Tim Dick, a further bout of Dick thinking, and the joys of being a Sydney-sider

(Above: Sydney siders rushing to the beach. Doesn't the traffic look nice at night? Such a wonderful town, and nary a sign of road rage - except for that bastard that cut me off, forcing me to tail gate him the length of Parramatta road).

Oh dear, what does this presage?

Lisa Pryor returns from maternity leave to this spot tomorrow.

Yep, a bout of Tim Dick-ism, as the valiant pinch hitter columnist turns up at the plate to deliver a screaming three strikes scribble entitled NSW, the hottest premier state ... and the weather's not bad either.

Looking for a bout of hot, hot feminism? Dick is your man, or even your person:

Who cares if we've had four premiers in five years with only one election, for not even this mob can bugger up the weather. Besides, Kristina Keneally is the hottest premier any Australian state has ever had. It's such a Sydney thing to do, distract us from a stinking, self-obsessed mess with a bit of passingly hot.

Not just feminist thinking, but bonus incisive political commentary as well.

Or could it mean that the Dick is into puppet sex? Does Kristina Keneally's compliant kow towing to the right of the Labour party make her even hotter? Is there nothing like a submissive woman to turn on a Sydney man?

Who knows, but hey, if it's a metaphor, the Dick method is to stretch it to breaking point:

OK, she's not hot-hot, but compared to Carr, Iemma and Rees, she's seasonably warm. Much like the forecast for this weekend, and when the sun does shine, who minds what's not happening on transport? Not this Government and, a bit of griping aside, not us.

Is it just coincidence that the arcane Dick should be publishing these thoughts when Sydney is gripped by rain and a bus strike, and the traffic is more feral than usual, though helped along by pre-Christmas sickies? (Bus drivers go on strike). Sure finding and selecting a pedestrian to run over has gotten easier today, but isn't there more to life?

Well yes there possibly is, but there's nothing like a tin ear when scribbling a column dedicated to the joys of Sydney, including the slagging off of other towns. Who else but a Dick would compare Sydney town, complete with bonus bus strike, to other towns which presumably actually have public transport that works? On the day of the strike no less!

The Dick, you see, lives not just amongst the hottest chicks, but also in the land of the lotus eaters where everything is super duper jolly:

If it rained more in Sydney, we'd be marching in the streets. We'd be cold, wet and angry. We'd be furiously raging against the incestuous State Government machine, rather than raging at music festivals with our hands in the air like we just don't care.

Oh yes, we all just love state Labour here, and we love to head off to classical music concerts at the Opera House, or enjoy music in the domain courtesy of the Sydney festival, provided of course it's a classical music festival (oh wait, I got that wrong, classical music is profoundly boring).

Because we don't, not really, not demonstratingly-angry care. What protests we see are limited and focused, but no general strikes, no mass marches on Macquarie Street, no riots, no burning flags, no petrol bombs.

Eh, whatever, we're at the beach.

Never mind the riots at Macquarie Fields or in Redfern. Or Cronulla. Never mind the rain. Never mind the bus strike. We're at the beach, getting there is so easy, that no one in the inner west ever swims in chlorinated pools.

Never mind, says the incisive raven-like mind of the Dick:

We have no train to Bondi, Manly or Balmoral, nor to the north-west or the south-east, nor to Taylor Square or Leppington. Yet no one seems too upset, as if the beauty of the destination always outweighs the trauma of getting there, once we've found a car park and enough coins for the meter.

Why I cheerfully waved to some pedestrians this morning as they trudged through the rain to their destination, and they gave me the finger. How offensive and churlish. Clearly they haven't read the Dick.

If this was London, there would be mayhem. Foppish Boris Johnson would be pelted by a mob angry at administrative incompetence intensified by seasonal affected disorder. Perhaps the Brits are such whingers because they never see the sun. That'd make you angry. But we have tans, so we're not.

Tans? The first step to skin cancer and possible death? Jolly good, number one, carry on Mr. Dick.

Great, now we can put 'the hottest chick ever to run a state' feminist thinking aside, and get down to the real business of musing on national stereotypes. And who better to lead the way than the pathetic, pale, white whining, sunless British? Unless of course it's fractious, cheese-eating French monkeys:

Some suburbs in Sydney retain the ability to run riot, but the rest of us don't seem motivated to turn the barbecue stopper of useless government into a spark for French-style mass street demonstrations. Sydney's riot squad targets the collectively inebriated, rather than the collectively enraged.

Great, we're just a happy pack of rioting drunks, inheritors of the grand traditions of the Rum Rebellion.

But by now you're probably wondering what the fuck this meandering pointless excuse for a column is on about, such is the lotus-like rambling of the Dick:

Ah, summer, you're back. We've missed you. You're the reason many move here only for a bit, and never leave. Yet even with a summer like Sydney's, it's still only ninth on Mercer's list of most liveable cities. If that's an accurate and justified ranking, liveability can go jump.

Ah, now we come to it. A bit of parochial flag waving of a kind that made rioting on the beach in Cronulla such a patriotic fun chore. Who is this wretched Mercer, and why does he have such a wrong attitude to Sydney?

Well first a word of explanation:

Here's the standard question to be asked at Sydney airport by a sharp journalist of any new arrival (who by nature are parvenu arriviste nouveau-riche types):

Tell me Mr. Mercer is this your first visit to Sydney and what do you think of the beaches and what do you think of Australia, and do we have an international feel, comparable to Paris, London and New York, except for the better beaches? Are we up there with them, or perhaps even better, seeing as how the English have no tans, and the French riot, and New York is full of muggers, so now will you finally, even if reluctantly, even if we have to extract a few teeth, admit, Sydney is without doubt, the greatest place in the world in which to live, work and play?

If any answer provided doesn't include 'Siderney is wonderful', immediately write story dismissing Mr Mercer and anyone of his ilk as a stuck up snob, who should leave town at once before he's tarred and feathered for being anti-Australian.

Oh sorry, got distracted by the joys of parochialism. Back to the Dick:

Mercer's top five liveable cities are Vienna, Zurich, Geneva, Vancouver and Auckland. There's a reason why they're so liveable: they're safe and dull. Cities are fun because of a surplus of people, not a lack of them.

Give me Sydney - or New York, or Hong Kong - and you can have your Zurich and all its secretive tax-dodging bankers. Its compatriot bore, Geneva, is convention centre to the world, and every bit as dull as ours.

And calling Auckland liveable is like praising being dead as peaceful. Yes, death is very relaxing, but you're still dead. It's as attractive as the Glebe morgue. The less said about that pox on an otherwise beautiful country the better, save for this: don't go.

There you go. The Dick manages to savage five countries, who now can join outraged classical music lovers in chortling at his idle mindlessness and offensiveness.

But surely it's just a jolly jape, surely the Dick is just having fun, filling up the space for the absent Lisa Pryor? (Come back Lisa, save us from the Dick).

No, no, the silly gherkin thinks that the Labor party can be saved by having a hot chick leader and a good sunny autumn day:

None of them has weather as uplifting as Sydney's. And surely Labor's only hope to win an utterly undeserved fifth term on March 26, 2011 is for a warm autumnal Saturday; for a balmy, fragrant day on which people call into the polling booth after swimming at Clovelly, Vaucluse, Camperdown or in the Nepean.

And for the entire electorate to have had such an endorphin-laden Sydney day that, when they're in the booth, they'll think: It's not all that bad, is it?

Political commentary as incisive as that? Why surely you'd pay a week's wages to Fairfax Media for the pleasure.

But what's that mention of Camperdown, an inner western suburb of Sydney? Far removed from the beach.

At Victoria Park pool in Camperdown, my earnest determination to swim a kilometre will again give way to a compromised half.

Eek, the Dick swims in Camperdown. He must be that relentless thrashing machine that ploughs up and down the pool like a stump jump plough. And for god knows what reason he prefers chlorine to the smell of the sea at the beach.

Suddenly, it's not the rain pelting down, or the absent buses, or being ruled over by a hot puppet chick, or reading the mindless babbling of a bubble headed booby patriot with nothing much to write about that makes Sydney only ninth on the most liveable cities in the world.

No, it's the thought of sharing chlorinated water with the Dick.

Meanwhile, if you want an alternative Dick-free view of Sydney, why not have a read of Sydney: nice place to visit, wouldn't want to live there.

A sample:

Sydneysiders complain of daily traffic snarls that can gridlock parts of the city, the high cost of road tolls, routinely late trains, hospitals that struggle to cope with more and more patients, worsening air pollution from cars, a rising cost of city living and lack of affordable housing.

Even former Prime Minister Paul Keating has labelled his hometown an ugly city, ruined by rapacious property developers who have constructed apartment blocks that resemble "egg crates" to house the growing population.

A benchmark report on Sydney this year began with the headline: "A city in love with its own image."

"Sydney is often described as the most deeply superficial of towns. A party town so enamoured with its postcard-perfect imagery that reality rarely gets an invite...," it said.

Oh stop it you whingers you'll go blind, or upset Tim Dick. What's wrong with the deeply superficial?

Topics of interest for those who can't give a flying fuck about Sydney or its liveability or Tim Dick will resume in due course ...

And now because it's Friday, and rain-sodden, bus free Sydney suddenly smells clean and fresh in a rainy kind of way that reminds me of the pleasure of having an actual winter, why not return to the source of the Dick's mindless hedonism, as explained in the Odyssey (here):

I was driven thence by foul winds for a space of nine days upon the sea, but on the tenth day we reached the land of the Lotus-eaters, who live on a food that comes from a kind of flower. Here we landed to take in fresh water, and our crews got their mid-day meal on the shore near the ships. When they had eaten and drunk I sent two of my company to see what manner of men the people of the place might be, and they had a third man under them. They started at once, and went about among the Lotus-Eaters, who did them no hurt, but gave them to eat of the lotus, which was so delicious that those who ate of it left off caring about home, and did not even want to go back and say what had happened to them, but were for staying and munching lotus with the Lotus-eaters without thinking further of their return; nevertheless, though they wept bitterly I forced them back to the ships and made them fast under the benches. Then I told the rest to go on board at once, lest any of them should taste of the lotus and leave off wanting to get home, so they took their places and smote the grey sea with their oars.

And why not a bit of Tennyson as a sorbet, with the end bit of his poem The Lotos-Eaters. You can catch up on the start, by heading here:

The Lotos blooms below the barren peak:
The Lotos blows by every winding creek:
All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone:
Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone
Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown.
We have had enough of action, and of motion we,
Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was seething free,
Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world:
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships and praying hands.
But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong;
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer--some,'tis whisper'd--down in hell
Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
Oh rest ye, brother and hot chick Sydney car drivers, we will not wander more.