Author Archives: Kerry Cue

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About Kerry Cue

Humourist, journalist, mathematician and author

Vote 1: Kerry for Pope

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cardinals

The College of Cardinals

Apostolic Palace

Vatican City State  00120

…………………………………………

Dear Your Graces,

I believe a vacancy is about to arise in your esteemed organisation and I forthwith put myself forward for consideration for the position of Pope for the 21st Century.

My credentials for the position are extensive. I have read The Da Vinci Code. So I’m fully aware of the lunatic nature of albino monk assassins and the dangers of carrying anti-matter in the papal helicopter (or was that Demons and Angels) and I’ve seen all the Godfather films, which, as you know, involve influential catholics.

The Canberra Times 20 Feb 2013. Read more here: Vote 1 Kerry for Pope

10 reasons why, if you are sick, you should visit your Vet and not your local hospital

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hospitalTwo members of the Cue household have just been through the medi-go-round. One came out dazed and bleeding, the other chirpy and bouncing. The tale begins with our little dog, Tuppence. She is 12 years old, which is 84ish in dog years. She has been hospitalised with pancreatitis, bladder stones and a cruciate ligament replacement. Now she has congestive heart disease and is on heart meds, but bouncing.

My beloved HRH (His Royal Hairiness) is pushing 10 dog years. He’s had two angioplasties, by-pass surgery and a stent. He’s suffered dizzy bouts or Transient Ischemic Attacks, which means ‘something’s wrong with your head, mate, but buggered if we know what it is’. They stopped. Last week he had a ‘little’ prostate op in a private hospital, supposedly, an overnighter. Something went horribly wrong. At 3am he started having fits. The fits became so violent he was likely to badly damage himself.

The private hospital didn’t have a doctor on duty at night.

The Canberra Times 30 Jan 2013. Read more here. Vet vs Hospital

When Life’s No Picinic

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Illustration: Jenny Bowman

Illustration: Jenny Bowman

Idyllic summer days and leisurely family picnics go hand in glove like, um, hands in gloves.
When I was a youngster in the ’60s, however, a picnic with my family was more akin to throwing down the gauntlet to the fates.

Our father stood by the pink, open driver’s seat door of our old maroon FE Holden, snapping orders as we elbowed our way onto the clammy vinyl of the back seat. ”You sit there and look out that window. You sit there and don’t you touch him. Tuck your elbows in. I don’t want any carry-on during this trip or I’ll wring your bloody necks.” There we sat in our cotton shorts, T-shirts and plastic sandals, me, my three brothers and one other kid, with our bare legs clinging to the vinyl seat, waiting for our mother to turn up with the baby so the adventure could begin.

But our mother was always distracted by some last-minute fussing, as our father stood drumming his fingers on the roof of the Holden, calling out ”Kath, hurry up. We’ve got to get going.” When our mother finally arrived with food in a basket – there were sandwiches and fruit in the tartan metal Esky in the boot – our father planted his foot on the accelerator as she struggled to close the door. We were off on our adventure.

Read more @ The Canberra Times 8 Jan 2012: When Life’s No Picinic

Welcome to Hollyweird

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hollyweirdThis is a summer piece with a twist. Rather than review the holiday film schlock, I’m going to describe three films I’d like to see. They’re of the Hollywood blockbuster ilk, with an ethical dilemma at the core raising questions such as, ”is it ethical to force males or females to take hormones for the survival of the species?”, ”if the Pope gained office by corruption, is he still infallible?” and ”is it morally acceptable to kill to stop others killing?” Here are the film plots:

Darwin’s Dead
In this action thriller, the latest N1H17 virus has a strange impact on humanity. It reboots junk DNA in the human foetus. Women start giving birth to stocky, thick-browed hairy babies, then to long-limbed ape-like creatures. Finally a woman gives birth to an Axolotl-like air-breathing fish. Panic erupts.

Read more @ The Canberra Times 1 Jan 2012: Welcome to Hollyweird

In Search of an Aussie Hero

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SkippyWhy do we Aussies get so carried away with the word ”hero”? On the one hand, any Aussie, who has won a garish plastic trophy or a middling beribboned medal in, say, the South Poowong Rugby League or the Synchronised Gargling at the Pub Pong Olympics, is a hero, a bloody hero, mate. We don’t care if he does drugs, takes bribes or wins Dickhead of the Day by running around naked with a lit firecracker up his bum; if he wins and gets away with it, he’s a hero, a bloody hero.

On the other hand, what with the droughts, the fires, the flooding rains and being girt by sea and all, we Aussies do need heroes and, thankfully, these men and women turn up at the worst of times and earn their pat on the back. So the job description for the occupation of Aussie Hero ranges from ”drunken yob” to ”risking your life for others”.

Meanwhile, if we had a Heroes Hall of Fame, you would hear the echo of your own footsteps as you walked down a hollow empty hall that boasted three inductees: Don Bradman, Phar Lap and Ned Kelly. Not one of them risked their life for the benefit of mankind or even saved a stray cat from up a gum tree, but they are heroes, mate. We respect our VC winners. But we don’t put them on a pedestal. Name one. So drunken yobs, dickheads, bushrangers, batsmen and a horse are our heroes.

Read more @ The Canberra Times: In Search of an Aussie Hero 

Goodbye Uncle Sam

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Uncle Sam PicJulia says so. Politicians insist. Even former prime minister Paul ”you scumbags” Keating claims it’s time for Australia to embrace Asia.
Unfortunately, we’re a little stumped to know how to do this exactly, as so few of them seem to play football or cricket.

Top marks to India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, of course. But China is a problem. If only China played cricket, we’d get on like a house on fire. Why can’t Indonesians play more tennis? Why can’t Filipinos play, say, lawn bowls? We Aussies aren’t that fussy. We’ll watch any sport.

Of course, there is a menacing hidden agenda in this Asia push. Before we can throw ourselves wholeheartedly at Asia, we’ll have to take one huge step for Aussie kind and give up the US. Giving up the US will have its plus side. There’ll be fewer wars. Really. Can you imagine Australia announcing all by itself ”Excuse me Iraq, we’re going to invade.”
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As for Afghanistan, we can’t even spell it, let alone find it on a map.

Read more @ The Canberra Times 21 Nov 2012: Goodbye Uncle Sam

Power to the People or Maybe Not

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power-wide-cue-

Dear Mr Power Co,

Thank you so much for sending me our quarterly electricity bill of $841.25. I did a quick household head count. There are two of us and we use gas except for the electric oven and the clothes dryer. As I don’t dry towels, just knickers, I’m wondering if I should stop washing and simply buy new knickers then chuck ’em.

Naturally, I did a house search looking for any illegal marijuana crops in a spare bedroom. Those artificial lights chew up the power. No luck there, sadly, just when I needed the crop to pay the bill.

There is one other occupant namely Tuppence, our dog. Tuppence is not a big power consumer. She can’t reach a light switch. I told her, however, it’ll be her duty to keep us warm on those bitterly cold three-dog nights next winter, tough work for a Mini-Schnauzer.

Meanwhile, Mr Power Co, I’m writing to let you know how I plan to pay the $841.25 power bill you sent me.

Plan 1: Buy a power company

Yeah! I’ve gotta get myself a power company. That’s the way to print money. Electricity prices have gone up 60 per cent in three years. We should wipe the Queen off our $5 note and put on a light bulb.

Read more @ The Canberra Times, 14 Nov 2012: Power to the People or Maybe Not

The Society for the Promotion of Fluff-Free Lucid English

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text imageThe English language is out of control. New words are being invented every nanosecond. My action group SPOFFLE, the Society for the Promotion of Fluff-Free Lucid English, is pursuing an on-going campaign to save the English language from a slow death by suffocation buried beneath mounds of spin and bull shit. At the end of the day the bottom line is that not one stakeholder in the English Language knows what another stakeholder is talking about because of our persistent overuse of cliches. And it has to stop.

Fortunately, for future generations, we at SPOFFLE continue to draw up sets of rules for the care and proper use of the English language.

Rule one: A new word can be invented if, and only if, it does not cost us more money.

You know how this works. First there was television. B&W. Then came colour telly, VCRs and cable TV. They cost us heaps. In no time, we had to fork out for DVD players then HDD thingimmys. Now any new words added to the English language for your viewing pleasure will set you back $5000.

Read more @ The Canberra Times 6 Nov 2012 : The Society for the Promotion of Fluff-Free Lucid English

 

Labels are used to gag people

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kml-art-charles-One of the funniest outraged letters I have ever received from a reader hinged on the meaning of one word. My article took a swipe at the royal family. The royals are open game for humourists because, firstly, they’re our favourite reality TV/sitcom on the tellie, a sort of ”Wife Swap Windsor” crossed with ”Snog, Marry, Reign” combo and, secondly, because readers don’t give a rats what you say about the wacky Windsors.

My article was riffing through the commonly held view that you have to kiss a lot of toads before you find your prince but included the caveat ”I’d rather kiss an ugly toad than kiss Prince Charles.” One sternly worded protest letter arrived under the letterhead of the Frog Appreciation Society insisting that ”toads aren’t ugly”.

The word ”ugly” may be a little prickly or fuzzy at the edges where we argue about its meaning, but most of us get it. We have a common view about its core meaning.

Words such as misogynist, feminist, racist, bleeding-heart, greenie and climate heretic, however, work in an entirely different way.

Read more @ The Canberra Times, 23 Oct 2012: Labels are used to gag people

The Joy of Colourful Families

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Kerry Cue Ratbag RelationsAnyone who comes from a ”colourful” family will enjoy P.J. Hogan’s latest film Mental. It is, in Aussie slang, not everybody’s cup of tea. Mental is over-the-top, raw, crude and maddening. I thought it was hilarious.

Entertainment aside, the film acts as a sort of Uncle-Sam-ometer indicating how far we’ve come in adopting the American view of madness. I read books on madness. Crazy Like Us by Ethan Watters looks at the way the US exported its biomedical view of mental illness that requires expensive drugs globally or, as I see it:

We’ve got pink pill

We’ve got green pills

We’ve got happy, happy little yellow ones

And they’re all called Just-Give-Me-Them

And they all taste just the same

(Sung to Little Boxes performed by Pete Seeger)

In the US, mass-marketing and madness go hand in hand. Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays opened the first PR firm in New York in the ’20s to sell soap and cigarettes. So the founding member of the Mad Men club was Freud’s nephew. Group therapy of the 1970s, based on theories of mad psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, were quickly adopted by marketing interests and turned into focus groups to sell more soap and cigarettes.

Read more @ The Canberra Times, 17 Oct 2012:The Joy of Colourful Families