If you are from the Pacific Northwest, you may remember The Lame List. It was a recurring sketch on Almost Live, a sketch comedy show that preceded Saturday Night Live. It was a Seattle based show and I watched a lot of it in the early to mid 90s. I won’t go into details about The Lame List, but I will say, “Kim Thayil????” I shall pay homage to The Lame List regularly here methinks.

WHAT’S WEAK THIS WEEK:

1. The Flies in Sydney

They. Are. Everywhere. But mostly in my face. Apparently this year is worse than normal due to some early heat and humidity this week.

LAAAAAAAAAME!!! SOOO LAME!!

2. Christmas Decorations in October

Halloween basically does not exist here. Though Amanda did surprise me and my Canadian visitors this week with a wonderfully decorated living room. Fake cobwebs, lots of orange and black…the works. I wish the same could be said for the department stores (I’m looking at you David Jones and Mr. Myer) who have already got the trees out. Even the giant, and admittedly awesome, tree in the QVB is up already. Insanity. That means that Christmas shopping season officially takes up 1/6 of the year here.

L.A.M.E.

3. ANZ Bank

For shorting me 30 dollars at the bank machine at Bondi Junction this afternoon. Now thankfully I don’t bank with them, so I never have to use their crappy service again, but my bank has said I “might” get my money back. Screw you ANZ.

LAMELAMELAME

In the mainstream media back in Vancouver very little Australian content ever succeeded in crossing the Pacific. Perhaps an occasional news piece about bushfires, but for the most part, nothing. With the exception of the Sydney Olympics, Australia remained more or less invisible in my sheltered North American media world. Even major Australian cultural icons, such as the soap opera Neighbours, I had only the vaguest grasp of. If Kylie and Natalie Imbruglia had never had a hit in North America, I don’t think I would have heard of Neighbours until I got here. And, for the record, Neighbours is pretty bad, and very budget.

One aspect of Australian culture I was aware of was the Prime Minister John Howard. However, it was not until I arrived here that Howard went from Politician I Disagreed with to Man Who Needs to Shut the Hell Up. And why? Not because he is evil, but because he has about as much character as an Ikea CD rack.

For those of you who do not live here, I wish you could understand just how awful he is. In order to explain, I shall graciously quote Mr. Bill Bryson from his hilarious book about Australia, In A Sunburned Country, or as it is published here, Down Under:

(…) John Howard is by far the dullest man in Australia. Imagine a very committed funeral home director – someone whose burning ambition from the age of eleven was to be a funeral home director, whose proudest achievement in adulthood was to be elected president of the Queanbeyan and District Funeral Home Directors Association – then halve his personality and halve it again, and you have pretty well got John Howard.

Beyond the fact that I disagree with most of his politics, upon arriving here I was baffled by the fact that this nation of gregarious people could even produce such a spine-tingling bore. And then elect him Prime Minister? Surely something is afoot here. And in my first few weeks here, I discovered what that was.

Australia has a Shadow Government. And it explains SO much.

In the course of my cultural investigations I have watched some Australian television. I particularly like the news because I can watch a story and not really know what’s going on. It’s great fun. The story may feature a pack of alcohol-invigorated men screaming outside a field of some sort, and I’m left to only assume that cricket is a big deal. And that losing to England was bad. But, as an outsider, I just can’t grasp HOW bad.

Between stories about sports, the Australian news does feature some very humourous stories about their government. They are mostly humourous because quite a few politicians here seem to have no filter between their thoughts and their mouths. They will quite happily call a former Premier’s wife a “mail-order bride” and then act shocked when they are branded a racist.

But as political scandal after political scandal unfolded as I sat on the couch I began to notice something. On the screen, underneath their name, the politician’s position is shown; but some of these positions were preceded by the word Shadow. SHADOW. Shadow Treasurer, for instance.

This is a nation that has a secret government! And because no Australian news leaves these shores, NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT IT. In fact, I may even be at risk writing this, exposing their Superhero Secret Government to the outside world.

So all of a sudden, the mystery of the tepid, dry, and personality-challenged Prime Minister, John Howard makes sense. He is just a front for the Shadow Government who are far more dynamic than he is. With such a boring frontman, who would ever pursue matters further? Pretty much like Dave Matthews then. Now if Howard was more like Bowie the world would take notice and start scrutinizing Australia more thoroughly and the whole system would come crumbling down.

I like to think the members of the Shadow Government have capes and secret powers and that far underneath that Parliament Building in Canberra; they are in an underground cave surrounded by beautiful hangers-on, drinking martinis, and…still blindly following Bush. Evil superheroes then! Or as they are more commonly known, villains! With deformed faces and sweet cars! And I’ve gone off track.

This Shadow Government also explains why Canberra is so odd. It’s hard to figure out where you are and it is full of round-abouts. Anyone wanting to search out the secret government just ends up back on the highway bound for Sydney before they even know they made it to Canberra. And that Parliament House! Surely those things on top send up some sort of Bat signal!

It also explains the amateurishness of other levels of government. Just last week an NSW government official physically attacked another over a disagreement about roads. In Parliament! On video! When fools like this are “making decisions,” then surely somewhere up the chain of command there must be someone making the real decisions about roads and whether or not nine young Australians should be put to death in Indonesia.

So the mystery of John Howard as PM has been solved! Replaced with the mystery of Australia’s Shadow Government. Now all of a sudden this country makes sense to me.

There are some mysteries about Australia that I don’t want solved. In fact, I’m sure they are only mysteries to me. But more on that another time. For now, I would like the following mysteries solved:

1. Why does pepper taste different here?
Even freshly ground pepper comes nowhere close to the seasoning perfection that the pepper I grew up knowing and loving does.

2. What possesses a person to look at a perfectly good hamburger and decide, “You know what would make that burger better? Let’s crack an egg onto it.”
This mystery extends beyond the border of Australia as well. That’s right Japan, I’m looking at you.

3. What do Australians have against ketchup?
Has ketchup greatly offended them in the past? It’s odd considering how “American” a lot of the food is here that ketchup is never just handed to you in fast food places. And when you do manage to wrangle some from the McTeenageWorkerwithAttitude it’s not really ketchup but tomato sauce. It’s really thin and runny and crap. Even Amanda thinks it’s odd that I put ketchup on my fries.*

Enlighten me, please.

APPENDIX

Over lunch I remembered a couple more mysteries:

4. Why is cheddar cheese here white and not orange?
Perhaps the real question is why is it orange in Canada?

5. Why is cantaloupe called Rock Melon?
I mean I get it, it looks a bit like a rock and is a melon, but I don’t see the need to be quite so literal.

* Amanda now denies this. It seems Australians aren’t as averse to ketchup as I thought.

Location: 33°52′ S 151°12′ E
Time: 19:57 EST
Enemy: Periplaneta australasiae

Tonight was a first.

In Vancouver I can cook calmly in my kitchen comforted by the fact that a large cockroach won’t wander out from under the dishwasher.

Not here.

Mere hours ago whilst watching Survivor (they love reality TV here in Australia) I stepped into the kitchen to refill my glass with a refreshing beverage. Things were going well; the liquid was pouring wonderfully into my green plastic cup and cookies lay waiting for me on the counter. Then, from the corner of my eye I see a black shape careening across the floor, my bare feet directly in its sights.

From here details become a bit sketchy as the field reports are contradictory. I claim I quietly yelped and moved myself into the living room. Amanda recalls a scream and a flash as I shot out of the kitchen as if shot from gun. Believe what you will.

So while Survivor continued on the television, our cockroach friend was about to not survive. I went to the laundry to retrieve the rat poison while Amanda had a look and confirmed that this was, in fact, an above average sized roach. Luckily for us, and unluckily for our visitor, the Australians are smart and have “surface spray” which we had sprayed earlier in the week. Basically this is a spray you put down in certain locales loved by bugs, and it lures them and kills them. So our roach, having already sustained the use of chemical weapons, was stumbling around. I probably wasn’t in as much danger while I was pouring my drink as I thought.

Now, having assembled a desk earlier in the day, I decided to let Amanda take the lead on this little domestic opportunity. I handed her the non-surface bug spray and she unloaded on the maimed intruder. Having already stumbled through our poison trap, the roach now faced an aerial gas assault, the likes of which had not been seen since Northern France, 1940.

It still didn’t die.

So then we (Amanda if you want to get technical about it) placed a piece of cardboard over the dying beast and then smashed it with a shoe. And that, my friends, was the end of my first encounter with a roach in a dwelling in which I live. In the annals of history Amanda may be seen as the true hero tonight.

But I did get the piece of cardboard for her.

And I wiped up the floor after.

It has now been over a month since I arrived here in Sydney and in a lot of ways I think I am lucky to be alive. My plane landed safely, I haven’t stepped out into traffic screaming towards me (thank God for the “LOOK RIGHT” warnings at crosswalks), and I’ve successfully avoided being trampled by a rampaging kangaroo. Actually, as far as I can tell, kangaroos are one of the few species of, well, anything here that does not actually pose an immediate threat to my personal well-being. Other than them and most of the birds, I do believe I am eligible prey for most anything else on this Island of Terror that decides to wander up and take a bite.

In some ways I find it shocking how many people want to travel to Australia. Not to say it isn’t an amazing, beautiful country full of wonderful people. But for North Americans and Europeans simply getting here involves a couple thousand dollars, a nightmarish 14-24 hours stuffed in a tiny seat, only to emerge in a land that the British saw fit to send its criminals to. Now at first that little piece of history seems rather odd. What kind of punishment is sending someone from grey, dreary England to a land an acquaintance of mine simply refers to as “Paradise”? Beautiful beaches, an agreeable climate, and all the land you could ever want. Well after my recent trip to the Australian Museum here in Sydney, I now know why the Brits decided Australia was a place fit for society’s undesirables.

The Australian Museum is an impressive looking building sitting just east of Hyde Park. It’s imposing exterior is dominated by large columns, which are only dwarfed by the Sperm Whale skeleton that awaits you in the lobby. Below the bewildering mass of bones a sign informs visitors that the dead whale had washed up on a beach in South Australia in the 1870s and it was quickly shuffled off to Sydney for display. Surely the sign of a young country when an animal carcass is immediately seen as an attraction.

Once I paid my ten dollars to the friendly cashier I ventured into the museum proper, filled with the joy of being in a museum on a weekday by myself. Unemployment has its benefits. The first floor is filled with skeletons and a somewhat disappointing display about Aboriginal culture. The display itself wasn’t terrible, but in a building called the Australian Museum I think I was expecting a bit more. The second floor I knew wouldn’t excite me as it contained minerals. And nothing but minerals. That said, there were a lot of cool looking rocks, so if that’s your thing, go nuts. I quickly made my way to the third floor, which was what had drawn me to the museum in the first place.

Upon reaching the top of the stairs I was greeted by a snake in a case, staring at me. It wasn’t too large, but it did look intimidating. I’m not too terrified of snakes, mainly because I know there isn’t too much of a chance of one of them crawling on me while I sleep in my bed. Australia, however, is making me rethink my stance on snakes. Most of the world’s most venomous snakes are found creeping around the bush of Australia. Some of them not too far away. They have snakes that will kill you in a field and snakes that will kill you in the water. They can drop from trees, they can jump from holes, and I was later informed by another display that there is even a snake that enjoys living in the attics and rafters of your home. Luckily this snake is not a poisonous one, but still, the thought of one of them slithering over my high school yearbooks looking for food doesn’t fill me with ease.

Snakes don’t bother you? What about the world’s largest species of crocodile? This thing is HUGE. Once I turned around from the Greeter Snake I was faced with a very large display case featuring the largest crocodile I have ever seen. And that includes any Peter Pan related films. I cannot stress to you how large it is. In the wild they can grow to 7 metres (about 21 feet I think). This stuffed one glaring at me was less than that and even it made me want to postpone any trips to Queensland. Oh yeah, they will eat humans too. The same case also featured some deadly snakes which I mentally noted for later reference in case of an encounter.

Now that my heart was racing I ventured into the Evolution/History of Earth portion of the museum. I was very pleased with this section. It was well done and explained in such a way that I could follow along. In the middle of this room a Stegosaurus skeleton was battling the newly found skeleton of a dinosaur that lived millions of years later. At least the display told me this info, rather than try to slip one by me. I’ve always been a dinosaur nut, so my moments of staring up at the skeletons brought me right back to my first elementary school library where I spent hours kneeling on the floor in front of the dinosaur books. I bet if they haven’t changed that library around, I could find them immediately. Sadly, I’m sure all the same books would still be waiting for me on the shelf with few new additions to the County Line collection.

While I love evolutionary history and the finer points of Home erectus (I really do), I left that part of the museum eager to see the Birds and Insects of Australia room. In addition to the dinosaurs and evolution bits, this was the reason I came to the museum. I needed to see what I am up against as a new resident of the Island of Terror. And my lord, I am up against some truly terrifying opponents.

The Bird and Insect room has not-so-scary (though often freakishly large) birds on the outer wall, and insects in smaller displays on the inner ring. Each insect display is about three feet long and dark. In a fit of unwarranted cruelty, the museum curators decided that the most effective way to show visitors their worst nightmares is to make them push a button on each display which, after a nail-biting two second delay, violently lights up the spiders you have chosen to look at. It really is quite unnerving to have a bright light suddenly forcing your eyes to gaze upon large, hairy, evil looking spiders. So, in addition to the world’s deadliest snakes and giant killer crocodiles, Australia is home to the world’s most lethal spiders. And these things aren’t opposed to showing up in your home unannounced.

There is one spider called the Sydney Funnel-Web Spider. I’m not going to try and scare you with my own hyperbolic writing. Instead, here is a quotation taken from Wikipedia:

The Sydney funnel-web spider, also called a funnel-web tarantula, is regarded by some to be the most dangerous spider in the world. Actually there are two related genera of very dangerous spiders, Hadronyche (which has the higher mortality rate) and Atrax (which has produced a higher number of serious bites).

Now I don’t know what words stand out to you, but “dangerous,” “mortality rate,” and “serious bites” jumped out at me. And that is only the opening paragraph of the article. A quick read of the article also reveals the following comforting words and phrases:

- “fatal bites to humans” (Yeah, I got that from your opening paragraph.)
- “the venom is known to cause death within a period ranging from one hour to three days” (Yes, I know.)
- “they frequently search for a place to nest under human dwellings” (Lovely.)
- “most active at night” (That works out well since that is when I am at my most vulnerable and when I can’t see.)
- “often found in swimming pools, yards, and garages” (How often????)
- “can move quickly across the ground” (Please tell me they can’t jump.)
- “their fangs have been known to penetrate fingernails and soft shoes” (You have got to be kidding me.)
- “often bite aggressively and repeatedly and may envenomate enthusiastically” (Enthusiastically???? Someone tell me this is a joke.)

I had saved the Bird and Insect Room for last. That was a mistake. I left the museum and made my way towards George Street to catch a bus back home. As I walked (rather quickly) through Hyde Park I carefully avoided trees and tried my best to be near someone who looked like they would be slower than me if we were both chased down by a Funnel-Web. As I crossed Elizabeth Street and looked back into the park I am pretty sure I saw a pack of tourists running from a giant crocodile only to be taken down by the world’s deadliest spider and a few agitated snakes. Maybe that was just my mind though.

On the bus ride home I started thinking about where you are actually safe in this country. The land is filled with spiders and snakes. The rivers and swamps have man-eating crocodiles. The ocean maybe? Surely Nature isn’t so cruel as to load the peaceful ocean surrounding the Island of Terror with deadly creatures right? Oh wait, that reminds me of a TV show I watched shortly after my visit with the spiders. It was called “Sharks on Trial.”

…I would start a blog as well.

So here it is. A Reminder. Dot Org. /notes. Or something. Amanda is still working on the index page, and there will be a music blog to come soon as well. But for now it is this. Notes From a New Country. Basically this space will be filled with tales of my struggles to survive in the vicious environment of Australia. Sydney to be exact.

I’ve been here just over a month now and have more or less adjusted to Sydney. I learned cricket, then watched Australia lose the Ashes. And today…we lost the Red Sox. The Canucks are 1-0 though. OK…off topic already.

Regular posting will commence shortly.