I’ve always wondered what the difference is between a Tropical Cyclone, a Typhoon, a Hurricane, a Tornado and a Twister; so I checked my dictionary and here’s what I, honestly, got…

Tropical Cyclone: an area of low pressure with heavy rain and circular winds, up to 350 kilometres per hour, around a central area of about 30 kilometres in which the air is relatively calm.

Typhoon: a word, which originates from two Chinese words, meaning, ’Big’ and ‘Wind’. See Tropical Cyclone.

Hurricane: a strong wind of at least 120 kilometres per hour. See Tropical Cyclone.

Tornado: an extremely intense tropical cyclone with a strong spiral upward force, which follows a narrow track and is caused by the meeting of two air masses of different temperatures.

Twister: an unreliable, tricky person.

I reckon he must be a very unreliable and tricky person because he stole Dorothy’s house and moved it from Kansas to Oz. Australia had an horrific tropical cyclone named, Tracy, that wiped out Darwin city in the Northern Territory at Christmas time in about 1974. When everyone sobered up they wondered what the hell had happened and put it down to the evils of mixing beer and rum.

Australia also experiences a much lesser known phenomenon called, Willy-Willies. These are a great deal smaller than cyclones and don’t get the honour of being given a name such as, Tracy. The only name they get is, Willy-Willy, because they’re very-very small-small and, once up and spinning, are no threat to anybody.

Some people chase tornadoes, and the like, in order to study and film these climatic events, others chase them simply for a free adrenalin trip or because they can’t afford an overseas holiday. Experts advise, if you’re ever caught in a cyclone, you should place your head between your knees and then kiss your ass goodbye.

Cheers, vicplume.com

I wonder what dung beetles do when they have a poop? By that I mean, if we humans were to sit down and eat a T-bone with chips and a side-salad we’d eventually poop out poop, but dung beetles eat poop, so after a dung beetle sits down and tucks into a nice hearty meal of poop with poop and a side-poop do they eventually poop out a well-done steak with chips and a salad? Crikey! Even a cow or a horse, who only eat grass, will poop out poop, so what the hell does a dung beetle poop out? It reminds of the bloke who went to the doctor and said, “Doc, I’m have a problem, every time I eat carrots…I poop carrots and every time I eat peas…I poop peas, what can I do?” The doc thinks for a second and says, “Eat poop.”

Australia has its own native dung beetles but inevitably foreign dung beetles were imported because the introduction of sheep and cattle meant the local dung beetles couldn’t keep up with demand, they were literally up to their necks in poop. They were being overloaded with work and, even with overtime, were running behind, literally, and, even to a dung beetle, the words ‘running’ and ‘behind’ are not a pleasant thought. It’s hard to roll a ball that isn’t, if you know what I mean. So now Australia has foreign dung beetles who prefer to eat common farm animal’s poop as opposed to Aussie dung beetles who prefer to eat the likes of kangaroo, koala and wombat faeces and I don’t blame them, there’s no accounting for taste.

Cheers, vicplume.com

Chinese whispers is good game and, I believe, was created to show us how much a story can change if heard-second, third or fourth-hand and, thus, why we shouldn’t listen to gossip. For example, a group of people sit around in a circle and the first person might whisper into the second person’s ear, “The magical red goblin ate 100 blue mushrooms on a green hill covered in bright yellow flowers.” The second person would then try and remember what the first person said so they can whisper it to the third person, which may end up changing slightly to, “The magical forest goblin ate 99 mushrooms on a red mountain covered in bright green flowers.” I like to teach people that gossip is really, really bad so when it was my turn I’d whisper something like, “My bright white ass is going numb, let’s go to the pub and get some evil spirits into us and, by the way, Mary, who is sitting opposite us, is a heroin addict.”

Yes, you can have a bit of a laugh with Chinese whispers but it’s not a very good way of contacting the dead although some might argue that any group of people over 18-years-old, who are suggesting playing Chinese whispers, may well be already there. ‘Googling’ the Internet is another way of contacting the dead and I proved it possible when I found Elvis in cyberspace, the only problem was I couldn’t communicate with him because, again, he was dead, and that’s where psychics come into play. Paid psychics don’t seem to communicate with people who have died, instead, they speak with people who have ‘passed-over’ and, frustratingly, once these passed-over-people get to ‘Never-Never-Land’ they can’t figure out how to spell anymore.

After a lifetime of living on Earth these now ex-alive people seem to have trouble getting more than one-letter-out at a time, which is why these alleged paid psychics will often sit in front of an audience and say, “I’m picking up on the letter, ‘D’… I think it might be the name, Don? I think it’s the letter ‘D’? ‘D’ for Don… does anyone know a Don who has passed over? Maybe your name is Don and someone is trying to contact you in the audience? Is there a Don in the audience?” (The audience quietly sit and stare) “I’m sure it’s a ‘D’ for Don, or Donald… ok, maybe it’s David? Dave? Davo? How about a Douglas? Or a Doug? I think it’s a ‘D’?” (The audience quietly sit and stare) “Ok, maybe it’s an ‘M’? Does the name, Michael ring a bell? Mick?? Macka??? Ok, how about a Mary???? Finally a woman seated in the back of the audience hesitantly raises her arm and says, “My mum had a talking parrot and his vet’s name was Michael?”
“That’s great!!” says the excited psychic, “And what was the parrot’s name?” “His name was, ‘Dave’”, says the woman, “but we always called him, Michael Douglas because he always whistled when Michael Douglas appeared on the telly.” “That’s him!” Says the psychic, “The letter, ’D’, is for Michael Douglas which is really, ‘Dave’. Your mum’s talking-parrot, Dave, is trying to communicate!” I can hear him… he’s trying to say something… something starting with the letter… ‘F’, does that ring any bells?” “Yes,” says the woman putting her hands to her face, “I can’t believe it, Dave’s trying to say either of 2 words.” “And what would those 2 words be?” says the psychic?” “Well”, says the woman, “considering my mum never owned a pet in her life and I made-up the whole story, I reckon there’s a damn good chance he’s trying his best to say, either, ‘Fake’ or ‘Fraud’.”

“Oh,” said the paid psychic, “I didn’t see that one coming.”

Cheers, vicplume.com

Ok, here I am again, how many more of these blogs can I write? That’s a good question. Have you ever noticed that good questions are usually good because the person who says that it’s a good question is usually saying it because they don’t have an answer to the question, which you’d think would make it a bad question but, because they want to stall for time while they think of an answer, they give you a bit of praise and self-assuredly say that it’s a good question when in actual fact they’re thinking to themselves, “This question sucks big time… I better make something up and keep sounding confident or they’ll realise I’m dancing in the dark!”

Politicians are experts at it. They can answer a question without even answering the question and instead talk about a completely different subject that makes them sound like they are the best thing that ever happened to the planet, for example, if a politician is trying to hide something the interviewer will ask, “Foreign minister, isn’t it true you lied about the amount of boat people entering this country?” POLITICIAN: “Well Kerry, let me say this unequivocally and without prejudice, these accusations are can be attributed to the fact we have brought unemployment to an all time low.” etc, etc. The interviewer then repeats the question and the pollie repeats his answer using different words but always pushing how much good work the government has done and are doing. The same question is repeatedly asked until the frustrated interviewer realises the answer is a constantly moving target and so moves on to the next question, which produces the same results.

Most politicians are so slick that when they’re dealt a ‘good-question’ they’ll rarely say, “Hmmm, good question,” because they’re always armed with ‘good-answers’ not the right answers but good enough to eventually make the interviewer give up and move on. Sometimes it’s the interviewer’s fault that they don’t get the right answers, for instance, when ex-president, Bill Clinton, was asked if he’d had sex with Monica Lewinski he categorically stated, “I did not have sexual relations with Miss Lewinski.” But if he had then been asked the follow-up question of, “Ok Bill, but did she perform fellatio on you?” I have no doubt he would’ve answered, “Hmmm, good question!”

I don’t understand how reporters and journalists can stay interested in politics because they always get dodgy answers and must end up frustrated. I suppose they’re so interested in politics they can never be bored because it’s what they love. It’s a bit like sports journalists, you constantly hear the same questions and answers, but because they’re doing what they love it keeps them interested, like when a football team loses to another team the reporter asks, “You’ve just been beaten, what happened?” And the coach always says something like, “Well, Lang and Walton were injured early, we were weakened up forward but basically they were the better team on the day, we tried our hardest but it wasn’t good enough.” And the reporter says, “What are you going to try and do next week?” And the coach says, “We’ll try and strengthen the forward line and interchange Thompson and Castle, move Murphy to the back and hope Tanner is over his groin strain and fit enough to play.”

Just for a change I’d like to see a TV sport segment go something like this…

REPORTER: “You’ve just been beaten, what happened?” COACH: “We lost.” REPORTER: “What are you going to try and do next week?” COACH: “Win.”
REPORTER: “Is there any chance you’ll try and strengthen the forward line and interchange Thompson and Castle, move Murphy to the back and try and get Tanner back in to play?” COACH: “Yes.”

Yep, sport’s reporters love what they do and that’s why they can ask the same questions over and over again. Coaches also love what they do but unfortunately for the sports reporters being interviewed isn’t what they love. Then there are sport spectators, they also love what they do and what they love to do is watch people doing what it is they love to do, which is playing sport. Being a spectator is a bit weird when you think about it because instead of having the love of playing a sport they, instead, love to watch people who love to play the sport they love. For example, golf spectators love to watch golfers play golf because golf spectators love watching golf players doing what they love to do, which is playing golf. These golf spectators, very often, also love to play golf but their truelove is watching golfers doing what it is they love. The scary thing is, if this insanity continues could we soon see a new breed of spectators who love watching spectators who love watching golfers who love playing golf? And, then, could it be just a twisted step away from there till we see spectators who love watching spectators who love watching spectators who love watching golfers who love playing golf? Now there’s a question for you.

Cheers, vicplume.com

News reports keep stating that the planet is in trouble but the planet will be fine, it’s we humans that are in trouble because we’ve been very, very naughty. For a start we’ve put a hole in the ozone-layer and if the hole gets any bigger all the pollution, and all the air mixed with it, will get sucked out into space and then we’ll have to go and live on the moon, which isn’t much fun because it’s a bit like Central Australia, heaps of sand dunes and not a beach in sight. The moon is barren and there’s no Internet up there… just a rubbish dump and a 7-11.

Lightening produces ozone gas so maybe that’s why there are more storms these days because perhaps the planet is trying to heal itself? It’s almost like the planet knows that humans are the cause of it’s failing health and it seems to know that most of the little-parasite-people polluting it are very reliant on water and so live around the coast where rivers flow and all it has to do to get rid of us is get angry, heat-up, flood us out and let the mozzies do the rest. I’m doing as much as I can to help, my car runs on LPG not petrol, I only use natural non polluting soap products and whenever I light the gas cooker with that little blue-spark ignition clicker-thing I obsessively click it 400 times per-gas-jet because I know that lightening produces ozone gas.

They should make a giant 10,000-ton blue spark ignition thingy, as big as the Empire state Building, that runs on wind and solar power, then we could stick it on top of a mountain and fill-up the ozone hole but then we’re still stuck with the pollution. Maybe we’re underestimating ourselves and humans will adapt by evolving lungs that capably breathe pollution. It might get to the stage where there’s no clean air to breathe so we’ll have to walk around wearing necklaces with miniaturised car engines hanging off them with an exhaust hose that attaches to our mouth so we can breathe? Then once we’ve evolved even further we won’t need lung transplants, instead we can simply drop a reconditioned engine in our lung cavity instead.

Whatever is going to happen will happen so don’t get yourself down. In fact hold on because I think it’s already happening. Right, wrong or indifferent, we are meant to be here, we are a part of the planet. The food that grows from the dirt gives us life and makes more sperm and more eggs that makes more people so look on the bright side, when there are way too many people living on the planet you’ll always have someone nearby to complain to.

And it’s not all bad anyway because before my grandfather died, he told me something, which is a lot easier than telling me something after he was dead, he said the next world war would be fought over water so, there you go, if you’re a thirsty young person looking for a good reliable job with plenty of water in difficult times, join the navy.

Cheers, vicplume.com

I think what they meant say was if you know you’re not going to live forever it should give you a push to enjoy and make the most of your limited life while you can. I don’t want to end up in an old people’s home, especially if they’re not home because when they come home and find me watching their TV and eating their biscuits they’ll call the police and I’ll end up in a jail cell and I don’t want to end up in a jail cell at the end of my life pondering why I didn’t do all, or at least some, of the things I wanted to do, like travelling the world’s casinos, yachting around Riviera and… robbing a bank.

Imagine if you did live forever, it would eventually get a bit dull, fair enough, the 2999 New Year’s Eve party would rock-your-socks-off and the 3999 party wouldn’t be too bad either but if you were still alive for the year 50-million AD New Year’s Eve party it would be a bit dull because there’d be no human life left on the planet, just mosquitoes, cockroaches and you. Even the sun would’ve burnt out by then so by the time you’re celebratory sparkler burnt down to its end at midnight, at the 50 millionth New Year’s Eve celebration, you’d be alone in complete silent darkness except for your feeble echoing questioning cry of, “Happy new year?” followed by the frail thin discharge of your rollout party horn, the scuttle of a cockroach and the sound of a whining mosquito being slapped.

You’d also be very cold because there’d be no sun to keep you warm, so try and enjoy the now and be content that we don’t live forever because forever is a long time. In the meantime, here’s another poem by someone who, I believe, said something…

Let it go, let it out, let it all unravel.
Let it free and it will be, a path on which to travel.

Cheers, vicplume.com

Here’s another word for you, so is ‘another’, ‘word’, ‘for’ and ‘you’… but now it’s clearly getting trippy. I’m sure the first word ever created wasn’t written, I reckon the first-ever word was spoken and would’ve simply been, “Ugg”, which is, logically, a grunt. It would’ve been expelled by a primitive male, let’s presume a Neanderthal male, and would’ve been accompanied by a suggestive, intimate, physical motion in order to signal intense interest to a Neanderthal female standing nearby. There’s another strong possibility that the 1st second-word ever spoken was also, ‘Ugg’ but had a completely different meaning as, on this occasion, the second ‘Ugg’ would’ve been expelled by the male Neanderthal a split-second before the female Neanderthal removed her ‘Ugg-Boot’ from the male’s nut-sack.

Writing, on the other hand, evolved later. The first word ever written would’ve been a simple scoop of dirt or sand scraped from the ground leaving a small hole and would’ve been more like a symbol directly relating to the second word ever spoken as the male Neanderthal dropped to his knees and fell forward onto the ground closing his hand in agony. And so, logically, we can say that the first word ever written was the second word ever spoken, neither of which were really words but grunts, leaving us to ponder that the first grunt ever written was the second grunt ever grunted.

Next in line were the first people to read. They were, understandably, the furry folk standing around watching the first, un-pleasured, pain-filled person to ever write when he wrote the second-grunt ever to be grunted, which they clearly read and understood. Ironically the first person to ever write couldn’t read what he’d written because he was feeling way too rotten to read his own writin’.

From there evolution took us to the first sentence ever-written, which was also the first blog ever written, when, an instant later, the male Neanderthal unconsciously closed his other hand in agony thus leaving 2 small holes in the ground and which read, ‘Today I asked a hot hairy woman for a hug, unfortunately she misunderstood… and gave me an ugg.’

Cheers, vicplume.com

Then again, I don’t think it’s a big thing replacing a word you can’t think of with the word ‘thing’. Everybody knows what you’re talking about anyway, like, if I’m going shopping and I ring home and say, “It’s me, I’ve left my thingie list on the kitchen thing can you please read-out what things I have to thing.” Everybody knows what you’re talking about anyway so it’s no big thing, especially for people who know you, because they can figure out what things you’re talking about, for example, instead of saying, “I’m taking the dog for a walk, have you seen his lead?” in the early days of forgetfulness you’d say, “I’m taking the dog for a walk, have you seen his thing?” and at a later stage it would end up as, “I’m taking the thing for a thingo, have you seen his thingie?” Or if you got really forgetful you’d probably say, “I’m thinging the thing for a thingie, have you thinged his thingo?” Which isn’t a problem because anyone close to you will know exactly what you’re talking about and probably respond with, “Yes, it’s thinging over the yellow-thing behind the thingo cupboard-thingie.” And you’d know exactly what they meant.

After a while you start thinking about other things like songwriters; for example how forgetful was the person who wrote, ‘All Things Bright & Beautiful’? For all we know they could’ve simply been forgetful and the song was meant to be entitled, ‘All Wings Bright & Beautiful’. Obviously they weren’t too forgetful or it would’ve been called, ‘All things thing and thing’. Louis Armstrong’s, ‘What A wonderful World’, could well have been entitled, ‘What A wonderful Thing’, ‘Happy Birthday’ would’ve been ‘Thingie Thingday’, Jingle Bells would be, ‘Thingle Things’ and the lyrics of, Don McThing’s song, entitled, ‘American Thingie’, would’ve ended as, “And the three men I thinged most, the father, thing and the thingie ghost, they caught the last thing for the thing, the day the thingo… thinged.”

Then there are movies and TV shows that could’ve been ‘thingied’. Movies like, ‘Something About Mary’, would be entitled, ‘Something About Thingy’.  ‘Superman’, would be, ‘Thingman’, or ‘Superthing’, ‘I Dream Of Jeannie’, Would Be, ‘I Dream Of Thingo’, ‘Bewitched’ would be, ‘Be-thingoed’, ‘Batman’ would be, ‘Bat-thing’, ‘Gilligan’s Island’ would be, ‘Gilligan’s Thing’ or, ‘Thing Island’, ‘Jackass’ would be, ‘Thingass’, ‘Dr Phil’ would be, ‘Dr Thing’, ‘Oprah’ would be, ‘Thing’, ‘The Late Show With David Letterman’ would be, ‘The Late Thing With Thing Thingerman’, ‘Gone With The Wind’ would be, ‘Gone With The Thing’, ‘Days Of Our Lives’ would be, ‘Days Of Our Thingoes’, ‘The Bold And The Beautiful’ would be, ‘The Thing And The Thingie’, ‘Home and Away’ would be, ‘Home And A Thing’, ‘Myth-Busters’ would be, ‘Thingbusters’ or ‘Myth-thingers’ and ‘CSI Miami’ would be, ‘Thing Thing Thing My Thingo’. I could go on changing names but I’m just about over the whole thing.

Sometimes when walking along a footpath you’ll trip over some thing and you’ll look back to see what it was and there’s not a thing there and that’s because sometimes things just don’t turn out your way but don’t let things get you down, you can’t change every thing because some things never change. As far as I’m concerned there’s not a thing to worry about unless you forget the word, ‘thing’. The real problem begins when you can’t remember the word, ‘thing’, because if you forget that word then you’re really up thing-creek in a barbed wire thingo and that would definitely be a difficult… thing!

Cheers, vicplume.com

Speaking of amazing, in the news today I was informed that a 70 year old Indian woman has fallen pregnant, I don’t know who she fell-on but I reckon he should be the news story. I’m more concerned about the pregnant woman’s poor mother because if the daughter is 70-years-old the mother could well be hitting 100 and simply asking her if she could mind the kid over the weekend, while her and the bloke she fell-on go out clubbing, could well possibly kill her.

There was a news story a while back about a woman who went into a doctor’s surgery to have a sex change into a man and then got pregnant. Immediately after hearing the news I rang my friend Lillian and asked if she was just on the news but she couldn’t answer me because she’d just been to the doctor’s to get her earwax cleaned out and couldn’t hear properly.

Albert Einstein, the world famous genius, once said, on a number of occasions, but who’s counting? ‘You can either look at everything in the world as amazing or not amazing at all.’ Some people think what Einstein said wasn’t amazing at all and people who think nothing is amazing really amaze me but that’s not surprising in fact it’s predictable, which I surprisingly find to be quite astounding but that’s not amazing just astonishingly beyond belief.

I myself believe that nothing is amazing because the sheer fact that nothing can be something is undoubtedly amazing. If nothing was nothing then we wouldn’t have a word for it but because we have the word ‘nothing’ then nothing is automatically something but not everything because everything is obviously something else.

Before the universe was created there was, ‘The Big Nothing‘, which, when you think about it, is really something and that something was nothing and nothing was something that was just about to start ending only a split second before the start began beginning. In the beginning there was the start and it went bang. What made it go bang is anyone’s guess but it was a very silent bang because you can’t hear anything in space, so technically ‘The Big Bang’ was really just, ‘The Big’. Directly after, ‘The Big’, flaming balls of fire went shooting through space along with asteroids, dust and God knows what and even he, she, them or it’s probably not too sure either and if that’s not amazing then why is my head spinning enough to, not surprisingly, stop myself writing.

Cheers, vicplume.com

How do TV news programs pick what stories they do? Lets face it, there are so many stories happening everyday but there’s only so much they can fit into half an hour. So how the hell do they pick what stories they’re going to put on and what order they’ll put them in? I always watch the start of the news because, lets face it, if there’s going to be a major event I should know about, like a world war or a radioactive meteor plummeting at light-speed toward planet Earth, then it’s obviously going to be at the start of the news… unless Australia just won the cricket in which case the story about the radioactive meteor would be on after the cricket story unless it’s a lotto night in which case the lotto numbers would be on after the cricket story and the meteor story would be on after that by which time the meteor would’ve struck the planet and the lotto numbers would be interrupted with a news-breaking story about a radioactive meteor that just struck planet Earth instantly killing 250 million people and sending life threatening radioactive gases around the entire planet ultimately destroying the night’s victory celebrations for the Australian test cricket win against England.

On the weekends I’ve noticed the stories are very cutesy and light because all the hardcore news reporters have the weekend off and the trainee reporters are made to work the weekends doing stories about a bunch of community minded souls who are snorkelling around the local bay identifying fish species. These are the future hardcore reporters in training and I’m sure after these fish filing fanatics have been interviewed and the camera operator is filming them paddling, heads down, in the water, any self respecting future hardcore news reporter would be silently praying for a speedboat full of escaping cocaine smugglers followed closely by the coastguard at breakneck speed to accidentally drive right over the top of them, their propellers turning them into instant seafood and a school of ravenous Great White Sharks finish them off so they could be recognised as serious reporters, not the sharks, the reporters. But that’s not very likely to happen so these trainee reporters are sent out to report on a little milk bar that caught on fire or Margie Thornton who turned 100 years old in the Sunny Hills Retirement Village where upon the reporter’s arrival she crankily complains, “Haven’t you people got something better to do?!”

During the week, on the other hand, the main news content is all about suicide bombers, wars in Africa and water shortages usually ending with a happy story about a cat stuck up a tree who had to be rescued by fire-fighters who obviously didn’t have anything better to do and which is probably why the milk bar burnt down? Sometimes they do stories about a dog stuck in a drainpipe and we see pictures of the fire brigade rescuing the dog from the drain but what the news story should really be about is why the hell are all these fire-fighters rescuing dogs from drains and cats from trees when they should be out fighting fires? If a cat’s up a tree call a painter, painters have got ladders, and if a dog’s stuck in a drain call a plumber. It’s getting to stage now if a building catches on fire you’ll have to call a vet.

Cheers, vicplume.com