I Wish I Was Ern Malley

When I told my little girls (aged 8 and 3) that there was a campaign to stop pink for girls there were howls of dismay. Noo!", "We love pink!", "Pink is the bestest colour for girls!" I would have much preferred that our girls didn't wear pink. I'm not that fond of it as a colour and I thought other colours suited them much better. My favourite dress for our little girls was a smart navy-blue dress with a silver star on the front which I thought looked very nice. They didn't. Given the choice they'd wear almost anything pink. Or with ribbons. Or pink with ribbons. I gave up and let them be girls. Which is exactly the point. As I see it, part of my job as a parent is to let our children make their own choices and to be confident with their decisions. My job is to make sure that those choices are safe, appropriate to their age and right, according to God, everything else is not important. So if they want to wear pink, they can wear pink. If ...

So it turns out I wasn't the only one that thought "iSnack 2.0" wasn't a good name for the new Vegemite. So many people thought it sucked that Kraft has now changed its mind . “We have been overwhelmed by the passion for Vegemite and the new product. The new name has simply not resonated with Australians. Particularly the modern technical aspects associated with,’’ said Kraft spokesman Simon Talbot, according to The Sydney Morning Herald . You don't say. Anyway it's back to the ol' drawing board to come up with a new name. A lady at work suggested "Cheesymite" — maybe spelled "Cheesemite" but pronounced the same way — which I thought was pretty good.

At first I thought it was a joke, but no, Kraft really has decided to name the new kind of Vegemite "iSnack 2.0" . Which is encouraging news in the war on drugs. Clearly the quality and quantity of cocaine available to advertising and media types is in decline. The downside is we get lame product names like "iSnack 2.0". Lame lame lame lame lame. It's hard to know whether this is some post-modern meta way of generating publicity (in which case it's bad news from the war on drugs) , or just a really, really bad idea. There are so many things wrong with the name it's hard to know where to start, but let me try with just a few. There's no "1.0" After 13 years if iStuff, Apple is about the only company that can get away with calling a product iAnything iAnything and "2.0" are both technological terms, about the only thing technological about Vegemite is the jar lid Still, I suppose it's better than Parwill , and look how ...

I am a child of the space age. By the time I was born the first men on the moon had been home for a few weeks and I grew up through the rest of the Apollo program. I drew pictures of Saturn V rockets in my pre-school exercise books and did a project on the Space Shuttle in primary school. All that stuff is pretty cool, and great for kids' imaginations, but I can't help thinking that maybe we humans could spend a bit more time and money and energy fixing the problems down here. Like clean water, food, basic hygiene. Maybe it's just easier to send a man to the moon.

Anyway I got a new job back in April. It's jolly. I probably should have updated back then, but I've been busy ... with the new job ... and stuff

As you may know, God is in control of everything. Which is why I’m not particularly unhappy about losing my job. Check back with me in a few months on that front. I’m also rather enjoying the stress-free nature on not having a job. I feel very relaxed, even creative. Plus, I’ve been enjoying more time with the children, been getting lots of fix-up jobs done around the house, and getting up later. Of course it may all change when the money runs out, but for now…

For Australians it seems that no good news comes out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Sometimes it's no news at all, but usually it's bad news. So it's no surprise at all that Iraq's largely peaceful provincial elections have gone almost completely unreported. Surely they could have reported it as the first miracle of Barack Obama's world-saving reign, but maybe that would have been stretching credibility a little too far. I suppose it might be too much to expect the Australian media to admit that George Bush, John Howard and Tony Blair may have actually succeeded -- after a long hard road -- in bringing democracy to Iraq.

Animal rights group PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, wants to rename fish "sea kittens" because it's cuter and people won't want to kill cute things. Right. In a world filled with stupid things, this is possibly the most stupid. What's funnier, is that "hunting sea kittens"—PETA's recommended terminology—actually sounds more fun and interesting that just 'fishing'. If you had to use guns to do it, it would be perfect.