Justin has few friends, but many laughs...

Justin prided himself on his ability to see a good joke coming. Right now he was watching one approach at a painfully slow speed. He had just finished his half-hourly smh.com.au review. Dr Brendan Nelson had been elected as the new Liberal Party leader. To Justin, this news (hidden between a pic story on David Beckham [he's so down to earth!] and a breaking news blurb about a Chinese man cutting off his own penis to win an argument with his wife "Penis chop: Husband has last word") was a Stuart MacGill full toss.

Like a MacGill full toss, the joke opportunity was not going to arrive quickly, but when it did it was a guaranteed six runs. Probably straight into the M.A. Noble. A fat bloke would probably catch it in one hand without standing up or dropping his pie, his beer or his train of thought. The joke wrote itself.

Justin knew that a good joke needed immaculate preparation and perfect timing. Too many good jokes were ruined because people blurted them out too early, held on to them too long, or messed up their research and turned a potential laugh-riot into a crushing faux pas.

"What is the most popular hors d'oeuvre in Far North Queensland?"
"What?"
"Paul Hogan!"
"I think you mean Steve Irwin mate."

Sad, Justin thought. He was determined not to waste this opportunity. What the joke required was this: the Coalition would have to win back government in 2010. Brendan Nelson would be sworn in as Prime Minister. Then, Justin would be able to say, probably at a dinner party, something intimate, so all attention would be focused on him: "He used to be my GP. It wasn't enough to have me by the balls, now he's got the whole country by the Jatz crackers (pause for riotous laughter)!"

Could probably do with a rewording, Justin thought. Oh well, I've got three years to work on it. Maybe I should also look at turning leftie. The joke would probably go down better in Newtown than Point Piper. Justin wondered whether he should find his old prescription signed by Dr Nelson in case someone at the party was aggressively drunk and questioned his integrity.

Justin felt contentedly impatient. It was like a swingers party. He'd tossed his keys into the bowl, and now it was just a matter of time. He made a note in a small pocket diary he kept for such occasions, grabbed his keys, and marched out the front door towards 2010.

Dinner, drinks, and the end of time...

Paul picked up his phone and scrolled through his contacts list. Finding the number took a couple of seconds, and he hesitated for another three before he pressed the button with the green phone receiver stamped on it. His every action was of monumental importance. He was acting against the wishes of the universe. Every move he made pushed the cosmos further and further out of balance.

The coin he'd tossed had rolled under the couch. Paul was not that interested in meeting Joanne tonight, but he wasn't against it enough to bother crawling under the couch. Finding the coin had been about as much effort as he was willing to put in. He was bored and feeling a little sorry for himself that night, the kind of mood brought on by a Sunday spent on the couch in pyjamas, or a Stanley Kubrick film, or both. He decided to just call Joanne and go to dinner. He was sick of being inside.

Underneath the couch, Queen Elizabeth's profile stared blankly up towards the universe (or at least that part of it that encompassed the thin black fabric stretched across the underside of the couch). As the universe had planned, Paul had tossed heads. Heads he didn't, tails he did. By not checking the coin, by being unable to perform the simple task of throwing a coin in the air without making a hash of it, Paul had set events in motion that he, and the universe, were powerless to stop. (The universe, although powerful, is only able to influence events up to a certain point. Usually this works out, but tonight the universe had gotten sloppy, and was kicking itself. The universe remembered the day Paul had chosen the floor covering for his new flat. Instead of pushing him towards carpet, a surface known for its coin-retaining traits, the universe had been offering God some unsolicited advice as He made some slight adjustments to one of its malfunctioning galaxies in the Gamma-Epsilon 76 quadrant.)

As the universe brooded, Paul met Joanne at a small Thai place in Newtown that had received a favourable review in the Herald that week. He was surprised how good she looked. They sat down and ordered, and apart from a momentary shiver as she mispronounced tofu "toffee", Paul managed to hold a pleasant, interesting conversation until the restaurant had emptied and the effeminate waiter began rudely stacking chairs atop the tables around them. Paul's expectations had been low, but the evening had been thoroughly enjoyable, and he sensed a certain chemistry developing between him and Joanne. Paul congratulated himself for making the effort, in the same way he had after he finally followed up a friend's offer of Sydney Kings tickets.

Outside the restaurant, the universe registered its displeasure by turning on a dreary, icy rainshower. Helpless to stop itself unravelling, the universe had to content itself by making the sky rumble and crackle with lightning and thunder. Depite the storm's awe-inspiring power, the universe was really just placing its figurative head in its metaphorical hands in a pose much like the one struck on February 26, 1995, by the Barings Bank human resources manager who hired Nick Leeson.

St Valentine was basically just a dude in a jail...

The heavens and the stars above
Are nothing compared to our love
That is hideous. It's good that this one came with the paper insert, I'd actually spew if someone gave this to me. Just gotta tear it out without stuffing the rest of it up. Awesome. Now it's blank. Blank ones shouldn't be so hard to find. It sucks when you find a good picture, but then the message is so terrible you can't buy it, but you've already seen the picture you want and the rest of them look like crap. A good business would probably be one where you made them with white fronts with black typewriter-style writing on the front, and when you open them, the same message in the same font would be there. "Cards for Men" I'd call it. Then, when you give someone a card, it would have "Happy Birthday" written on the front, and they'd open it and it would be like "Happy Birthday" again, and you wouldn't have to stand there cringing while they read it.
Anyway, I better write something in this now. That paper come out pretty well. She won't notice. Now, what to say? You know she's going to expect something written inside it. You can't just scrawl "Happy Valentine's Day Love Greg" in it. Because it's an arbitrary day for selling cards suddenly I need to get eloquent. As if driving into the city to pick her up at 4am isn't a good enough indication that I'd pretty much do anything for her. Suddenly I've got to be the bastard child of Mr Darcy and John Donne because it's February 14, whereas in the preceding 364 days I haven't said anything of note that I didn't pilfer from The Simpsons or someone smarter.
That's not helping. What to say? "I love you" is too plain. She'll expect some kind of comparison or qualification to that. Heaps? A lot? More than ever? Lame. What about a reminisce? She likes it when we talk about things we've already done. Ten pin bowling? Sitting on a couch all day instead of going to the art gallery? Arguing in the car for 45 minutes after I didn't introduce her to my friends at that party? It's too hard to know what she liked. Like that time I took her to the aquarium after she'd mentioned wanting to go, and then she stormed around it and would hardly talk to me. Don't want to risk bringing something up that she secretly hated.
Song lyrics? Which song? I've got that stupid Don't Cha abomination from the Pussycats stuck in my head. Maybe I should use that Dire Straits one... "Can't do anything except be in love with you." It all seems so soppy when you tear it out of context and write it down. You can't express the husky, manly voice he has with some wobbly handwriting or something. No good quoting poetry or anything like that I reckon. It doesn't sound like me. It just sounds like I cracked out the first thing I could think of.
Something original then. Why not something honest? "I'm much happier than before I started going out with you." Sounds a little retarded. "In comparison with other girlfriends, you are significantly better across the board." This isn't working. I'm not romantic. Does anyone actually think like this? Would any man in his right mind be able to fill in a card like this and have her gasp a little, and then look at him over the car, a little misty-eyed and say "thank you so much"? That's what I want to happen. Maybe tape a fifty dollar note in there. She's pretty skint at the moment. Not quite the right gesture though.
Come on, it shouldn't be this hard. What did I say the other night? She seemed pretty chuffed with that. Something about not minding that the rest of my life is a bit of a shitheap because she makes me feel like it isn't. I probably shouldn't use the same thing twice in a week though. Maybe something funny. How does that Mountain Goats song go? The way those eyes I've always loved/illuminate this place/like a trashcan fire in a prison cell/like the searchlights/in the parking lots of hell. That's not bad. Maybe "will you be my Valentine?", get a bit cute... Bloody hell. Maybe I should break up with her and save the trouble... Hold on. Got it.

"Dear Anna,

I spent an hour trying to pick this card and then another hour trying to think of what to write on the thing. Enough said?
Happy St Valentine's Day.

Greg."

Imagine Thomas Edison electrocuting a horse...

America's wild frontiers weren't just restricted to its, well, wild frontiers. The cowboy ideal penetrated all facets of its culture. Even science had its wild colonial days. Perhaps it's not quite right to say science though, because essentially it was about business.
Thomas Edison is a name familiar to most, and it's a fair bet that most people would know that he had something to do with electricity, or at least remember that he invented the light bulb. Nikola Tesla is a name that would be unfamiliar to most. Devotees of The Prestige might remember that David Bowie whipped up a curious Eurotrash accent to portray him as a mad scientist, but let's face it, there aren't many people who watched that movie and even fewer that bother reminiscing about it. But Nikola Tesla is a very important man. The computer I'm writing this on has numerous components that owe their existence, in some form or another, to Tesla. If Edison was the "father of electricity", then Tesla was surely its pimp, because he was the man who found a way to make it available and user friendly.
Without getting too scientific (or more accurately, not getting scientific at all. If anything, a little patronising) Edison and his team of scientists and inventors created power stations and electrical goods that ran on Direct Current electricity (this is the type of current that means when you're electrocuted, your muscles contract and you can't let go of the wire). The problem with DC is that it can't be transported over long distances. This meant that, for example in New York, power stations would be needed every two blocks or so to make sure everybody could get enough juice to run their radiolagraphs and brill-o-lamps, or whatever people plugged into sockets in the late 19th century. This is bad news for people wanting power, but good news if your company (General Electric, although readers may be more familiar with the company's modern incarnation GE Finance, home of the culturally sensitive GE Money Genie) builds power stations and sells DC-motor powered appliances.
Tesla, who worked for Edison in his early days (and made him some decent scratch), developed technology that could harness Alternating Current. This is the current that tosses you across the room when you touch a live circuit. Alternating Current can be transmitted across vast distances, as well as be easily converted to the low voltages needed for domestic use. In combination with entrepreneur George Westinghouse, Tesla began promoting AC power and appliances to the American public. (Westinghouse and Tesla also had a contract guaranteeing Tesla $2.50 for every horsepower of electricity sold. With more success, this agreement threatened to bankrupt the Westinghouse Electric Company, and Tesla tore up the contract.)
Edison was, rightly, nervous about the emergence of AC power, and embarked on a scare campaign about its safety. Stray dogs and cats, old cows and horses were trotted out in front of the American public and executed to prove that AC power was unsafe. Tesla responded by holding demonstrations where he would pass AC current through his body, illuminating a light bulb he held in his hand. These demonstrations were accompanied by various lawsuits, and the obligatory defamatory comments in newspapers.
In 1890, Harold P Brown, who was on Edison's payroll, used an AC motor and generator to create the world's first electric chair, to prove once and for all that AC current was a danger to society. William Kemmler was the lucky prisoner to be spared the horror of hanging for the ease and convenience of electrocution, or as Edison was calling it by then, "Westinghousing". Unfortunately for Kemmler, they couldn't get the voltage right the first time, and he had to receive a second jolt to finish the job. As Westinghouse reportedly said: "They would have done better using an axe."
Eventually though, Tesla's AC system won out, and all the appliances we use today owe something to his groundbreaking work with AC. But the next time you flick on the television, or toast some bread, take a moment to reflect on the fate of poor Topsy, the elephant who died as part of a vain attempt to stop you enjoying cheap, easy electricity. (The video is a little unpleasant, so I don't mind if you don't watch it. Let me summarise it for you: an elephant gets electrocuted.)