SO now we have Airbuses. Or, more precisely, the Airbus 380. They say they’ll have double beds. And gyms. It’s going to change the way we travel forever. Flying will never be the same again. I never doubted it. The bit that bothers me is the airports. I can’t see any prospect of them changing. Unless it’s because the staff grow more hostile, the sandwiches more expensive and more disgusting, the shuffling queues more irritating and the luggage more ineffably lost. The Airbus company reckons there’s going to be twice as many people flying in 15 years, in these double-decker behemoths, which will carry 600 people at a time. With…

MY neighbour is an android. If you chopped his arm off you’d expose wires, steel rods and silicon chips. I know this because I have driven in his car. There are two kinds of car owners. My kind, who have budgie seed growing into exotic plant species in the door sills, the aroma of last year’s spilt milk in the carpets, and dog hairs and biscuit paste in the seats. And his kind, who have cars so clinically sterile you could safely perform surgery on the seats (but if you did, of course, they’d kill you). How do people do that? I’ve already answered my own question. They’re not people;…

LOOK, I don’t want to sound churlish, or even blasphemous, but you have to admit that the idea of human beings being designed by an omnipotent creator is, well… silly. I could have done better in my shed with bits of wire and some baling twine. Take heads. If heads had been designed by anyone with half a brain they’d have been retractable. They can do it for tortoises, why not for us! I am carrying the scars from a weekend that provided incontrovertible evidence that heads should be the size of walnuts, and just as tough to crack. My wife says they got it half right. She says it’s…

HOW lucky we are that we have Queensland Health. The world spends far, far more on being entertained than it does on being cured – and with Queensland Health we can do both at once. So long as you’re idea of being entertained is a Stephen King movie. And there’s a certain dark humour in the way events have unfolded since the obscene news of botched operations, bullying, pandemic under-funding and administrative incompetence. But at least it’s more interesting than Australian Idol. We have the politicians to thank for that. Forgive me this outburst. If you stop at this page often you will know I spend about as much time…

THE police got me. I could have run but they looked young enough to be keen. And I wasn’t armed, except with a briefcase, and it wasn’t loaded. I must say you have to admire them. Terrorism is knocking on the door of our daily lives, the kids are shooting up heroin at kindy, illegal immigrants are swarming over our borders like lemmings without the death wish, but that doesn’t stop the boys in blue from caring for the welfare of respectable citizens. I was touched. I even said thank you. I think he wanted to arrest me again for being smart, but that’s not an offence in Queensland. Yet.…