History teachers will be using this clip twenty years from now

 

 

Now, I don’t know if you’ve been following the news, but I’ve been keeping my ears open and it seems like everyone everywhere is super-mad about everything all the time. I try to stay a little optimistic, even though I will admit, things are getting pretty sticky.

Here’s how I try to look at it, and this is just me, this guy being the president, it’s like there’s a horse loose in a hospital. It’s like there’s a horse loose in a hospital. I think eventually everything’s going to be okay, but I have no idea what’s going to happen next. And neither do any of you, and neither do your parents, because there’s a horse loose in the hospital. It’s never happened before, no one knows what the horse is going to do next, least of all the horse. He’s never been in a hospital before, he’s as confused as you are.

There’s no experts. They try to find experts on the news. They’re like, “We’re joined now by a man that once saw a bird in the airport.” Get out of here with that shit! We’ve all seen a bird in the airport. This is a horse loose in a hospital.

When a horse is loose in a hospital, you got to stay updated. So all day long you walk around, “What’d the horse do?” The updates, they’re not always bad. Sometimes they’re just odd. It’ll be like, “The horse used the elevator?” I didn’t know he knew how to do that. The creepiest days are when you don’t hear from the horse at all. You’re down in the operating room like, “Hey, has anyone ... Has anyone heard -” [imitates clopping hooves] Those are those quiet days when people are like, “It looks like the horse has finally calmed down.” And then ten seconds later the horse is like, “I’m gonna run towards the baby incubators and smash ’em with my hooves. I’ve got nice hooves and a long tail, I’m a horse!” That’s what I thought you’d say, you dumb fucking horse.

And then ... then ... then you go to brunch with people and they’re like, “There shouldn’t be a horse in the hospital.” And it’s like, “We’re well past that.” Then, other people are like, “If there’s gonna be a horse in the hospital, I’m going to say the N-word on TV.” And those don’t match up at all.

And then, for a second, it seemed like maybe we could survive the horse, and then, 5,000 miles away, a hippo was like, “I have a nuclear bomb and I’m going to blow up the hospital!” And before we could say anything, the horse was like, “If you even fucking look at the hospital, I will stomp you to death with my hooves. I dare you to do it. I want you to do it. I want you to do it so I can stomp you with my hooves, I’m so fucking crazy.” “You think you’re fucking crazy, I’m a fucking hippopotamus. I live in a fucking lake of mud. I’m fucking crazy.” And all of us are like, “Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.” Like poor Andy Cohen at those goddamn reunions. “Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.”

And then, for a second, we were like, “Maybe the horse-catcher will catch the horse.” And then the horse is like, “I have fired the horse-catcher.” He can do that? That shouldn’t be allowed no matter who the horse is. I don’t remember that in Hamilton.

("Hamilton" is a hit broadway show about Alexander Hamilton, one of the United States' founding fathers. So he basically says "I don't remember that being in the constitutional powers of a president, but all my knowledge about is comes from a broadway show.)"

 

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They were relieved when they finally got the horse out of the hospital, but then, four years later, someone said, "You know, the sandwiches in the hospital cafeteria have got a bit expensive", so they decided to fix the problem by letting the horse back into the hospital, only by this time the horse had been there so long, it thought it was the doctor.

History teachers will be using this clip twenty years from now. And John Mulaney somehow did it without using the word “Trump” even once.

 

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SORRY - NO WHEELCHAIR ACCESS

 

 

The onset of cooler weather makes me think of warmer climes again. Should I take one last trip before it is too late to visit some of my favourite places that have no wheelchair access?

Not that I want to go bungee-jumping off Niagara Falls or swim with sharks in the Red Sea or walk unarmed through the Somalian bush.

Instead, a sandy beach, good food, a warm sea, and an absence of mosquitoes (it's too tiring applying all that repellent) is pretty much all I want. I don't want to be guided around monuments; I don't want to be told how many bricks it took to build the damned thing; I don't want to make new friends on holidays (I can't manage the ones I have at home).

Instead, I just want to veg out in my secret hide-away high up in the hills of northern Bali. No tourists, no television, no a la carte meals, no regulated swimming pool hours, no minibar which transmogrifies a can of Coke sold for 3000 rupiah at the local 'warung' into a ludicrous $5.

 

 

I would be reading books, looking at the sky, listening to the song of birds, taking a swim at any hour of the day or night in the pool (or in the ocean which is a short, death-defying bejak-ride away) ...

 

 

... or enjoying a massage (for the equivalent price of a minibar Coke).

 

 

Perhaps I should book now and go before they have to wheel me up and get stopped by a dirty big sign that reads, Tidak ada akses kursi roda.

 

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It's all about the oil, stupid!

 

Read it online at www.archive.org

 

It was about the oil in Libya; it was about the oil in Iraq; it still is about the oil in Venezuela; and it's now about the oil in Iran. "The Prize - The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power" by Pulitzer Prize-winning Daniel Yergin captures the fascinating stories behind the global hunt for oil.

 

 

Daniel Howard Yergin (born February 6, 1947) is an American author, economic historian, and consultant within the energy and economic sectors. He has authored or co-authored several books on energy and world economics, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning "The Prize - The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power", "The Quest - Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World", and "The New Map - Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations".

 

 

But before you launch into this eight-part video of the book, you may want to listen to this insightful commentary on what's going on with Trump's naval blockade. Why can't a man like Sachs be US President?

 

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Canberra Accounting Services

 

I anglicised my German name GÖRMANN by dropping the second 'N'; however, to keep the German Ö-sound, I replaced it with 'OE' instead of going with the more common GORMAN. Now I always had to spell it out to people: "G as in GNAW, O as in PEOPLE, E as in GIVE, R as in FORECASTLE, M as the first M in MNEMONIC, A as in BREAD, and N as in AUTUMN. My first name is PETER: P as in PSALM, E as in ... You know how to spell that one? Oh, good!"

 

Those bronze plaques cost me almost as much to obtain as the qualifications so boastingly mentioned on them, so when I dismantled my office in Canberra, I took them along as a reminder of another life before eventually fastening them to the wall of my retirement home at "Riverbend".

Being of advanced age, it was hard enough keeping my own balance let alone that of other people, and so I didn't expect nor did I want to do any more accounting work in my retirement. That was until that memorable day when a little old Chinese lady knocked on the door.

It took me quite some time to disabuse her of her discombobulation — there you have it, two rarely-used words squeezed into one sentence! — that the also mentioned "Dip.Ac." stood for "Diploma in Acupuncture".

(Actually, she wasn't all that old, and I almost asked her to take her clothes off! I've left the plaques on the wall in case she comes back.)

 

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If you want to know who of your family and friends went where and came back when.

 

 

If you want to know who of your family and friends went where and came back when, simply go to www.naa.gov.au. Click on "RecordSearch", then on "Passenger arrivals", and type in the "Family Name", and select from the displayed search results - which you can enlarge to 200 per page - by clicking on the displayed icon in the "Digital copy" column.

There's just one limitation: your family member or friend must've travelled BEFORE 1973 because, for privacy reasons, later Incoming Passenger Cards are not yet available in the public domain.

(If your family or friends weren't deported here for stealing a loaf of bread but came, like me, as free settlers, you can also find their original migration documents. Stay on "Basic search" and type in as keyword their family name and, if known, the year of their arrival. If the documents are readily available, click on the icon displayed in the "Digitised item" column. If not, click on the "Item title" and, in the next window that opens up, on "Request copy" and follow the instructions.)

 

 

I've just found my best friend's Incoming Passenger Card when on the 9th of October 1972 he flew down from New Guinea, where we both had lived, to Brisbane, from where he took the XPT to see me in Sydney.

 

 

After several years in New Guinea, I had just accepted a big promotion to Group Financial Controller in the head office of the company whose Bougainville contract I had helped to kick off. My mate Noel had come to Sydney to ask me to join him on an island-hopping adventure through the Indonesian archipelago. After all the hard work on Bougainville, I was due for a break and could easily have asked for a couple of months' leave but, as always, put my career first, and so Noel left without me.

Sydney never agreed with me, and I was soon back in the islands, that time in the British Solomon Islands Protectorate. More than fifty years later, my career no longer counts for anything whereas two months hopping from island to island would still be a treasured memory today.

Regrets, I've had a few ...

 

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