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Feature article samples Sydney Sunday Telegraph and Melbourne Herald Sun

Have You Noticed…Kitchens have become the new tool shed?

As city dwellers give up on the Great Aussie Dream and opt for apartment living, men are facing the reality that they may never be the proud owner of a garden tool shed. In response, Generation Cave-Deprived is taking their need for tinkering, building and destruction to the kitchen with the aid of powerful electric appliances and heavy utensils.

”I don’t have a shed to store the loud tools I always wanted”, says Paul Cartwright who owns a unit in St Kilda, “so I take it out on food with my blender, juicer or high carbon knife set”.

Dr Rob Heard, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney, believes such behaviour is a result of social learning, “From a very early age, boys are encouraged to focus their energies on rugged pursuits. If men can’t retreat to their backyard shed, they want to at least enjoy some of the pleasures associated with it.”

One of those pleasures is to show off the new kitchen toy to mates while the womenfolk are left to gossip around the dining table. However, just any machine won't guarantee collective grunts of approval.

“You can’t have a fully-automatic espresso machine. It’s all about being in control”, says Dan Sanger, proud owner of a $500 Gaggia Classic and resident of the aptly named Sydney suburb of Manly. “To make great coffee I need to tamp just right so the two shot basket runs evenly from each spur. Plus the slip on turbo-froth adaptor makes better steamed milk.”

While knowing that high above Australia’s largest cities, otherwise peace-loving men are cutting, dicing, grinding and crushing defenceless cups of fruit, vegetables and coffee beans may not be cause for concern. That it may not be long until they are strutting around with filters and steam wands dangling from their belts is something none of us dare contemplate.

Have You Noticed...They’re adding fries to your computer game?

Lock up your Playstation, hide your Xbox, it’s the attack of the giant sponsor! Once upon a time, the only advertising in computer games was ‘Easter eggs’, or hidden signatures of game designers who received little credit for their work.

But now, as 18 to 35’s spend more time playing with their joysticks and less with the TV remote, major advertisers plan to capture these elusive bloodshot eyeballs, much to the delight of game publishers.

“The new games cost up to $10 million to develop”, says Darren MacBeth, Managing Director of Ubisoft Australia. “We used to pay major companies to use their ads on our racing circuits and sports stadiums, but now they are throwing money our way to get their brands seen.”

In Splinter Cell Chaos Theory game, the sweaty hero wanders past Links deodorant cans in a steamy Japanese bathhouse, while CSI’s ever-reliable Gil Grissom uncovers a thumbprint on a Nokia phone. Online players are now being fed dynamic advertising, so posters and billboards change each time their character walks past.

Does this mean that Lara Croft will be using Revlon repair kits when she breaks a nail knocking out bad guys? “We won’t include anything that interferes with the experience of the game, and I doubt even Lara’s biggest groupies would let her get away with that”, says MacBeth.

Avid online multiplayer gamer, Scott Gorman, says he’s not worried about the men in black polo’s as long as their ads are realistic and don’t interfere with the game, “but in a tense shootout, when everyone has an itchy trigger finger, I don’t want a couple of smiling M & M’s jumping out of a dark alley into my firing line.”

One game that did feel the wrath of gamers was Fight Night 3 when developers inserted a huge Burger King logo on ring canvas. Gamers complained that it wasn’t appropriate. Perhaps they just didn’t want to think about hamburgers when their opponent’s faces looked like mince patty.

Have You Noticed...You never see baby pigeons or seagulls?

It’s not like we want to encourage any more of the little beggars, but why is that we never see baby pigeons or baby seagulls hovering around our half eaten lunch or defacing public property?

Conspiracy theorys on the subject abound. Some say there are no mini-me varieties and the birds just pop out of giant eggs fully grown. There have also been several unconfirmed sightings of storks dropping super-sized newborns from the sky directly over fish and chip diners on picturesque beaches, and around people clutching handfuls of stale breadcrumbs under statues of obscure historical figures.

Another school of thought is that every pigeon and seagull we see is, in fact, a baby. Legend has it that when the birds reach adulthood they have a wingspan of twelve feet, fly off to remote mountain hideaways and feed solely on rock-climbers and the occasional lost tourist.

According to Angelo Foresio at Melbourne Zoo you've probably seen the kids and never realised it. “Seagulls nest on isolated, quiet spots like islands, spits and moored boats. Baby gulls are about the size of a jelly bean when they are born, but when they leave the nest a few weeks later they are as big as adults. You can tell them apart because their legs are brown, instead of orange or red, and they don’t have the silver eyes.”

And what of those pigeons nesting inside bridges, on tall buildings and other spaces away from, but usually above, mankind? Matthew Kettle, Bird Shows Supervisor at Taronga Park Zoo says, “Parents make ‘pigeon milk’ in their throat to feed babies, or squabs, for the first week or so and then mix in regurgitated food and water for a few more weeks”, by which time the kids are old enough to drink, fly, and vote for themselves.

Feasable explanations, but is there something they’re not telling us? When asked “So if storks deliver baby humans, who delivers baby storks?”, the phone lines went dead.