Writing certain things on certain bits of paper. That's mostly what the bureaucracy is about. Writing bit of paper about things you couldn't humanly care less about and then diligently passing it on to people who cared even less than you did. They then pass it on to someone else that you don't know of and naturally couldn't care less about. Sometimes it would come back with comments like - rubric? what's that mean? Rephrase. Or a post-it note instruction to replace a colon with a semi-colon, demonstrating that their knowledge of grammar comes directly out of their own large colon. Good one, Spirellli.

But in the end it all ends up either shredded and surreptitiously carried away in black plastic bins at night or put in bar-coded white files archived in a storage unit in some industrial estate surrounded by cheap residential housing where people eat bucketfuls of KFC convinced that you can't beat that taste. Pointless? Pretty much. Amazingly I'm told that its now less pointless than it used to be, and here I am stupidly thinking that something pretty much had some sort of inherent relevance or just didn't, much like Catholicism, male nipples, frozen pizza and hippies. How on earth could this have ever been more pointless?

But it just wasn't working for me today. I'd gone to the well and it was dry. Not only dry but full of scorpions, and not just those ordinary scorpions, angry scorpions. Angry, defiant fundamentalist scorpions, intent on bloody jihad. OK, that's probably overstating it. It wasn't the normal distractions of the open plan office. Sure, someone was graphically reporting to someone how her incontinent dad had shat on the new carpet, again. Yesterday in all seriousness they'd advised their pregnant friend to think about getting the obstetrician to organise liposuction for immediately after the delivery. You might as well Cheryl. They're going be down there anyway. Urgh, colleagues. Can't live with them, can't sink a rust pitchfork into their necks. Not legally at least. Unable to start resolved to make a list.

I'd once worked for a forgettable and thankfully brief period in the non-profit sector. The place had started as an advocacy group for women in vocational training - marshalling teenage girls into plumbing jobs and motor mechanic apprenticeships they they had no interested in and didn't care for. That sort of self righteous thing. They'd started small and through determined effort and careful strategy managed to stay that way, despite having dropped the chick thing to quaify for richer funding pickings. It was a weird place full of little secret rules. One was that you were under a daily obligation to begin every single day re-capping in minute detail every single thing that'd happened in the hours since you'd last seen them (or in fact might have happened). This included, but was not limited to, last night's dinner, conversations, visitors, children, the ABC, cardigans, hair, the shocking government, shoes, and impotent husbands that refused to listen. And if anyone happened to have a shopping bag of any description there had to be a ritual of show and tell, and naturally yet more talking. Even a fucking Safeway bag. You had no option. Even if it was a single tin of damn tuna. You were forces to waste at least an hour of your remaining life talking about tuna or tuna related topics, which would inevitably lead on to last night's dinner, conversations, visitors, children, the ABC, cardigans, hair, the shocking government, shoes, and impotent husbands that refused to listen. The place had still pretty much carried its old lefty women's rights attitude on its sleeve. So, there'd you'd be, the only male sitting at a meeting of the board of management where other women who didn't actually work there would naturally bang on about last night's dinner, conversations, visitors, children, the ABC, cardigans, hair, the shocking government, shoes, and impotent husbands that refused to listen, and occasionally they'd throw up any number of self congratulatory comments. They'd say things like behind every successful man is a woman, and behind every successful woman is a list. And how they'd all guffaw, chins a-wobbling, as if it was the funniest joke ever told. I'd smile, pretending to be in on all of it. Secretly I felt like chucking most of the time.

Anyway, the list. It was meant to be a list of the Top Ten most personally annoying and aggravating things. No real surprise in that. In a world so jam-packed with justifiably hateful things I though it might help to isolate the worst and put them in priority order. Then, perhaps, I could concentrate on these, make them manageable. I've made similar lists. I'd once made a list of my previous sexual encounters while pretending to listen to some bloodless insect drone on endlessly about some sort of legislation. I'd been given the choice of that or a seminar on Workplace Diversity. If drinking a litre of petrol had been the third option I would have gladly opted for that. A least it looked like I was taking notes. The guy next to me was whistling through his bulbous nose asleep. It's a depressing list both in terms of quantity and quality. A short lived flurry that coincided with my worst nihilist period and then almost nothing. Little more than what's known in common Australian parlance as a handful of lame, passionless sympathy roots.

Some of the entries are just places since I'd forgotten the unfortunate girl's name or been too drunk to have ever known - the Prison View Hotel, Middle Footscray Station, the Discount Camping and Motor Home Show, Coburg Wholesale Bulk Cheese Factory, Ashton's Family Circus. Others are more cryptic, based simply on scant details dredged from long distant memory (Panda, Carpet Girl, Racoon Armpits, Spastic Eye, Pancakes, Rover). Allegedly one poor girl had once complained to her friend after I'd tried some fumbling drunken move that she'd rather a dose of viral pneumonia than sleep with that moronic Tourettes' affected dickhead. And to think it was my essays that got her through Marxist Theory in fourth year. But who was I to argue. Anyone stupid enough to think they can trade an undergraduate understanding of dialectical materialism for a head-job is a moronic, Tourette affected dickhead. ASSHOLE. ASSHOLE.

No, but seriously my Top Ten started with one entry. What is it about the country that it's always associated with any number of virtues, purity and god fearing goodness? The simple, uncomplicated life where you get up in the clean crisp fresh air and with a strong arm and stout heart begin your honest day's work in bright sunshine, the chorus of morning birdsong in the trees, the warm, life-giving earth under your fingernails. It's about being one with nature, working with the land, the cycle of life, and being part of god's plan. It's about honouring the pioneering ancestors, respecting your parents, saving yourself for marriage, toiling without a harsh word or complaint for your family. It's about being part of a community, about stoically enduring floods and drought, being the first to volunteer, and fighting raging bushfires with your bare hands. It's about treating your neighbour like your brother, about stepping up to help the weak and vulnerable, about defending your country without the slightest hesitation or fear or question, about being solid, having pride and never letting yourself down, and never letting your mates down. For fucks sake its all about having a heart as big as Phar Laps', cheering the Don with a cold VB in your hand, the spirit of ANZAC, Bob bloody Menzies, and each and everyday sinking to the hard wooden floor and on your bony knees unashamedly crying out thanks to almighty god for all your blessings and most of all for Australia - the greatest country in the world.

The more I thought about it the less I couldn't think of any other entry as potentially hateful as the country. I've lived there can speak with some authority. And we're not talking about those little quaint villages nestled in green hills with antique shops in the day tour 'tea and scones' belt two hours out of metropolitan Melbourne. No siree. I'm taking of a hot, dry place where the stinking corpses of rotting, fly-blown kangaroos adorn the road and a municipal town sign peppered by the shot-gun pellets of bored, listless youth. A monochrome town bleached by the crushing relentless sun with sad abandoned shops, broken fences and pissed aboriginals camped under the struggling Eucalypt trees. A home to a millions flies where no tourist in their right mind has ever been. And to be honest, it's not the place itself. Even a scrubby desert or a dank backwater can usually lay claim to some particular charm. But, without question, what makes the country such an awful place is the people that live it - county people.

Country people. I once spent some time in Maroopna, just outside Shepparton in the Victorian fruit district. It called itself 'Fruit Salad City' and I was on the run from real estate agents that were hunting me down like the Yule Bruner character from WestWorld. I ended up on a farm planning to sweat out some fast cash and anonymously head back to the city. I was staying in the single men's quarters, basically just tin Nissan huts with beds made from galvanised pipe and chicken wire. You'd queue for breakfast each morning and they' slap a chop dripping with fat into a chipped enamel bowl and had it to you. For lunch you got two greasy chops in your bowl. Dinner, naturally, was three rank oily chops, but with sauce. The pickers were a pretty rough crew and although there was nothing obvious to single me out it instantaneously clear to everyone I wasn't one of the tribe. It wasn't long before the tribe came a-calling.

It was late one afternoon. I was sitting in the door step trying to digest my three-hundredth fatty chop for the week, reading. One of the guys just came over and brazenly kicked my hand sending by book flying almost into the paddock. A couple of others let out a nervous giggle. It was one of those moments, like in prison where you have to step up now or pay the price for the rest of your time. I chickened out. I did however collect my book, went into my hut and in a small act of defiance, continued reading. Basically they were personally affronted by the fact that I was reading something that wasn't titled Pregnant Jugs 2, The Best of Fuck City Cum Dumps, or 1001 Vaginas. It's not as I was reading Heidegger for godsake. In fact I think it was Peter Benchley's Jaws without a cover and missing the first couple of pages that I'd picked up from a charity shop that stank of old people, pee and boiled sprouts. Chances are every one of those guys is now living lives of abject misery. That's consolation enough for me.

Perhaps country people are not dumb. But I have been told stories. One about a young farmer that discovered an old wrecked Model T Ford in some ditch and having dragged it out with his tractor, decided to restore this historical piece of rural farm machinery to its former glory. He proceeded to work on it day and night, sparing no expense, and unveiled the polished and gleaming end result to much applaud from friends and family. Until someone asked how he proposed to get it out of the lounge room. It's not an isolated incident. Another independent source once recalled how some country genius sent off for a one man helicopter kit and had successfully assembled the impressive machine, again, in the lounge room. But that's all anecdotal. You'd have to do an empirical study. There could be a PhD topic in it. The purpose of this dissertation is to precisely determine just how stupid country people are. Perhaps then it's more a question of narrowness.

A friend of mine once travelled to Mildura in the far north west of the state with his new girlfriend to meet her parents, a pretty urbane, friendly sort I knew from school. He wore a lot of black and listened to Joy Division. We'd smoke joints and watch art house films. Now, Mildura's famous for many things, including probably the very worse rural TV on record. Every evening Sunraysia TV presented the Stock Market Report where for one hour some startled guy dressed like a carnie in a cheap checked suit would come on. He had huge sideburns and a brylcreamed come-over, and would stare down at a sheet of paper the whole time studiously reading out the daily prices for fat sows, yearlings and wool in a flat monotone voice. He'd end it by suddenly looking up and in a relieved voice say and that was the stockmarket report for Tuesday the 14th of June as if he was reading out your Miranda rights.

Worst still were the live STV commercials from local traders. At 3.00pm every Thursday there'd be Joyce, from Joyce's Cosy Country Crafts in a red gingham apron and Coke bottle glasses (she was clearly blind as a bat). She'd proudly show off her knitted tea cosies, dried flower arrangements and various bits of crafty rubbish. Ladies, here are these marvellous gift ideas. Aren't they lovely? Just in today at Joyce's Cosy Country Crafts, 15 Langtree Avenue Mildura. And you've got all your pretty colours. Here you've gottya greens. You've gottya yellows and youse even gottya blues. And the cameraman would very, very, very slowly pan across each of the terrible tatty items, the image all shaky from the symptoms of the cameraman's alcohol withdrawal. You'd be there as a kid, your life barely begun and you'd look around astounded by the fact that with the whole world of potential and possibility lying endlessly in front of you, there you are, alone, watching Joyce shuffling around bumping into the cheap sets. You'd end up thinking Joycie, at least you will never, ever realise just how fundamentally offensive you are. Too harsh? Probably, but the anger would have subsided by the time the guard-tower hit the ground in the opening scenes of F-Troop.

Anyway, my friend came back with a shiner. He'd gone to the Mildura Working Man's Club that once had the title of having the longest bar in the world for nothing more than a quiet drink. Some of the local heroes had taken him out back and given him a belting. Why? Because he was wearing pointy black shoes. For fucks sake, it was the 80s, we were all wearing pointy black shoes. He never went back. If you're planning a trip to the country, make a note - only pack books with pictures and round toed shoes only thanks.

Perhaps this narrowness is best evidenced by the degree of self obsession exhibited by our country cousins. Who on earth spends more time and energy thinking about and taking about themselves then country people? There are entire programs on TV and radio devoted exclusively to rural life with a seemingly endless stream of country people, one after the other eulogising about how great the country is and how great they all are. So deep and ingrained is their self love that normal words often fail and they can only express it lyrically through home made, tearingly god awful, rhyming bush poetry. And if they're not inducing your bile with their own sickly sentimental poems full of down to earth, home spun wisdom, they're braying homage to those champions of tedious bush literature, Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson who truth be told were little more than talentless, opportunistic, bi-polar, wife beating, alcoholic miscreants. And if its not poetry, it'll be some sort of never ending, pointless old country 'yarn' that is neither funny nor remotely interesting to any living sole apart (from other country people), usually spun by some smart lackey, dirty bearded old country 'character', (re: coot) sitting there milky-eyed in the front bar of the otherwise deserted Dimboola Hotel, half tanked on port and cokes. And when they've exhausted every single opportunity for self aggrandisement, they'll then move on to their second favourite topic - complaining.

Who complains more than country people? OK the English perhaps. But still the do whinge a lot and like the poms they have their favourite topics. Above all else, they love criticising the Government. To them, it's the number one scourge all time, the source of almost all evils. Bureaucrats with noses firmly in the tough sucking the life blood out of the bush through taxes. Kow-towing to the Europeans, the Americans, and the Chinese, signing dodgy trade deals that sell out the bush. In bed with their mates, the foreclosing banks. Giving any number of hand outs to the dirty blacks. The Government. Funding the arts wankers. Sympathising with the AIDS spreading poofters. Listening to the deluded environmentalists. Supporting immoral single mothers and the bone idle dole bludgers. Worst of all cranking the flood gates open to the tsunami of Asian migrants who aren't Christian, can't speak Australian and god forbid, don't have Australian values. There was a TV story recently about a young rural tackle and bait shop proprietor who so incensed by customers with poor English that he banned them. He'd fashioned a homemade sign from some cardboard and had proudly and defiantly displayed it in the front window. It read...If you cant speak english then dont arsk for service. It may as well have read...Owned and operated by a slow talking, dim witted, xenophobic, gun totting, red neck dickhead. Moron. I hope he goes broke.

So there you have. As uncharitable as it is, that's the first entry to the List of Unspeakable Torments.