Little Running Bear

I’ve stayed out of this whole election debacle for as long as I can but it seems like the rest of you can’t make up your minds so I’m going to have to step in.*

Here’s what I think we should do:

Because the country voted overwhelmingly for the monarchy, the Queen** should come over here and just point at random people. “Thou, thou, thou, thou, thou, and…. thou. Form thyselves a governing body of this colony,” she will say. Those people will form the first citizens assembly once the Queen has trotted off on her sidesaddle horse and they can stand up out of the mud.

Pass that idea on to your politicalians so we can all get some rest. It’s clearly what the country wants.

Or else, I think last Monday’s qanda panel would make a nice government. T Jones as leader, Albrechtson as Parliamentary Opinionator, Mr Independant as the Minister for not wanting to be a minister or anything, Green lady as Minister of Naive Comments and Whale Births, Arbib as Minister for Absenteeism, Richo as Minister for Taking Credit, and Turnbull as Minister of getting Lefties to love a Conservative and wearing leather jackets.

There’s your government. Everybody else can just keep talking about what they would do if elected and meanwhile those people can run the country.

Now, let’s all get back to making this nation the poor cousin of whichever Northern Hemisphere English speaking country you choose.

* This was originally written as a post on my Facebook wall. I just copied and pasted most of it but thought it was too good to waste on only 446 of my closest friends.

** If the Queen can’t make it, then it should be Prince Phillip or at the very least Brian May accompanied by the reanimated corpse of Freddie Mercury.

There are lots of things I’m doing to earn and save money to get me to my macbook target. Recently I mentioned that I was almost at $1000 thanks to Optus and I wanted to explain the way that happened.

I had an iPhone 3G. I loved this phone. I used it all the time for everything. It doesn’t make a great Vegemite spreader but I used it for that because you can use an iPhone for anything.

A known problem with the iPhone 3G is that the silent switch can fall off. Contrary to all the advice in the world, I bought the extended warranty with my phone because two years is a long time with Apple products and a few bucks a month can give me piece of mind.

So I took my phone in to be repaired. They told me it would take a couple of weeks to get it fixed. Fine. Could they give me a loaner phone in the meantime? No. But what they did do is credit my account with $100 so I could buy a phone. I bought a shitty little Nokia for $60 which means that Optus actually paid me $40 to take this shitty phone.

It turns out they don’t fix iPhones. They just replace them. So three weeks later a brand new iPhone 3G (where do they keep this stockpile of previous model phones?) appeared at my door. I put that sucker on eBay and I netted just over $570 for it in auction.

That money went, BAM, straight into my macbook fund and now, thanks to another donation I received earlier today, I have over $1000.

You can see that the red line is just on the $1000 mark:

I’ve also dropped the total down to $2500 because that’s a more realistic goal.

You can help by chucking me a few bucks..

Thanks so much to everybody who has helped so far, including Optus.

I love buying books. I love owning books. For me, the idea of a library, a place I can freely borrow books from but then have to return them, is like some kind of elaborate torture.

So, a while ago I committed myself to reading a bunch of books I had purchased but never read. It’s so much easier to buy books than it is to read them that my to read pile became some literature or publishing based equivalent of that episode with Lucy and Ethel working in the chocolate factory.

So, in an effort towards necessary frugality and to fulfil the promise that an unread book implies is broken, I’ve listed some big players on my bookshelf that I absolutely must read before I can buy any more books*.

The list of books I still have to read is available on Goodreads. This doesn’t include the five books I am technically “currently reading”.

The one I am mostly reading currently is Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis.

I mention all of this because I almost succumbed to a purchase when I saw that Freedom, a new novel by Jonathan Franzen, was due out in a couple of months. My cursor hovered over the pre-order button on Amazon as I argued with myself over my own weaknesses.

The list keeps getting longer because, as easy as it is to buy books for oneself, it’s even easier to receive them as gifts. That, of course, has happened from time to time since I made this promise to myself.

So I’m making the promise public in an attempt to hold myself to it. If you see me buying a book for myself, stop me and I will continue to try to stop myself.

____

*The exception to this rule is the purchase of books at an event where the author is signing books. That is more about the opportunity to add to my collection of signed editions than it is about the actual book. Two books have been purchased under these conditions: How the Universe Got Its Spots: by Janna Levin (read and purchased after seeing her in conversation with Laurie Anderson) and My Footprint by Jeff Garlin (unread and purchased after seeing him in conversation with Ira Glass)

I awoke this morning to a delightful email from a member of the Boxcutters family. The wonderful Clare had put a lot of thought into the “Josh Kinal Needs a Reliable Mac Book” Fund.

I think it would really help to suggest a sum that would be appropriate to give. Suggesting a smallish sum will take away the problem some people face of not knowing how much to donate – some people can’t afford much, but still want to help. By doing so people will know that they’re not expected to give a huge donation, but that every little bit counts.

So here’s what I was originally thinking. If all of my friends on Facebook and all of my Twitter followers would give up the cost of a cafe caffè latte/hot chocolate, that would get me really close to my target.

At the time of writing some really wonderful people have donated $260. That’s absolutely amazing and I’m so grateful to them. Of course almost all of them donated over $25 with, I’m assuming, the photo incentive in mind.

I think, though, I’m more likely to reach my goal with lots of little payments. It would be sensational if I can get a third of the way by the end of the week. So if all my friends and followers donated $3-$5 to the “Josh Kinal Needs a Reliable Mac Book” Fund, I reckon we can get there.

Help me buy a more reliable Mac Book and I can continue to make the world a better place for everybody (except the bad people).

Here’s the graph again. Every time a donation comes through that red line reaches higher and higher.

And here’s where to donate.

Some things I do with my current Mac Book:

• Research, plan and write segments for Boxcutters.
• Edit interviews and other audio for Boxcutters.
• Help you fix your computer problems.
• Code websites as part of my work with Soupgiant.
• Write blog posts for Boxcutters, Little Running Bear and Big Red TIn.
• Write entertaining and uplifting updates of Twitter and Facebook
• Get frustrated and frightened when it doesn’t boot properly, or when it makes unexpected grinding and flapping noises.