Photo: Getty Images ARGH!!!!! How’s the ol’ nervous system? Every day in this current era of stupidity and carnivorous capitalism is like being in one of those Yale experiments from the ’60s where they randomly gave out electric shocks, only this time they give you a bill for the electricity. AI is using more energy than all our hydro lakes could power, foolhardy pensioners are making AI art memes about the good old days and every time I Google something I unintentionally feed the beast responsible for the death of my job. Sarah Connor must be doing chin ups in a padded room somewhere. I’m so sick of the bad people always winning. A rat the size of a terrier just ran past the sliding doors, and I bet he’s right wing too. The only way I can afford my mortgage is by Airbnb-ing my house - which means I can’t live there, only endlessly clean it. My life feels like Escher stairs. A homeless man crouched on the corner of George St yesterday yelled at me in the vocal fry of a crackhead to f*** off. Offended, and just so sick of everything, I told him to f*** right off at the top of my voice, when what I meant to say was, ‘‘Hey, just because I’m in my work clothes and look like I have it together, the gap between my life and yours feels so slim a distance a rice cracker could bridge it. Don’t imagine I don’t empathise - we’re both people and living right now is excruciating.’’ I’m wound tighter than a Mar-a-Largo facelift. Knowing I can’t be handling any more stress, I took a week off work to get away from the disintegration of local government (unwise under the circumstances, perhaps, as I work in local government, but it was that or just start screaming and throwing highlighters) - joining the Yorkshireman on the Gold Coast where he was spending time with his sons. I packed a pair of shorts and a hopeful white dress. Not that kind of white dress - don’t be ridiculous, these aren’t marrying times these are burying times. Hopeful, because it would last five seconds before being stained beyond fixing due to my shaky handheld camera way of eating and drinking. The flight was cheap, half empty and not bumpy. I ate cheese and arrived feeling decompressed. OK, this is going to be so good for me, I thought. I’ll be one Zen cat after this. The Yorkshireman met me at the airport. He was hysterical, hadn’t slept and looked like he’d been wrung out by King Kong. Youngest son’s girlfriend’s father had called the cops on youngest son. Son was in a car somewhere with girlfriend who wasn’t 16, as she’d claimed, but 15. Girlfriend’s father was demanding her return, forbidding her seeing him ever again (like that’s ever going to work). Youngest son had just got a great job he couldn’t jeopardise, and what was the age of consent in NSW? Emotions were heightened. Phones were ringing, texts pinging. Girlfriend’s father was some high-powered pharma executive or something, or a pill seller or ... what? Oh, he was from Timaru? Gimme that phone. It was midnight by the time things were resolved, youngest son home and pretending not to be shaken up. Police couldn’t have cared less - they weren’t Bonnie and Clyde on a murder spree just a lad with ADHD who likes to drive and girl afraid to go home to face the over-the-top reactions of her father. The circumstances didn’t warrant the extreme levels of drama. But on the other hand, I did get it. Picturing the worst, waiting for the other shoe to drop, the button to get pushed, the shot to ring out. If there was a soundtrack to this year, it would be the Psycho shower scene violin screech.
