RETIREMENT

Is there such a thing as ‘retirement’?  Is ‘ceasing to work’ a good life thing?  Do I turn off my ‘lifetime of work’ brain?  How much bad golf can I endure?  Will my new 24 / 7 family life spring up communication unknowns?  Am I too old to contribute?  How long can I both physically and mentally do stuff?  What if I become a burden?  Can I nurse my wife if need be? Will the dog outlive me?

All valid questions as we prepare for a certain and miserable death with years of imagined physical and mental hardships all endured before the final second.  Oh woe is me!

But, and fortunately before death, there is life and even more life.  Life comes first!!  Every moment is precious.  Death is just the microsecond finale of life lived.

There are several great sayings, ‘live for the moment’, ‘planning stops remorse’ and ‘fill every hour with sixty minutes worth of distance run’. 

So, simple, create a staged contingency plan whilst enjoying every moment of actual breathing by doing stuff.  Don’t turn off the work brain as it won’t anyway, get golf lessons, be nice to the dog and stand up straight whilst taking a deep breath and go forth.    Good moments disappear unless we savour them. 

Retire or stop work? Not a chance.

Being able to contribute through ‘work’ is life affirming and stops us becoming age invisible.  Buy a car without tinted windows as it’s not a cocoon or a coffin.   Enjoy the world.

We will all just fall of the perch at sometime hopefully a long way away and in perfect health. 

The Trump Vance war

America is creating global meltdown through a trade war.

Global exchanges are in turmoil as Trump threatens Tariffs starting tomorrow.  What/if scenarios are being played at stock markets everywhere.  Indeed, American companies have already dropped millions [reported as 1.8%].  There is global unrest over the unpredictability of Trump and his obvious isolationist policies which will trigger global retaliation further hurting the American people. How can one person be allowed to create havoc in a democracy?  Obvious answer is that America has become a dictatorship aligned to communism and other world despots.  Vance and Musk are second tier puppets mimicking their overlord. 

Trump pointing his finger at Zelenskyy whilst yelling over him shows another Trump trait of attempted physical intimidation trying to gain rant ascendency.  This is pathetic and shows he has not advanced beyond a 10 year old learning respect whilst debating.

TRUMP / VANCE DYSFUNCTION

ADDENDUM TO PREVIOUS ARTICLE BELOW

It got worse.  The Trump / Vance duo of lying stupidity were flexing their 10 year old brains trying to yell down a world leader who was and is doing everything to save his country.  A leader who has actually done something and deserves international recognition, unlike Trump / Vance.  In the face of a million dead through an illegal invasion, the Trump / Vance morons berated Zelenskyy for not wearing a suit yet neither berated Musk for his fashion choices.  Go figure!   This is play pen behaviour and beyond moronic and clearly proves the Trump /Vance morons have redefined narcissism, pronoia and deserve the title, ‘common as muck’.  The ego led disrespect they showed Zelenskyy was a huge blow to being human.

Trump / Vance have obviously taken the communist oath of allegiance working with Putin to aid Russia to illegally invade Ukraine and steal their country. This is gutless and obscene.  It forces the world to view Americans as turncoats dedicated to rising communist isolationism.  And, this is apart from showing any actual intelligence amply demonstrated by constantly shooting the messenger and yelling over the top of others.  This is 10 year old stuff!  Take Trump blaming the police for the capital riots whilst pardoning the dropkicks already sentenced through the courts for proven heinous acts.  I suppose one has to protect one’s supporters evn if they are low life.

America has been a stalwart of democracy since WW2 but has now devolved to ‘less’, ‘much less’.  Pity.  Actual actions no longer match egos.

The EU, along with the rest of the real world, has let this happen because it was easy  with Americans constantly telling us how good they were.  Trump / Vance have exploded that myth.

Russia, North Korea and China are beside themselves with joy and happiness because the Trump / Vance egomanics have kicked over the play pit bucket with multiple juvenile hissy fits moving towards isolationism also fabricated by ‘tariffs’ which have never been successful because governments have been forced to cash support affected industries and prices go up because stuff is dearer to buy.

Where are the big people, the adults who actually understand?

As long as world leaders pontificate at length, obfuscate and offer ‘we must’ statements, dripping with Machiavellian traits [interpersonal manipulation, an indifference to morality, a lack of empathy and a calculated focus on self interest] we are in trouble.

Trump /Vance have devolved to this level and need help to extricate themselves before they start WW3.

A place to be ….

The single most important life enhancer we have as a human being is to create our own personal nurturing space more commonly known as ‘the bolt hole’.  This could be a 20 bedroom mansion or a caravan somewhere nice - doesn’t matter!!  Indeed, it owns us and we own it because we are attuned to that spot.  It’s ours, somewhere safe to foster and encapsulate deep relaxation and thought.

Why a place to be?  The human condition demands a place to think, fathom the unfathomable and to accept where we are and where we want to be.

We emerge from our chrysalis state out of said bolt hole and metamorphosis into our future where thinking and planning come to fruition and we embrace life.  Stand up straight, take a deep breath and go out and play!  Wow.

But, like all of life, beware the usurper with a personal agenda to disrupt our metamorphosis for their own nefarious ends.  Horrible people obviously without a place to be.  Ignore them with a smile whilst taking that deep breath.

We all need a place to be and it’s not under a bridge!

Turning 8 ‘a tangle of boys’

 

Wow, not 7 anymore, now I am 8 and obviously grown up.  Grown up enough to have heckled Dad for months to drive myself and a around 8 others to Luna Park where fairy floss and hot dogs could be consumed all at once before rides which hopefully would not tempt the contents of my stomach to deliver the second coming.

It all started well until Dad’s company car died and he was presented with a Hillman Minx as a temporary replacement.  The Minx was half the size.  No longer could we fit 5 kids across the back bench seat with Dad and another 4 smelly boys in the front. No seat belts – no issue.

But in the spirit of collective insanity 8 boys were delivered to our home by not-so-keen fathers after seeing the magnificent Minx.

We all fitted.  The back seat became a veritable tangle of 6 boys all practicing for the national ‘passing of wind’ competition.  An experience to remember.  Needless to say Dad’s window was always down as he inched his nostrils towards clean air freedom and he had another 3 boys with him in the front determined also to keep the ‘passing of wind’ practice alive or, dead.  Something must have died in the car, surely.

Still we got to Luna Park and spilled out of the Minx only to be confronted by, ‘heaven’.  Hot dogs, fairy floss and coke all to be consumed at once and at speed in the hope for more of the same.   Then the ghost boat ride which frightened the crap out of us but never never admitted it followed by the spinning room where the floor disappeared whilst we were glued to the wall and then the Big Dipper.  Stomach, not too bad but tender.  Next, the moving floor required balance and lots of personal movement.  This spelt trouble but bravado won through. Sort of.

Dad, in his infinite wisdom, could see the complexion change of 9 boys from sort of suntanned to ghostly pale and he knew it had nothing to do with the ghost train.  Oops. The inside of the borrowed Minx was in trouble.  Funny how 9 smelly boys went quiet-ish.

I remember Dad asking us, with smirk, if we wanted anything more to eat and we just looked at him in disbelief.  Couldn’t he see we were slowly dying?

After a brief colour returning respite sitting on the footpath outside Luna Park we bundled back into the mighty Minx for the ride home.  The out of control very loud tangle had turned into a messy but quiet jumble looking forward to standing on solid not moving ground.  

What a day!  Turning 8 with a bang and that memory has survived 69 years.  Wahoo.

Trump, a lost little boy

 

Why has Trump now become a Putin puppet and mouthpiece?

It’s so obvious it’s ridiculous.  Just 3 examples in the last few days …

Putin wants to get rid of Zelenskyy  [as is his habit of ‘removing’ strong opposition].  But this time it’s Trump doing Putin’s bidding trying to remove Zelenskyy by lying about his approval rating of 4% when it’s actually 57%.  Active disinformation to create unrest in someone else’s sovereign nation. This is designed to incite rebellion and is just plain sedition and carries a gaol term.  Why?

Putin desperately wants to be seen as the victim so as to avoid sanctions on Russia.  To achieve that, Trump now agrees with Putin that Ukraine started the invasion / war despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  Trump is obviously a liar in full knowledge of the facts and is attempting to support Russia’s illegal invasion.  Why?

Putin and Trump want to control everything as any despot does. Therefore Zelenskyy was deliberately excluded from ‘talks’ between Trump and Putin regarding his country, Ukraine.  This is beyond stupid.  Trump has become a ‘boot licker’ to Putin.  Why?  Ego’s abound.

Key question .. ‘Why has the USA as a past pillar of democracy now embraced communism by supporting a pariah communist state controlled by someone whose political opposition just disappears or is landed in gaol without valid charge?’  Trump is now supporting Russia’s invasion of a sovereign state.  Why, apart from ego wanting to be seen as equal to Putin, are his motives?

How about a million dead as a direct result of the invasion and a country in ruins which will cost billions and decades to remedy quite apart from say nuclear fallout from recent attacks on Chernobyl.  Putin has threatened to drop his mega bomb in the English channel which will take out England, France, Norway, Denmark and every country with a water frontage.  This is unhinged as obviously Russia would be immediately decimated by NATO leaving China to assume ‘the world’ free and clear.  Where’s Trump?  A little boy lost trying to blame anyone else, spreading disinformation and playing golf.  ‘Not me, never lost an election, do you want a pardon, I didn’t mean it, where’s my MAGA cap?’

 Unfortunately this is not a joke.

EV’S AND UNSALTED BUTTER

 

Just thinking about life and what makes us smile.

One train of thought goes to Clarkson in an episode of Top Gear on the Isle of Man as he was waiting for his test car to arrive.  That car was an Aston Martin.  Clarkson nearly had a euphoric melt down as he heard the car still some miles away before even seeing it.   The point being that our sensors are pricked by sight, sound, feel and emotion.  Clarkson was hooked just by sound before tasting the nuances of the Aston lapping up what it had to offer the senses.  Noise, rumble and a tactile feel enough to want an immediate lie down post test to recover.  This is like spreading proper salted butter on your morning toast leading to an eyes-shut flavour hit.

Then we have the lithium fossil fuel dependant EV with no rumble, no noise, no tactile feel and no fun.  This is akin to spreading unsalted butter on your toast.  It looks yellow, it spreads like salted butter but it’s missing the fun.  It’s probably better for you [maybe] and suffices to grease the toast but isn’t life too short not to have fun?  Your average EV is like unsalted butter in that it’s quick, does the same job as a real car, has seats and doors, has huge infotainment systems but no buttons to play with, no vibration and no wahoo.  Boring as batshit.  All the fun has been removed.  Unsalted butter!  Even restaurants serving unsalted butter sprinkle sea salt onto the yellow grease in an attempt to bring back the fun!

And remember, I can drive my ageing supercar for decades [University study] with less environmental impact than a new VW electric golf.  This fact is dodged by the woke-driven wanabees ignoring major battery issues such as lithium fossil fuel dependence, range insanity, charging times forcing in car sleeping and car end of life disposal problems.

Personally, I smile when I approach the garage because I know all my senses will be tested when my 24 year old Mercedes V12 fires up and I tootle off the work.  Salted butter!   Five minutes in a petrol station and there is another 600km of nonstop fun.

Please, stop the woke crap and the brain-mouth disconnects and the pontificating self entitled by trying to understand the real science and develop a proper environmentally friendly bio-fuel which will keep the fun rolling in millions of cars.  A trillion dollar reward may jog a few brain cells?

I like my butter salted!

BACKING INTO ANGLED PARKING SPOTS & TINTED WINDOWS

There is a dysfunctional change to the way people angle park and it’s moronic.  As an example of this stupidity, at South Melbourne market people go to great lengths to back into a 90 degree angled parking spot seemingly oblivious to the fact that their boot/tailgate, where they will put their purchasers, is now blocked by the very fact they backed in. If they had driven in forwards like a normal human being they would have had easy access.  At South Melbourne market we have seen idiots carrying shopping, kids, strollers and all manner of junk squeezing past cars parked either side just to get to their tailgate which they can’t access anyway.  We have also seen the same morons use the bonnet of the car next to their tailgate as a platform until they shift their car forward a metre  into the traffic so as to load up.  There is another entirely logical reason to nose into an angled parking spot in that by parking nose in you do not disrupt the passing traffic as in parallel parking.  By backing in to an angled park you expect all traffic to stop just so you can back in.  This sense of entitlement and ‘me me me’ beggars belief.  Indeed we have seen people reverse park even in a 45 degree angle park which makes zero sense and they are facing the wrong direction on exit.  This backing into angled parking spots is moronic and I suspect driven by the proliferation of reverse cameras enabling the moron to pretend they self shine.

People need to be aware that backing into everything is not normal behaviour.  May I suggest that a touch of clear thinking will override self entitlement.

Please, nose into angled parking spots like a normal human being!!

There may be another reason why people use their reversing cameras with such moronic regularity.  Watch drivers doing strange things and I will back it in they have every window in their cars, including the windscreen, so heavily tinted they can’t actually see outside with enough clarity to park or indeed safely drive anywhere.  Yesterday we ate lunch at a cafe on Church Street in Brighton enjoying a table outside where we had a plain view of passing traffic.  In roughly 40% of cars you could not see the driver through any window let alone through the windscreen.  How these people see anything at night is a mystery but does explain the necessity for parking cameras.  In our daily commute we see drivers veering, swerving and ignoring other cars and in nearly all cases the morons have heavily tinted windows.  Obviously, there are good drivers with tinted windows but, it seems that a good percentage of bad drivers have tinted windows – they just can’t see out. 

Personally, we like to look out and enjoy the world with as clear a vision as we can get.  The world is a fantastic place to be treasured and not to be hidden behind tinting.  Drive with the windows down, let the wind flow through, turn the radio off and soak in life.  Please.

DJNO CYA

Djno,

Australians have a lovely way of expressing thought through and by a ‘localised vernacular contraction’.  We leap at diphthongs and revel in bastardising English like, G’day.  Wahoo!

I thought I would pen another being ‘Cya’ or ‘see you’ to the uninitiated.  This concatenation [3251 – position in alphabet] in mathematical terms is the 458^th prime number.  Why is that important?  Because it’s ‘pure’ and unadulterated and unable to be divided by any other ‘thought’.  In mere mortal terms it expresses one’s singular desire to actually be able to lay ‘eyes’ on someone in the future.  There can be little else better in terms of friendship or satisfaction or heart warming, even if it’s spoken in a throwaway line! 

 

Which brings me to the point.

At life’s end-ish there is nothing more important than people and life and how we have lived with those people.  Knowing their thoughts is critical, life affirming and just plain bloody nice.  I missed mum’s death by 3 minutes and dad’s by 16,000km and I regret same every day assuming they would be around forever.  Stupid male.

[DJNO translates to ‘did you know’]

Ms Lidia Thorpe and alleged sedition

Apart from a personal disgust at Ms Thorp’s recent behaviour purportedly speaking for all Australians as an elected Senator, it seems she is also guilty of sedition which is a punishable offence.  Even giving her the benefit of doubt regarding her statement ‘not my King’ which at a pinch could be seen as a personal view [albeit uninformed and misguided], her statement ‘not OUR King’ is far far more serious because she has made that statement as a senator and as a representative of Australian peoples.

This is plain and simple sedition or ‘conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch.’  Indeed, her screaming rant was designed to bring OUR lawful sovereign into ‘hatred and contempt and to promote ill will’ in an attempt to advantage one group of people.  Her actions were racist, divisive and promoted sedition.

Our law states that a person who engages in sedition with the intention of causing violence, creating public disorder or a public disturbance, is guilty of an indictable offence punishable on conviction by imprisonment for not longer than 3 years.

It’s worth noting that our constitution and supporting ‘Law of The Land’ applies to us all in that there is no separate indigenous law or Sharia law or any other so called law.  We all live in Australia as Australians and should be damned proud of it.  If this doesn’t fit your moral or ethical values then perhaps Australia is not for you.

Ms Thorpe’s 5 year old screaming hate filled explicative driven rhetoric has no place anywhere, let alone being delivered as a representative for and behalf of all Australians.

Her demonstrated behaviour is obnoxious and she does not deserve to be a senator.

Where are the adults? 

PREVIOUSLY WRITTEN ..

The question is not about the moronic behaviour of one misguided politician in a treasonous outburst.  It is about that it can happen at all and then her denying she agreed to an oath of allegiance to Australia’s head of state and justifying her spurious claims by saying she actually pledged allegiance to the Crown’s ‘hairs’, not ‘heirs’.  If this wasn’t so serious it would be a joke as it’s at shows the intelligence level of a 5 year old.

And yes, I believe it is treason as she has attempted to overthrow our government as an elected official in our parliament house by denying our head of state is in fact our head of state.  This is not a political comment but a statement of fact.  Worse, the language she used was not only inappropriate but demeaning to herself and to all Australian peoples.

Is this person the best we can do?  She is divisive, racist and ignores facts to suit her own misguided rhetoric.  Even forget for a moment the confused and error ridden message she screamed, the demonstrated lack of respect for ‘our’ King [once again not a political statement but a fact] demeans us all.

She is attempting to overthrow our system of Government by using ‘free speech’ as a treasonous weapon and maybe be subject to section 80.1 of the criminal code act of 1995 with life imprisonment.  Personally, I find the whole saga abhorrent and she needs to be removed from our government as she is a disgrace to all Australians.

Once removed, let ‘the law of the land’ prevail as it should for all peoples holding Australian citizenship and indeed anyone lucky enough to be on Australian soil.  This ‘belonging’ is a gift and a privilege and is not to be demonised by anyone with a brain – mouth disconnect.

She is attempting to racially divide Australia through false rhetoric screamed at length and in the process breaching her signed oath of allegiance to our King.  It is obnoxious.

Screaming achieves zero and Australian’s [each and every one of us] reputations have suffered globally.

When do the adults enter the room?