I always find the television news most entertaining over the holiday season. Not so much for the news content, but more for the news presenters. During this period all the big name news readers are on leave – no doubt relaxing at their Noosa penthouses or their wineries in the Barossa Valley, recharging their batteries after a long year of working about 25 hours a week. This gives the ‘cub’ reporters their 15 minutes of fame and these earnest young men and women grasp their big chance to impress with both manicured hands. Now I suspect that most of these people are hired, not so much for their keen investigating skills and bull dog tenacity to hunt the truth out, but for their perfect white teeth and hair extensions. One young lass I found particularly amusing and she will remain nameless (as I can’t recall her name) but for the sake of simplicity we shall call her ‘Britney’ (no relation!). It seems appropriate. Last week she was given the task of reporting on the rainfall ‘event’ in the southeast of the state.
Most new newsreaders suffer from ‘nodding head syndrome’ where they bob their heads up and down and from side to side, believing that this adds to the sincerity of the delivery. If you turn the sound off it looks like they are suffering from some terrible convulsive disorder. But not our Britney, she favoured the hair flick approach, resulting in her blond bangs falling seductively across one eye. With the sound off she appears to be starring in a commercial selling a new brand of shampoo designed for serious people, but minus the shower scene. She favours a very solemn facial expression, helping to highlight the gravity of the catastrophic ‘event’ befalling the greater Brisbane area. With the wind blowing her locks to one side and her designer rain jacket dotted with a few strategically placed drops from the downpour, she told of the ‘heavy rainfall event’ bringing back memories of last year’s ‘flood event’ and subsequent ‘evacuation events’.
I think you can see where I am going with this. What is this obsession with the ‘event’ word? For Gods sake, why does heavy rain and flood need to have ‘event’ added to it? Does she think we don’t understand that this rain was heavier than normal or that the flood was something that doesn’t happen each week? Britney I know that few of us have had the life experience that you have garnished from your 19 years on this earth, but if you just say ‘heavy rain’ or ‘flood’ we will probably get your drift. She saved her best for last and I quote ‘Police and SES are on alert for this afternoon’s ‘HIGH TIDE EVENT’!!!!
This actually caused me to snort coffee out of my nose.
Stupid, stupid girl! How can something that occurs twice virtually every day be an ‘event’?
Now in my mind the word event conjures up images of marquees and open bars, with people getting dressed up to attend and air kissing each other. Sporting contests can be described as events. So can concerts, car shows and fashion parades. The 15th annual Muswellbrook Hog tossing championships are an event. But Britney, my coiffed little friend, a high tide is not! Committee meetings at the yacht club are events. (In fact yacht club committee meetings are events where the minutes are kept, but the hours are wasted, but I digress).
Many, many things are events, but the gravitational pull on the surface of the ocean by the moon and sun are not! But, as with facebook, twitter and the remote control of our new TV, many things in the modern world remain a mystery to me.
Perhaps Britney is right, and as people now feel the need to share the most trivial part of their lives with hundreds of ‘friends’ they have never met – the definition of what constitutes an ‘event’ may have changed. So I am about to go to the bakery for a ‘shopping event’, followed by an ‘eating event’ and possibly an ‘indigestion event’. But I doubt that I will be able to sneak home for an ‘afternoon nap event.’
As you can see below we are back in full swing here at Southern Cross Yachting with many sail training and shorebased theory ‘events’ scheduled and if you have a group that wants to get out on the water we can put together a outing to suit your needs. Or should that be an ‘event?’
That’s all for this week until next time may your sailing be ‘Uneventful’!
Cheers
Mike Job