Modern guru
The Age
Saturday July 4, 2009
Danny Katz answers readers' questions about 21st-century ethics, etiquette and dilemmas.Roof repairmen have got me blowing my topI have been dealing with a roof-sealing company that refused to provide a quote unless the "man of the house" was at home. Should I be angry about the assumption that a woman can't make a financial decision?A. M., Kilmore East, VicLots of tradies advertise with the motto "good old-fashioned service", but this roof-sealing company seems to have taken the motto a little too far: I'm imagining a guy straight out of the 1950s, showing up in a truck that says Smith & Son Roofing Blokes, then wandering in with an Andy Capp cigarette dangling from his bottom lip, his dopey son following behind with a wooden ladder fixed to his shoulder, and the two of them perving at your boobular zone with a Benny Hill leer while he says, "Reckon we'd better discuss quotes with the man of the house, eh luv?" Then both of them wandering out mumbling, "Phooooar, whadda pair of pitched gables! She can raise me roof beam any day, haw haw."So you need to punish this guy where it hurts: no, don't knee him in his batten rod - instead ring him up and tell him that the woman of the house has decided to take her business elsewhere. Then find another roof-sealing company that's a bit more modern, a bit more in touch with the times, maybe someone called Smith & Daughter Roofing Revampers. The real question: is this column a fabrication? After I read aloud a dilemma that a Modern Guru letter writer had sent in, my mother declared, "They're not true", before promptly explaining that the letters were "made up for our entertainment". Not wishing to believe her, I decided to write in to my favourite column, wanting to know the truth. Are your letter writers merely characters of fiction?M. C., Wagga Wagga, NSWIt's time to settle this once and for all because people are constantly bugging me about this, saying, "Are they real questions or do you just make them up?" Well, let me now officially say that, yes, they're real, every single one of them, so please stop emailing me about it, hassling me on the street, tapping on my window at home - I mean, how'd you get my address anyway? please leave me alone. i'm trying to take a shower. But this question raises a fascinating guru-esque dilemma of elephantine proportions: readers are thinking, "Well, how do we know this letter writer isn't a fictional character he made up to prove he doesn't make up fictional letter-writing characters?" As far as they're concerned, M. C. from Wagga Wagga might be someone I dreamed up in the fecund broth of my imagination: maybe Methuselah Chlamydia, a 42-year-old circus busker with a harelip who lives in Wagga Wagga with her mother, Fat "Toecutter" Stella. But I suppose this is actually the best proof I can give: no matter how fecundly brothy my imagination may be, I could never come up with the dazzlingly wacko letters I get sent each week by genuine problem-sufferers. The newlyweds who wanted to know when to throw out the rancid banana-flavoured horse-head wedding cake they'd been storing in their fridge for two months. The lady who'd spent decades sharing a bedroom with areal human skull and was wondering whether or not to give it a burial. The man who needed advice on genital-reduction surgery because, "tragically, I am too large to accommodate any woman". He even forwarded his mobile phone number "in case you want to catch up and discuss it further". All real, all surreal.Although, maybe there is one other way I can convince everyone, and I'll need your help, M. C. I need you to roam from town to town across Australia, yelling, "i am real, i'm not a fictional character made up by the guru", and it'd be extra cool if you did it riding on your circus-busking unicycle. Do this and I'll thank you personally when I visit the inpatient unit at the Wagga Wagga Mental Health Emergency Care Support Centre.
© 2009 The Age
