Year: 2016

New name for Target and Kmart combined

Lili Gans Uncategorized

Since Target is not flourishing, the management of Wesfarmers, owners of both brands,  are considering combining Kmart and Target stores

There have been some suggestions that the new name for this union should be Karget.  Not a good idea.  It has no resonance, no cachet, no appeal.

A better name and one that is optimistic and inclusive of the successful reputation of Kmart,  is

Kmart Plus

In my opinion, this covers all bases. It is forward-looking and includes Target as the Plus factor. In other words,  improvement.  Improvement is always good. Two for the price of one is also good and the shoppers who were loyal to Target will not have been forgotten. They are the Plus Factor in Kmart Plus.

Say Hello and Goodbye to the Panamacebus transitus

Lili Gans Uncategorized

Just when you thought that life could not get more idiotic a Florida paleontologist called Jonathan Bloch has discovered seven fossilised teeth from a monkey 21 million years ago (give or take a day).

According to Dr Bloch “it’s  a mind bending discovery” because until now it had long been accepted that such monkeys (or their teeth, to be exact) did not exist so long ago.

So how did they get to Panama?  Did the monkeys swim across from South America to North America? After all, it was a 160 kilometres journey across the sea. Apparently this is the crux of the entire study.

Fascinating stuff is it not?

It’s not the question on my mind, however, that’s for sure.

My question is  “who gives a damn?”  Why is precious research time and money  being wasted on a monkey who may or may not have existed and who may or may not have left some teeth behind when he fossilised himself?

Stella Prize? Why do women need a special literary prize for women only??

Lili Gans Bullshit, What Pisses me off

So Charlotte Wood has won the Stella Prize,   an Australian prize of $50,000  which is exclusive to women.  Her book, “The Natural Way of Things”,  deals with misogyny etc. and domestic violence which are trendy topics.

I have to admit that a prize like that smacks of condescension and sexism and I wish that special offerings would not be made to women on account of their gender.  A truly egalitarian society would not discriminate between male and female writers. But there you are.

It is sad that this is the way of things.

It reminds me of the complaint made by female tennis players who want the same prize money as men even though they only have to play up to three sets of tennis instead of five.

Is that fair? Is that equal?

Imagine if there were a special prize for male authors only.

We women will have come a long way when we no longer depend on special concessions for being female.   Until that day comes not much has been achieved.

 

 

 

The Sudanese in Australia are their own worst enemies.

Lili Gans Uncategorized

It is with deepest regret that I write this blog.  We Aussies have really tried to accommodate the Sudanese community who came here for a better life.

Australia is a marvellous country compared with the rest of the world. I should know because I came here as a displaced person.  My family was grateful to be here. My parents worked hard and I studied hard even though we did not know a word of English when we came here.

There was no welfare then, nor the dole,  but we all knuckled down and got on with it. I was seven years old and so was put in Grade 2 in July.  By the end of the year,  the headmaster called my mother to the school and asked if it would be all right if I were promoted to grade 4 the following year instead of grade 3.  In six months I had learned English and managed to skip a year.

I am revealing this because I believe that if you work hard you can achieve a lot. It’s up to you.

That  is why I bristle at the mention of  “disaffected youth”.

In Siberia we were never bored or disaffected.  Life was too precarious for that luxury.

So why am I writing this?

Well,  on the weekend about 200 disaffected Sudanese and Islanders decided to riot in the middle of the city of Melbourne. They spoiled the Moomba Festival in town and made us resent them.

They are bored,  apparently.  They feel disliked.

My question is “What’s there to like?  Their violence?  Their attacks on women?  Their home invasions?  Their selfish and mindless assault on this generous society? ”

My reply is  “If we don’t like you it’s your own bloody fault.”

 

 

 

 

Rob Thomas told the truth but Australians can’t handle the truth

Lili Gans totally absurd

Poor Rob Thomas made a comment about Australians being big alcohol drinkers. He also said that the traditional owners, that is, the aborigines, were heavy drinkers as well.

For this he had to apologise.

Why?  When he only spoke the truth.

Australians do drink. In fact, for them it’s a rite of passage. Heavy drinking is responsible for car accidents, domestic violence and violence in the streets. In fact,  being drunk has been used as a mitigating excuse for breaking the law. “I didn’t know what I was doing, your Honour,  cause I was pissed.”

The hospitals are overwhelmed on the weekend by drunks who are violent towards nurses and doctors.  Aggressive behaviour combined with the use of other drugs chokes our health system and it is the genuinely sick people who cannot be treated in our emergency departments because of these drunks who waste our precious resources.

There is hardly an event in Australia that doesn’t involve drinking. Watching sport? Have a beer. Fishing? Have a beer.  Watching TV? Have a beer. It’s hard to think of any occasion that doesn’t involve drinking alcohol.

Now, I have nothing against drinking in moderation, but being too drunk to remember what you did seems to be the ambition of many revellers and that is pathetic.  It could be our colonial heritage that is to blame.  Who knows why?

A few years ago someone wrote a song about a pub with no beer. It was amusing but also prophetic and it became one of those iconic songs in Australia.  Seems to me it would be hard to imagine a greater tragedy for the majority of Aussies than running out of grog.

It’s a pity that poor Rob Thomas had to cop it for telling it the way it is.

 

 

What sort of creature abandons women and children?

Lili Gans Uncategorized

Two weeks ago I attended a Current Affairs discussion.  As usual, the subject of  “refugees” or  “migrants” came up.

I posed the question :

“If Australia were being attacked by an enemy would you expect the young Aussie men to abandon their families, their parents, their wives and children, and escape to another country or would you expect them to stay in Australia and defend and protect them?”

That question received much applause.

This afternoon,  visiting Canadian journalist Mark Steyn made the same comment on our local radio station, 3AW, about who was abandoning the elderly and the helpless in the Middle East.  It made my day.

Disgusting Smiths Crisps TV advertisement

Lili Gans What Pisses me off

If you want to judge a society you should observe what TV ads appeal to it. It will tell you a lot about the moral fibre of viewers.  Of course,  it may only tell you about the values of the marketing companies, but you have to concede that along the line,  after the ad men created the ad,  the manufacturers must have  approved  the commercial.  So both manufacturers and marketing had to agree on the ethics of the campaign.

In this case, I feel entitled to blame the manufacturers of Smiths Crisps who are originally an Australian company founded by a Mr Smith, but which is now owned by Pepsi.

The advertisement which has distressed me is the one which shows an elderly woman opening the door to a repairman who has come to fix her stairlift.  He enters and  places his open tool box on the floor.   She notices that he has a packet of Smiths Crisps in it.  This old lady wants some and when the repairman closes the tool box she steals a part of the stairlift.

When he sits down on the stairlift and turns it on to test it,  it shoots upstairs and ejects him out of the window.   She then chuckles to herself and steals the packet of Smiths Crisps.

The final scene of the commercial portrays the old crone cheerfully  munching on the crisps.

Is that funny or is that funny?

Wow!  What a distressing depiction of old age!  The worst aspect of this commercial is that it condones violence and theft.

Shame on Smiths,  shame on Pepsi,  shame on the marketers and shame on the TV channels who didn’t have the moral fibre to reject this tasteless ad.

Irritating women at supermarket checkouts

Lili Gans Uncategorized, What Pisses me off

Here is a typical scene at a supermarket checkout. You are standing in line behind a few women. You have your credit card at the ready.  This is contrary to the behaviour of  other women in front of you who go through the checkout and then at the end of the process are taken by surprise…apparently.

It seems that the checkout person expects them to pay.

So now the farce begins. Most female shoppers fumble in the depth of their handbags. Out come the hair dryers, the make-up purse, the chocolates, the collection of tissues and all sorts of other personal items until at the very bottom of the abyss,  the wallet is found. Then it takes a few minutes till the credit card or cash is located.

This seems to be a female thing.  They go through the process of placing the shopping items on the counter and  it’s only when the cashier has finished totalling that they work out that they actually have to pay for their purchase.

Of course this lack of  preparation slows everybody else down.

Honestly,  I have no idea how their mind works.

Now men, on the other hand,  always,  and I mean always,  have their wallets or credit cards ready so as not to delay the other shoppers in the queue.

I invite you all to observe this weird phenomenon.

Which is why when I select a queue in a supermarket I always head for the one that has many men in it.