Friday, April 28, 2006

What's still on my fridge.

Mr Lefty has a post about news clippings and cartoons that no longer grace his fridge. The following gem, from the West Australian, remains on my fridge and will do so indefinitely:

I have just read the Let's Look Out for Australia information pack and, thanks to the warnings, I now realise how suspiciously my mate Derro has been acting recently. I have been gathering evidence and I wanted to share my thoughts on his behaviour.
1. Unusual videotaping of critical infrastructure. Last year, me and Derro went up to Queensland on a pilgrimage to visit the XXXX brewery. Derro took pictures of the buildings, brewing vats and delivery trucks. This beer is a very important part of my life and, looking back, I am concerned he was really taking terrorist pictures of critical Australian infrastructure.
2. Suspicious vehicles near significant buildings. Last week, Derro went to visit Wendy round the corner. Hers must be a significant building because there is a red security light on the front and a lot of blokes go in every day. The advice about bombs being placed in no-parking zones has really opened my eyes. I became suspicious when Derro went inside and left his old bomb outside the house in a zone clearly marked No Parking. Now I realise why he looked so shifty when he came out nearly two hours later.
3. Unusual purchases of large quantities of fertiliser or chemicals. Derro's garden is a mess. One day recently, he asked me to accompany him to the garden centre. I thought we had come to get a new barbie, but I became concerned when Derro ordered 500kg of sheep manure and 250kg of cow manure. Without the booklet, I may not have known that Derro's purchase of such a large amount of fertiliser was suspicious.
4. A lifestyle that doesn't add up. I went round to Derro's place the other day and he was watching TV. I became worried because he was not watching Neighbours but a strange foreign channel. I checked with my mates and this is called the Suspect Broadcast Service and apparently no one ever watches it. Do you think he receiving covert messages from foreign terrorists? Also, Derro and me recently went into town to get some Aussie grub. He ordered two Big Macs, two large fries and a strawberry shake. I became concerned that his lifestyle didn't add up when he said he only had five bucks and asked me for a loan.
5. False or multiple identities. This is the clincher. I went round to Derro's mum's place for afternoon tea. While we were eating our Vegemite toast (with hundreds and thousands) his mum, forgetting I was there, starts talking to a certain Derrick. After 15 minutes I realised Derro IS Derrick. "Derro" was just a way of disguising a suspicious and unacceptable name to hide out in the Australian community.
Quite a dossier, I think you'll agree. What do you think my next move should be? Eventually, his mum confessed the family was not Australian at all but the country they came from was Wales. That's somewhere in the Middle East, near Philistine, I think. Maybe with Philip Ruddock's help we can apply the Pacific solution to Derro's case. After all I, like all Australians, am a Pacifist at heart.
TIM ARMSTRONG, Bedford.