Jasper Schultz

I have been single for a long time. My whole life, in fact. A combination of coming out of the closet late, embarking on a career that seriously hindered my ability to date (a career that is thankfully over), and just being a shy, nervous twit are all contributing factors to this.

I bring up my singledom because I feel my twenty-eight year habit of observing relationships, as opposed to participating in them, has given me extensive insight into their machinations. And seeing as this insight has come at the price of my emotional celibacy (not to mention physical, for great vast you-don’t-even-want-to-know-how-long stretches of time), it would be wasteful if I didn’t pass the wisdom on.

And I want to pass it on now because it has been a very tumultuous time for relationships these past few months in the Jasperverse. I’ve known more than a few couples who have broken up. Some couples have come dangerously close to breaking up. Some couples really should have broken up, but haven’t (and a couple of these I just wish would already). And some couples, while not ever actually approaching a break-up phase, seem to have made it their primary objective to make each other as miserable as possible.

And where does this leave me? With miserable friends. And, to a lesser extent, a miserable me; because like a hungry person watching someone else complain about all the food they have, I get to watch a stunning array of douchebags treat their partners like shit.

So, with this in mind, I present:

An Open Letter of Advice to All Girlfriends/Boyfriends, From a Spectator

Your partner: Love them, or don’t. Stop faffing about in the middle.

For a start, stop bickering all the damn time. I am sick to death of people having needless arguments and fights. You’re supposed to be in love, aren’t you? Am I missing something? Because here you are, fighting over something so insignificant it would actually be funny, were it not so frightening to consider what got you into the fight in the first place. And don’t bother with the “we fight because we love each other – it’s couples who don’t fight that lack real passion and love” chestnut. I call bullshit. Couples who are passionate and in love fight about things that matter – things that can make or break a future. Getting pissy over, say, what this weekend’s plans are, and whether or not you feature in them enough, is not evidence of passion. It is evidence of being childish.

Speaking of things that don’t matter – why is it so important to you what your partner spends their disposable income on? Unless you’re actually living together and they are the sole breadwinner, it technically isn’t your business. They should be able to buy as many pairs of Jimmy Choos as they can afford. Or whatever videogame tickles their fancy. They earned the cash – provided they aren’t spending it on something that physically endangers themselves or others; they should be able to spend it as they wish. You should really just back off. Stop bleating about what is and isn’t a “waste of money” – you sound old and ridiculous.

In fact, just stop bleating in general. Haven’t you been told before to stop trying to “change” your partner? Actually, you haven’t. The popular phrase is “you never can change your partner” – which is sort of like a loophole. The unseen, unwritten, unspoken part of that is “you never can change your partner…so try to do it to your heart’s content, as there are no consequences!”  Well, this is just not true. You CAN change them. You can whine, threaten, bribe, cajole, browbeat or just plain force your way to success in this field. The question is, why would you want to? “Changing” your partner usually means making them do something they don’t want to do, or stopping them from doing something they enjoy. Are you okay with this? Let’s recap – this is the person you are in love with; the person you have, for now at least, chosen over all others.  NOW you’re saying there are provisos? I’m sorry, but you were supposed to go through that checklist long ago. You had all the time in the world to decide they weren’t tall enough, old enough, or didn’t share enough of the same tastes – you can’t go tacking on conditions now.

Besides, do you really want to force the person you love into something they aren’t happy with? And do you really want to be the kind of person who forces someone else into something they aren’t happy with? Is getting your way really worth sacrificing their happiness and your humanity?

And there’s the little matter of basic power balance. The number of times I’ve heard a partnered person say they “aren’t allowed” to do something actually wigs. me. out. We will holler all up and down the place about basic human rights, and then go home and tell our partner that they are NOT ALLOWED to, say, go fishing or shopping or out with their friends? Oy. Maybe this will ensure that I will stay single for a lot longer, but if a boyfriend of mine tried to tell me I “wasn’t allowed” to do something, he would quickly find a red mark on his forehead roughly the same size and shape of whatever object it was I last held in my hand. You want someone to boss around? Hire someone. Or have a child. Or go to Subway and order a particularly fussy sandwich. Your boyfriend/girlfriend is your partner, aka your other half, aka an equal, not a subordinate.

I don’t know why relationships are taken for granted. Maybe you’re a serial dater. Maybe you’ve had the same partner since high school. Maybe you have never had a problem getting into a relationship. If so, maybe you don’t realise how lucky you are. But let me tell you something true – you are lucky. Incredibly lucky. You have someone to be with. Someone to care for you when you need it, to love you when you want it, to give you strength when you don’t have it, and to surprise you when you least expect it.

If you aren’t treating this as the wondrous gift it so surely is, then you’re a fool and you don’t deserve any of it. You chose them, they chose you. Behave like your choices are worth something.

And if what you currently have isn’t what you want? Then get out. Get out now. You are not doing anyone any favours by lying to yourself. You’re only going to cause more pain for you, for them, and for the people around you who are right now being forced to watch a train wreck in slow motion.

Love them, or don’t.

A few weeks ago the Australian Commercial Radio Awards were held. A person with a wankerish streak would call it “radio’s night of nights”. I have a wankerish streak, so that’s what I’m calling it.

It was radio’s night of nights!

All the radio stars hoping to win a coveted trophy attended, dressed for success; and all the provincial radio employees hoping to meet a metropolitan program director and be given a better job also attended, dressed for… a B&S ball (provincial radio = provincial pay packet and a provincial town – formal wear is hard to come by).

Despite me being neither of these things (and not even nominated for an award, a fact I have clearly made my peace with as evidenced by the mentioning of it not two paragraphs in), I also attended. I had many friends who were nominated for awards (but not me, not that I mind no that’s not a facial tic why do you ask?), and it’s always a fun night out.

A night like this is the one time a year when I will actually wear a suit. Now, I’m not fond of suits. Women say all men look good in suits, I call bullshit on that. Skinny men with no shoulders look good in suits, all squared out and smooth. Men with giant guts look good in suits, proportioned out by the boxy jacket. Men who can afford a tailor look good in suits, as they accentuate the hunky and cover the chunky.

I, meanwhile, have a decent set of shoulders, but no other discernible shape, and a disposable income well below tailor-affording status. So when I wear a suit, I look like:

- a pinstripe brick. 
- a refrigerator with lapels.
- the TARDIS (well, if the suit is blue).

Suffice it to say the idea of wearing a suit does NOT make me comfortable.

Unsurprisingly, I was not the only person in our office attending the awards feeling uncomfortable about the way they were going to look that night – there were four of us. (I was, however, the only person still bitter about not being nominated. But I’m totally over that now, obviously. Did the room just start spinning?) The four of us decided we would tackle the problem head on, and do the only thing that made sense:

We decided to do a crazy, potentially life threatening detox.

The detox was this: ten days spent living on nothing but a concoction of maple syrup, lemon juice, cayenne pepper and water. What follows is a journal I kept of my time on this detox, known as ‘The Master Cleanse’:

Day One

7:50am. I have acquired all the ingredients to start. All I have to do is squeeze the lemons, and measure out the maple syrup and cayenne pepper into my water bottle.

7:52am. Fuck this, I’m going to McDonalds for a coffee.

The End.

As I hurtle frighteningly closer to my 29th birthday, I sometimes fear that I may be getting “old”. I don’t know at what point (if there is one) a person suddenly falls out of touch with the youth demographic and becomes a doddering old twit, but it’s probably coming. And the worst part is I won’t know when it does happen – because that’s kind of the point. I worry about this. It keeps me awake at night.

This week, however, I slept like a little baby – safe in the knowledge that no matter how old and daggy I may or may not have become; I’m nowhere near as bad as the marketing department at Kraft.

A couple of months ago, Kraft launched a new version of the seminal Australian product, Vegemite. It’s nothing more than Vegemite mixed with cream cheese – a more convenient way of eating the Vegemite/cheese combo that Australians have been doing for gadonks. (As someone who has always considered Vegemite and cheese to be a waste of good Vegemite and mediocre cheese, I was pleasantly surprised by the flavour – but in my immediate social circle I appear to be the only one, so I’ll say no more about it.)

The thing is, this new variation didn’t have a name. Kraft decided it was up to the people of Australia to name the bastard child of its flagship product. And so the Vegemite: Name Me! promotion began.

As I understand it, the promotion received over 40,000 entries from people eager to be a part of the introduction of the new, “other” Vegemite. And rightly so – history was being made! This was the first time in history that the original formula for Vegemite had been tampered with since…well, since the very first day it was invented, back in 1922 when brewery chairman Fred Walker asked food technologist Cyril P. Callister to “do something that pasty crap we keep chucking out”.

So, brand new Vegemite. And this week, it was finally launched, with its new official name. Out of 40,000 entries, they decided on:

Vegemite: iSnack 2.0.

I am not the first to say it, but nevertheless: I call bullshit.

There is absolutely no way that that was one of the competition entries. Everything about that name positively reeks of the hive-mind of a department of marketing consultants: middle-aged men with greying faux-hawks, Wayne Cooper shirts worn a size too small and an unearned sense of entitlement. In between their already overloaded schedule of ordering “really strong” short blacks (but never actually drinking them), glancing smugly around the room for a reaction every time they say the word “fuck” out loud, and furiously grabbing at their own cocks, they have attempted to tap into the beating heart of youth culture – or, as they call it, the “demo”. And iSnack 2.0 is the fruit of their labour.

Hilariously, news outlets around the country are reporting the new name complete with explanation as to its origin: The move is a bid by the food conglomerate to align the new product with a younger market — and the “cool” credentials of Apple’s iPod and iPhone. Oh? Is THAT where they came up with it? Ingenious! But does that mean one in every eighty jars of Vegemite iSnack 2.0 may spontaneously explode in my face?

I really hope Kraft find some modicum of success with the product itself – but I also hope that they get enough backlash from the Vegemite buying public to change that cringe-worthy name. So whether you genuinely enjoy Vegemite on your toast in the morning; or if you just pretend you like it to screw with foreigners’ heads (and who among us hasn’t told an unsuspecting German tourist that Vegemite is most commonly used as cake frosting?) – stand up and be heard.

At least Kraft succeeded in aligning themselves with one phrase frequently used in the “youth demographic” vernacular: Epic Fail.

I had one of the most terrifying experiences of my life on Tuesday night when my car ‘aquaplaned’ and went sideways.

I was driving home from Mr. Sparkle’s surprise birthday party (where I totally missed the cue to yell “SURPRISE!” – All I could do was join in at the end with a weird, vowel-heavy “AAAIIIIIIZE!” – my ONE chance to feel like I was finally in the loop of something and I blew it). It had been raining all evening; which combined with the dust storm that had hung in the air all day to give the landscape a sludgy, pasty brown look. The entire city looked like someone had just finished eating Neapolitan ice cream off it. The car was murky and wet, the trees were murky and wet, the buildings were murky and wet, the road was murky and wet…

…and Olympic swimming pool sized channel of water taking up 70% of the road was also murky and wet.

I didn’t spot it until I was nearly on top of it, and by then it was too late. The tyres hit the water, completely failed to hit the bitumen, and suddenly my car was Jesus.

I need to point out at this juncture that I have forgotten my own tax file number countless times. I have missed the birthday of every family member so far this year. I have lost so many pairs of sunglasses by absent-mindedly leaving them wherever I put them down that the CEO of Sunglass Hut considers me a threat to his revenue stream…

…and yet? The moment the Corolla hit the water I suddenly remembered that I was not supposed to brake. My brain, which until this point seemed incapable of nothing but retaining actor’s names, useless trivia and obscure rules of grammar; finally brought something useful to the table and threw up a life-saving defensive driving technique. 

So I didn’t brake. I tried to “steer into” the slide (I have no idea what this means, I just remember it being a conscious thought) and hoped for the best.

The fact that my innards are not now smeared across the Nissan Tiida that was to my immediate right at the time should indicate that I got what I hoped for. My car did turn ninety degrees, but kept moving forward in its own lane, and when it finally hit bitumen again I was able to straighten up (after a violent swerve into the next lane, which was thankfully empty).

In the middle of the slide, when I was at the most helpless, I was almost convinced that I was going to hit something and be killed. I was also horrified that I might hit someone else, furious that I didn’t spot the water patch sooner, and disappointed that my last meal would be a ‘Strawberry Jubilee’ from the Pancake Parlour. It was one of the most terrifying moments of my life.

I hope you never experience the horror of aquaplaning; which is why I’m starting a campaign against it.

My first step? The abolishment of the name “aquaplaning”. It sounds like a fun, sporty activity! Like something you could do if you attached wings to a jetski. And to me, attaching wings to a jetski is totally something I’d want to do. We can’t have people attempting to aquaplane because they think it’s something cool.

But what to call it instead? I initially went with “death-slide” – but that sounds more like a lucrative film franchise starring Jason Statham than a possibly-fatal automobile mishap. Then I came up with “splash-coasting”, but that sounds like one of the challenges on Wipeout.

I realised I needed a name that was frightening, without being thrilling. Shocking, but not titillating. Scary AND offputting, with no possible way of sounding appealing. And that’s when it hit me:

Car Herpes.

No one wants that, right? Good! Drive carefully in the rain, and watch for puddles – or you’ll get Car Herpes!

Last weekend, my housemate Wolverine decided to set a challenge for all members of The Ponderosa: No swearing. For the entire weekend. From Friday night until Monday morning, Wolverine, Jean-Paul and myself were to be a clean-mouthed household.

I feel I am to blame for this, even though it was Wolverine’s suggestion. She had been watching me repeatedly fail a certain section of Batman: Arkham Asylum; and every time, I would let fly with a torrent of ferocious profanity at the television/game controller/my ungainly thumbs. I was quite obnoxiously foul. If the first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan could be artistically re-interpreted as a free-form sonnet, it would sound vaguely like I did at the time. I was making threats and exclamatory statements, the likes of which would make even Kyle Sandilands blush. And it was in the middle of one of these offensively bleep-worthy sprays that Wolverine had her epiphany.

So, no swearing. For 60 hours.

To say this challenge was difficult would be an extreme understatement. The challenge started at 7:30pm, and I had already fallen off the wagon by 7:37pm. I tried to cover it, but I don’t think “I was going to say ‘GAAAH, WHAT A CONT-ROLLER BASED ERROR!’” was convincing at all.

Eventually, though, we got the hang of it. The trick is to find satisfying substitutions. In case you’re planning on cutting down on your own potty mouth, here is a handy guide:

JASPER’S EASY HOW-TO OF “CLAYTON’S” SWEARING SUBSTITUTIONS:

1) Food/Drink
The options are endless! For a start, inspiration is easy – just fling open the fridge. Secondly, if you pick a food that is already considered disgusting by the wider population, then half the work is done. Calling someone Cottage Cheese! is both insulting AND G rated. Certain spirit names work well: Chivas Regal! has a classy undertone, and is spectacularly handy for covering up when you’ve accidentally started to say ’shit’. And, if you DO want to resort to an old sound-alike, then Pickle Head! should be your go-to phrase.

2) Exotic Locales
This one should is an obvious choice, as you can sound and feel like you’re swearing in a foreign tongue. Zanzibar! was a particular favourite of mine. I have no idea where it is, but you know where I was after yelling it out loud several times? In a sea of calm. Antananarivo! is another solid pick – as the capital of Madagascar, I am appalled that this hilarious name didn’t end up as a gag in either of the Madagascar movies. The bonus of this word as substitute profanity is that it can be extended as required to match your level of fury: ANTANANANANANANANANANANANARIVO!! for those particularly hard moments. And you can’t go past a silent ‘j’ – Reykjavik! is not only a nice, sharp edged word that you can really spit out; but when said at someone it sounds like an entire nasty phrase, like you’re questioning the size and/or effectiveness of their genitalia.

3) Atari 2600 Game Titles
I only discovered this one towards the end of the weekend, but I really wish it had been earlier. When it comes to uniqueness, nostalgia and just base satisfaction, you really can’t beat some old school Atari. Frogger! is both cute AND a sound-alike to a much more common profanity – you can shorten it to Frogging or even Frog if you’re desperate. Galaxian! has that exotic feel AND sounds like an adjective, so if you feel like stepping it up a notch you can try adding it to other substitutes (is there a comeback to being called a Galaxian Cottage Cheese? I think not). But nothing comes close to satisfaction that I felt from screaming ‘oh, PITFALL!‘, and I’m not even sure why. Try it right now, though, and I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

See?

Now, in the interest of covering my own biscuit, I am going to include a disclaimer, on the off chance you Frog this up, and start screaming capitals of African countries at me:

This is not a 100% guaranteed substitute for swearing.

If you are frequently potty of mouth or fiery of tongue, this will not satisfy you completely. It will take the edge off, but you may find yourself slightly…pent up. On no less than two occasions on the weekend, I was asked by close friends what the Klax was my problem, because I was behaving like quite the Burkina Faso. It eventually dawned on me that I was sitting on a little ball of rage. Normally my frequent use of foul language would double as a pressure release valve, but without it I was operating on a higher level of ferocity than normal. Now, I have read How To Win Friends and Influence People, and nowhere in that book is there a chapter on being a bitey, aggressive, belligerent jackass.

Therefore, I will be reverting back to my regular, profanity-laced ways. Because apparently I have two choices: I can swear, and offend old and/or conservative people; or I can not swear, and offend my friends instead.

Sorry, old/conservative people, you’re shit out of fucking luck.

Recent news reports of “exploding” iPhones have got me a mite concerned. Because quite frankly, my iPhone is temperamental enough.

I’m a firm believer in the idea that electronic gadgets have personalities of their own. How else would you explain my vindictive clock radio? I’m serious. As  I am not a still sleeper, every now and then, in the dead of night, some kind of frenetic jerk of my arm will send a pillow careening (can pillows careen?) into the bedside table, which will knock everything on it to the ground. The clock radio, the lamp, my watch, an Ayn Rand novel (okay, that last one is a lie – I just wanted to look cultured) – all sent clattering into the wall, and then into a heap on the floor.

Every time this happens, without fail, the ricocheting of the clock radio against wall, lamp, watch, literary classic (okay, no) and floor will mysteriously press just the right sequence of buttons to set an alarm to go off offensively loudly at some time between 3:30am and 5:30am, usually on an aggressive AM talkback station. This has happened more than once, and every time I reset the radio back the way it was. But it keeps happening. You can’t tell me this is just amazing coincidence every time.

It Is Aware, And It Is Angry.

There’s more. I once had a dvd player that flatly refused to play the movie Deep Blue Sea. It would play every other movie I owned, and the dvd itself worked in everyone else’s dvd players – but my particular machine was opposed, on principle, to playing that movie. (And fair enough too, it was fairly rubbish. But dammit, if I wanted judgment from inanimate objects, I’d step on my bathroom scales more often.)

It Is Aware, And It Has Taste.

And then there’s my iPhone. My fundamentalist Christian iPhone. At least, I assume it’s a fundamentalist Christian iPhone. It loses reception at the first sign of me talking about something even remotely in the vicinity of sex; it pretty much flat-out refuses to work AT ALL on a Sunday, and sometimes it makes me feel guilty for no apparent reason at all.

It Is Aware, And It Condemns.

Now that I think about it, even my laptop has a personality – except in a new twist, it appears to be imbued with a duplicate of an already existing person’s personality, Dollhouse style. See, technically it does everything it is supposed to do fairly efficiently, and with a base level of competence – but there’s something just…off about it. Like it knows it’s on its last legs, and is clinging desperately to its remaining shred of relevance. And every now and then it does something unexpectedly bizarre. But not in an impressive way – it doesn’t actually ruin my day, it’s just a little off-putting, and leaves me scratching my head.

My laptop is Tyra Banks.

It Is Aware…Eh, But Only Just.

I play a lot of videogames. I would call myself a gamer. I would even, at a pinch, describe myself as a fairly competent gamer. I have enough basic skill to be able to pick up any new game I come across fairly quickly. I am proud of my abilities in this arena.

At least I was. Until I met Stevivor.

That man has been my undoing. I hold him single-handedly responsible for the obliteration of my gaming self-esteem.

It started when I met Stevivor during a recent trip to Melbourne. We had known each other for a few years through various incarnations of blogs and whatnot – but this was our first face to face meeting. Through a previously agreed upon arrangement, I had a package of Pop Tarts to deliver to him. (The semantics of a Canberran purchasing an American breakfast in Brisbane and transporting it to Melbourne to deliver to an ex-Canadian are better left unfathomed.) As a pleasant surprise, Stevivor had a return gift for me: a copy of the Xbox 360 game “NHL 2K6″. An ice hockey game (sorry, it’s just a ‘hockey’ game. Apparently the Canadians don’t bother titting about with that ball-on-grass rubbish).

Now I love presents, and I love videogames, so I thought this was a purely benevolent gesture. Even more so when Stevivor described this game as “the easiest 1000 GamerScore points you’ll ever make”. How nice! 

Of course, in hindsight I realise that this evil bastard’s fruity, lilting Canadian accent disguised what must have been a malicious and mocking tone. Because this game is NOT the easiest 1000 GamerScore points I have ever made.

I have not, in fact, made any. This is the first time I have ever found a game impossible to conquer. And it IS impossible! I can get my team to get a hold of the puck okay, and I can look quite efficient hurtling from one end of the…rink? (I’m originally from Queensland, I know nothing about ice) to the other. I can sometimes even make a show of passing the puck from one player to the next (except for the frequent times when my highlighted player decides to pass it to a member of the opposing team) – but can I score a goal? No, I can not. And the only way I can prevent a goal from being scored by my opponent is when I let the A.I. control the goalie for me.

I have now played this game several times, and every time is exactly the same. I come out with nothing. No points, no unlocked achievements, no GS points. In fact, the last time I played, I swear I heard the normally authentic sounding commentator say something that sounded suspiciously like “No seriously, dude, just give it up and get a refund on this game. You suck so bad you’re embarrassing your mother.”

I could be the worst hockey player to ever exist. Or NHL 2K6 could be the worst game to ever exist. Or, (and this is much more likely) Stevivor could be the worst human being to ever exist: for introducing me to this utterly incomprehensible monstrosity of a sporting game.

I have come to the conclusion that hockey videogames (if not the actual game itself) is another one of those elaborate jokes Canadians play on the rest of the world. Like those excessively thick cuts of bacon. Or Bryan Adams.

So you win this time, Stephen – you foul, treacherous beast. But I’m buying you a cricket set for Christmas. THEN we’ll see.

Remember the big rule of Christmas Eve when you were a kid? NO sneaking out of bed in the middle of the night to try and catch Santa Claus in the act? Because if you do happen to see him, then you won’t get any presents?

That’s how I feel about the postman.

I leave the house in the morning, the letterbox is empty. I come home in the afternoon, there’s mail. That’s how it works. There is no process in between. At least, none that I care to know about. This is why I can not deal with seeing the postman in action. Because, like Santa, it ruins the magic of the whole experience.

I am more than happy to accept that I am the only person with this particular…well, ‘psychosis’ is such an ugly word – let’s just say ‘quirk’. I see it as being very similar to the old adage “if you like sausages, you don’t ever want to see how they’re made”. I like getting mail, and I don’t want to see how it gets into my letterbox.  If I see a random postman zipping along the footpath on his motorbike, that’s okay because it’s not near my house. If I happen to be home during the day, however, then I can’t venture out into my front yard at any time between 11am and 2pm, for fear of seeing him*. 

Sometimes I’ll forget, and I’ll venture outside at the wrong time, only to hear the familiar tinny whine of the postman’s motorbike. I won’t hesitate to run back inside and wait until he has gone. And I don’t just mean gone to the house next door, I mean up the road and around the corner. (What? I don’t want him to inadvertently look over his shoulder and see me! He’ll think I’m being rude!)

As you can see, I’m not mucking around with this.

So try to imagine the testicle-disintegrating horror I experienced the other day when I ducked home from work mid-morning to pick up some paperwork (or, more likely, my lunch). I parked the car in my U shaped driveway, nipped inside to pick up the documents (food), jumped back in my car, put my seatbelt on…

…and then the postman rolled himself up my driveway.

They say that in times of great distress, time seems to slow down. I’d go one further and say my entire life flashed before my eyes – but yes, I would also agree that there were a few seconds that seemed to stretch on forever. In those few seconds the postman made eye contact with me, and made some kind of “I have your mail” gesture as he reached for his bag. Which brings us to the precise moment at which I fucked everything up:

I nodded in response and rolled down my window.

I will have nightmares about that for the rest of my days. Dear God, I rolled down my window. I wasn’t thinking. I was blinded by panic. This, of course, gave the postman the green light to further shatter the wonderment of receiving mail. He smiled as he handed me the letters, before continuing on his merry way. Meanwhile I, having broken all laws of nature and decency, drove back to work a broken and quivering shell of a man. With mail I acquired by unnatural means.

So now the magic of the postal system has gone the way of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and the idea of Blizzard ever actually getting around to releasing Starcraft 2. Disillusion. Disbelief. Despair.

And for all this trauma? There wasn’t even a letter for me.

*On the off chance that there are any feminists reading, ready to jump down my throat for my use of the singular gendered terms ‘postman’ and ‘him’ – my postman IS a him. Deal with it. And for heaven’s sake, fix your hair – you’ll never land a husband looking like that.

Another prolonged absence – sorry! This time I was on holiday.

I hear you exclaim “How exciting, Jasper! Was it a travelling holiday? Did you visit faraway lands? Meet strange people whose customs are foreign to you? Marvel at the primitive cultures that differ so much from your own? Was it the exotic thrill of a lifetime?”

The answers to these questions, in order, are: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. No.

You see, I went to Toowoomba.

Toowoomba is known by many names. The Garden City, The Birthplace of Geoffrey Rush, T-Bar, or even The Volcano (because to get to it you have to drive up a mountain; but when you get to the top it’s a hole).

It’s also the only place I know of where time hasn’t only stood still, it has actually gone backwards.

Seriously, when it comes to time travel, it doesn’t get any more convenient than Toowoomba. You could faff about with Marty McFly’s DeLorian, the T.A.R.D.I.S., or even H.G. Wells’ sled-with-a-dangerous-looking-fan-attached; but you might struggle because a) they’re all fictional, and b) they generally end in disaster for one or more people. It’s much easier to just go to Brisbane, get in a regular car, and drive (at a regular speed) 119 kilometres west. Voila! It’s 1983.

Toowoomba is actually much bigger than its culture would suggest. It is a town of approximately 95,000 people; and yet it still operates like a tiny country town. It has about as much ethnic tolerance as an episode of Kingswood Country. Old people in Toowoomba will not even attempt to hide the fact that they are crossing the street to avoid a dark skinned person (which is why spray-tanning salons always go bankrupt in Toowoomba – they can’t get sustainable foot traffic). Many Asian restaurants in Toowoomba have deceptively non-Asian names, like Ocean Breeze, August Moon, or even Jonathan’s Cafe (for the record, Jonathan’s Cafe specialises in Indian curries. You’d never guess). I haven’t eaten in any of those places, but I’m guessing the spring rolls are called “snack tubes”.

Toowoomba also struggles to keep up with the times. The last time I was in Toowoomba, in May 2008, the third leading news story in the local bulletin was all about the current debate on whether or not to introduce Sunday trading. Something that has been a staple of the retail landscape since at least the early 1990s; still the topic of fiery discussion within the Toowoomba Chamber of Commerce.

And why is it the subject of debate? Why is it still necessary to spend every Friday afternoon pretending like it’s the apocalypse – stocking up on perishables and canned goods and toilet paper to ensure you can make it through the weekend? Because there’s some kind of Quaintness Preservation Society in Toowoomba that is afraid that Sunday trading will single-handedly eliminate the Olde Worlde Charme of the towne. And the Quaintness Preservation Society is made up of a bunch or hardnosed old bastards who have managed to keep Sunday trading – the apparent blight on baroque townships – at bay for the past twenty years. Not even Coles-Myer can break through their impenetrable, rustic shield.

Now obviously the name of the society is fake – I can’t remember the real one – but the reason behind this raging debate is real. I shit you not. And I don’t even know if the ban on Sunday trading still stands – this time around I had the good sense to go to Toowoomba mid-week. I’ve been living in the heady metropolis that is Canberra for four years, I need my shops OPEN, dammit.

And it’s at this moment you realise how bad the situation really is in Toowoomba. When someone who lives in Canberra – CANBERRA – says “Ugh, things are SO much better back home”, what hope is there?

PS: In the interest of fairness, and of not having a hit taken out on me by the one remaining friend I have in Toowoomba – if you do end up in The Volcano, and want to see a live gig, or just want a decent feed – go to Bon Amici. It’s run by the delightful Shannon Cook and her husband Cookie. (Logic dictates that his name is Cookie Cook? AND he cooks at Bon Amici! You can get cookies at Bon Amici, but I don’t know if the Cookie Cook cooks those cookies. He has cookies enabled on his computer, though. I’m going to try to convince them to move to Cooktown, purely for my own amusement.)

Twice now, I have been served my McDonalds drive-thru coffee by the most ridiculously attractive man I have ever seen in a poxy brown sun-visor.

For a lot of people, this would be a good thing. A good perve is considered, by the greater population, to be wonderful. Women can laze away hours staring at a buff, sweaty tradesman. Men get a gander at a spicy pair of running sticks poking out of a short skirt and are instantly uplifted – both in the trouser and the soul. Most people, on the whole, enjoy having a look.

I am not one of those people.

I don’t understand perving. It is basically window shopping, and I HATE window shopping. Being forced to observe the things you know you can’t have? That’s not fun, that’s self inflicted torture!

So when I am forced to look at, and interact with, a man so beautiful he doesn’t even need to grind the coffee beans (he just shoots them a furtive glance and they voluntarily disintegrate); I am not happy. There are several reasons for this:

1) I don’t like embarrassing myself. I try to avoid potentially humiliating situations wherever possible. But put me in front of someone whose pants I would rather weren’t there and I am sure to create one. I can’t help it – at the first sign of tingling, be it in my heart or my nethers, I become a textbook, sitcom-style bumbling fool. And I don’t need that first thing in the morning. I’m already buying a coffee because I can’t face the day on my own, let’s not make things worse.

2) I am responsible for the safe forward motion of approximately 1400kg of vehicle; which I am already compromising by simultaneously trying to juggle a hot beverage, AND there is a particularly sharp left turn to get out of this particular McDonalds, and so I’ve already got a lot on my mind. I don’t need the added distractions of point 1.

3) A man that beautiful should not be working in McDonalds. It is a waste of his considerable talent. He could make a much more lucrative income in other ways (I would suggest pornography, but I might have my own interests at heart there). He should be paid to just stand somewhere, improving the aesthetic of everything in his immediate vicinity. And then I should be told exactly where that somewhere is, so I can stay the hell away.

And 4) Fast food joint employees should never EVER look as attractive as the models who portray them in the commercials. I have no problem with life imitating art – life can imitate art as much as it wants. And then art can imitate life and the whole thing can spiral endlessly until we’re simply a parody of ourselves – that’s great.

But when life starts imitating advertising…I mean, have you seen cereal commercials lately? Do you really want to live in a world of annoyingly precocious children, mums with bad hairdos, and conspicuously absent fathers?

Oh wait. I just described my childhood.

Well, I’m sure that proves my point somehow.