KEY POINTS:
Sometimes you wonder why we wonder about the things we wonder about sometimes.
Because most of the things we wonder about are really pretty trivial, which could be the reason we wonder about them.
For all that we may wish to be regarded as deep and meaningful, much given to the sort of metaphysical ponderings best left to turgid German philosophers, the truth is most of us are never happier than when we're paddling in life's shallows.
Little things besot us. The banal adventures of Paris Hilton - who must surely be the littlest thing ever invented; why Bishop Tamaki is contemplating the construction of his Destiny City (assuming he is or isn't). These are the sirens that lure us on to the rocks of debate.
Should there or should there not be a Destiny City in South Auckland? Who cares? The much bigger question is whether there should be a South Auckland - or, more precisely, the kind of South Auckland we've created. But that's a tad too meaty, don'tcha know. Far safer to have an argument about Bishop Tamaki's new car.
Or better still, who would he turn gay for? Not that we're suggesting for a moment that he would. Heaven forbid - and has, according to Brian. No, there's no suggestion of ecclesiastical impropriety here. What's at issue is the question itself, which has become the inquiry du jour.
Out of the blue, a host of notable persons of the political persuasion are being asked for whom they would become what it is presumed they are not. Names (like Brad) are being put to the love that once dared not speak its name.
Being asked who you'd turn for has become perverse evidence that the person being questioned is a person worth questioning. Which is a bit debilitating for those of us who haven't been asked to identify our alternative other.
Still and all, what the media won't ask, we can always ask ourselves. As many did over the long weekend. It was, by all accounts, the hot topic poolside at the Hero Parade clubrooms in Ponsonby on Labour Day.
And rightly so. Superficial as it is, the question remains more diverting than the obvious alternative - "What are the causes of the world's current financial crisis?"
Perhaps we could combine the two to produce a juicier composite - "Who would you turn gay for if they could fix the world's current financial crisis?"
But even that presupposes the question is germaine and for some of us it seems it is not.
As our humble scribe discovered when some bright young things posed that very question just a day or so ago.
Those of you who read this column regularly will know its author is a tough and rugged bloke, more inclined to regard a drag racer as a motor car than some chap called Kandy Barr who likes running marathons in Size 11 stilettos and a pink tiara almost as tall as Peter Dunne's hair.
What you don't know is that he couldn't answer the question. "Ummm," he spluttered. "Ummmm ... " Eventually, a name did spring to mind but before he could stammer, "Perhaps, umm, Oscar Wilde ... " the bright young things had reached the minuscule limits of their attention spans and moved on.
"Oh, it wouldn't affect you," opined one gorgeous flapper, merrily spraining her thumb with a paroxysm of txting. "You're a retrosexual ... "
"I'm a what?"
"You know, a retrosexual ... "
For someone yet to meet a metrosexual, discovering a newer category was even more shocking than being asked who you'd turn gay for.
Worse still was the explanation. It turns out the young ones have decided there's a whole category of folk - mainly anyone older than them - for whom sex is naught but a memory, a lingering fragrance on the pillow of solitude.
It's their hurtful view that any sexual question put to a retrosexual must be in the past tense: "Who would you have turned gay for?"
While questions in the present tense can be put to those with a burning desire to form a government and lead the nation (always assuming that governments do actually lead the nation), you're wasting your time with the dotty old, drooly old retros. They're past it.
Well, this one is anyway, at least in the opinion of his less chronologically challenged companions. Needless to say, much angst has been angsted between then and now and a small fortune spent on counselling and various pharmaceutical miracles.
Sadly, the former has only deepened one's sense of cosmic impotence and the latter merely triggered certain physiological transformations to which no end can be put.
And there, dear friends, is the rub. Before these overeager little polytechnical muppets in the television newsrooms ask another politician the profoundly superficial question, "Who would you ... " etc, they should ask the much more important one, "What are you going to do to help this new throng of victims, the retrosexuals?"
Hell's bells, we're voters too! Aren't we? Or is that a trivial question?
