July 2011 - What's in a word?
Dear reader, the word for the month is ANOMALY.
How would I describe the meaning of the word anomaly to my mate Unfortunate O'Day?
It might be easy if I know what it meant myself.
When it comes to the meaning of the word anomaly I feel like a fish out of water.
It sounds to me like it should be a board game.
As a lad, I played lots of board games.
On cold, dark winter nights we would sit by the fire and play Ludo and Snakes.
Many years passed before I found out it should have been snakes and ladders but we had a cheap set with no ladders.
The game would go on for hours, even longer than Monopoly, but nobody ever won.
I came across an old ludo set and I invited the Apprentice Leader of the Opposition to play.
I set the game out and told her that as a lad we would play it for hours.
She looked at me askance. "How could you play" she asked, "there's nowhere to put the batteries."
So this is what the wold has come to.
An all electric existance.
I must admit since the privatisation of the electric supplies, their product has become more powerful.
I realised this when I opened the bills and got a terrible shock.
My mate Unfortunate is working on an invention that will help us all...a wind up light bulb.
When he perfects that, he's going to work on a wind up computer.
I enquired of him regarding the wind-up mechanism.
He told me there was no problem with it.
You just plug it in.
As a young lad in Conamarra I remember having no electricity.
We would sit and talk by the light of the oil lamps.
We became very enlightened when, as the locals said: to discover in many homes not"the electrics came through."
When the fellow came to read the meter he was amazed to discover in many homes, not more than one unit of electricity was used.
"Is the electricity not to your liking?" he asked."
Tis marvellous. I would say that the electric is the best invention since the potato."
"Why then," the fellow said, "don't you use it?"
"There's not a night goes by that it's not used. What a convenience.
The electric comes on at the touch of the switch lighting the room with the incandescence of the sun and we have no trouble at all finding the matches to light the lamps.
"Under their influence the stories would flow like brooks, enlightening all who listened. Whereas under the influence of the electric light, the conversation would be as dull as a candle on the ocean.
Anyway, being unable to find a meaning for anomaly at this moment, I realise the best thing I can do is get some lamps.
The leader of the Opposition suggests that an anomaly is something like this:
Australia stops the inhumane killing of cattle in foreign lands but lets young soldiers die inhumanely in foreign lands.
But hey, what would she know?
Sean Kramer