Nothing like a good visualisation

Genetically cursed as my sisters and I have been with not just one but two bad-tempered extroverts for grandmothers, I at least (my sisters usually don't bother) spend an awful lot of time trying to be patient while my patience is tried. (And, usually, found wanting.) It's not just irritability, it's a full-on propensity to breathe heavily like Marvin the Martian and say in a posh high-pitched robotic voice 'You have made me very angry. [pant pant pant] Very. Angry. Indeed.'



Bugs Bunny And Marvin The Martian via Noolmusic.com


Unlike the sisters, however, I regard it as a major failing and character flaw, and -- as with other curses of the human condition, like migraines -- try very hard to stay out of situations that might bring it on. Unfortunately I have now failed to do this two days running, and find myself wanting to scream obscenities at two completely different lots of people -- one online, one off -- which is some kind of a record even for me.

And so there is nothing for it but housework therapy. By the time I've wielded the vacuum cleaner the length and breadth of the house, including the special attachments for curtains and sofas, I'll have vacuumed them all up in my imagination, consigned them to the disposable vacuum cleaner bag where they can be smothered by the kilos of cat hair, and chucked the bag in the bin.

Oh God I miss him

I mean, can you think of anyone else who left school at fifteen who could make himself so vulnerable by, yet still somehow convincingly get away with, calling a Rhodes scholar and Oxford MA an 'intellectual nobody'? It's not as if Abbott's speech or behaviour of late have reflected these qualifications, or indicated much capacity even for logical or consistent -- much less for abstract, rigorous or difficult -- thought. Even his supporters say fondly that he is a bundle of contradictions, almost as though an absence of clarity were a desirable thing in a political leader.

If you read that link you'll see that Keating has also provided an admirably brisk summary of Turnbull's superiority as Opposition leader, and has coined the pungent, nay, scary phrase 'the poor man's Howard', all in one short radio conversation.

Sad waste that his shortish tenure as PM may have been, it's some consolation that these days he feels free to tell us what he really thinks whenever somebody asks him, untrammelled by the restrictions of office.

UPDATE: Oooh look, there's Footage.

You have to wonder what ABC employee chose to describe this as a 'rant', and under what sort of instructions. And you have to wince at that very very telling little Freudian slip right at the very end.

UPDATE #2 (12.43 am CST): Hullo, someone at the ABC website has changed that heading and removed the word 'rant'. Someone, clearly, who also thought it was as suss as anything.