As this great metropolis falls apart, I’m hearing Australians are getting too cynical. But that’s not it at all. As I always say, a cynic is just a realist who is drunk.

It isn’t that the glass is half-empty. It’s more like Roy Scheider in Jaws. Having seen the circling shark, you just need to get me a bigger glass and keep filling.

The negativity is everywhere – especially if you’re young. We used to have reds under the bed now it’s neuroses under the keffiyehs. Take Melbourne-based and perky Gen Z-er Siena. She writes in the Age about working three jobs, no time for dating, and a 2025 Wellbeing Index saying young people are unhappier than earlier generations. She blames Boomers because they’ve kept everything for themselves. Staring into the plasma of my 100-inch flat-screen I have to agree. I hate myself too.

As American crooner Bing Crosby once sang before rock and roll happened and he slid into irrelevance, we need to accentuate the positive. According to my flat-screen there’s plenty of it, you just need to find a new streaming service that doesn’t bankrupt you. Look, here’s some good news right now:

Virgin passengers can now travel with their dogs on domestic flights. Great news, but not cheap. It’s $149 one-way to place your dog underneath the seat you’ve already paid for. And there are rules: once onboard the dogs must be in a container so rogue chihuahuas can’t bite your ankles in-flight as you eat a 40-dollar meal that looks nothing like the advertised chicken korma or as you pretend you’re working on your laptop so you can still claim the billable hour.

The dog sizes are limited too. All bets are off if a large, aroused golden retriever humps your leg as you force your oversized guitar case into the overhead locker and crush some other passenger’s Krispy Kremes. To be fair, Qantas Chairman’s Lounge has this problem too, with flight crew using rolled-up Fin Reviews on over-excited, slobbering lobbyists who’ve spotted an unattended politician near the complimentary bain-marie.

Victoria has new Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) laws making it even easier for people who want to kill themselves to do so. This makes us not only the most liveable state but also the most killable. I want this on our number plates as a daily reminder of how happy I should be. While all of us yet to travel over the dog rainbow bridge say, ‘Hurrah’, it does seem to contradict other policies legislated to keep us alive like pill testing, machete bins, Best Banh Mi polls and safe injecting rooms with the lot.

I’m often asked, by the sedated elderly, ‘Mike, what is VAD?’ and I reach over with a comforting hand and explain it’s Ozempic for old people – just take this little pill, you’ll drop 20 kilos, and not have to buy an overpriced carton of Man Shakes you’ll never finish because of the taste. I wonder how this works at St Vincent’s Hospital where they now colour code how they prioritise patients. Hopefully, they won’t be moving indigenous patients to the front of the VAD queue.

Speaking of VAD, the new TV series Golden Bachelor has started on Nine. This is a dating show for older people who haven’t succumbed to VAD, can afford the gym membership and are interested in sex with people the same age as them. It’s a throwback to Fantasy Island or maybe popular 1981 rom-com Porkies (the origin story for Love Actually), with lots of superannuated ex-Brady Bunch cast members looking for love or trying to pretend they’re not gay but without a marinated Ricardo Montalban who I believe is still alive as a result of regular blood transfusions and tipped to be Golden Bachelor in season two.

Speaking of true love, a survey in the Herald Sun reveals most people marry for money, not love, which is good news as we can now save on expensive, overly romantic white-dress weddings and just hold the ceremony next to an ATM instead.

This is reassuring if you ever felt ripped off in a relationship. See, your intuition was right and like Roy Scheider in Jaws or Jamie Packer when he dated Mariah Carey you may have to buy a bigger boat if only to keep your OnlyFans hook-up happy.

The poll is by Finder, who I couldn’t find anywhere. It turns out they’re a financial company and so very much concerned with matters of the heart like your credit rating. Their poll says 3.6 million Australians have married for financial reasons. This is based on a poll sample of only 1,000 which is the big return on investment you usually only see in Climate Council polling or when Lambo Guy walks onto The Block set for the end-of-season auctions.

Where did they find these wannabe gold diggers? I’m guessing Toorak or Brighton – if you’re from Sydney think Double Bay or Vaucluse; if Tasmania, think anyone who spends weekends at Salamanca Market objecting to the new AFL stadium and using the word ‘aesthetics’. I think we all know somebody who loves their partner’s money a little too much. The tell is when you visit for lunch, but they insist on showing you the BMWs in the garage rather than the two-month-old baby in the cot.

Gold digging is less common than you think because the rich are usually attracted to their own kind meaning there is not the necessary wealth discrepancy to allow gold digging to occur. This is why we herd them all into wealthy suburbs and allow them to free range with their financial equals or young AFL recruits who did well in the draft.

This isn’t new. In 2019 the Toffee dating app was created for rich private school types wanting to further diminish the gene pool by mating with their own in a scary mix of overpriced Victoria’s Secret underwear and Invisalign. Promoted as glamorously decadent it turned out to be just a bunch of obnoxious young real estate agents down at Portsea hitting each other over the heads with polo mallets because it felt so good when someone paid them to stop. Just like life, really.