To make money, I'd imagine. And whether he's real, or not, isn't even the half of it...  

 

Whilst I initially refused to join the millions of bloggers and media sites that have now made this the week's most viewed "story" on the internet, I have watched - my mouth slightly open, my eyes squinting in the awe that is seeing this take up so much of people's attention - the "discovery" of Big Foot, and I simply cannot resist adding my two cents worth, like every other blogger in cyberspace. Because, aside from being a little frustrating - at times, downright disturbing - it's a fascinating thing to behold. Not the monster, or the costume, or whatever it should be referred to - not even the men who are now playing the press so perfectly, or, indeed, the press, themselves - but those good people of America. They like a show, don't they? And they're getting one.

 

 

As if you haven't guessed, I'm not really the sporty type. Shocking, isn't it? I lived in the middle of Sydney for Australia's Olympics, back in 2000, and the only fond memory I have is how nice it was to get smashed with my friends on my Darlinghurst rooftop, watching the lasers shooting off Centerpoint Tower for the nightly Olympic light show. I do also remember being in a cocktail bar, during the opening ceremony, where I unfortunately looked up, over my gin & tonic, to a plasma, just in time to behold Nikki Bloody Webster and some ridiculous rock-eisteddford-on-acid representation of Australia as a country which had long achieved harmony with its Indigenous people - who we all loved very much, and who loved us back, in return. Yeah, right.

 

 

Eleven years ago, Jeane Meiers, at 47 years of age, had come to the conclusion that she married the wrong man; both agreed to separate. Her husband, Geoffrey Braunack, for whatever reason, was not a man one would ascribe the word, “ordinary”, to. Some time into their marriage, Geoffrey had initiated the replacement of that ordinary married sex that ordinary married couples have, with bondage-oriented scenarios. Geoffrey’s trip? He liked to be tied up – not a unique a practice as you’d think, and probably not what their Sunshine Coast neighbours suspected went on in the Braunack family home. For reasons we can only speculate upon, she apparently obliged.

 

 

My 19 year old brother, Glenn, lives in a distant galaxy from me, on a planet called Regional Suburbia. He likes football, easy girls and fast cars. His favourite film is The Fast & The Furious; he calls it "wicked shit." It would never have dawned on me, it goes without saying, to peruse my brother's DVD collection. I knew it would be large, and I knew it would have been entirely purchased at JB Hifi; I know probably more than I should about Revolution Plasma and its disturbing power to appeal to the working and middle classes, and replace what would once have been their lives; draining whatever connection to the real world they had, by offering their unconscious longing to escape, a glistening, mostly poisonous, apple. Here, everybody! Plug into this - you'll find it... easier. You will have a purpose. You will own that 42" plasma, even if you fuck yourself up on credit to do it, and you will build thyself a DVD Tower. There, thy shall easily access The Fast & The Furious; it shall keep the company of Face Off, Rush Hour, the Terminator Trilogy and, but of course, the Die Hard Box Set. Got plasma? check. Got plasma tower? Check. Okay, then, you're all set to waste a good deal of your life plugged right into consumer oblivion. Isn't modernity just fabulous?!