The PR Blog

 John Wayne is an American Hollywood icon every bit the equal of James Dean or Marilyn Monroe.

He is also a man from another era, a man whose conservatism came as naturally as walking down the street.

Affectionately known as “The Duke,” he spent three decades as a top box office draw with 179 film and television credits to his name.

Nearly 30 years has flowed under the bridge since I last owned a dog. That doesn’t mean that I’ve had nothing to do with dogs. It means that I’ve had relationships with other people’s dogs as a by-product of the relationship with their owners - some of an intimate nature and some not. But that’s what this series of posts is all about - the behaviour of people and dogs.

The day I met Eddie I had driven about 50 kilometres to Alan’s house on the outskirts of Nowra, a town some two hours drive south of Sydney. I’d been modifying some paint shaking machines for my brother who owns several paint shops. However, I needed  a special machine cutting tool and it was the sort of tool I’d probably never use again and couldn’t really justify its heady price tag. Borrowing was the best option.

Alan was another of those middle-aged men who was trying to get on with life after the trauma of a failed marriage. It’s funny how people wake up one morning in a 25-year marriage to discover they hate each other. Men never know why, women always tell you that the split comes from a lifetime of hell at the hands of an uncaring and self-absorbed man.

Back in 2005, I was teaching in an adult learning environment. I had been a long time fan of Science Fiction and an avid reader of the old classics. I loved the work of Douglas Adams and had read the works of pretty much every Sci Fi author I could lay my hands on. I had read the work of JRR Tolkien.

I was no Sci Fi novice. 

In short, I was a Space Opera, Sci Fi, Fantasy junkie. Always searching for my next fix. 

I sat down one day during our class lunch break and one of my students was sitting, munching on his sandwich and totally engrossed in a paperback novel. It appeared to be huge. Over a thousand pages. He was so engrossed in his book that I felt almost invasive by asking him what he was reading. 

When I lived in South Korea, the first thing I had my Korean friend write down in Hangul ( written in the Korean Alphabet  ) was " this person is allergic to chilli. " I later found out that he actually wrote " Don't let this woman eat chilli. It makes her lips fat and she will look very ugly and drive your customers away. " 

I always wondered why they looked at me strangely and almost sympathetically when I presented the staff with my note. 

When I found out what he wrote, he said to me " Miss Shaydee, you wrote about how it affected you. They don't care. I made it tell them how it would affect their business. "

Virtually every manifestation of evil involves a desire to dominate and control.

To many people, the world seems to make less and less sense with each passing day. Values we once cherished and that bound civil society together face daily bombardment. Offensive things are routinely said and done today in ways intended to inflame and divide. Freedoms we took for granted—freedoms of thought, speech, press, religion—are under relentless assault as intrusive government and cancel culture gain ground.

“Orwellian” is no longer just an adjective derived from a work of fiction more than seven decades ago; it describes some new development in our lives every day. Words and thoughts, once neutral or perhaps disagreeable but not actionable, are treated now as if they are crimes. History itself is being rewritten to serve political agendas. Petty tyrannies are morphing into bigger tyrannies as governments play an ever more intrusive role in the lives of their citizens. There’s an awful lot of bad behavior going on—and perpetrators getting away with it, too. From lying to looting, it feels like an epidemic.