Ok, now say it in Irish

The weekend Herald, print edition, features columnist Mark Dapin explaining how he came to be columnist Mark Dapin. Looks like all you need to do is hold a series of boring, menial jobs throughout your twenties and early thirties, drift around a bit and finally move to Australia where being from ‘overseas’ (which is technically anywhere) makes one exotic and therefore inherently interesting. That’s me, exactly! Stories that bored the mukluks off people in Canada go over great here just because of the accent and charming colloquialisms (see: mukluk). Hell, if I was Irish I could make a living reading out the bus schedule as long as I sounded like Jimeoin.

I am assuming Mr. Dapin is paid for his work, I’d be happy with something like that. So now all I need is one or more of you readers to forward this post to all the Australian daily’s and magazines who will realize they too could have their own pet foreign columnist to put a fresh take on issues such as the price of petrol, the price of beer, what happens to odd socks and the differences between men and women.

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The Missus tells me she had a dream last night where we were all on holiday. She was about to begin an affair with a woman she’d met, which later turned out to be a transvestite, when the kids and I came along and spoiled it. In the dream, she says, she thought it remarkable I wasn’t upset to find her thusly.

Well she’s right to be surprised, because upset isn't the word for what I would have been. I’m already being drowned in wet towels, hanging bras and various other accoutrements regarded necessary by la femme domestique. I can’t keep a sharp razor without it being appropriated for underarm work, Mrs. Joe and P3 have synchronized hormonally and soon P4 will fall into their painted clutches. The last fucking thing I need is to come home, trip over a pair of size twelve stilettos and find some hairy-backed freak taping down its genitals in my kitchen prior to a big girl’s night out.

If anyone actually does forward this post to a newspaper or magazine (Transvestite Monthly?) let me know at mamalfarmer@yahoo.com and I'll send you a postcard for your trouble.