In his autobiography, My Last Sigh, film-maker Luis Buñuel describes the arrival of movies in rural Spain. The audience, unfamiliar with the syntax of films, were bamboozled by the jump cuts and changes in point of view. An explicador accompanied every screening, standing at the front of the cinema and explaining the film to head-scratching movie-goers.

I want an explicador to wander around by my side and explain much of modern life to me. Why is Big Brother so popular? Why do universities offer homeopathy and iridology as units of study but not alchemy or contacting the dead 101? Why is so difficult to get a phone connection in your office?

Yrs
Baffled of Melbourne