When I started this blog almost exactly a year ago, I told myself that since it belonged strictly to me and not to a publisher, I was going to publish any crazy ass thing I wanted, up to and including a poem now and again. I forgot that I haven't written poems since college, and I'm badly out of practice. Well, here goes nothing.

Lunch yesterday with Australian HR exec and writer Andrew O'Keeffe, author of The Boss, a novel I'll be reviewing here soon enough.

But I couldn't embargo this true anecdote that O'Keeffe shared about employee communication.

A CEO was told that an engagement survey had found that employees think company communication leaves a lot to be desired.

"If people think communication around here is poor," he bellowed, "they are seriously misinformed!"

My faithful and funny Australian communication correspondent and golf mate Rodney Gray—I can't mention him without boasting that he and I once played together on a course outside Sydney that was teeming with kangaroos—has a gem for us.

Newish Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd and his treasurer are being forced these days to talk a lot about a national budget deficit projected to be $300 billion.

Except, Gray says and the Australian Associated Press confirms, they won't say "billion," because if they say only "300," their political opponents can't make ads quoting them as saying "$300 billion."

Australian journalist Annabel Crabb reacted, "I don't know if I've ever seen anything so awfully, skin-crawlingly, knuckle-bitingly embarrassing …."

Bootsters, I bet you have. Let's hear it.