This looks like a job for ...

Daniel Kinsman.

Dan - your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a programme which analyses the content of the last page of any document sent to a physical printer. If there is less than, say 1% of the printable area used, then your magical programme will ask the user if they want to print that useless last page with the tiny watermark at the bottom.
If the user selects "yes", then a small sound effect will play: a chainsaw felling an old growth tree for office paper.
Better yet, you could set it in advance not to print those pages at all and simply ask afterwards: "Did you really want to print that last page of nothing?"
Yes, we should stop printing everything.
No, people aren't going to.

I set you to your task.

Gillie would be a great dad

Parenting is like wicket-keeping: no-one much comments on a job well-done, but drop one little catch ...

I should have broken a cup

Three women and a man enter a country art gallery. The man is wearing a cast and holding a crying, burbling baby. He jiggles the baby with the cast arm and walks around to settle the child while the women he is with examine the local artworks.

Enter Middle-Aged Curator: Oh! How adorable! With Dad! How old?
Cast man: He's three and a half months. He is gorgeous, isn't he?
M.A.C.: Oh, what's all that racket, eh?
Cast man (over baby's fading wails): He's tired.
M.A.C.: Lovely! What a lot of noise! Darling little fellow!

Middle-Aged Curator bustles off to sell sell sell her prize-winning pottery to the other three woman and the baby, now free of overhead chit-chat and possessed of a manly chest clad in a soft coat to snuggle against, falls instantly and deeply asleep.

Some half an hour later, Cast Man's cast arm has long since fallen asleep and the other arm is swiftly following it after single-armedly cradling a five and half kilo dead weight for thirty minutes. He relents and hands the baby to one of the three women, the baby's mother. Middle-Aged Curator appears from behind a large painting of an emu.

M.A.C.: There we are! He'll go to sleep just fine with his mum!

Cast Man has to be quietly man-handled out the gallery's front door, a feat made possible only by his weakened arms.

Later that night, as Cast Man is walking his son to sleep around a restaurant, another young father cuffs his 18 month old son over the head in front of the three women. This is the same young father who absolutely would not return Cast Man's comradely nod at the start of the evening; opting instead for the blank 1000-yard stare.

Not the one-handed computing YOU'RE thinking of ... although that will present its own problems ...

Bloody hell.
Dislocated thumb by hockey stick.
Sounds tough but actually hurt less than stubbing my toe.
Thanks, Panadeine Forte!
So now I'm typing this with one hand.
My left hand, of course.
The right hand is wrapped in a special OT-melted cast and velcro to protect my Jurgen Balls.
For three weeks.
Hence, everything I write now will be severely curtailed into
bad poetry.

*

Spot the difference

I recently submitted a review of Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Just yesterday I received the glorious hard copy of the latest edition of Viewpoint in the post. Below is the sentence as I submitted it for publication:

"... it is the story of Changez’s time studying and working in the United States and being absorbed into the culture which grew from the September 11 attacks."

And here is the sentence as published:

"... it is the story of Changez’s time studying and working in the United States and being absorbed into the culture, which grew from the September 11 attacks."

AAAARRGH!!

On the one hand, I'm annoyed that my review (or at least that sentence) has been turned from a factual recounting of the basic plot of the novel into a broad statement about the United States' culture after the September 11 attacks.
On the other, I stand in quiet awe that a simple comma can transform so much.
I love language.

And the next cliff-hanger could happen at any moment!

When you're a new parent, every feature film turns into a serial!

Right. That's IT.

I am sick to fucking death of the prevailing attitudes about fatherhood. If mothers are still seen as the ones firmly ensconced at home, writhing in throes of whitegood-enabled ecstacy while they slowly, blissfully euthanise their thankless, smart-arsed children with ever more powerful anti-bacterial cleaning agents, then we fathers are still firmly on the outer. Clueless, spineless morons from Mars, we are, one and all. Footballs in one hand, nutsack in the other.
Before Charlie was born, as The Expectant Father, I received much advice and commentary . (Mele did too, but that deserves its own tetchy blog). Most of that advice was in the form of a warning about The First Poo.
"You know," my newly-self-declared mentor would intone, "the first poo a baby ever does is this black, sticky GLUEY Satanical substance, which affixes itself to everything like Intergalactic Superglue. It doesn't come off, it can't be washed out." This was usually followed by the requisite evil cackle and knowing stare, just to ensure that I was quivering on the ground in disgust and mourning for the imminent loss of my immature, boyish, care-free ways to the grim spectre of responsibility.
I, of course, did no such thing.
I'm a large fan of self-deprecation, but in this instance, I will buck my own trend and proudly claim that when that first nappy needed changing, I changed it. And moved on with my life.
One thing about my life that did not move on, however, was this larger issue of treating fathers like naughty schoolboys who need to pick up rubbish after school in order to learn some responsibility. Most of the mainstream literature I encounter (read: theage.com.au) uses the same patronising tone that pre-feminism literature did in referring to women in the workplace.
Many difficult and strange rituals will happen to you, Mr New Dad, the tone of the piece goes. We bet you didn't think you'd be expected to pick up the housework while your wife sleeps! Did you know, she'll seem exhausted all the time and probably won't even want to have sex? Didn't think of that? Did you? You stupid boy. Daring to have children, which is clearly the sacred mother's role. Tsk tsk tsk.

Think I'm joking? Think I'm overreacting?
Please, visit the Phil&Ted's website (they make fancy prams) and take a look at the way fathers are welcomed.
"Freaked Out Dads!"
If you venture further, you'll find that the website is actually directed towards fathers who actually don't seem to be looking forward to the arrival of a new child.
Don't panic, Mr Mannering! they reassure you. No need to be a prisoner of the nursery (like Mum), with our funky kit you'll still get to: See the lads; watch the footy; build the deck ...
How about get phucked Phil! You too, Ted!

I'm sick of good fathers being marvelled at and the shit ones being let off the hook.

***
GTH - Andy Pants, you cherry-picker, you. Nice work. I was thinking red roses and passionate storm clouds, but I liked yours better.