Itemisation

Black Saturday

2009-02-09T18:01:00.005+11:00

Last Friday afternoon, John Brumby made what seemed like a ridiculous statement, that Saturday could be "the worst day ever in the history of the state." A combination of very high temperatures, extreme winds and bushland dried out by years of drought certainly had potential for something very nasty, but did anyone really think it would happen?

There's been a lot of speculation that the reason for the staggering number of fatalities (it's currently 130 but is expected to go considerably higher) is due to the fact that people have forgotten Ash Wednesday. Not that it occurred, or that it was bad, but just how ferocious a fire can be.

I was at the beach - Airey's Inlet, where folks are rightly spooked by fire (it was almost entirely destroyed in 1983). We knew it would be hot and that fire danger was extreme, but we had the fire plan in order (kinda) and spent most of the day marvelling at the ludicrous heat.

With the radio on 774 listening for any mention of fires in the area, we were glued to the weather websites, getting excited with every notch of temperature. I put a thermometer outside to see how hot it was (if you look closely you'll see it reads 42ish).

I then stuck it in the sun to see how hot we could get it. It got to 49 and promptly died.

The birds were freaking out, just sitting under the eaves of the house making pathetic squawking noises (poor little buggers).

The air baked.

But the first sign that things were going to get bad was looking at the BOM radar to see what looked like rain bands in Gippsland. But it wasn't rain. It was smoke.

As the news rolled in that night the horror began to dawn. Whole towns were gone. Images of cars crashed and burned in the desperate, panicked attempt to get away. The stories of people dying by ones and twos, whole families, dogs, cats, old people, children. The initial estimates of 30 dead rapidly became obviously inadequate.

What became clear was that many of the people who died had made the decision to stay and fight - exactly the decision we had made earlier that day - but the ferocity of the front, the combination of heat, wind and incredibly low humidity suggests that there was nothing they could do. They died following the same advice that we thought would save us. Jesus.

The next morning we woke to an extraordinary sunrise accompanied by earth-shaking claps of thunder. Quite post-apocalyptic.

I suspect every Victorian will be affected by this, whether they know someone or have friends who have copped it, all of us will feel this for some time. It is a terribly sad thing.

Brokeback Goblet

2008-12-01T09:02:00.002+11:00

I'm aware that this isn't particularly ground-breaking, this video has been doing the rounds, but I want to post it here so I can remember it later.

If you haven't seen it, it's another one of those 're-cut' movie trailers, this time featuring Harry Potter and the Brokeback music - remarkably effective. And as Virginia says, "the power of a soundtrack". Listen to it through headphones, or on something with good sound and it will make you teary.

Very clever.

A new day

2008-11-08T09:44:00.003+11:00

Well, I can barely even believe it happened.

Looking back at the sparse posting over the last year on this blog, you can see how caught up I've been in Obama's push for the White House.

Way back at the start of 2006 I emailed Dr Mike and suggested that we try to find out more about the young Obama who was just starting his rise - there was something exciting about him. We agreed that though it was unlikely he'd get past Hilary in a selection battle, he was a talent to keep an eye on. And so he was.

After one of the most extraordinary campaigns in US history, America (and the world) has its first African-American president and what a man he appears to be.

For the first time in my life, the world has a politician who has shamelessly embraced the big picture, who sees value in inspiring hope and unity, who speaks of an enormous vision, who can give a speech that reduces people to tears and inspires them to try to make a difference.

The US is in a horrible dark hole and it will take a giant effort to pull it back into the light. The challenges are enormous, but to have a leader elected who can inspire and galvanise an entire nation is a truly wonderful thing.

Among the phenomenal catalogue of great speeches that Barack Obama has already delivered (can you even imagine what's to come!?), the clip below is among one of the best moments I've seen. That two friends (Joseph and Jo) were actually there to witness it makes me green with envy (Joseph writes about it here). Delivered in Manassas, Virginia, it was Obama's final campaign rally - the night before election day. Obama demonstrates his story-telling skills in a genuinely funny retelling of a story from the campaign trail that ends in a stirring call to arms.

As Helen wrote to me in an email having just watched the clip below: "won't somebody please make this man the President of the Unites States. Oh wait..."

And as a parting salute to the most brilliantly run campaign ever seen, here is a photo of a pumpkin pie made by Snaz, an expat in London watching the results roll in until 5am when she finally got to bed very tired, but very happy, a new dawn in America.

More election LOLs

2008-10-29T09:20:00.002+11:00

Hee hee. Jon Stewart is funny. And right.

If you haven't seen this already, watch it now. Right through to the end.

And some weirdness from Harry Shearer.

McCain's last hope - crumping

2008-10-25T16:02:00.002+11:00

Jeez this election is producing some gold!

Checkit.

Shudder

2008-10-16T09:03:00.002+11:00

Go here and ~~pray~~ play.

Thanks to Snaz on Twitter for the heads-up.

FRIV!

2008-10-10T11:14:00.002+11:00

OMG

Is it really almost a year since I ded the last Friday Random Interweb Video post?

Goodness, I've really let the team down haven't I.

Well, here you go (all two of you).

First of all, you may remember this post from some time ago about movie trailers recut to mean something entirely different. Well here is the latest one I've come across, courtesy of Defamer Australia.

~~Bat~~ Toy Story 2

This next one is for people who have eleven minutes to spare to watch something that should be utterly tedious. I found myself watching this almost in tears. I don't really know how to explain why I find it so moving.

After Tuesday night's presidential debate, most major television channels cut to expert panels or to other programming. But C-SPAN stayed with a live feed and the cameras were kept running as the candidates stayed in the studio to talk casually with the audience. The footage, shot without commentary, is fascinating (if you're into that sort of thing).

For the first few minutes, the McCains and the Obamas share the space. What is immediately evident is John (and Cindy) McCain's awkwardness. After a couple of minutes (during which McCain appears to snub Barack Obama's offered handshake), the McCain's disappear backstage.

What follows is an extraordinary ten minutes of Barack and Michelle Obama individually greeting EVERY SINGLE MEMBER of the audience, taking time to talk, shake hands, sign autographs, hug people and have their photos taken. It demonstrates better than any campaign ad or stump speech ever could, how Barack Obama appears to genuinely be a "Man of the People". The ease with which he works the crowd, the smiles on the faces of those around him, the palpable excitement of those he speaks to (ie everyone) is amazing to watch.

Is Palin a good debater? You betcha!

2008-10-04T11:55:00.003+10:00

Pure gold.

Via Wonkette.

Lost in America as metaphor for Wall St meltdown

2008-10-01T09:34:00.002+10:00

This is brilliant, but I won't post it here because it will be lifting the entire post from Boing Boing.

Go and watch and read.

I got this!

2008-09-14T18:45:00.003+10:00

As Dr Mike has just alerted me, Possum's latest post (on the NEW BLOG) suggests that the post-GOP Convention polls were just that - the standard post-convention bounce. The polls seem to be settling back down.

I have a feeling the outrageous Republican attack ads of the last two weeks might just come back to bite them. They've been too ludicrous, too sleazy, too unbelievable to actually help the Republicans. And if Sarah Palin's first interview is anything to go by, she'll continue to show herself to be the political novice she is.

But ultimately, it's this image from Punditkitchen.com that's making me feel better and has reminded me of the actual situation. As Possum has said, it's still Obama's to lose.

Two reasons why America needs to not let us down

2008-09-13T12:46:00.003+10:00

Jon Stewart on the differences between McCain and Bush.

And Think Progress notes the nasty tone taken towards 'Community Organisers' at the Republican Convention. Clever editing sure, but disturbing nonetheless.

McCain Palin. Do Not Want!

Possum gets serious

2008-08-25T09:01:00.002+10:00

Possumcommitatus was THE indispensable Australian (statistical) politics blog last year. Looks like things are stepping up a notch. Hoorays!

Gosh there's been a lot of video posts here lately...

And the Tony Award for "Best Girl as a Guy" goes to...

2008-08-20T09:03:00.002+10:00

This piece of Genius from The Onion was brought to my attention by Peter of the now defunct Glutbusters.

I'm proud to say that on our recent trip to the States we shared a lunch table with the Onion's appropriately hip, young, spunky marketing manager. So, you know, I am essentially responsible for this (leave credit card details in the comments kthx).

High School Tony Awards Honor Nation's Biggest Drama Club Nerds

"Dream a little meme of me(me)"

2008-08-11T14:13:00.002+10:00

Who even knew that this wonderful website existed.

Muppet style patriotism

2008-08-07T11:36:00.001+10:00

I likes it.

Via Snooze.

An post

2008-08-05T11:17:00.001+10:00

I'm working from home today, which is both good and bad. Good because, well because I'm at home, but bad because when you work at home, there's no escape from work. That may sound like an obvious thing to say, but think about it for a minute.

If you have somewhere to go to work, an office, a separate building, you are physically placing yourself in a different environment. You are surrounded by workly possessions and accoutrements, you have other people around you doing work-type things, you dress in work clothes, you talk work talk, you 'meet', you organise, arrange and produce.

When you're at home, even if you have a special room, you're still at home which means that when you finish your work, there's no transition. You're already at home. There's no commute, no time to wind down, to remove worky thoughts from your mind.

Consequently, working from home, for all its glamorous connotations kinda sucks. It either leads to horrendous procrastination ~~like blogging~~, or a soul-crushing slog that stretches well into the post-work time as your mind struggles to disconnect. I've long harboured a fantasy of getting a job on 'teh internets' so that I can be "somewhere else": down the coast, in the country. But to be honest I'm not sure how well that would go.

I know your no-shoe-wearing ~~Xavier Rudd's~~ hippies love to pour scorn on people who work in offices. "I'll never have an office job man, I'd rather be dead" etc. But I suspect it's because they've never tried working at home. Still.

In other news, I have succumbed to the evils of Facebook. As I mentioned in my previous post, there's been a lot of physical movement among friends of late and even those who are still in town seem to have been maintaining a steely radio silence. It's become a little eerie. Not to mention lonely.

And sure enough, like lifting a rock and discovering a nest of scuttling cockroaches, joining Facebook has uncovered all those missing people. They still exist! It's just that they only seem to socialise via the interwebs in this very specific place.

It reminds me of the Pete Seeger classic, "Where have all the flowers gone?". They've all gone to freakin' Facebook that's where.

So yes, I've joined the throng because I felt left out.

I still resent it though...

Back!

2008-07-28T13:01:00.001+10:00

I have just returned from three glorious weeks of holidays in the good ole US of A. Weeks of sunny, dry 30+ degree days, sun tans, drinking, eating, driving, walking, marvelling. All the things a holiday should be.

Who knew (well it was predictable really) that I would fall in love with Colorado and it's spectacular mountains, crystal-clear rivers, cute and cuddly animals (like whistle pigs!) and wholesome wholesome outdoorsey hipsters? This was my second visit to the States (the first in 2002) and I continue to be astounded by the sheer size and variety of the place. It's also fun to be treated as a novelty - not the case in Britain where Australians are to be found under every rock - though we were confused with all sorts of random nationalities.

It was nice to get away from the cold of a Melbourne winter (although I must admit to being a little excited about the prospect of freezing temperatures and rain. Seriously. There's something about dragon's breath and doonas and heaters and coats that is very comforting. I mean I like the sun and all - but still...).

I don't actually have much to report. My blogly silence is a symptom of a new job that has kept me busy and prevented the sort of mind-wandering that leads to postings. A number of friends have left for the overseas for indefinite periods which feels a bit odd. Others are making Big Life Decisions about houses and permanent and official hitchings and hatchlings and the like. *sigh*

Still, I have a few minor blogging ideas that I might trot out if youse are lucky.

Till then...

Frozen

2008-05-06T13:24:00.002+10:00

This is brilliant.

There's something about public art or stunts like this that can cause such a wonderful response from people. I love it.

Background to the whole thing here.

Elsewhere

2008-05-05T09:01:00.001+10:00

Shrieking, Hysterical and Desperate. CC on Sam Newman and the most recent Footy Show outrage.

The monster post that was

2008-04-20T13:49:00.010+10:00

So I've written and re-written a mammoth post to try to describe the trip to the Pitjantjantjara lands but there's just too much to do it any justice.

It was an extraordinary experience. Confronting, beautiful, moving. It's difficult to believe we have places like these in this country. The lives people in these communities lead is so far removed from anything in my experience that it was quite humbling to see the problems first hand and to catch a glimpse of what European settlement has done to the Aboriginal people.

So rather than try to explain what it was like in words, here are a couple of photos that will at least give you a feel for the whole thing.

The rubbish was astonishing and confronting.

Oak Valley

It rained one night.

The most devastating thing were the kids. Such little people whose lives of almost certain destitution, ill-health and abuse seem to be mapped out already. The last weekend we were in Yalata someone estimated that there were probably 80 to 100 kids in town (most about this old) and maybe 30 adults. Their parents had left for the weekend to go to Ceduna to drink.

The lake was dry on the way out to Oak Valley, but the overnight rain made a difference.

We had a brief side trip to the Head of the Bight. The cliffs start at this point and stretch unbroken for over 800km. In the other direction was low-lying beach and dunes.

Wow

2008-04-15T09:12:00.000+10:00

Just, wow!

Courtesy of Dr Mike.

New Flickr addition

2008-04-09T11:04:00.003+10:00

Well, we're back. And it was extraordinary as expected.

I'm currently working on a monster post to explain all about the trip, but in the meantime, Virginia has alerted me to the Powerhouse Museum's photo collection that has recently been loaded to Flickr. It's mesmerising.

The photos are mainly of Sydney (like this one of Bondi beach at the turn of the 20th century)

But it's fascinating nonetheless.

Powerhouse should be congratulated for opening up their collection in this way.

Into the unkown

2008-03-28T16:27:00.001+11:00

Tomorrow morning at 7:30, Snooze and I will pile our stuff into a 4WD and start out on a 1,700km journey to a place called Yalata.

View Larger Map

We will spend a couple of days in this remote aboriginal community and then head to Oak Valley, an even more remote aboriginal community 500kms or so North West of Yalata. Right in the guts of the country.

View Larger Map

The reason for the trip is a book that Snooze is editing about the Anangu communities in these settlements. Yalata and Oak valley are the end result of the aboriginal displacement caused by the Maralinga nuclear test range. I expect it will be quite confronting but also quite extraordinary.

Despite living all my life in this country, I have never ventured into what can genuinely be called the Outback. I've spent plenty of time in the Bush, but never the deserts. I think it might be quite alien but I am very much looking forward to it.

If I feel it's appropriate I might blog about it when I get back home.

In the meantime, wish us luck...

"Mmm...genius"

2008-03-06T13:32:00.002+11:00

I know all that's gone on here in the last few months is purely blog filler, but meh.

I think I'm in love with Michael Bay.

"I demand things to be awesome"

In other news, this is my 200th post on Itemisation. Happy bicentenary to me!

Opposition Leader Worthington-Delaney

2008-02-19T12:42:00.001+11:00

[Via]

!!!

2008-02-18T16:03:00.001+11:00

I has a new job!

Spotted near Sydney Rd

2008-02-13T12:50:00.000+11:00

Apparently posted by an international student.

Don't know if it's for reals or not, but it's funny either way.

Want!

2008-01-11T14:15:00.001+11:00

This is truly ace. The things people can do with technology. This is gaming 3.0 for Playstation 3.

It's a longish video, but skip a few minutes in for the fun.

Hello (cool change), is it me you're looking for?

2008-01-11T09:22:00.000+11:00

Courtesy of (and apologies to) Lionel Ritchie

I've been alone with you inside my mind
And in my dreams I've kissed your lips a thousand times
I sometimes see you pass outside my door
Hello (cool change), is it me you're looking for?

I can see it in your eyes
I can see it in your smile
You're all I've ever wanted, (and) my arms are open wide
'Cause you know just what to say
And you know just what to do
And I want to tell you so much, I love you ...

I long to see the sunlight in your (h)air
And tell you time and time again how much I care
Sometimes I feel my heart will overflow
Hello (cool change), I've just got to let you know

'Cause I wonder where you are
And I wonder what you do
Are you somewhere feeling lonely, or is someone loving you?
Tell me how to win your heart
For I haven't got a clue
But let me start by saying, I love you ...

Hello (cool change), is it me you're looking for?
'Cause I wonder where you are
And I wonder what you do
Are you somewhere feeling lonely or is someone loving you?
Tell me how to win your heart
For I haven't got a clue
But let me start by saying ... I love you

Thankyou. Donations welcomed.

UPDATE: And right on cue, here it comes.

A brief lesson in the BOM's weather mappage.

This is the extremely cool new Doppler Wind indicator that was introduced late last year (click to embiggen). It shows the shift in air towards (blue) and away from (red) the central weather radar. The darker the colours, the faster the air speed. In essence, this is showing the prevailing winds at any given moment.

You can see from this screen grab (taken a short while ago with my pretty green arrows added) that the change is literally sweeping through from the South West.

The green arrow on the right (pointing down) shows the wind direction in Melbourne at present, moving from the blue patches to the North West to the red patches in the South East. A howling North Westerly wind (note the dark red patches in the bottom right corner), hence the ridiculous heat.

The green arrow on the left (point up) is the band of cold air being pushed through with the change, switching the wind direction from the North West to the South West, bringing all that Antarcticy goodness.

Whee!

Ferrets

2008-01-10T11:32:00.000+11:00

Via Virginia. Circa 1999.

The spirit of the game

2008-01-08T13:28:00.001+11:00

Australia's extraordinary last minute victory in the second test was one of those great moments that only test cricket can deliver. After five days of high quality cricket it all came down to the last few overs. With long shadows cast by the fielding team grouped impossibly tightly around the batsman, the rambling, drunken chants of the fans too boozed to notice the tension, and every ball carrying the threat or promise of defeat, it was an hour or two of test cricket at its best.

Except.

Fucken Ricky Ponting.

With all the grace of a petulant 12 year old, the captain of the Australian cricket team, intimidated, complained and bitched and moaned his way through the entire final day. With Michael Clarke's third wicket in one over delivering the seemingly impossible, Ricky Ponting led the celebrations, thrusting his pelvis towards the Indian dressing room before leaping around with his team mates, oblivious to the shattered Anil Kumble whose stoic innings had come to nothing as he watched from the bowler's end as his hapless team disintegrated in front of him.

Poor little Ishant Sharma, the 19 year-old in only his third test, who had come to the wicket not two balls before with two right-hand gloves (he had to call back to the dressing room for a left-hand and was abused by Ponting for his efforts for presumably wasting time) stood disbelieving as the Australians cavorted around him. It was Sharma who had been robbed (by Symonds own admission) of the early wicket of Andrew Symonds in the first innings and it was Sharma who congratulated him some 130 runs later when he finally left the field. Despite his sporting gesture earlier in the game he was ignored by the Aussies as they indulged in an orgy of self-congratulation.

Some commentators have compared the Australian celebrations to the now famous moment when England won the second test of the 2005 Ashes series (in very similar circumstances) and Andrew Flintoff knelt to console the devastated Brett Lee.

None of that for the Aussies against India.

Some (most notably in today's Age, Peter Roebuck) have started to call for Ponting's removal as captain. I tend to agree, not simply because of his performance in Sydney, but because I don't think he's ever been worthy of the post. There's no doubt he is one of the greatest batsmen in the world, but the captain of the Australian cricket team needs to be more than just a good cricketer. Ponting has never been a diplomat, he's never been humble, or sensitive to how his actions (and those of his team) may be interpreted by others. If he was just another player that would be fine. But he's not. He's the captain and therefore the spokesman for the Australian team.

It's almost exclusively his lack of diplomacy that has brought on the whole crisis with the current tour. With jaw-dropping hypocrisy, Ponting insisted that the issue with Harbhajan be dealt with through official channels. Harbhajan's apparent verbal abuse of Symonds should not be encouraged, but I shudder to think of the barrage of comments from the Australians that goaded him into it.

The Australian preciousness over 'racial slurs' is ludicrous given their infamy for saying anything and everything to opposition batsmen to (as some may say) get under their goat. Apparently it's all very well to swear like a sailor, but call someone a monkey!? One could suggest some perspective is in order.

And then, just to cap it all off, the Indian Cricket Board has reacted as hysterically as possible and canceled the tour 'pending the appeal' of Harbhajan's misdemeanor - essentially blackmailing the ICC into overturning the ruling.

If the Australian's, led by Ricky Ponting had behaved with a little more decorum, if they had dealt with Harbhajan on the ground at the time with Tendulkar as mediator, if they had refused to intimidate the umpires and had accepted their decisions and if they had congratulated their opponents for one of the few genuinely competitive games they've played in recent years, the second test in Sydney would be remembered as one of the great contests - an equal to the second test at Edgbaston. Instead, we now have a summer of cricket that will be, at best, overshadowed by the nastiness of the Australian team's attitude and at worst non-existent.

Ponting would do well to acknowledge that however much they claim it's just about winning, cricket is so much more than that.

Drinkemisation

2008-01-04T11:55:00.000+11:00

The following post is brought to you by the letter Snooze.

Being back at work makes me feel like this:

The heat makes me feel like this:

and this:

The prospect of some kind of cooling beverage after work:

Indeed.

Itemisation's 2007 Year in Review

2008-01-01T11:48:00.000+11:00

In the spirit of all things New Year and as 2007 was one of the more memorable for both good and bad reasons for me personally, and because I've been very lazy and really need to provide some sort of blog fodder, I figure that some sort of 'wrap' item might be a good idea.

I've been trying to work out how best to do it - it's trickier than you think - you try it if you're going to be so freaking judgmental! Do I break into categories: travel; friends; sport; family? Or maybe into fun stuff and not-so-fun stuff? What about alphabetically (ok, that's just a stupid idea - or is it...). There's always boring old chronological order, but frankly, I don't think I can remember what order things actually occurred.

I know it sounds like I'm just trying to fill space, but I've genuinely been trying to work out how to do this for some time and I've finally decided to go with the categories and hang the expense (or something). As such and the like, I hearby present

Itemisation's
2007 Year in Review

So categories hey? Well, gotta start somewhere...

Friends

The year friend-wise started in fine form with a get together of last year's show peeps early in the New Year. After all the gushing I did at the time it will come as no surprise that I was entirely excited to see everyone on an afternoon that ended late at night in inappropriate behaviour and controversy.

A good kick off to 2007.

In March, two dear friends got hitched (H & T) - only my second 'friend' wedding ever. It was extremely ace, with the autumn colours of the Edinburgh Gardens setting it all off beautifully.

A week earlier I had ventured out into the wilds South of the River, with a bunch of your less intimidating lads, for an evening of structured buck's night debauchery. Despite our very best efforts to get beaten up at several different locales we actually escaped mostly violence free. (I must qualify that last sentence and point out that what violence there was had little, if anything, to do with our posse. I think the thought of actually getting into a fight probably terrified most of them as much as it terrified me).

Ironically the greatest danger of any of us getting involved in an actual fist fight came on the wedding day when we (the organising party) arrived at our pre-booked spot in the park, permit clutched in our little fists to find an enormous family party spread across the booked area, complete with four-wheel drives, trailers, trestle tables and a freaking jumping castle (!). Somewhat predictably the meathead who decided he was in charge of the family group decided to be a knob and argue that they didn't have to go anywhere. After some fairly frantic maneuvering and on-the-run diplomacy we managed to convince them to move their shit to allow a wedding to take place. Nice of them.

Despite that little hiccup, it was a truly fantastic event.

Meanwhile it just so happens that these two have decided to move to Paris next year, joining another dear friend, Helen, who's buggering off to the same God forsaken city in February. Seriously, what's with Paris all of a sudden?? And joining in the international fun are others from Sydney, M & I traveling to far-flung Vietnam. I mean really.

Other friends in 2007 have suddenly become all capitalist, got themselves into the property market and as one observed having signed his property contract not two hours previously: "Kevin Rudd's all very well, but now I've got a mortgage you know, I just don't think I can trust them". Quite.

Family

2007 saw my last living grandparent shuffle off this mortal coil. As I wrote at the time, it was very sad for a number of reasons but has had the effect of bringing us closer to our cousins and that's not a bad thing. One of the greatest shames was that she never got to see John Howard voted out of office - she hated the man with a passion.

We'll miss her.

Sport

The year in sporting items was certainly significant for various reasons. It started early in January with a trip to the Australian Open - always a pleasant distraction from having to be back at work.

But the really big stuff came with the start of the football season. The Mighty's made the finals for the first time in years and I was present at the record thrashing of Carlton on a freezing night at the Dome with the thickest fog I think I've ever seen. It also saw the emergence of Buddy Franklin, who's goal from outside 50 in the dying seconds of the first elimination final was one of the greatest moments in sport I've ever seen.

Still, the year in AFL belonged to the Cats - my adopted 'second' team. I say adopted because Snooze and many of my friends are devoted followers and I've just always had a soft spot for the pussies. Without my beloved Hawks making it all the way through (and let's face it - 2007 was never meant to be our year), the Cats were a very worthy substitute and the Grand Final win was just brilliant. There are few things I enjoy more than seeing Warren Tredrea crushed in humiliating defeat.

I also did a bit of sporting myself, playing 6-a-side soccer during lunchtimes at work (and continuing our tradition of being the worst team in the competition by some considerable margin). With the heavy snowfalls I also managed to get up for some skiing action as well.

Blogs

The rise and rise of Crackbook in 2007 unfortunately took it's toll on the blogging world with several beloved blogs disappearing from the interwebs. Among them the wondrous Jellyfish, Fluffy and Ausculture (Defamer's just not the same!). Glutbusters also went the way of Waverley Park. But some new gems were born or discovered including Possum's Pollyticks - the utterly indispensable guru of psephology - and both The Man Without Qualities and The Rant introducing some well-overdue new talent to the sphere o' blogs.

I'm reliably informed by various sources that Bookface is on the way out anyway (I'm sure this is the case), so clearly my decision to maintain a haughty distance is paying off handsomely and the fact that I keep missing out on party invites is just the price I have to pay for "keeping it real" as the kids would say.

Travel

Well look. If there was a moment in my life I would be happy to repeat until I died (Groundhog Day style) it would have to be this one. Five days into an eight day walk around the North East coast of Spain, the Costa Brava.

With all our expenses paid in advance, each days walk planned and presented to us in a neat little package, our bags taken for us from one village to the next and nothing to do but walk through beautiful countryside at our own pace, eat tapas, drink beer and cava, soak up the sun, become fit and tanned and sleep, it was unadulterated bliss. Here we are, looking over the Mediterranean, three more days to go. Just. Un. Real.

Spain was the culmination of four weeks of ace-ness.

Arriving in London I spent the first couple of days walking about, doing the sites and recovering from the flight then off to Rome to stay with a native. Rome just blew me away. Such an extraordinary place. I saw so much stuff including incredible works of art, including Raphael (among many others):

The Roman Forum

St Peter's Basilica

Then to Paris with Snooze where we sat on our balcony in the Marais and drank wine:

And then at last to Spain for the walking with dear friends Sophie and Virginia.

And among other things, the home of Salvador Dali, Cadaques:

And finally to Barcelona:

Health

Yeah, look - not a great year in the health area. Despite the fact that I got myself to a point where I was running 20kms a week for a while, stuff just kept happening to me.

My teeth were a disaster. I have to admit that was mostly my fault. Not actually seeing a dentist for over fifteen years and then not following though with further treatment when I finally broke the drought about five years ago (and then only because I had a tooth literally crumble into pieces). Somewhat predictably it was on the trip that my teeth decided to get one back for the years of neglect. An emergency trip to a hastily arranged dentists appointment in Rome with a dentist who barely spoke a word of English (and my Italian is extremely poor at best) revealed that I had a troublesome wisdom tooth that would need to be removed. With thoughts of having to leave early (and the miss the walking) I headed back to London despondent. Fortunately (and somewhat miraculously, the tooth managed to settle itself down enough for me to actually enjoy the rest of the time away.

When I got back to Melbourne I went to see my dentist man here. I think I probably returned 6 or 7 times in the period of about 2 months as he sorted out the mess I had been cultivating for so many years. Finally, just as I thought it had all settled down, back came that wisdom tooth and despite dentist man's best efforts, had to be removed. Without going into too much detail, let me just say that having a wisdom tooth removed under local anaesthetic in the chair is one of the weirder sensations I've ever experienced.

Then there was the drama with my troublesome mole which has been dealt with elsewhere.

All in all, I've entered 2008 several body parts lighter than this time last year.

Animals

Really this is just an excuse to show some pictures of dogs taken over the year.

The Pupwup at the start of the year (still smallish):

And at the end of the year (all growsed up):

And Dad's new whippet Henry

Culture ('n' shit)

Though our little theatre company ~~couldn't be arsed~~ didn't manage to get a show up and running in 2007, there was still plenty of fun to be had. I did two film-type items. The first was an appearance in The Audrey's film clip shot all over Melbourne and muchos funtos.

The second was for a mate who scored a sweet contract as part of the TAC's program aimed at getting young film makers involved in road safety awareness.

In March I went with a big bunch of mates to the Folkie where, among other things I got to actually play onstage - something I've always wanted to do.

It was a stunning weekend and the best way I can imagine to see in one's fourth decade.

I also saw (among other things), Exit the King with Geoffrey Rush at the Malthouse and was reminded of just how brilliant theatre can be.

Politics

2007 was the year of exits. Bracksy, Thwaitesy, Beattie-y and of course Fuckface.

Nothing else really needs to be said, other than if you had told me this time last year that we would now be rid of John Howard I would have hit you for being so flippant. Let me just leave you with these images (courtesy of others).

God bless democracy.

Randomness

There are always things that don't quite fit into categories in these sorts of things so here are a series of dot points from this blog and elsewhere in 2007 to sum up the stuff that doesn't fit above (and to get this increasingly tedious post done with).

The final Harry Potter. Ever.

Aishwaya Rai was married (Boo).
David Attenborough (and Parkie!) retired.
Our fish got eaten.
My sister stacked my car.
Book Cult began.

I broke the frame on my bike (and now have a new one - woot!).
I turned 30.

And with that, I bid farewell to 2007. An eventful year, if not entirely good. Here's hoping 2008 will be just as eventful, but with less of the crap. Thankyou for continuing to read my often sporadic postings and...well, yeah.

Happy 2008.

Hawt

2007-12-03T18:39:00.000+11:00

I went and saw this bunch of dudes on Friday night, starring this man among a collection of very hot musician types. I haven't seen them before, but they're ace. Kind of part Bowie, part Pulp.

I took my camera.

I feel it's the first of many funs to be had in this pre-Christmas (POST HOWARD!!!!!) period and it kicked off the silly season beautifully.

Go and see some gigs in December. You'll enjoy it, I promise.

And so say all of us

2007-11-29T12:36:00.000+11:00

Happy Birthday

Snooze

And so this is Christmas?

2007-11-26T16:43:00.000+11:00

Well wow.

Just wow!

What an extraordinary weekend.

It still feels a little unreal. In fact so unreal that I keep remembering all over again, like a goldfish with a two second memory. And it's wonderful.

I go about my business, doing this and that and then something bubbles to the surface: VSU; Kyoto; Andrew Bolt; Kevin Andrews; Work Choices; Phillip Ruddock; AWB; Alexander Downer; Teh History Wars !1!!; Caroline Overington, Piers Ackerman and Dennis Shanahan; and the little devious prick himself, John Winston. Oh the wonderousness. I remember that they're gone, or silenced, or humiliated and a little beam of sunshine peeps into my life.

Sure it's uncharitable. I'm quite content to admit I'm not being particularly gracious. But quite frankly, fuck that. We've put up with it for eleven and a half LONG years. And with EVERY ONE of the conservatives' four consecutive victories, we of "The Left" have had to stay silent and absorb the gloating, accept the scorn, remain quiet as we are reminded that nobody (in fact) likes us, and that perhaps we should consider eating some worms.

So I'm going to enjoy it for at least a week. I think I'm entitled.

I've thought for some time that we had it in the bag and even on Saturday my deepest suspicions were that we'd get home comfortably, but that didn't stop the terror of those final polls.

And then for it to unfold the way it did - slowly at first with only narrow margins in Bass and Braddon, the smirk on Nick Minchin's face creeping back onto our screens once again in an echo of 2004, then with growing pace as the swing swept through Victoria delivering the seats we weren't supposed to win at all. Then NSW: Robertson, Page, Linsday. And then here comes Eden-Monaro the true-to-form bellwether and Bennelong! Sweet Bennelong.

Anthony Green was getting angsty as QLD lagged in the counting, and as we waited with bated breath, our confidence growing with the list of gains, in came Kingston and Wakefield in SA.

And then the final cavalcade. The Queensland booths began to roll in. First the smaller, more conservative rural polling places - something wonderful was happening. The wave grew. Nick Minchin began to look ashen. Eleven years I have waited to see that smirk wiped off his face! Oh joy!

A dash to a nearby election party, we squeezed into a heaving room packed with True Believers just in time to see Maxine McKew take to the stage. How astonishing.

And then as the minutes ticked on we heard the news. Howard had called Rudd to concede!!!!

I woke yesterday with a hangover that couldn't dint the happiness. And then went Costello. And today went Vaile. Mal Brough is gone already. Howard has lost not just the election but his own seat as well.

Even the fact that I'm currently sitting at home nursing a large hole in my head whence a wisdom tooth was ripped this morning cannot effect my mood. I am, as one might say, ebullient.

Congratulations Australia, or should I say Comrades. You have done the country proud!

And so we turn and watch and wait and hope that a new era is about to begin. But I'm in no rush. Who knows if Rudd will deliver what many of us hope for and quite frankly, at this point, who cares? Howard is gone and with him his deceitful, selfish, mean-spirited Government.

Woot!

UPDATE: And so it begins...

I love the smell of democracy etc.

2007-11-24T13:17:00.000+11:00

I have ceased to enjoy it. Yesterday's polls spooked me. Now I just want it over and done with.

My ballot paper now nestles among it's friends in a ballot box at the North Fitzroy Primary School waiting patiently for the moment it cascades onto a table in the closed polling centre to be placed on a pile. 1 for the good guys.

Standing in the line waiting to vote we were surrounded by people of all shapes and sizes and all political bents. Snooze and I shared a laugh at the ludicrously type-cast Liberal staffers - girlfriend and boyfriend we hypothesised, both in their early twenties. She dressed in short shorts, blonde perky ponytail, big gold-adorned sunglasses and fake tan. He in iron-free tan chinos (FFS!), navy polo shirt (collar up) and the obligatory boat shoes.

The bechilded couple in front of us clutched two how-to-vote leaphlets: one for the Liberals, one for the Greens. Only in North Fitzroy.

As we stood there quietly in the sunshine, I was overcome with a sense of solidarity. I couldn't hate those people behind us voting Liberal. I may not agree with them, I think they're horribly wrong, but they're doing what they feel is right - just as we all do. The Family First woman handing out their how-to-vote cards is doing it because she feels as strongly about her view as we do ours.

There is something truly extraordinary about getting up in the morning with every one of your fellow countrymen, all around the continent, wandering down to the local primary school and voting out a Government before heading off for a bite of breakfast.

Regardless of the outcome this evening, the act of voting has, as it often does, restored my faith in the system. If John Howard is returned as Prime Minister I will be genuinely devastated, but I can't escape the fact that if it happens, it will be because more people disagree with me than not. It doesn't get much more representative than democracy.

And with that offering to the karma gods, let me now say this. Come on Australia. Don't lose your nerve. Not now. It's hard to kick out a Government, but you can do it. I have faith.

Vote the bastards out!

2 More Sleeps!!1!!!

2007-11-22T14:24:00.001+11:00

This is actually fun.

I am actually enjoying myself.

However, for those of you not wishing to be complacent, take a walk down memory lane courtesy of Antony Green and the ABC Election website. Nothing will make you pull your head in faster than watching "highlights" from the last four election campaigns.

In other news, Jackie Kelly, are you for serious?!

CHRIS UHLMANN: Was your husband involved in the distribution of this pamphlet?

JACKIE KELLY: Well, I've read the alleged pamphlet and when I first read it I had to laugh because I think everyone who reads it has their first instinct is to laugh, pretty much everyone who's read chuckles in terms of the parody it does make of various things that have happened during the campaign.

So my view is that it's a bit of Chaser-style prank that an ALP goon squad, which I understand was is led by some unionists, have chased down and hunted down and tried to intimidate and I understand there was even a fight, so yes, I think it was all a very…

CHRIS UHLMANN: But just to establish it, your husband and two colleagues were handing out this pamphlet?

JACKIE KELLY: Well, my understanding is they were letterboxing…

CHRIS UHLMANN: This pamphlet?

JACKIE KELLY: Well, I don't know. Well, I don't know, allegedly. Allegedly.

CHRIS UHLMANN: And this pamphlet says it comes from an Islamic organisation that doesn't exist? It says the ALP wants the Bali bombers forgiven and supports the construction of a mosque in western Sydney. What's funny about that?

If you want to see this defence from Kelly getting the treatment it deserves, watch this reaction from Laurie Oakes on Channel 9 this morning (about half way through the video at the top). I couldn't agree more.

And how's this for a set of numbers?? Primary vote figures: Coalition 40% ALP 47% with TPP: Coalition 45% to ALP 55%. Blessed be the cheesemakers!!

And just cos I find him hi-larious, let me leave you with some beautiful election-summing-up cartoons from First Dog on The Moon. Click for bigger.

Oh boy... so close...

2007-11-19T19:28:00.000+11:00

Alright kids, here we go.

Five sleeps to go and the Psephos are going to town.

Things are looking good. Very very good.

For those of my readers who remain unconvinced and keep muttering about marginals and the like, feast your eyes on this...

Possum's Big Prediction (Anthony Green in disguise?)

So how good is [my] model using previous elections?
In 1998, the model predicted an ALP TPP of 50.82 whereas the actual result was 50.91
In 2001 the model predicted an ALP TPP of 49.15 whereas the actual result was 49.07.
In 2004 the model predicted an ALP TPP of 47.23 whereas the actual result was 47.20.

So what is the forecast for the election?

An ALP two party preferred result of 55.15%

And again.

The message is clear - the game is over.

That is what makes it so dangerous.

The polls are consistent, the fantasy of “Liberal strategists” being able to hide under the petticoat of fictitious marginal seat polling because “they’re closer than the national polls suggest” now looks like the façade it actually always was. The media have picked their winner, Uncle Rupert has moved behind Rudd in The Oz to match what has in reality been happening with his Tabloids and the Smage for weeks. This very morning Centrebet blew out to $4.60 - reflecting that even the punters are starting to get it, punters which haven’t got very much at all over the last 5 months.

There is risk and plenty of it over the next 7 days to E-Day, but it’s not downside risk for the ALP vote, it’s the risk of a collapse in Coalition support.

Simon Jackman - Professor of Political Science at Stanford University

We’re looking at almost a 7% swing, in 2PP terms, which would make it one of the biggest “swing” elections in Australian political history as well (Labor got a 7.1pp swing in 1969, but failed to win office; Labor suffered a 7.4pp swing against it in 1975; Howard won office with 5.1pp swing in 1996).

...

We see evidence of a trend away from Labor from September 1 onwards, reaching its peak in the first week of the campaign, at which point Labor has shedding about 0.05pp of 2PP vote share, or about a percentage point every 3 weeks. It looks like that trend is continuing, but the evidence for it is weaker later in the campaign. And in any event, 1 percentage point every 3 weeks, or 2 percentage points over the course of the campaign isn’t enough to bring the election back for the government.

Barring something amazing in this last week, or a marginal seats miracle, Labor will win, and win comfortably.

And finally, Geoff Lambert - Medical researcher and statistical gun. [pdf]

History shows the polls don’t lie. That was a title of an article I wrote for the Australian Financial Review in the lead-up to the 1996 election, in which I predicted a50-seat majority for John Howard. After this duly occurred, the AFR asked me to explain how I did it and this duly appeared as Maligned opinion polls got it right.

...

The perception that the polls lie arises from a selective reading of immediate pre-election polls at past elections. Although the vagaries of sampling error are routinely acknowledged, they are often forgotten when pundits look at the polls which emerge on the Thursday before the election.

...

In the 24 elections from 1946-2004, projections made from the aggregated polls produced an average overestimate in predictions for the ALP TPP of 0.6% (graph below). In the worst case (1987), the error in the TPP was 3.8%. In half the elections, the error was less than 1%. There are differences among pollsters (the “house effect”), but these tend to cancel one another out, so that the average of all pollsters has nearly always proved to be the best estimator.

...

...“elections are won and lost in the marginals”. In theory this again is true but, in practice the average swing in the marginal seats rarely differs from the nation-wide swing. ... Thus, if campaign effort has been concentrated in the marginal seats over the years, then the efforts of both sides must have cancelled at almost every election. Only 1998 bucks this trend.

...

The bottom line is that the weighted national swing is likely to be about 8.2% and the final national TPP about 55.5%- this would give a most likely number of seats for the ALP of 97. The different methods contributing to the weighted results give projected TPPs of 53.8% to 57.3%, and seat numbers ranging from 94 to 102, which is not symmetric about 97 seats, mainly because the clustering of seats on this part of the pendulum is not homogenous. In this region of the pendulum, every 1% swing can produce a 14-seat majority change.

Monte Carlo simulations based on the weighted data show that about 19 out of 20 elections conducted under these conditions would produce a TPP of between 54.7% and 56.3% (55.5% is in the middle of this range) and a 95% confidence limit for the number of ALP seats of 87-104.

...

It would take a political sensation of biblical proportions for the Coalition to win from here or, as Antony Green has said, the greatest come-from-behind victory in history. The chance of the Coalition pulling the ALP TPP vote back to Tiger Territory in the region of 50.6% in the absence of such a sensation, or in the absence of the statistics going pear-shaped, is ridiculously small.

Come on Psephos! Don't let me down. I've come to love you all over the last few months and if you're wrong it will be utterly devastating. This isn't just the election you're predicting here - it's our relationship!!!!

The furry oracle

2007-11-12T11:48:00.001+11:00

There are many things I like about Possums Pollytics, but probably the most impressive is the fact that he not only clearly knows what he's talking about, but that his predicitions seem to be uncannily accurate.

Have a look at this post about today's Newspoll.

Honestly, if you're not regularly reading this blog during the election, then you should take a good hard look at yourself.

Exactly who's in charge?

2007-11-07T14:18:00.000+11:00

From this morning's AM. Chris Uhlmann interviewing Andrew Robb, Vocational Education Minister.

CHRIS UHLMANN: This argument on experience, this argument on experience, saying you can't replace experience with inexperience is a self-annihilating argument. If you argue that then you would never change governments, would you?

ANDREW ROBB: But people need to look long and hard at, you know, at what the circumstances, the economic circumstances are that are there.

Labor is promising to scrap our industrial relation laws which will only remove the checks and balances on inflation and risk an interest rate break-out.

Now, when, the thing is, when you look behind Labor's slogans, when you peek behind Labor's, there is nothing there. Nothing but what they've copied from us.

The rest of it, they have not done the policy work, they have not made a case for taking over government. And people do face a choice in an election.

Governments do change, but, but when they change the Opposition should have made a case. They should have established a set of policies, an alternative program and shown that they've got the ability to carry that through…

...

CHRIS UHLMANN: But again, you can't argue that they have copied you, and that things will be radically different under them, can you?

ANDREW ROBB: No, they have, they have just parroted our policy programs…

CHRIS UHLMANN: So if it's the same, then why should people worry?

ANDREW ROBB: But they do not understand how to structure those policies. They have never done the work which has put those policies together, haven't got the experience to deal with and manage the economy, to find that mix of policy responses in difficult international economic times.

We are confronting, we are confronting some serious issues across the United States. We are confronting a booming economy. We've got a drought of major consequence. Now all of these things, all of these things, make if extraordinarily difficult to maintain strong growth.

CHRIS UHLMANN: And all are beyond your control.

ANDREW ROBB: This could all be put in jeopardy, Chris, by a Labor government which is union-dominated, which is inexperienced, which is, with a prime minister that would have to be beholden to a union movement that's put $30-million on the table to buy government in this country.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Andrew Robb, thank you.

I do like Chris Uhlmann.

Now apart from a fairly ordinary performance by a second-rate Government minister, complete with foot-tangling and slogan-pushing, this got me thinking.

Chris Uhlmann was quite rightly calling Robb on the ludicrous Government line that you can't trust inexperience and hence the Government should, in effect, never change. Andrew Robb's weak response is predictable, but utterly nonsensical: "But they do not understand how to structure those policies. They have never done the work which has put those policies together, haven't got the experience to deal with and manage the economy, to find that mix of policy responses in difficult international economic times."

Ignoring the inconsistencies, why is it that on these matters, no one ever points out that the economy is actually run by bureaucrats? Does anyone for a moment believe that Peter Costello is personally responsible for the running of our economy and that he receives no assistance at all from the vast and complex network of public servants whose professional existence keeps this country operating?

Do you think that to be a Treasurer you really need to have any idea about fiscal policy, or do you, like me, suspect that Kyle Sandilands would probably do as good a job as long as he took the advice of those paid to actually know what they're doing?

Under the Howard Government, the Public Service has been turned into a kind of blame absorption device. The cavalcade of I-wasn't-tolds that tumble from the lips of Ministers when things start to go dodgy is a testament to this. Yet while they're perfectly willing to crucify a public servant when things go bad, never is a mention passed their way when things are going well.

Have you ever heard ANYONE say that the good management of a particular Government Department (let alone the economy) is thanks to the people who actually work there? No, it's always the Minister and only the Minister. There's a reason bureaucrats are often called faceless.

And yet what happens if the Labor Party wins the upcoming election?

Peter Costello, Dolly Downer, Kevin Andrews, John Howard (all our favourites!) will empty their desks, tuck their butchers paper under their arms, clutch their whiteboard markers and shuffle out to less dignified offices down the way and Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan, Peter Garrett, Linsday Tanner and Kevin Rudd will move in. The wallpaper will get changed, the unseen bits behind the filing cabinets dusted for the first time in eleven years, new pictures, new plants, maybe a new set of cubicles for the apparatchiks. A wave of change.

And in the meantime, thousands of Australian public servants, the same ones as before, will continue to show up every day, doing their thing, organising their bit of the country, actually ensuring it doesn't all fall apart and why? Because that's what they do. It's not Joe Hockey who runs Industrial Relations in this country, it's his Department - he's just the tip of an enormous iceberg, the puppet who stands up and says what he's told by people who know better.

Whether the policy is heinously racist, or staggeringly compassionate, it's the same people who write it. Sure they get their instructions from someone different and that's where that difference comes from, but it's still the same Department, the same staff that has always been working at the Department of Immigration.

I think you see my point (I've certainly laboured it enough).

Which brings me back to Chris Uhlmann and Andrew Robb.

The Government line seems to go thus:

a./ the Labor Party has copied our policy;
b./ this is bad because they didn't write it and consequently don't understand it;
c./ unless you understand it, you'll fuck everything up.

Even if this WAS the case, it's completely irrelevant because the people who wrote that policy in the first place, the people who actually deal with it's minutiae every single day, the ones who enact it's suggestions, who see it's programs through, will be exactly the same under a Rudd Labor Government. They are the same people! If the policy is the same, why would they suddenly forget how it works?

It's a stupid argument and I think the Government knows it.

Today's interest rate rise has boxed Howard and Co into a very awkward position and I expect we'll see a lot more of this ludicrous logic over the next few days.

I for one intend to just sit back and enjoy it and in the meantime, raise a glass to those wonderful Public Servants who actually do all the work.

Can we just get it over with

2007-11-07T11:30:00.000+11:00

From today's Crikey.

Click to embiggen.

FRIV returns? Or just lazy blogging?

2007-11-02T11:17:00.000+11:00

Here you go, a Friday present.

EVERYONE loves a cat video!!

Off to see the Sydney-siders for the weekend. Won't THAT be fun.

How I stopped worrying and learned to love the Polls

2007-11-01T15:41:00.000+11:00

I am trying very hard at the moment not to be optimistic about the election. As I've mentioned previously, I'm convinced that if I get my hopes up they'll inevitably be crushed like a bug.

But I've been thinking a little about this approach and while the lid is not yet off, I think those of us who have suffered under John Howard for the past 11 years have every right to enjoy ourselves at the moment.

Look at it this way. If one stays pessimistic about the whole thing, convinced a disaster is on the horizon and the Libs win, well - it's not really going to make us feel any better about things. If it happens, it will be a disaster whether we prepared in advance or not.

On the other hand, things have been going so delightfully of late (Exhibit A: Tony Abbott's meltdown yesterday), that I think we should just enjoy the ride.

It's a bit like jumping out of a plane - once you're out you may as well enjoy yourself because either your parachute will open (in which case you're home and hosed), or it won't (in which case you're entirely screwed) and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. So get into it kids!

Why so perky you may ask?

Well, there's just been a few things of late that have made me feel better about the way the election is heading, mainly to do with the wonderful Possum. Considering for a moment that today is the first of November and that before the month is out, the election will have come and gone, this post is enormously encouraging. A graphic representation of it can be found here on Antony Green's election calculator.

On top of that, a Possum comment from earlier in the week sent me scurrying to Wikipedia. He said that if Labor can score a primary vote of 46% they cannot lose. It was then pointed out that since Kevin Rudd came to lead the party, the ALP primary, despite the various fluctuations in the polls, has not dropped below 46%. Even the latest Newspoll that the hyenas at The Oz leapt upon has the ALP primary at 48% - business as usual (as Possum would say).

To put that into context have a look at some historical figures. These are the final primary votes for the last four elections (remembering that in 1998 Labor actually had over 50% of the vote and still lost):

2004
Coalition: 46.36%
ALP: 37.64%

2001
Coalition: 42.69%
ALP: 37.84%

1998
Coalition: 39.18%
ALP: 40.10%

1996
Coalition: 46.9%
ALP: 38.75%

So I'm going to remain content as long as the primary stays up there. Once it drops below 46% I'll start to get worried again...

"The Heart of the Nation"

2007-10-31T13:46:00.000+11:00

Ooh, the Australian is really warming to it's election campaign task today.

In their rotating commentary headlines at the top of the page we have:

"The Rorts of Chairman Rudd" by "Jack the Insider". An Hil-AR-ious piece about Kevin Rudd being an admirer of China (hence a Communist).

Includes such pithy remarks as:

"The Kruddster spoke in Mandarin to Chinese Premier Hu Jintao but it’s never been clearly reported in the media what he actually said. The Kruddster was trying to welcome Premier Hu to Australia. The Kruddster got through that bit. It was only when he tried to wish Premier Hu a long and prosperous life that things went awry. If my Mandarin is anything to go by, the Kruddtser professed a deep admiration for Hu’s lower colon and wished that his children be covered in hair."

Oh stop it you wag! You're killing me with your wit! Kruddster! ROFLMAO!!

"Labor sees the light on next Kyoto phase" by that terribly well balanced Editor-at-Large Paul Kelly.

"Having spent 10 years of worship at the symbolic altar of Kyoto, Labor is suddenly selling a very different message. It is the opposite message: Kyoto has become conditional. Its sanctification is coming to an end."

"Activist Judiciary a looming menace" by the delightful Janet Albrechtson about how the female (!!) lawyers in the Labor Party threaten our future!!

"FRANKLY, there may be more to fear from Labor’s lady lawyers than from the union blokes who run the Labor Party. Astute Labor lawyers in a future Rudd government, women such as Julia Gillard, Nicola Roxon and Penny Wong, will surely have their eyes on the real prize: leaving a legacy that will outlast a term or two in government. That legacy may be an activist judiciary. A Rudd government may come and go, but the judges it appoints are there to stay."

FFS!

"Kevin feels the heat over Kyoto" by Dennis "Psepho" Shanahan. Seriously - another one? Do these guys think to compare notes at the start of the day?

"Labor’s attachment to the symbolism, and not the substance, of the Kyoto Protocol has been exposed, as has the party’s appreciation of where the international debate, and politics of, climate change is going."

What a disgraceful rag the Australian has become. If they barracked any harder or more obviously - well, I don't actually think they could.

Good on you guys. You keep pushing that barrow!

2007-10-09T16:47:00.000+10:00

Last Friday night at about 8:30pm as Snooze and I sat watching the second season of The Wire and the thunder rumbled outside, my last remaining grandparent slipped quietly away in St Vincent's Hospital. She was 84.

Over the past five weeks she has been fighting a battle, harder than any of us expected, against a lifetime of three-packs-a-day smoking, plural plaque and mesothelioma in her lungs contracted by washing the asbestos out her husband's clothes every day after work. He died of mesothelioma in 1980 when I was three and she just 61. 13 years ago she lost her daughter, my mother. My Uncle is the last one of that family left and he's not yet 60.

Mercifully, she was was healthy up to the moment she was not. It was the flu that got her - attacked her lungs - the one part that simply couldn't fight back.

She was never a 'nice old lady'. She had an acid tongue and a particular flair for passive aggression, often beautifully pointed. But the grandkids loved her unconditionally and she loved us back, though sometimes it took a second visit to remember.

I saw her almost every day of the five weeks she was in hospital. It was a fascinating and humbling thing. There were peaks and troughs from week to week, but each time the troughs were longer and the peaks lower. Without her grandmotherly veneer, I was able to see her as a wonderful, strong but exhausted woman, terrified of what was coming, yet resigned to the inevitable.

We got SMS updates every morning from my Uncle letting us know how she'd slept. One morning she was being shown some photos and came across one of her husband. The message came through: "we looked at some some photos. She said "hello my beautiful man" to my dad". On another occasion she told us she already knew about Hawthorn winning the Semi-final by five points - she'd found out "yesterday".

The next time I saw her, I had been to a concert the night before. It was a choral thing in a church: "Songs of the Sea". I spent many years of my younger life around this music and the performance brought back the most extraordinarily powerful memories. Thinking my Grandmother might like to hear about it, I told her that my sisters and I had been. She looked at me and said: "Do you think, when I'm gone, I could be taken to things like that?" I was (as often happened) taken aback. "I think that's a great idea" I said. And then, to my dismay, her little face crumpled and she burst into tears. It was too hard, it hurt too much, she had nothing left.

As I left the hospital, the music and words of an anthem by Edgar Bainton resounded in my head. I had heard it for the first time in 15 years at the concert the night before and I had never felt it so intensely:

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes;
and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying,
neither shall there be any more pain:
for the former things are passed away.

A Community Service Announcement

2007-10-08T14:40:00.000+10:00

I've never been a big sun person. I mean, I love the beach and all, but I've never been one to bake myself brown with hours comatose on a towel, or with the use of *shudder* tanning oil.

Despite this, I've always been a bit anxious about skin cancer. I think this comes partly from a fairly (I think) healthy hypochondria. I'm sure it also has something to do with cancer not being a friend of my family.

A little while ago I noticed what I thought was a mole behaving badly. Well, not badly so much as oddly. It looked a bit unusual and seemed to hang around for quite a while (over a month).

Preferring to be on the safer side of sorry, I took myself along to my GP and asked her to have a look at the spot. She took one look and said "no, that ones fine". Phew, thought I. "But while I'm here I'll just have a look around".

So she poked and prodded and look at a few bits and pieces until she got to a spot right in the middle of my back.

"This one though...this one might be worth getting looked at".

Needless to say, this was not quite the reponse I was looking for. She explained that I had what's called a dysplastic mole on my back. Quite small, but a bit funny looking. A plastic surgeon was called and I was booked in to go and see the man (as opposed to The Man).

A couple of weeks later I went to see him, heart in mouth, expecting to be told that I had three weeks to live. He asked me stuff (as doctors do) and then had a look himself. He asked me some more stuff and then told me that there were two options. It looked a bit funny to him, but he didn't think it was melanoma (actual skin cancer). He said that we could do it the easy way (cutting it out asap and being rid of the thing), or he could measure it and I could return in 6 months to see if it had changed.

The second one sounded a little dicey to me, so I went for option A. He concurred.

I was back there in another couple of weeks for the 'procedure'. I wandered in and waited for a bit until I was called. His operating room was quite small - just a bed thing, a light and a few bits and pieces. Up I got, shirt off and he dosed me up with some local anaesthetic: "this is the worst bit". Then he did that thing that doctors do when anaesthetic's involved. "Can you feel this?", sharp stabbing pain, "ow!", "good" (bastard).

Despite the fact that he'd just stuck me with something that hurt, he then proceded to 'do stuff'. I couldn't tell what it was, but it sounded to me like there was snipping involved - I figured he was preparing scapels and needles and other sharp, unpleasant items. A minute (at the most) later, he said "right, all done". All done? WTF?

I don't know if he was just messing with me or what, but the anaesthetic had worked a treat. In barely two minutes from start to finish he had hacked a bit of my back out and stitched up the two centimentre incision with five stitches - and I didn't even think he'd started!

So for the last two weeks I've been getting about with stitches in the middle of my back. I've never had stitches before - it was surprisingly unpainful.

The spare bit of me was sent off to a Pathologist and I was booked in to have the stitches removed and to get back my results. That was last Friday.

Getting the stitches removed was considerably more painful than the initial procedure, but it was good to be rid of them.

And my results? Again, not quite what I'd hoped.

The doctor said that there was evidence of dysplasia. This essentially means that the cells were very (unusually) active. While it was not melanoma, dysplasia can often turn into cancerous cells. I asked him more about it. He told me that the difference between dysplasia and melanoma is what you see under a microscope and that's it's often very difficult to tell dysplasia from very early melanoma.

Ultimately, the verdict is that while no further treatment is required, I need to be particularly aware of the sun from now on and that if I see anything that looks remotely dodgey, I should have it looked at immediately and removed if there is any doubt.

Which is all a very long way around to saying that you should check out your skin. All of you. You need to look for unusual moles or freckles - particularly ones with dark centres - it's the dark centres that are the problem ones. Here are some examples of actual melanoma (these are not pretty, but you should look at them - you all need to know!), and these are "dysplastic nevi" (moles that are predisposed to melanoma), the ones that you should watch like a hawk or get checked out. You also need to have someone check your back - that's where most of them occur and where mine was so I didn't even know it was there. You should be doing this at least once every couple of months - particularly if you're a sun person (I'm looking at you Mingrid).

Seriously peoples, a melanoma the size of just 10mm can be fatal if not picked up early enough. The good news is that if it's found early and dealt with the chances of successful treatment are very good.

Do it today. Really.

Pell solves climate change, is brilliant

2007-10-04T11:10:00.000+10:00

It's good to know that the Climate Change debate has been resolved thanks to the staggering scientific brilliance of Cardinal George Pell.

I think I read somewhere the temperature has gone up 0.5 of a degree on Mars. Well, the industrial-military complex up on Mars can't be blamed for that.

ZING!!

He then backed up that startingly insightful comment with this gem, demonstrating that not only is he in touch with the Big Fella Upstairs, but that he has "studied this a little bit" (!!!!):

I have studied this a little bit and there's a whole history of differing estimates. Thirty or 40 years ago, actually, some of the same scientists were warning us about the dangers of an ice age, so I take all these things with a little bit of a grain of salt. They're matters for science and, as a layman, I study the scientific evidence rather than the press releases.

Take THAT you filthy conspiracy theorists! Cower before him you so-called Climatologists! George Pell, as a layman (no less!), studies the scientific evidence rather than the press releases (?) !!! That's the last time you scare-mongering 'experts' will suggest we humans have something to do with global warming because you read it in a press release!!

Well done George Pell. Well done indeed. ~~Muppet~~

Mitten

2007-09-18T14:58:00.001+10:00

Helloes

2007-09-03T19:07:00.000+10:00

So, this blog business is going pretty well right now hey?

Things are busy. Very busy.

I've had an odd sense of apprehension hanging over me for the past weeks. There are a number of things that may be responsible for it: the approach of the football finals and my team's dismal showing yesterday; the fact that I have to have a chunk of my skin cut out because it doesn't agree with my doctor*; the inexorable march towards the event that will shape ours as a nation of either fuckwits or comrades; my Grandmother being taken to emergency during the week, dangerously unwell with the flu attacking her already mesothelioma-filled lungs; an increasingly dark cloud hovering over my place of work; the brilliant yet oddly unsettling moods of the early samples from my sister's new album; my highly developed penchant for over-dramatisation; an unexplainably stubborn refusal to sign up to Facebook. Who knows, it could be anything.

A couple of things I am enjoying right now are the convincingly optimistic writings of this character, particularly his confident predictions that Howard won't just lose the election, but will be crushed like a bug in the process. The Wire is yet another astonishingly good TV series from the folks at HBO, and Flight of the Conchords continues to be hi-larious. I had an extremely pleasant weekend away recently with these people, and had a lovely dinner with this particular set of charming lads and lasses.

So here's hoping this sense of impending doom is nothing but late-winter weirdness and that the next couple of weeks brings nothing but ace-ness. Here's hoping...

LOL x heaps!

*don't worry Jelly, it's not as bad as it sounds

Sometimes it's not all bad

2007-08-21T14:17:00.001+10:00

Good news day.

I should clarify that the news that Mary Kostakidis has stormed out on SBS is not good because she's left, but good because I entirely agree with her and I think she's ~~hot~~ unreal.

Some drugly thoughts

2007-07-27T15:37:00.000+10:00

I haven't blogged about the Tour de France as much as I threatened to (highly amusing LOLcats aside). Not because I haven't been enthralled (that's right - enthralled), just because I haven't had time.

In my previous post I mentioned that despite the rumours of drugs, the Tour de France "remains one of the great bastions of sportsmanship". With the drug-related fall of three of the main contenders in short succession, including the yellow jersey holder, many are saying that the race is not worthy of attention - there have even been suggestions it be pulled off air. But I stand by my previous comment.

There has been an enormous (and justified) uproar over the revelations of drug use among the sports biggest names, but I don't think that gives a sports writer like Greg Baum, whose principal interest is AFL (FFS!), the right to dismiss the entire event. Dare I suggest it, but anyone who says that completing a Tour is any less of an achievement because some people use drugs, is an ignorant twit.

I don't intend to get into a who's tougher argument, but let's for a moment consider a comparison with your standard AFL player. It's interesting to note that during tomorrow night's game between Collingwood and Brisbane, the players will be fitted with radio transmitters that will tell exactly how far they've run, how high their heartrate and how many G's they encounter on impact during a game. The elite AFL players - your Buckleys, your Crawfords, your Judds - are known to cover extraordinary distances in a game, often nearing marathon distances and rarely dropping below a jog for the two hours they are on the field. They then have a week to recover, mend aching muscles and refocus for the following round.

Riders in the Tour de France this year will cover an average of over 175kms a day for three weeks. This is often considered the equivalent of running a marathon every day for 21 days straight. Many of them will be involved in serious accidents during this time - Tyler Hamilton broke his collarbone in the first stage of the race in 2003 and completed the entire Tour finishing fourth overall, Michael Rogers crashed and was forced out of the Tour this year with seven broken ribs. Many of the stages are so difficult that even the best riders in the world can't complete them within the allowable limits - Australia's great sprinting hope Robbie McEwen was disqualified after finishing outside the allowable time on the 8th stage this year.

It is not a controversial statement to suggest that the Tour is one of (if not the) toughest sporting events in the world.

There is no suggestion that all competitors are using drugs. Not only that, but the people who have been caught have been immediately dismissed from the Tour, heavily fined and banned from the sport. When was the last time an AFL footballer was banned from playing AFL for the use of performance enhancing drugs (and I don't for a moment believe that it doesn't go on)? Ever?

There are a large number of competitors in the Tour who don't use drugs and are disgusted by those who do. Yesterday's stage was held up for 10 minutes at the start, as riders protesting against their own colleagues sat at the start line motionless after the flag had been waved.

Australia's own Cadel Evans, perhaps the greatest road cycling champion we've had for decades now sits in second place (!) overall with the prospect of potentially winning the Tour outright. There is no suggestion he has done anything in the slightest bit wrong, yet Greg Baum and others feel the need to dismiss the entire race because a number of other riders have cheated.

How does this irreprably damage the Tour? How can people argue that it is anything less than an extraordinary achievement by the men who do it clean?

I genuinely believe that in Australia, the Tour de France is entirely misunderstood and grossly underestimated and the reason people like Baum feel content to shoot it down is because they don't get it. If anything, I think the recent rash of drug disqualifications strengthens the Tour and makes the clean riders all the more impressive.

/rant.

Woah!

2007-07-27T10:46:00.001+10:00

No more Bracksy?

Didn't see that coming...

UPDATE: WTFBBQ!!??? Thwaites as well?? Are they from Syria?

Could this be Brumby's Steven Bradbury moment?

Cadel Evans recounts the mountain stage he just completed

2007-07-19T09:00:00.000+10:00

Courtesy of Snooze.

Play among your selves

2007-07-16T19:29:00.000+10:00

Apologies for the lack of entertainment of late (though I suspect I only have two readers left) I have been seriously under the hammer at work.

Just dropped by to say that this is a fucking disgrace. Sorry for the swears (I'm reliably informed I use too many naughty words on this here blog), but if anything deserves it, it's Kevin "I-know-better-than-the-magistrate" Andrews. Not to be outdone though, the freaking Labor Party has decided to support it. Seriously...

There's so much I don't have time to write about just now.

Le Tour - the drama, the agony - poor Michael Rogers, poor Stuart O'Grady, poor Robbie McEwen. Go Cadel!

The polls - Woot!

The Hawks (and grudgingly the Pussies) - Wow.

Freitag

2007-07-06T16:17:00.000+10:00

Courtesy of the Jelly.

All my frendz r belong to bookface

2007-07-04T16:40:00.000+10:00

WTF!?

I turn my back for one minute and the internets have been kidnapped by Myspaz for grown-ups. Honestly, the number of people who are suddenly facebooked up is growing with alarming speed.

Various people have tried to explain it to me - sounds like a cross between Myspace, Twitter and instant messaging with pictures - but I can't say I'm particularly drawn. But then maybe that's because I'm not someone who necessarily WANTS to find a long lost classmate from my high school days and can think of few things less appealing than having to decide if I really want to be someone's e-friend if invited.

To further my exasperation, Facebook is all secretly protected behind a members only screen. Maybe this is why people like it so much, it keeps the publics prying eyes away. But at the same time it means that anyone who's not completely sold on it can't just go and have a look. It's annoying, and simply adds to the whole feeling of exclusion.

Still, there seems to be plenty of hip folks leaping onto the bandwagon and raving about its wonderfulness so maybe it's not all a disaster (though I'm yet to be convinced).

So, Facebook: the dawn of a new age, or an irritating fad?

Discuss.

Recuts

2007-06-20T16:00:00.000+10:00

A while ago someone showed me some unreal pieces of work by some Youtube dudes. They're called "re-cut" trailers and are pretty much film editors showing off, but the good ones can completely reverse the atmosphere of the film they depict.

Because it's a Friday afternoon and no one can be bothered you know, working and stuff, here are some of the better ones I've seen.

When Harry Met Sally

The Shining

Top Gun (brilliant!)

It's all about the music, but jeez they're clever...

I'm going skiing tomorrow. Woot!

Flight of the Ace-ness

2007-06-20T11:43:00.001+10:00

OMGFWTFBBQROFLMAOETC!1!!!)!!!11m1ehi!!!111

The Most Amusing Men On Earth, Flight of the Conchords, the larrikins responsible for this piece of genius (seriously - I strongly recommend watching):

Have been given their own show on HBO!!

I may explode.

Watch their zany antics:

Thanks be to Zopsy for the heads-up.

Happy Birthday Berhinia!

2007-06-15T11:56:00.000+10:00

Couldn't happen to a nicer person.

Brrrr

2007-06-15T11:36:00.001+10:00

I would just like to point out that it is 11:30 in the morning and the temperature is currently 6.3 degrees.

Six. Degrees. Of centigrade...ness.

Brrr.

A month ago, I was here.

Now, I'm not.

:-(

Still. I loves me some cold weather. More I say!

A Question

2007-06-14T14:03:00.001+10:00

Is it just me, or do internet service providers have each and every one of us firmly over a barrel?

As the world of the interwebs has grown increasingly complex, websites larger and larger, content displayed with snazzy graphics, the need to have a faster connection has continued to increase.

Originally we all had dial-up. The we moved to quicker dial-up. Then arrived the apparent broad-band revolution and our download speeds were going to go through the roof. Except that they didn't really. Sure the difference was noticeable at first, but then as the web became more complex, it started looking slow again.

Those with the cash just upgrade again - double the download speeds and triple the limits - those lucky enough to an interchange (whatever that is) nearby even have the luxury of being able to choose super-fast ADSL2. This is a pattern that has always irritated me.

Now on top of this, is the somewhat extraordinary fact that ISPs can sell you a new super-go-fast internet package, and yet have no genuine obligation to provide the service they have just sold you.

Precisely.

Take our current home intermaweb situation. Initially we were on your basic broadband 1MB 256k a month thing. Then having found this excruciatingly slow, we upgraded to 2MB 512k. At first it seemed uber-speedy and exciting, but it has slowly become less useful. Of late, it has seemed ridiculous - pretty much dial-up speed.

We are about a week into our monthly billing cycle and we haven't even got close to our limit so we can't have been 'shaped'. I (slowly) uploaded our ISPs website to look for FAQs about speed and found a very useful speed tester thing - much more accurate than the online testing websites it said - download the little program and away it goes.

The advice given on the website, is that for a customer on a 512kb plan, we should expect download speeds of around 50kB/s.

I've been testing.

We haven't yet got above 30kB/s and most usually the download speed hovers around the low 20s. I've tested during peak (6ish), later at night (11ish) and in the morning (8ish) and while the results vary a little, never once have they come CLOSE to the recommended speeds.

Now I understand the business about the network being busy and all, but how can I be paying for an internet connection that is consistently LESS THAN HALF the amount I signed up for?

How is it that ISPs can pretend to offer you something they simply have no hope (or worse, no intention) of honouring?

If I bought a litre of milk, took it home and discovered it was half full/empty I'd be pretty pissed off and I can imagine the shop people would be fairly sheepish if confronted.

In what universe is it acceptable to sign someone up to a contract to supply a good/service and then supply them with half of the promised product IF THAT!?

And it's not just this lot. This has been my experience with pretty much every ISP I've ever dealt with.

Can anyone make any recommendations for ISPs that at least actually ATTEMPT to offer you the speeds you have signed up for? Cos I'm buggered if I'm going to upgrade with this lot to something that is apparently double the speed just to get to where I should be now.

/rant.

I'm excited! no really...

2007-06-08T15:51:00.000+10:00

On July 7 in London, 189 dudes will don the lycra and pedal their bikes around a 7.9km course with the aim of winning the first race - the Prologue - of the 2007 Tour de France. Over the following 20 days of competition, they will ride 3,542kms in 21 teams of 9, averaging just over 175kms per day.

With €3.2 million to be won, €450,000 of which go the the overall winner, it's a serious business. The French love it and after Lance Armstrong, so do the Yanks. The Germans, Italians, Spanish all have national cycling heroes. Riding a bike in the Tour de France is a big deal - but hardly anyone in Australia bothers to flick it a glance.

It doesn't help that the stages shown live on SBS start at around 10:30 or 11:00 at night our time (it's not their fault we're on the other side of the world), and it's not the sort of sport that will suck you in with it's flashy acrobatics as you casually surf the late night TV dials. But for those who have learnt to love the Tour, it's a wonderful three weeks of drama and heroics.

Over the next little while I intend to get all Toury on yo asses. If you know nothing about it, well, you should - it's one of the great sporting events, one of the great spectacles.

Learning to love the Tour is like learning to love Test cricket. Things don't happen quickly, it's all about the building tension, the deepening tactics and the moments of brilliance that can change the course of the whole event. Like this...

2003. Lance Armstrong attempts to win his fifth Tour de France in a row. It's the 15th stage - 159kms of mountains including two hors category climbs (the steepest hills in the race): the Col du Tourmalet after 124kms; and the Luz-Ardiden at the finish.

At the top of the Col du Tourmalet, with 35kms to go, the race is led by a lonely figure, Sylvain Chavanel, a Frenchman. Four minutes behind him are the main contenders, Armstrong, Jan Ullrich, Iban Mayo and four others.

As the following group hits the start of the final climb about 10kms from the finish line, Mayo attacks. Armstrong is up out of his seat hanging onto his wheel in a flash. A duel develops up the steep slope and Jan Ullrich gets onto the back. Then in a famous moment, Armstrong's handlebar catches a bag held by a spectator and he crashes heavily, bringing Mayo down with him.

Ullrich, avoiding the carnage is suddenly ahead of his two main rivals in a small group with only Chavanel to chase down. After four years of Armstrong dominance, the path to Ullrich's first win in the Tour de France lies open. Then something extraordinary happens. Ullrich and his fellow riders slow down the pace and wait for Armstrong to catch up.

Legend has it that a few years earlier, Armstrong and Ullrich had been involved in a close race and Ullrich had suffered a puncture. Armstrong, instead of exploiting his luck, held back and allowed Ullrich to catch up before resuming the race. Jump forward to 2003 and Ullrich, it is thought, is repaying the favour.

Within minutes Armstrong and Mayo are back to the leaders. The pace increases again but Mayo and Armstrong move immediately, breaking the resolve of the pack and leaving Ullrich floundering. There is a brief moment during the break when Armstrong turns his head over his shoulder, catches Mayo's eye and then blows him away, powering ahead in an extraordinary display of endurance and strength.

With 4kms to the line, Armstrong approaches and overtakes the gallant Chavanel, patting him on the back as he does so to console him and acknowledge his effort. Armstrong wins the stage by 40 seconds ahead of Mayo and Ullrich (who fought back valiantly) and goes onto win the Tour for the fifth time. Chavanel finishes the stage in 10th place.

This is the sort of stuff legends are made of. Despite the rumours of drugs, the Tour de France remains one of the great bastions of sportsmanship, while the sheer endurance required simply to complete a Tour is phenomenal.

Watch it.

Well if that hasn't got you interested, stay tuned. There's a lot to know about how the whole thing operates and the more you know, the more interesting it becomes. Needless to say it's not just about who can get to the finish line the quickest.

If you're one of my readers who's just not that into sport, don't dismiss the Tour - it's as much a cultural event as it a sporting contest - and you never know, you just might learn to love it like I did.

AB v PK

2007-06-08T13:01:00.000+10:00

Ha!

Matt Price on his Australian blog post about Keating's performance on Lateline last night, just wrote: "I’ve sent a message to Andrew Bolt..., suggesting now might be the time to strike with a proposal for AB v PK weekly program."

I would watch. That.

I saw the Keating interview and it was as good as everyone's saying it was. The man knows how to speak. Well. And eloquently. And passionately.

To see him going Andrew Bolt would be a joy to behold.

Why can't this country have politicians with panache any more?

Filler?

2007-06-07T16:23:00.000+10:00

You're just going to have to entertain yourselves for a while, cos I's gots nothin'.

This should help.

[via]

And God said "Let There Be FRIV"

2007-06-01T14:09:00.001+10:00

If you've been keeping up with the news - and I know you all have been - you've probably heard about this new "Creation Museum" that's opened in the US. If you haven't, well, this is a brand new US$27 million, state of the art Fundamentalist Christian propaganda device that represents the book of Genesis as the literal truth, complete with Adam and Eve playing with dinosaurs and cuddling lambs.

Now I have all sorts of issues with this (not the least of which is the fact that the guy who runs the thing is a freakin' Australian), but there are many other people who have written about it far more cogently than I could hope to. By all reports, it is jam-packed with the sort of bizarre pseudo-science that makes the vaguely intelligent shudder and the less-than-clever think they might be onto something.

I'm particularly fond of the well-muscled Adam and waif-like Eve as seen in this picture.

[Link]

Does anyone else think Eve looks like a Gelfling?

And here they are sans water (that blows any nudie-bits fantasies out of the water - so to speak).

[Link]

Still. The whole thing is utterly ridiculous. Read more about it here. And who better to make my point for me and to usher back the first Friday Random Interweb Video for, well, AGES, but Ricky Gervais.

Happy Friday team!

Oh dear

2007-05-31T16:41:00.000+10:00

A five-year-old captive-bred panda fell to his death less than a year after he was released into the wild, possibly after a fight with other pandas, Xinhua news agency said today.

Xiang Xiang, the world's only artificially bred panda living in the wild, was released at the Wolong Nature Reserve for Giant Pandas in the mountainous southwestern province of Sichuan in April last year.

That's very sad.

Kevin Judd?

2007-05-30T19:08:00.000+10:00

At lunch time today in general conversation about the local football code, I referred to the Worlds Greatest Footballer (TM) as Chris Rudd.

Freudian slip? Or perhaps I'm onto something... They both certainly seem to be teflon coated right now. Still. Makes for fun with the photoshop.

It could be good...it really could

2007-05-25T16:16:00.001+10:00

Have you read the Phillip Pullman 'His Dark Materials' Trilogy?

If so, isn't it unreal? If not - WHAT ARE YOU THINKING - get ye to a library/book-selling emporium immediately!

I'm actually serious. It may be pitched as young adult fiction (even though there are many who think this is not the case), but (at the risk of being howled down) it is honestly one of the most beautifully created fantasy worlds since the Lord of the Rings - and I don't even LIKE fantasy.

This mildly hysterical outburst has been brought to you by the fact that the books have been turned into films and the first official trailer for the first film "The Golden Compass" has JUST been released.

Quietly - I'm excited. Really very excited. Some may even say pumped.

Now I try to keep these things a little under wraps. The last film I got this excited about was Happy Feet and that let me down in any number of ways, but this one has real promise. Starring an unknown young actor as the principal protaganist Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards - sounds more like a show name for a pedigree dog than a young girl, but still), the film includes notable performers such as Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman, Eva Green and Sam Elliott and with the screenplay adaptation from Pullman novels by none other than Tom Stoppard, it could be ace.

See the first official trailer here. Wheee!!

Helloes

2007-05-21T15:20:00.000+10:00

On Saturday morning I was woken by my clock radio.

I was confused.

What room was I in, how did I get there, what country was it, why were there people speaking in Australian accents?

Eventually I emerged from my drug and flight induced stupor sufficiently to work out that I was in fact in Melbourne, in my own bed at 9:30am - not in fact in Barcelona at 5:30 in the afternoon.

Crazy business.

So yeah, I'm home. Woot. And it only took 36 hours of transit.

I shall shortly be boring you all senseless with irritatingly smug tales of European jaunts and jealous-making photos of sun-drenched larks. Lucky youse.

Remain tuned etc.

Bloggerissimo

2007-04-24T01:04:00.000+10:00

Helloes.

I am sitting in an apartment in Rome punching this out on a borrowed but very beautiful Power Book having been out and about all afternoon looking at, you know, Rome and stuff. What an extraordinary place.

Still. I'm not going to go into great depths at this stage. This is essentially a 'what has Tom been up to' post in pictures for those who can't be bothered reading.

So last Thursday morning Snooze, Mother Snooze and I arrived here at 5am local time.

Snooze and Mother Snooze immediately got in a hire car and drove away, leaving me to fend for myself. I did ok.

This thing is truly enormous.

See.

I also saw a bit of this action.

And a sampling of this sort of thing.

On Saturday, I then bravely stepped onto a plane all on my own (quite a big thing for me) and went all Continental on my own ass, ending up in Rome.

Rome's old.

They have little cars and cool walls / gateways.

Their houses are pretty.

And they build monuments to hideous torture - this is San Giovanni in Oleo - that's right, Saint John in Oil. Actual boiling oil.

The point is he was immersed in the boiling oil (I can't work out by whom), but rather than perishing horrendously, he popped up just fine, some say even refreshed. Sweet trick. He's the one who wrote Revelations in the Bible. I guess it helps to be into God and stuff.

Being in a country with few people who speak your language is hard work, but kinda fun. What's not so fun is that I have developed a troublesome tooth. I am about to go and see a dentist. I expect it is going to cost me pretty much every penny I have and I'm not even a week into a four week holiday, but that's all part of the fun right?! right?

Anyhoos, I shall leave you to ponder these marvels and will aim to do it again some day.

Ciao (that's the extent of my Italian).

Exit the Tom

2007-04-16T14:02:00.000+10:00

Last night I saw this. It was one of the greatest pieces of theatre I've seen. Truly brilliant.

Geoffrey Rush was extraordinary, the supporting cast magnificent, the design beautiful, the sound stunning, the lighting amazing. If you haven't already got tickets I suspect you'll miss out as it closes this week, but wow.

I'm not 'in' to absurdist theatre. That this production not only won me over but was at once funny, deeply moving, strange yet frighteningly familiar is testament to the strengths and depth of the talent on display.

I don't want to write an in-depth review. While it was overwhelmingly good, there were a few quibbles I had with it, but it wouldn't be theatre if it were quibble-free. Suffice to say that combined with a number of other shows I've seen of late, my faith has been restored in the state of theatre in Melbourne and Australia.

Blogging has been sporadic of late because I'm all distracted with a trip over the seas. We fly out on Wednesday for four weeks of holday funtimes in Europe.

I've mentioned here previously that this is my first holiday of note since 2002 and I am MORE than ready for some away-from-work time.

Whether I will blog while away I haven't the faintest idea, but if I go quiet for a month you'll know where I am.

In the meantime, here is a photo.

Whoa

2007-04-12T13:38:00.000+10:00

This is one of the most extraordinary photographs I've seen in a long time.

Apparently there are over 150 of these things sitting just off the NSW coast waiting to be loaded with coal. There are about 25 visible in this photo.

Photo from The Australian online (no direct link available).

Campfire

2007-04-06T12:17:00.000+10:00

Helpfulness

2007-04-06T12:06:00.000+10:00

Over the last few weeks, traffic to this blog has increased fivefold. I thought at first that my witty textual stylings were bringing in the fanz, but I suspect it might be something else. Recently the most commonly visited post has been this one.

I suspect someone on the interwebs with a bigger fan base than me has linked to it or somesuch.

Well it's a good thing, because according to a reliable anonymous commenter, I didn't actually create that image after all (and here I was thinking I had):

LOL loser you didnt make that, trust me i know who did. hes from facepunch

I guess I just imagined I'd done it. Thanks for clearing that up fuckface.

Markov Place

2007-04-05T11:45:00.000+10:00

Given I am now the proud owner of a kick arse piece of camera-ry, I figure I should do a little more of the photo blogging.

I'm going to aim to post a new photo every other day or so.

Don't hate me 'cos I'm pessimistic

2007-04-05T11:30:00.000+10:00

If someone were to ask me, I would have to say that I am, basically, more a pessimist than an optimist. Not that I never see things with a rosy complexion, just that I err on the side of not getting my hopes up.

Pessimism is a refuge. If I refuse to believe that good things will happen, I get to be surprised and delighted when they do, or if they (predictably) don't, my pre-prepared defence mechanisms are in place to soften the blow. It's not so hard to take if you kind of expected it all along.

Is that defeatist? Not particularly. It doesn't mean I'm not thrilled and overjoyed when something good does occur, just that I don't get crushed when something bad happens instead.

Take the football for example. For me it's Aussie Rules, for others it might be the soccer, rugby (!?), baseball, whatever. I was brought up on it, it's in my blood, I can't help it. When the Hawks lose, it hurts. Not in a feelingy-pathetic-woosbag sort of way, it actually physically hurts, like someone's twisting my guts in a knot. I don't like it. Not at all. But I simply don't have much choice in the matter.

So what do I do? I play it down. I never dare to hope we might actually win because the disappointment grows exponentially and I CERTAINLY never say it out loud. That way, if a victory unexpectedly comes along, I am over the moon, it's brilliant, magnified by years of poor performances. On the other hand, when (inevitably) another flogging slaps me in the face, I can turn to myself and say "you see? you expected nothing less".

Being a pessimist doesn't mean I have to wander the streets looking maudlin (though I am rather fond of that), in fact I am only really pessimistic when it comes to certain things. Things that matter. Things that hurt.

Like the football.

Or politics.

In a previous post Barista declared with some confidence that Howard will lose the upcoming election. While I hope with every fibre of my being that he's right, I can't help but think it's like uttering the name of the Scottish king in a theatre. It's tempting fate, it's asking for trouble.

And while I would love beyond pretty much anything to see Howard stripped of his robes (GOD I want to see that concession speech!), I actually don't believe it's going to happen.

Among the many varied and half-formed reasons in my head, I think one of the stronger points is the issue of voter fatigue. It occurs almost without fail during every election. Early on, when the idea of a new election is fresh and the pollies come out swinging, the general population allows itself the indulgence of actually thinking about the bigger picture for a couple of months. During this period, big issues like climate change, foreign policy, welfare, education and employment are taken up and embraced enthusiastically.

People think about, well, other people. They take a moment to let their imaginations run around the park and get some exercise. They can see a better world, a place where the ones with stuff, help the ones without stuff, a world in which Australia is seen as a leader of noble causes, a bastion of the ACTUAL 'fair go' (not John Howard's bizarre version). It's at these moments that Australians begin to consider reconciling with the Aborigines and using budget surpluses to *gasp* actually DO something literally constructive.

But all this takes effort.

John Howard has spent the last 10 years shoe-horning Australia into his ~~comatose~~ relaxed and comfortable mold. Ours is not to think on the possibilities, why expend the energy? You all work so hard in a purely noble way, you should put your feet up - don't trouble yourselves with these frivolities. BE RELAXED FOR FUCK'S SAKE!!

And so it is that the longer an election campaign drags on, the less energy voters have to, you know, give a toss.

The second reason I don't believe Howard will lose follows on from my first point and starts to kick in just as the energy described earlier begins to fade. Self interest.

Ultimately people are ~~shellfish~~ selfish. A staggering statement I realise and a trait that isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, under Howard's rule, the cult of the individual and immediate family to the exclusion of all others has become the dominant social force in Australia. Since the mid 90's we have been encouraged to get our selfish on. Bigger cars, bigger mortgages, give less to others, horde more for you, plasma screen TV's, McMansions, tennis courts. Build bigger fences to keep out the paedophiles, strengthen the borders to keep out the muslims. These are good and noble aims (apparently). Don't feel ashamed.

There is an ad on television at the moment for one of those new housing estates where the shiny be-babied couple smile wanly into the camera and declare that Delphin/Craigieburn/Caroline Springs/whatever-the-fuck is great because you're with people who "understand". In other words, don't let those latte-sipping inner-city elitists sneer at you for wanting a four-litre Pajero and a seven bedroom house with nine bathrooms and a "media room". It's OK, John Howard says so.

I am not entirely against these places, though I feel the ghetto-mentality that seems to be fed by ads like this and the concept of 'gated communities' can only be a bad thing. But they do represent a great deal of what Howard has achieved. It's a regression to the 50's.

Selfishness has always been and will always be at the core of every election, but my point is that Australians have been told for a decade that not only is selfishness acceptable, but it is a noble trait, something to celebrate - not to suppress it, but to shout it from the rooftops.

And so here we are, six, seven, eight months out from a Federal election with polls running strongly in favour of K-Rudd. The optimists among us are starting to get their hopes up, starting to believe that the dessicated coconut might finally be tipped out of his bowl.

But here is my prediction.

As we have seen in the last couple of news polls, the Labor lead will begin to diminish, slowly at first and then with increasing speed until the two Parties are more or less neck and neck by the time the election arrives. Howard will move to counter the areas of most concern (see Hicks already), including an increasingly shrill scare campaign over the abolition of the IR reforms, a hollow, but extravagant gesture towards climate change and continued attacks on Rudd's character. He'll drive wedges like the pro he is, he'll continue his ridiculous line about economic management that the MSM have bought wholesale, he'll furrow his little brow and talk Prime Ministerially about responsibilities and working harder and taking nothing for granted.

And slowly but surely, the Australian population will get worn down. After this early flurry of earnestness reflected in the polls, they'll get tired of having to be angry and instead they'll retreat to the feathered bed of selfishness and curl up in front of their flat screen TVs and watch Dancing With the Stars. Kevin Rudd will come to be seen as the all-too-eager geek at the front of the class and will be ridiculed accordingly. And John Howard will scrape in with a significantly reduced, but still significant majority.

Le sigh.

This (I hate to break it to you kids) is how I believe 2007 will turn out. But as I mentioned earlier - I'm not known for looking on the bright side.

But don't despair. Remember '99. It CAN happen - just don't expect it or it will run the other way. We need to play hard-to-get. Give it nothing and perhaps, just maybe, a Howard defeat can be coaxed out of it's burrow whence it has cowered quivering for the last three elections.

Please don't take this as an admission of defeat (though I realise that's precisely how it reads). It's just...by writing it down...I think it will help.

Bear to live - Bolt outraged (?)

2007-04-04T09:06:00.000+10:00

Well blow me down with a self-righteous feather.

Who'd have thought that those smelly, unwashed, baby-eating, dreadlocked, hippy, so-called 'animal rights activists' who demanded Knut be clubbed to death with a sock full of rusty nails (!!!) actually did no such thing.

I await Andrew Bolt's correction...

*settles in with a good book (perhaps War and Peace?)*

Dum de dum

2007-03-29T12:30:00.000+10:00

Oh hey. Hi there.

Wossup in da hood?

Me + inspiration right now = Hah!

Still. One must battle on irregardless.

I think lack of holidays over the last three years is starting to catch up with me. The good news? Holidays are on the way. Yesiree - I am off to far flung and exciting lands of exoticness mid April for a whole month of holitags - barely three weeks away.

WOOT I tell you!

I've been trying to summon the energy to write about David Hicks and why John Howard is going to win the next election (see voter 'care fatigue' and incumbency - I'll get there eventually) but it's too depressing. All I really want to do right now is sit on the couch and watch old seasons of the West Wing. DON'T JUDGE ME! I can't maintain the rage every day of the freakin' year.

Not sure about youse, but the daylight savings changeover has buggered me around. I'm still getting up and going to bed far too early. Oh well, if it means I can take photos like this

and this

more often, then maybe mornings are a good thing after all.

Peace out y'all.

Cleverness wins (again)

2007-03-23T11:06:00.000+11:00

I imagine many of you read or are at least aware of Larvatus Prodeo, the Australian group blog founded by Mark Bahnisch from Griffith University.

Though I rarely comment on LP (or anywhere for that matter), I'm a regular reader and often enjoy the stoushes in the comments.

As you will know if you're an Itemisation regular, education policy (particularly in history) and the Culture Wars are pet interests of mine.

In short, the conservative line for the last ten years or so is that the education system in Australia has been taken over by filthy 'leftists' who are injecting TEH CHILDS with all sorts of nasty Marxist ideas. It is a line frequently peddled by all the usual polemicists on the right, but the cheerleader for conservative education reform is Dr Kevin Donnelly.

Dr Donnelly is an 'educational consultant' who (among other things) first came to prominence as an adviser to the Kennett Government Education Minister Don Hayward. I first noticed him in the mid nineties after he published a typical polemic in The Age attacking Arts Faculties in various Australian Universities for some of the topics they chose to teach.

His method is standard. Broad-sweeping commentary packaged in neat bite-sized statements, easily digestible, yet almost entirely lacking in detail. He has made a living criticising teachers and (Labor) education departments, is published regularly in many of the major newspapers in this country and has worked for governments in Australia and New Zealand.
Donnelly's recent work Dumbing Down has received scathing criticism from Stuart Macintyre (Professor of History at Melbourne University and President of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia among other things) in The Australian. If you have five minutes, it's worth a read.

All this brings me back to Larvatus Prodeo. Being one of the foremost political blogs in the country, it receives its fair share of high profile readers and commentors. A little over a month ago, Mark Bahnsich wrote a post about education policy and 'teacher bashing' and who should turn up in the comments? None other than Dr D himself.

Read as he bravely and condescendingly weighs into the fray and is promptly shot down by LP regular Pavlov's Cat.

I love clever people.

Can't say I'm surprised

2007-03-21T16:30:00.000+11:00

About this.

Could it be cricket's Escobar?

This on the other hand...

Talk to anyone who knows anything about the speed of the interwebs in this country and you'll discover that we are rapidly becoming a stagnant backwater in things technological. With no plan whatsoever to rectify this situation coming from the surplus-obsessed Liberals, could it be that the "Future Fund" may actually be turned to something useful under KRudd?

I like the cut of his item.

Mystery

2007-03-21T14:24:00.000+11:00

Last night I went to a concert at a church in Camberwell to listen to 16th century choral works by Byrd, Morley and Weelkes to name a few.

*ignores puzzled faces*

One of the performers was my dear Papa and before the show, he discovered something very odd.

Under a park bench in the quiet, manicured gardens of the basilica, sitting side by side, he found two gold rings. One a plain gold band with an engraving on the inside, the other more ornate and filigreed. They looked very much like the wedding rings of a single couple.

Pondering the strangeness of the find, Dad picked them up to examine them further and it became even stranger: the engraving on the man's ring was marked with the date of my Father's first birthday.

...

Why were they there?

The engraved date speaks of a wedding during the Second World War, maybe a romance blossoming during time on leave, or convalescence. In Australia or Europe, Africa or the Americas there is no indication. Perhaps the bands of a couple escaping the horrors of war, or the mark of a more mundane, but still 60 year-long relationship.

Possibly they are the rings of two lovers never able to speak or openly recognise their love - a lifetime of regret and sadness laid out on sacred ground.

Maybe death has finally caught the ring bearers and the gesture is that of a relative gently setting them free. Or perhaps it is the mark of a divorce, the breakdown of a family, the end of a lifetime's era.

I have no true idea as to why those rings were there, but the possibilities are endless and most likely tinged with sadness. I hope the owners of them approve and that the rings find their way into hands that will care for them.

Hollow victory

2007-03-16T10:16:00.000+11:00

So it turns out one of the first inmates at Guantanamo Bay to be tried under the military commissions, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was responsible for pretty much everything bad that has happened in the last ten or fifteen years.

According to numerous news outlets, Mohammed has confessed to being behind the attacks on September 11, the Bali bombing, the World Trade Centre bombing in 1993 and having personally beheaded Daniel Pearl, an American journalist. But it doesn't end there, he admits to plotting to kill all sorts of people, from Bill Clinton to the Pope and an intention to blow up a whole lot of other stuff like US embassies, the Panama Canal and Big Ben to name a few. All up, according to the Pentagon, a total of 31 terror attacks either planned or executed.

It is also rumoured that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was behind the JFK assassination and if you play the episode of the Simpsons where Monty Burns gets shot backwards at 9 minutes, 11 seconds, Mohammed can clearly be seen handing Maggie Simpson a gun.

Cheap shots aside, this is precisely the sort of result that will raise more questions about the handling of Guantanamo prisoners (sorry, "unlawful enemy combatants" - no "prisoners" at Guantanamo) by US authorities than it will satisfy the general public. Already, there is considerable scepticism surrounding these reports.

See THIS is where rendition, ghost flights, "vigorous" interrogation techniques, questionable military commissions and general aresholery leads. Sure they've got a confession, but who is going to believe for a second that this individual was personally responsible for all of those events? Not after he has been in custody for six years. Not after his written accounts have been hit with the big black censor's texta, most notably in places where claims of torture seem to be made.

If he really DID do all these things and signed a confession, then why not put him in front of a legitimate court. Imagine how much greater the victory would be if they could place him in front of an impartial judge and gain a conviction using the laws of evidence, without hearsay and with confessions under dubious circumstances struck from the record. A conviction in a court of law would be a far more convincing demonstration that they have not only got their man, but that he actually did commit the acts he has apparently confessed to.

But no. This confession comes in a place where the law does not extend, where the rules of the Geneva convention are barely recognised and when they are, new terms are invented to circumvent them.

If it's a victory at all, it's a pretty hollow one.

How to act

2007-03-15T17:56:00.000+11:00

If you didn't see Extras last night, you missed this. Oh how I laffed.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Sir Ian McKellan.

A very folkie weekend

2007-03-14T14:29:00.000+11:00

So on the weekend, I lurched into my fourth decade.

The last few days have been spent with my dearest friends in the largely loving arms of the Port Fairy Folk Festival.

Heading down to stay in Airey's Inlet on Wednesday last week, we arrived at Port Fairy at lunchtime on Thursday and staked out a big spot in anticipation of the 20 or so people and 7 or 8 tents that were still to come.

As anyone who has ever camped at the Port Fairy Folk Festival will be able to testify, this is no mean feat. By the Saturday morning the campsite is so full that tents get parked in the most precarious of places. New arrivals stalk the camping area searching desperately for the smallest plot to plonk their shelter and we had to work hard to keep the space for friends arriving on Friday night.

Nonetheless, success was had.

There were many highlights of the weekend, but among the more amusing had to be seeing Lior get almost pulled off the stage by drunk 14 year-old girls, a very boozed and very dear friend and diminutive lady blogger (who will most definitely remain nameless but who will likely kill me for writing this regardless) punching someone in the back on the dance floor without the punchee registering the hit and then another friend following her lead, being sprung by the punchee's companion before contact had been made, and then pretending to look for something lost on the ground to escape recriminations.

For five minutes.

Did I mention the punchee was also a drunk 14 year-old girl?

G.O.L.D.

I saw many worthy acts including these people, this person, this person, these guys, that chick and numerous others, was wished happy birthday by Luka Bloom, swam in the sea, got quite sunburnt, drunk and tired, ate a lot of sausages, laughed a lot and had Happy Birthday sung to me by about 200 people on Fiddler's Green.

All in all, a pretty righteous birthday (in the non-Godly sense of the word).

And to cap it all off I was given the most awesomest birthday present evs. It is, in a word, fuckenunreal. Expect to see many more photgraphics appearing shortly.

So what with a weekend like that, time off work, presents, booze, sun, sea, wind, music, friends, John Howard sinking ever further in the polls and a trip to exotic locales in the very near furture, 30 is looking pretty bloody good right now.

Itemisizzle

2007-03-06T12:32:00.000+11:00

This is unreal!

Gizoogle any webpage you like, sit back and enjoy the results.

Here is Itemisation Gizoogled

"I reckon it M-to-tha-izzight have sum-m sum-m ta do wit tha alcohol escap'n whizzay tha bottle was opened allow'n tha wizzle inside ta freeze rapidly - but that's pizzy poorly-educated speculizzles."

Why is it so?

2007-03-05T16:08:00.000+11:00

Something odd happened last night.

*cue X-Files music*

Snooze and I were just settling down to dinner when we opened a bottle of wine. It had been in the freezer for maybe two hours because it was essentially room temperature when we got it home.

When it came out of the freezer, we could clearly see some little bits of ice floating in it, but only a couple of bits.

But here's the weird part.

Snooze pulled the cork and within seconds the whole thing froze solid in front of us. So quick was the process that Snooze actually put it back down on the bench and backed off fearing some kind of winey explosion (not of the Andrew Bolt kind - ZING).

It settled down to just a solid block of ice and no explosions were had, but it was very bizarre.

I reckon it might have something to do with the alcohol escaping when the bottle was opened allowing the wine inside to freeze rapidly - but that's pure poorly-educated speculation.

Any science nerds want to have a crack at solving this one?

Where's Julius Sumner Miller when you need him?

Pet numbers drop, kids to blame

2007-03-01T14:46:00.001+11:00

"Pets ditched for games" says the headline on the Hearld-Sun website, complete with a picture of a sad puppy.

The amusingly named Dr Seksel *snigger*, President of the Australian Veterinary Association, reports that changing lifestyles have seen a reduction in the number of pets in the last 15 years.

"Our style of living is different. We do tend to live in apartments and high rises more than we did 15 years ago," Dr Seksel said.

Fair enough.

"Modern suburban dwellings are much less likely to have a big backyard, which tends to restrict choices about pet ownership.

Reasonable point.

"Australian children these days are much more likely to be sitting inside playing video games than running around the backyard, which I think is a shame."

WTF!?

It's those lazy fat children that are to blame! They're bringing down society from within with their perfidious "computer games" and their "U-Tubes" and their "My-Spaces"! It's not a shame, it's a NATIONAL DISGRACE!!

How this stops people owning pets is not entirely clear to me, but that's the beauty of the Hearld-Sun, it doesn't have to make sense, as long as there's someone to blame. Hurrah!

Kerry gets one back

2007-03-01T12:56:00.000+11:00

For the first time in many years it's actually kind of fun to be a Lefty. Many of the appalling decisions that have been made on the wave of neoconservativism are starting to bite the hands that delivered them.

When John Kerry was defeated by George W in the 2004 US Federal elections, there was a level of despair among those who thought that we were seeing the end of the Bush White House. It was heartbreaking not just because "our side" had lost, but the way the loss came about.

Readers may remember a particularly charming group that formed during the campaign called the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth". A selling point for the Democrats was that John Kerry was a legitimate Vietnam War hero, having been decorated for his service in the swift boats - and an obvious counter to George W's own dubious miltary service.

SBVT took it upon themselves to viciously smear Kerry, accusing him of fabricating and exaggerating stories of his service in Vietnam to bolster his own image. Hiding under Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code, SBVT were able to publish a book and run television and print advertisments denouncing Kerry without being subject to the Federal Election Commission laws that would otherwise have prevented it.

Skip to February 2007. The President's nominee for the post of US Ambassodor to Belgium appears before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to be essentially interviewed for the position. The nominee is Sam Fox, a Republican and benefactor of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who contributed US$50,000 to the group during the 2004 election. On the Senate Committee is none other than John Kerry.

A beautiful comeuppance.

You should read the full transcript here [link], or watch the footage here [link].

But here is a brief sample:

Kerry: So, again, I ask you the question, do you think now that you and others bear responsibility for thinking about where we put money in American politics? What we're saying, what we present to the American people -- is truth important or isn’t it?

Fox: Senator, if I had reason to believe and if I were convinced that the money was going to be used to, in any untruthful or false way, knowingly, I would not give.

Kerry: Well, sir, let me ask you this question: Did you or did you not in any of the public comments being made at the time, which I assume you were following, hear or read of any of the public statements at that point in time, with respect to the legitimacy of these charges and these smears?

Fox: Mr. Senator, I can say this…

Kerry: Did you miss this: In September of 2004, Vice Admiral Ruth, with the Navy Inspector General, wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Navy that was made public -- the New York Times, the Washington Post, every major newspaper in the country carried, saying their examination found that the existing documentation regarding my medals was legitimate.

Did you miss that too?

Fox: I don’t remember those, but I'm certain at the time I must have read them.

Kerry: Do you think this should matter to me?

Fox: I'm sorry?

Kerry: Do you think this should matter to me?

Fox: Yes, I do.

Kerry: Do you think this should matter to everyone here, as a Senator?

Fox: Absolutely. As a matter of fact, going back to the time when I said I was on record and was interviewed a number of times about campaign finance reform and about less money going in, I said one of the big reasons was not just the nastiness and so forth associated with it, but the abuse the candidates had to take to run for public office, I think it's disgraceful, I think it's terrible.

It could be a fun few months.

Just...

2007-02-28T14:00:00.000+11:00

Courtesy of Virginia

That is all.

Woot

2007-02-21T15:55:00.000+11:00

Congratulations to Tim Stitz on his well-earned Green Room Award nomination for Best Male Performer in the Independent Theatre category.

Well earned my friend. My fingers and toes are crossed...

Howard's devastating troop surge to solve problems in Iraq

2007-02-20T12:40:00.000+11:00

In a bold response to Barack Obama's challenge to send another 20,000 Australian troops to fight in Iraq, John Howard and Brendan Nelson yesterday announced a move that will surely strike fear into the hearts of the previously emboldened terrorists in Iraq.

As Howard himself said in 2004, "It [Iraq] is a test of values - whether the powerful call for freedom can overcome the destructive force of terror".

In keeping with these grand statements on the clash of civilisations and his well-earned monika of the "Man of Steel", John Howard will commit UP TO 70 MORE NON-COMBAT PERSONNEL TO THE WAR ON TERROR!!

[Photo from here]

Osama Bin Laden must be LITERALLY quaking in his boots.

What a decisive and devastating move from a master tactician! This will ~~fool people into thinking he's doing something about~~ solve the problems in Iraq. I'm particularly fond of the wording: up to 70 more personnel. They're not even committing to 70, just any number between 0 and 70 - could be 50, could be 5 - either way IT'S STILL UP TO 70!

In other news, the newly appointed Minister for Trying To Excuse The Governments Appalling Record on Climate Change, Malcolm Turnbull announced a devastating move of his own. Australia will decisively fight Greenhouse gas emissions by completely phasing out conventional light globes over the next 2 to 3 years.

According to The Age, "lighting represents about 12 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions from households in Australia", so reducing these by any amount is surely a step in the right direction - but is this really about trying to reduce greenhouse emissions or is actually just a stunt? Take a look at the transcript from this morning's edition of AM on ABC radio and decide for yourself:

EMMA ALBERICI: Lighting is said to represent about 25 per cent of commercial sector greenhouse gas emissions, what about all the businesses around the country that leave their lights on at night? Will you consider fining them?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, I don't think that we're likely to be doing that.

EMMA ALBERICI: Why not?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Emma, I think you've got to look at measures that are, that are effective, and ultimately you know, you say you want to fine a business with its lights on. How do you know when you see the lights on in a business, how do you know whether the floor is empty, whether there are people working there, whether there are cleaners working there?

...

Um...sure. How do you know... if people are working... or not...

Good point Malcolm, well made.

You have to feel sorry for the man. He has the hardest job in the Federal Government at the moment and he doesn't do too badly considering the material he has to work with, but seriously.

An open letter to the neighbourhood racist

2007-02-15T17:17:00.000+11:00

Dear Fuckstick,

Last night, you chose to wake up the neighbourhood by racially abusing the taxi driver who brought you home, pissed out of your brain, at 3 o'clock in the morning. As enjoyable as you seem to find the exercise, I don't appreciate (nor does the rest of the street) being woken up by redneck cockheads like you.

Though you certainly have a way with words and a persuasive turn of phrase: "why don't you learn fucken English!? Have some fucken respect for this country mate! I don't wanna go to your fucken country! Have some fucken respect" etc, I would be more impressed if this wasn't the second time in a month that exactly the same thing has happened.

Last time, you took the particularly charming tack of calling the taxi driver a "curry muncher" and by thoughtfully informing him that it was people like him who gave "his people" a "bad name".

I congratulate you for your bravery - picking on taxi drivers unable to fight back as they are technically "at work", selecting those with a poor grasp of English, waiting until you get home before sparking up and then running into your house after they have already delivered you for a minimal fee. I applaud your eloquence: "why don't you fuck off back to your own country" and I am glad, so very glad that it is people like you who many new immigrants get to encounter at least every now and then.

Here's a news flash for you Fucktard, abusing someone for "not having respect for this country" and in the very same breath telling them that you don't want to go to their "fucken country" is so disastrously ironic that it actually leaves me speechless.

You, my friend, neighbour, brother in citizenship, I despise. I wish nothing for you but misery and a long, unfulfilling life.

Oh and while you're at it, fuck off out of our street.

Yrs etc.

Tom.

Amusement (en francais)

2007-02-13T16:42:00.000+11:00

I'm going over the Seas soon. OH THE EXCITEMENT!!

One of the places I'll be traipsing though is Paris. That's right. Paris.

In doing the obligatory pre-trip planning, I discovered that one the airports in Paris is called...Orly.

Ha!

Neeeaaooowww!

2007-02-09T16:54:00.000+11:00

I'm not all that in to fast cars and the like, but this is ace.

The looming Arc de Triomphe is amazing.

Well-earned

2007-02-06T13:03:00.000+11:00

David Attenborough is finally retiring at 83.

What a wonderful man and and a wonderful life he has led. Nature documentaries will not be the same without his distinctive narration.

I guess it had to happen one day.

PS - What's happened to Ausculture?

OH NOES!!!11!!!!11

2007-02-01T16:08:00.000+11:00

I like nature. I do. I like it's little twigs and it's sprouty grass, it's wavy trees and blowing winds ~~it's droughts and flooding rains~~. I have been known to spend "time" outside - some may even have seen me frolicking happily in the "woods".

But every now and then it all goes horribly, horribly wrong.

Gather 'round children and let me tell you a story, a story of innocentsce lost, of heart-wrenching despair and all round WTF-ness.

OH MY GOD TOM, I AM TOTALLY GOING TO FREAK OUT RIGHT NOW!

It's OK, it's not THAT scary a story. Like, chill out ~~dudes~~.

It all began "back in the day" when Snooze and I moved into our frankly "righteous" pad in inner-city Melbourne town. Oh they were happy days. A commonly agreed "feature of awesome-ness" in this new abode is an outdoor area I like to call the "backyard", complete with pondage.

For some months*, we assumed said pondage was just a stagnant cesspool of ancient waters, so you will appreciate our shock when we discovered, quite by accident, that these pools were in fact INHABITED!

Dude.

After recovering from our collective shock we investigated further. A litter of goldfish, their bodies adapted to the lightless conditions and foodless depths, had been swimming their merry way in front of our very noses for weeks** and we had noticed nary a thing. Yet here they were, splishing in a carefree manner and generally living up a storm (insomuch as they were alive).

With mouths agape, we set to improving their conditions (I would consequently recommend NOT cleaning a filthy pond with your mouth open, but there you go). We scooped our new little friends from the bowels of the swamp and placed them in the washing basin, drained the ponds, scrubbed them, hosed them, and re-filled them with sparkling clear water fit for an item and then introduced our fishes back to their new home.

Oh how they gallavanted!

Among other things, our earlier exploratory work had unearthed a pump system designed to circulate the water from one pond to the other, giving the fish a chance to gambol in the running stream and generally benefit from the tasty goodness. With a stroke of genius, we decided to let the pump run as we left the house one night to give the fishes a good run.

You can imagine our horror then, when we returned the following day to discover the pond COMPLETELY EMPTY bar the smallest, most distressing PUDDLE OF HELL I have ever witnessed. In it struggled five or six terrified goldfish, gasping for, well, water I guess.

Amazingly, after we rescued them and put them back into the washing basin as we refilled the ponds, they were all fine - not a formal complaint from any of them.

We did this again (shut up - it was BY ACCIDENT) a couple of weeks later, but the plucky little tackers just bounced right back.

Over time we have learned to love our fishes and despite our track record of trying to kill them (BY ACCIDENT), I like to think they felt a certain affection for us too ~~that had nothing to do with food~~.

And this is where I get back to nature (not literally, I'm not into that sort of thing).

For those who live, like, on the PLANET, you will know that we are in the grips of a drought the likes of which we have never seen ~~since the last one~~! The lack of water has made our dams dry, our grass parched, our trees wilted and our right-wing fuckwit columnists hysterical. Strange things happen in a drought.

And so it was, that a few short weeks ago, as I waltzed (literally) around my house on a leisurely weekend, I happened to cast an eye out into our backyard and there saw an amazing sight.

Standing on the pond, it's graceful neck swaying to and fro, impossibly long, spindly legs and an elegantly tapered beak scything the air, was a herron. A large waterfowl of the wetland variety. And there it was, standing in our tiny inner-city backyard.

With barely concealed excitement I ran to find my camera to record this wonderous moment. Returning to the backyard, camera at the ready, there was the herron, gulping gently. I took a photo. The herron gulped some more. I took another. The herron eyed me with its beady eye.

But then a little nagging voice started in my head.

Why is there a herron in our backyard? (Isn't it pretty!) No, wait a minute, WHY IS THERE A HERRON IN OUR BACKYARD AND WHY IS IT GULPING LIKE THAT!!??

OH NOES!!!1!!!!11!!

That's right readers. The fucken herron ATE OUR FISH. Not only did it eat our fish, it ate ALL BUT ONE!! There was one, solitary, quivering nervous wreck of a goldfish left.

So beware! Just because it looks pretty, doesn't mean it WON'T EAT YOU (or at least your fish). Nature's a bitch man. Or should that be nature's a bitch, man? Whatever. JUST DON'T LET YOUR GUARD DOWN WHEN NATURE'S AROUND. For real.

The use of "talking marks" in this "post" brought to you by Mike's Dad.

* and by months I do of course mean days
** and by weeks I of course mean multiple hours

C'mon (et al)

2007-01-28T17:01:00.000+11:00

When I was a smaller person, we used to have summer holdiays at Dromana on the Mornington Peninsula. The house was (and still is) an old weatherboard beach shack that belongs to the extended family. They were wonderful holidays, seemingly eternal weeks of sun, swimming and beach. Fish 'n' chips, pizza, cordial with ice in it. No TV, lots of boardgames, cricket (endless cricket), tennis, bikes - just ace.

While all that stuff was blissful, nothing was quite as exciting as getting taken by Dad to the brand new tennis centre to see the Australian Open. Looking back, it was an ideal opportunity to give my Mum a break - can you imagine the luxury of no kids for a whole day when usually there were at least three and often several more.

We would get in the van and drive to Frankston, get on the train and sit impatiently all the way to (then) Flinders Park, a white, glistening, almost religious icon in the centre of the city. Tickets to the outside courts in the first week was standard - hundreds of games, the soft thock of tennis balls filling the air. Occasionally we'd see someone famous, Stephan Edberg, Pat Cash, Stefi Graff - but mostly we watched lowly ranked qualifiers and doubles on the back courts.

One year Dad got a rush of blood to the head and bought us tickets to Centre Court. I have no idea who we saw, it doesn't matter in the slightest, all I remember was the stunning stadium. Modern, compact, shiny, colourful and so astonishingly quiet, any sound dense, like talking into a pillow.

I've been to the tennis most years since then but I've missed the last few Opens. I'd forgotten how wonderful it is to see the best in the world doing their "thang". So it was with some anticipation that me and Pete went along last Wednesday to see the night session of the Men's quarter finals - Rafael Nadal versus Fernando Gonzalez.

Anyone with even a passing interest in the tennis will know that the highly favoured Nadal was summarily dispatched by an extraordinary Gonzalez on the night. He was truly amazing with a forehand that really shouldn't be legal it's that good. We got tickets courtesy of a friend with inside contacts right next to Gonzalez' players box, three rows from the front. We could pretty much smell the players they were that close.

We saw the little interchanges Gonzalez had with his coach, watched Nadal struggle to find a chink in his armour and watched the best tennis that certainly I've ever seen.

Rafael Nadal adjusting his famous wedgie - Yes, I actually got a photo of it!

In a couple of hours Gonzalez will take to Centre Court to play in his first ever Grand Slam final against Roger Federer, possibly the greatest tennis player that has ever played the game. Both won their semis with terrifying efficiency, but no-one expects Gonzalez to even come close to Federer - in the words of Dr Evil, "no Mr Bond, I expect you to die". But having watched him on Wednesday and after seeing what he did to poor Tommy Haas, I reckon he's in with a chance.

So tonight I shall be sitting back and enjoying what could be one of the best games of tennis played in recent years. And I wouldn't be surprised if Gonzalez can do something quite extraordinary. I really hope he does.

Having said all that, I can now forsee and absolute thrashing being dealt out by Federer, but in the meantime, get behind Gonzalez - if nothing else, he's much cuter and considerably more charming.

Go Fernando!!

At last!

2007-01-25T11:24:00.000+11:00

It makes my heart swell with pride when friends of mine do extraordinary things. Sophie is not only an author of some note, but has recently turned her hand to nature photography with quite stunning results. I've been pestering her to post this for some time and now she has.

So I insist you visit her site immediately, grab a comfy chair, settle back and marvel at her spectacular footage of the truly magnificent sea eagle.

...and bells on her toes...

2007-01-25T10:45:00.000+11:00

I've been having a light hearted yet ongoing argument with Snooze over whether or not bells on bikes are compulsory. Well, turns out I'm wrong as Snooze has discovered courtesy of the Bicycle Victoria website.

Traffic regulations require a rider to have a bell fitted. The penalty for riding a bicycle without a bell is $50. The penalty refers specifically to a bell. The old definition of an audible warning device no longer applies - so you can't argue that your voice meets the regulations.

A bicycle for normal road use must be sold with 'an efficient bell or some other suitable audible warning device'.

OMGWTFBBQ indeed!

I can understand the point of cars being required to have horns, trams to have bells, trains hooters and emergency vehicles sirens, but bicycles!?

OK, so a bell on a bike might be handy to warn pedestrians of an approaching bike, BUT RIDING ON THE FOOTPATH IS ILLEGAL, so THAT can't be the reason.

So why else would you ~~need~~ be required at the point of a $50 fine to have a bell on your bike? To alert cars to your presence? As if anyone in a car is going to hear a pathetically pinging warning bell from a cyclist.

It's a silly rule.

Itemisation

Black Saturday

Brokeback Goblet

A new day

More election LOLs

McCain's last hope - crumping

*Shudder*

FRIV!

Is Palin a good debater? You betcha!

Lost in America as metaphor for Wall St meltdown

I got this!

Two reasons why America needs to not let us down

Possum gets serious

And the Tony Award for "Best Girl as a Guy" goes to...

"Dream a little meme of me(me)"

Muppet style patriotism

An post

Back!

Frozen

Elsewhere

The monster post that was

Wow

New Flickr addition

Into the unkown

"Mmm...genius"

Opposition Leader Worthington-Delaney

!!!

Spotted near Sydney Rd

Want!

Hello (cool change), is it me you're looking for?

Ferrets

The spirit of the game

Drinkemisation

Itemisation's 2007 Year in Review

Itemisation's2007 Year in Review

Friends

Family

Sport

Blogs

Travel

Health

Animals

Culture ('n' shit)

Politics

Randomness

Hawt

And so say all of us

And so this is Christmas?

I love the smell of democracy etc.

2 More Sleeps!!1!!!

Oh boy... so close...

The furry oracle

Exactly who's in charge?

Can we just get it over with

FRIV returns? Or just lazy blogging?

How I stopped worrying and learned to love the Polls

"The Heart of the Nation"

A Community Service Announcement

Pell solves climate change, is brilliant

Mitten

Helloes

Sometimes it's not all bad

Some drugly thoughts

Woah!

Cadel Evans recounts the mountain stage he just completed

Play among your selves

Freitag

All my frendz r belong to bookface

Recuts

Flight of the Ace-ness

Happy Birthday Berhinia!

Brrrr

A Question

I'm excited! no really...

AB v PK

Filler?

And God said "Let There Be FRIV"

Oh dear

Kevin Judd?

It could be good...it really could

Shudder

Itemisation's
2007 Year in Review