There are multiple things that are giving me the shits at the moment. But the one thing that really tops it off is the Olympic movement. They have done nothing, at least nothing visible in the media, to shame China for their actions in Tibet. Instead protesters get hit hard for their actions against a do nothing Olympic movement.

When I talk about China’s actions in Tibet I am not talking about the violent actions stopping the violent protests. It is the lies that they spread about the Tibetan people and especially the Dali Lama. I fail to believe that someone who has dedicated their life to peace would orchestrate violent protests against the relatively innocent Chinese civilians. If the Dali Lama had organised the protests, they would have been peaceful and on a much larger scale.

I think the Chinese leadership, to a certain degree, believe their own lies – this has to be born of ignorance. The Chinese forget that virtually every world leader has met the Dali Lama and a sizable percentage of the world’s people have actually heard his voice in person. That is why the Chinese lies are so ridiculous. I laughed the first time I heard the Chinese government spokesman accuse the Dali Lama of these crimes. They just look like idiots.

The instant a Chinese leader meets the Dali Lama their whole policy towards Tibet will change. And maybe they know it. Could this be why they’ve refused to meet him for so long? Maybe they just want to save face in that ancient Asian tradition.

I wonder what will happen during the Olympic Games. Will rebellious Chinese students try to protest again – this time with the Chinese government being handcuffed – unable to act because an Olympic games is happening? Maybe Taiwan will unilaterally declare independence. The Olympic Games could either be the greatest thing for China or maybe their worst nightmare. I’m kind of hoping for the nightmare.

In order to combat the obesity epidemic my brother, Nick, has developed his own weight loss program. This system involves calorie restriction and forced exercise.

Forced exercise is the revolutionary part of the system. Nick Fryer is confined to an electric wheelchair. Luckily Nicks chair is fast and travels at the blistering speed of 14 km an hour – this is faster than any fatty fat fat (FFF) can run. My brother simply grabs his turbocharged superconducting cattle prod and chases them beyond exhaustion. He does this every day until the FFF transforms into a human being and can outrun his wheelchair.

This system does create deep mental scars. This sounds like a bad thing, but is actually good – the victim and by that I mean the patient would rather die than become a FFF a second time.

In summary here are the positives and negatives:

Positives:
· 0% chance of relapse
· You either lose weight or die
Negatives:
· Treatment may be fatal
· Completely unproven
· 100% jocular in nature
· Did I mention this was jocular?
· Classified as cruel and unusual punishment and contrary to the United Nations declaration of human rights

Disclaimer: This post in no way reflects the true beliefs of the author. If you find this offensive please look up jocular in the dictionary.

Now that Rudd has unprecedented popularity he can use it as an opportunity to do unpopular, but necessary things. I was talking to the guy next door the other day and he suggested that one thing that may be pushing up house prices is the $7,000 first-time home buyers’ grant. This is something I agree with.

$7,000 doesn’t sound like much and when you look at it isn’t really isn’t much of an incentive to get yourself into mortgage debt. But humans often aren’t logical. Think about the people who use $10 worth of petrol looking for the cheapest petrol station. Or my mother who will drive past dozens of car spaces in a quest to find the disabled one, and when she eventually does it is actually further away from the entrance than many other spaces.

So according to my in-depth analysis. The home buyers’ grant is bad for the economy. The only thing it does is make houses more expensive and encourage people to get themselves into debt when they really shouldn’t.

Similar arguments can be made can be made against the baby bonus. Apparently we are having an almost unprecedented baby-boom at the moment. We really don’t need more baby Australians in this time of mortgage stress and labour shortage.

Doing both of these things should take money out of the economy and that can only be a good thing in an era of rising interest rates.

Oh my God I finally understand how interest rates work. The reserve bank is responsible when they go up and the government is responsible when they go down. Of course the opposite is true when you are in opposition.

Turnbull you’re a genius!

The other night I was watching the first Tuesday book club. This show is on ABC 1 on the first Tuesday of every month and is hosted by Jennifer Byrne with permanent guest roles filled by Marieke Hardy and Jason Steger. This episode the guest reviewers were Judith Lucy and Julian Burnside. The first book they reviewed was The Memory Room by Christopher Koch. Comedian Judith Lucy absolutely detested the book and proceeded to shred it with acidic wit.

Here is a snippet from the transcript of the show:

Judith: This little paragraph sums it up for me; ‘He was physically possessed by her in a way that sometimes disturbed him’; God knows it disturbed me! ‘Since any addiction is disturbing. This possession has partly been achieved through the manner in which she continued to swing between opposite poles in their love making. In the dark and frenzied and aggressive maenad would appear, sinuous and surprisingly strong, pinning his shoulders with both hands, her flesh unnaturally white, her narrowed shining eyes and thinly tightened lips expression a passion closer to anger rather than love only to be replaced by a humble won nymph who abased herself in front of him, her hair hiding her face’ now this is where I’m going wrong with my love making! Because I do not swing from the creature in Predator to a slightly mentally challenged child! Which is obviously what you guys like!

It was bloody funny and I really did laugh out loud. But the poor author would have been humiliated. I hope that Christopher Koch doesn’t watch that show is this review would have destroyed the ego of many writers.

Being a writer myself I know how angry I get when someone doesn’t like my work. Luckily I am blessed with high self-esteem and a solid ego, but most writers aren’t so lucky. It seems many creative people are also quite sensitive. They have to work with the door firmly shut in case someone peeks over their shoulder and criticises an early draft.

I’m sure Mr Koch will eventually recover. In the meantime I will not be reading The Memory Room.

I was watching Cutting-Edge last night on SBS. It was a documentary called The Medicated Child. It was about the enormous increase in the diagnosis of psychiatric illnesses in young children. And when I say young and I mean young, ages two to four. The documentary mainly focused on children who were diagnosed with bipolar disorder, this used to be known as manic depression, sufferers go through periods of mania and depression.

The thing is all the kids I’ve known do seem to show this kind of behaviour. You give the kid red cordial they go nuts get tired, irritable and begin crying. This is normal behaviour. How the fuck can these so-called psychiatrists determine what is normal childhood behaviour and what is a psychiatric illness? Sounds like an impossible task to me. Some of these kids are put on nine different medications – most have not even been tested sufficiently on children. The studies they do have are nearly always funded by pharmaceutical companies.

I believe the current rise in the number of difficult children probably has a lot to do with what they eat. Highly processed food with lots of sugar, salt and god knows what else probably share some of the responsibility. Parents should avoid buying all those bags of chips, lollies, chocolates and sugary soft drinks – drinking water may be boring, but it is often the best source of hydration.

Another part of the blame properly lies with the fact that often both parents work. Unfortunately, our culture is developed in such a way that parents have no choice but to work lest they default on their mortgage.

I do believe that in some cases medication is the answer. I have taken medication for depression in the past and I think it really did help me. In my case I asked for the medication and was aware of all the side-effects before I began taking it. I don’t feel a child is able to make such a decision. I feel it is bad form for parents to make a decision to medicated child just because the kid is a bit of a handful or even a huge handful. Parenthood can be a very difficult challenging undertaking medication should always be an absolute last resort.

Sometimes, I think some psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies will not be happy until 99% of the population is taking some kind of psychiatric medication. Science-fiction authors such as Larry Niven and Aldous Huxley predicted exactly this. Do we really want to live in a boring brave new world where any deviation from a so-called normality is considered an illness and heavily medicated?