Okeefereport: More Musings

Dear loved ones,

So Kell, Cat are you among the one in five Australian expats on more than $320,000 per year or at the other equally extreme end of the remaining four. If your not it should a be simple enough matter to climb pyramid style over the other four, kill them if you have to, lets face it the reward is worth it. Unfortunately the prospects back here for, well, backpats I guess, are not so rosy, about A$100,000 and maybe some backpats. I don’t know that I could survive on $100,000 having never had the opportunity to try.

Tony Abbott wants to re introduce fault based divorce, and yes of course, who cares what Tony Abbott wants? At the same time and on the back of the same page of The Herald ‘PM faces stoush over gay marriage’ could lead to an interesting compromise don’t you think? A double bonus for the private investigation industry. I’ve got a camera and time to spare. I’d be happier dodging a gay pat than a hetro boofhead biff.

These enlightenments along with a disjointed obituary for Sweeney, roadie extraordinaire, with 42 years of slog in the rock and roll cause under his belt, (or certainly somewhere below his waist line), have not convinced me that I’ve missed anything these last several weeks when I ignored The Herald ion favour of some good books. ‘The Slap’ “excellent”, ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ by Khaled Hosseini who wrote Kite Runner’ “Breathtaking”, ‘A Fortunate Life’ “barely literate but I enjoyed” and a re read of ‘A Fence Around The Cuckoo’ the first part of Ruth Parks autobiography which I have resolved to read annually till I die, or go to New Zealand and find she lied.

There then Face Book, see if you can find this when I’m found dead in flagrante in a closet full of queens. Meanwhile I appreciate all the new friends I have there and delight in their wonderful profiles, full frontals and I look forward, or should that be backward, to a departing, rear view.

Switching topic now for those of you who found continuity in the previous ramblings, I find myself bemused by Bunnings muzak tapes. The playing of music in public places had its origins as I recall in the sixties when department store and office lifts began to be abandoned by human operators who would keep occupants calm with a monotone “third floor ladies hosiery, lampshades and leathegoods. Psychologists discovered that humans in these unnatural conditions behaved better if a low impact audio track were provided. Soon Percy Faith and a bunch of Perry Como cardigan’d crooners began to see their best sales. The mid term arrival of the swinging sixties saw the introduction of ear shredding music as accompaniment to clothes shopping in Carnaby street like boutiques all over the world. Slowly and softly “muzak” became the background to all supermarkets, shopping centres, airports and other collecting points of humanity. Gradually the machines that collected and compiled these tapes abandoned Percy and in their place inserted more radical selections like Dylan’s “Mr Jones” and Hendrix’s “Purple Haze”, works that were always meant to be consumed whilst shopping.

Now that the pop music has become only another piece in the jigsaw that is broadly known as noughties industry the machines main objective is to keep consumers awake and save. Yes money of course not the silly planet. One way to save is to produce home brands of favourite songs that incur none but writing royalties. Artist royalties are payable to the machines themselves. These home brands sound almost perfectly like the original for two good reasons Firstly the consumer likes it and second the machine finds it easier to imitate than to originate. You might be fooled into thinking that’s the ‘Beatles’ doing “Yesterday” but I’m not. Another cost saver is the re mix. Bunnings have recently featured a wonderful Bollywood version of “lets Dance” by David Bowie.

Given that the psychologists have determined this muzak to be such a controlling influence on the population at large does it ever cross your mind, as it does mine, how easily it might be programmed for anarchy and chaos in the lift. I mean would you, Kell, feel comfortable travelling to the thirty ninth floor (marketing and dispatch) of Ernst and Young to the accompaniment of “Anarchy In The UK” or “Rock The Kasbah”? I know that in these difficult economic times when there are many out there bearing grudges that “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick” convincingly delivered by Ian Dury, not a machine, has the potential to make me nervous amongst so many sticks.

Robert

'The distraction' As promised; Kell