Dodgy motor

When my TV acting work dried up, I worked at corporate presenting even though I had the wrong wardrobe. 

I landed a presenting gig and thought I was ready to become an expert. I’d been booked to pontificate on a raised platform at a huge car stand at the annual glitzy Sydney motor show. On the hour for 8 hours, I had to deliver a heavily scripted 20-minute talk on a new zippy car aimed at young singles. In the land of the non ironic mullet wearing petrolhead I had to make the car sound attractive to 20 somethings who were buying their first brand-new car. I was 36, my de facto was sending secret late night texts to a younger woman and I’d been up all night breastfeeding my second child. Did I mention I know nothing about cars? And I don’t want to? And I don’t care about engines.

 

My first attempt at the talk was for 30 car dealers from around the country. Experts in their field. I forgot the script, couldn’t remember the key selling points, and didn’t know how to use the wipers. I lacked enthusiasm. I don’t own a car, I couldn’t give a rats about a piece of machinery but I had an unemployed partner with a dope addiction and our kids to support. I needed the money. An entertainment agent was paying me $800 for an eight-hour day. I could inhale fumes for 10 days.

 

On a break, I met a nice dark-haired man in the dressing room. He smiled and said hello.

“What do you do?” he said.

“I’m talking about a new car. What do you do?”

“I drive cars.”

“You race them?” I said.

“Yes.”

“You get paid to drive? That’s cool. I love driving manual cars.” And I prattled on about being a secret rev head while he listened patiently. There was an awkward silence, then he handed me a bottle of water. We walked out together and I heard,

“Ladies and gentlemen the champion of motorsports. Marcus Ambrose.”

There were about 300 people waiting for him in a queue.

 

After six days, a younger guy who knew about cars replaced me on the podium. I’m surprised it took them that long.


Give it away, give it away, give it away

We’re doing a giveaway on instatwatrestfakebooklinked

Entering our competition is simple:

Like our page. Like our post. Like our Pinterest boards

Follow our unused Twitter feed

Like our Tumblr site that we haven’t updated since 2013

Like our Facebook page populated by nut jobs

Like our next-door neighbour’s cousin’s mother’s company, located in freak knows where that has no contact details on their website

Like my 615 friends’ pages that promote shonky science, hideous frocks and expensive shakes

Like photos of my awful children doing annoying crap

Please follow these pages:

I’ve had so much Botox I’m surprised even when I’m cranky

Women Who Sell Crap We Don’t Need

I’ll swallow handfuls of steroids and get fillers in my face, but won’t touch toxic vaccines

Follow ivedonemyresearch.com

Follow three random pages of your choice

Spend $500 on our website for 2 entries

Vote for me on a nonsensical awards site started by a shell company with no ethics

Tell your friends to vote for me

Help me buy my next investment property

Spin three times, click your heels and yell, Dorothy we won’t get back to Kansas

And you could win a $5 voucher for an online shop selling stuff from the tip

This is a paid partnership with common sense

Why are we tuning into charlatans and not wise people in our culture?


Inspir-rational

There are many joys being locked in with a teenager for an extended time. Extra Lockdown 3.0 has given me the time to go on exciting endeavours like delving through my junk mail folder and scoring lovely new online connections. I received this beautiful comment on a Facebook post:

I must confess and thank you so much my friend request. Although I translated to your language and hope you don’t mind, you are beautiful? My new best mate is clearly a high ranking, good looking Army General based in Texas.

I’m filled with happiness when complete strangers with expertise in marketing or real estate sales in their bios try to add me as a connection, and nothing makes me feel more soothed than the comments written by professional networkers on Scotty from marketing’s LinkedIn posts.

I’m revelling in reading long essays by conspiracy theorists with obvious expertise in epidemiology commenting on health professionals’ social media posts; relaxing reading that I highly recommend in the middle of a pandemic.

I’m deeply moved by the inspirational quotes obviously written by Gandhi, Jesus and that lady influenza who promotes yoga pants on Instagram. I feel so motivated now that genuine celebrities are following and messaging me on Twitter. I am focused on success instead of endless hours of TV watching.

And I’m humbled that I’ve secured a large sum of money from long-lost distant relatives in far-flung places who only want what’s best for me.

I can’t tell you how exciting it is to know that I can buy healing anti inflammatory lollies from one of my online mates who did extensive research on YouTube. Honestly, I can’t tell you.

Like, I’m really, really, really like energised by social commentary online, like for reals totes legit like, as the people I gave birth to love me to exclaim regularly in front of their friends in enclosed public spaces while I’m hitting the chardy. Sorry. Like I forgot about the pandemic pandemonium for a second there.

No really, I’m thrilled by your business opportunities, I haven’t left the chat permanently, I’m just having a nanna nap for a couple of years.

https://youtu.be/dKdJhL6WEgUhttps://youtu.be/dKdJhL6WEgU


Visions

I wrote this list of predictions for 2020 on the 31st of December, 2019:

The Pollard definitive guide to enjoying 2020:

Pat puppies and kiss kittens

Don’t vote for morons

Eat, drink and be merry

Don’t buy ‘beauty’ products

Stay off the internet

Help a refugee family

Read books

Unsubscribe

Stop buying plastic crap

Thank firies, ambos and nurses

Check your emotional baggage

Get fresh on the dance floor

Support the Uluru Statement

Be kind, even to dickheads

Don’t use the words onboarding, textural or disruptor

Buy the Big Issue

Sing every day

Bring home the facon (don’t harm piggies)

Love your friends

Swim in the ocean

These words are still accurate, but I’m adding:

Thank teachers, wear a mask, donate to your local food pantry, talk to a wise creature (preferably a furry one) stay home (if it’s safe), become a pirate and beware of deep, dark internet rabbit holes. Tell your people you love them. And please don’t use the words unprecedented, pivot or disrupt ever again.


‘Ucken see ya rona

As we prepare for a new world order after the first wave of corona, I’m reflecting on life in lockdown.

I will NOT miss

Updates from the CEOs of every company I’ve ever shopped with

Seeing Scummo’s smug face on my screens every five minutes

Pointless health and wellness videos

Over-medicated Zoom calls

Online conspiracy theories from whackos who I thought were sane people

Nauseating we’re-all-in-this-together messages from celebrities

Remote learning with teenage beast

I WILL MISS

Sleeping in

Cuddles with my cat every day

Reading multiple books

Afternoon naps

Carbs

Clean air

Day time TV

Day drinking

Bin isolation Facebook posts

Tracky dacks every day even though I wear pyjamas to work

Laughing with goth child over mad cat vids on TikTok

Bye rona, don’t come back…


Ay Corona

Call me a bloody hippy, but much good will come out of this time of corona madness. A whole new world is waiting to be born

We have stopped buying plastic crap we don’t need that is shipped here from overseas

All children may get access to good schooling and new technology

We will stop working in jobs we hate to buy crap we think we want

People have stopped injecting their bodies with botulism toxin

Maybe we will finally close the gap and have good health outcomes for our first nations people

Kids who aren’t neurotypical and don’t fit into our one size fits all school system will have other options for learning

Neighbours are looking after lonely, elderly folk because they’re not at work all the time

Billionaires and foreign companies who make massive profits may actually have to pay some tax to put money back into society.

People have stopped adding plastic to their fingers and breathing in solvents painted on their toes

Foxtel may go bust with no live sport being played; good riddance Rupert

People will wake up and realise that housing is a human right, not an investment opportunity. We may get rid of over blown rents, negative gearing and have housing that is fair for all

Families will spend quality time together; eating, arguing and singing

The planet will breathe while we’re not stampeding through every river and canal throwing plastic bottles into the sea

We finally appreciate and give thanks to doctors, ambos, nurses, teachers, garbos, shelf stackers, child care workers, aged care lovelies, check out chicks and roosters and start to honour how they keep our society going with their hard work

We will stop buying too many clothes, and not prop up an industry that exploits too many underpaid workers in countries that have no labour laws.

We will grow our own food, share with our neighbours, distribute goods according to need

We will live according to the seasons and honour the ebb and flow of mother nature

We may start to fund our scientists and actually listen when they impart their knowledge

We will swap clothes with our friends, mend and repair broken bits and bobs and remember that compulsive shopping doesn’t fill our hearts

We will crave our connection to nature and appreciate every blade of grass once it is safe to be back in the world

Without organised religious gatherings, people will start to question their beliefs and maybe not hide the paedophiles

We may realise that we don’t need the latest technology to be happy

200,000 poker machines are now sitting idle

We will discover we don’t need to pollute the planet with balloons at gender reveal parties, we can actually live with surprises

We will wake up and stop listening to and voting for greedy mad men who can barely turn up to do their job and finally decide to elect visionary leaders

We can no longer queue and panic buy phones and shoes and other stuff that we really can live without

Huge floating Petri dishes have been stopped from polluting precious cities and oceans across the world

We will have time to dance and sing together (online) and tell our stories and have time with our babies without having to rush off to feed the planet destroying capitalist beast

People will find out the real value of a dollar or a euro and realise that the share market is a house of cards, favouring only the fortunate

And the dolphins and the fish and the worms and the birds will come out of hiding and say ‘what took you so long silly humans?’

This revolution will be televised


2020 vision

The Pollard definitive guide to enjoying 2020:

Pat puppies and kiss kittens

Don’t vote for morons

Eat, drink and be merry

Don’t buy ‘beauty’ products

Stay off the internet

Help a refugee family

Read books

Unsubscribe

Stop buying plastic crap

Thank firies, ambos and nurses

Check your emotional baggage

Get fresh on the dance floor

Support the Uluru Statement

Be kind, even to dickheads

Don’t use the words onboarding, textural or disruptor

Buy the Big Issue

Sing every day

Bring home the facon (don’t harm piggies)

Love your friends

Swim in the ocean

 

 

 

 


Single mother To Do List

Feed munchkins

Laugh with best girlfriends

Verify your identity

Be fabulous

Embrace single motherhood

Pay all the bills

Find all the thrills

Bring home the bacon

Find app to block people in real life not just social media

Eat fruity wine and fruity fruits

Rage against the pale stale males in government

Stand up for girls

Find someone to collect my emotional baggage

Dance like instagram is watching

Drink tap water

Pat the cat

Thank your knees

Eat all the cheese

Hunt and gather

Educate people on the difference between your and you’re and he is and his

Sing like I’ve got 45 million YouTube followers


Izzy go fund yourself

For all the times that you put down my gay friends
And all the clubs you used to fund your own ends
You think rugby will be lost without you, oh Iz for goodness sake
You think we’re crying ’cause you stopped playin’ well we ain’t
And I didn’t wanna write these words ’cause I didn’t want you thinking we still care about you ’cause we don’t but, you still hit our socials up
And Izzy we’ve moved along and I think you should too
I don’t wanna hold back, maybe you should know that,
Aussies don’t like you and we like everyone
And you for-profit-Christians won’t admit when you are wrong
You get so caught up in your hate, you can’t see what’s going on
But now we know, you’re better playing on your own
‘Cause if you like the way you play that much,
Well Izzy you should go and fund yourself
And if you think that we’re still holding on to you
Well you should go and fund yourself
And if you think hate speech has a place right now
Well Izzy you should go and fund yourself
And if you think you bigots deserve a voice
Well you should go and fund yourselves
Well haters you should take a long hard look in the mirror because Jesus wouldn’t be paying lawyers, he’d be funding homeless people and women who have suffered DV and sick kids and people who need a hand
So Israel Folau run away with your bigoted god bothering pack of fundamentalist and go and play with yourselves

Tell me Kondo, Kondo, Kondo

Marie Kondo san

Vinnies and Salvos may not agree but I’d like to say,

Doomo arigatoo gozaimasu

I hugged my teenager and she didn’t give me joy so I sent her to live with her father

I spent Christmas with my relatives and they didn’t bring me happiness so I moved away

I laboured through a summer party with pill popping friends who became obnoxious, so this year I won’t be answering their calls

My daggy trackie dacks don’t spark joy but the fact that they still fit me after three kids does so I’m keeping them

Folding up Dutton, Morrison and Abbott at the next election will help my thoughts become clear

Parking cops don’t speak to my heart, out they go

Throwing out “joyless” items originally struck me as a first world problem. But the end result may be that the world is made better