Anonymous Tradie

Deadline.
And we have nothing for page 71!

Long ago in a land far far away there were simple things like magazines. Magazines that you could “flick” through whilst reposing in the staff toilet or riding on a bus from Berrimah to… well let’s face it, anywhere else.

Nowadays I swipe. I don’t turn pages. I slap at them on my iThingy. I brush across the screen and they magically change form, as though I possess some secret power reserved for people we used to burn at the stake. Those olden day things like the fact that the reader used to be able to take a page and rub it between your fingers or roll up the whole affair and swat some annoying co-worker before the invention of Fair Work Australia. Fair Dinkum.
This xmas I bought my daughter an iPad. I bought my son and iPod. I bought my other daughter an iPhone and I bought the loverly wife an iRon. I am writing from the desk in the back shed now, which is also where I sleep these days.
So I’m informed by the bosses that 400 words must be on the desk by DEADLINE. A word that strikes fear into the heart of every hard dodging journo pretending to be making something useful of that five years of Uni (or was it seven with deferrals?).
DEAD….LINE….it’s got the word ‘Death’ in it, and its underlined, for goodness sakes! Awake now and not particularly sober. Perhaps a little Hank Moody stoned still, he emerges from the slime that is the Gold Coast weekend lifestyle and puts pen to paper. No, really, like in the Olden days. Scribbling. Do we even do that anymore? Why is your laptop case so free of inky graffiti? My Old school binders were never this shiny and new, unless I wanted a good flogging with them because they were, well, shiny and new and needed to be broken in. Like every new pair of shoes that received a good school ground stomping from only your closest of mates.
I am not trying to promote workplace violence and in no way do I support a ban on laptops for fear of gaining a good liberal thrashing with them on a daily basis simply because they are too shiny, but we could save a lot of time in the courts if we just returned immediately to biros, Loose Leaf Binders and Darwin Life magazines in the office.
All this technical mumbo jumbo about the Cloud (gonna rain), Megabytes (Upsize at Maccas), Facebook (Work hours only), Tablet (Don’t get caught in Bali with that in your handbag), Excel Spreadsheet (Come on Laura, you know what I’m talking about). It’s too confusing for a Seventies baby who chooses to still act like a big baby in the year 2014.
Nowadays I own a Hybrid car, laptop, notebook, smartphone, tablet, iPad, Wi-Fi modem, Sports Betting account, Google Account, Twitter account, Facebook account and I can’t drive any of them. Especially the car. None the less I am bombarded by Telstra and JBHI telling me I won’t be cool without these things, when really all I need to cut a swath through the smartphone absorbed crowd is my trusty rolled up magazine. Read me. Hold me. Fondle my pages (easy Tiger, this isn’t shades of Grey). Smack me over the head with that last copy for being so stupid and so rude. You know you want to.
Love from Tradie