Sunday 31 August 2008

Experience

Do you love the story about Brendan Nelson going on a truck-driving odyssey this weekend? Do you really, really love it? I do. Best Brendan Nelson ever, I would say. Why do research or ask an expert about what it's really like to be a ________ when you can experience it first-hand for yourself? I think about it at night just before falling asleep, and again in the morning when I wake up (and I also think about how in both of these circumstances I am in my own warm soft clean-sheeted and comfortable bed, not huddled in the cabin of a truck by the side of a road in Dubbo.)

I hope Brendan plans to do a choose-your-own-adventure project on other Australian ways of life in the future. Will he go on Deal or No Deal for instance, to learn about what the issues are facing contestants on incomprehensible game shows. Will he go into grade four for a few days and draw a poster about penguins in Antarctica. Will he get first-hand experience of life wielding the scissors in Just Cuts? Will he hire himself out as a real estate agent and advise people on how to declutter their homes for open inspections? Will he do a big shop at Aldi? Wash windscreens at traffic lights? Cruise with a bunch of overexcited teenagers in the back of a stretch Hummer? All this and so much more must he do if he is to truly understand, in his inner soul of souls, how We live.

5 comments:

TimT said...

That's Brendan Gonzo Nelson to you!

But he won't get any traction until he does 'Fear and Loathing in Canberra'. "We were halfway through Parliament House when the drugs set in..."

PS His colleagues are probably just grateful he doesn't make them do the same thing. David Cameron made a whole bunch of his fellow Tories live in mud huts in Africa as a (*cough* publicity stunt *cough*) sign of how much they care.

Anonymous said...

Deal or no Deal is the best show on television.

lucy tartan said...

I knew I thought of it for a reason.

Anonymous said...

More posts on Sill's Bend, that's what I love. And the ace illustrations!
*Stamps*
*Whistles*

Anonymous said...

Pleeeeeaaaase - Brendan doing windscreens at an intersection near me very very soon....