In early 2005, the ABC ran a TV series, "Grumpy Old Men", which featured a bunch of aging disgracefully middle-aged English celebrities mouthing off about things that brassed them off.  Horrors!  I found myself agreeing with a lot of what they moaned about!  So, with respect (or is that disrespect??), here are some grumps of my own....  and if you think this is pathetic, just wait another decade (or two, if we're still alive)....

(2009)  Grumpy Old Men Therapy – Cellphones

We haven’t circulated any Grumpy Old Men servings for quite some time.  Why, you ask?  Well, they are dangerous, because many of our e-friends get their wives to clear their email for them.  Flaming in cyberspace is not just the turf of the heathen, no, no no!  Being craven cowards from way back, we are careful to pick topics that are (supposed to be) intelligent, helpful, and hopefully, humorous.  Sometimes we gloriously fail to do this.  Grumpy Old Men are very forbearing when this happens.  Others, sadly, are less merciful.

MOBILE PHONES is a topic that begs for a Grumpy Old Men critique.  Arthur Smith and co (the original GOM on UK TV) did a brilliant hatchet job on their pet hates in the emerging mobile phone world some years ago.  Otherwise known as “cell-phones” (with all the implications of prison that goes with that), or should that be “sell-phones”? – considering the amount of money ripped off the 16-30 y/o age bracket by the Telcos who market them.

So, here are some random Grumpy Old Men observations.  Some humorous; some very serious; and some common courtesy.  And if you have been privileged to get a copy of this Friday Food ‘n’ Therapy, feel free to send back your own additional grump for a later circulation!

1.      Cellphones do NOT have No. 1 priority in social intercourse!  Let the thing ring its head off!  Remember Voicemail?  If you stop your friend speaking mid-sentence just because your phone rings, what are you telling your (soon to be ex) friend?

Worse case scenario…  Some years ago, I was coordinating the prayer lines at a Tabor convention as Jackie Pullinger (Chasing the Dragon) preached powerful messages for a week - calling people to rededicate their lives to Christ and give Him “lordship” above all else.  A young man came up at the last; there were no spare pray-ers left, so I asked him what he was out the front for.  “I’m desperate to get through to God!”, he exclaimed.  So, after a brief discussion, I began to pray for him.

Just as we started, his cellphone went off in his pocket.  He raised his hand to stop me praying and told me to wait while he answered the call!...  A lengthy non-event conversation ensued that took so long, I walked away shaking my head in disbelief….  I think God followed me out....  As Hal Oxley said years ago, “God is not at home to a casual caller”.

Let the miracle of modern, mobile technology be your servant and not your master…  We hope our African friends read this too, as they are the worst at refusing to switch their phones off - even in church.  Makes one wonder what they do when they....... ahem.....

2.      Manners!  Turn it off in church!  Christians survived for two millennia without having to rush to the door to answer their call.  And somehow the world kept spinning.  If your mother is dying, and you want to be the first to know (before the will is read), turn it to silent vibration and quietly exit the building before weeping, “oh no!”

3.      Manners!  In public transport, the rest of us sitting near you are not interested at all in the trivia of your life and relationships.  So keep the conversation down to a dull roar.  One of the UK GOM said he got so mad at people invading the private space of other public transport passengers that he took to singing as loudly as they were talking.  Seemed to fix things quite quickly, he observed (singing out of tune might help here).

4.      Manners!  Rudeness!  The priority of the precious phone also dictates an inversion of manners.  Interruptions become rudeness.  When calling someone on their cellphone, is it too difficult to ask, “have I caught you at an opportune time, or are you busy right now?"  People are often otherwise engaged in fairly important activities.  But no.  Most callers tend to barge in, presuming their call has right-of-way over every other thing you are doing.  Even the lines, “I am in a meeting right now”, or, “my child is choking on a Big Mac” often fall on deaf ears….

5.      And now for the big one….  In Australia for many years you are fined if caught speaking on a hand-held cellphone while driving.  The evidence is incontrovertible – most people cannot concentrate on their driving and talk on their cellphone at the same time.

At the risk of being fined by the Anti-Discrimination Board, some Grumpy Old Men (who shall remain anonymous for obvious reasons) have advocated a sliding scale of fines, commensurate to the risk level to bystanders and other drivers (not to mention cyclists).  Something like….

Male drivers: over 40 - $100;  25-40 - $150; under 25 - $200; under 25 and on P’s - $300.

Female drivers: over 40 - $150; 30-40 - $200; under 30 - $500; under 30 and on P’s $1000; under 30, driving a Honda or Hyundai, and from any country north of here - $2000!!

Worst case scenario….  A young female scored news coverage here some years ago, when, while engaged in an obviously life-changing conversation on her cellphone, she managed to crash into another car and turn her own car upside down in an intersection.  A rescue team arrived soon afterwards and cut her out of her crushed car using Jaws of Life equipment.  As she emerged from the wreck, she was still clutching her precious phone, and engaged in the same conversation that caused her to crash!!

6.      Yeah, that one’s politically incorrect – but to finish with, this one is deadly serious…  In Sydney in the past two years there has been an observable explosion of cars stopped at red light arrows, the driver not noticing THEY HAVE A GREEN LIGHT / ARROW, and green means you are supposed to drive on!  Men are as guilty of this as the talk-time sex.  Just what are these people doing?  They are texting on their cellphone while stopped (illegal in this country).

But at least, they are stationary….  The number of bad smashes caused by drivers texting while driving is on the rise.  So dangerous.

Worst case scenario….  Two months ago, near where we live, a well-known triathlete was run over and killed by a 20 y/o concrete-truck driver who veered off the tollway and hit two cyclists in the breakdown lane.  The story circulating is that he was texting at the time....  That really makes me grumpy – so unnecessary!  And so irreversible.

Got a real-life story / observation?  The broadband is open!  Grumpy Old Men unite!

(2006) More "proof" of abusive authority in sport!

Perhaps it’s the weather, but we have had so few issues to be really grumpy about in recent months, our occasional (limited, inner-circle) Grumpy Old Men (and some token Grumpy Old Women!) mailout went into temporary hibernation.

But now that Footy season (as in, Australian Rules – not that other pretender to the glorious title of ‘football” [formerly known as soccer]) is under way, in true unbiased fashion, we believe it’s time to be true to that grand Australian custom of giving the umpires a spray.

For our correspondees unfortunate enough not to live in the land Downunder, we really need to explain that the huge crowds and following that Aussie Rules has generated since its humble and rebellious beginnings in 1858 are not really due to some inbuilt love of sport, but rather to the inherent anti-authoritarianism of the prevailing initial immigrant culture – mainly Irish convicts and their progeny.  Yes, folks, it’s always really been about abusing the authorities – THAT’S what makes the game the spectacle it is!

Forget soaring marks, 60-metre accurate kicks, unbelievable goals from the boundary – the atmosphere builds from the highly subjective nature of the Rules…  As a great ad showed, featuring an English Rugby superstar saying, “Aussie Rules!  What Rules??”  This means every spectator has a God-given right to be an interpreter of the rules the umpires are applying, to violently disagree with the official call (usually against “our” team of course), and howl like a French Revolution crowd, for their execution…..  Then go home feeling emotionally drained, but happy that they stood up against injustice in the face of unbelievable bias.

As Sydney Swans (last year’s Premiers we have to humbly add, despite the Victorian-based umpires’ jihad against us in games 1 and 3 of the Finals!), we have suspected for years that “Number 23” nurtured a long-held hatred of all things Sydney-based….

It got worse this week…  Gross incompetence was added to the perpetual cries of bias!  The whole nation was riveted to the news that the AFL’s supreme authority (a bit like the Supreme Soviet Council) had overridden the umpires re a critical call on when a game ended – in a draw, or a one-point victory - for Fremantle.  And to give the story a sense of uniquely “only in Australia”, the news stressed that the errant timekeeper (another expression of abusive and/or negligent official authority) had been pulled up and corrected by an irate fan belting on his window with a beer bottle – pointing out the game was still going on!

(2005) Umpires are neutral - any perceived bias is in the eye of the one-eyed supporter!

And we do promise on my mother’s grave (hang on, she’s still alive), this is our last Aussie Rules “inspired” article...

It's game #1 of the AFL finals.  Our team are playing West Coast in Perth.  The three central umpires include two who have been our nemesis all year - McLaren and Goldspink.  By now, the Sydney radio commentators are calling him, "Gold sphincter", others, "Goldfinger"....  It's a night game, low-scoring - but that doesn't stop our models of unbiased neutrality enabling our opposition to kick five of their first seven goals from free kicks in front of goal!!!  I groan to myself, "we will never win the Premiership while this attitude persists"....

We, Sydney faithful, have assembled in our church office Bunker room (appropriately named this particular night) to take in the action on the big screen.  Well, it's becoming the big scream...  And the multitude are not so much cheering for the Sydney team, but rather engaging in that traditional Irish-heritage Australian pastime of challenging and abusing the official authorities....  It was disgraceful!  And we lose by a measly 4 points (less than a goal - 6 points for all foreigners reading this).

Next day, the media runs several reports of how this umpiring cost us the game (I put this line in to show that GoM do have some support out there in the wider community!).

Come the next week, and it's must-win or goodbye to the Dream for another year.  Oh no!!  We have the same two presiding!  It's like getting hanging judges to officiate at your court hearing for parking infringements...  And they do it to us yet again!  Not quite so one-sided, but still decidedly biased.  We scrape home by a miraculous 3-seconds-to-go goal from Nick Davis "who came to save us" (as one placard read!).

Next week, we come from behind to send the Saints to footy hell and it's on to the Grand Final!  The same umpires caned us again when the game was hanging in the balance.  And then - once the Swans jumped to an unlosable lead - a series of soft free kicks are awarded to our team.  Sam Keckavich comments on radio, "here come the soft free kicks to even up the stats sheet, so it doesn't look so biased!"

My brother officiated as a first-grade Aussie Rules umpire for several years in country Victoria.  In my Grumpy Old Man mode, I mentioned this comment to him.  His reply was, "don't let anyone tell you the umpires aren't one-eyed at times.  They do get a set against a team, and will even up the free kicks when the game is nearly over, to even up the stats sheet".

So, who do we inherit as umpires for the Grand Final?  Oh no, the same two again!  We groaned.  It's Groundhog Day revisited, revisited.  It's Judgment Day for some hidden sin.  It's a horrible football version of the Catholic notion of Purgatory...  What have we done to deserve this??

But wait!  The Grand Final begins, and It becomes obvious pretty soon that they have been spoken to!....   The game is umpired with only the usual amount of mistakes, and they're not all one-way traffic.  Has God intervened with threats of dire punishment for those who abuse their position of authority??  Have they been reading Psalm 82?? (Mis)quoted below...

In this new flowering of a thousand blooms, the Sydney Swans fall over the line by less than a goal, and we have won our fist Premiership in 72 years!  My stream of grumpy comments ceases.  Against the odds, sometimes playing 20 men instead of 18, we have triumphed in September, and true justice has prevailed! 

But, in the true tradition of Grumpy Old Men, our suspicion of bias will remain – roll on the 2006 season!

Psalm 82:1-7  [with apologies to the Message Bible version]  God calls the umpires into his courtroom,  he puts all the umpires in the dock.  "Enough!  You've corrupted justice long enough, you've let the thugs, actors, and stagers get away with murder.  You're there to defend the defenceless, those going in for the ball, to make sure that underdogs (Swans) get a fair break;  Your job is to stand up for the powerless, and penalise all those who exploit them."  Ignorant umpires!  Head-in-the-sand umpires!  They haven't a clue to what's going on.  And now everything's falling apart, the season’s coming unglued.  "I commissioned you umpires, each one of you, deputies of the Umpire of umpires; but you've betrayed your commission and now you're stripped of your rank, busted."  You’ll never get another finals appointment when THE Grand Final takes place (at the Second Coming)…. 

(2005) Kylie Minogue has breast cancer!!  

screamed the front page of the Daily Telegraph - Sydney's largest-selling newspaper.  The whole front page was devoted to this earth-shattering newsbreak, No one would not sympathise with the poor woman's horrible health news, but, but, but...  this was followed by another four complete pages of "news" about the Singing Budgie's health battle!!  Blow me down, the invasion of Iraq barely got that much coverage!!! (or should that be "cleavage"???).

from the vault...  May 2003:  follow up to the PAN panic

For the past couple of months, some of the main arterial roads of our district had strung across them very, very large billboards depicting a very randy young man about to throw his leg over a very sexually aroused young woman.  He has already stripped off all her clothes, barring her g-string, and they are on fire with lust!  Sorry...  love….

This wonderfully sexually-explicit advertisement proudly proclaimed the effect of HORNY GOAT WEED - one of nature's finest natural aphrodisiacs!

I get my car checked by a mechanic whose workshop is alongside one of these proud evidences of our freedom from censorship.  He has a 13 y/o daughter, who sometimes comes into his workplace with him.  I asked him how he felt about it being right there, and he admitted he's embarrassed for her.

The problem with public billboards is that they do not discriminate; they do not have a niche target audience, as they would in this case if they were, say, placed in Playboy.  Those who do not choose to consider the benefits of chomping on horny goat weed (nor want their children to have to consider it) are forced to endure its asserted claims of increased horniness.

Horny Goat Weed… Now, there's a name!  The horny goat is well known in Greek mythology.  He is a goat from the waist down (ahem…), and has a goat's ears and horns.  He is the god of fertility and was known to fraternise with the satyrs (the male fertility spirits also with pointed heads and small horns, usually depicted as fond of wine, lustful, and chasing nymphs for sexual pleasure.

Oh excuse me, and what was his name, I hear you ask?  Yes, he was known as PAN,  and he was the source of a term originally applied to the unreasoning kind of fear he could inspire in a flock of sheep, but which later became a term for financial distress -  PANIC…

By a strange coincidence the manufacturing company of the aphrodisiac, and promoter of public pornography, is known by the same name.  Mercifully, after the recent "panic" attack, the billboards have been taken down (perhaps the panicked sheep were actually shareholders)…

Never mind, some time in the next century, after we regain public leaders who act to protect the young and public decency (possibly after shari'a law has been introduced into Australia), like Jim's shonky pharmaceutical company (PAN) that makes and promotes this stuff, the sweepings off the floor of our decaying sense of public morality will be tossed away rather than being gathered up and recycled on an unsuspecting public….

Is there anyone out there in the public arena still guarding the gate?

And a 2005 update....
As a minister, you get to deal with a certain amount of pornographically "inspired" deviate behaviour.  After such an episode lately, I gagged again at the rank hypocrisy of community leaders (including politicians and civil libertarians) ranting on about sexual violence against women and children, while remaining totally silent on the devastating effect of pornography in its myriad proliferating forms in our "liberated, tolerant" society.  Big business, big money...  Prevention or cure??  The choice is theirs. Since Don Chipp (then Liberal Minister for Customs) removed public censorship in the early 1970’s, 30 years of anecdotal and systematic accumulation of evidence has established beyond doubt the causal connection between pornography and sexual violence against women and children

In Australia right now (Dec 05), there is a huge cry against the Singapore Govt for hanging a convicted Vietnamese-Australian heroin drug courier.  We stopped over there on our way home from Zimbabwe in July.  The lack of public pornography hits you.  In Singapore, rapes, sexual assaults, and child abductions are almost unknown.   But, who wants to live in a Police State like that??  Just about every woman and young girl!!