"The Meek shall inherit the earth". This is a mistake, not on the part of the speaker, but on the part of the all-too-human translators. The original error was made in the translation from Hebrew into Greek and further compounded by an error in the translation of Greek into Latin.

From then on, who knows what happened? I have no facts to back me up on this and I certainly have not engaged in any research on the matter. It's a gut feeling and thus very difficult to refute in academic terms. It is my assumption that the correct translation of the phrase should be " The petty will inherit the earth", primarily because it makes sense.

The petty deserve the earth, and besides, where else could be we go? The residents of heaven would hardly be interested in us constantly bitchin' 'bout the place. We shouldn't go to Hell, because, unless the Church's stance has changed, I don't think pettiness is a mortal sin. Ergo - we get the earth.

There has been great deal of mail generated by last week's column concerning my pettiness. Many readers believed they had a similar gift for intolerance, a few were appalled and others wished to learn more. The question that arose more than any other was: how can I become more petty?

For those inquiring minds, I have attempted to deconstruct my own pettiness, but let me say this: the truly petty are born, not made, I am a complainer. Even when there is nothing to complain about, I complain. It's the only way I know how to make a conversation.

Some of you may aspire to depths of pettiness that are beyond you. You may be too good-natured, annoyingly positive, cringingly sentimental or have faith in humanity. With time these qualities under a patient, watchful eyes can be ironed out and may disappear completely. The more you make others suffer, the greater your feeling of accomplishment. Hence the phrase: "No pain- no gain". Before long, you should start feeling the benefit of this regimen and join the ranks of the consciously petty. Never let a moment pass you by, you have a right to comment on anything. Never forget, it's your planet too (and with time it will be all yours).

Attitude, repetition, suspicion, expectation. By following these four simple steps, you can become very petty in a short time. If you don't see immediate results, just try harder.

Attitude: This is a term you should hear often and employ yourself whenever possible. It is normally preceded by the words "I don't like your..." or "It is a question of your..." . It will enable you to neatly side-step questions by deflecting attention to your accuser. If anyone has the audacity to query the extent of your pain, the validity of a story, is indifferent or suggests you're exaggerating - just question their attitude. Never forget: there is only one way to view a situation and it's yours.

Repetition: Repetition is a major weapon in the arsenal of the petty. When properly applied it will wear your opponent down. Repeat, repeat, repeat, go on and on, labour your point and when you stop - continue. When repetition is combined with lethal amounts of bitterness you have a dynamic combination.

Suspicion: The petty person thrives on the misfortunes of others. To capitalise on an error you must be aware of it; therefore, always be on the look-out for mistakes. Watch your acquaintances continually, make them nervous, be suspicious of their action, thoughts and motivations. Let them know you are watching them. This will make them more nervous and more capable of failure.

Expectation: I have saved the best for last. Expectation is the greatest tool available to you. Optimism guarantees misery and false hope produces the perfect situation for a petty outburst. Push the level of expectation up very high and you have nowhere to go but down. Regardless of the situation, always expect too much from it.

Every day, more disenfranchised people join the ranks of the petty. There are millions of us and we are the true democrats. The petty do not recognise race, color, religion, disability or sexual preference....to us, anyone is fair game.

Remember, the only person in the world who is truly disadvantaged is you. So it seems only fair that you and the rest of us get this spinning ball of mud. If I'm wrong and we don't get the world, we'll make it hell for them in heaven, just like we made it hell for them on earth. The truly petty can make a mountain out of thin air. Now that's a miracle.

White feathers brown-grey from the muck and grime of the city. A tiny blackened head foraging for scraps. Its elegant beak pinpointing morsels that shorter-beaked birds cannot reach. It is a superior animal in every respect and it is rewarded for this evolutionary gift with a half-eaten egg and bacon sandwich still wrapped in plastic.

Several readers know of my loathing for the cockroach; few are aware of my deep and uncontrollable hatred of the ibis. Hatred fuelled by sadness. How could this bird have fallen so far?

The ibis, treasured bird of ancient Egypt, who possessed a special relationship with the gods. The ibis, who inspired the Greek poets Ovid and Callimachus. The ibis, Colleridge's second choice for the albatross, and friend of the phoenix. The once magical bird has fallen further and harder than any other. Maybe it happened when the ibis swapped the banks of the Nile for the sewage outlets of Bondi. Perhaps when it left the Tigris and Euphrates, the home of civilisation, and settled for their corner of Victoria and Darlinghurst Streets, the home of the cappuccino.

One thing is true. The proud bird that left the drifting sands of the mystic East is not the same one that arrived penniless in the Antipodes. The ibis has become a vagrant, a hobo, a bum. The only difference is the ibis doesn't have a shopping cart to push around. If you get close enough to one to smell its breath, it even reeks of turps. Somehow the ibis has become the Robert Downey Jnr. of the heron family. A gifted creature with an assured future, who now stalks the back streets covered in crap. A shadow of its former self, desperately in need of rehab - Robert, not the ibis.

My eyes first alighted on the bird in a book on Tutankhamen. I was trying to complete a school assignment on interbreeding, false gods, water on the brain and pyramids - when there stood the ibis. A divine creature with a swan-like neck and stark white feathers. Its noble profile carved by long-dead artisans into stone. A bird with a living body and a tiny mummified head. The more I looked, the more the ibis stared back at me form the pages of history. Its sacred image shaped with lapis lazuli, pressed into metal, etched into the walls of Cheops. Those papyrus readers loved that bird. In this old world the ibis knew Osiris and Horace, the gods of ancient Egypt, and roamed free in the gardens of Rameses and Cleopatra. You can tell a lot about a bird by the company it keeps.

These days the ibis is most often seen in the company of pigeons (the rats of the air) and seagulls (the pigeons of the sea). I have no idea what goes on in the mind of the ibis; it may think the other birds look up to it. It's like the big dumb kid at school who hit puberty first, the kid you send in to get the fags and the booze. The truth is that the only reason those mongrels hang around is to feed on the scraps the ibis drops. These scavengers are using the ibis, and the dwarf stork is too stupid to figure it out. So there it stands, a moronic featherhead Fagin surrounded by an assortment of winged rats and sea birds. And thereby hangs a tale....

A tiger, a fox and an ibis met one night in the jungle. The tiger said, "I have these stripes to conceal me in the forest." The fox said, " I have these eyes to help me see at night." The ibis said, "I have this really long beak to get to all that good stuff at the bottom of the bin." What a gift. What immortal hand or eye framed that one? Here's a long bill used for probing mud for soft mollusks or for hunting through garbage to find a mouldy falafel fused to cigarette butts and lemonade. And here are some long legs to help you wade through water or give you a height advantage when you're raiding the bins.

And so ends a moral story; the ibis is the ugly duckling who grew up to discover it was just a duck, and an ugly duck at that. Where the phoenix rose form the ashes, the ibis rolls around in them, which serves to remind us of the price you pay when you fall from the heavens.

Why me? Out of a street-load of potential failures, why do they always pounce on me? What am I doing that attracts their attention? Is it something in my manner? Am I the only member of the herd with a limp? Is there blood on my flank? I'm a magnet for anyone with a clipboard and a questionnaire. They'll cross the street to stop me. "Hello sir, would you like to answer a few questions?

This exchange must happen to everyone, but it seems to happen a lot more to me. It always occurs on a busy street corner when I'm trying to get somewhere in a hurry. An earnest stranger, with the conviction of the converted, blocks my way. "Just a few questions, it won't take a second." A multiple-choice minefield to prove, scientifically, that I'm an abject failure. It only takes a few minutes and in those few minutes I'm transformed from a retiring, yet confident, individual into a self-centred egomaniac out of touch with reality. I don't feel any different, but my new friend assures me it's all there in the way I've answered the questions. The form confirms it, my life's a crock. "It's that bad huh? What can I do?"

Fear not, hope is at hand. I can reach my full potential, become a better person, find untold wealth, be attractive to the opposite sex and live forever - if I answer a few more questions. All I have to do is follow the Street Interrogator (SI) up the stairs and into a grey office. It's of concern that the good folk asking the questions always seem more in need of guidance than anyone they stop. If this person has fond their "full potential" why isn't there any physical evidence? Why are they dribbling out of both sides of their mouths at once? And if this is an improvement, what were they like before? It's wrong to judge a book by it's cover - but these are people we are talking about. Grey gabardine shorts, white socks pulled up to the knees, greasy hair plastered flat on one side of his balding pate: and he's asking me if I need help? What about the gibbering 18-year-old recruit fresh from Stupidville, telling you they can assist you? The only way they could assist is if they were asking "D'ya want fries with that?"

And yet, you stand there in the middle of a busy street while they tell you what a mess you've made of your life. There is a way you can take your revenge. Lure the SI towards you. You accomplish this by one of three methods: 1) The limping seagull method; 2) The uncontrolled emotions method; 3) The heaps of stinking cash sticking out of your pocket method.

Your mission is to get asked to do the big test. I have always found it's best to take a surreal approach when the big test is in front of you. Circle at least two answers for every multiple choice, swap the test with your friends, leave entire sections out or ask if you can finish it at home in your own time. If a moral dilemma has an obvious answer, find the most grotesque answer and circle that.

For instance, if the question is: a young attractive family of four are involved in a high speed collision with a tree. Their expensive car is about to burst into flames. Do you:
a) Immediately ring the police and ambulance service;
b) Without thinking of your own safety rush into the burning wreck and save their lives;
c) Wait for the fire to die down, get rid of the bodies and sell the car for scrap?

I would mark "c" (with the proviso that you would also flog their still-smouldering body parts in the overseas organ market). You would be surprised how highly you can score as a motivated personality by this method. I may sound sceptical about the methods employed by the SI, but there are some undeniable truths. Their carefully designed forms do help you to uncover aspects of your personality. For instance, if you walk up the stairs, you've discovered you're Gullible. If you sign away your earthly belongings for a "seminar" you've discovered you're Stupid. How much else you learn on the streets of Sydney is up to you.

"A dog is a man's best friend." In the transaction between humanity and an animal, dogs agreed to be loyal, subservient companions in exchange for warmth, shelter and food. Part of this agreement meant they would be called upon to perform unpleasant tasks. The most unpleasant and degrading of these would be to appear in commercials.

The world of advertising has entered a new phase, with an alarming increase in the number of animal-oriented ads. There have always been the Shirley Temple quadrupeds: "trained" animals bred to perform. Dogs and cats with shiny coats, good teeth and a carefree attitude to life. The kind of animals that, if they were human, would be in Coca-Cola ads. At least these creatures advertise products that have some impact on their lives: like chowing down on liver or begging to be wormed.

But these days all kinds of exotic mammals are working their asses off selling everything from cars to chocolate bars. We have polar bears swigging rum and acting like Westies, para-gliding three-toed sloths and camels who get off on funk and afros.

There are many reasons for the popularity of animals: they're cute, cuddly and tell the truth, as opposed to human beings, who are all liars. A panda would never mislead you about the interior comfort of a car, an elephant wouldn't swim for a drink unless it tasted great, and we all accept the fact that polar bears are party animals who dig foxy ladies, bad jazz and getting pissed. I cannot deny the popularity of animals, but I am concerned about the psychological strain a workload places on creatures of leisure - it could be the straw that breaks its back.

There are safeguards ensuring animals in ads are not physically mistreated, but what of their mental state? They're well fed and pampered now, but there may come a day when they're not needed anymore. What happens when the Daewoo dog has finished its hectic schedule of script-reading, shooting, performing and mall appearances? What then? What happens if a young pup comes along with more talent? After years of being the top Dog in sales, will he be happy to be put out to pasture like some stud bull? After the limousines, the late nights, the whining and dining, where does the Daewoo dog go? Will Peter Luck scout around dumps in search of our "Littlest Hobo" for Where Are They Now? Will he appear bloated or corpse-like on Oprah? (The Daewoo dog, not Peter Luck.) Will he end up as maggot-food and mulch like Skippy, Gentle Ben, Flipper, Rin Tin Tin, Lassie and all the others?

We have all seen the terrible effect that fame and fortune can have on people. Just look at Shirley MacLaine and Marlon Brando. Will our Daewoo dog swell up to the size of a Zepplin, lose loved ones in a bizarre murder triangle and write best-selling books about self-realisation and reincarnation?

In the fast-livin', easy sex, hard drugs and "dog eat dog" world of advertising any creature could lose its innocence, despite a willingness to be exploited. Animals will continue to be used in advertising because they're cheaper than child labour, most of them work for peanuts, and they have no conscience. The final factor is most important: it means animals will sell anything, even if they don't believe in it.

This is one issue that has got my goat and where we have to take the bull by the horns and enter the lion's den. It's not too late, the horse hasn't bolted, and if we're eager beavers we won't end up flogging a dead one. We have to go cold turkey on the whole animals in ads thing. Animals are sitting ducks for unscrupulous merchants and if we don't take care of them they'll be as dead as dodos. So tomorrow, if it ever comes, I'm off to see a man about a dog. We have reduced their numbers, destroyed their habitats and now we force this final indignity upon them. How long will it be before that bear in the woods is using Sorbent?