Completely Unnecessary

Look, I’m not the fittest cat on the planet. I do things like reading for a living and abhor things like running. It’s clear to me that I’m not most likely Olympian.

In addition, there are some sports that just look really difficult. Like hurdles. Or shotput. It looks hard as hell to throw a shotput. [Or is shotput the name of the sport and the ball is called something else?]

But while I’ve accepted the fact that I will never be a shotputress, I’m pretty convinced that I could play water polo at an Olympic level.

Granted, tonight is the first time that I’ve ever seen water polo on teevee, but it looks mostly like short bursts of swimming (check), treading water (check) and close-range throwing (checkish).

[Also, why isn't it called 'water soccer' (or 'football'), since it closely resembles soccer and completely lacks any sticks.]  [To that end, why isn't polo called 'horse hockey'? There's a sport I could get behind.]

Actually, the only thing keeping me from a water polo career is the thought of being wet again today (or ever again). I know we’re all supposed to be happy about the precipition given the status of the dams, but cold, driving rain is my least favorite weather ever. I felt (and looked) as though I’d been drowned when I got to school today.

Vaguely Related

• The Olympics are Pretty!
• Rain: Wherefore art thou?

In Melbourne we live with some pretty stringent water restrictions. But we’re still eventually going to run out of water down here.

Last night we got a taste of those bad days ahead.

I came home around 2:30a to find a huge lake of water down the road from me and crews working frantically (and, undoubtedly, at incredible penalty rates).

The implications of this image didn’t hit me until I tried to brush my teeth. And do about a million other small things you never even think about. (I wound up washing my hands with water I found in the kettle…)

Glancing with new appreciation at the crew in the road, I was really impressed  at first with the gung-ho attitude of Melbourne Water. Way to get the problem solved, team!

This enthusiasm lessened as I settled into bed, and the sounds of the jackhammer continued intermittently. Actually, the sound of the machine was fine when it was going constantly. Instead, every time I started to drift off it would either stop, only to loudly punctuate the silence a minute later. As the time moved towards 5:00a, neither Bryan nor I were happy campers.

It was not a pleasant evening.

Nor a pleasant morning when we were still without water - and, indeed, until about 12:30p. I was at a bbq yesterday, so with the grease from the sausages, the sweating caused by strenuous sessions of Guitar Hero, and the absurd number of hedgehogs I ate (it’s a dessert), I really, really wanted a shower this morning.

Instead I’ve been watching episodes of The Office, the US version. Now I am clean, and will do my reading - after watching just a bit more of The Office.

Vaguely Related

• Rain: Wherefore art thou?
• Olympic Unimpression

Really - and I can speak from experience; I lived here four years ago. In 2003, it poured down. It was freezing and rainy all during September. I remember wondering what kind of hellhole I’d moved to. And yet, this year, it’s pretty warm and far too sunny.

My plants are so dry. And it’s not just the lack of actual rain, but the dryness in general. I watered them (tell no one) the day before last, and it rained last night - and today they are just dry as a bone. The air just saps the liquid from the soil.

And one of the fireplugs was open today with a Yarra Water truck parked right by it - I was thinking about how many liters were pouring into the street and how much my garden would love it. Sigh.

It’s meant to rain tonight. I hope it does. They reckon this year might be the endgame for Victorian farmers (if it doesn’t rain heaps, and well soon) - which, aside from the higher food prices here - will just be devastating for the state.

Johnny H. reckons we should pray for rain. Luckily, he won’t be PM much longer.

Vaguely Related

• Remember How I Keep Mentioning the Drought?
• To Be Young

It’s really bad.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, a hardened climate-change sceptic, delivered dire tidings to the nation’s farmers yesterday. Unless there is significant rainfall in the next six to eight weeks, irrigation will be banned in the principal agricultural area. Crops such as rice, cotton and wine grapes will fail, citrus, olive and almond trees will die, along with livestock.

A ban on irrigation, which would remain in place until May next year, spells possible ruin for thousands of farmers, already debt-laden and in despair after six straight years of drought.

…

With paddocks reduced to dust bowls, graziers have been forced to sell off sheep and cows at rock-bottom prices or buy in feed at great expense. Some have already given up, abandoning pastoral properties that have been in their families for generations. The rural suicide rate has soared.

…

Australians are among the world’s biggest per-capita energy consumers, and among the top producers of carbon dioxide emissions. Despite that, the country is one of only two industrialised nations - the United States being the other - that have refused to ratify the 1997 Kyoto protocol. The governments argue that to do so would harm their economies.

Aside from ’softening’ his position on global warming as of late, what does John Howard have to say about the situation?

Mr Howard acknowledged that an irrigation ban would have a “potentially devastating” impact. But “this is very much in the lap of the gods“, he said.

It’s not actually. It’s been in John Howard’s hands since 1996 and Australia is now reaping what his policies have sown.

Vaguely Related

• Rain: Wherefore art thou?
• Minus Florida