It's A Crisis: We're All Doomed To Get Proper Jobs

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday March 31, 2007

James Bone

Monday

The chill winds of autumn blew around the Phantom Day Traders' Syndicate as we huddled over a little picnic in the park, discussing our latest investment disasters.

Silex has been our saviour. But little else seems to be working.

A deep gloom set in. Even Yogi, our normally indefatigably happy senior chartist, looked glum. He sat on the grass surrounded by flapping charts of BHP Billiton, Coles, Woolworths, National Australia Bank et al, wondering whether to extrapolate an Echidna Breakout on Oxiana's Dog Leg.

Something was in the air: the premonition of a crisis, the scent of terror that drives all the wildlife from the bush long before the humans get wind of the approaching conflagration. I think I even saw a few possums fleeing.

The picnic was a failure. We made no decisions, agreed on no strategy. We sat there turning over the leaves of the past, until the leaves of a nearby gumtree landed on the leaves of the past and died.

I think we should all go out and get proper jobs, said FastCash, our head of research. Never, not in our worst moments of despair, had FastCash succumbed to such a terrifying thought. Now, even he seemed to have lost faith: I thought I might apply for a job as a bank clerk. What about you Bone?

TuesdayI hadn't given a proper job much thought. Yogi had. He wanted a job in a bowling alley, clearing away the pins when the automatic barriers failed.

It's always been my ambition, he said. The tragedy is, we believed him.

But Yoges, you're a highly educated guy. You can read share charts. Why would you want to work in a bowling alley? There's only two things I understand in this world, he said, grimly. Share charts and bowling alleys - that is, if you exclude Abba. I love Abba, as you know FastCash muzzled his Abba medley with a piece of lettuce.

Back on earth, we pondered another term in the government of Don Iemma's mates.

There are few things more depressing than the sight of the beaming faces of Dons Costa, Della Bosca and Iemma presuming to celebrate popularity after years of squandering billions of dollars in stamp duty and GST receipts on infantile projects such as anger management courses for gender-challenged nitwits and mateship workshops for Don Costa's mates.

Meanwhile, our dear state lurches from crisis to crisis, with health and public transport knee deep in the ordure of failed government initiatives.

And that's before anyone has even considered the serious asbestos problem at a leading Sydney hospital, which the day traders got wind of last week via a mole in the intensive-care unit who has since died, allegedly, of asbestos poisoning.

WednesdayHow should we pre-empt the new media laws? That was today's agenda item. It was a useful starting point, because it banished all talk of getting proper jobs.

The interesting thing about the new media laws is that they will kill off the media as we know it, which can't be an altogether bad thing. With the exceptions of the Boggabri Bugle and the Gulargambone Gazette, among other token gestures to diversity in the outback, all the mainstream media will steadily devolve into the hands of two proprietors.

Meanwhile, Doomsday has his heart set on a job as a baggage handler at Sydney Airport, and Yogi was delighted to hear that Macquarie Leisure has bought Panmure Superbowl in Auckland for $NZ1.5 million ($1.3 million).

Maybe they'll give me a job in the pin arranging department, he said, excitedly.

ThursdayDoomsday was working himself up to another rant. The tell-tale sign is the frenzied way he fiddles with his goatee.

I wish to make a statement, he said. I'm fed up with being treated like a child by Don Iemma and Don Costa: they have damn rules for everything. It's like living on the wrong side of the Family in Palermo. We've got more bossy rules in this nanny state than Mary Poppins has in her handbag.

The reference to Mary Poppins transfixed Yogi, and I dreaded another digression into absurdity. Hold all scenarios, he bawled. Mary Poppins has what in her handbag?

Rules, said Doomsday.

Really? I had no idea. I thought she carried magical tricks for kiddies.

Then we all focused on Don Iemma's first Parliament. What would be the next thing to be prohibited? Fishing without a corporate governance statement? Boating beyond 50 metres of the shore? Yawning in public places?

FridayApparently, Stalin banned yawning. He liked to think of his proletarian paradise as exciting. Yawns tended to mitigate against that impression, which is why you'd find so many yawning inmates in the Gulag.

But I digress. Unfortunately, we made no new share purchases this week.

Instead, we accompanied Doomsday to Sydney Airport to watch Macquarie Bank's exciting baggage retrieval systems in action.