AM I A BOGAN?

A friend of a friend, an Aussie, remarked the other day that some people considered it "bogan" to like Pink Floyd, which got me to thinking...

Here was me imagining the bogan concept to be the Australian equivalent of the American redneck, the Jerry Springer Show fodder on which US TV audiences seemed to gorge as readily as they do their buckets of KFC or multiple Big Macs. 

Did I have it wrong? I mean, I don't like Pink Floyd - I love Pink Floyd.

This required some introspective scrutiny and perhaps a little research on the topic.

Variously, google, wikipedia and the urban dictionary paint a pretty clear picture of boganism which can be summarised as follows:

The typical bogan lifestyle involves wanton promiscuity and copious alcohol intake with scant regard for birth control, typically loud aggressive females, quieter but no less aggressive males who regard a typical breeding season as any Friday night that comes along...

They are regarded to be of low social status, an uncouth, unsophisticated working class, singlet wearing, oftentimes mullet or mohawk coiffured subculture renowned for its hideous bad taste. Old model, muscle Holdens or Fords will be parked in the cluttered driveways while their owners swill beer, talking footy, showing off their most recent home-done tattoos while Cold Chisel, AC/DC, Midnight Oil, Rose Tattoo or any other harder form of classic rock is pounding away in the background.

So far I'm thinking I haven't quite acquired the credentials for boganism as far as the modern understanding is concerned.

But there's a catch - as with the white-trash Zef subculture in South Africa, championed by that potty-mouthed duo going by the name of Die Antwoord (hoozit, Yolandi,)] boganism has ironically achieved an "in" status - it's actually cool to aspire to the style...if you're under 30. If you're older, you flip and look down your noses at them.

Yes, it appears, only stuck-up toffee-nosed snobs are the ones who use the term to derogatorily describe a person supposedly less cultured than themselves, which, by default would make the cultured snobs potentially less cool than the bogans. Does this make any sense to you?

Bear with...

What had to happen here, I mused, was a bogan checklist had to be transcribed wherein I would enter the notations to resolve this dilemma once and for all. I mean, Pink Floyd is at worst psychedelic rock and at best prog rock but it's never been your typical chug-chug, leather jacket and anti-establishment hard rock with anarchic mantras issuing forth (except perhaps momentarily on Another Brick In The Wall Part II - but that was more of an anthem and it was lifted from the autobiographical angst of Roger Waters' troubled childhood.) Syd Barrett and the lads were nowhere near Rose Tattoo, Cold Chisel or even Midnight Oil...but I digress...

1. Dress code: stubbies shorts, singlets, Ugg boots, monkey hoodies, thongs (flip-flops not anal-floss) and home-done tattoos - nope, not even close with the exception of a single, small tattoo up on my right shoulder that I did design but then again, I earned my living as a commercial illustrator for a while in South Africa and the design was rendered by a professional studio in Cape Town so I think that cancels out the home done tat aspect, don't you.

2. Coiffure: mullet, mohawk, long strange looking goatees, single-stranded pony tail, mutton chop whiskers, skinhead - nope again. I have the goatee but it's always trimmed to a No 1 in a kinda designer-stubble arrangement....my hairstyle - traditional shortish with a modicum of product tickled through it - far too metrosexual to be bogan, I'd wager.

3. Mode of transport: Holden or Ford - old model muscle car (in constant state of upgrade and/or modification,) souped up ute - nope. Sad old suburban Subaru Outback station-wagon with auto transmission - about as anti-bogan as you can get, I think.

4. Diet: junk food, predominantly burgers, fries, fizzy drinks, copious quantities of alcohol, particularly beer - oh and cigarettes, often hand-rolled. There may be the occasional spliff involved here somewhere as well - I'm a vegetarian, I don't touch alcohol but do relish a good non-alcoholic beer (ow, I think I got clipped on the back of the head by a passing bogan who heard me using good and non-alcoholic in the same sentence...) and cigarettes - nah, not since 1983. Doob? A bit while growing up but like Bill Clinton - I never inhaled....pfffffttttt...

5. Musical preferences: (As previously noted) classic rock bands from the 70's onward, listen to classic rock stations on the radio and go mental for AC/DC, Rose Tattoo, Cold Chisel, Midnight Oil, Guns 'n Roses and on and on (and, I'm told, Pink Floyd) - now this is where I do, in fact, start devolving into the realm of the bogan as I have a particular fondness for this genre of music into which I would not specifically place The Floyd, however, if this means the bogan virus is in my blood then it's been there for a very long time - over 40 years, in fact, and it hasn't mutated into an all-consuming pathogen that has driven me to meat-eating, smoking, drinking, muscle-cars, dodgy hairdos, a penchant for home-inked tats or the desire to attend family reunions to pick up chicks...

6. Sporting code preferences: footy period - oh and cricket - meh, not me really. I know the story about the argument over what ballgame would win favour on some colonial cricket pitch way back in the Aussie day when they decided after many hours of dispute to combine them all - rugby, soccer, Gaelic football, netball, lacrosse while wearing their wives' shirts and shorts and this strange pastime eventually "evolved" into Aussie Rules Football which holds sway until this very day for reasons that may become known to me over time. But as a buff old traditionalist, I still prefer that pinnacle of ballgames, Rugby Union followed by soccer. Cricket - it's okay but ever since Hansie put the kibosh on the thing with the match-fixing shenanigans, I don't know if you can trust the process any longer. And T20 - that's more about bums in seats and cash in the bank than it is about cricket but hey, what do I know

Conclusion:

So if Pink Floyd fandom or even worship renders me bogan then I think there might be hope for this subculture yet - there must be bogans in charge of some of the radio stations in fair Adelaide such as Classic Triple M, which in and of itself is a very good reason to hang in this wonderful city.

I'll bet you this - nary a Justin Bieber tune has ever aired itself on the stereo of a bogan muscle machine in a tinny-littered driveway and if that remains a trend in the average boganvilla then I think I could happily be labeled a bogan albeit a very, very watered down version of the breed. 

See ya!

Australian Quirks Part II

It's a logical thing to comprehend that at a purely intellectual level one mustn't calculate the Rand AU$ exchange rate in one's head every time you reach for a handful of mushrooms or avocados, packs of butter, litres of milk, tinned goods, toilet paper and, of course, if you're of that persuasion (as most Adelafricans undoubtedly are) meat and grog. In a word - essentials. 
My wife, who's been here for a year already and is earning at some level in the local currency has long since forgotten about the abject horror of this phenomenon: going pale and cold when realising what you'd pay for this or that item in South Africa and hesitating with your hand poised over the supermarket trolley while you play the Adel-newbie mindgame of Is This Essential?
And as illogical as it may be to try and make the comparison, being a newbie, I still do it, especially as I'm not earning local disposable income yet and am effectively paying for stuff with my hard earned South African Rands where the R5 you'd hand out to a car-guard (remember them? The only creatures on the planet, other than cockroaches that are likely to survive a nuclear armageddon...) is just 50c here and doesn't feature as actual money. The fact that the coinage here covers a face value of R20 puts it in perspective - a perspective I am still struggling with when one pays the equivalent of R50 for a cup of coffee or R80 for a bowl of chips...
Yes, I know you can't really do that but I still do. Sorry. I try not to but - well...erm...ja, you know the story - you've all been through it.

Everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - is more expensive here if you work it on the direct comparison basis (and yes, I heard you the first time - I know you can't really do that...) - that is with the exception of one thing that (it would appear) Australians never actually buy - that's right, non-alcoholic beer! 
Oh, and bank charges - I love the bank charges here - far from the usurious  theft that is perpetrated in South Africa. 
And here's the thing - for a society that's so well behaved (for the most part), sticking to speed limits, honouring honesty box type trading (I love that too), paying their fines, not bribing cops - they are very diligent at avoiding the drink-driving phenomenon and cautiously monitor their intake if they know they'll need to drive afterwards.
Which would make you think they'd be all for lighter and even non-alcoholic beers... I personally stopped drinking alcohol way back in 2001 and it was a mission to get non-alcoholic beers back then, very hard indeed. The ethos toward beer without alcohol was much like a business exec's attitude toward their morning java-fix - if it was decaffeinated, what was the point? 
But things have changed since the days of the insipid, watery tasting piddle they tried to pass off as alcohol-free beer - there are awesome 0% beers around nowadays that are wholesome, full-bodied and actually taste like beer and one of them, Birell is made right here in Adelaide by the only Australian owned brewery left in the country, Coopers.
And, even using the direct exchange comparison, it's still cheaper by the litre than any non-alcoholic, or "unleaded" beers we got back in South Africa, all of which, it must be said, were imported.
So why don't they sell it in bottle shops? 
Why don't they sell it in bars? Why don't they sell it in restaurants? 
Why only in the supermarkets or Dan Murphy outlets exclusively? 
It makes no sense. Well, not to me at least.
Unless the only reason for which people think beer was put on the planet was for us to get drunk every time we partook of it and/or be over the legal limit...Surely not? 
Don't people like beer for the taste of it alone?
I know I do. 
I mean, hey - they even got Charlie Sheen on the stuff for pete's sake - and he's got tiger blood! 
But then again, I don't eat meat either so I guess I'm not a real South African or Aussie to begin with. 
Yet even in our anarchic, sort of first-world/third-world hybridised society that is South Africa, most bars had Becks Blue or Cobra zero or Bavaria Malt - there was usually an option but not here.
It amazes me.
When one politely enquires of the beerista (or whatever one calls the accredited retail specialist at the bottle shop or pub) if they might stock any non-alcoholic beers, they regard you as if you've just appeared from a shimmering ovoid interstellar craft and are surely not of this galaxy or perhaps even this universe. 
There is, however, certainly one constant in this shared universe (unless it's Dan Murphy's) the answer to that question is always - no.
What's not articulated vocally perhaps is the: what good is beer without alcohol, mate? 
And so it goes...
As mentioned: in a society where one can encounter a scenario with two old tannies armed with hand-held clicker counters at a local fair, who are monitoring the number of people in the alcohol-serving zone ensuring that at no time would that number exceed 200, you'd think they'd give a little more mileage to a decent, Adelaidian home-brewed beverage that offers a wonderful option to beer drinkers who'd like to have more than perhaps just one....You would think...
Then again, if that's all I've got to worry about, I guess it's not such a bad deal. 
There's a helluva lot to be thankful for and believe me, I am. 
Perspective is always a great leveller of playing fields.
Cheers! 

ON OUR PERCEPTION OF WOMEN

It isn't just the portrayal of women as figures for physical objectification: the whole western cultural phenomenon (certainly where it's progressed/regressed to) is based on essentially superficial validation. The lure of the Hollywood filmstar paradigm and the generally flawed male ideal of acceptable/beautiful female body types certainly perpetuates this.

I love erotica (one man's erotica is another man's pornography) - sensual art if you will - but there is always an energy imbued or conveyed in any image that discerns its essence - that is to say - a creation which can be viewed as collaborative from the perspective of the photographer/artist and the model on an equal footing. In that sense it's not only equitable, it's empowering for both participants and, it has to be said, many women elect to follow such careers without selling out their gender.

Many, of course, don't.

Even with consensual adult collaboration, there can still be abuse on the part of one or other of the participants and, let's be frank, it's usually the man. It is in these instances that the exploitative nature of innate misogyny is evident.

And that's my biggest problem with any of this - exploitation and the perpetuation throughout the world of this unbalanced and misogynistic perception of women, which is, in my view, what's fundamentally wrong with our species.

I do, however, take great solace from the reality that one of the reasons such behaviour is still embraced by so many men the world over, is simply because they feel threatened and are still labouring under the misapprehension that subjugation and physical might is where human empowerment lies when, in fact, they know at some subliminal level that women, the creators of new life, are those who harbour true power and that it's contained within. The tenuous male stranglehold on the planet is slowly but inexorably loosening.

it is evolving in the right direction I do believe albeit slowly - too slowly for my liking. So for women it must be excruciating.

And there is that single word I look to when viewing any relationship between people regardless of gender or circumstance - respect.

We need that in spades and it should be the innate nature of what we're about both through nature and nurture - I think the latter feeds the former even if it's over generations through soft inheritance, which I feel certainly has validity. And even if it doesn't - we should be teaching our sons to be respectful of women, all women, at all times.

Oh, and as an aside - if we were to eat less meat or none at all, I firmly believe our behaviour and consciousness would rapidly and collectively evolve to allow us to view others of our species as something more than just meat suits too - especially women...

Image credit © Jan Saudek "Beautifully Imperfects"

HOME, HAGGIS AND HONEYMOONS - A TASTE OF THINGS TO COME...

The story of our eventual arrival in Adelaide is a very long, bizarre and convoluted one. Suffice to say, it became so strange and, at times, beyond comprehension, that I was compelled to chronicle the events in a book, as yet incomplete, and with the working title, Home Haggis And Honeymoons...

Y'see, I knew that would pique your interest. 

What transpired beforehand, commencing in January and February of 2008, where Australia and more specifically my sister's house in Newcastle NSW and my aunt's place in Ipswich Qld, which were part of a two week visit in a broader six week itinerary that took in Easter Island and Tahiti, culminated in something entirely and inexplicably different.

The upshot of it all was that we never actually reached Easter Island or the Tahitian atoll of Mo'orea where our dream wedding was to take place - this all bought and paid for in advance - no, we ended up stranded in Sydney instead on that most patriotic of occasions, Australia Day. Which, in and of itself, is a short story worth telling.

No matter what we tried to do and how we tried to do it, the universe would drop a very solid portcullis in our pathway and after many attempts at either removing or charging through the obstacle, we grudgingly and oftentimes very emotionally, elected to divert around the impediment and stumble through the doorways that did deign to open up for us.

These impediments, many of them, would manifest throughout the trip items such as botched visas (or lack thereof, courtesy of an inept Joburg Travel Agency) or luggage being sent to a city other than the one we arrived in, wallets being lost in Australia's busiest city on its busiest night then found again and many less significant but no less disruptive or aberrant events.

We felt like pawns being moved against our will on some gigantic chess board where each move contradicted the planned strategy we had already mapped out and try as we did to influence the hand that was poised to pick us up and deposit us on an altogether unfamiliar square, this proved futile. We began to simply accept our fate, stopped fighting the inexorably spinning wheels of the universe and let ourselves drop into the slipstream of wherever the hell that would lead us. Acceptance. Acquiescence. But always the curiosity of why...

I know Rabbie Burns, Scotland's poet laureate would simply say in a sage brogue, "The best laid plans o' mice and men gang aft aglay..." but come on, Robert - what the fuck! 

And coupled to the insanity of recreating an entirely new trip that didn't include fascinatingly mysterious spiritual workshops on Easter Island or traditional island wedding ceremonies on an idyllic coral atoll in the Pacific, we had to deal with the massive time lag between Oz and South Africa just trying to get some semblance of recompense or commitment from our hopeless and, it would eventually transpire, devious, travel agent. We were stuck in Australia. The rest of the trip was in the bin so we'd make the most of it and just deal with the fallout when we got back to Jozi.

And thus, instead of azure oceans surrounding us 'neath swaying palms looking out across an endless horizon over little umbrella-bedecked cocktails, we found ourselves in a camper van (or RV for the more abbreviatedly inclined) in the middle of the Simpson Desert just outside Alice Springs. 

....where, it has to be mentioned, we became intimately acquainted with feral critturs whose reputation precedes them in the great red landmass - no, not wild camels - but flies, millions of the little bastards that would relentlessly pester us whenever we'd venture forth from the RV to explore some exotic location or other.

Ironically, prior to this, we'd been enormously amused, while gazing from the cabin of the Merc Vito, at a stream of tourists emerging from a tour bus, all replete with full-face fly nets like an envoy of some weird beekeeping cult...Apiarists Anonymous? Oh how we laughed at them.

An hour later while sprinting back down the dry river bed at Simpson Gap, windmilling our hands over our heads to beat off the kamikaze fly swarms, oh how we understood them...

As luck would have it, a little while later on the trip, while traversing the West McDonnell Ranges, we came upon some locals who were to introduce us to the that most wondrous of unguents, Desert Dwellers fly repellant, which, we soon found out created some kind of X-Men type mutant energy barrier around you which caused the flies to drop into an attack formation buzz toward you with malign intent then swerve away at the last moment when the Desert Dwellers force field made its presence known. To this day we still have tubs of the stuff from that trip. Although, it has to be said, the city flies are much fewer and further between thank goodness.

I'll save the rest of the yarn for the book, suffice to say we had a magical time driving round the Outback, exploring, getting quietly and spectacularly married in the shadow of Uluru but there was one occasion when the whole trip had just got to me and I spat my dummy while railing at the skies, yelling: "Just give me one, unambiguous sign that what we are doing is okay and we are meant to be here then I'll shut up and accept it all - no more questions asked!"

That was when we saw the sign to Honeymoon Gap, turned onto that road in the middle of the Australian wilderness and saw a huge white painted name on the tarred road surface. It simply said "PAUL."

True to my celestial promise, I made no more profane utterances.

It's pretty hard to argue with that especially when your whole body is awash with goosebumps...

We have photographs of me in the Honeymoon Gap road with this painted graffito in the foreground.

For the rest, I guess I'll just have to finish the darn book...