Nav Nuts

After writing a recent article about car navigation systems and the amazing technology that enables them to function, I got to thinking about the little voices these devices employ to give verbal directions. For example, on ours there is a very British-sounding lady. She has such a regal affectation, I almost feel like it’s the Queen giving the orders.

“One should command one’s vehicle to turn left at the next intersection,” she instructs. “Oh, and DO be sure to indicate ….. or we shall NOT be amused!”

This got me thinking about some possible alternatives to this voice … as well as some creative new product ideas.

For example, we could have ‘Nav Bloke’. He has the voice of an Ocker and gives instructions like: “Hey Chooka, why doncha hit the skids at the red loight, mate? Then hang a lefty at the pub on the corner. Bewdy.”

I can see Nav Bloke being very popular amongst the local lads.

Then there could be Nav Kid. This one would be a hit with the small fry because, rather than containing boring stuff about roads and adult destinations, it would only contain global positioning information for fast food outlets and toy shops.

The voice will shriek; “Stop the car, Mum! So and so (insert annoying sibling’s name) is hitting me! I need to go to the toilet! I’m hungry! I wanna buy a new X Box!” If nothing else, this device would minimise the length of time that parents are willing to spend driving, thus reducing global warming. See, how eco-responsible are we at our new Naf Nav factory?

But wait; there’s more! Just to save us girls a bit of work, we could have Nav Nag, which would sound something like this: “I TOLD you to turn left at the last corner, Geoffrey! Now you’ll have to turn right, make a detour to pick up my mother, run the kids to basketball and bring home something for dinner! (Gee, I’ll bet Geoffrey can’t wait for THAT one to hit the market!)

Of course, we shouldn’t overlook the older members of society when marketing our new line of car navigators. Nav Gran will not only ask our senior citizens where they need to go (and if they’re absolutely sure about that), but it will also send them back inside to get their glasses, turn off the iron and put the cat out … before it even allows the car to leave the driveway!

Or for those who prefer a little Zen, what about New Age Nav. As you approach a chaotic intersection, a serene voice accompanied by pan pipes and the sound of rolling waves will waft peacefully across the airways. The voice will eventually murmur; “Just let go. MMMMMMM. Take a deep breath and eeeeeeze right. Just drift along and let your inner chakra guide you.”

Then, lastly, for nostalgic Baby Boomers, there will be Hippy Nav. It will come in a jaunty little plastic case covered in flowers and peace signs and the drawling voice will say; “Hey, man. What’s your hurry? We’re all on a road to nowhere, man! Slow down; smell the roses; feel the love. Peace man.”

I don’t know about you, but I feel better already.

Not safer. But better.

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Satellites R Us

You have to admire the logic of some people. Or laugh at their audacity! Take, for example, a conversation I had with a friend a couple of days ago.

We had been discussing car navigation systems and I was marvelling at this technology. Isn’t it incredible that data can be collected for mapping, assembled into a meaningful format, beamed up by a satellite and finally sent back to our little electronic devices? And all in a matter of nano-seconds!

My non-techno mind boggles at this type of thing!

Not so, apparently, that of my learned friend. He evidently has more insight into such matters for, when I expressed my incredulousness at the above, he simply shrugged and said; “Well it’s really not all that complex. I mean, once you’ve got your satellite up there, it’s just a matter of…….”

My eyebrows flew skyward.

“Stop! Rewind!” I cried in disbelief (and not a small amount of amusement). For correct me if I am wrong here folks, but isn’t there something inherently wrong with a sentence that includes the words; “Once you’ve got your satellite up there…”?

I mean, who does this guy think he is? Neil Armstrong? Captain Kirk? Obi-Wan Kenobi? George Jetson? In his alternate universe (or mind?) does launching a satellite into outer space sit happily alongside feeding the cat, cutting your toenails or putting out the garbage — in terms of ‘everyday’ activities?

If so, I can just imagine the conversations at his place.

She: “Darling, what time will you be home for dinner?”

He: “Well, I’ll just check the encoder to see how long the space probe should take to push its way through the Equitorial orbit.” (Consults the small device imbedded in his wrist). “Hmmm. I should be back about six. Do you want me to pick up some frozen dinners from Pluto on my way through?”

Yes, okay, this example may be a little extreme. He wouldn’t actually pick up frozen dinners. If he’s really as clever as he makes out, he would get hot ones from Mars.

But all silliness aside, surely you can understand why it amuses (and somewhat disturbs me) to hear everyday, non-NASA people making glib statements about ‘getting your satellite up there’. As if my friend, or most people for that matter, could ever get a satellite ANYWHERE, let alone know how to make use of it!

Interestingly, my friend couldn’t understand my mirth.

“What?” he huffed defensively ... but I was too busy laughing to answer him.

Fortunately his pronouncement did have one worthwhile element. It provided me and my fellow diners with much amusement as I recounted the story over dinner later that day.

“I just don’t get why you think it’s so funny!” Captain Kirk cried in exasperation as I cried tears of laughter.

“All I meant,” he went on, “was that, once you get your satellite up there, the rest is a piece of cake! The technology already exists. We just tap into it”.

And he almost had me feeling contrite … until he added one last sentence.

“I mean, it’s not rocket science, is it?”

We all cracked up again.

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Californian Dreaming

Strange things are happening at my place. Habits are being formed and, for a change, they are not all bad ones.

For example, objects are finding their ways into strange places. Like the cupboards where they belong.

Bizarre, I know.

And dirty washing is being placed in the dirty wash basket! Shock, horror! Bathrooms are being left clean and dry, (unlike their usual ‘just been visited by a family of muddy water buffalos’ state), and overflowing school bags and smelly runners (thus far never have been known to make it beyond the back door after school) have suddenly disappeared.

What is going on? I hear you ask.

Well, the house is on the market. And given that it was all due to some pretty consistent nagging from Master Teen about being ‘sick of living out of town’, apparently he concedes a certain amount of responsibility towards keeping the place in ‘imminent inspection’ mode and is happy to do his share.

I must say I am impressed too. It’s not often that you see a teenage boy making his bed. In fact, I was so fascinated by this whole cleanliness in teens thing that I wondered how often you would see the words ‘teenager and ‘tidies’ in the same sentence, so I Googled it on the Web.

Not surprisingly, I found only two references. The first was a headline from a 1973 copy of the medical magazine, Lancet:

“Teenager Tidies Room — Doctors Baffled”
(Sub Heading: “Mother Goes Into Anaphylactic Shock”).

The second reference was from MAD magazine where, clearly, they were joking.

And the new house? I hear you ask.

Well, don’t get excited. It’s not so much a house as an advertisement for Dirty Dan’s Demolition Services (the ‘Before’ picture obviously). Peeling paint, sagging floor, seventeen varieties of gaudy carpet, a kitchen with no stove, a rusty tin roof and an outside dunny with no flush. And all currently buried under twenty tonnes of fallen autumn leaves.

“Delightful Californian Bungalow,” reads the Real Estate guide. “Bring the old girl back to life.”

Naturally they neglected to mention that you would need a defribulator the size of the MCG to get this old girl’s fireplaces burning again. Californian Bungalow indeed!

But whilst she is seriously more ‘Bung’ than ‘Cal’, she is in a great location and we figure that with a bit of ‘T.L.C’ and a fair bit more ‘C.A.S.H’ she will come up a treat.

So, soon it will be on with our very own Renovation Rescue!

But first we have to sell this place. It’s a bit of a mess at the moment but that’s no problem. I will just get my own little ‘Mr Sheen the Teen’ on the job!

Am I’m enjoying this? You bet!

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For Whom Pavlov's (Dinner) Bell Tolls

Over the years much research into human behaviour has (oddly, I feel) been conducted using dogs. I seriously question the worth of canine responses in the formulation of hypotheses about the human psyche, for surely there is a vast chasm between human intellect and that of the average Labrador Cross. Agree?

For a start, there is clearly a big language barrier.

Most dogs show little interest in the sound of the human voice (especially one which is yelling) and seem to have no grasp at all of the actual meanings of most words.

In Pavlov's famous research, the dog was not asked to salivate, but did so in response to a ringing bell (which normally preceded food).

And as my own 'Pippa the Wonderdog' leaps excitedly into 'walkies' mode at the mere sight of my runners, I concede her behaviour is more readily attributed to Dr Pavlov's conditioning theory, than to any super 'Labradoric' ability to decipher human syntax.

She's just not that smart and, in any case, she seems to have her own definition of the human language, as follows:

My command: "Sit!"

Pippa's interpretation: Stand with rear legs in rigid upright position. If human attempts to push your rump down, flop sideways onto ground.

My command: "Fetch!"

Pippa's Response #1 : Follow thrown object almost to point of retrieval, then veer off suddenly to find something more interesting to do.

Response #2 : Retrieve thrown object and carry it as far away as possible from the human who threw it.

My command: "Get out of that!"

Pippa's interpretation: You are doing a sterling job of shredding that sheet on the clothesline. Keep up the good work!

My command:"NO"

Pippa's interpretation: Do not stop what you are doing right now. It's all good.

My command: "Get off the Road"

Pippa's interpretation: free to wander unfettered and unhindered by passing traffic. You are, after all, the most important user of the roadway. The traffic will wait while you sniff the dead magpie in the middle of the road. Take your time.

But judging by the number of disobedient mutts around, it would seem that my Pippa is not alone in her gross misinterpretation of the English language.

So, my advice is this.

Forget voice cues and complex body language. If you really want your dog to obey, just go out and buy a whacking great bell and a really big tin of dog food!

Ding! Ding!

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Vanishing Women

Just a few weeks ago, I was lamenting in this column that my teenage son was having trouble recognizing me in photographs. Apparently, he confessed, he had never ‘actually looked’ at me before. Hurtful as this was, I have forgiven him and moved on. (Well, almost, although I have banned him from using my car for a couple of weeks. After all, if he isn’t exactly sure who I am, he shouldn’t be borrowing my car, should he? Stranger Danger and all that…)

Well anyway, I am beginning to discover that this apparent invisibility is not only confined to me. In fact, forty-something women across the country are probably nodding their heads furiously as they read these words. They know what it’s like to become suddenly inconsequential.

Where once we pulled admiring glances, we now find people peering around us to check out the young beauty behind us. Where once a smile could facilitate queue-jumping, today we just head for the back of the line resignedly. Where once we might have smiled and waved when a car horn tooted at us, today we quickly check that our skirt isn’t tucked into the back of our knickers. And where once people would marvel and say “Gosh, you don’t look (insert approaching middle-age number)!” now they just nod and mutter, ‘Mmm. Yes. Those wrinkle creams really are such a waste of money, aren’t they?”

A heightened appreciation of this phenomenon came the other night when dining out with a group of girls (the more mature variety) and being totally ignored by the waiter for the first half hour. I swear we could have tap-danced naked on the table and he wouldn’t have given us more than a cursory glance. (Although doubtless there would have been some complaints from the other tables — something about putting them off their food — which might have brought the good man sooner).

Well, anyway, we discussed this matter of being unobserved, my invisible friends and me, and agreed it is becoming more and more noticeable. It seems they too have been suffering the curse of being overlooked, dismissed and ignored. And not just by their spouses, kids, bosses and pets either! They noted a distinct lack of interest from everywhere.

We Baby-Boomers, it seems, are, well … plain boring, to the younger set. Apparently we don’t deserve to dress groovily, be well fed or even have our views heard. In fact, if we had any dignity at all, we probably should just cover up, pay up and shut up!

But like every other hurdle our generation has ever encountered, there is little chance of us capitulating to the scourge of mature-age-invisibility. We wanted sexual freedom — we got it. We wanted no-fault-divorce — we got it. We wanted to be rock stars forever — we got it. (Well, okay, it was actually Mick Jagger who got it, but there’s no way we are going to tell him he’s too old because that means we’re old too!)

Yes, we BBs like a challenge and we will rise to it. We have been changing things from the sixties and we aren’t about to stop now.

So, what can we do to change this trend towards obscurity?

Act up. Misbehave. Break the law. Don’t pay your bills and definitely don’t lend your car, money or cooking skills to anyone under thirty.

Would we still be invisible then?

I don’t think so, Tim.

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A Mooooving Tale

You often hear about strange things that happen to people. Weird and wonderful things. Worrying or frightening things. Funny or sad things.

Usually we just smile (or frown) and think “poor bugger” or something similarly compassionate and heartfelt ….. and then we just forget about it. Other times these stories become like folklore and give the person who endured the happening (or the families and friends thereof) many happy years of entertainment as the story gets retold, rehashed and sometimes even reinvented!

One such folklorish story that (happily!) needs no embellishment is the one about a close relative of mine ….. and a cow…in the middle of the city.

He is an accountant. Very respectable person. Responsible job. Nice office in town. Normally this chap (whom, for the purposes of this story, I shall call Pierre) likes to live a quiet life, mind his own business and not draw unwarranted attention to himself.

And that’s exactly what he was doing one summer’s morning as he drove his car to work; wending his way through congested city traffic; half listening to the ABC news and presumably thinking about calculations and fiscal responsibility, as you do if you are, unlike me, a lover of numbers. (Personally I would rather think about decaying compost than anything remotely numerical. Luckily it’s not up to people like me to keep the world’s economy in order. Phew!).

Anyway, it was a warm morning and Pierre had his car window wound down in order to capture the slight breeze that flitted between the tall city buildings. He was clearly in the ‘zone’ – a zombie-like state reserved for regular commuters to stop them from going insane. Not really thinking about anything in particular (creepy numbers notwithstanding) and certainly not thinking about the possible ramifications of being stuck at the lights with a cattle truck in the next lane. And that was his mistake.

For just as he was about to take off on the green light, something rather unexpected happened. He felt upon his window-side arm a warm, slushy wetness and witnessed in horror a rush of browny-green pooey slime jettisoning down the side of the truck and all over his hitherto dignified, white-shirted personage! Arggh!!

I suspect a few words not befitting a respectable, number-loving citizen may have similarly jettisoned out of poor Pierre’s mouth as he struggled to come to grips with what had just happened. Pooed on? In the middle of the city? By a cow? What the….?

So Pierre did what any good accountant with cow poo all over his body driving in the middle of the city would do. He kept driving to work. Well, I guess it’s true that we often revert to routine in times of stress, so Pierre’s natural instinct was to head for his comfort zone. But how could the office be his comfort zone when he was decorated in smelly cow dung? It’s not like no-one would notice!

Upon arrival he sat in the basement car park to consider his position. Could he risk being late for a very important meeting by going home for a shower and shirt change? Or was his shirt salvageable with a towel-down? Would anyone really care?

He decided to phone his office to explain his predicament. Predictably there were plenty of hearty guffaws coming through the phone as his tale of woe quickly circulated around the office. (And I suspect there were many hysterical retellings in pubs and at workmates’ homes later that day).

Pierre’s boss finally suggested he go home and attend to his ablutions. After all, who would want to do business deals with a human dung beetle?

Well anyway, it all ended well. Pierre got cleaned up. The business deal got closed; and so did Pierre’s driver’s-side window whenever driving alongside trucks in the future.

A very wise move, Pierre. A very wise moooooove, indeed!

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The Elephant in the Room

Elephants, perhaps surprisingly, have featured rather noticeably in my life of late. Which I hope is not actually some kind of subliminal message from Jenny Craig about my hijacked weight loss plan (well, it is winter you know, Saint Jenny — who can resist stodgy food and chocolate in this weather?)

Well, anyhow, back to the elephants. The first encounter of the Elephant Kind was during an in-depth, philosophical conversation with a friend in which the ‘elephant in the room’ saying was mentioned once or twice.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t have noticed this, as weird conversations are not necessarily noteworthy in my usual sphere. But I did make a mental note about the mention of elephants on this occasion because there had been two of them living just up the road from me for the past couple of weeks.


No, I am not kidding! The circus was in town and, while the two big fellows no longer perform as part of the circus, they still manage to attract plenty of attention. After all, an elephant is not something you often see in suburbia.

In fact, imagine the surprise of my friend’s golden labrador as she dashed across the local reserve towards what looked like an innocent mound of dirt, only to have the mound of dirt suddenly stand up! The poor dog was so astonished she did a backwards doggy Moon Walk that would have made the late Michael Jackson proud!

My own Scruffy Dawg (my mini schnauzer) also did a double-take when he saw the giants.

“Omigod!” he shrieked in amazement. “Can you imagine the bones THOSE mothers could bury!” (Or something like that. My ‘schnauzer’ is not yet very fluent).

Luckily he was on the leash because I am sure he would’ve become a schnauzer pattie in about ten seconds flat had he ventured any closer.

All this talk of elephants reminded me of the local elephant legend where a young boy was quietly fishing in a creek when he suddenly found an elephant crashing through the undergrowth towards him. In North East Victoria, Australia. Just imagine the poor kid’s shock!

Especially when the most exotic thing he probably expected to see that day was a European carp — if he was lucky!

But I digress. We’ve become so accustomed to seeing the elephants around my neighbourhood during the past few weeks that they have almost become a bit pass

“What, you don’t have an elephant in your street?” I say to my out of town buddies, “how odd!”
Scruff, too, now finds nothing strange about passing a four ton gargantuan on his daily walk. In fact, I suspect he has come to think of the local ‘elephant’ park as his own personal Serengeti.

Furthermore, I think he rather fancies himself to be a mud-dunking wildebeest, judging by his fondness for slopping in every available puddle!

But anyway, today we discovered, sadly, that our beautiful, betrunked buddies are gone. The time had come for the circus to move on.

“See ya next time, you camels,” said Scruff, who’s clearly not very up with his circus animals.

And then he rolled in the biggest poo he had ever seen!

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