gauntlets

Facebooked

Tue, 22 May 2012 08:16:00 +1000

Dear Face~~fuck~~book,

When you popped into existence in Canadia somewhere around the Cretaceous Period, I was not alarmed. Nothing will topple Myspace from its throne, I thought to myself with what remained of my Internet naiveté. Little did I know that not only would you kill the dinosaurs but you would attempt total annihilation of the newly dominant homo sapiens as well. Your evil truly knows no bounds.

Now I have seen enough Star Trek to know what happens when a group of individuals start slavishly following the one train of thought. Borg is what happens. Collectiveness wherein resistance is futile. You would think that being spawned by nerds, you would understand this but perhaps this was your plan all along, to have us fearfully suckling at the teat of peer acceptance and when our next Farmville crop is going to wither. And I don’t want to drag religion into the battle but I will say this ‘My name is Legion: for we are many.’

I personally am connected to you, I am one of the hive mind, and I loathe it. I claim to only use it to stay in contact with friends across the globe but is this really true? Are we so utterly inept at contact if Facebook is not involved that email, letters and telephone calls no longer exist in a post-Zuckerberg dystopia? We either follow the lives of our friends but subscribing to their endless self-marketing updates about the awesome highs and attention-seeking lows of their lives or we are dead to them. This is the horror you are harvesting in your wake. We, like all rich children, are connected but so very, very alone.

I feel such a divine hatred of you but still, I crawl to you with my bleary morning gaze, you are more important to my waking mind than sustenance or even going to the bathroom. Thankfully I am able to do these things while also using you on my Blackberry, my Nintendo, my iPad, my iBook, whatever I am holding that will connect to the Internet dammit, someone might have updated something! Wait a minute! I’m not thankful at all! I despise you and everything you stand for! LOOK AT WHAT YOU HAVE DONE TO ME!!

I apologise, Facebook. I did not mean to shout at you. My frustration overwhelmed me for a moment, but perhaps that is a good thing because it shows that I am still human. I am not the endlessly smiling face in 2500 photos on my Facebook Timeline. I do not respond to everything of vague passing interest by screaming ‘Like’ at the top of my lungs. I do not consider clicking a link to be a world-changing event that can topple dictators, free slaves and bring equality for all. I do not obsessively scrawl my name on the walls of whatever establishment, eatery or cinema I happen to be visiting with 2 others. IRL I don’t do many things that you force me to do online and I am done with you.

I’m signing out of Facebook and I’m never coming back. I’m going back to letters and emails and calls. I’m going to go outside and see people instead of staring at 2D images of them with their friends and family. I’m going places instead of checking in to them! I’m going to do all these things and feel so much better about myself. I’m going to do it. Don’t try and stop me! Is that a notification? I’ll just check this one more thing. And follow this link. And look at my friend’s 900 photos of the beaches of Thailand. I’ll just ‘Like’ a couple of them. Wait, I can’t delete you, I need you. How else will I post this blog entry to all my friends? These are the thought circles you drag me around. This is how it is to be addicted to something that you hate. This is 1984! Big Brother is real and he has a whole book of faces to choose from. He could be you or me or any of the other billions of profiles in our midst. He is watching and we need to be afraid.

…My last hope in a world of dying individualism is that this gauntlet stops your radio-waves from taking me over entirely if I wear it as a hat. Godspeed, Facebook. You may be many, but in the end, you will be very much alone.

Adrik

MC(f)A(il)

Tue, 08 May 2012 08:34:00 +1000

Dear Mordant Wing,

When I first heard your name, I thought the word ‘mordant’ was either the opposite of verdant or meant ‘pedestrian, boring and run of the mill’ both of which I found rather suitable. Turns out that Mordant is actually a henchman in Might Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie. I cannot fathom why you’ve named yourself after this ‘pig-like’ character when a much more cromulent character exists in Rita Repulsa but I can’t be accountable for your many, many failings.

Now I must admit that I was quite excited when I learned that Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art was getting a new wing as I had always thought the building lacked inspiration. These things always seem so much clearer in retrospect. Of course anything inspired by the actual MCA was going to be mind-numbingly uninspired. A random collection of cubes as a building? Never been done before? I think not. When you’re in the company of the Sydney Opera House which, while not unique is pretty damn close, you would think that the game would be stepped up. It’s vastly disappointing to me that it was not.

I don’t even need to look far to find a similar building because there is the locally known ‘tetris building’ almost next door in The Rocks. Also, Jessie St National Women’s Library in Ultimo glares out at me. Here they are, mixtures of cubes, square windows and… *yawn*… Sorry I dozed off. You would think that contemporary art would be contemporary and not a re-hash of old architectural styles. Anyone can go into IKEA and buy a random collection of storage boxes, nail them to the wall and call it contemporary art. I just didn’t think the MCA would do the same thing. I mean, perhaps I’m missing something. I have not been inside to see the view or exhibitions. Perhaps the internals are where your glory can be seen but let’s just remember that everyone, everywhere judges books by their covers. And in your case, your cover is literally mortifying.

So take this gauntlet and think about how something medieval might have been more appropriate if you were just going to recycle someone else’s much overused design. And don’t ever disgrace my eyes with your presence again.

Adrik

No Reception

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 06:54:32 +1000

Dear Receptionist,

In war, the front line is both vitally important and utterly disposable. Strong enough to induce fear in the enemy but too weak to achieve anything of actual note. In the real world, this front line is held fast by you, the Receptionist.

Mel Gibson played the most famous Receptionist in a film called Gallipoli. His trials and journey from Australia to the trenches of Gallipoli and onward into meaningless death ring true with me whenever I have the misfortune of dealing with you. Of course, we have come a long way since Gallipoli and the times have changed considerably. Instead of a young man with the world at his feet, you are (usually) a young woman with the world at your fingertips. You fix me with a plastic smile upon entrance to whatever establishment you are the face of and welcome me to the counter. I will announce my reason for visiting clearly and confidently while pointedly meeting your vacant gaze only to be summarily shut down by one perfectly manicured hand in the air and the other pointing at a headset and what I presume is a person speaking into your head.

Gaze broken, confidence shattered, I shuffle on the spot like a tyrannosaur in ballet class until you transfer your call into the ether of your establishment and proceed to file superfluous documents behind you. Unsure of myself, I glance at one of the chairs and gesture as if I will wait there but I am stopped by your shock at my apparently sudden appearance and your ever-question ‘Can I help you with something?’

Once again, in a meek voice, I explain why I am visiting. You smile knowingly and proceed to contact whoever I am visiting then gesture at the chair. ‘It won’t be long’ you say. It won’t be long… Little do I realize the eternity I am about to spend in one of your comfortable chairs.

After literal decades, I am asked to go through to the office. Throughout these decades, I have witnessed your inept filing, brusque telephone manner, ability to multitask uselessness over the phone and on the computer, dismissal of fellow visitors, some of whom have perished in the waiting area, inability to answer even the most basic question and seeming desire to annoy everyone you come in contact with. These things pale in comparison to the most feared phenomena in all the world. Two receptionists.

When you hold a mirror up to another mirror, you create a seemingly endless corridor of mirrors. When two receptionists catch eyes, a corridor of stupidity is created that sucks all intelligence from the air around it. No one will escape and no one is safe. It is my hope that if I am not able to beat my own brains out with this gauntlet, I am at least able to beat out yours.

Adrik

No Braining Cats and Dogs

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 07:02:00 +1000

Dear… most people,

There is a question that is often asked, which has been bothering me for a while. It started as a mild irritation, like the sitting on a rocky chair at a café, then it was like a fly buzzing around my head. As time went on, the buzzing fly had moved into my ear canal and felt as though it was starting to bore its way into my inner ear and brain. Then finally, it escalated to a Factor 5 Irritation, whereby with each repetition of said question, I felt a sudden urge to stab wildly at my own jugular with a broken pencil.

The question has a few variants but essentially it is this: Are you a dog person or a cat person? Or, do you like cats or dogs. OR being the operative word.

Now, in the interests of not wasting any more of my life on this than I absolutely need to, I will keep this to 2 key points.

Firstly, while I am not a DNAologist, Southpark and other popular shows have taught me that you can’t just go splicing DNA willy-nilly. This includes the splicing the DNA of dog and a person, or a cat and a person. The closest you get here are those wackos that look exactly like their dogs and I don’t even want to think about how that happens. So already, the question is loaded with 2 possible answers of which neither has any bearing in reality.

Secondly, allow me to educate you about a little something called “mutual exclusivity”. An “or” statement implies that both elements cannot coexist. Cats and dogs cannot both be liked. One MUST have a favourite, must choose a side, choose a team, butter either the side of a cat or a dog. Of all the (inhale) kingdoms, phylum, sub-phylum, classes, orders, families, sub-families, genus and species (exhale) you must pledge an allegiance to either cats or dogs. You would never ask: Do you like rainbow trout or meerkats? Elephants or toucans? Television or bacon? (the answer is obviously bacon)

Whatever the answer you know you will be met with either wild agreement as though this is a coincidence akin to discovering we have identical fingerprints, else a furrowed brow and an almost sympathetic “oh, really? I always had <insert cat or dog here as appropriate>”.

One of you asked me this question the other day and I said “I like both, I don’t feel they are opposing ideas” and your head just exploded, right there, so incomprehensible was this revelation to you. I still have a little bit of dried grey matter in my hair as I write this. This response will be my gauntlet, so that any time any of you ask me this question again, your head will explode too so that you may never ask it again. I implore anyone who is asked this dim-witted question to employ the same tactic, in a sort of genocide against people who ask this question.

Kyrani

Chugging and mugging along

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 08:20:00 +1100

Dear Chuggers (charity muggers),

When you approach me in public and attempt to communicate with me, you inspire the kind of hatred that makes me actually wish harm on the very unfortunates your charity might be attempting to help.

If I am walking in open spaces this means I am on my way somewhere. I do not want to be touched, approached or acknowledged in any way by anyone I don’t know, or anyone I know for that matter. The look of disdain I sport is not a default facial expression. It is deliberate Chugger repellent, as are the headphones blaring my favourite tunes into my head to block out the drone of humanity around me.

I could understand the need to recruit donors by accosting people on the street if say, no other marketing channels existed – but they DO! When we’re not being bombarded with images of children with distended bellies fainting in ponds of filthy garbage filled water on TV, we’re being guilt tripped with banner ads of adorable guide dog puppies. From these, and other sources of experience and information, non-apathetic adults, admittedly a minority, are perfectly capable of deciding what causes matter to them. Those who are inclined to donate, and perceive they can afford to, WILL.

Your cousins, the dodgy shop-without-a-shop people who set up shanty stalls in the thoroughfares of shopping centres thrusting free junk into the faces of shoppers or trying to get old ladies to mail all their gold to them would be equally offensive, except that their wages aren’t taking food out the mouths of hungry children or dog biscuits away from some adorable pooch at Battersea Dogs and Cats Home. Yes, you are doing what you are employed to do, but it’s not a necessary function, like Bog Trolling. Collaring people and asking them to sign up to ongoing direct debit in the midst of recession is an ill-conceived function if ever I heard one. You must hate yourself as much as the general public do.

Unless you are a chugger soliciting funds for the Chugger Control Task Force to eliminate chugger activity, I’m not going to justify your employ with attention or donation, regardless of what cause you are pushing, which you probably don’t know or give a shit about. Please appeal to your bosses to make you redundant, which you are, or failing that, next time I see you I will punch you in the face with my gauntlet glove, which I will be wearing especially in anticipation of your assault.

Kyrani

Sticks & Stones May Break My Bones But Paper Always Cuts Me

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 19:14:00 +1100

Dear Paper,

Your face may be crisp and white (or an array of other alluring colours) but your soul is drenched in the blood of your ancestors. I do not know or presume to pontificate upon why you insist upon having a perfectly healthy, vibrant tree decapitated, dismembered, ground to a sappy pulp and bleached in order to achieve your final result but here you are, facing me with your crisp whiteness, your thin blue ink lines and your fascist sizing code. Here you stand, Paper, wavering in the wind, trembling like the weak material that you are, lulling me into a false sense of security with your delicate consistency.

You really are a despicable creature, Paper.

I use you, oh yes I use you in many forms. Your most common format, A4 is a stalwart of the modern office, the outpouring of a fax machine, the scrap upon which we scrawl. Sometimes you evolve into A3 or A2 (or the lesser known A1, rarely sighted in the wild) but you are always there, taunting me with your inanimate nature.

You may be wondering why I am so worked up, why I am spouting such nonsense at you for you are just Paper. But then, why are you wondering, if you are indeed just Paper. No! I do not believe that for an instant.

You are a trap. An insidious, welcoming trap. ‘Pick me up’, your clean slate cries out to me. ‘Stack me in piles’, you call out in chorus. ‘Make me neat’, you torment me. So I do. Time and time again, I pick you up, battered spouse that I am, and I write upon your pristine surface, highlight your lines, fold and hole-punch you to fit wherever you are meant to fit. My fingers are on your surface, my pen marks your skin and I caress you.

And that is exactly what you want.

Because just as I am finishing, just as I pick you up and slide you into your plastic sleeve or binder or envelope, that is when you strike. Your blade-like edge slices through the tender skin on my finger like a meat cleaver through a freshly bled pig.

And I bleed. I swear at you and curse the day we met. I run for antiseptic, bandages and water. I weep into my chest for having fallen for your charms yet again and I lament not being strong enough to resist. I bleed, Paper, but you do not care. My blood splatters your surface, drying from red to rust but you do not care. In fact, I think you enjoy it. I think it spurns you on. Your taste for blood awakens the demon inside you and you come at me, slicing and dicing until my fingers are tattered and raw and I cannot go on.

And while I wallow in defeat you sound your triumphant horn and call to your brethren for you have found prey. And you must feast.

But not next time, Paper. Next time, my hand will be clad in a gauntlet and your edges will not touch me. Next time, I will win.

Adrik

Kill Two Ibis With One Stone!

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 07:16:44 +1100

Dear Ibis,

Many may not be aware of this, but you are the official international bird of Sydney. As a resident of this area, I come in contact with you far too often and I have a few bones to pick over with you.

The first bone is why are you even here? How did you get here? I have consulted with the oracle and she told me that you are actually a native of Australia. And that your sister is the African Sacred Ibis. Logic fails me.

According to the internets, I am not the only one who thinks of you as a ‘bin chicken’, ‘dump chook’ or a ‘tip turkey’. You are despised the web over and this pleases me, however I have more personal grievances with you. For example, the fact that you insist upon joining me for every meal that I have outside. I have a tale from childhood that I would like to recount.

I was six or seven and had just enjoyed a magical day peering at animals in cages at Taronga Zoo. I had had the small but terrifying experience of getting my head stuck between the bars of the kangaroo enclosure and my mother excitedly telling me that they were dangerous before assisting her screaming son’s escape. I had also watched, wide-eyed with fear as a pack of spider monkeys stalked, caught and tore apart a lonely sparrow that had ventured into their cage. I was a little fragile but my mother had bought me some hot chips and dragged out the buttered bread so I could make myself a carb-loaded sandwich. I was happily doing this when one of you horrific avian specimens appeared out of nowhere, grabbed my entire packet of hot chips and knocked it to the ground, where you squawkingly devoured them.

Understandably, considering the day I had experienced, I burst into tears. My mother, stoic leader that she is, refused to buy more hot chips for me and forced me to eat my butter sandwich instead. I can only assume that she was hoping I might learn from this survival of the fittest routine however at the time it was utterly soul destroying.

Do I blame my mother for this zoo experience? No. I blame you, Ibis. Clearly you are at fault.

As I have aged, I have found more reasons to despise you. You smell like all the homeless people in Sydney bathed in the same water, condensed the remaining muck into a perfume and injected it into your sweat glands. I can actually smell you before I can see you and this sickens me more than anything else in the entire world. It is rare to cultivate a stench that actually provokes a physical reaction but you have done this Ibis, and every time I smell you, I vomit into my mouth a little.

You have a disgusting red flap of bare skin underneath each wing and tiny shrunken naked heads which makes you seem like zombie birds. Zombies are terrifying and so are you.

If this were the zombocalypse, and it will be soon, I would target you first. With all strictures of society gone, I would be free to shoot, stab and tear you apart to my heart’s content. Yes, this would reduce me to precisely your level but everyone will be dead and no one will judge me! So watch out Ibis, because when the first zombie strikes, I’m shucking on my gauntlet and coming for you!

Adrik

Copy Fat Cats

Sun, 28 Aug 2011 05:39:00 +1000

Dear American Producer,

Imagine my disgust when I learned Australian cult classic Wilfred had been remade without my express permission. Before the fur of disgust took seed there was a wave of confusion, not dissimilar to the confusion poor Wilfred must have experienced when his master transformed inexplicably into an American hobbit (yes, LOTR fans, I appreciate this is impossible). Dogs can be really traumatised by change, as can audiences.

Later that day, the shock of Bizarro Wilfred resurrected a memory of the trailer for Death at a Funeral, the original of which is more quintessentially British than a milky tea, bad teeth, fish and chips in yesterday’s newspaper, miserable weather and Big Ben cocktail. Again, the recycling of a key player, being Peter Dinklage as dwarf Peter, was confusing. One can only surmise he played the role (renamed Frank) under duress involving electrodes and hot irons. Will the world’s little people ever be free from persecution?

Cue tsunami of formerly repressed memories, saturating the synaptic landscape of my brain, forcing me to relive the horror of learning of so many misguided remakes. Lost in Austen, set in fictional Georgian England, relocated to where, Austin Texas? More like lost in translation. Life on Mars, which you actually set ON MARS. As in the planet. Did you not even watch the original? David Bowie wept. Even the brilliant Miss Marple could not solve the mystery of how the universe allowed her to be dragged across the pond and played by charmless Jennifer Garner. Perhaps worst of all though was Kath and Kim, a show so culturally specific as to be so necessarily completely inimitable and only a dozen Australians really got it. That was one pilot even Cubana Airlines would want nothing to do with.

Other honourable mentions are the shameless casting of creepy William H Macy in Shameless, the skinning of the brilliance of Skins, the official doglegging of The Office, the hackneying of Hachi, the wringing of the Ring and now talk of remaking the Inbetweeners which sits morally somewhere in between genocide and unleashing a WMD. Why not just go all the way and remake classics like This is England, Australia and Big Trouble in Little China.

Admittedly you have adopted, mastered and really enhanced many foreign creations, like the motorcar, democracy and imperialism. If I wasn’t armed with gauntlets I would be afraid to write this for fear of imitation by you, changing the font to size 48, with animation, added sugar a crass backing voiceover and some sort of NASCAR wallpaper. It’s time now to stop taking square-pegged, archetypal and iconic works of cinematic brilliance from abroad and trying to shove them into the round holes of your television and film industries, so to speak.

Kyrani

Mxffy

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 09:16:50 +1000

Dear Miffy,

You are a strange leporine piece of jailbait that has haunted me since I first learned of you deep in the dark depths of my teenagedom. You wear a cutesy little dress and have fat little ears and small features like you have been designed by someone in Japan or China, but you are not, are you Miffy? You are not! You are Dutch! That aside, you are almost sixty years old which is offensive considering your trap-like exterior.

Now, in Dutch…land your name is Nijntje which, and I’m sorry to say this, is clearly a monster’s name. It’s a scary, pointy name with no comfort in it at all. Somewhere else in the Netherlands, your nest is located and it is known as Nijntjepleintje. The Dutch tell me via wikipedia that this means ‘little Nijntje square’ which is oh so sweet and twee but also a filthy lie for I know, deep within my soul, that it means ‘mountain of skulls upon which Nijntje sleeps’.

I could go on and on about your blood-soaked origins, your draconian law-hands laying down all over Sanrio and poor Hello Kitty and her friend Cathy, as well as your infiltration into the imaginations of children all over the world ala Skynet and the end of said world, but I will not. Do you know why? It is because there is something far more sinister lurking underneath your two-tone surface. And that something is your mouth.

Your adorable, cross-stitched, miniature mouth carved straight from the bowels of hell itself. Clearly no one has thought practically about this mouth or you would not be so adored. For this mouth is not for speaking, or mouth-breathing, or any such thing, is it Miffy? No. It’s for eating children! I have counted the lips on your face, and there are four of them. Four! Someone else I know also has a mouth with four lips. That person is the Predator. And we all know what happens when he opens his mouth, don’t we? Shit gets real.

So what will happen on the occasion that you open your mouth publicly for the first time? It will be rather like a coming out party, where the world discovers that innocent little Miffy is in fact a soul-sucking demon, come to eat their younglings and bathe in their blood! It will be a day of doom.

So rest now, Miffy, like the succubus that you are, but know that my army of revolutionaries grows stronger every day, and be-armed with these gauntlets, we shall rise up and fight for our lives in the face of your unspeakable horror.

Adrik

Shhhhhhhh!

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 07:24:42 +1000

Dear Moviegoer,

You come in many forms and types, much like Pokemon, however I despise you all, much unlike Pokemon. When I decide to go to the cinema however, for some reason I do not recall this absolute hatred and blindly careen into a den of moronic twits each and every time. Why on Earth it cannot be me alone in the cinema every time, I don’t know, but since I do have to apparently deal with you people, I would like to remind you of some cinematic etiquette on the off-chance that you realise your idiocy and the even more remote chance that you attempt to change your ways.

Firstly, as the giant notice preceding every film at every cinema everywhere in the entire world states, SHHHHHH! Films are to be enjoyed on their own merits and surprisingly, I did not pay an enormous amount of money to listen to your commentary while I watch something very likely to be quite close to my heart, like the previous analogy of Pokemon. Further to this, any comments that you do make are generally witless, infuriating or delivered in a tone of voice that seems to pierce my brain with a type of pure irritation I have rarely felt. Sadly, unlike the commentary of a DVD (similarly infuriating and pointless) I cannot deselect you. But that I could…

Following directly on from this, and also in that giant notice shown before the film, cinemas are no place for telephone conversations. Nor are they the place to be SMSing, Twittering or tumblring from. They are in fact, a place in which to watch a film. If you cannot spend two hours away from the Internet and your various vacuous iPhone apps then you are a sad excuse for a human being and likely should never have left the hole you crawled out from. If you insist on answering your phone call, then at least have the decency only to do so in an emergency and to leave the cinema when you do. Do not say to someone ‘I’m in a movie’ or ‘I can’t talk now’ because these sentences are ridiculous and you should be shot if you do. Failing this, you should at least be lifetime banned from cinemas worldwide.

On the subject of small sources of general irritation, I have noticed on occasion that some of your more prolific examples enjoying bringing an entire flock of children with you to a film that is clearly inappropriate for their age. Toddlers do not mix well with adults at the best of times and halfway through a tense psychological thriller when your child decides to start asking questions or running down the aisle or pooing themselves is hardly the best of times. And just quietly, anyone below the age of twenty five should not be allowed entry to a cinema in a group of more than two unless they have passed a rigorous examination to determine that they are one of the rare young people who are not odious.

Now I don’t want to move on from your obnoxious talking variety, Moviegoer, but I’m afraid your other types deserve some light also. Directly central to my ears is my nose and this is accosted time and time again by the oft mentioned and seemingly never resolved Body Odour. The cinema is actually not your ‘good room’. It is not acceptable to remove your shoes and place your besocked, tinea-encrusted feet on the back of my chair or even worse, at the point of my armrest so that my elbow may occasionally come in contact with them. I do not know if my elbow is susceptible to tinea and I have no desire to find out. You, and all your cronies need to keep your shoes on. Nothing, nothing is more offensive than Body Odour, except perhaps when wielded by you, Moviegoer, then it is a fine line.

Coming a close second though is the smell of other people’s fast food. Considering the rule that hot, outside food is not allowed in cinemas, this is generally smuggled in down tops and in handbags and brought out in a crumpled mass of warmth to be scoffed in the dark much like a rat might eat a cockroach in the sewer. Because of this method of transport, it compounds some people’s Body Odour and permeates the air with sickly, oily fumes. It is overwhelmingly abhorrent to me to have to smell your half-congealed pad thai or moist naan or plastic mass of McDonalds. Eat it before or after the film outside the cinema, please. I beg of you. Grow some common sense. Sadly, this plea is likely falling on the deafest of ears.

I haven’t even touched on perverts, inappropriate PDAs or questioners. Nor have I talked about tall people in front of you or fat people attempting to get past you or applauders! There are too many types of Moviegoer than I care to think about and it would be impossible for me to catch you all. Hopefully however, this gauntlet will eradicate you all and I will no longer need to fear my cinematic experience.

Adrik

Bog Off!

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 09:21:00 +1000

Dear Bog Troll,

I hate you.

Yours sincerely

Kyrani

……..

Haha, no you don’t get off that quickly, but seriously, I really do hate you. WHY ARE YOU THERE? If there ever was a profession that shouldn’t exist, surely it is yours. There is a reason you are not affectionately called Latrine Consultant, Strategic Toilet Director or Ablution Administration Assistant. It’s because your name is true to form – you work in a bog (loo) and you live in a bog (bog) and you are a TROLL!

You know, nobody chooses to go to the loo. Sadly, our bodies make us do it so that we may ingest many delicious foods and drinks, but it is unpleasant and I for one, resent paying for the privilege! We are all taught to do it from a young age and except in special cases, do not require assistance beyond infancy. I don’t need you to pump soap onto my hand or hand me a paper towel, and when you ration out the loo roll I want to spray your cheap deodorant in your eyes.

The first time I see you is at the inaugural “breaking of the seal” visit and I am shocked, for I will have repressed any memory of your existence since my last night out, and frankly you are an unwelcome blow when I open the door. You want me to hand over my hard earned cash, but here’s the catch - I don’t carry cash. Why? Because it’s absolutely, f*#king disgusting. If I did carry cash, I still would not want to give it to you because you do nothing for me I can’t do myself.

You serve no purpose and you should get a job that actually needs doing. When we make eye contact I insincerely apologise and justify the absence of filthy cash on my person. You make me lie! In reality I have no intention of paying you at any point during the evening. After my second visit I know our relationship will soon sour, though not as sour as the air you must breathe for the duration of your shift. Imagine the UTI’s you are causing in women and men who avoid going to the loo on nights out to avoid you and your brethren. For shame.

Before I close, a special shout out goes to the Bog Troll at a certain karaoke establishment I won’t name other than to say it’s in a part of London that starts with “F” and rhymes with Claringdon and has the word “Box” in its title. Reading the bible instead of doing your “job” is not going to put food on the table for your many children. Furthermore, your office is the toilet in a karaoke club. God has clearly forsaken you.

So Bog Troll, though I wish I could throw you into a river like the 3^rd Billy Goat Gruff did, sadly I can’t, so throwing this gauntlet at you will have to do for now. Until electric hand-dryers and common-sense prevail, you will be free to lurk about in nightclubs and bars handing out paper towel, stale lollipops and cheap perfume, but rest assured I have my eye on you and I will be celebrating heartily and rejoicing when your kind disappears from these classy establishments FOREVER.

Kyrani

Personal Space Invaders

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 19:42:39 +1000

Dear Personal Space,

Why are you so defensively weak? You encapsulate me utterly to a radius from my body of approximately 50cm. You are invisible and weightless and for the most part, odourless, which is preferable, I suppose, to a constant plexiglass bubble around me at all times, however, when you are penetrated by something that I do not wish to have close to my person, I desperately wish that you were made of plexiglass, nay, lead, in order that I may feel even slightly protected by your presence. But no, much like a piece of candy being protected by a baby, I am far too easily taken.

Let’s explore the myriad ways your barrier can be breached. Firstly, there is the physical breach. This can happen anywhere at any time as long as there is someone else around me. Notably on a bus or train, where you shrink down to a perceived radius of zero and it becomes socially acceptable to not only brush up against a stranger but to sleep, drooling on their shoulder, occasionally nuzzling into their hair. Of course my issue here is that none of that is socially acceptable. This sort of breach also occurs in other places. I have known many the undesirable person who feels that their face should be positioned 10cm from my own when speaking to me. And these people invariably suffer from terrible halitosis which you, Personal Space, are also incapable of shielding me from. And what about the ‘passive’ smoke that you allow to infiltrate my very lungs as it drifts in from a passing by smoker? How do you ‘defend’ yourself against that accusation? My money is on you not defending yourself well at all.

Perhaps the most offensive of your weaknesses is against sound. As a human, I am already cursed with uncloseable ears, meaning I must be subjected to every noise around me lest I jam tiny speakers into my ear holes and blast very loud Britney Spears to drown it out. But you see, fighting fire with fire never ends well and before you know it, I will be suffering from tinnitis and possibly (hopefully) partial deafness, all because you are not soundproof! Among other things that my ears are incapable of doing (potentially deserving a well-worded letter of complaint themselves) is turning the volume down a notch. You therefore, are responsible for this and guess what, yet again, you fail miserably. When I am confronted with a well-meaning but ignorant person who believes that they are talking at a normal volume but WHO IS ACTUALLY SHOUTRAPING MY EARDRUMS I am once again, defenceless. And those people are often the very same people who are 10cm from my face. It’s all just icing on a bitter, bitter cake, isn’t it, Personal Space?

My suggestion to you is to toughen up. I require the ability to close myself off immediately from these everyday offences that I am confronted with. You should be capable of deflecting the worst close-talker and outside-voice-user without a moment’s hesitation and until you do, my faith in you is sadly nonexistent. Further to this, I shall be using this gauntlet, not to whip you into shape, but to attempt some actual defence in the wake of your absolute failure. Poor show, Personal Space, poor show.

Adrik

Approach With Caution

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 07:26:00 +1000

Dear Canvasser,

I do not want to talk to you. You are literally the very last person on Earth that I would ever want to talk to. If we were the last two people on Earth, not only would I not birth a new species with you, I would flat out refuse to speak to you.

Let’s explore why I feel this way. Firstly, in this fine country known as Australia, the vast majority of you are backpackers from the United Kingdom (the minority being comprised of backpackers from Europe and out of work Australian actors). When you come to our country and insist upon gallivanting around in your ridiculous orange tans while holding a plethora of mixed drinks shortly before whacking your tits or kit out for all and sundry, you make me loathe you almost perfectly. But when you go out and become a Canvasser in order to fund yourself not dying of starvation, my hatred becomes exquisite.

When I wander through Sydney’s CBD or inner western suburbs and I see a flock of you in the distance, I die a little inside. You travel in packs of three or four, as if en masse you would be less offensive (this is not the case). You dress the same, in an ill-fitting T-shirt with whatever company logo emblazoned upon it, with ankle bracelets glinting around sandals, previously mentioned fanta-tans disappearing under bohemian trousers and hair out, frizzed to ‘perfection’, possibly with a dreadlock or two banging around in there. You have a officious lanyard around your neck and an equally officious clipboard clasped to your baggily T-shirted chest.

As I approach, I see your eyes glint like cartoon villains. You glance at each other and after unspoken discussion, one breaks off to approach.

The game begins. I turn my iPod up as loud as possible, sadly not loud enough to drown out all outside noise. I pull up my hood for added protection and look directly ahead of me, concentrating on not concentrating on you.

You begin to dance. Your arms wave up and down, billowing your hostel B.O. toward me as you do. Your free hand (one is clasping the clipboard) waves out and jazz fingers ensue.

I bring out my Blackberry. I begin scrolling something, anything, just to appear busy. I settle on old messages. It doesn’t matter, just as long as I don’t look up.

Somehow, through the cacophony from my iPod, I can hear your faint, whining non-descript-United-Kingdom-accented voice screaming some banality at me like ‘I like your hoodie! Where did you get it?’ in a desperate grab for my attention. I will not however, be swayed so easily.

I take my final stride past you and look up, feeling the relief start to flow.

Your cronies have closed in on me.

I have only one route, the most direct route through the horror.

One of you is dancing, all have jazz fingered me brutally, all are screaming attempted small talk at me.

‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.’ With Coolio’s words to guide me, I make it through the horror.

But the point of the matter is that I should not have to make it through any horror, especially not Canvasser branded horror! You are an abomination to the streets, to employment and amazingly to the utterly reprehensible sub-culture to which you also belong, the backpacker. That’s correct, even though my opinion of you is abysmally low from the very outset, the fact that you have transformed into a Canvasser somehow both surprises me and lowers my opinion of you. I too, was shocked that there was a base opinion lower than infinitely abysmal, but congratulations, Canvasser, for busting that myth.

I will not give you this gauntlet per se, instead, I will use it to defend myself against your constantly multiplying and encroaching mass.

Adrik

Seedy Grapes

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 07:47:00 +1000

Dear Seeded Grape,

I promised I would refrain from innuendo when composing this gauntlet to you, Seeded Grape, but it seems that I cannot. I have nothing against bunches of bite-sized fruit, in fact, I quite enjoy popping a few of your seedless cousins into my mouth from time to time however, and this is quite a large however, I must take offense when you sneak your way in and surprise my expectations with your hidden seed.

Normally, I have found that I can identify you via your look. You are a purple brown colour, almost bursting with juice and when I pluck you, often there is a sweet trickle of said juice down my hand. I would not be taken in by this seduction however, as I know that underneath those layers of pulpy sweetness, there is a grainy seed that will make my mouth pucker with bitterness. So I cast you out in favour of your smaller, greener, seedless varieties. Herein lies the problem. Sometimes, one of you sneaks in, dressed all in green, but still hiding a time bomb of seeds inside of you and I do pop you in my mouth and take a bite only to find a resistant intruder to my mastication.

No amount of spitting or tongue wiping or even, in extreme cases, vomiting, is enough to remove your foulness from my palate. I realise that you must produce seeds in order to reproduce, as do most flora and faunae. This is not my issue. My issue is the hypocrisy that you exhibit when you market yourself as seedless and yet, plainly, are with seed! I should not have to experience being seeded without my consent. No one should.

It is with the fire of revenge that I slip on this gauntlet and the thrill of satisfaction that I press you between my armoured thumb and forefinger and the joy of final relief that I press you into a pulpy mess on my finger tips. And it is with sad regret that I wipe your dribbly remains off my formerly pristine gauntlet. You have stained and soiled us for the last time, Seeded Grape. Feel my gauntleted wrath.

Adrik

Medi-Evil

Mon, 23 May 2011 09:10:52 +1000

Dear Medieval Enthusiast,

Don’t think for a second that I am not seeing you when I walk past a pod of you in the park, gaily swinging wooden replications of various weaponry such as ‘broadswords’ or ‘rapiers’, dressed from head to toe in crushed velvet. Because I do see you. And it fills me with rage, which is why I pretend not to see you. This faux ignorance is offset however by the fact that I cannot stop my jaw from dropping literally to the floor, aghast at the idiocy I see before me.

I mean, could you have picked a less appealing time to obsess over? It was between the Roman Empire and the Renaissance, sort of in the way that revolting luncheon meat is sandwiched between glorious pieces of bread. People were uneducated and rude, everyone wore crushed velvet (I know I have mentioned this already but it bears repeated lampooning) and chain mail and as far as I can ascertain, personal hygiene was put on a seriously concerning back burner. Yet you persist in attempting to eschew the ‘values’ of this time in the public park.

I have come up with some possible explanations for this. First off the bat is that you suffer from terrible natural body odour and an uneducated outlook on personal hygiene and have decided the best way to cover this up is by immersing yourself in a culture in which this was acceptable. Bearing in mind that said culture has been dead for around 600 years. Another reason could be that you are a devout Catholic and see the Middle Ages as a high point of reference for your faith and so wish to, in the face of progress, ignore it. Yet another reason could be that you genuinely enjoy the feeling of metal and velvet on your body and like the heft of a long piece of oddly shaped wood in your hands. None of these reasons give me much peace of mind, frankly, and I will simply ask you, in lieu of an explanation to your insanity, to stop what you are doing and never do it again.

Now, to be fair, I don’t mind what you do in the privacy of your own home, but when you take to the streets, I’m afraid I simply must say something. I’m referring of course, to your Medieval re-enactments. These take place at random, sometimes in London, sometimes not. They can be anywhere from three people in a park with sticks to idiots en masse. Frankly, the only reason anyone outside of your wretched circle would go to one of these would be as an obligation to a school on excursion or out of some sort of curiosity fuelled by freak show addictions. These re-enactments make me want to fall upon my chalice and run you through with your own codpiece or some such medieval analogy.

If you must inflict yourself upon me, Medieval Enthusiast, please don’t. Take this unfortunately very fitting gauntlet and strap it to your cowl or bodice or horse, I don’t really care because you could not be more ridiculous than you are now.

Adrik

Internet - Part the Seconde

Tue, 17 May 2011 22:51:33 +1000

Dear Internet,

As well as being an attack on you this is also an ode to print. Unquestionably, countless trees are felled and animals displaced to accommodate some appalling word salads masquerading as books, but in the interests of turning a profit, publishers must have an idiot filter in place. Internet, you provide no such thing. Clay Shirky, a General in the Army of the Republic of Obvious calls this absence of a filter “Mass Amateurization”, in his actual non-e-book. We prefer to call this process Mass Bacteria-like Cultivation of Self-publishing Wankers, but that’s just us.

For some strange reason, you have ingratiated yourself upon the majority of the Earth’s population as a tool through which to self-publish insipid blogs about things no one cares to read about. You seem to have forgotten, in your quest to become as necessary as air to humans, that the majority of humanity is unable to construct even a single coherent sentence, let alone an entire website worth of ruminations.

Take pause to appreciate how you have mothered the self-importance, vanity and narcissism of almost 2 billion people - most of whom probably shouldn’t be allowed to socialise without a minder let alone publish. Imagine the millions of ugly baby photos, political drivel, poetasters’ works and unqualified hateful critiques of irrelevant things that you house.

It may seem to you that we should be targeting these bloggers, twitterers and tumblrers who utilize you, however we believe that the adage of targeting the disease rather than the symptom rings particularly true in this situation. You are an enabler of all that is wrong. In what situation do you think it would be helpful to read the unfortunate tortured poetry of a fourteen year old trustafarian? Or the daily musings of a newborn as told through the words of a modern stay-at-home mother armed only with a digital camera and three percent of her native lexicon? Or, God be merciful, anything on Facebook? That’s correct, Internet, the answer is never.

Occasionally, some curio attracts the attention of the challenged masses, and it goes viral. What people don’t realise is that this is not a metaphor. Justin Beiber, Rebecca Black and the Chapstick Girl are actual viri. Symptoms include speechlessness, nausea, headache and a strong desire to drop kick your computer into the next galaxy.

We threw our inaugural gauntlet at you Internet, many moons ago. Now we throw our 50^th at you in the hope that you will GO AWAY but also to celebrate our new look, which by the way is fabulous.

Adrik and Kyrani

Training Day

Sun, 08 May 2011 03:20:44 +1000

Dear Riffraff (aka fellow commuters),

I have beef with you. No, that is not me inviting you out for a steak dinner in broken English. As I’d prefer not to die of old age writing about them all I have chosen the Top 5 highlights, all equally maddening. If you are caught doing any of the below you should be tagged with a tracking bracelet or tattooed accordingly and shamefully, and banished at least from public transport if not society.

Standers on the left - as per the many signs, escalator etiquette is to stand on the right leaving the left free for those can’t abide the glacial pace of the moving stairs. Do it. Do it, if for no other reason than that EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT. Also, don’t STOP when you dismount the escalator at the top or the bottom. Nobody wants a people pileup, particularly one made up of people like you.

Bargers and runners – the next train is only a few minutes behind the one you are so desperate to dive into, relax, unless you’re in Sydney, in which case run like the wind or you’ll expire waiting for the next one. If you trip, I laugh.

Pole huggers – the pole may be a foul festering thing to be touched as little as possible, but it serves a purpose (not for dancing). When you hug the pole, others have nothing to hold onto and we certainly don’t want to touch you. If it’s just that you need to hug something that’s sad, but get a friend. Or a coma. Either way.

People under trains – get into the train, not under it silly! Not to make light of a serious issue *totally makes light of serious issue* but if you’re going to do it, please refrain from doing it in peak hour. Spare a thought for the poor driver and the commuters you leave traumatised from having to watch men in garish orange overalls fight tooth and nail as it were, to locate you and take you away. People never get over seeing those outfits. Not to mention the thousands of people you make late to their riveting jobs. Imagine the anxiety that commuters underground experience spending unnecessary precious minutes without reception for their phones and gadgetry, maybe even being forced to interact with one another.

Early get ups – there is ample time once the train stops to disembark. I am as eager for you to leave the train as you are but I go out of my way to block your way to the door when you get up too early. Politeness is recommended as when you are rude I put a hex on you.

The following abominations did not make the cut, but I’ve got my eye on you:

People who cough or sneeze without covering their mouths, nose pickers, molesty press-up-againsters, broadcasters, odorous people, hipsters, foreigners (just kidding**), the gap, parents who don’t control their children, children who are out of control, starers, people who can’t use the entry/exit gates, pickpocketers (you really don’t have to pick a pocket or two, get a job), Goths, people who make conversation, sleepers, the sick, mutterers, Mormons, morons, people who think the train is a disco, anyone bleeding, drunkards proposing marriage, the man on the Piccadilly Line who hysterically demanded the owner of a suitcase to identify themselves while barricading the doors in peak hour so he could “get the bomb off the train” presumably to subject the people on the platform to the inevitable blast, people with delicious smelling fast food, hotties, people on the cusp of old age who may be offended if they were offered a seat, loud breathers and people who insist on boarding the train before people have finished disembarking.

One day your kind will be suitably tagged to set off humiliating alarms when you enter shared spaces, and removed when you offend as per the above, the behaviour guidelines in this piece will become enshrined in law and all will be right in the universe. Until then this gauntlet will have to suffice, together with a barking order to refrain from being so oblivious, rude and just plain weird when commuting.

Kyrani

**Or am I?

I say tomato, but you don’t know what the f#@k that is

Tue, 03 May 2011 07:02:57 +1000

Dear Tomato Hater,

Since even you have not been living under one of the rock-hard tomatoes you purchase, you will be aware that Woolies call themselves the “Fresh Food People”. And without any deliberate sense of irony, they continue to sell you and your kind more “gourmet” tomatoes in a day than these fleshy, seedy men throw at the annual “la tomatina” festival.

But the difference between those volatile I- (which you habitually pronounce as ‘eye’) talians and you, apart from your superior interpretation of pizza, is that the modern forebears of ancient Roma can actually distinguish a tomato from a plastic frog.

I humbly predict that the next unripe, taut, green, chalky “gourmet” tomato you impose on innocent gustatory organs will turn up in one of your “signature salads”. Commonly found accompanying the admittedly evolving “Aussie (got the cheapest sausages you could) BBQ”, and proudly compiled by your always male, sometimes obese, never funny sausage-flipper in customary “kiss the chef” apron on his annual foray into the culinary landscape, your “Irish flag salad” draws indigenous knowledge from generations of your rabbit-food devouring forebears, as follows:

1. Take 1 iceberg lettuce carefully germinating in the cooler for 5-6 weeks

2. Cut into large random camel bite-size pieces, taking care to include the knob as an untouched, worm infested whole

3. Take 2 Woolworths gourmet tomatoes from the refrigerator and cut into halves, or if time permits, quarters

4. Dollop (verb) a dollop (noun) of processed Kraft (it’s a miracle nobody has died from you yet) Mayonnaise unevenly throughout.

5. Toss (the salad). Serve with soft, flavourless white bread, now with added fibre for those mc-constipated, palette-less, peanut-allergic, ADHD, i-children.

“So simple, yet so tasteless”, describes you to a pickle.

But you are not the sauce of my discontent. Bad salad is my real nemesis, I admit. I am a tomato snob, I admit. By following recipe instruction number 3 you necessarily condemn yourself to having rotten tomatoes hurled at you and your compliant family and friends, bearing in mind that these would not be hyper-charged herbicided, pesticided, fungicided Woolies cardboard varieties which defy the laws of rotting produce. Do you not know that leaving a tomato in the fridge is the most uncivilised thing a human being can do, especially if you have taste buds? Leaving a tomato in the fridge is like leaving a Mexican at the border, made even worse by the fact that South Americans gave us the tomatoes that you shamefully re-package today. Yes, with that Dolmio grin on your face you personify numero uno stupido.

Don’t just ask me, ask famous chef-lebrities. To all those hard-tomato eaters, Jamie says “get puck(a)ed”. And Nigella concurs, although admittedly much of her fruit may be too big for your cooler. I know what you’re thinking: “Gordon Ramsay is a red-faced muppet”. Scientific evidence proves this conclusively, yes, but you’re less likely to see him freeze his crimson cojones in a Westinghouse, than you are to see an Italian Prime Minister popping a young cherry. Hell’s kitchen will sooner freeze over.

Before you accuse me of being pro-British or un-Australian (technically these sentiments are identical), I have my own cherry to pick with riper epicurean civilisations as well. I’m quite frankly a little sick of Tokyo restaurants in winter including powdered quarters as salad afterthoughts. Your ninja food has such “balanced natural flavours” and your geriatric farmers grow such brilliant summer tomatoes. So I beg of you, iron chef, don’t go changing my next wakame and cod sperm salad to try to please me – I rub you just the way you are.

Once upon a time, tomatoes were a sweet, soft, ripe, delicious, even reddish, summer fruit, or vegetable – it doesn’t matter, but these days I’m the one seeing red. This once precious joy of life is slowly dying as ordinary people like you, ordinary being the key word here, show extraordinary ignorance of the humble tomato. Thus, for collectively destroying one of the few great treasures we can pass onto the (admittedly few) generations who will survive catastrophic climate change (which, incidentally, will make growing heirloom varieties all the more difficult), along with this first gauntlet I feed into your anaesthetized palette, I hurl at your pouty scarlet, yet pimpled cheek a discounted 1kg bag of the very thing you have spent decades guarding against – rotten tomatoes. In the meantime, roll back under your nightshade, keep your tomatoes out of the fridge and yourself out of the kitchen. Kapish?

Mark

Body 'Oh Dear'

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 21:34:00 +1100

Dear Body Odour,

I’m not sure if you’re aware but the smell of warm, old onions and rotting flesh is absolutely repulsive. I understand that you are trying to warn us of something, that you’re informing us that our hygiene could be better or that we may be susceptible to some sort of parasitic infection (if not already afflicted), but honestly, could you not be a nice smell? Or a small electric shock? I know we have the potential for further senses, couldn’t you have manifested through one of those instead of as an odour?

Another reason for my disgust with you is the things you have sneakily marketed to us in order to cover you up. I’m referring of course to deoderant. I can’t quite get my head around whether this product is an oxymoron or ironic, so I’m just going to call it stupid. Deoderant does not de-odour. It compounds odour.

I’m going to use Lynx as an example. You have been marketing this at pubescent males, advising them that by bathing in a fine mist of chemicals, they will become men, able to attract women and not be wet with sweat. This is wrong on many levels. When one of these males actually empties a can into their armpit in lieu of a shower or on a crowded, sealed train carriage or bus, millions of fellow humans are then not only subject to your devastating natural stench, but also to the cool breeze of Arctic Mist™ or Mountain Blast™ or some other amalgamation of a cold noun and verb.

At this point, my rage is being directed at your subsidiary when in fact it should be firmly aimed at you. Your proliferation deepens with the en-fattening of each human generation, the continued obstinate growth of hair in awkward, pointless, hidden away places and fashion that leaves no room to breathe. Everything is, ironically, coming up roses for you and this makes me sick to my stomach.

I’d like to be able to imagine a world in which you do not exist, in which I could happily catch public transport and have my face buried in a perfect stranger’s armpit or fat roll and not be accosted with your putrescence, however I fear that were you to be eradicated, something equally, if not more terrifying might succeed you. Something like halitosis, skid marks or foot fungus. The world is a dangerous place because of you, Body Odour, and against my better judgement, I’ll be applying my gauntletified Speedstick of Blizzard Hammer™ against you.

Adrik

Die-monds

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 05:09:00 +1100

Dear Diamonds,

Everybody’s favourite Dame, Shirley “I-don’t-pop-my-cork-for-every-man-I-see” Bassey (she does) once told us that you were a girl’s best friend, a message reiterated by an especially pallid Nicole Kidman from a high perch in Lurhmann’s subdued piece, Moulin Rouge. From the moment I saw you I thought this could be true but I feel increasingly disillusioned. If we were friends, we’d always be together like peas and carats, I’d have you wrapped around my finger and I wouldn’t mined (sic) when you get all up in my grill like you do with Kanye.

I could even accept that there is a generation gap. You have felt the need to hide underground for a couple of billion years, which is odd as you are the hardest naturally occurring thing on earth. This is clearly because you are a fraud and you don’t want the world to know that you are just glorified CARBON! Then again, a wise person once said you are “a chunk of coal that is made good under pressure” and if I had even a basic understanding of chemistry this might resonate at an intellectual level as well as an emotional one, but failing that I can only exclaim that YOU ARE COAL!

You’re all such terrible pikers too. You never come out for a girls’ night except in the aftermath of a major volcanic eruption, followed by millions of years of nothing and the establishment and proliferation of a US$13 billion a year industry to unearth you and make you pretty, at great expense and loss of life. Even then most of you can never be pretty, you will become scalpels and round saws, like your ugly yellow synthesised cousins. Luckily, for the ones that are pretty, most women would and frequently do sell their first born, or remain married to men they detest for 60 years and hope that milestone anniversary is remembered and rewarded with you. It’s not. No wonder Dame Bassey encouraged a one Big Spender to spend a little time with her. She had the right idea.

I propose the introduction of a 5^th “C” word in the rating of you, in addition to cut, colour, clarity and carat, but as children read this I can’t say what that might be. If you weren’t buried so far underground I would throw a diamond gauntlet at you, as only you can destroy you, but as I don’t have one I will issue this request instead. Please become less well concealed, less expensive, less able to be used to fund guerrilla warfare in African trouble spots and more on my finger.

Thank you

Kyrani