Have you lost your cam­era recently? Mis­laid it some­where in a national park? Left it in a taxi? Dropped it in the gorilla pit? Any­one can be a vic­tim of the thought­less­ness and/or sleepi­ness that can lead to Cam­era Loss.

‘How can I pre­vent Cam­era Loss?’ I hear you ask, wish­ing I’d get to the point. Well, you can’t pre­vent cam­eras from get­ting lost, but you can do some­thing so your cam­era can be found very soon after it has vanished.

All you have to do is take some pho­tos – which you never delete from your cam­era – so when some­one finds your cam­era at the bot­tom of the gorilla pit they are able to locate you and return the lost prop­erty to its right­ful owner.

To illus­trate just how you can safe­guard your cam­era from the crip­pling effects of Cam­era Loss, here are the pics that I always keep on my camera.

Over the past few months I have been addressed as ‘Andrew’, ‘Sir’ and ‘Oh no, that guy is com­ing over to talk to us – fake smiles every­one – oh hello Andrew.’ I am con­tent with all of these monikers. What I am less thrilled about is being known as the ‘Goat Skull Guy’. Ever since I blogged about tak­ing my own Goat Skull to work with me for Take Your Skull to School or Work Day I have been cat­e­gorised – or pigeon­holed if you will – as that guy with the skull.

Pigeon­hol­ing is an ugly sport, like ele­phant poach­ing or play­ing Twister in win­ter. It ren­ders both the pigeon­holee and the pigeon­holer one-dimensional and it evokes the image of a car­toon char­ac­ter being shot with pigeon-shaped bul­lets that leave pigeon-shaped wounds. Like I said, it’s an ugly sport.

It can take on many dif­fer­ent forms too. There is Actor Pigeon­hol­ing for actors who never move on from suc­cess­ful roles (Buffy, I’m look­ing at you) and there is Author Pigeon­hol­ing for authors who never escape their most suc­cess­ful books (J.K. I’m look­ing at you). And there is Present Pigeon­hol­ing. This kind of pigeon­hol­ing has prob­a­bly hap­pened to you before. You express an inter­est in – let’s say – cus­tard – and for the rest of your life you receive custard-themed presents: car­tons of cus­tard, cus­tard pow­der, cus­tard apples, books of cus­tard recipes, books about Gen­eral Custer, etc.

But Weird Pigeon­hol­ing – aka being pigeon­holed for a per­ceived weird­ness – is the worst. I say this as both the Goat Skull Guy and as a per­son. I haven’t always been on the receiv­ing end of Weird Pigeon­hol­ing though. At school I was over­shad­owed by char­ac­ters such as Robert the Blood­eater who was known for eat­ing his own blood, Fast Brent who was known for run­ning and Jessie­and­Cassie who were known for being twins.

No, it wasn’t until 2009 that I was truly reduced to being a one-thing won­der. Since post­ing about goat skulls on this blog I have received an end­less stream of emails from peo­ple who say they have been reminded of me by a cer­tain skull or goat-related object they’ve come across.

Does it even mat­ter though? Should we care if we are pigeon­holed? I thought about this a lot and I realised that there is actu­ally a lot more to me. I am a real-life human being with loads of dif­fer­ent lay­ers of emo­tions and gar­ments and per­son­al­ity traits. I am not a goat-obsessed weirdo with a taste for bones. And it really doesn’t mat­ter if peo­ple pigeon­hole me. I felt much bet­ter after I realised this and had freed my mind from a tor­tur­ous line of thought. And so I stepped out­side and went for a leisurely stroll through the goat grave­yard out the back of my house, con­tent in the knowl­edge that I am the well adjusted per­son I have always thought I am.

I recently got an email from a teacher at Var­sity Col­lege on the Gold Coast who had been read­ing The Great­est Blog­ger in the World with her Grade 5 class. Appar­ently they liked the book so much they decided to run their own in-class Great­est Blog­ger com­pe­ti­tion. They used the specs from the offi­cial com­pe­ti­tion that ran back in July, to com­pose a short story with words and terms from the book such as ‘Bar­code’, ‘Lola Cat’ and ‘Trunk Food Company’.

The Var­sity Col­lege Great­est Blog­ger com­pe­ti­tion has been and gone and I can now exclu­sively reveal that the win­ner of the com­peition was Olivia. Good on you Olivia. You are the Great­est Blog­ger (at Var­sity Col­lege, if not the world). And here is Olivia’s win­ning com­po­si­tion for your read­ing pleasure.

My granny is soooo annoy­ing that we built her granny flat out of straw in the hope that one day, the big bad wolf would come and blow it down and eat her! But instead when she opened the door she saw Lola Cat with the Boots — Puss-in-Boots, along with his famous out­back, iron­man of an ani­mal BARCODE — or stage name — DUCK ON A LEASH!! I won’t tell you the rest, things might get feathery!

Before Mum’s wed­ding, I got my hair cut so short that on the day I wore a tuxedo instead of a dress. They were sell­ing ille­gal red cor­dial at the time of the after party, so I took my chances and had a sip. It tasted bet­ter know­ing where I’d end up, because nobody would see me like this in jail. I guess it was the Trunk Food Com­pany behind it.

The biggest ani­mal on our farm is the unshorn merino. At our school par-tay they wanted it there instead of the school mas­cot. A kid called Dr Mary­loaf started to ride it. It’s now in hospital…sad really! It must have been groomed by my mum after her FAP meet­ing. Mum makes every­thing look like card­board…includ­ing me! Maybe he thought the merino was one of those card­board mod­els that you just jump on and ride?

Yes, I have been a bad blog­ger of late — ignor­ing my blog, not answer­ing emails, writ­ing in a real-life diary instead, etc. I have been in New York and Canada hav­ing what we call a ‘hol­i­day’, what the locals there call a ‘vaca­tion’ and what the US gov­ern­ment calls ‘a valu­able input of tourist money into a flag­ging US economy’.

And here is the most amaz­ing thing I found dur­ing my North Amer­i­can travels.

Yep, more goat skulls! After I spent a good por­tion of this year blog­ging about goat skulls, it was per­fect that in an art gallery in Mon­tréal, Canada I would find mov­ing crea­tures with the heads of dead goats. I watched them for a lot longer than the above video goes on for. The com­bi­na­tion of goat skull with crab claws is inspired.

The artist of these dis­turb­ing (good dis­turb­ing, not bad) exhibits is a local guy called Eric Braün (who does some pretty cool art­work and comics as well).

Dear Prime Minister,

I am writ­ing to thank you for start­ing up your very own ‘youth’ blog. As some­one who has just writ­ten a book all about blog­ging it pleases me greatly to think of the Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter star­ing at a com­puter screen and scream­ing, ‘Why won’t this image upload? I keep press­ing ‘Upload’ and noth­ing hap­pens. And how do I make all my links flu­o­res­cent green anyway?’

How­ever hav­ing looked at your youth blog I thought I would offer a few sug­ges­tions so that your blog might be some­what more appeal­ing to the kids.

To start with I think you should include some ref­er­ence points for young peo­ple. And when I say ‘ref­er­ence points’ I mean lol­cat jokes. For exam­ple you could include a pic­ture like this:

It will demon­strate that you can make fun of your­self and that you can speak the con­tracted lan­guage of the young.

I like the way that on your last blog post you asked read­ers to tell you what they would do if they were Prime Min­is­ter for a day. You should know that while some peo­ple think you are a stern taskmas­ter with no sense of fun, I can assure you that ALL young peo­ple would love to be you for a day. Mainly so they could call Obama and have a chat with him on the phone.

Which makes me won­der – when you call lead­ers of for­eign nations do you use Skype? It’s cheaper than call­ing on the phone you know. Plus you could do video link-ups. Just imag­ine being about to see the looks on the faces of the Burmese junta when you tell them about new sanc­tions being intro­duced on their country!

I think that your blog would also ben­e­fit from some wid­gets. For exam­ple how about a wid­get to count­down to Mal­colm Turnbull’s birthday?

Noth­ing says ‘bi-partisanship’ more than get­ting the leader of the oppo­si­tion a present for his birthday.

Finally, I like a blog post that fin­ishes on a light note – some­times with a YouTube clip that gives me lolz.

Per­haps a clip like this one would be a good starter?

I think if you fol­low my sug­ges­tions and ‘funk up’ your blog you will imme­di­ately gar­ner a strong fol­low­ing from every mem­ber of The Youth demo­graphic. After all, The Youth are the future of this country’s fed­eral electorates.

Kind regards,
Andrew McDon­ald
Author of The Great­est Blog­ger in the World