How Could You Not See It Coming

I remember what I said to a friend at work when I first saw Power Balance Bands (or whatever they're called) for sale. I thought there must have been a marketing meeting where everyone had a bet. The person who could sell the cheapest, crappiest item for the most money would win.

Seriously, I couldn't think of another reason they would come up with the idea.

The most vehement anti-power band campaigner in our area has been my twelve year-old son. How does that make you feel, Shaquille O'Neal?

In my search for guitar parts from across the world, I had found the exact items available from the Chinese manufacturer for 15c a unit. Yes, these were the same items being sold for $60 in Aussie sport stores. The total amount of money made on this rort must have been obscene.

For a while, I considered buying 10,000 of them and selling them for $10 each. No-one would believe it would work, though. It just wouldn't be expensive enough to work.

I know a number of guys who bought the bands. Some believed they worked, some decided to eat the loss and pretend they never saw the damn things. The ones who believed they worked referred to the "tests" that the makers published with the bands and that were touted as proof they worked.

The results of the tests are easily explained by two things. One, placebo effect and two, practice. More so practice, I suspect. I never met anyone who did the tests with the Power Band first. The tests seem to always be done without it first. Have you ever done a complex task worse the second time you did it?

No, would be the answer in most cases. You could wrap yourself in toilet paper and do the tests. You'll still do better the second time. That'd make toilet paper prices go up, as well.

So, the ACCC have declared the bands a rort and told the maker to refund everyone who bought them.

Prepare for phase two of the rort, where athletes and celebrities claim to have been duped like everyone else into purchasing the bands - rather than having been paid to participate in the deceit.

Of Drought and Flooding Rain

I've got a note book of dozens of posts I need to get up here, but I want to take a moment to reflect on the forces of nature and how much we depend on them. No matter how powerful we become as a people, nature can change our world in an instant.

For the last God-knows how many years, the area we live in here in the middle of New South Wales, Australia, has been in drought. This is a farming community. When there's no water, there's no crops. When a crop fails, a farmer and his or her employees suffer. Then, the town does, too.

In fact, everyone does. Prices rise, quality falls. Consumers demand lower prices, so the supermarkets offer the farmers lower margins. And so, the cycle continues.

For years, now, the people around here have been praying for rain. When I arrived here, my friends would joke about the cardboard plains surrounding Parkes. The place really was the colour of cardboard. There were no emerald-greens grassfields here.

A year ago, farmers were receiving government drought assistance.

Then, in Febraury this year, we got rain. 150mm of it. And it kept coming through the year. A fantastic season was upon us. The rain held off enough for the farmers to get their crops in and then it came back to make it grow. The whole place has been full of hope and optimism.

But to harvest those bumper crops, you need some dry weather. Harvest hasn't happened the way it should, this year. The rain has continued through the harvest period. This means the crops - especially wheat crops - had to be left longer than they should have.

Then, to add insult to injury, the big rains came. Massive rains. A week ago friday, we were ferrying people out of the mine site to get them home from work. Roads were closed. Telecommunications services cut off (a good story for another time, right there). One of the guys on my team was isolated and couldn't get to work. Another couldn't get home.

There was even a fatality due to the flooding not far from where I work. A sober reminder of the realities this kind of weather can bring.

Then, it got worse. More rain. More flooding.

The upshot? Those bumper crops are ruined. Those that aren't can't be harvested because the ground's too soft. In some areas, they're letting fruit di on the tree. Many wheat farmers are planning to cut their wheat and let it lie.

I'm no farmer. But I know a few. I know the devastating effect the weather has on a community like this one and I see the hardships that those who rely on the weather endure.

Most of all, I realise that a few years ago, I had no idea. I had opinions, but I didn't have a clue. Neither do most of us in our comfortable offices and homes.

That government drought assistance, less than a year on, has turned now to natural disaster assistance. Just a month after residential water restrictions were lifted, I was up to my hips in water crossing a road. The farmers just can't take a trick.

A land of drought andf looding rain, indeed.....

Why Am I a Freak? (Why I don't like basketball and animal biscuits)

If I'm approached in the street by a stranger and told how good I must be at basketball one more time, I might just fold that stranger up and take a three point shot with his contorted body right under a passing truck.

OK, maybe I wouldn't go that far. I might well scream, though. You see, I'm not very good at Basketball. I don't even like the game. I've never watched a whole game all the way through. Even when my parents took me to see the Harlem Globetrotters as a child, I was bored. And they had trampolines. TRAMPOLINES, PEOPLE!

I succumbed to the peer-pressure a few times, though. In high school, I joined the Basketball team and rapidly found out I was better suited to Rugby. At least it seemed that way from the extraordinary number of opposition players missing skin and teeth. Oh, and the amount of time I spent on the bench.

But, when there was an opposition player really tearing us apart, coach knew what to do. Inside a couple of minutes, that hotshot would be laying on his backside twitching and I'd have a referee pointing me to the showers - usually in a very animated fashion. It wasn't that I set out to hurt people, though. It's just that I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know the difference between screening, blocking and charging (and still don't). Since I had to play, coach took advantage of my considerable ham-fistedness.

When I was in the Army, I played a whole season in the local competition with the base team. I'd improved, though, and became a valuable member of the team. I still knocked people around a bit and got benched a lot for said knocking, but I led the entire competition in rebounds.

By the way - I don't really know what a rebound is, but it's one of two things. Either it's catching a ball that bounces off the backboard or it's shoulder charging someone so that they bounce into the crowd. Since that last one was frowned upon, I'm pretty sure it's the first. For the record, though, I led the league in both. I don't remember ever scoring one basket, though.

The truth of the matter is that I don't like Basketball at all. I don't like to see kids with their hats on sideways wearing giant pants and speaking with an American accent. Especially since I'm in Australia. But more than that, I just plain don't like watching or playing the game at any level. I don't begrudge the sport - my son enjoys the game - and I've never had any truly bad experiences. It wasn't that I was bad at it, either. When I decided to learn some rules, I became quite useful.

So what is it that put me off? I put it down to society's double standards and pressures around height.

I'm two metres tall. That's around 6'7" for Americans and older folk. Or four-and-a -half cubits for ancient Romans and any members of the Rolling Stones that may be reading this.

If you're still having trouble putting that together, that's the same height as Andrew Gaze and Michael Jordan. It's also seven inches taller than the average Australian (That's almost half a cubit!). So, I'm regularly seen as some kind of freak. When you think about it, I suppose it's true. If a man is only four-ish cubits tall (I'm starting to like cubits - the rest of you can use 5'4" or 163cm), he'd be viewed as a little unusual, too. He'd probably even be typecast as a jockey or a chimney-sweep.

So, why aren't there any four cubit tall, squeaky voiced guys complaining that complete strangers that strangers tell them they'd look great in multi-coloured silk? The answer is simple. A complete stranger wouldn’t do that. Some self centred teenage jerk might for a cheap laugh, but no-one respectable would.

I've never seen an old lady in a supermarket walk up to a dwarf and say "Excuse me, I can't bend down. Can you get that jar of coffee off the bottom shelf for me?" It's just not socially acceptable.

It's not socially acceptable to tell a skinny stranger with an Afro that he'd make a great toilet brush. It's not acceptable to tell a catatonic kid's family that they should enter him in a staring contest. And nor should it be. Those are things that weigh on the minds of the people they're aimed at. It may be less dramatic to draw attention to a short person's height, but it is no less damaging to them emotionally.

So, why is acceptable to draw attention to a tall person's differences? It's even OK to do it loudly and publicly. A case in point is the loud "You're just f-in' HUGE!" I once got from a complete stranger at a party. Immediately, all eyes are on the big guy in the middle of the room. And it's not like you can hide behind someone. Unless the Harlem Globetrotters have turned up. But with all the snazzy uniforms and trampolines, I guess that's about the only time a freak like me doesn't get noticed.

So, next time you think about drawing attention to a stranger's height, have a think about the effect it may have on them. You might even pick the wrong person to ask at exactly the wrong time.....

"Say, you're tall. You'd be a good basketballer."
"Say, you're ugly. You'd make a great gorilla biscuit mould."

The Grammys finally get an AC/DC

So, after the better part of 40 years' trying, AC/DC have gotten a Grammy.

I don't know if they're too ugly, too Australian, not Australian enough, drunk, loud or some combination of the former - but they were just awarded the Best Hard Rock Performance gong and they're still in the running for Best Rock Album.

My question is, who is this rewarding? Is it really an accolade for for the band or are the Grammys' organisers trying to cash in on a massive audience of half-drunk thirty-something Bogans - Cashed up or otherwise.

I can call  AC/DC fans Bogans because I am one. I'll be in Melbourne in a few days time bouncing my head up and down. I'll probably even wear a flanellette shirt for the occasion.

I wasn't always a fan, but into my late twenties, I realised just how much I enjoyed the very things some people can't stand about them. Simple, repetitive riffs, powerful, precise rhythms, really, really good guitar playing and some lyrics that spend most of their time hovering around barely acceptable and some time well below the line.

And I can tell you, I'm not alone. Generation X are cashed up at the moment and that includes Flanno wearing Acca Dacca fans - just the type of people the Grammys traditionally aren't aimed at.

They have also just sold out what is ostensibly their last world tour - mostly to that very demographic.

So, is this really about AC/DC being rewarded or is it about trying to get a chunk of those tens of millions of fans to tune into the awards ceremony?

I hate to be cynical. Wait - no I don't.

Well done, AC/DC - not necessarliy on the Grammy, but on an outstanding four decades of bringing the spirit of  Rock 'n' Roll to the masses.