August 29 2007

Text By Greg Fallis

You too can be a winner. Impress your date, amaze your friends. Bust a balloon and carry off a prize. Come one, come all, share in the cheap, tawdy, gimcrack dreams of the carnival.

And we do share in them, we do. No, we're not taken in by the tinselly gaudiness, we're not beguiled by the vulgar glitter. It's quite clear that they don't even attempt to camouflage the wretchedness of it all. We're very aware we'd be competing in games rigged against us for prizes we don't really want to win. We willingly overlook the carnival reality; we only want the carnival dream. We want to pick up a dart and bust a balloon.

Only a plonker of the first order would offer up a carny game as a metaphor for life...but we all think it, sometimes. Sometimes it seems life is a rigged game in a tacky stall run by a drunk. Sometimes it seems we're all of us just plonkers on the midway.

But it's not so. The plonker thinks you win the prize by busting the balloon. In truth, you win the prize just by picking up the dart.