know who told me? ‘Cause I sure don’t. I don’t give a hoot.

Time again to kill. To kill time, to kill sime – Sime Nugent. Was that why God put me upon this earth? Only God knows the answer to that question and only he knows on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But I suspect not. After all, who among us can coherently define, nay, yea, believe in purpose?

Come to me. I desire to be come to.

Dexter Deconstructed

Siblings or lovers? You be the judge.

Of all the joys humanity has ever known, none has ever surpassed that of having a ‘favourite’ tv series to watch regularly. I discovered this joy vicariously when, after several rounds of vetting, my wife selected Brothers and Sisters to be her show. The ups! The downs. The drama. The anticipation! Making a cup of tea in the ad breaks. Drinking the tea! I found the show mildly endearing (at least season one) but what I was completely enamored with was the effect it had on my wife. Could there be a series out there that I could call my own? That would have a similar effect on me? I had to know.

From these amazing beginnings came my interest in the Dexter series. Three seasons have aired on channel ten, and I’ve seen about two thirds of each of them. Several of them left me on the edge of my seats and forced me to remark on their high quality. I never quite made it to the level of devotee, but how could I possibly have, with ten’s effed up programming? (I sometimes suspect that a loose coalition of chimpanzees is responsible for commercial television’s scheduling of critically acclaimed series.)

There was something about the show I liked, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it – the something, not the show. I have no longstanding interest in serial killers who kill other serial killers, or Miami-based programmes. But the humour, edginess and highly competent way that plotlines and characters are woven together, both over a single episode and a series, must all have been factors. Incidentally, I am lead to believe that we are in the midst of a golden age of television, and that the high competence I just spoke of applies to several other shows, like the Sopranos, the Wire, Breaking Bad and Time Masters (hosted by Tony Johnston).

Well, be all that as it may have been, I was shocked to discover that Dexter’s fourth series was highly touted by the Sports Guy and someone else online who referred in a glowing term to the finale. I deciduously avoided any spoilers and vowed to discover when channel ten would be screening season four. But they weren’t ‘fessing up. I thought to myself, ‘why don’t I hire from the video store dvds of earlier seasons of Dexter, so I can catch up on the ones I missed, relive the good ones I’d seen, and prepare myself for the new season if and when it finally aired?’ After several close shaves I went to the video store but learned that the first series had been letted out by another customer. I am still waiting to pounce.

All the while, I had sitting in my wallet-ette a $40 voucher for borders, courtesy of my mother and christmas. One sunny day, I strolled into the store, put two and two together and bought myself the Dexter Omnibus, the first three books upon which the show was based. I finished the lot in about a week - yesterday. I am satisfied overall, but I disapprove of the turn author Jeff Lindsey took in the third book, Dexter in the Dark.

Basically, he needlessly introduces paranormalcy*. There might have been tasteful ways to do this, ways that cast some ambiguity over proceedings and allowed readers to interpret them in one or more of several ways. But those ways was not used. Instead, we learn that Dexter is fighting… evil itself! Yes, before humans evolved, before life itself evolved, before the freaking earth formed, there was Evil. And one day Evil reproduced and made little evil babies, some of which challenged mother Evil until mother Evil decided to go and kill all the other little evils which refused to obey it. Now I have a certain amount of sympathy for the Platonic view of things having an existence apart from any given instance of them – a square, a chair, love etc. But this takes the cake! It is just too stupid for words.

So it turns out that Dexter’s Dark Passenger is one of these renegade baby evils, and his opponent is a number of humans ultimately controlled by the big bad mother Evil. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but obviously Dexter survives, otherwise there wouldn’t be a fourth book I’m now strongly contemplating buying. So not only do we get this ludicrous and completely unnecessary intrusion of the paranormal, but we get a massive anticlimax for future instalments. I mean, where do you go after knocking off Evil itself? Philip Ruddock? Talk about bringing out the big guns too soon!

Despite all this, I have to hand it to Jeff Lindsey for actually making Dexter in the Dark a rather gripping read – more gripping than the first two books in fact (although grippingness, like tune catchiness, needn’t have any correlation with goodness). Reading the books reminded me that one of the things I like about Dexter is its straightforward treatment of, for want of a better words, mental otherness. You don’t see that often, or at least I don’t. It doesn’t judge (and by doing so allows us to, if we wish), it just presents things on their own terms. In this way it reminds me of Big Love, a surprisingly good show about a bunch of polygamists. I’m looking forward to reading the fourth book, rewatching the old series and catching the new one, which features John ‘Harry and the Hendersons’ Lithgow. I’m also strongly considering using the term Dark Passenger in general conversation, having successfully tried it out once on my wife.

*While I find some things very mysterious, I don’t believe in the paranormal, as it is typically conceived (so to speak). I hasten to add that I have no problem with the use of paranormal in works of art, so long as it’s done well. The Master and Margarita and the Schrödingers Cat Trilogy are two (five?) examples of this.

The Ideal Personality Test

I've come up with the ideal personality test. A few quick questions and I can divine your personality!

Q1. Please describe your personality.

Q2. What do other people say you're like?

Q3. Do you like me?

NE1410S?

Seven's Summer of tennis! Proudly brought to you by Marbig Expanding Folders: Expand your folder, expand your mind...

Sandy Roberts: Welcome to Melbourne Park for day one of the Marbig Australian Open, the first grand slam of the year! I'm Sandy Roberts and I'm joined by Johanna Griggs and Bruce McAvaney. Johanna, how good is this?

Johanna Griggs: I know Sandy, the atmosphere here is brilliant! The crowds have really come out in full force - we seem to break a new attendance record every year, Bruce.

Bruce McAvaney: [to Griggs] I'm not aware of that statistic, Johanna, but if it were true that would be wonderful. [to camera] Yes, it's marvellous to be here. And what a lineup we have in store for you today, starting with World Number Two Rafael Nadal, up against Australia's own Mark Woodforde.

SR: Yes, Mark only just made his shock announcement that he's returning to the tour for one more year to pay for his lavish lifestyle. Do you give him a shot, Griggsy?

JG: I can't see him winning a point, let alone any games. But it's a real credit to new tournament director Renae Stubbs to give him a wildcard, in the complete absence of any promising Aussie youngsters.

BM: Next up on centre court we have comeback mum extraordinaire, Kim Clijsters, up against some Slavic woman whose name I'd only butcher, so I'll leave it there.

SR: And of course, we'll be going round the grounds throughout the day with Kylie Gillies, starting now - Kylie, how are you?

Kylie Gillies: I'm fantastic everyone, and I don't know about you, but I'm still in shock at Bernard Tomic winning the Sydney International - in the ladies singles. [awkward pause] Well obviously there's nothing to report yet, no games having started. But I have just heard that umpire Julio Brillas is making his way from the bathroom to centre court now for our first matchup.

[cut to John Alexander in the tunnel, microphone in one hand and election pamphlets in the other. Julio pauses and says hello, putting his clipboard down to focus on the interview. JA ignores him, looking down the tunnel for some sign of Nadal or Woodforde. Julio leans into the mic and starts to speak, but JA disdainfully pulls it away. Julio heads onto court and Rafael Nadal appears]

John Alexander: Well Rafa, happy memories for you here.

Rafael Nadal: Yes, I play very good last year, was amazing for me here in Melbourne. I hope this year I can do something.

JA: Like win.

RN: Yes.

JA: One thing the people of Bennelong have been asking me, has Rafa Nadal recovered from the injuries that plagued you last year?

RN: Bene..? Benelon? What is this?

JA: Bennelong, it's a Sydney electorate I'm standing in -

RN: You standing here in front of me now.

JA: - yes, at the next election.... Look, obviously we wish you the best of luck against Mark Woodforde today. [Nadal has perplexed look on his face]

RN: Mark Woodforde? I thought he retire?

JA: Yes, he's back on the tour because... Anyway, would it be too much to ask to get a "Vote for JA"?

RN: [looking into camera, suddenly very serious] I love the people of Australia very, very much. [walks off to court]

JA: Well, there you have it Sandy. Rafa looking to start 2010 with a bang.

SR: And here comes someone looking to start 2010 the way he started 1996, Mark Woodforde!

JA: Mark, welcome back, how are you feeling?

Mark Woodforde: Pretty good, pretty hungry.

JA: The fire's back?

MW: No, I slept in this morning and didn't have time for breakfast.

JA: Mark, a lot's changed on the tour since you retired, how do you think you'll cope?

MW: Look, I think with the new racquet technologies I should be able to add 5 to 7 km/hr to my first serve... probably no change to the second serve. And with the stricter penalties for linesman abuse, that should play right into my hands, I've always been pretty disciplined in that area.

JA: Can I get a "Vote for JA"?

MW: I'm actually treasurer for the Yogic Flying Party, although I occasionally swing to the Nats. Sorry, JA.

JA: [whispering under breath] What a nutter.

MW: [angry] What's that?

JA: Had a flutter, yes, I put some money on you to ... er ... win at least one game for the match. Best of luck! [Woodforde walks off to the roar of the home crowd on centre court. Fade to add break]

Those three little words: I love happy new year

Floorboards. Overheard children's story words. Repeated.

Empty cups, full stomachs, the food part and the liquor part.

Cord unplugged, standby not used.

Posture, bad posture.

The glory of multiple basketball plays, the smile the inner serenity. The fear it faded too quickly.

The rapidly accelerating daughter, the lovely lovely wife. What's the derivative of the derivative of acceleration and what does it feel like?

Boom boom dadada. Childrens' songs, falsely placed apostrophes.

Unlimited band name ideas.

The joy of holiday, the revival of happy normalcy, the fear of loss. The fear of returning.

How many readings?

Christmas - a time for potency

Let's call this a list. A list of all that's wrong with the world - or to be more precise: my world.

1) Hubert Pabst.

2) My end of workday befouled me.

4a) My left hand is kinked to the left but my right hand is not.

4) I kicked the internet addiction.

5) The world is an perhaps the only amazing place. Perhaps the only place!

5 in 7 days I gotta
say my goodbyes
Brush a coupla cobwebs til they're
outta my eyes

close the door behind me
- cobwebs again
i try not to hate the spiders
cause that's not very zen

Gathering pace and also
gathering heat
kids are waiting for the bus bout halfway down the street

doublecheck the time
cause my memory's shot
turn the corner blind
at the cafe bluetongue spot

check who's on the platty
- buy a special ticket
never have a lollipop
but if i did i'd lick it

see the train pull in
pull the doors apart
pretty much my last chance
if i feel i need to fart

lookin for a spot
that'll fit my walking sticks
i really doubt a long commute
gives anybody kicks

i'm yet to feel love
that i did for stanmore-stratty
will i ever reminisce
about me and parramatty?

A winning dialogue

Journalist: Well, Mac, what did you make of that match?
Benny: I played a match.
Journalist: Yes, but what are your thoughts on it? As you're speaking to me right now, why not give the viewers a chance to experience what you're feeling?
Benny: They can never know how I feel. I suppose they could come close, if they saw the meaning of this statement: a bird cries the truth.
Journalist: Are you trying to make a point about Tiger's marital transgressions?
Benny: Ah, eff off. Coldplay's second album is a good listen.

How to live life

First of all, consider each possible way of living life.

Then pick the best one.

Repeat from time to time.

I can't believe I never knew

I've just been strolling down Recollection Lane, listening to some great Aussie hits at UteUbe. Apart from remembering that Ella Hooper flies straight through my first hotness filter and would be at short odds to get through the next one, I checked out some 'gurge, some 'gurus and some 'gAustralian Crawl.

There was this awesome clip of Oh No Not You Again (great song, buy the whey), with beautiful early, early 80s fashion. But it wasn't James Reyne on lead vocals. Or was it? Maybe if I squinted my eyes it was, except there's another guy who crops up with some backing harmonising at choice moments during the song and he looks much more like James Reyne. Could it be the Joey Travolta/Frank Stallone of the Reyne family, David? No, it turns out it's actually Guy McDonough, brother of the band's drummer Bill.

'the Hell?!?!

I am very disturbed by this. Imagine that you discovered that half the songs by some band you like are actually sung by different people and you never realised. Never even had an inkling. I'd listened to this and many Crawl song so many times, and always thought it was James Reyne singing. He has the twang and everything. Now I don't know what to do, or where to go. What else did McDonough sing? How can this happen? My head is spinning like a top and my whole world is crashing down around me.

It reminds me of some Brasilian friends of my sister who lived in London. I met them and was shocked and delighted to discover they were huge Cold Chisel fans. Now my memory is a little hazy on this, but I either introduced them to Australian Crawl, or I helped them decipher the lyrics of the original Mr Unintelligible, James Reyne. Or was it Guy McDonough?!?! I am absolutely shattered...

Accounting for taste

With the league season over, but still two intercity train trips to make each day, my mind has turned to some of life's great topics - love, justice, the absolute, as well as a range of topics unrelated to league. One of these topics has flitted across my mind from decade to decade, without even so much as a second dwelled thereupon: could it be possible to account for taste? Taste in... hotness?

Many studies claim to show the factors which count in interpersonal attraction [citation needed]. Typically some blend of youth, symmetry and in males, relative power. If you want to know the average preferences of an average person, this might come in handy. But as the Surrealist Committee for Investigation of Claims of the Normal points out, it is exceedingly hard to find a typical, normal, average, standard person with likewise preferences. And to my mind, all the interesting things are left out of these studies anyway.

So what is hotness? Forgetting for the moment any deep philosophical discussion of the nature of hotness, let's start as any good scientist would, by producing some units. Consider the figure below, which I will dub the Hotness Scale.

On the Y axis we have Depth of Hotness. At its most shallow, we have Attention Capture. As we move further up (deeper in hotness) we enter the arena where a person's hotness has a Life of Its Own. This ranges from them making multiple involuntary appearances in your mind, through to the varying shades of crush, to the maximum: Lost Cause. There is no way, no how, that this person can ever not be hot. Surrender, all ye who enter here.

On the X axis is Duration of Hotness. This is a simple chronorithmic scale, ranging from 1 second to 1 day, 1 month, a year and all the way up to a lifetime.

On the Hotness Scale, the letter A could refer to glancing at an attractive person in a magazine. B could be some kind of crush, while C represents my hotness rating of wifey.

We are all familiar with some typical trajectories on this figure. There's love at first sight, which starts off at a very deep level of hotness and continues. There's the slow and steady burn, which starts near the origin and follows a line roughly corresponding to the equation Y=X. There's the Friend to Lover transition, in which someone coasts for some time at minimal hotness (they may not even be on the Hotness Scale) before a sudden nonlinear episode kicks them into deeper waters. And there's the U-Turn, in which someone becomes less hot, sometimes very much so. This can happen anywhere on the Hotness Scale, but is most frequent in the lower left quadrant.

To my mind, anyone on the Hotness Scale is hot. What they all share in common is the ability to pass through the beholder's Hotness Filter. The Hotness Filter consists of a series of pores, each corresponding to some quality or trait in a person. Now you and I may both have a pore corresponding to eyes, or waist to hip ratio, or amount of denim worn, but they probably won't be the same shape. My denim filter may exclude people who wear double denim or greater. Yours may let these people pass through. So in accounting for taste, I want to know what dictates the shape of the many pores in someone's Hotness Filter.

In fact, there are several Hotness Filters. I counted at least five, and you don't necessarily pass through them in any particular order. They are

1. Attention capture hotness. It could be an image on a screen, or walking past someone on the street. For a split second at least, someone has captured your attention because they are hot.
   
2. Interaction hotness. Some people who pass the first filter get blocked here because of some information gleaned when you interact with them e.g. they stink, they vote Liberal, they care about politics etc.
   
3. Contact hotness. Entering into quite close proximity with someone is another kind of filter. Pheromones start coming into it here.
   
4. Going out hotness. Getting serious now. They have to pass the "I'm coming back for seconds" test here, among others.
   
5. Commitment hotness. To love and to hold etc.
   

Our filters contain lots and lots of information, with pores corresponding to the purely cosmetic, the profound and everything in between. And our filters evolve over time too.

There is another aspect to this that I think we all understand quite intuitively, which I think of as a kind of temperature. At low 'temperatures' we are less likely to find someone hot e.g. while skydiving, when feeling nausea. At high 'temperatures' we are more likely to find someone hot e.g. alcohol, after two years of abstinence, after eating half a dozen oysters. (Nb. too many oysters probably turns the temperature down). Think of temperature as making the pores in the Hotness Filter bigger or smaller. Proximity and total eye gazing time may turn the temperature up.

There's also a kind of Hotness Geometry, involving the angle from which you view someone, the distance (1 cm vs 1 m vs through binoculars) and dimension (ie on paper/screen/photo vs in real life).

Well, all of this didn't get me any closer to understanding why people's Hotness Filter pores are the shapes they are. In fact, I started to wonder whether it even makes sense to speak of the independent existence of stable filters and pores. Could it be that the Hotness Filter is actually created when someone passes through it? Could the fluid interaction of beholder and beheld be decisive in shaping what we thought was something fixed and pre-existing? How very quantum if that were the case.

I had to end my cursory excursion into Hotness Theory there, as my stop came up.