Showing posts with label baby boomer interests. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baby boomer interests. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Business idea - investors wanted

I am going to start up a tech company which redesigns and rebrands existing technology for old people. Remote controls, USB sticks, microwaves, all with big buttons and minimal functionality for people who are either nervous about technology or routinely puzzled by it.

My company will be called 'FANDANGLED'.

I called it first.

I'm going to need money and staff to redesign cheap techie stuff so that your Gran will be able to use it and and confidently say "I've got one of those new Fandangled microwaves!"

Now hiring.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Lipid

Got a real hit spike from blue milk for my sleepovers post. I went back to leave a responce and noticed the metric-shitload of feminist motherhood/parenting/but mostly motherhood blogs she has in her linkage. So I hit up Spilt Milk and found a post about something called Fat Acceptance or Health At Every Size. It was crafted as a responce to a blog of John Birmingham's.

Instead of blogging on someone else's comments page, I decided to put off the PhD for (yet another) night and think this one out right here. I would welcome any thoughts on this issue.

I'm having a bit of trouble getting my head around this concept of Fat Acceptance. I'm not going to read JB's blog because I like him as a gonzo journo, but as a blogger it's obvious the pressure to push instead of polish is getting to him.

I'll roll with Fat Acceptance and Health At Any Size. I'm completely in agreeance with a philosophy of body autonomy and I realise that divorcing external moral pressure from health care is of primary concern if we're all to move forward to the spaceships (Bill Hicks - not me - not crazy!).

But I'm still curious. Is there a line? I'm assuming that FA/HAES is about having each person draw a personal line between 'Screw everyone, I'm just fine actually' and 'My chances of heart disease could be lowered if I changed'.
I also assume that it's at the other end too - skinny people cop the inverse kind of hatred. Instead of you succumbing to self-loathing when someone makes a salad comment, skinny people (I've known, loved, etc) are equally as alone when someone makes an envious comment about their figure. Any body image problems are automatically negated and silenced because 'You're skinny'. This is body hate lingua for 'Shut up you cow stop saying I'm fat'. Skinny people are not killing anyone with their bodies any more than fat people are.

The most reasonable argument for losing weight that I can think of is the one which puts the body in the national perspective. An increase in the national rate of obesity equals greater pressure on health care resources in the future. Call it a 'Lose Kilos For Your Country' platform. This increase will occur in much the same way that the Baby Boomer population will be draining resources when they hit retirement en masse from now and for the next 30 years or so. Perhaps the losing weight argument could be put as a warning, not about heart disease, but about competition: 'You'd better lose weight or else you'll be fighting a bunch of geriatrics for a dwindling number of heart surgeons who will have more insurance than you.'

However, this denies body autonomy and is an exercise in exerting possibly the largest (per capita) amount of external moral pressure possible (ie. the entire country doesn't really want you to get thinner so you'll feel better, they want you to do it in case their future taxes go up).

I am still wondering whether there is a line, a personal, subjective line between feeing okay in your body, whatever you name it's shape, and flat-out obesity.
The kind of obesity in which blame is not important.
The kind of obesity which is as unhealthy as consistent sunburn.
The kind of obesity which sits at the upper reaches of thousands of statistics which all begin with the words 'Increased risk of ...'
Nothing is guaranteed. You could eat healthy, exercise regularly, but still have to buy two plane tickets and you could live to ninety-eight.
But where does Fat Acceptance and Healthy At Every Size draw its line and say 'You are probably going to die sooner and suffer longer because of the size of your body'?

Thursday, October 1, 2009

A stifling review

Tim Winton's Breath

**spoiler alert**

Is just like Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo, but with Michael Hutchence swinging from a wardrobe door in the background.
No, not really an addition I would have made either.

Monday, September 7, 2009

I am a ... what?

I garden most weekends, fall asleep in front of ABC crime drama, know about lawn mowers, own more tracksuit pants than those suitable for the public eye, have a subscription to ABR, listen to 891 Mornings with Matt'n'Dave, complain at the video store, call the place where I rent DVDs "the video store" as though it were some retailer of Betamax tapes from beyond the black stump, own antiques, enjoy shopping for antiques more than clothes, drink lattes, maintain facial hair on purpose rather than a result of laziness and buy and drive Toyotas because my mechanic recommends them.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

A simple question

Am I a cynical Gen XY conspiracy theorist*, or does the ongoing water restrictions crusade on 891 ABC Radio represent nothing more than the simple desire of their middle-class, mortgage-castle, pre-bubble audience to have their lawns kept nice'n'green and stuff any one who would have them douse their quarter-acre but once a week?

*Is there any other kind?

An explanation of The Joy Division Litmus Test

Although it may now be lost in the mysts of thyme, the poll below is still relevant to this blog. In the winter of 2008, Mele and I went to live in Queensland. In order to survive, I bluffed my way into a job at a Coffee Club.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.

Have you heard of the band Joy Division?

Chinese food, not Chinese Internet!

Champions of Guess The Header

  • What is Guess The Header about? Let’s ask regular “Writing” reader, Shippy: "Anyway, after Franzy's stunning September, and having a crack at 'Guess The Header' for the first time - without truly knowing what I was doing mind you - I think I finally understand what 'GTH' is all about. At first I thought you needed to actually know what it was. Don't get me wrong — if you know what it is, it may help you. I now realise that it's more Franzy's way of invoking thought around an image or, more often than not, part of an image. If you dissect slightly the GTH explanatory sentence at the bottom of his blog you come up with this: “The photo is always taken by me and always connects in some way to the topic of the blog entry it heads up.” When the header is put up, the blog below it will in some obscure way have something to do with it. “Interesting comments are judged and scored arbitrarily and the process is open to corruption and bribery with all correspondence being entered into after the fact and on into eternity, ad infinitum amen.” Franzy judges it, but it's not always the GTH that describes the place perfectly that gets it. “The frequent commenters, the wits, the wags and the outright smartarses who, each entry, engage to both guess the origin and relevance of the strip of photo at the top (or “head”) of each new blog and also who leave what I deem the most interesting comment.” It generally helps if you're a complete smartarse and can twist things to mean whatever you feel they should mean - exactly the way Franzy would like things to be twisted." - Shippy Blogger and GTH point scorer.
  • Nai - 1
  • Lion Kinsman - 2
  • Will - 2
  • Brocky - 2
  • Andy Pants - 2
  • The 327th Male - 3
  • Mad Cat Lady - 3
  • Miles McClagen - 4
  • Myninjacockle - 4
  • Asheligh - 5
  • Neil - 5
  • Third Cat - 5
  • Adam Y - 6
  • Squib - 6
  • Mele - 6
  • Moifey - 7
  • Jono - 8
  • The Other, other Sam - 14
  • Kath Lockett - 15
  • Shippy - 19
  • River - 32