Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Rodent Opera and good old Alzheimer's

Yes hello. I know, it's been a while. When you have overcome your grief, learn to let it go...read on...

Besides, nothing could top my Grand Prix blog posting. Anything else would have been empty and pointless, so I have been rather demotivated, I'll admit.

Poor Omi lost another little rodent last week. You may have seen the news article in the Herald Sun:

Shock in the Atherton household last week when Billy was found dead in his cage. Police are not ruling out foul play, since another Guinea Pig was found near the scene acting in a suspicious manner. He was called in for questioning. For legal reasons we cannot name the suspect however we know that interviews with crime squad detectives proved fruitless, as the little rodent could offer no real information, only unintelligible squeaks. His defence attorney is outraged, accusing the Police of verminophobe and claiming Billy died of hypothermia. It is understood the suspect has now converted to Islam.
Herald Sun- "taking any old stuff and making it news".

Now, I may get into trouble for saying this but we all know the "suspect" was Billy's cage-mate Troy. And we know he has never liked Billy since we mated Billy with Troy's ex-girlfriend. It's all a big soap opera but that's what you get for living in Melbourne.

Just send condolence messages to me and I'll pass them to Naomi.

Now, on less morbid matters some of you may have noticed that we decided to sell our house in Bridgy. Yes, it's a sad tie-breaker with good old SA but let's face it, the longer I stay here (not to mention the more I get paid:)) the harder it is to go making empty promises about moving lock, stock and barrel back to the beautiful Adelaide Hills next week. Sorry, but I'm trying to learn to be happy in my own skin and that means staying put for a while.

ad says "buy before Global Warming Fire sale!!"


The annoying bit was the moment we put it on the market, the tenant moved out. I can't say I blame him. But there is the small matter that we are legally entitled to squeeze the broken lease's entire value out of him, plus confiscate his car, and sell him to slavery in Sudan. But we're not going to do that because we're Christians and that wouldn't be nice. And Christians are supposed to be nice. Apparently.

No wait. I must be thinking of "Christian TV stereotypes".

The extra annoying bit was that the agent who is property managing it didn't even let us know the kid was leaving. So, now we're corralled into auctioning the place at a fire sale (don't get any ideas about us selling it for $1000 plus a carton of beer).

Normally auctions cost a lot extra but I mentioned to the agent some piddly stuff about Real Estate codes of conduct and disclosure of important things like tenants leaving., and acting in the interests of the Vendor etc etc. Then they agreed to do it a "little cheaper".

It wasn't very nice of me at all. Some stereotype I am.

What else: Oh yeah- the job is going well and there's been a kind of, ahem, promotion. I think it's like a "general manager" role, babysitting the other branch more so Cameron (the owner) can be freed up. The upshot of that is that I get to spend more time in Melbourne traffic. Which means I get more time to switch off my brain, or sleep, or do some Bible Study, or talk myself to varying levels of insanity.

I'm now convinced that the road safety management in Melbourne correctly represents true Stalinist socialist values of wealth redistribution and citizen kontrol. Allow me to demonstrate:
- someone gets killed in a car accident by making a stupid error
- Government says it was speed, lowers speed limits and puts out more speed kameras
- Speed limit is so ridiculously slow most people go over it to avoid falling asleep from boredom
- Government makes bucketloads of money from "speeding"
- Government spends some of it's filthy lucre on feelgood advertising convincing everyone that being forced to drive at walking pace and spend all day on the road is for your own good. People are so stupified from driving mundanely slow they are easily brainwashed
- Government looks good by spending more filthy lucre on building nice new freeways, so that we have more top-class roads on which to...drive really really slowly


SO... I've decided not to whinge about speed revenue any more. Oh no. It's far, far worse than that. It's kontrol. Kommunism can creep up on you so slowly (!) you don't even notice.

Another reason Victorians don't notice is because the rest of the Government's filthy lucre gets spent on nice things like renovating the MCG or sucking up to F1 King Pin Bernie Ecclestone. So long as everyone is being entertained with sport, all is forgotten. Go to Party-approved sporting matches, cheer, be happy, drive home at Party-approved speed. When you are destitute from playing Party-approved pokies and your non-Party-approved bolshevist family unit is finally broken, rely heavily on Party-approved welfare system...

...and so on.


Meanwhile, there's still no water supplies in Melbourne. The people in Gippsland also have a water supply problem- they're buried under it. The rivers which flooded Gippy (ugh- now I'm talking like a local) are the very ones which have flooded in a major way no less than four times in the last 50 years. So clearly there has never really been a water supply problem in those rivers. I'm no hydro engineering expert but apparently a real hydro engineering expert actually said that if you dammed those particular rivers you would a) boost Melbourne's water supply and b) save Gippy people from drowning.

Instead, what do the Victorian Government do?

Blame the floods on Global Warming (note Party-approved use of kapital letters to afford the correct respect to the God of Klimate Change).

Gippsland is beautiful this time of year.


If we all fry in 50 years as Prophet Al Gore says we are, I will happily stand corrected. But what better way to kontrol people than to tell them we are ruining the planet, right now! Little old us! Just now! It's all only happened in the last few, um, (when was the last election??)

What the bluddy heck am I doing here again??

Making money in the Alzheimer's Ward

I've just cringingly noticed that the TV Channel which likes to push the boundaries of good taste right over the edge of a big cliff (Channel 10) are, with much hoop-la-la, peddling that Shlockumentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus.

This latest piece of re-hashed Jesus Conspiracy involves an innocuous 27-year old archaeological find which has been tortured mercilessly by a couple of unqualified Hollywood people until it no longer resembles what it really is. You guessed it. Through the magic of TV it is now the tomb of Jesus. The shocking truth. Rocking Christianity to it's core. Etc........etc.............Blah..............................blah.............................

.................blah.

And it's riding on a fresh tsunami wave of Jesus-conspiracy mania brought to new levels of cringworthiness by the Leonardo Code. Once again, the great masses will, through the magic of the entertainment industry, believe they are actually being informed about something.

Remember, the guy behind this shlock doc is the same guy who brought us the cringiest of all cringe movies....Titanic. 'Nuff said.



I won't go into the critical detail. I have done that here, if you've got your reading shoes on (that's a link to click on, you luddites). Needless to say I am convinced there is profit in selling the same story several times over to people with Alzheimer's disease.

Cheerio.