This kind of thing's not my bag, baby

Ladies and gentlemen, may I direct your attention to Exhibit A.

Imagine my exasperation when this questionable item was whipped out in broad daylight and in front of lots of people - friends, tourists, security guards - by one Mandi, fellow paddler, full-time shoe-shopper and supposed part-time distributor of "medical equipment".
"Here," she said loudly, waving it around, "I brought this specially for you."
How, I thought, stowing it swiftly in my car, did she come by what could only be a Swedish-made Penis Enlarger? And how presumptious. Nonetheless I took it home.

That night, after half an hour of toil, all I had to show for my efforts were two sore feet, a stiff back and no appreciable increase in volume. Mandi's promised 10cm increase had failed to materialise. My recommendation: leave the dubious Skandinavian products to the professionals, and use a bicycle pump to inflate your pilates ball.

How Quarkman got his Groove Back

I was taking a shower last night with music blaring on through from the next room, when on spun The Hustle. Now The Soul City Symphony's signature strains always set me a-swingin'. I don't know how the original dance is supposed to go, but getting down with a bit of bad-ass impro never seems amiss.

Alas, the confines and angles denied me the usual expansive manoeuvres. The jazz hand flares wouldn't fit, the pelvic thrusts were, um, problematic, and the Hammer jumps were right out. I found too that not having a belt or pockets makes one suddenly conscious of what one's doing with one's hands, and the MJ groin clutch-and-scream spectacular felt just plain unwholesome.

And yet adversity fosters inspiration. Amid the shampoo and anguish of defeat I felt the mystical ghosts of discos past surround and embolden me. Be cool, son, they said, this ain't no way to shower. And lo! from the mists emerged the first vestigial steps of the Hot Water Hustle. It's sultrier, slippier, soapier - and there are still no jumps - but it cannot be denied.

Only ever do this kind of thing if you live alone.

Bad Medicine

Medical Doctors are mostly practitioners, not academics. However, this doesn't necessarily stop them from dispensing wisdom beyond their training. Normal people are inclined have much higher regard for the general opinions of doctors because they see being one as a proxy for great intelligence, knowledge and sense. The reality is that they have spent seven-odd insulated years learning a whole lot about medicine, physiology and the like, and practically nothing about anything else. A couple of first year half-courses in in the hard sciences and maybe some electives along the way are typically all they get to prepare them for the elevated esteem they will be granted by society. True, some are quite brilliant, and many are well-rounded, but then they probably would have been whatever they studied. Unfortunately, the opposite is often true.

This explains to me why there are so many former or current doctors out there actively promoting or at least condoning "alternative" remedies, the definition of which could be broadly put as those which have failed, often completely, to (a) work, (b) make any sense, and (c) pass safeguards like peer review and clinical trials. No-one with real understanding of statistics and the Scientific Method could take seriously most of these remedies. Indeed, we have a Health Minister whose Soviet medical training clearly permitted graduation without demonstrable critical ability, and worse, a system that allows someone like that to become the number one decision-maker in national health care. Scary. A sad blight on a respected profession. I hate to think what immense diseconomies result worldwide from such ignorance.

Time was a doctor was considered an authority beyond his field. Sadly, the advances of modern medicine now necessarily require a more complete focus on the discipline to the exclusion of general science. Doctors are now better at fixing people, but they are by no means scientific generalists. When enough of them start lending credibility to spurious ideas, perhaps it's time to start changing the undergrad curriculum. And I reiterate my call for all top-level public office bearers to be forced to pass a stats test.

Preacher from the East

I often listen to the Christian station when driving in in the morning. It's an insight into another world, one that I find way more interesting than competitions, phone-ins, traffic reports and sanitised D.J. humour. Usually I catch a lengthy sermon syndicated from an American broadcaster. Today's was by one John MacArthur, whom the station chatted to afterwards. The slightly overawed tones of the interviewer suggested that he is apparently quite prolific, perhaps even a big noise in the business. He has the slight drawl, the easy authoritative metre and the odd pauses so characteristic of a lot of the pulpiteers on this particular show. I'm almost certain that he has a winning smile, perfect teeth and immaculate hair.

John's lesson today was that we must not trust Philosophy. Capital 'P', because it's the entire discipline scheduled to be jettisoned. Not just Socrates, Plato and all those pagan Atheneans, who could be excused for being lauded as early luminaries now sadly and completely discredited by the comparatively more modern teachings of the scriptures. Luckily for those of us who might otherwise be taken in by several thousand years of the considered and debated thoughts of some of history's finest minds, John has since revealed that all their conjecturing was merely "infantile musings". You see, we all exist in a box, and are arrogant to even presume to speculate beyond it limits. Our only knowledge of the outside can come from the penetration of God into the box. He has condescended to give us the scriptures as our only insight into the larger workings of the universe. I forget his exact words, but John used "retarded" to describe the pathetic attempts of our keenest intellectuals to breach this box. How silly of said intellectuals to waste their time in self-indulgent critical enquiry when all the knowledge we can ever hope to gain about the cosmos has been in plain view in the scriptures all along. That's good old rebellious human nature for you - resisting proscription to the last and always trying to push the outside of the envelope, even if God - and John - have told them they can't.

Alas, John, progress progresses inexorably, your patronising chastisement notwithstanding. We've been "thinking outside the box", since even before the Renaissance and Reformation made it okay to do so without getting burnt at the stake for entertaining infantile musings. Not everyone is blinded by the light.

Pure Disco

Many long years I have sought in vain for the very pinnacle of disco. I knew that it must be out there somewhere, like some sort of Questing Beast roaming the Forest Sauvage, languishing in some dark, forgotten recess - perhaps re-imagined as some stripped-down arcade midi or on-hold switchboard track. For a disco song, little can eclipse (in my mind anyway) Gloria Gaynor's Never Can Say Goodbye, which manages to be at once sad, beautiful, nostalgic and totally groovy. But I could never find an instrumental piece to match it. The Hustle comes close, as does Love's Theme or Rise, but the Holy Grail was still missing, until one day there it was - a number called "Manhattan Skyline" by David Shire in what was in retrospect the most obvious place of all: the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. And it's a piece within a piece; it starts with a typical so-so 70s-sounding intro, and then erupts from nowhere into this exquisite instrumental refrain/bridge/whatever (I don't know the term). It's one of those transcendental song moments, like the keyboard bit in "Clouds Across the Moon" or the chorus in "Shout to the Top" or a couple of far-too-short bits of Boogie Wonderland ("All the love in the world can't be gone...") and Disco Inferno ("Up above my head...").

No song is perfect from start to finish, but occasionally one has a seminal twenty seconds or so that is an order of magnitude sweeter than the rest. It's as if the composer was jamming oneday and happened upon it, but couldn't stretch it to 3 minutes, so just wrapped a normal song around it. Maybe I should put together a collection of these segments and try to explain why I think each is so great. I would also be curious to know if it's just me.

Democratax

Herewith my first serious post on a real issue:

Something about the urinals here at work this morning gave me an epiphany about income tax. What if only a part of the tax one paid went to the general receiver account, say 75%, and you got to decide how the rest was to be apportioned? You could be given a list of government spending areas and be allowed to assign your remaining part piecemeal amongst the options. For instance (of the remainder) I could choose to assign 20% to renewable energy research, 10% to scholarships, 30% to conservation programmes, 20% to the TAC and 20% to my critical thinking course for cabinet ministers.

Not only would everyone suddenly feel much more included and important in the budgetary process, but it would give us a great view of what everyone feels is really important that the governmant should spend money on. It would make tax (slightly) less of a grudge expense. Also the more money you make - and thus the more tax you pay - the more you get to influence the things that you feel strongly about. I suspect we'd end up with a couple less frigates but gain several thousand more riverine rabbits.

The Wrath of Quarkman

Hi everybody, and a special welcome to my new fans, Ridge and Cadbury - you guys are the best. Ridge, I found your blog interesting and informative, but maybe a little cynical :( There's really no reason to be all jaded and orange on a fine afternoon like this.

I thought I'd let you all know about the exciting line-up of content that you can expect. There will be pictures, poems, songs and recipes, and, if you're lucky, then some sternly-worded social commentary might even make an appearance. Bye for now!

Ka-ping.

Quarkman has erupted once more like a periodical cicada from the flowerbed. Thousands of innocent biennials are now in dire, dire peril.