Politics Has Become Professional Wrestling

I have reached the conclusion that politics is no longer politics.

It's wrestling.

Not actual wrestling, mind you. Nobody is in the ring with Trump, lying on all fours with him. Although, give it time.

No, I'm talking about professional wrestling.

The Squeeze loves wrestling. He watches it with all the seriousness of a man observing open-heart surgery. Meanwhile, I sit there wondering how grown adults can become emotionally invested in two blokes in sequined underpants pretending to hate each other.

Then I turn on the news.

And suddenly it all makes sense.

Politics has become wrestling.

Everybody has a favourite. Everybody has a villain. Nobody changes sides. Facts are optional. Outrage is mandatory. The crowd's chant. The commentators scream. The fans buy merchandise. And every week there is another dramatic comeback, shocking betrayal or feud that absolutely nobody saw coming, except everyone did because it happened three months ago.

The amazing thing is that wrestling fans know it's entertainment. (...although won't admit it unless pushed)

Political fans seem to think it's life and death. Spartan's; in the arena - and the crowd baying for blood.

People no longer discuss policies. They discuss personalities. Nobody asks, "Will this improve the economy?" They ask, "Did you see what he said?" or "Can you believe what she posted?"

At this point, I expect election debates to be sponsored by KFC and settled with folding chairs.

And social media hasn't helped.

The internet has convinced everyone they are either defending democracy itself or fighting evil, depending on which team shirt they are wearing.

Honestly, I think we'd all be happier if politicians entered Parliament with theme music and pyrotechnics. At least then we'd know where we stood.

Because let's face it, politics stopped being boring for some people years ago.

It became entertainment for the brain dead.

And the entertainment became an addiction.

Which explains why half the world is furious before breakfast and the other half is selling T-shirts.

Personally, I'm waiting for the day somebody jumps off the top rope during Question Time.

At this point, I wouldn't even be surprised. 

Nobody Warned Me About The Passwords

When I was younger, I had this vague image of retirement.

I imagined leisurely mornings. More cups of tea. Perhaps the odd crossword puzzle. Maybe even some gardening... Anyone who knows me knows that the plants and I have a very easy relationship. My kitchen is like an indoor forest. It reminds of an old Australian Crawl song... 'the gardens full of furniture, the house is full of plants." Except in my case, my garden's full also!

What nobody warned me about was the passwords.

Sweet Jesus, the passwords.

At sixty-four, I spend half my life trying to prove I am actually me.

Everything requires a password. Banking. Email. Streaming services. Shopping accounts. Government websites. Medical appointments. My fitness watch. The television. The remote thing that controls the garage door. I fully expect the toaster to demand two-factor authentication any day now.

I like my phone, where everything compares me to the thing it has mapped and knows it is me...

Oh but passwords... Heaven help you if you get one wrong. Not only have you entered the wrong password, but now you're locked out because apparently you are a criminal mastermind attempting to infiltrate your own Outlook account.

Then comes the reset process.

First, they send a code to your email. Except you can't get into your email because you've forgotten the password. So they send a code to your phone, which you can't find because you've put it somewhere "safe", which in my house means it has vanished into another dimension.

By the time I finally gain access, I can't even remember what I wanted in the first place.

We used to remember phone numbers; admittedly, they weren't that complex then. I knew everybody's birthdays. I could recite addresses from twenty years ago. Now I have forty-seven passwords and can't remember why I walked into the laundry.

Apparently, this is progress.

And don't get me started on the requirement to have one capital letter, one number, one symbol, one Egyptian hieroglyph and the blood of a virgin just to sign in and check your electricity bill.

Then they helpfully ask if you'd like to save your password. Of course I would. But no. Apparently saving it on one device doesn't mean it will appear on another. That would make life far too simple.

Meanwhile, my mother managed perfectly well with one key and a purse full of twenty-dollar notes.

I don't remember her ever needing a verification code to boil an egg.
Nobody warned me about the passwords.

And if retirement was supposed to be relaxing, somebody forgot to tell the internet.

The NDIS Said No. The Raspberry Jam Said Yes.

At sixty-four, I thought life would be settling down. Instead, it appears I'm reinventing myself. Again. God; I’m so sick of it…

Barwon Health is behind me. The NDIS said no to funding my university course. I found the yummy jam I'm after online. Google knows exactly who I am if you type in "Dating a Hunchback", which frankly is not something I ever expected to put on my resume.

I have somehow written 564 blogs and several books, most of them while working full-time. I have survived 29 brain operations, raised a family, become a grandmother and watched Geelong lose enough football matches to qualify for trauma counselling.

And now I'm investigating digital marketing courses and wondering whether Pinterest can make my sites famous. (Of course, dating a hunchback or Secretwomen haven't leapt in views so perhaps not…)

But still, this is not how I imagined retirement. Not by any stretch of imagination.

Mind you, I never really imagined retirement. I just assumed it involved more glasses of lemon water and fewer passwords. Instead, I spend my days arguing with Outlook, checking blog statistics and ordering raspberry jam directly from the manufacturer because civilisation has apparently collapsed and Woolworths no longer stocks the good stuff, nor Coles!

The funny thing is, despite everything, I'm still making plans. Which tells me something. Perhaps I'm not finished after all.

Perhaps this is simply Act Three. And it had better be a hell of a lot more financial that the first two! And let’s face it, if the first two acts are anything to go by, this one should be interesting.

564 Blogs And Still Annoying People On The Internet

Yesterday I got 268 visitors to my blog.

Now, before anyone starts applauding, let me point out that the day before I had considerably more. In the world of blogging, this means I spent several hours behaving exactly like a share market analyst watching a stock crash.

I checked the statistics repeatedly.

Maybe the counter was broken.

Maybe Google had accidentally disconnected Australia from the internet.

Maybe everyone had collectively decided to go outside and enjoy their lives.

The possibilities were endless.

The strange thing about writing online is that you start out convinced you're writing because you have something to say. Then somewhere along the way you find yourself refreshing analytics at ten o'clock at night wondering why David from Nebraska hasn't read your latest masterpiece about social media, narcissists or the collapse of modern civilisation.

Apparently, my self-worth is now directly tied to a graph. This is probably not healthy. When I started blogging years ago, I didn't even know what analytics were. I wrote things because I got to laugh my ass off. If ten people read them, fantastic. If nobody read them, I still had a laugh writing them – that was my biggest laugh actually.

Now I can tell you exactly how many people visited, where they came from, what they clicked on, how long they stayed and precisely when they got bored and wandered off to watch cat videos.

Knowledge is not always a blessing.

One day you feel like a literary genius because 2,000 people read a post about true crime. The next day only 268 people turn up and suddenly you're convinced your career is over and you'll die alone surrounded by unpublished blog posts and empty coffee cups.

It's ridiculous. The truth is, 268 people is still a lot of people. If 268 people walked into my lounge room and asked me to entertain them, I'd have a nervous breakdown. Yet online we somehow convince ourselves it's not enough.

Human beings are greedy creatures. Give us ten readers and we want a hundred. Give us a hundred and we want a thousand. Give us a thousand and we're disappointed it wasn't two thousand. Nothing is ever enough.

So today I've decided to be grateful for my 268 visitors. Thank you to all 268 of you.

Especially the one person in Brazil who appears to read absolutely everything I write. I don't know who you are, but at this point we're practically family.

The rest of you can lift your game. I'll be checking the stats later. 😏

AI - The Sky Is Falling!

The other night I had a friend over for dinner and as invariably happens, it ends up with a lively debate. She doesn't use AI... Which is probably healthy. But I spend ten minutes asking ChatGPT whether a Facebook miracle cure is bullshit (and 90% are crap!) 

She spends three hours watching cat videos and people fighting in supermarket car parks. Let's not pretend either of us is saving the rainforest. 😊  

The water usage isn’t the argument! But it is with everyone I speak too about AI.  A lot of people see headlines about AI using water and assume that every question is somehow draining a reservoir. The reality is much less dramatic. The environmental impact is real, but it's also part of a much bigger conversation about how we power and cool all the technology we use every day.

The better question is:

"Is the value we get from it worth the resources it consumes?"

That's the same question we ask about agriculture, transport, manufacturing, air conditioning, football stadiums, and just about every modern convenience. All of which uses water.

I’d say the argument should be around people. The number of authors that had their work stolen. Or musicians. Anything creative.

But the really terrifying truth is that in the newspaper yesterday (online) talked of the 80 plus jobs that are/will be defunct thanks to AI. Idiot men, thanks to them, lots of people will be out of work.

It’s okay for the Elon Musk’s of the world! It’s even okay for me who is at the end of my work life! But I think about anyone with young children; and how bleak it must seem.

Yes, AI uses resources. So does Netflix, Google, Facebook, air conditioning, online gaming, and half the things we do every day. The real question is whether the benefit is worth the cost.