While I am sometimes in less than full agreement with the Age's Catherine Deveny and don't always think her columns are 'good' (unlike many bloggers, I think there's a very clear distinction between those two things), I have just decided that I want her for my new best friend.
That's because I've just caught up with her Wednesday column (my secret Terrist name is Pavlov Bin Busy), in which she expressed the feelings of -- I'm guessing -- about three-quarters of the Australian populace, thus:
You can shove your citizenship test up your poxy date.
Like many others, including -- again -- many bloggers, she then goes on to provide her own citizenship test, and I must say this is the best one I've seen so far. After long consideration I've decided that my favourite question is #1 under 'Customs':
'Macca, Chooka and Wanger are driving to Surfers in their Torana. If they are travelling at 100 km/h while listening to Barnsey, Farnsey and Acca Dacca, how many slabs will each person on average consume between flashing a brown eye and having a slash?'
(Zoe from crazybrave may well be able to answer this correctly, but I don't like anyone else's chances. Those who have had the experiences are unlikely to have been doing the arithmetic.)
10 comments:
As they say in the blog-world, lol.
I believe Tim Sterne was the first to come up with a citizenship test satire, and others to pick up on it included Leunig.
I once wrote a deliberately geeky response to one of Deveny's columns about Doctor Who and sent it in to her editor at The Age.
In a couple of days, she wrote back saying some very nice things about my blog and writing before concluding...
I hope you get rogered up the arse by a Dalek.
Looking forward to reading Zoe's comment on this.
I believe the Sterne citizenship test is here.
Heh, all.
Is Deveny still claiming not to read? That struck me as kinda unhelpful, and stuck in my mind.
Lucy Sussex
The icy-pole question should be incorporated into the official test forthwith. I particularly like the graceful segue to
'frozen confection' at the finishing line.
What's a 'slash'!!!!!!!!!!?????????????
Actually, the questions are, if you read them carefully, quite interesting. Apparently Macquarie Uni's professor someone-or-other did the writing.
I mean, why not?
Love the "mate" with trailer question in particular. Strange, no question about Germaine Greer though....
I seem to have had my whole week's worth of mirth here.
Deveny is certainly on form at the moment - probably one of the few newspaper columns I'm actually reading at the moment. Today's piece about women who change their surnames when getting married had me cheering in my office. Wouldn't want to lose sight of the fact that men who encourage this practice are even bigger pillocks (and undoubtedly a lot of them drive ridiculous 4-wheel drive monsters in my quiet inner-city street but ... ok, I should stop there).
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