Looks like The Lane Cover Sticker Syndicate Inc. Pty Ltd. is at it again. Here’s the sticker they left on our mailbox this week. A bit hard to see, because my camera phone’s not that good at macro shots, but you can see the amateurism and the white mark still left from the previous sticker. Bastards.

Amusingly enough, our local (coalition) member wrote to us this week, saying that if re-elected, he would contribute $10 million in federal money towards filtration of the tunnel. We’ve had signs all along our main roads for the last few years complaining about filtration, erected by the Sticker Syndicate, but this morning those signs changed to “Coalition gives $10 million to filtration, everyone else $0”. However if you got out of your car and walked up close to these signs and read the small print, you’d see that they’re actually Liberal party advertising posters posing as local community public service announcements. That’s slimey, and taking advantage of local residents. Not exactly what you’d expect from a local member, or maybe you would.

This is the same politically minded federal government who says they won’t fund hospitals because they’re a state budget issue, yet with an election looming, are suddenly able to fund a local state government filtration project. Nuts. I’d call that hypocrisy, but at least the money’s being offered.

Shot this today at Grace Bros Myer, while three wise , yet bored, salesmen looked on. Good to see Santa’s marketing types starting the season early. Nothing like good will to all men in spring (or fall/autumn, if you’re that way inclined).

Recently I’ve been increasing the number of blog posts which talk about impro, not intentionally, but in response to the number of Google referals I’ve been getting recently now that Scared Scriptless (web site design still pending) is back up and running at the Clarence Hotel in Sydney. I’ve also been a bit shy about posting in public about it, why I’m not too sure, but an increasing number of players are telling me they bumped into my site, so I’m guessing it aint too bad, and it is safe to come out of hiding so to speak.

Anyway, today I had another one of those classic Theatresports degrees of separation moments. Last weekend I went to a non-impro wedding interstate, where I met a Science Communicator who was a nose bogey giving guided nostril tours at the Edinburgh Science Festival. Amusing, and a nice claim to fame, she outa do impro. Then another non-impro person mentioned a Science Communicator friend of theirs who was currently doing a Theatresports course. Nice coincidence, and I left it at that.

So tonight I’m at the show buying a drink at the bar, and this guy says he liked my gibberish endowments scene. A short exchange later and I find out he’s doing an impro course, and is a muso as well, and as we’re always looking for talented musos, he gives me his business card. Hmm… the first name sounds familiar. Bam! It’s the Science Communicator guy mentioned at the wedding, he knew about the wedding, knows where I used to work, and had already heard second hand the story about the nose bogey girl, yet didn’t know about me or who I was. No connection, but amazing coincidence.

Freaky coincidences like this seem to haunt my life, and at times it makes me question whether there’s more to it than just coincidence. But then I remember that so much of our lives is not coincidence, that perhaps the significant thing is that on average we should actually have more coincidences in life than we do. What a strange thing is existence and the human condition.

Apparently this photo of me after directing the Scriptless final a few weeks ago is funny. Yeah, amusing, but you should have seen what Rob and Amanda were doing!

Still catching up on delayed blog posts due to last week’s disaster, but the big news this week is that the big red pop filter at our radio station has disappeared again, as quickly as it had appeared. Never more to invoke the muffled giggles of our many and varied announcers. You see, with many different cultures, classes and age groups on air, with all our differences, a knob joke in anyone’s language, is still a knob joke. Perhaps the powers that be prefer the old divide and conquer approach to community domination.

This is one of the reasons that I’m a cat person, and more significantly not a dog person. Celebrate individuality and the creative and adventurous spirit. Accept no substitute.

The “I found some of your life” post that did the rounds a few weeks ago was amusing. Not because of what happened, but because of what could be. Some background, a guy found a camera and didn’t know who it belonged to, so he posted one photo per day online and added his own candit comments about each photo. Eventually someone came forward and the site was taken down, but not before it did the rounds of the blogosphere, and finally made it to Slashdot, where someone put the pieces together and found other photos online of the same people.

Anyway, the interesting part is that this is effectively an old impro game we call Pop-up Storybook, where each scene is a frozen piece, improvised by on stage players, with an off stage player providing an improvised commentary. It is tempting to take a couple of dozen photos from a night out, and have some of Sydney’s top improvisers provide a running commentary online. There are sites for photoshopping contests, and photo caption contests, why not Pop-up Storybook?

Which brings up the issue of what other impro games could be played online?

Of course if you’re in Sydney, you could always see the real thing with yours truly, tomorrow night at the Clarence Hotel. 🙂

Sydney is tunnel mad at the moment. You can’t drive anywhere without bumping into a tunnel. Well, it isn’t that bad, but if you’re a politician trying to get ahead, slap a tunnel onto your platform and you’ll be in Canberra before you know it.

In our local area, there’s a big kerfuffle about a new tunnel they’re building, which will go pretty much under our suburb, and doesn’t include “in-tunnel filtration”. Here’s the official RTA page for the tunnel, and here are some activists for filtration, bicycle support and other bits and pieces, including a transcript of an ABC Stateline story covering the issue.

Anyway, the whole point of this post is that today I found a sticker stuck on my mailbox, which basically complained about filtration in the tunnel, and said that we as a community needed to do something about it.

I thought that in this modern age, that most people would have at least a basic understanding of psychology and the human psyche, and what it takes to mobilise and rally people behind a particular cause, or at least someone in such a group would. To then pick on my house, in a suburb that will not only not be adversely affected by the lack of filtration, but will actually have improved local traffic conditions due to the tunnel, and stick an ugly yellow permanent sticker on my mailbox saying such, is probably not the most ideal way to garner support for your activist group.

I tried scraping off the ugly yellow sticker, and the damn thing won’t come off. It left an even more ugly white square where the yellow used to be. Fuck filtration, I want the testicles of the streetwalker who vandalised my mailbox! After all, it could only have been a male.

So while we were going to start getting involved in the local community campaigning against the lack of filtration, we’re now reconsidering whether we really want to be involved with such muddle headed fools.

I’ve spoken a little about community groups in the past (Trust me, I’m not a psychologist and Community groups — a flawed operational model?), and the key thing, above all else, is identifying the skilled and passionate individuals, and empowering them with the authority and resources to enact the missions of the group.

A mistargeted campaign of sticker vandalism against your main prospect base I’d probably regard as a dumb arse backyard job, certainly by someone without the necessary skills or understanding, and whose knowledge of the issues is most likely flawed as well. Makes you question the activist sites mentioned above, doesn’t it?

Fortunately my green lefty socialist leanings mean I’ll still fight the issue, but I think you get my point.

I don’t want to sound like I’m picking on Canberra at all, but I just happen to be spending a bit of time there in recent months, so it tends to be a big source of material.

This time it is back to cabs/taxis. Standing at the airport taxi rant, I’m asked if I mind someone else sharing.

Official cab rant guy: Would you mind sharing with someone else?

RBF: Not at all. So long as they get out at the same place I do.

I had an amusing, if not frustrating situation about 15 years ago when getting a cab back from Sydney airport. I was in the cab, and had some woman pushed in beside me by the official cab rank guy. I didn’t know the law, and she said she’d split the $50 fare, so who was I to complain? 10pm at night after a week away, I was just happy to get home.

That was of course until the cabby decided that she’d be the best to drop off first, then when we pulled into her street it must have have been about ten suburbs away from where I lived, and then the damn cabby gets pulled over by the police half way to my place, and I’m told that the cab was unregistered and wasn’t going anywhere. Another cab and another fare later, and I swore never to share a cab again.

Anyway, back to Canberra airport earlier this week. Although the company pays, I try to do my part to ease the load. 50% of the fare I figured would be a good saving, even though I’d have a stranger to deal with for the subsequent 15 minute cab ride.

Then as we get close to our stop, the following exchange happens:

Cabby: So are you both familiar with the new taxi sharing rules?

RBF: Err, no.

Silent stranger: No.

Cabby: Between 8am and 10am, we have ten times more passengers than taxis, so we have a new system to help people who find it hard to get a cab.

RBF: Uhuh. [ pause ] And what’s that then?

Cabby: Well, we now have a new rate, rate 3, the sharing rate. Rate 3 is 70% of the standard rate, so the trip costs less, but you both pay the amount on the meter. That way I get more, you pay less, and everyone is happy.

RBF: Happy that our discount has gone from 50% to 30% off the standard rate?

Cabby: No, you only end up paying 70% of the standard fare. It’s all up there on the sticker. [ he points to yet another sticker on the windscreen which seemly explains the cab share process ]

RBF: So let me get this straight, for the privilege of sharing a cab with a complete stranger, arguably the reason why I would probably have caught a bus instead if it didn’t frustrate me too much, I can pay an additional 40% more than I would have had I used the old sharing system, and not had the added emotional weight of knowing that you’re also getting 40% more out of the ride than you would for a single passenger. Sounds like a bloody rip off to me, as me and Mr. silent here are now in a lose lose situation.

Cabby: Are you from Sydney?

Anyway, silent stranger guy didn’t get out at the same place as I did, so the official cab rank guy is now the official cab rank bastard guy, and that’s probably the last cab I’ll share for a while.

I love the power of language, particularly how we’re able to sculpt and mould it in ways that strongly effect people’s opinions and emotions. Taking a negative and turning it into a positive, is probably the most commonly attempted deception, if I can call it that, but is also usually the most poorly executed.

Our wonderful channel 7 Olympic Cycling commentators are a great example of this. Who on earth would even think of trying to use Australia’s recent dominance in cycling as the proof that we’re not a bunch of drug addicts? Yet I’ve heard at least four commentators all say something similiar to:

Let the doubters be proven wrong.

…or…

Australia’s cyclists have redeemed themselves.

In one case, they obviously figured it best to instead let one of our gold medal winning cyclists continue this quite deluded logic:

Commentator: So what do you say to all those pepole who doubted this team?

Cyclist: Mate, it just shows you, we’re clean, and it doesn’t get any better than this!

What? Was logic just chucked into the ol’ sharps bucket with all those vitamin syringes? And what’s with that anyway? If someone asked me if I wanted a vitamin C shot, more likely I’d just stick with the tablets thanks.

I’m not saying that our cyclists are all doped up to the eyeballs, because like any sport, we can’t detect every drug, and we don’t really know who is using what. Sure, I was one who said bring them all home, but maybe just perhaps, by slaughtering all comers, they’ve finally redeemed themselves? Nuts.