" Ground Control to Major Tom: your circuit's dead, there's something wrong "
"Here am I floating 'round my tin can, far above the moon. Planet Earth is blue, and there's nothing I can do "
I have experienced no end of trouble since I went on to the NBN. The No Bloody Network as I call it. I had no choice but to put my home telephone onto this insane dinosaur that Malcolm Turnbull created and, ever since, any time someone calls me on my home phone, I lose the internet. I have been told that it is my overloaded exchange, my crappy Telstra infrastructure and I suck it up and deal with it. Because there is not a damn thing i can do about it.
Running a website and uploading a vast number of images and data would be prohibitively expensive on a WIFI plan. I don't own a smartphone. I used to have a dumbphone but it went bugger up a while ago and I no longer have a plan for that either.
This morning, the phone rang. I answered it. And the internet and phone went dead. Again.
Normally, I simply turn off the modem, give it 15 minutes to have a little think and turn it back on and I am back in business. But not today. Oh, no. The modem would not turn back on. No power. It had become a dead parrot. An ex parrot pining for the fjords of Norway.
Fortunately, I live in a residential and holiday apartment block and I was able to connect using the management's WIFI. Which is where I am at right now. I will not use all of their data by uploading images - suffice to say I hope my words can tell the story.
I cannot go to Hardly Normal and buy a new modem: I have to get one from my internet provider. So I have to wait until it is delivered, some time next week. Apparently it is because my home phone is configured in the bloody modem.
Since September of 2019, I, we, have suffered. Bushfires, communities literally in meltdown. Then came the Wuflu, the lockdowns and the misery and frustration of not being able to live normal lives and interact as we have done all of our lives. There are people in Australia, still living in tents because of the fires.
What about the drought? Has that gone off the radar because some black dickhead had a fight with a white guy - who, most of us know, was a crooked cop?
Our relatives from overseas are prevented from visiting us and yet the Australian Government is flying people in to Australia from CHINA to study at our Universities? Courtesy of the Australian taxpayer?
We have selfish tantrum throwing bloody idiots marching for a black dude in America who was a murderous thug - and compromising our safety - whilst our Politicians would not back a move by Pauline Hanson to declare that ALL Lives Matter?
What is wrong with the world?
Instead of protesting about some drug addicted criminal, how about protest about the tens of thousands of young indigenous children abused, raped and neglected? The tens of thousands of white Australian kids who the Smith Family Foundation look after each year?
How about protesting against the millions of little babies whose live's apparently DON'T matter and are aborted by uncaring and irresponsible people who see dollar signs where limbs are and inflated bank accounts where hearts and lungs are?
Seriously?
We have all been disconnected. Cut off. Isolated.
Our world is under attack; our modems have lost their power source and we are becoming silenced. " Your call could not be connected. Please try again. "
Well, when my new modem arrives, I will get back to doing what I have endeavoured to do over the past couple of years - connect you to the feelings and the hearts and the minds of those who feel disconnected and want to shout out from the depth of their lungs
" I hear you. Do you hear me? "
Many thanks and bear with me as I stay on metaphorical life support until that modem arrives.
After all, we are pretty much used to it these days, aren't we?
Monty.
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