Heat by Rob O’Neill

That's all folks

In this life you get out what you put in, son.

That’s what I tell today’s insolent youth when I bail them up on the bus with their butt-crack showing above belt-less balloon pants.

Son, pull yourself together, I say. Straighten up and put something in.

Don’t give me that look, I say. You get out what you put in. So pull up those pants and, go on, put something in.

I think they are listening, when I do this. I think some of them at least are thinking, “Hey, that old guy talks a lot of sense.”

Anyway, it’s much like blogging, dear reader. You get out what you put in, and frankly I haven’t put anything in for a while.

I’ve been a busy boy and I’ve been expecting to get less busy, but it just ain’t happening. And while no one likes a quitter, there is a time when all good things must come to an end. For my blog this is that time.

Publicaddress came along for me at just the right time. I wasn’t really doing any writing and I was working at a job I didn’t much care for. It’s been great fun. Originally it wasn’t supposed to be about much at all. It was to be “the blog about nothing”, a la Seinfeld, but really just about me and the Girlie, everyday life and the odd strange or stimulating idea.

Unfortunately politics intruded. I’ve always been wary about politics and feel a bit soiled for even caring about it. I’d much rather read a good book. But the last couple of years have been highly political and I’ve often been led astray, into the fray. For that I apologise and hope that at least some of my thoughts on those subjects weren’t totally banal.

But things on the work front have changed for the better and I really want to free up as much time as possible to give a new role a good shake.

To put something in, son. To put something in.

So while I may be pulling out over here, I’m putting in over there. You see. That’s life and we have to move on.

Anyway, Publicaddress has been enormously successful and won a lot of eyeballs. That’s because it’s been a damn good read, often a better, more stimulating and more thoughtful read than you get from much of the mainstream media. Maybe we’ve even given you a laugh or two.

Its success has been because a bunch of people have been putting in. Putting in big time if you count all those words. But the real credit goes to Russell on whom we have all to some degree piggybacked and me perhaps more than most. Also to the team in the backroom at Cactuslab, as Russ would say, “Big ups”.

And now an indulgence. Along the way over the last eighteen months or so I have produced few particular favourites, so if you have a bit of spare, if you’re not busy putting in, as it were, and want to do a bit of pulling out, wrap your eyeballs around this lot!

The Girlie
The Girlie thinks I'm gay
The Girlie downshifts

Australia
Epiphany on Circular Quay
Granny has an orgasm
Another day, another holiday
Das capital

Iraq
Who said Quagmire?
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