The bastards are out to get you

The car company had bugger, the tourism commercial had bloody and now the soft drink company has bastards.
None of the words is exactly dreadful and absolutely all are part of the normal Australian language but still they are not words most of us want to hear coming out of the mouths of our kids.
Having the words all over billboards makes it pretty to argue that it is not a nice word.
It also shows a lack of imagination in the creative minds of advertising agencies.
Don't have a campagin? I know let's use a soft swear word. Done.
And just to prove the bastards really are out to get you, now there's a relish called Baa'Stard.

Is there something I'm not c-ing?

I just don't get it. Why would a new business name itself after a phrase which refers to what is generally considered the most vulgar word in the English language? And what does female genitalia have to do with bagels? Only one C word springs to mind - confused.

Cinemas prove nothing is sacred

You know that the regulators are comprehensively failing in their duty and badly letting down families in the process when you can't see a G classified bible movie on a Sunday without being exposed to adult content.

Quite simply at least one cinema chain in continuing the breach the regulations regarding the screening of trailers is putting commercial imperatives ahead of the rights of families and the law.

In this most recent instance before the screening of The Ten Commandments a trailer for the M Classified And The She Found Me was shown. Surely it is not unreasonable to expect to be able to see an animated movie about the life of Moses without having to know if Bette Midler is always verbal during sex.

And this is not an isolated case.

Since September 2007, I have noted 11 separate incidents where the same cinema chain has screened trailers for movies classified higher than the classification of the feature movie in breach of section 21A of the Classification of Films Act 1991 (Qld).

Even more worryingly, a written complaint to the regulators resulted in nothing more than an assurance that the chain in question would be reminded of its responsibilities - fat lot of good that did.

The Federal Government this year launched Inquiry into the sexualisation of children in the contemporary media environment. Well if Kevin Rudd wants a starting point he need look no further than his own electorate where all 11 of the recorded breaches took place.

It's something I intend to make the Member for Griffith aware of. Watch this space.

No sex please we're parents

Two Australian mothers called Anita and Hannah are seeing our insights into sex after parenting for a book they are about to write.

They say "We are looking at how and why things change in the bedroom once the pitter patter of little feet have entered your home - and how we as women can reclaim the sexual goddess within! "

How and why things have changed in the bedroom? We don't need a book for that. Eavesdrop at any mothers' lunch and the answer is the same. If action in the bedroom has dropped off it's because we are exhausted. Given the choice between sleep and sex, sleep wins every time.

And there's also the small matter of opportunity. You can hardly sneak off for a bit of afternoon delight while the kids are watching the Disney Channel in the next room.

But if you have other ideas, the questions the researchers are interested in are listed below. Send your responses to: currievirgo@gmail.com

QUESTIONS FOR THE LADIES…

Name: (for our records only… these will not be published)

Age:

Marital Status:

Number of Child/Children:

Ages of Child/Children:



What is your perception of sexy?

How often do you and your partner have sex? (Thought we’d ask the loaded question 1st, pardon the pun).

Do you think this is above or below the average for Mums and Dads?

Do you have the desire to have sex as much now as before you had children?

Do you feel sexy now that you’re a Mummy? (If yes, how have you maintained/achieved this? If not, why do you feel this way?)

Did you feel sexy before having children?

Do you see yourself as sexy? If yes, why?

What is your perception of sexy?

What do you find sexy about your partner?

Has your perception of your partner’s sexiness changed since having children? If yes, why?

If anything, what do you think your husband can do to make you feel sexier?

What do you think you could do to be more sexy?

Do you think there is a need for this type of book?

Further comments:



QUESTIONS FOR THE DADS…


Name (for records only, will not be published):

Age:

Marital Status:

Number of Child/Children:

Ages of Child/Children:


How often do you and your partner have sex? (Thought we’d ask the loaded question 1st, pardon the pun)

Do you think this is above or below the average for Mums and Dads?

Do you have the desire to have sex as much now as before you had children?

What is your perception of sexy?

What do you find sexy about your partner?

Has your perception of your partner’s sexiness changed since having children? i.e. did she appear sexier before children/during pregnancy/after having children? If yes, why?

If anything, what do you think your wife could do to be sexier?

Do you see yourself as sexy? If yes, why?

What do you think you could do to be more sexy?

Do you think there is a need for this type of book?

Further comments:

Warning: Being time poor will cost you

Forget volunteering. Parents are now being conscripted - do the time or pay the fine.
It's a sad reflection of the way society is heading that the local Aussie rules club is now billing parents who fail to sell enough chocolates in the annual chocolate drive.

It makes a nonsense of the very term drive which the dictionary defines as " a united effort to accomplish some specific purpose, esp. to raise money, as for a charity". Charity may begin at home but it now seems that it ends there to.

We are not being asked to lend a hand for our child's school or club we are being told to turn up or cough up.

The Freddo fundraiser is far from an isolated case.

A quick search of the internet will reveal an education system that is making parents pay for a growing number of services once done by volunteers.

There are kindies where you "volunteer" for classroom duty a day a term or pay $40 each time you miss your turn.

One school charges families a $130 a year "school grounds assistance bond" which is refunded if you work four full working bees or assist in the tuckshop for 40 hours.

Another slugs parents a massive $220 a year P and F levy which can be worked off if parents do a minimum of two and a half hours work per term in the tuckshop, gardens, resource centre or at working bees.

Problem is that the reason people can't or don't help out is not just that both parents are too busy out earning the big bucks for anyone to be bothered to cut sandwiches in the tuckshop.

What about the single parent family, or the low-income families working two jobs to make ends meet, or the mum with younger kids at home or families caring for sick or elderly parents?

It hardly seems fair to fine these families for failing to sell enough chocolate frogs. Forget time poor, the new user-pay attitude to charity makes us all poorer as a society.

Parents punished by popcorn profiteering

It wasn't the terrible lip syncing that left a bad taste in my mouth at the Brisbane performance of Disney's High School Musical on Ice - it was the popcorn.
True a bucket of fat smothered in salt is always prone to a bitter after taste but this time it wasn't the artery-hardening properties of the snack that did the damage as much as the blatant rip-off of the product not to mention the anti-competitive behaviour of its retailers.
If ever there was an example of the profits being in the packaging it has to be Disney popcorn. A small box cost $6, the bucket a massive $13.
While it could be argued that if people want to pay for over-priced popcorn that's their problem, there is a much bigger issue here.
The regular food outlets at the Boondall Entertainment Centre normally retail popcorn for $4 or $6.50 BUT they are forbidden from selling it when the Disney machine comes to town.
Surely creating a popcorn monopoly and forcing patrons to buy the snack at the inflated special Disney price is in breach of some restriction of trade regulation - or if it isn't it should be.
The current popcorn piracy is too hard to stomach.

Truth suffers in Hannah hype

They must think we are really stupid.
Three weeks after the start of the one-week only season of the 3D movie Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert, it is still screening at cinemas.
While there has been no official explanation for the longer than advertised season, the fans have their theories.
As one said "Well, as I predicted in an earlier question, the "one week only" was a load of bull "
Couldn't agree more.

Parents deserve better from cinema classifiers

The lyrics of Blowin' in the Wind flooded into my head as I watched the movie trailers before the PG-classified Spiderwick Chronicles recently. You know the line: "And how many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died". Apparently the answer is rather a lot. In five minutes on a Sunday morning in a cinema packed with families with young children, trailers for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Ironman and Star Trek were screened. All were dark, scary and, in the case of the first two, extraordinarily violent. Yet all three previews had Office of Film and Literature Classification approval. They could have been shown with any movie any time. This is despite the fact that both Ironman and Indiana Jones have computer games already classified M and blind Freddy could see from the content of the trailer that the movies should carry M classifications as well. It seems to be a hole in the classification regulations big enough to drive a truck through that you can preview any movie any time until they are classified but at that point trailers are restricted to being shown only with a movie of the same or lesser classification. Granted, trailers have to be classified themselves but both the Australian and the US regulators considered all three trailers as appropriate for all audiences. Which can only mean that either the regulators are way out of step with community expectations or I am. You take the most violent highlights of a movie, package them in a trailer completely out of context and that's okay for general audiences when the same level of violence spread out over 90 or so minutes isn't. What kind of warped logic is that? It just seems harder and harder for parents to make active, considered choices about the level of violence their children are exposed to. Surely parents should be able to take the kids to the cinema on a Sunday morning and have a reasonable expectation of what kind of content they will see. The present regulator-approved free-for-all is just not in the interests of good parenting.

This is really f#$%&ing crazy

If ABC One's decision to screen the Australian Story on Michael Chugg at 8pm despite setting a new record in swearing is perplexing what happened next is just madness.
Apparently it is justified to air Chugg repeatedly dropping the F word in a timeslot normally restricted to coarse language which is "mild and infrequent" but writing the word is offensive.
The transcript of the show replaces the word with f***. Go figure. Either the word is rude or it isn't.
Bizarrely, the ABC's position on the word wanker is even more confusing. It is written in full twice but in the same transcript appears later as w****r.
Perhaps it is time for the ABC's Standing Committee on Spoken English - the body which claims to exist so broadcasters and journalists can check all aspects of spoken and written English – to start a f@#$ing debate on the subject.

Force is with Canadian funnyman

I am going to immediately buy a copy of 365 TV-Free Activities You Can Do with Your Child.
The DVD player will be on sale on eBay before the day is out. There can be no alternative.
If you ever needed any evidence of the damage a TV and VCR can do to a child's developing brain you only need to consider the tragic case of Charles Ross and his One-Man Star Wars Trilogy .
Ross, who this week brings his one man show to the Cremorne Theatre is Brisbane, admits to have seen the original Star Wars at least 400 times - and it shows.
He has every little mannerism, every voice, every attitude of the characters exactly right.
Clearly he didn't get out much. It seems that a large percentage of the audience also spent a large slice of their youth watching Star Wars and its sequels too.
They were getting right into it. And why not. Ross is a funny, funny man.
He has taken six hours of film and condensed it into one hour and then delivers it without props or costuming - and the true believers still love him for it.
What is more amazing is that even those with a passing interest in the trilogy can still enjoy the show and laugh along with most of it.
It's a formula that has been phenomenally successful, has seen Ross travel the world and has spawned a second show based on The Lord of the Rings series.
For something that looks a bit like a school boy leaping around performing to entertain his friends, Ross has created a highly successful and doubtless lucrative franchise.
May be I won't buy the book and throw away the DVD player yet. May be I'll just encourage my Hairspray-obsessed child to watch it a few hundred more times.

Foul-mouth aunty invades lounge rooms

The ABC was perfectly within its rights to screen the Australian Story on Legendary rock music promoter Michael Chugg last night.
Okay it was only eight at night and the F word was uttered at least 10 times in the first five minutes and there were a few "wankers" thrown in for good measure.
In fact the Australian Story's own home page proudly announces "the tirade will almost certainly set a new record for the most F-words aired on ABC TV at 8pm"
So why was the ABC setting a new F word record at 8pm when according to the Office of Literature Classification on which the ABC Code of Practice is based 8pm is still in a PG zone allowing only coarse language which is "mild and infrequent"?
Basically because it can.
The ABC , like its commercial counterparts, operates under a code that allows for exemptions in the screening of news and current affairs programming.
Put simply news, current affairs and information programs are not subject to classification and can be screened at any time.
So, yes the ABC was perfectly entitled to show Australian Story at 8pm no matter how many times Chugg used the F word.
But that doesn't mean it should have done it.
Sure there was a warning.
And it can also be argued that the language was not gratuitous. It was clearly trying to make a valid point. "Chugg is famous for his chain smoking and on-stage rants full of profanities – which feature in the colourful opening of tonight’s program," the Australian Story site announces.
Problem is that either the ABC thinks that children aren't or shouldn't be watching TV - or at least ABC TV - at 8pm or that the F word isn't a bad word any more.
Both are just not right.
The F word might be perfectly okay at the pub or in any gathering of adults but surely most of us still don't want to hear it from the mouths of our kids.
And if we don't want to hear our kids using it we shouldn't be showing it in a way that makes it seem perfectly normal in what is still family viewing time.
Yes, the ABC was perfectly within its rights to screen the Australian Story on Legendary rock music promoter Michael Chugg last night.
But it shouldn't have done it - at least not until after 8.30pm when the M classification zone begins.