Grant Me a Wish

In my workaday boredom, I’ve been contemplating alternative employment. But I’m well over one foot in the grave and paid quite well for what I do, so finding something appropriate at my age isn’t easy or particularly lucrative.

I should have been the brains behind the Super Nanny franchise. She has stolen all my child-raising and parent-training tips from naughty mats to reward systems and she can’t even enunciate ‘asseptable’ acceptably.

Then there’s that American boofhead Caesar who trains the parents of naughty dogs. I could do that. Imagine being paid a motza by celebrities who simply want to stop their Chihuahua peeing in their purse? Cinch, give me three weeks with a dog and I’ll have it sitting, staying, heeling and doing a trick or two.

Well those boats have long gone so I thought bout post-grad study and some sort of University grant for doing research to prove more of the bleedin’ obvious.

For instance, Researchers at the University of California were paid to actually research the hypothesis that muscular young men are likely to have more sex partners than their less-chiselled peers. Duh! isn’t that a revelation after two years of researching the sexual habits of muscly men . . now that’s a job for which I might take a drop in salary.

Or maybe similar research to that which recently tested the hypothesis that there is a link between beards and hierarchical seniority in tertiary institutions. The survey was done by doctoral students who were inspired by an "impressively hairy" supervisor at the University of London. The answer appears to be yes. While 10.5 per cent of lecturers were bewhiskered, the figure rose to 13.6 per cent for senior lecturers, 16.7 per cent for readers and 21.4 per cent for professors. So there you go the hirsute among you . . . pash rash must be commonplace among nerds and post menopausal women is all I can say. (That’s a girl joke – we get it!)

Or, for the religious, there is a new study analysing whether active prayer by complete strangers can affect the out come of illness (there goes another for Australia’s one and only candidates for sainthood

Parishioner: “I prayed to Mary McKillop and that fella over there that I’ve never met got out of his wheelchair and walked away”.

Priest: “Yes my child, but you know that research has proven that your intercessory prayers have little effect on curing illness, so poor old Mary will have to remain in the queue. Beatified but not sanctified."

(c’mon Popey baby . . give us our first foikn Saint!

Apparently the use of prayers requesting devine intervention by strangers on patients recovering from serious illness or major surgery has little effect on the person. What evidence the study provides does however leans in the direction of prayer being harmful- if the person being prayed for knows about it. Iwonder how much they paid that lot to go to Church and interview the faithful.

An Ohio Air Force laboratory asked for $7.5 million last year to build a non-lethal 'gay bomb'. A weapon that would encourage enemies to make love, not war. The weapon would use strong aphrodisiacs to make enemy troops so sexually attracted to each other that they'd lose interest in fighting. Or maybe the researchers would become affected and gain interest in their research. Or. Maybe I could be a test case and eat lots of Oysters (Salandaise, Kilpatrick, Mornay, Au naturel).

Surely someone will pay me $75,000 a year to research the bleedin' obvious.