The infiltration of electronically infused gadgetry has now reached saturation point and the first rumblings of discontent are starting to come in. Has the time finally arrived to start taking things in our own hands again? Shares are hopelessly down on Face-book Inc. Micro-soft is struggling with keeping up sales on new Pod/pads and Tablets. Moses is sobbing to Joshua.

Looking back, it might well have been the moment when the IT television Guru showed us a new form of inter-connect and therefore disconnect with living lives with the introduction of spectacles that were mini computers. Apparently, those spectacles introduced by Micro-Hard reacted to eye movements that would obey brain messages.

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/drive_to_discover&id=8670164

If the brain thought of a big Mac, instantly would appear a GPS signal on the special spectacles, giving directions to the nearest MacDonald’s obesity emporium. They were never far away.

Pitifully or fortunately, many life brain messages, if they still existed, were already mainly of such a superficial nature, the electronic spectacles had little trouble obeying them, honing in on mainly food courts with lots of sugar and fat destinations. The glasses reveled in obeying the child-like brain messages and many people were observed robot-like and in auto mode, marching to fast food outlets or ATMs, queuing patiently and obediently but also utterly silently behind each other with eyes fixed myopically into their special E-spectacles with 4G capabilities and interconnecting WWW surf obligations.

It was then, that, first in medical journals but followed soon reported in the MSM (main stream media), that odd behavior, mainly in some elderly people in public was observed. An elderly man found in Sydney’s George Street, all fetally curled up sobbing with an unexplained rage foaming at the mouth trying to ingest a Samsung 3G tablet. A week later a woman dressed in a floral summer twin-set had been found trying to strangle her I/pod with an ear phone cord. Nothing like that had ever been seen before.

In America similar incidents were observed. Disposal bins and rubbish containers were being filled with E-Modems together with anti-depressant pills. Swinging mood changes amongst taxi drivers were worrying authorities. What was happening? The next week, in Innsbruck Austria, a smoking pyre of Blue E-Teeth was discovered after neighbours in Rauchenstrasse complained of an acrid smell. The Tyroler ski resorts are greatly worried. The image of smoke curling up from ancient farm house chimneys and the perfume of pine covered valleys was what attracted tourism to Tyrol (Ach Tyroler-Land, du bist so schon) not smoking stacks of dying Blue-teeth.

What was most worrying though that on the intercontinental train Genoa- Stockholm a group of people were seen to be talking and conversing, face to face. It was also rumored some were even knitting while TALKING, although that last item has yet to be confirmed.

Just now a report came in of a large group of people having been seen along Fifth Avenue NY chasing Micro-Hard and Windows 9 executives while hurling E- tablets at them. A 79 year old addressing a small crowd while standing on an E-Box modem, solemnly threatened self immolation unless shops would empty their pernicious E-Wares including those dreaded E-specs.

A large golden arched M sign was being torn down in Brooklyn by an infuriated crowd reclaimed the right to health with lentils and celery sticks and shouting obscenities at those still munching on triple beef patties and slurping sugar slurries.

Was it also true that people were handing in their guns, throwing bazookas and multi clip assault weapons on the front lawn of the NRA with its president last seen rowing across Lake Ontario after being chased by large groups of school children? Rumors are rife. In Australia people were helping refugees on leaking boats, rowing them on-shore and gave them blankets, oranges and cashews, and offered their shivering bones welcoming fires.

It is in the air. Some think the world is ready to take back the copper wire again. Things are yearning for simplicity. There will be a revolt by millions of the elderly fed up by complications and enforced choices. The E-glasses were just the catalyst. Things had been brewing for a long time. Even in Vladivostok reports of rampaging people demanding for copper-line to be returned with normal ring-tones and obligatory banning of all E-Glasses and Blue Tooth connectivity in cars strictly banned. Riots in Rostov’s Gorky Park are ongoing.

There will be milling crowds of the elderly, many in battery powered mobility scooters, fed up by complications of hard drives and E-Sticks with useless memory Apps and Blue teeth, with clusters of chargers clogging up drawers and found tangled underneath groaning beds and around cats’ claws.

Mark my word, all those millions of the gummy mouthed but brave, seething with discontent, coarse oaths renting the air. There will be blood on the streets. I/Pods will be hurled through shop windows, gnarled hands shaking, poking the arid air. Give us back our normal lives, face to face with social intercourse, is what we want. We want it now, they shouted in voices hoarse but not of age.

People on street corners are talking, having real conversations and chattering crowds on trains and trams again. The sound of voices is reverberating on the streets. From the chaos of entangled stifling staccato text messages and E- padded rubbish will come forth again a river of flowing words and torrid conversations. Seeds of imagination are being sown on fertile ground. It will come about.

Mark my word.

The revolution is coming.

Retrospection is the reward and pay off for getting old when past events outweigh future, at least in quantity if not quality as well. How did we fare is not an unreasonable question that might arise out of those people faced with the possibility of soon not even able to wonder anything anymore, let alone those questions pertaining to life’s achievements.

How do the scales weigh? Here is what happened during some earlier years; 1956 in fact. This could be seen as giving at least some background or grounding for the unfurling of some sort of life into the future.

After having been wined and dined on our boat (Johan Van OldenBarnevelt) for over 5 weeks or so, the bus trip from Sydney’s Circular Quay to our camp at Scheyville, interrupted by the driver’s ‘pub-stop’ at Home-bush’s Locomotive for a couple of schooners, having calmly left a busload of anxious and nervous European migrants in the sweltering February heat, our arrival at the camp’s Nissen Huts was somewhat of a difficult transition.

After all; the mellow sounds of the violin, piano, with twanging base and the brass instrument (was it a saxophone?) still reverberating from the luxury liner evening soirees ringing in our ears needed more time than just the 3 hour bus trip to our camp…The lingering and haunting tune of Dean Martin; ‘Was it on the Isle of Capri where I met you,’ clashed violently with the lurid car sales yards signage and yawning bonnets of Parramatta Rd, Sydney. Can you imagine?

My mum thought those Nissen huts were for the push-bikes. Yes, but why are there mattresses inside, my dad queried with his Dutch pragmatism coming strongly to the fore? Having to flick maggots of the mutton chops did it for my poor dad. He went on one of those mattresses for two weeks, utterly depressed. He finally got up and put on his polished fine shoes, laced them up and decided to at least move… We moved away from the camp and shared an old half demolished house in the middle of old Mr.Pyne’s timber yard on Woodville Rd, at Guildford, with another Dutch family.  The yard contained stacks of building timbers, baths, bricks and an old 1946 Chevy Ute on three wheels, a Sheppard dog on three legs and a generous abundance of very fast rats outrunning the dog.

They were old friends from the period of war torn bombed out Rotterdam and had migrated to Australia in 1951. No doubt they had experienced the Nissan Hut and maggot delights far more heroically than us, or actually my dad. My mum was made of sterner stuff.

I made the best of it. It was in the camp’s flimsily built shower partitions that I viewed for the very first time a woman’s pubic bush, having peeked through a slight gap between the partitions separating males from females. I was fifteen. I had already seen naked breast in a ‘native African’ news reel in The Hague, a year or so before migration and had lived of that ever since. Considering the daily inspection of food possibly laden with maggots, the very first view of something I was so curious about was a bonus. I leaped with joy. My teen years’ patience was rewarded and had come to full fruition. Well, not fully, that came later, all in good time though, I was still young.

That view of my first female pubic bush in Scheyville migrant camp made up a hell of a lot, considering all the misery that my parents experienced. The woman was a Polish mother of three children. I used to pass her briefly on the way to our huts to eat our meals, hopefully without any extras. I looked her in the eye deciding I would be honest with my little secret, at least by not avoiding her gaze. Was she suspecting something?

I am still gasping over my parents’ bravery. How did they do it with six children?

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The autumn leaves are in a serious downturn. Going past the hospital grounds I was wading knee-deep in them. I love walking through them listening to their particular sound. The crunching of leaves underfoot cannot be imitated easily. It is a sound of my childhood when I used to play with my friends no matter what weather. It would be the leaves in autumn and the swishing of snow in winter.

In winter, and if there was a good pack of snow, we would take matches and some lint with us and try and find snow bubbles above the frozen canals of The Hague were we were living after the war. The gases that were free to rise when the water wasn’t frozen would get trapped under ice or snow and form gas bubbles which we would explore and set alight with our matches and burning lint. The aim and hope was always to get a big bubble with a huge explosion. We never found the really big one..

Is it true that boys are more drawn to fire and explosions and does that explain the inclination to wars and bloody mayhem? I watched a mob of primary school kids running into a park. Within minutes the boys separated and went running after each other rumbling and play fighting, rolling over the ground. The girls in the meantime, few rumbled or threw each other to the ground. Most were happy to sit in the shade of a tree and talking. Is it nature or nurture?

Another favorite trick of mine was to put petrol on water in our kitchen sink and light it. How I was fascinated by something burning that was floating on top of water. I suppose it was a lesson in science. I always did this when my mum was having a nap in the living room which was on the other side of a long wall-papered corridor. The bottle of petrol was kept in a green cupboard underneath the sink and was used by my father to fill his cigarette lighter. In those days it was the height of sophistication to light a cigarette by petrol filled lighter. Men walked around not just smelling of tobacco but also of petrol seeping out of there lighters.

The contraption used a small rotating disc against a flint stone that would ignite the petrol infused cotton wool wick that was kept inside the housing of the lighter and which would protrude through a small hole at the top of the lighter. Even the modern lighter uses some inflammable liquid or gas to light the cigarette. Of course the delights of smoking have long gone since, together with so many other enjoyable cultural habits. We now ingest more tablets than ever before but they are just not as satisfying as the pipe, cigar or cigarette.

Let’s also not forget that instead of smoking we now suck on sugar, salt and fats as never before.  Even so, we live longer or at least stay alive longer but is it still hotly debated if it is ‘living’ when the number of Alzheimer and dementia suffering people are skyrocketing and queuing up by the millions at the gates of places with names such as Eventide, Golf-shore Delight,  or Heritage Thistle.

I don’t want to grow old and in my demented state start grabbing nurses by the bum or mumble obscenities in church and suck up farts in a bicycle pump and then stalk my best and equally old and fading friend and give him the full benefit of a recently digested Brussel sprout blast.

It would be nice to grow old and still be writing my little nonsensical pieces within some reasonable word order.  I have some doubts though. Lately I wake up having to piss almost every couple of hours during the night. I thought of rigging myself up with a handy rubber harness above the bowl where I can hoist myself up with pulleys and ropes and sleep there instead of in bed.  I have to check the Senior Magazines for any aids. I am sure to find some. I bet many might well end up chucking a mattress on the bathroom floor.

In the meantime, my life of decades ago  playing with exploding gas bubbles under the frozen and snowed canals of my youth and now mulling over the possibility of hanging from a suspended harness above the loo is still proof of a busy and interesting time ahead.

The joy of ageing with Milk bottle Lenses. (No walking stick)

The eye test is scheduled for 30^th of April at 10am sharp. The hearing test will be May the 13^th, anytime after 2pm and in Sydney. In both cases bring your health benefit card!

The right eye is being threatened by a good bout of (old) age related Macular disease resulting in loss of vision. It is irreparable but a good diet is advised and there can be injections into the affected eye that may be of some help as well. There are lots of aids including magnifying glasses, super strong spectacles with milk bottle lenses, enlarged print in books and change the settings on computers to giant format with an added opportunity for those that as the loss of vision increases and a thick depression blankets in, you can share your loss with an experienced counselor who will ease you into accepting that life is short, and anyway,” it doesn’t last forever”. Have you chosen your casket yet? That’s just such great news. Keep up your pecker Gerard.

I know I should fear large brown bears or trucks on the footpaths, but loss of vital organs is in a class of their own. I mean, can’t read the small print on the gas bill anymore? What could possibly be worse? Can’t hear the ads on channel 10 or 7, those lovely jingles by Harvey Norman’s ‘Get it now” exhorting us to buy the latest nest of woven plastic tables and chairs for outdoor dining together with a gleaming turbo driven eight burner stainless steel kitchen cum barbeque life style enhancement.

Why then do we get so many ads relating to funeral cost protection lately? You get to see this happy family cavorting with kids on a sloping lawn with the wife beaming happily in the knowledge that her hubby has taken out a good solid funeral protection plan. He looks so proud! It all adds so much to lifestyle. What are they trying to tell us? Should we ask the funeral organizers to put the cremation retort on low or stand-by? Is that part of ‘life-style’ as well or is it more of a death-style? How’s your death- style going might well be the next catchy phrase?  Is it still thriving, getting warm?

If that is all what lays ahead it can’t be too bad? There is still lovely food and nice conversations with friends and family but I do resist the temptation of the old and weary to rabbit on about   ‘the good old days’ when petrol was 2shillings and six pence a gallon and Franquin the Great Magician was as hilarious an evening of entertainment it could ever get. I just put on the ‘for the hearing impaired’ ear phones and listen yet again to ‘le piano du pauvre.’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeD-B-KSwgs

Nothing could chase the grandkids back home to mum and dad quicker than when I put on that piece of music and ask H for yet another fox-trot. (Or talk about the benefits of a Jules Verne book)

I have learnt my lesson well and leave the kids to their IPod, Pad, Tablets and Apps and console myself that a similar fate will befall them as well. “You will all be lucky to get out of it alive, I tell them”. They look a bit bewildered when I say that. Oma puts them at rest and says “your Opa is just kidding you”; “he is always joking and making fun.” “Don’t take him seriously!” “He is going gaga.”

I can still put on my own socks and you walk rather briskly, so my lovely wife tells me.

This journey is still ongoing.

The world is a failed fruit-cake.

If you thought the noise about the Chechen-American brothers in Boston had died down, you are mistaken. It is still at fever pitch. The commentary on blogs and web-sites are running hot and are now blamed for jamming even the levers and cog-wheels on North Korean nuclear weapons.

Someone has estimated total cost of the 6000 police, 2000 vehicles, 22 helicopters with Boston businesses and shops as well as all subway, rail and transport closed down for a couple of days, of being between 800 million and 1 billion dollars. One man is dead and the other, a teenager, can’t speak.

http://www.thetranscript.com/ci_23067670/marathon-manhunt-could-cost-1-billion?source=most_viewed

The only business allowed operating during the ‘search’ was the Dunkin Donuts shops in Watertown! Residents were allowed to stock up on donuts but advised to stay indoors and ration the donuts as good as possible. Scuffles were reported breaking out as long queues of donut customers fought over limited supplies of the chocolate coated ones.

Bruins and Red Socks (whoever they are) postponed their games.

A fertilizer factory that apparently been allowed to operate within a housing estate exploded and so far 14 have died and two hundred injured.

That same night or nights Iraq held an election and 55 people were also blown up in a string of attacks. Those costs no one seemed to have blogged much about. I doubt if the Dunkin Doughnuts patrons would even have bothered giving it a second thought.  The local action is what was central and closest to hearts and minds. Here in Australia it was very much the same and the hunt for the bombers just about the only news item  during the entire day apart from something about a horse named Black Caviar leaving for a paddock somewhere and being patted by people, some showing unbearable grief and anguish with tears in their eyes

http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-/latest/16831382/black-caviars-owner-reveals-anguish-of-retirement-decision/

Of course, a tragedy is a tragedy and it is silly to compare them but it does strike me that a tragedy in America overshadows tragedies elsewhere. Perhaps we are numb to tragedies happening in the Middle East or those countries at war and are unsettled much more with those that happen in the West or close at home. I don’t know why that is so. Is it all because of geography or different cultures? I thought we were a global village now!   Someone’s son or daughter is someone’s son and daughter. (Or father, mother friend, wife, husband).

http://rt.com/news/iraq-election-attack-killed-876/

When those children were killed at Sandy Hook I would have thought that gun ownership would have been tackled as a first step. How can violence ever be stopped when people are allowed unlimited guns? How come this latest attempt to at least start to rein in and do something about the millions of guns being held in American Households failed again? What do people do with all these guns? Do they take them out, fondle them and oil them followed by looking down their muzzle, perhaps take aim, just for practice? Do they fantasize protecting their homes against robbers or foreign armies?

Are American people really  safe with all those guns in circulation? It defies logic and common sense. Surely the Constitution can be amended. Wasn’t it amended before?

Ps: Of course national disasters are in a completely different category. None the less those that have died in China during the last earthquake are just as dead and just as missed by friends and family.

The interview with the two brothers Chechen father, sitting there so forlornly on his bed, his boney knees stuck out, looking for an answer. How could his sons possibly have come to that; all so sad? Not all that long ago, there they were, in the sandpit letting it run through their fingers, saying ga,gah and gra, grah; lovely boys, uttering their first words with the world at their feet. And now?

The world is a failed fruit cake.

Ps. Since Sandy Hook as at 26April 2013 another 926 people have been shot dead in the US.

One of those week-ends

Even though half of the week-end had passed, I dreaded the next half. All day it was all over the media about the two brothers allegedly responsible for the planting of explosives that killed three people including a young boy. Hundreds of millions world- wide were glued to their Apps and Iphones getting the latest. The two brothers are supposed to be ethnic Chechen who arrived in America aged about 7 and 12.They grew up in America. Some years later they plant bombs! What happened in between? One could ask the same about the man responsible for the massacre at Sandy Hook; what happened? They used to be lovely little boys not long ago. I suppose Klara thought the same of her little boy, Adolf.

I decided to (resolutely) to try and shake my gloom by taking a walk with my wife and our incorrigible Jack Russell ‘Milo’ to our little river at the back of our complex of eight town-houses. I call them ‘units’ but some also refer to them with the rather more grandiose name of ‘villas’! Coming from Europe, I hesitate to call them villas seeing they don’t resemble anything one would find facing the sea at Monaco or the waterfront French Riviera with 50 metres of swimming pools and helipads with Portuguese maids dressed in white uniforms serving Dom Perignon in tall stemmed glasses.

Years ago soon after arrival in Sydney and aged 15 I was desperate to investigate a Sydney suburb named ‘Palm Beach’. Having grown up in Holland and seen the occasional movie with waving palms and people lounging in hammocks while sipping from a coconut with skimpily dressed Hawaiian girls swanning about I was desperate to soak up and make real my vision of waving palms. I thought the hoola girls can come later as a concession to a possible disappointment. (Even then there were already creeping in shadows of doubt or negativity about my possible unrealistically enlarged projections of fantasized distant futures, dreams or visions.)

I was right to be skeptical; not one fucking palm. I walked along and noticed a garden facing the sea. It had a profusion of white peace lilies (Spathiphyllum) which I knew in Holland to be tropical indoor plants. I can still see my dad bending over them with a small watering can. I thought, well, at least something tropical at last. But…here my skepticism and previous negativity came to the rescue once more; on touching them, leaning over the white picket fence, ( just like dad bending over his indoor plants) they turned out to be plastic. Can you believe people spending time to plant plastic greenery? What sort of country had my dad migrated to with locals having the hide to call their suburb Palm Beach with no Palms and gilding the Lily as well? I have found out that the English speaking world is somewhat over-generous with naming things that are only just skirting along the edges of ‘truth’. They sell fresh-cream apple pies with the cream oozing out being a grainy mock cream and the apple probably plastic grown at someone’s Palm Beach garden. They advertise ‘free gifts’. Electrical shops are named “Good Guys”!

The walk along our little river or bubbling brook is always a restorative event. Milo goes berserk sniffing out the ducks while nervously cocking his hind legs alternatively every few metres. He is clearly eternally optimistic in breaking loose and murdering a nice duck, no matter how strong the leash is, he jumps around and is  enjoying jumping and bucking about. I don’t allow him his duck but as a concession to murder, I will let him loose at the church yard where he  chases the occasional wild rabbit and even killed one. Rabbits are in plague proportions, so…

Good boy Milo.., Good boy.