1. I went on a bus tour of the municipality I work for. Oddly enough, I started giving the bus tour halfway through, but that's not a surprise to anyone, right? So we're heading down Barry Rd Thomastown, towards the Whittlesea Botanic Gardens, looking at the huge amount of orange brick that went into making the suburb. Through the gap between two houses we see an easement, graced with the upturned shell of a car, stripped and ready to be torched. We laughed, because it was so movie-absurd and yet so plausible. We had a discussion about social planning, but the tyre marks from the donuts in the Botanic Gardens carpark distracted everyone.

2. Repetition is the hallmark of power. By which I mean, the ability to say the same thing in a limited number of ways to every statement that is put to you probably marks you out as a leader of persons. Or a senior bureaucrat.
today's exemplar of this principle is a senior manager of my place of employ. The details are not that important, but I was impressed by his ability to say "this is really about promotion" and "we don't want to get [lunatic Federal minister] off-side" to a wide variety of propositions, including such apparently open-ended questions as "would you like me to do anything?" I guess variety dilutes the message...