Anderson - Friendly fire

Sometimes I suspect that when I was a kid my parents dropped me on my head and something broke in my brain.

The thought occurred to me while celebrating Easter this year, when a ridiculous question formed inside my noggin: before Jesus rose again, did he push the snooze button and say, 'Ah, screw it. Ten more minutes, who will know?'

You might think this isn't a big deal, but this is the crap that preoccupies me.

Over the years I have lost count of the ridiculous rubbish that runs rampant through my brain: when librarians die do they get buried according to the Dewey decimal system? If 'upskirting' is looking up someone's skirt, what does that make 'updating'? And don't even get me started on 'downloading'. Do 'Weird Al' Yankovic parody acts sing the original versions of the songs? Is there any easier job in the world than a professional wrestling referee? Step one: learn rules. Step two: ignore rules.

If you had a mental condition that stopped you from using any form of electricity, would you be known as the Barmy Amish? And more importantly, during Earth Hour did those with OCD turn their lights off, then turn them back on again, then turn them off, then...

It takes only the smallest thing to set my brain off on a flight of fancy, and I can lose half the day. Recently, for example, I was listening to the radio when the newsreader reported that AC/DC tickets were 'selling like hotcakes'.

Really? I thought. Like hotcakes? Is there someone in this country who is selling 100,000 hotcakes in half an hour (for $150 bucks each)? I'm clearly in the wrong game.

I started wishing the rest of the report had been: 'AC/DC tickets are selling like hotcakes... for four bucks at Maccas, but only before 10.30.'

In fact, the radio tends to trigger my brain into Burke and Wills-style wanderings quite often. For instance, every time I hear that NASA has sent an 'unmanned probe' into space, it sounds less to me like a rocket and more like something lesbians might use to get pregnant.

And my brain isn't better served by TV. The other night I was watching a fascinating documentary about the guy called the Tree Man. Do you remember him? He had a disease that made him look like a tree. It was an amazing doco full of drama, courage and medical miracles, but as usual I missed all this because I was more fascinated by the fact that the Tree Man's teenage son was an emo.

Yes, that's right. Suddenly my brain was filled with questions: if your dad is the Tree Man and you are an emo, does that make you a treemo? Or maybe an Elmo?

When the Tree Man's emo son cuts himself, does he use a chainsaw? Does he bleed sap? Is the son ever referred to as 'a chip off the old block'?

But it's not just the Tree Man. I couldn't watch Ladette to Lady without thinking that it would be much more entertaining the other way around: if they'd got a bunch of posh, frigid chicks and sluttied them up a bit.

Speaking of reality TV, according to The Biggest Loser Club ads, all you have to do is 'replace two meals a day'. Okay, that seems fine, but what about the other seven?

Even when someone tells me good news my brain still takes the logic road less travelled. The other day I heard that advertising course enrolments had gone up 30 percent since the beginning of my show, The Gruen Transfer. Now this should have filled me with pride, but all I could think was: 'Wow, imagine the effect of Underbelly on those who want to get into organised crime!'

The other day I was in a pie shop that claimed it sold 'award-winning pies'. Clearly, I should have busied myself sampling these famous pies, but instead I was paralysed, wondering how it can be that every pie shop I ever enter seems to sell 'award-winning pies'. For a start, how do the pie-makers find time to actually make pies in between attending all those awards ceremonies?