God has given you one face & you make yourself another

Recently my eldest found a fetching gown for her boyfriend to wear to a party. I think every boy needs to wear a princess dress at least once in his life, but it seems the religious nutters don’t agree. In a recent ad, allegedly opposing marriage equality and supporting the no vote, a woman proclaiming to be a Christian whinged about boys being asked to wear dresses. The Pope wears a frock. Scottish men wear kilts, Jesus ran around in a tunic and plenty of men in the middle east look like they’re wearing shift dresses, but apparently men frocking up opens the gateway to hell.

What disturbs me most about the Australian Christian Lobby’s ‘Vote No’ ads, apart from the fact that the No campaign ads claim that schools will force males to wear skirts, is that these so-called Christians think that it is morally right to spend upwards of $20 million on a hate campaign. $20 MILLION DOLLARS that could be spent helping SO many people who are homeless, are victims of domestic violence or need help for mental issues.

I come from a long line of godbothers, I endured years of being dragged to Sunday school by my religious grandparents. My grandfather knew the Bible so well he would lecture Jehovah’s Witnesses at his front door for so long that they’d run away. So I remember key Bible verses. Jesus said,

“Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none, and whoever has food must do likewise. Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.” Luke 3:10-14

Jesus also said,

“Three things will last forever–faith, hope, and love–and the greatest of these is love.”

1 Corinthians 13:13

Jesus didn’t say Thou shalt cherry pick the bible to find verses that suit an agenda of hate and division, and cause your fellow man to suffer bullying because their values are different from yours

Love wins


I manifest magic and exhale platitudes

I can’t believe women’s magazines are struggling to find readers when they insist on writing stories about women who aren’t particularly inspiring. In this week’s issue we talk to Goopy Gwyny, who tells us how she ‘does it all.’ Gwyn can pay for an army of nannies, personal fluffers and acolytes but apparently, she is amazing. Be stunned at how Sheryl Sandberg juggles career and raising children. Sheryl has a net worth of $US1billion, poor Shezza, the school run must be exhausting for her au pairs. These women aren’t inspirational, they’re filthy rich.

I want to know how Wiradjuri woman Linda Burney survived domestic violence, raised kids and went on to be a successful MP. This is the woman who said,

“Teach little girls that it’s not normal to be hit, do work in schools with the young women and young men about respectful relationships,” Ms Burney said.

Lady magazine editors and bloggers, please tell me about women who crawled out of the swamp of their lives and became successful despite their lack of money, self-esteem or contacts. Botoxed #fitspo #inspo women with enough money to pay assistants and massage therapists aren’t groundbreaking, they’re lucky. These women may work hard, but when you can regularly take luxury holidays with your kids without worrying if you’ll be evicted from your small rented flat while you’re away, you’re not someone who lifts my spirits.

Day after day on Linkedin and Facebook, I’m bombarded with ads from ‘success coaches’ about how to be a winner, reinvent myself as an inspirational role model and write ten best selling novels before breakfast. Spare me. I don’t want quotes about wisdom, I want Rosie Batty as our next PM. Ladies, it is time we turned the world around.

Photographer Stephen G Reinhardt


To Pollard

Pollarding is a method of pruning that keeps trees and shrubs smaller than they would naturally grow. It is normally started once a tree or shrub reaches a certain height, and annual pollarding will restrict the plant to that height.

 

In the interests of fine single mothering, I’ve decided to Pollard my children. Minimal feeding means that my kids won’t grow too tall, thus saving on expensive sports shoes and fancy undies, and keeping school uniform costs to a minimum. My food bill will be reduced, thus Pollard will be kept in the fine style I would like to be accustomed to.

 

Maintaining a Pollard

The Pollard method is useful to maintain the size of a teen who is in danger of growing too big for a small, single mother budget sized apartment.
Rejuvenating a Pollard

Summer can be a suitable time to Pollard. This method requires the removal of parasites or weakly-attached branches of the family tree. So out with the toxic monster in law and deadbeat dad and in with promoting attachment to healthy adult role models. According to Dr Google, “It may be possible to remove the branches that have grown from the stumps of old Pollards.” Yes! I am well rid of my STDs, the sexually transmitted debts that kept me weighed down for too long.  Bring on summer.

If you’re happy and you know it, learn to Pollard

Look how little and cute my youngest favourite child turned out.


(C) Pollard Perfect Parenting Plan 2017


Love and Let Go

Jenny McGregor makes me cry. She sings like an angel, has perfect skin and a gorgeous husband. Her children are so cute it is revolting. Jen’s beautiful smile could fool anyone into thinking that life has been easy for her. But when Jen’s adorable first-born son died suddenly at the age of 18 months she was broken. I still can’t believe that she could go through that kind of loss, and now she is so strong she can walk into children’s hospitals every week to cheer up sick and dying kids.

 

Jen and her husband have been through the kind of spiritual growth no one wants to experience in their lifetime. Music helped with Jenny’s healing, but she found that no one was writing songs that dealt with the death of a child in a profound way. 

My beautiful colleague has been through every parent’s worst nightmare and now wants to help other grieving families. Jen is going to record an album of songs for bereaved parents but she needs money to employ professional musicians. Love and Let Go will be an album of great music with the proceeds going to the charity Red Nose, who provide free counselling for parents who have lost a child.

 

Jenny McGregor is very close to her fundraising target, but we need to help her get over the line. This woman is a shining star. Please donate if you can. Even $10 will help Jen realise her dream of supporting families who are suffering.


 


That way madness lies

Appalling parenting alert! Apparently we must stop lying about Santa. ‘Experts’ have suggested that parents who lie about Santa may be motivated by selfish desires, and not what’s best for their children. 

I’m astonished. I can’t believe that parents would put themselves first. Does this mean Instagram parents who post constant photos of their awkward children in designer gear so the parents can get free stuff, adulation and insta-fame are self-obsessed? Quelle horreur! Next ‘they’ will be telling us that children are playing with toys kids don’t really need. 

I’m glad there are gurus who can point out these faux pas. I want to be a fabulous parent to ensure my daughters don’t end up on reality TV shows, so I will never tell a white lie. Ever. And I know single mothers make the best parents, so I’d like to supply sound advice for the thousands of parents who read this blog religiously, hanging off every word I utter.
What other things should parents stop lying about?

Daddy’s girlfriend really wants you to stay at their place for half the school holidays

Nanna means well, she just has a problem expressing herself in a non-passive-aggressive way

Mummy is very upset that the police charged our rude neighbour with DUI

I love your new friend, that little boy in your class is so special

Swearing in another language doesn’t count

G.F.Y means Good For You

 

(C) Pollard Perfect Parenting Plan 2017

 


Avocado free zone

Lucky me! I’m househunting again. I’m a professional Sydney real estate agent stalker. My kids and I have moved about 20 times. Months without buying avocado toast mean that one day I may be able to move to a home within 50 kilometres of an area I’d actually like to live in.
I have so many questions to ask a real estate agent:
Where is the step father accommodation?
Where is the step sibling spare bedroom?
Is there a sibling fight room away from the main house?
Can the main bedroom detach from the house and move 10 metres into the garden when the teenagers get too much?
Can the cat annexe the house?

Back in 1995, when I was drunk every night and kissing girls because boys asked me to and wearing absurd feathered dresses and talking shit until 4am with guys with ironic facial hair, I could have been buying a house for $250,000 and set myself up for a much more comfortable cranky middle age.

But now, thanks to negative gearing and government greed, I’ll never buy my own home. The only way that anyone earning under $250,000 i.e. single mothers, students, commies, pinkos, leftos, nurses, ambos and waiters will be able to buy a house is for one of these miracles to occur: 
Winning the lottery

Overthrowing capitalism 

Conducting a scandalous affair with a billionaire

Or the most ridiculous:

Voting for politicians who have the bollocks to help workers afford vermin-free housing in big cities 

Jokes. They don’t exist


Thank you for your time

We hope you enjoyed your stay in our hotel. Please fill out this survey so we can judge your level of customer satisfaction and we can annoy our staff with ridiculous statistics about their performance, even though you had one conversation with them that lasted all of two minutes. These surveys will take longer to answer than your actual stay in our facility. 

In a few days we’d like to call you to discuss the results of our tedious marketing logarithms. 

No!

Don’t call me when I’m feeding my kids

When I say I don’t have time for your idiot questions, I don’t have time, fuck off

Don’t call or email me when I buy a new phone, change my plan, check out of your hotel, buy groceries, fill up the car, change a frigging light bulb!

And stop paying idiots with dodgy marketing degrees to come up with new buzz words du jour:

#disruptor

#influencer

#worldclass

If you have to use the hash tag #authentic then perhaps you’re not

Please join our social networking channels, which have content about as interesting as having a pap smear. Enough. There are too many places to waste time already, I’ve lost track of the names:

Opportunity

Referral Key 

DoYourHeadIn

LinkedIn

Snapchat

Tinder

eBay 

GetYourHandOffIt

How about we all go to a party down the road and argue in real time. I’ll bring a pie


 


Same Love

My beautiful friends got married a few weeks ago but their wedding was held in Ireland. Their ceremony was held overseas because Australia refuses to recognise their union. Which sucks. It’s time we changed our laws. 

I come from a long line of God botherers on my mother’s side. My grandpa knew the Bible chapter and verse. He took me to Sunday school in a hall beside our church every week when I was little. So I remember that Jesus talked about love and not judging other people. 

There are too many bigots in the belfry for me to be a member of a church congregation any more. But I did learn important lessons in all my years of Christian indoctrination. 
For there are three things that endure: Faith, Hope and Love, but the greatest of these is Love. 



Love is love 


Straya

On a sunshiney day at an outdoor gig in a park by the beach in Cronulla, I met a Palestinian man who had come to Australia last year for a better life for his family. His wife and four beautiful children said hello but it was he who needed to talk. To a clown. There is something about wearing a red nose that makes people open up and share their stories.

I told him I thought he was very brave to leave everything and everyone he knew behind to create a life in a new country. He told me in Australia he had hope for his children’s future. He believed that they would have a better life here. He said,
In eight months we have achieved a lot.”

I told him I thought that it took a lot of courage to start life in a new country, but as I said it, I felt a dread that I’ve never experienced before. I hoped to God that dumb rednecks would not ruin his view that Australia was a peaceful place to be. I hoped that no one made nasty remarks or commented on his accent. I couldn’t bear to mention to him that racism is rife, as I could see a few metres behind him a woman pushing her child on a swing with a southern cross tattoo on her neck

I want an Australia that doesn’t lock people up and torture them because they dare to seek asylum

I want to vote for politicians who consider people in their policies before posturing politicking bullshit

I want uneducated rednecks out of parliament

I want a beautiful Australia where real estate speculators haven’t bought up and ugly-fied every building that happens to overlook a beach.

I want to live in a country that recognises that love is love.

I want aboriginal people recognised in our constitution.
I want $300 lunches to be abolished while people are homeless and kids are going to school hungry.

An end to reality renovation shows
I want to meet this lovely man’s children in 20 years and say, “Your mum and dad wanted you to live in safety so they gave up their friends and family for you to have a chance.” I hope they have a wonderful life, I hope they don’t get teased for their accents. I hope their mum and dad find great jobs and they grow old together, free of war.

And I hope his kids don’t end up voting for idiots 


Unrool nursery rhymes

As a well-known hash taggerer, disruptor slash influenza influencer slash media guru and recent graduate of The Richard Wilkins’ School of Real Good Journalism ‘n’ That, I’m very, very busy coming up with Get Rich Quick Schemes and ways to help my many readers find more ways to connect and waste time on social media. I’m hoping to motivate my huge fanbase to break through brick walls and hashtag their way to world peace, pin so many photos on Pinterest that the war in Syria will end, and sign so many petitions that Malcolm Turnbull will finally grow a spine. Whatevs.

I’m so busy being fabulous that I’m hoping you won’t notice that I’ve written a short and gratuitous blog post this week. In the meantime, here is some of my unbelievably artistic rhyming poetry stuff:

Two little dicky birds sitting on a wall

One named Peter (Dutton) and one named Paul (Keating)

Rack off Peter, kick him off Paul

Drop dead Peter, come back Paul

 

Controversial political art that is