The Helium people have recommended that we use real photos of ourselves and be serious in our "About Me" sections. Yeah, right. Where is the fun in that? I thought writing was supposed to be enjoyable. So, sod that, I've always been silly and, like the old dog of folklore, I'm not about to learn new tricks. And hey, get rid of Jack? No way.

So, sit back, relax, and get yourself ready for a ride into the surreal world of Jimmy Nightingale. It's a little like a David Lynch film, however I'm sure that by the end of my life, unlike Lynch's films, it will make some kind of sense. There will also be a narrator.

I first thought about a narrator from one of those wildlife or police documentaries, someone like David Attenborough or Will Lyman, but the best narrative voice is that of Morgan Freeman. Yes, I know a Morgan Freeman voiceover is a much overused device, but the guy is smooth. His is the voice of God, well, at least in the movies, and I do think that there are none better.

Now, close your eyes and pretend that Mr Freeman is speaking the rest of these words:

Jimmy Nightingale is a silly sod. No-one knows where he came from or understands what he is on about most of the time as he tends to speak in a range of accents depending on the movies he watches (the mere mention of a celebrity or a country can be enough to trigger some temporary geographical displacement in his head).

One thing is sure though and that is that he appeared in the Sutherland Shire, in the southern suburbs of Sydney, at some stage in the 1960s and inflicted the locals with his own brand of silliness. In the process, he developed an affliction which has proved to be a curse, namely support for the local football team, the Cronulla Sutherland Sharks. His passionate support, culminating in a couple of mediocre appearances in Reserve Grade, is to date unrewarded with anything approaching a Premiership and is largely pointless.

He joined a band in the late 1970s and, after years of pestering the other members to sing, they foolishly agreed, thinking that he might live up to his monicker. Thus was Nightingale's prodigious vocal anti-talent unleashed upon the world. Sadly, the world wasn't ready for this and neither was the band. They broke up shortly after, the other band members drifting off into a lifetime of soul-searching and expensive therapy. Nightingale was black-listed by any group or organisation with even the most tenuous musical focus and eventually he and his family moved away from Sydney.

After successfully completing high school and then a Business degree, Nightingale decided that the best revenge on an unkind world was to inflict it with his genetic material, fathering four children and developing multiple personality disorder. This has proved very useful when no-one will play chess with him, however his plans for revenge came unstuck when a couple of those personalities could actually sing. He is currently in therapy and trying to convince his psychologist that there is such a thing as selective Tourette's.

He is still waiting for Cronulla to win a Premiership. The board of the Cronulla Sutherland RLFC call their Premiership drought "Nightingale's Curse" as their league's club was the venue for that fateful evening of anti-talent.

Quite frankly, I think they secretly just wish that he would start supporting someone else.

My passion is ...

writing, music, movies, the Chelsea Football Club, and the Cronulla Sharks (an Australian rugby league team that has never won a Premiership)

I know too much about ...

stupid, abstract stuff that no-one apart from me is interested in

My parents always told me ...

to not ask so many questions, to eat my vegies and to shut up (I ignored them)

My childhood ambition ...

to be a doctor; didn't happen, so now I'll have to rely on winning Lotto

My favorite memory ...

the birth of each of my four children

Why I write ...

because I can. I'd like to also think that I have something worthwhile to say

What I am reading/watching/listening to ...

Jose Saramago/any movie that makes me laugh/Coldplay, The Frames, Jesse Malin

My first job ...

paid job - cooking chickens at Red Rooster; unpaid - child slave labour at home

My best moment ...

becoming a father. Winning lotto/lottery (only joking, I'm the unluckiest person on the planet)

My inspiration ...

Hemingway was rejected 27 times before he was published (I have 26 rejections to go...)

Sciences > Anthropology Predicting the next phase of human evolution

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Ever since the first primitive humans, namely Homo Habilis, decided it would be easier to use stone tools to do certain things, human evolution has been marked by technological leaps. Fire, stone, bronze, iron, steam, coal/oil (electricity), and silicon have all played their parts. With the earlier leaps forward, cranial capacity expanded in conjunction and anthropologists continue to argue the 'chicken or the egg' question: whether the technological leaps preceded or drove the increase in brain size. Such a question is important because our technological leaps are proceeding at an ever ...

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