I remember when you could always rely on those little street kids to pop a few people for the latest Nikes," Vice-President John said. "Now people get mugged for Reeboks, for Adidas - for generics, for Christ's sake.

I will not be what I was made, but what I make.

Look, I understand that for a lot of people, the US is superior to their country of residence in myriad ways, but I'm Australian. We have it all: the weather, the beautiful cities, the brand of football that involves neither padding yourself up like Santa Claus nor standing in a line in front of goal and covering your testicles.

Apparently we're now in a state where most ads are full of people looking at us in a way that would heat us up down to our toes if it happened in real life, and we don't think anything of it.

Some people would break the rules to get things done and some wouldn't; it was simple as that. John didn't have much use for the latter.

She had been in situations like this, where people said, Convince me, and in none of those had they actually wanted to be convinced. She could lay down a perfect argument and they just invented new bullshit on the spot to justify why the answer was still no. When people said, Convince me, she knew it didn’t mean they had an open mind. It meant they had power and wanted to enjoy it a minute.

People resist a census, but give them a profile page and they'll spend all day telling you who they are.