Get-Off-My-Back-And-Out-Of-My-Face Day

Every time I start thinking about what I want to say on my blog today I get a headache. Perhaps it's anger, or frustration, or maybe I shouldn't have mixed two different wines last night. I am trying to listen to Trackside, my escape from the absurdities of the world around us, and this damn advertisement for "Families Day" keeps bloody well intruding. FFS. I do not need the frigging Families Commission telling me that I need to appreciate my family and do stuff with them, especially on Mother's Day. How many goddamn days can we stomach? You see, the United Nations passed a resolution to promote families, especially mothers and children. And so now the waste-of-space Families Commission is using your money to do just that - all week.

...the Families Commission also wants everyone to stop and think about Why Families Matter? - to you, to your community and to all New Zealand society. How does being part of a family help in your life? How do healthy and positive families help your community or New Zealand as a country? And how do we help each other put family first?

Aaarrrggghhh.

And male readers, Pansy Wong, National's Minister for Women's Affairs wants you to start pulling your weight around the house.

"My vision sees New Zealand as a place where women are recognised for balancing their roles as mothers and workers; a place where unpaid work is shared evenly between men and women".

Aren't you sick and tired of being either hen-pecked or ordered to celebrate at every turn?

Oh please, please can I have a Get-Off-My-Back-And-Out-Of-My-Face day.

And I was going to say something about Greg O'Connor's statement that the Napier shooting is a wake-up call to New Zealanders to stop tolerating the increasing violence in our society. Perhaps the wake-up call is actually to the utter futility of continuing cannabis prohibition.

But, bugger it. I better go and take an Ibuprofen or 10 instead.

Which reminds me about teenage son Robert who was being theatrically melodramatic about all the time pressures on him to do music practice, homework, travel in and out of the city every day, etc. "I'll kill myself!" he said.

"But you don't have time to," I replied.

"Oh yeah," he said. And after a few more seconds, "I'm not doing it on my time anyway."