Athertonblab

Roxy and Omi

2010-09-17T18:16:00.000-07:00

I blogged about it, when we first got Roxy.. I wrote about how I tried to play hardball, as the family breadwinner, that we could not buy this horse until we sold the other one. I tried to play the stern, clinical, purse-strings-clutching father saying "no". But I couldn't say no to this one. There was something about her that I knew I was not meant to resist. And even before all of the beautiful women in my life (wife, daughter, mother) lovingly convinced me it was the right thing to do, I had already decided. She was a beautiful animal. She was just perfect.

Perhaps when the agony passes, I might understand. The agony that my precious daughter didn't get to say goodbye, because fate is so cruel. A holiday which was meant to free her from so much stress, to give her some relief, ended up depriving her of some final, brief precious moments with this dear animal. We had only just sent her off to what was meant to be a time and place of joy. Now it's been rudely invaded with more pain.

When the vet said those dreadful words, all I could think about was this. It isn't fair. Any other time but this. Can my daughter take any more blows?

Roxy was so beautiful, right to the last. She accepted it graciously, she didn't struggle. She lay down softly, looking up at us. But in her gaze she knew someone was missing. I hope she forgave us, if horses can do such a thing.

Dear Roxy, you were only in our family for such a short time. Maybe one day I will understand, how it must be remembered as nothing other than a precious, wonderful time. I understand that death robs us so much. But it's cruel and unfair that my poor Naomi didn't have the chance to start her grieving and sadness, by the side of this irreplaceable companion.

Goodbye Roxy. You were the best friend my daughter had. She was at her happiest sitting on your back. Right from the start, when I tried to play tough guy, you kept softening me up. You were just like all the other beautiful women in my life.

For my precious daughter, I pray that void will be filled somehow, one day.

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Why the media are stupid #2

2010-04-29T21:29:00.001-07:00

Egads ! Since when were crimes considered illegal ??

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Paddysaurus

2010-04-21T21:53:00.000-07:00

I've invented a new term and simply had to share it on the blog... (since nobody in the real world gets me)

Here it is: "Passive anorexia".

It's what happens to you when you are dining with two or more nurses, and they are talking about their work.

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And that was just on the way to the tram stop!

2010-03-29T23:21:00.000-07:00

People are actually more interesting than race cars..

Just...

Webber Snr. Had his chin up, all things considered...

"That's Sir Jackie to you, laddie"
(Just kidding. ....
He would never call me "laddie")

Yep. He's large.

Stoddy. Wonder what budget airline he owns now?

So how is test driving working out for you Fisi?

Marcos, who unlike me was unburdened by the responsibility of having to go to work on Monday, did even more flesh-pressing at Crown.

SURE it was a mechanical failure, Sebastian!

Yes Lewis, it is a bloody nanny state. Four million Victorians will hardly disagree.

Brazilian, you say? You got a sister??

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Grand Prix gets slightly more interesting

2010-03-28T05:09:00.000-07:00

My marshalling post was about as exciting as watching Save Albert Park protesters complain. And that was with the near-priceless Ascari having it's right rear corner ripped off by an equally near-priceless Porsche GT3 and another Porsche catching fire in front of us.

And that was after I had to drive from Wartook in the morning to get there (check it on a map). I parked at the Exhibition Centre, found out the trams weren't stopping out the front, had to sprint up the road to Spencer St, stopping briefly to chat with Jenson Button's dad. He wished me a "quiet day". I wished him and his boy luck. I now wish I hadn't. I finally got to my post, already quite stuffed.

But it did get more interesting after the race. Thanks to an old GP friend Marcos Linhares, a bubbly Brazilian and former accredited journalist who is used to getting into places, and still does, now without accreditation. The magic he can weave merely with my CAMS Guest pass is amazing. Every time Marcos is around, things always get interesting.

Here's some pics to prove it.

That would be Marcos

Corinne Schumacher talks to hubby "Nein, leibster, don't come out yet...there are too many of ze fan people outside" (I seriously think that's what she was saying from what I overheard!)

Vijay Mallya, owner of the very handy if not slightly dorkily named Force India

A blurry and not at all well-looking Eddie Jordan, drummer and former team owner

Vitantantontonio Liuzzi

"It's only Vitantantontantonio Liuzzi, Marcos, let's find someone more interesting..."

"Lauda"!! No...."Lauda!! "...no...oh, you've heard that one before... a few million times...okay...

Martin Brundle, the best driver to come out of the UK in the 80's and 90's, period.

He is also an uber-gentleman. He remembered Marcos from having met the evening before and asked after some things they had talked about.

Josef Leberer was once Ayrton Senna's physical therapist, now working for Red Bull, and an extremely charming man.

Paul Stodddart, the man who gave Webber a break, trying to hide the fact that he's holding a fag

Our family fave, Rubinho, let me pretend to be his minder for a few paces. "Move aside folks, Rubes has a plane to catch". If I really want to be a hardball minder, perhaps I should stop grinning like a goof.

German Timo Glock whose name in Irish is pronounced "Tim O'GLock". Driving for Richard Branson's new super team, which designed it's F1 car with a fuel tank too small. Fly Virgin, they're safe. No, really...

Coming soon, pics of Jackie Stewart, Ian Thorpe and Mark Webber's Dad, Allan!

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Australian Grand Prix- now with extra wedding!

2010-03-26T04:45:00.000-07:00

To cut a long story short:

A close friend who lives 3 hours drive from Melbourne decided to (finally) get married. This was good.

She scheduled the wedding date the same weekend as the Grand Prix. That bit was bad. Because when I try to have my cake and etc.... things invariably become hyper complicated. To keep it simple, I am driving a great distance in a very short time, and for once I'm thankful Bernie Moneybags demanded that the GP starts at 5pm on Sunday. It means I have a chance of getting back in time for the race, and not displeasing the motorsport powers-what-be to the point of getting kicked out of the marshalling team.

I've been conscripted into the communications team these days. That means I listen to the race control loop all day and occasionally call in with something really, really trivial just to remind them that I still exist. To top things off, I am posted on the the most boring section of track, ever.

Still, things started swimmingly enough. Of all the boring of boringest posts on the track, Bruno Senna had to walk past mine, on Thursday morning. With my meagre Portuguese I gave him a hearty greeting, and he gave me a hearty response.

That pretty much had my weekend made. Now here's some pics, hot off the press, of some people you probably don't know and shiny expensive things.

Nick Heidfeld, who I mistook for Nico Rosberg, (who really should grow a beard as he is often mistaken for a woman) but I don't think he noticed. Don't mention the w....

Goosebumps!!

Passover, Easter and the Grand Prix

2010-03-12T05:05:00.000-08:00

Yep, it's a big time of year for religious festivals.

Let's cast a little look back to the same time of year in 2006.

The reason for that particular nostalgia trip was because, at the end, I blogged about a young Brazilian up-and-comer. Name of Bruno.

Bruno Senna. Nephew of a chap named Ayrton.

I watched him drive a F3 car like his uncle did- decimate his opposition on cold tyres on lap 1, effectively ending the race for everyone. Senna first. Daylight second. And goosebumps from me.

Well now the lad is in F1, driving for one of the dubious first-time teams of 2010. I had hoped, back then in 2006, that he wouldn't rush it. He hasn't, but the Hispania Race Team has no design or manufacturer background which fills me with confidence. They only tested the car a week before the opening race in Bahrain (this weekend). A rubbish car and team can be a real career killer, even if you have the talent of Senna and Schumacher combined.

Mind you, back in in 1984 his uncle drove for the little known minions Toleman and almost won a race, before scoring multiple points.

I hope I'm wrong, and I hope he can carry them. In the meantime, let's see how Bruno goes just having fun...

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Remember the "Studio" ?

2010-03-11T01:37:00.000-08:00

Our renovation projects tend to pop up in four yearly cycles. They stay unfinished until the cycle returns.

Don't look down. It's even more upsetting.

Well, the Studio is back on. I'll post some "during" pics. My utopia awaits.

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New Missy

2010-02-24T17:31:00.000-08:00

I seem to recall this very thing happening some years ago with a little, fat, white pony.

Barely nanoseconds after dragging ourselves out of a potential financial mess, we buy a horse.

I did my level best to play grumpy head-of-the-house-breadwinner and said "NO" to this purchase for a whole three weeks, but there was one overwhelming reality which I could not shake, and that was:-

I. Love. This. Animal.

Firstly, not being a snooty little high-bred pony (yes you're beautiful Opal and we love you but you're a snob), she actually comes over to you when you jump into the paddock.

She's part Arab (no jokes please, we will get along just fine. Besides, she hasn't said anything remotely antisemitic yet). A strapping lass, athletic, but without looking like an oversized greyhound. She solicited comments from impressed observers at Omi's first Pony Club ride, one day after we collected her, at how cooperative and responsive she was, even with her new unfamiliar rider.

She takes bridles and saddles without the slightest fuss. There was nought but placid ambivalence from her while a farrier hammered away at her feet, which made me almost oblivious to his bill.

Yep. I purchase cars, motorbikes, even houses, and they will break down or misbehave. And I'm supposed to know a thing or two about those thingies.

But me, I can buy horsies good I can.

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Kevin's favourite interview

2010-02-24T16:55:00.000-08:00

He's so articulate! He didn't even batt an eyelid.

I see little difference between this and the ABC's default practice anyway. Time to sack Kerry O'Brien and Tony Jones. It might save some money.

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Bruce Wayne had a garage sale

2010-01-11T18:54:00.000-08:00

I've been warned that I'm getting way too serious about my politics.

It's true. So, I thought I'd try my hand at poetry.

Ahem....

Bruce Wayne had a garage sale
His toys they had to go
Alfred got the Batmobile
Catwoman, the Lambo

His black and sleek marine machine
Went to an eco-clown
Bruce, ever the capitalist
He wished they'd all just drown

The hippy moonbats hit the sea
Off to the whale’s defence
With hope, and hemp, and attitude,
But not a boat licence.

They tangled with the Japanese
Set off an awful row
You’d think they’d learn some manners
from Obama (he would bow).

Such courage from our eco-friends
At danger they would laugh
Until the big Shona Maru
Just cut them right in half

They shed tears to their lawyers
While floating in the blue
And there did Bruce Wayne’s wish
just about come true…

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So where the &$#! are youz?

2010-01-11T14:53:00.000-08:00

In the fine tradition of crass Aussie tourism promotions, I want to reach out to all of my overseas friends, especially those who haven't already been here (and survived).

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Christmas balls

2010-01-04T04:27:00.000-08:00

Our Christmas get-together was going great until Buzz Lightyear tried to hit on Bratz Cowgirl.

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Poor Santa. Poor, fat, unhealthy, evil Santa...

2009-12-16T20:07:00.000-08:00

From the same university which brought you bogus speed-kills road safety data and climate change alarmism, now this startling expose on Santa Claus.

Monash uni boffin Nathan Grills is concerned that Santa encourages, among other things, obesity, smoking, alcoholism, sloth, lack of hygiene and drink driving. In other words, he is too politically incorrect and must change his ways, or go.

None of this bothers me much since, as a family, we don't do Santa Claus, so to speak.

What is a little disturbing is that a publicly funded university pays a professor to analyse the vices of someone who doesn't exist.

First Global Climate Warming Change alarmism, and now this. Do we need any more proof that research departments should stop receiving all that juicy taxpayer funding?

If they must harass Santa Claus, why can't scientists stop being such killjoys and spend more time coming up with stuff like this. I'm prepared to believe in a Santa who's arrival is accompanied by a thermonuclear explosion. BOOM! Merry Christmas, all.

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So you think you can wear pink gloves

2009-12-06T19:40:00.000-08:00

When I first saw this slightly cheesy but cute dance-off, something struck me.

Sure, it's important to raise awareness about breast cancer. But what I really love about this, is that it proves something I've always believed: Real people are so much more interesting and beautiful than celebrities.

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A warming poem

2009-12-06T18:11:00.000-08:00

From the brilliant Tim Blair, whose readers are possibly more brilliant:

Lyle’s History of Global Warming:

Ah, looking back, I have to smile,
When I was but a little Lyle
In summer, and I used at play
In gentle Narragansett Bay.

Then panic grabbed ahold of me
When suddenly I had to pee
And to my shame, I now admit,
I warmed the ocean, just a bit.

That reckless moment, I suspect,
Set off a domino effect;
And here’s a fact I now must face:
I have destroyed the human race.

And so I must apologize
As all life on this planet dies,
I’m sorry, I was only three
And really, really had to pee.

Wall bad. Don't forget it.

2009-11-09T21:23:00.001-08:00

Time to reminisce on two related thingies; the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the 4.1 year anniversary of our variety-packed trip to Germany.

Casting my mind back to 1989, I do vaguely recall nonchalantly trudging past the TV while Mum and Dad excitedly exclaimed "Look, the Berlin wall is coming down! I never thought we'd see the day!". I (probably) responded with a grunt and wheelspun noisily away in the Datsun 1600, more interested in what my equally fashion-challenged mates' thought of my new happy pants.

I'm thankful that 16 years later, my nerd-ish curiosity forced me to bone up on my cold-war history in order to make the 2005 trip a little more interesting. And boy, did it...

Yet the world seems to have gone in the reverse direction to me. I'm (still) discovering the sheer weight, scope and relevance of "The Fall of The Wall". Others seem to think it almost a tragedy. We've been numbed to the significance of it. With articles like this in the UK's Guardian it's no wonder. It's called "creeping socialism", prevalent throughout our mainstream politics and media.

I'm bemused to see some influential members of the modern intelligentsia reflecting on the euphoria of the Berlin Wall's destruction, yet elsewhere champion the very things which put it up in the first place. It's one thing to have Ostalgie- morbid fascination for the quirky things of the former east. Sharon and I sure did; the time-capsule chic, serial blandness, happy traffic light icons, and the wonderfully awful Trabant.

Happy little communist girl says WALK...or we'll lock you up in a small, steel cell and deprive you of sleep for ten days...

But it's another thing to willfully ignore the arrests, tortures, imprisonments, and murders of those who simply had an opinion, the surveilance, the corruption, the gulags, the deprivation, the control.

Let's break it down into two often-quoted expressions of socialist romanticism, which were said to me first hand, by some of my dearest German friends from the former east:

There was no poverty in the GDR.

There was no crime in the GDR (former East Germany).

Indeed. Poverty is relative. There was no poverty in the GDR because everyone was poor. And of course there was no crime in the GDR- amongst the citizens. All the crime was being committed by the government.

I was also told this: Secret State Police? Everyone has them! Australia has ASIO, no?

Sure, except here our "secret" police protect us from terrorism. In the GDR, they protected the regime from criticism. Using whatever brutal means necessary.

If you're like me and let the actual event pass you by, it's not too late to learn what it meant. And, let me spell it out for you, why it was a fantastic day. The wall didn't "fall". It was pushed. By very, very brave people. I hope that spirit doesn't remain in the past.

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Aussie F1 ace Webber slams vertically challenged people

2009-10-22T18:02:00.000-07:00

Yes this is petty but very effective example of why I hate most newsmedia.

Here's a headline from the Sydney Morning Herald: Casey Stoner quick to criticise circuit after slick effort , with an opening claim that Stoner took a "swipe at the condition of the track".

Those not sophisticated enough to read past the sound-byte will think that this great Aussie World Champion comes to his home event and does nothing but whinge that the circuit is rubbish, the corners all go the wrong way, it's too far from anything, the flag marshalls are all ugly and the toilets aren't clean.

Note to SMH journalist Martin Boulton: Either you learn your subject, such as how racing drivers or riders always criticise a racetracks' early lack of grip, and this is perfectly normal... or stick to something that you're good at, like busting a footy player getting drunk, or something.

And the stones in the sandtraps are too big and cause ouchies..

So, congratulations to Casey Stoner and Mark Webber for breaking an Aussie drought in world motorsport, all in one weekend.

Although I do hope the Sydney Morning Herald don't catch wind of Webber's post-race press comments, when asked about his fuel strategy; "I knew that Barrichello ...was a bit shorter than me..."

Please, Mark. We know you're a lanky guy but go easy on the dwarfist comments. Rubens is shorter than just about everybody.

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Birthday!!

2009-10-22T17:57:00.003-07:00

Happy Birthday to our beautiful daughter Omi. She's now a teenager. Although, unofficially, she has been for some time.

Archive footage. In fact I think the horse is dead now...

To herald this milestone she now has an iPod.

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Cliches accidentally merged creatively with other cliches #1

2009-10-13T01:17:00.000-07:00

"We'll burn that bridge when we come to it"
-somebody or other

I had to share that. In other news, the bride and I traveled to sunny Whyalla recently to investigate our "Spec home". For the uninitiated, we purchased a reddish coloured block of land in mining-boomtown Whyalla to build a new house, and rake in all the profits of capital gain, negative gearing and carbon trading* before the Gum-mint changes it all and steals our hard-earned money.

Unfortunately most of the builders who set up in blossoming Whyalla forgot to bring some semi-vital services, such as bricklayers, carpenters, roofing people, plumbers, electricians and telephone sanitisers. You know, the kind of people who come in handy when you want to build a house and can't do it yourself because you live too far away.

So we headed up north to see if being in the same town as the builder for a few days might spur them into action. It kinda worked. We feared the boomtown had become a ghost town on the Monday, before remembering that rural South Aussies do take their time getting to work at the beginning of the week.

Despite the house not being finished, beloved bride saw positives. Whilst hanging curtains she noted that the rudimentary state of the interior helped us become more detatched to the newness of the place, knowing that we would never live in it.

She was right. It would have been even better if that state of detatchment could have produced an extra 5K to pay the massive mortgage whilst vacant. We still await the builder to finish, some public services to be connected, property management appraisals, and all the rest.

But I guess we'll burn those bridges we we come to them.

*I wish

Before

...and after (spreading 400 sqm of mulch bark with nothing but a shovel. Never again. Ever.)

The reserve over the back fence is currently around 150,000 acres

A heavy roller would have been better, but less likely to get us home afterwards

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Classifieds for the bored and lonely

2009-09-09T19:46:00.000-07:00

Craigslist is the classified advertising website for anarchists, so it has a reputation for producing the weirdest ads and personal notices. Scary washing machine guy would have been right at home here, although probably wouldn't have found a buyer with actual money...

Here's a selection from their current top twenty.

Looking for Bridesmaids
...my fiancee and I are getting married in June. He has 8 groomsmen lined up and I only have one bridesmaid. So, I need some girls who are attractive and around my age to stand up in my wedding. You can be single or taken. It doesn't matter....you just have to be hot. But, not hotter then me. ..

Do you have a small, incontinent dog?
Or perhaps you work for a small dog rescue of some sort. Either way, I have a package of small doggy diapers. I don't want to throw them out coz they are pretty expensive. (as someone with a small, incontnent dog would already know). Please don't try to put them on a cat. It won't work. Trust me.

Ferocious attack kitten
This destructive kitty has been trained as a proud warrior and will fiercely defend your house, even against you. Has a very soft and furry belly, like a teddy bear - however he will bite your face if you try to touch it. For the love of God, someone please take this thing out of my house

Collectable Ralph Nader chair
Yes, that's right. Ralph Nader, perennial Green Party candidate for the U.S. presidency MAY have sat in this very chair! ... It has a nice red, commie upholstery and a sleek black plastic backing. The wheels don't function well, but that is a small price to pay for state control of the means of production.

You hit me with your Prius
Me - Bicyclist, heading to jury duty on 10th Street, Friday at 8:50am.
You - Prius driver, crossing over two lanes, hitting me with your car and speeding away.
I was hoping we could catch up for a cup of coffee, so I could get your views on the environment, and strangle you.

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Promote Road Safety: Kill a Rally Driver

2009-09-07T05:12:00.000-07:00

Kudos to NSW for saving Rally Australia. It would be a travesty if those WRC cars were lost to our fast, sweeping roads, and an army of Finnish maniacs were denied a decent excuse to visit Down Under.

What do you get with an Australian major event? Well, you get world-class organisation, unrivalled Aussie hospitality, blossoming local economies, beautiful scenery, and of course, the most standard issue...PROTESTERS.

Can I grab a lift? Our Kombi Van collapsed under the weight of placards and hemp...

I'm unsure as to whether they oppose the rally for environmental reasons, road safety reasons, or because there aren't more women drivers.

I'm presuming it wasn't for road safety reasons, since they threw rocks at Rally Drivers. Because as we all know, death is nature's way of telling you to slow down.

The delightfully sarcastic (my kinda guy) Tim Blair has more.

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Spooky Ninja Cat

2009-08-26T21:41:00.000-07:00

The soundtrack helps make it that extra bit spooky

I know what many of you are thinking and the answer is this; the nice hardwood floors appear to be coated with a water based non-yellowing satin finish.

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Not that I'm discriminating against Vertically Challenged Jewish Catholic Formula One Drivers

2009-08-23T17:36:00.000-07:00

Those of you unfortunate enough to know all of my little quirks know that I love giving everything a deep, mystical meaning.

For example; I'm sitting at work idly wondering why it's so quiet. At that precise moment, three tradesman vans elbow their way into our carpark, both phone lines light up with two unrelated customers complaining of an identical problem, two competing sales reps make an unsolicited call, and my mobile lights up with Sharon telling me that the car has broken down again.

I then contemplate whether this is some kind of universal Murphy-esque phenomenon, some kind of man-made (and baffingly well co-ordinated) conspiracy, or a message from God. And not in a Blues Brothers way.

Here's the latest: My interest in the Jewish people and the Hebrew roots of my faith, and my love for Formula One racing, with particular favour for Brazilian Catholic and all-round-nice-guy Rubens Barrichello, could not be more detached and unrelated.

Until I saw something rather interesting on Rubens' helmet from an in-car shot.

Freaky. Now let me contemplate this. And don't try any "perfectly logical explanation" claims, I won't hear of it!

Well, I am rational enough to avoid suggesting that it brought him the luck he needed to win the Euro GP last night. He won it because he just drove faster than everyone else...

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Thai Diary

2009-08-18T16:51:00.000-07:00

Fancy travelling all the way overseas for a holiday...

On previous overseas trips I have attempted to create some kind of compressed adventure travel where we bounce from place to place, immersing one's self in reams of boring geo-politics to extract maximum value from the experience, then arrive home totally exhausted.

The strange logic behind this is that if I, a nervous aerophobe, am to sit in a metal tube ten kilometres up in the sky being propelled at 900km/h by thousands of exploding chemicals, for hours and hours, I want it to lead to a real experience. Relaxing on a beach trying to think about nothing, I can do in Adelaide, or even Melbourne for that matter (if one doesn't care about weather).

But this time, for Sharon's 40th b'day, the plan was to put aside my need for cerebral geo-political, historical and spiritual stimulation, and keep it simple for the bride: Tigers (her favourite), beach, palm trees, no stress, no rush, and my undivided attention. No history, politics or war stories...

And you'll never guess- we almost achieved all of the above.

In keeping with the original plan, I shall try to itemise the holiday without being excessively wordy, and will use catchy present-tense to feign the impression that I was writing as we went. Creative licence is used at my discretion (I know no other way);

DAY 1: Flight is fine until we reach the tropics where it becomes annoyingly bumpy. Using Jetstar's individual DVD players, wife and I manage to synchronise watching My Life In Ruins. 8.5 hours goes fast. Arrive in Bangkok, humid as expected. No probs. Taxi cheap. Accor Hotel magnificent.
DAY 2: Go looking at pagan shrines. Sharon takes 200 photos already. Get scammed by a Tuk-Tuk driver into visiting tailors and jewelers so he could get a petrol bonus. Don't care. Actually, yes...yes I am interested in a tailormade silk lined dinner jacket for $120...

DAY 3: Early back to BKK airport Suvinarbhumi (pronounced Su-Bi-Nar-POOM) for a flight to Koh Samui. Shocked to discover it is a prop plane, not a jet. Manage to talk myself into believing it will be the worst flight ever, will get blown around like a plastic bag, and if the plane doesn't crash the heart failure would get me anyway.

After the smoothest most pleasant flight ever, land at Samui which looks suspiciously like a tropical paradise, if the airport is anything to go by.

Taxi almost can't find the bungalows recommended to us by our pastor. Then we wish he hadn't found it at all. Promised beachfront room is indeed beachfront, but not actually a room. It is a hastily converted kennel with a padlock, scary light switches, and non-flushable toilet with accompanying bucket. The dog who once lived there is now sleeping on the balcony. Flee for our lives, gladly losing 350THB ($15) deposit.

Find another hotel room with a less third-world feel. Make mental note to question pastor's travel standards.

Lounge around poolside reading The Shack. Start crying as tragic plot unfolds. Stop reading. Dinner at Hotel's beach restaurant, which is actually on the beach.

DAY 4: The saying goes "when in Rome, rent a motor scooter". We do ($8 a day). Best way to travel. Initially safety-conscious with long pants and helmet for Sharon (despite hair issues) but eventually don't bother and ride just like everybody else here, i.e. no helmet, shorts, thongs, and on the wrong side of the road three abreast playing chicken with SUV's.

Go to main attraction, Tiger Zoo and Aquarium, which holds the entire cast of Finding Nemo, and has tigers. Real ones.

Awww. Just like Molly. Except bigger. And capable of scratching more than the couch.

Sharon gushes over finally meeting a tiger and feeding tiger cub. Magnificent experience, beautiful, majestic beasts. Marvel over God's cleverness-ness.

A lone traveller, equally gushing over big cat experience, starts chatting. I'm thinking Ukranian, Czech or Polish. Mentions she's Israeli. One main objective of trip (see above) dies an instant death as I start bombarding the poor woman with my geo-politics and respect for Israel. She doesn't run away screaming, which makes me happy.

Go to sea lion show with loud Thai presenter and barely discernible Engrish. Sea Lions very funny but don't they know it, the slippery little prima-donnas. Tiger show not so. Something wrong about seeing these incredible beasts made to do tricks.

Evening: Cheap meal (third Thai green curry for trip and looking forward to many more) and romantic beach walk with bride trying to remember conversation sans kiddies. Lamai beach not loud and debauched like other parts. Manage to avoid loud Australians. Catch up with Israeli later for more geo-politics and girl talk. So I get to have cake and eat it too.

Order cake for dessert.

DAY 5: Meet elephants for ride and visit anti-climactic waterfall. I slip and almost take a comical wet-bum ride down waterfall, in true National Lampoon-style, lacerating hand. Feel like buffoon. Go back down and feed elephants. Wonderful animals. Not worried about sticking hand in elephant's mouth, more worried about the trampling thing.

I hear Elephants are very clever

And this one has just eaten my camera

Ride scooter around rest of Island. Shopping. Drink fruity drinks on beachfront bar. More shopping. And more. Become smug and proud that only a good husband can endure so much shopping. Visit pagan shrine, the "Big Buddha" on an estuary hilltop, right in airport flight path, with enormous Buddha arms stretching up to touch the belly of the passing planes for good luck (which, somewhat ironically, would cause them to plummet into a fiery crash, killing everyone on board).

Get puncture. Think we're going to be stranded until nice Thai mechanic spots us a mile away and fixes puncture for 20THB (around 0.80cents). I give him 40THB.

Love the way Thais greet and show gratitude with slight bow and praying hands. Adds to the truly wonderful experience.

Get another puncture before arriving back at Lamai. This one costs 170THB ($6) to replace tube. Again, mechanics appear from nowhere and rescue us.

Bump into Israeli again (yes she has a name. It's...um.....) at Lamai cafe after dinner. Dining alone (poor thing). Tolerates more geo-politics from me (poor thing). Gotta love secular Jews. You can eat and talk non-kosher.

DAY 6: Do a big fat dose of nothing but lie on hotel's beach lounges. Get sunburned with a view to eventually getting some kind of tan. 1000THB ($40) gets pinched by room cleaning staff but a swim in beautiful ocean cools me off and I am surprisingly less livid than I thought.

Remember Israeli's name now. It's .

More shopping. I'm exhausted from all the nothing. Sharon is taking less photos, discovering that immersing ones-self in the moment is actually more relaxing. Kudos! Keep reading The Shack. Cry again, but in a happy way.

DAY 7: Wake up. Bum around. Taxi to the most relaxing airport in the world. Catch flight. Almost disappointed to see it's a full size jet this time. Bangkok. Cheap Taxi. Back to the Accor Hotel with even better room this time. Last chance for a real green curry. Watch a movie with the appalingly bad Haydn Christensen (the one who played Darth Vader as a pouting kid). Sleep.

DAY 8: Check out, need to kill entire afternoon before 10pm flight. Suggest skytrain to a boat ride on Bangkok's river. Bad idea. Loud diesel engine, smog, fumes, takes forever. Stop at one last pagan shrine mainly to escape fumes. Still not sure why we missed a Thai massage. Back to hotel lounge for free cocktail and cheap taxi to Su-bi-nar-POOM.

I blinked and it was all over. Arrive in Melbourne. Freeze half to death.

SELF- RATING:

Tiger time and general wildlife level: 9/10
Beach quotient: 10/10
Palm tree factor: 10/10
Lack of stress offset: 6/10
Avoidance of geo-political discussion: 0/10
Undivided attention to wife: 6.5/10 (subject to external audit).

This whole travelling-for-a-holiday thing is actually growing on me...

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When Baptists attack...

2009-08-04T21:23:00.000-07:00

We're GOING TO THAILAND on Sunday! (Applause).

But first, some news. Not days after a terrorist plot was blown open in Australia , the apologising begins.

The article I linked to above goes out of its way to avoid using any reference to the religious affiliations of the alleged perpetrators. It's an ABC article (feign shock and surprise... now).

You haven't guessed yet? They're Islamic (feign shock and...). I guessed that all by myself, from picking out the words "fatwa", "Al-Shabaab", "links to Al-Qaeda", and "Broadmeadows".

Prime Minister declares cautiously: "This is not a war on Collingwood supporters". Most of Melbourne really wouldn't mind if it was...

Perhaps now is not the time to be pondering this, since, in case I didn't mention earlier, we are GOING TO THAILAND ON SUNDAY !!

I stopped by the gum-mint's travel advisory website yesterday to see if anything had changed on Thailand, and fortunately, it was still business as usual:

There is a high threat of terrorist attack in Thailand. We continue to receive reports that terrorists may be planning attacks against a range of targets, including tourist areas and other places frequented by foreigners.

Good-oh then.

Forgive me, but I have a kind of naive optimism about smartraveller.gov. I suspect they give those kinds of warnings about anywhere, so that if someone does end up getting injured in a terrorist attack in somewhere like, say, Iceland, they can do a "don't say we didn't warn you" routine and avoid a litigious nightmare.

But just in case the warnings are remotely legitimate, here's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to steer clear of Islamic people.

Yep. I'm going to put aside fear of being considered offensive/racist/intolerant/ bigoted/ etc, and worry more about what protects my beloved and cherished wife and mother of my three children. You can charge me with hate crimes after we return safe, sound, and refreshed.

Unless of course we get mauled by Tigers. Still, that's a risk we actually choose to take.

To lighten the tone of this post before I depart, I leave you with this mild attempt at humour, courtesy of the irrepressible Iowahawk:

A person from a country, a person of a religious persuasion, and a member of a non-endangered animal species walk into a bar. The bartender says to the animal, "hay, we don't get many of your kind in here." After reporting the incident to the appropriate civil rights agency, the bar's liquor license was revoked.

...and this rare 70's Star Wars photo, for which I would welcome submissions for a better caption:

"what's the problemo? She's not my sister..."

See you soon! Unless we are attacked by Collingwood supporters...

Satire and Suicide.

2009-07-29T22:47:00.000-07:00

I really hope that satire isn't the same as personal mockery. I use one, and don't like the other.

If you're smart (unlike me) you'll try and remain voluntarily ignorant about politics, but try to avoid, at least, thinking that all political bents are the same. Take the 1970's socialist revolutionary Saul Alinsky for example. His book Rules For Radicals, a step-by-step handbook on how to rise to power, has been used frequently by various US Democrats.

This useful instructional tome reads like it's a workshop manual for VW Beetles, but with bigger words. It has some marvelous pointers on stuff like; how to discredit and personally destroy your opponents, how to deflect criticism, how to create job vacancies (i.e. "push" people out of your way) and such like. It even contained an "over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: Lucifer". Quite the magnanimous hat-tip coming from a militant atheist.

Here's one of Alinsky's famous methods, paraphrased somewhat: Force your opponents to live up to their own standards. When they don't, attack them.

Matthew Littman was a Democrat strategist and a speech writer for now-VP Joe Biden (which may explain why Biden so often strays from his script. Tragically, he's even worse at ad-libbing). In an article in the factually-challenged news portal Huffington Post, Littman wrote of Hillary Clinton during the 2008 US presidential race...

I am offended by the attacks on Senator Clinton because there is no question that the slams against her are hypocritical and come because she’s a woman...

Such a nice thing to say albeit where his grammar is slightly awkward because also the lack of punctuation makes the sentence look a little strange and because he can't write quite right.

Yes, as speechwriter for one of Clinton's opponents, it's really quite sweet of him to be worried about Hillary mainly due to her scary woman-parts (that's a feminist term so don't get snarky). I totally agree with him.

But wait. The same Littman, in a recent interview, made comments about resigned Alaskan governor Sarah Palin which were, by his own logic, misogynistic and sexist. And, of all the media-driven twisted, sick and depraved mockery of Palin, Littman excused it, and joined in. The bi-partisan feminist website New Agenda has the story. He even talks down to a female co-interviewee in the most hideously patronising manner, clapping at her like a dog.

Okay, so the guy is a low-brow, bigoted hypocrite who enjoys being nasty. Check. But isn't he running contrary to the much-heralded, Democrat-practised Alinsky method?

Not at all. He's adhering to it fastidiously, actually. Because, like many of his political allies, he has no moral standards at all. So there's nothing to hold him to.

As opposed to Republicans, who often can't hang on to their own standards. They still haven't worked out that to make the party platform "bugger marriages, bugger families and exterminate inconvenient pregnancies en masse" gives them licence to stuff up almost anything.

In that light, I would almost have to disagree with the Sarah Palin response to "comedian" David Letterman's jibe about her daughter, were it not for the fact that the media incited Palin into responding. You see, Letterman had nothing to apologise for. He has no standards to adhere to. So, building a "joke" around statutory rape of a 14 year-old girl is just another day at the office for Dirty Old Dave.

Likewise, when the leftist gossip site wonkette.com made fun of republican nominee John McCain's daughter recently. Megan McCain was desperately trying to help an unknown person who sent her a twitter message saying that he wanted to kill himself. She contacted Twitter, and even the Seattle Police, such was her concern. Wonkette.com mocked her for it, calling her "hyper-emotional" and saying she was going "progressively nuts" for attempting to help some guy who was just "writing some sadsack stuff about wanting to die".

Nope. Wonkette.com, a gossip site who want you to believe their personal, insidious mockery is actually savvy political satire, have not done anything wrong. To call anything "wrong" is so yesterday.

That last example resonates somewhat more than usual. You see, down here in Victoria, a 14-year-old girl and former classmate of my daughter's best friend, committed suicide after repeatedly receiving demeaning comments on the internet.

Any suicide is a tragedy. That it was someone so young is exceedingly heartbreaking.

But then, a broken heart would be my own fault. If only I didn't have standards....

Chanelle Rae.

You Tube innit

2009-07-27T05:12:00.000-07:00

At last some relevant Atherton family stuff on You Tube. Technology rocks.

Omes:

And Sammy Boy

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Senna Massa Surtees

2009-07-26T17:05:00.000-07:00

Bear with me I'm a little freaked and am having a weird, join-the-dots moment.

I was watching my beloved F1 at Hungary on Saturday pm. For my past ponderings on F1, go here.

I suspected that the crash involving Brazilian Felipe Massa, where the car seemed to just drive off into the wall with little or no input from the driver, was not actually a car problem, but a driver problem. It was almost as if he just lost consciousness.

Of course, I had no-one to explain this theory to as I was all alone, which I mostly am when I watch F1. Funny about that. Well, Sharon was away for the weekend at a scrapbooking boot camp, where hopefully she will finish the wedding photo album.

Anyhoo, my theory was proven correct when replays showed a suspension spring bouncing down the track and hitting poor Felipe (who I affectionately call "FES", for fans of That 70's Show) in the face. As good as carbon fibre helmets are, they can't stop a metal spring from penetrating and lacerating one's face.

As a diversion from the hard reality of it all, commentators waxed bafflingly over how the spring had bounced into Fes's path when there were no cars immediately ahead to kick it up. Well, I thought. It's a spring. It bounced. That's what they do. It could have been bouncing around for hours before poor Fes came along. But again of course, no-one was there to hear my brilliance.

Brawn GP driver Rubens Barrichello, a fellow Brazilian, had visited Fes at his bedside.

The next morning at little league footy, where, incidentally, Sammy's team won, I met a Pommy guy who had raced formula Ford in the UK and once worked on the car of Roland Ratzenberger.

For the uninitiated, Ratzenberger was the Austrian who was tragically killed on the Saturday practice at the Imola Grand Prix of May 1st, 1994. The Sunday race was then made infamous by the death of Brazilian Ayrton Senna, where a piece of suspension had peirced Senna's helmet. Besides visiting Ratzenberger's crash, Senna had also been to the hospital bedside of his Brazlian friend, the young hotshoe Rubens Barrichello, who had survived a horror crash two days earlier. It had all happened, one big ugly mass of incidents, in the one weekend. They say things happen in threes.

Back at the footy; we also discussed the timing of it all. A week ago, Henry Surtees, son of the great world champion of both motorbikes and cars, John Surtees, died in a Formula 2 race. 18 year-old Henry Surtees, driving a Renault, was hit in the head by a loose wheel. The race contained other second-generation F1 drivers Jolyone Palmer and Alex Brundle.

So that night I watched the Hungarian GP. Early in the race, a pitstop error by the Renault team lead to a wheel coming loose and bouncing, as wheels do, down the track for quite a distance. I haven't seen a loose wheel in F1 for a long time. This season is particularly interesting for my age group of F1 tragics, as there are three second-generation F1 drivers in Piquet, Nakajima and Rosberg. All of whose dads drove in my era.

I love F1, but learning to put it into it's proper place has been quite a journey for me. I pray that Fes will be okay. I also pray that the delightful Rubens Barrichello will quit at the end of this year. Sharon and I both love him as an F1 driver, but wife Silvania and his new munchkins Fernando and Eduardo love him even more as a hubby and dad.

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Dramatic Chipmunk

2009-07-23T15:50:00.000-07:00

The title is inaccurate. It's actually a prarie dog.

AND tragically I missed the fact that the previous post was momentously #100 on the athertonblab blog!! Had I noticed, there would have been carnivals and prize-giveaways.

Oh well.

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Funny Billboard dept.

2009-07-11T16:52:00.001-07:00

Billboard I saw just outside Geelong. Spot the ideologically accurate piece of defacement.

Beyond that I'm saying nothing.

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Back to whatever is considered normal for us...

2009-07-09T22:45:00.000-07:00

Family news. Omi and Opes did their first bit of Pony Club together and I'm pleased to say that they jumped some stuff without breaking anything except the bank. I have some video footage, complete with sexy camera angles I learned from One Digital's sports coverage, and some unwitting background commentary from Sam, although it had nothing to do with equestrianism.

There's also a cameo appearance from Mum and Dad, who were over for the weekend to enjoy our sub-arctic temperatures, no doubt due to global warming.

I would post them on You Tube. But a) I can't find the cable that sends the pictures from the camera to the papooter, and b) Mum worries that everytime I put something about our family on the interweb we increase our risk of being kidnapped by jihadis. I do wish she wouldn't flatter me so.

It's not like I haven't uploaded stuff to YT before, which should scare anyone who rightly thinks I already have way too much publishing space on the interweb. The stuff I've experimented with thus far is not quite as cerebral as you'd expect from me:

That's me channeling Steve McQueen in the blue car. I'll let you know as soon as I upload something involving reality.

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Obama channels Clinton

2009-07-09T22:41:00.000-07:00

And not in a good way...

UPDATE: According to ABC's Insiders, a different camera angle exonerates The One from any carnal intent so I should not be so unfair. Sarkozy, however, is still guilty-as-charged. Oh well, he's French. (We know he is French from his outrageous accent).

And now, for the crime of attempting to criticise Bams, I am off to the gulag with my shovel, for re-education...

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Scary Washing Machine update

2009-06-11T18:58:00.001-07:00

The scary washing machine guy (see below) has generated over 200,000 hits on the original ad listing, received over 700 questions (including around 20 marriage proposals), is auctioning off his dinosaur pictures for charity (over $1,000 already), has a fan page on facebook (over 3,000 fans...me one of them), and is appearing on a prime time NZ current affairs show tonight.

Please, no jokes about what's considered newsworthy in NZ. This guy actually deserves the attention. Nice to see true talent being recognised, since there's so little of it on TV.

Oh, and the bidding for his cruddy old Fisher and Paykel is up to $275.

NZ dollars, but still...

UPDATE: 14th June- Bidding for the washing machine is over $2600, along with this memorable Q&A, amongst hundreds of others:

Q: I think when Trademe unplugs this auction, the whole Auckland would have a power surge & all eletrical appliances has gone POPCORNS !
A: You were doing really well right up to the end bit there when the Tuoretts kicked in but you have a the makings of a valid point

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Some "P" words

2009-06-11T18:08:00.001-07:00

This is not about politics, this is about principle.

Just when I thought the pop culture savagery of Sarah Palin would subside after Obama's success. Good thing I never watch David Letterman. Pity 25+ million Americans do.

The columnist writing about this latest low-brow excuse for comedy, makes the following observation:

...the surest way to have good people say cruel things (is) to bury them in a crowd.

Politics don't matter. Principle matters. Step out from the crowd.

An update:

Interesting that she prefers to talk about the fact that she has her finger on solving 80% of North America's energy problems, but CBS just want to ask her about smut. Still, it was articulately handled. Somebody tell me again why she is regarded in pop culture narrative as an embarrassing fool?

It bears repeating; time to turn down the pop culture influence in your life. Or turn it off altogether.

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Irritable netball Syndrome

2009-06-10T19:28:00.000-07:00

Well woo-hoo.

First, some family news. Very soon, Sharon is turning 40. Sadly I had to cancel the live performance by Darren Hayes, the fireworks, the official statement by Kevin Rudd and banquet for 3,000 people when she insisted on having a quiet little gathering of...get this...girls only.

I'll ponder the self-value implications of that later. Meanwhile I'm kinda glad the Darren Hayes thing was called off. Some of his roadies were looking at me in ways that just weren't right.

Our little princess Becky Boo is experimenting beyond artistic pursuits and is now trying out sport: Netball. I got to take her to a Saturday prac recently. In hindsight I should have taken the video cam, in case I caught that elusive cute-6-year-old-girl-getting-hit-in-the-face-with-a-ball shot for Australia's Funniest Videos of Kids Seriously Maiming Themselves. Perhaps not.

I actually quite like netball. It's a fast-paced game where the ball moves around a lot, and the plot is simple. I'm not so sure about the mass TV coverage it's getting though. Sure, netball deserves it. I'm just worried that it will turn an army of cute little good-natured netballers into ravenous, violent hyenas. That's what happens when sports and sheep stations get mixed up.

By the way, if anyone is into cliche entomology, I would love to know where the term "playing for sheep stations" actually arose. Did a backyard cricketer actually win a sheep station once? Did they keep it?

Elsewhere on the wonderful internet, it appears the most talented writers ply their gifts in online auction postings. In New Zealand, a young man was simply trying to sell his washing machine, and his ad copy skills ended up on TV, Radio, and a fan page on facebook. Exhibit A- he described the washing machine as

the loudest most violent sounding washing machine I have ever encountered. It makes guests scared and children cry. Once while washing a load of towels it...got so out of control for a minute that I swear I actually saw a porthole to another dimension open above it just for a second, there were dinosaurs on the other side and they looked scared too, it almost sucked me in but I held on for my life to the deepfreeze.

Just to show it was no flash of freak genius, the seller's responses in the "questions and answers" section is not only brilliant, it appears to have become a full time job. Observe...

Q: Did you see any hot cavemen through the portal? Not only do I need a washing machine but I need someone to do the lawns and fix the squeaky door
A: Look lady I was terrified and holding on for my life. I didn't really have time to sum up the hotness of cavemen as my pants and shoes were being sucked into the vortex of death. I only remembered seeing the dinosaurs because it was quite remarkable. I've seen a lot of cave men before, I grew up in Waiuku. But dinosaurs is a first for me.

I doubt the designers of this online auction ever dreamt that their Q & A forum would become a long, Pythonesque soap opera with recurring themes, instructions on how to turn your goldfish into fridge magnets, and paranioa about NZ being invaded by Iceland.

There's even philosophy: I try to learn obscure skills in case of dramatic life changing occurrences- I am learning to toe type at the moment in case I accidently dip my hands in liquid nitrogen.

And .. OHS would rain down on you like a tonne of bricks. Incidentally a tonne of feathers would be just as heavy as a tonne of bricks...a thought I have always puzzled over. ..I'd rather be smothered under a tonne of feathers though, I would rather risk the suffocation than be battered to a pulp by bricks

And ...I've seen what acid can do, I watched Robocop. A lot can be learned from Robocop.

And ...I've never understood the fear of cursed mummy hands. After all it's just a hand, no claws, no poison glands, no fangs, all it can do at worst is make rude gestures or wipe its smell on you.

And ...Isn't the term "sustainable life" a bit silly? All life is sustained, if its ceases to be sustained its stopped. When it's stopped it becomes death.

Reading through the comments is better than two hours of TV, and I don't just say that because TV is rubbish. He deserves to get over $10,000 for his washing machine, or at least the price of a major publishing contract.

In news far less palatable I have begun a course of herbal stuff to combat a condition I have which, in the interests of good taste, I will describe merely as "digestive issues". I am confident that this stuff will do the trick. I base this optimism on the fact that it is, without peer, the most foul tasting substance I have ever come near. It tastes like fertilizer. I suppose I should have purchased the "berry flavoured" version, but I'd reckon it would simply taste like fertilizer with berries in it. And I'd prefer my affection for berries to remain intact.

You might argue that, just because this stuff leaves you feeling like a demonic being from Hades has urinated in your mouth doesn't mean it's effective. But you see, I'm applying the logic of Darren Hayes in reverse. He once sung that "junk food tastes so good because it's bad for you".

Or so one of his roadies said.

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Pope, you are The Biggest Loser!

2009-05-18T17:08:00.000-07:00

Before Catholics write in and complain (I shouldn't flatter myself...), remember: CONTEXT, people! Read...

For the Pope's visit to The Holy Land, as he constantly called it (when surely "Israel" would be much easier to say) those wacky guys at Hamas made sure the right billboards were set up to herald his arrival. Like this one in Nazareth.

I do so love it when Muslims are being honest.

Like somebody said once- can anything good come out of Nazareth?

Cerebral puns

2009-05-13T21:34:00.002-07:00

This is on an email going around the globe, so hopefully my blatant plagiarism and credit-hogging will be noticed first. Some puns for those with active brains.

I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.

She was only a whisky maker, but he loved her still.

A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class because it was a weapon of math disruption.

I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then, it hit me.

The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large

The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

And, my favourite, which should be read by all motorsport people who take it all too seriously;

No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.

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Careless clairvoyance

2009-04-22T16:41:00.000-07:00

Fresh from our Spot The Irony dept.

British psychic Derek Acorah had to cancel two evening shows due to "unforseen television commitments".

Darn Affirmative Action! Why shouldn't they be allowed to employ a psychic receptionist?

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Sporting parents. They're the worst

2009-04-20T04:26:00.000-07:00

So we finally agreed to let Sammy boy play an actual sport instead of just experimenting with several until he was old enough to decide which one he liked (i.e., around 35).

It's not that we wanted him to lead a sheltered life, or were worried that he would pick up bad, aggressive, competitive habits.

And it's not that we were dubious about his chosen sport, AFL- what with the fact that 500,000 other children from the area play it. I can readily admit that AFL is a good game, a fast-moving powerful clash of skills. It's the millions of barbarians who yell at their TV's over it and refuse to talk about anything else which is occasionally annoying.

That was it right there- the main reason we've been baulking on poor Sam was that we didn't want to become sporting parents.

But we finally relented and took Sam to the local mini league, the only outlet for his 3 million daily kilowatts of boyish energy. He was slotted into the Lara Panthers for his first game. They were playing the "Devils"- another annoying irony considering we had to miss church for all of this. The Devils, it seemed, were a bunch of overly skilled little ferrets who had been playing for a while. Sam, and all of his teammates, were the exact opposite.

So when the Devils kicked several dozen goals to the Panthers' zero in the first quarter we feared Sam would find it all a bore and become demotivated. Or worse. But the whole mismatch seemed to drive the little Panthers harder and by the final quarter they were peppering the goals with varying accuracy. Including our little panther, Sammy boy, having been thrust into full forward since Q2, grabbing his moment of glory and putting one through for six points.

By which time I'd fist-pumped the sky at least three times, audibly cursed an umpire's decision twice and jumped when Sammy kicked his goal. I am now a sporting parent.

But it's not about me. My little guy plays footy now.

first the attempted smother

then the big moment

...then the acting like maybe someone else should have kicked it..

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Facebook: Stop now while you still can...

2009-04-19T23:38:00.000-07:00

Sharon reckons I'm spending too much time on facebook.

She's absolutely right, but it could always be worse. I have been given permission to use the details of a good friend who has sunk into the lowest depths of facebook addiction and wants his case to be highlighted to warn others.

I did promise to change his name, however, so we will simply refer to him as "Mr. S. Anderson".

A true barometer of the degree to which facebookery has ruined one's life, is the number of pointless facebook "fun" quiz's one takes part in.

So far, Dave...er, Mr S. Anderson has partaken in the following banal facebook quizzery.

- The "What's your Bible IQ" quiz
- IQ Test
- Brain game
- The Ultimate Grammar Quiz
- The "What's your inner nationality?" quiz
- The "What's your five favourite breakfast cereals of all time?" quiz (he picked Cocoa-pops three times)
- The "what type of chicken are you?" quiz
- The "which Harry Potter character are you?" quiz
- "Are you smarter than a 5th-Grader?"
- "Where should you be living?" (His answer was San Fransisco. Hmmm. Big hmmmmm...)

Folks, I realised something was wrong after doing the "Which 'Scrubs' character are you?" test, and I stopped immediately. Keep David in your prayers.

(I was JD if anyone wants to know).

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I missed April fool's day!

2009-04-01T14:02:00.000-07:00

I did consider sending out an email announcing that we were moving back to Adelaide, but figured it would be cruel (in so many different ways).

To atone for this, here's a selection of April 1st 2009 pranks. I got them from an international source, with an unsurprisingly large number of them being from Australia:

The Guardian Switches to Twitter

UK's famous daily The Guardian announced it would become "the first newspaper in the world to be published exclusively via Twitter, the sensationally popular social networking service that has transformed online communication". Those goofs at Archie McPhees describe Twitter as "It's like a giant party where nobody can say more than 140 characters at a time". Twitter is like Facebook and MySpace, but more current. For now.

The Guardian also revealed an ongoing project to rewrite its entire news archive in the form of "tweets" (Twitter's style of text messages). Examples included:
"1832 Reform Act gives voting rights to one in five adult males yay!!!"; "OMG Hitler invades Poland, allies declare war see tinyurl.com/b5x6e for more"; and "JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?"

Buckingham Palace as a holiday rental

Website Holidaylettings.uk posted the following listing for Buckingham Palace on its site:
This stunning accommodation offers deluxe living in the heart of England's capital city. A gated property with secure parking and armed guards.. Exquisitely furnished with many priceless antiques, royal collections and rare artifacts. 400 people work at the Palace to cater to your every need, including domestic servants, chefs, footmen, cleaners, plumbers, gardeners, chauffeurs, electricians, and two people who look after the 300 clocks.
...and a throne room which is an unusual but popular additional feature.
The owners do reside in the property but are discreet and are available should you require any assistance. They also own other properties throughout the United Kingdom. Please contact them for further details.

It includes "guestbook" testimonials from Tony and Cherie Blair and George Bush and advises people withn allergies that there are corgis.

World's longest National Anthem

UK Tabloid The Sun revealed that during the qualifying match against Ukraine, fans would have to stand for the world's longest national anthem, the six-and-a-half minute version of Oi Ukrainy. Fans caught sitting down during the anthem would be ejected from Wembley stadium. The anthem would be sung by the folk star Furstov Aprylova (think about it). Apparently the anthem's closing line contains a dig at their former rulers: "Kiev, Kiev — there is no such thing as a Chicken Moscow". Yummy!

Aussie Rules G-bal l

Google Australia announced it had partnered with the Australian rules football league to develop the G-ball, which contains inbuilt GPS and motion sensor systems to monitor the location, force and torque of each kick. The data is interpreted by a new curvilenear parabolic approximation algorithm. Google can provide users - from amateurs to professional players - with detailed online kicking tips, style suggestions and tutorials based on their gBall kicking data.

Geelong could have done with that in September last year.

Silent Crisps

The Daily Mail revealed that Walkers Crisps had designed noise-free crisps, to be marketed as "Ready Silent Cri-sshhp." They would allow people to "eat loud snacks in the cinema without disturbing the person next to you." The crisp was said to have "the same flavour and crunchiness, except it comes already crushed."

But would the salt and vinegar ones still get you high when you inhale them?

GM and Chrysler ordered out of NASCAR

According to Car and Driver magazine, president Obama ordered that "GM and Chrysler must cease participation in NASCAR at the end of the 2009 season if they hope to receive any additional financial aid from the government. .. corporations must demonstrate they will spend it wisely. Racing has been said to improve on-road technology, but frankly, NASCAR almost flaunts its standing among the lowest-tech forms of motorsport..."

Obama telling the private sector what to do? NASCAR being the lowest-tech form of Motorsport? That one sure had me going...

Free Childcare at Political Offices

An advertisement that appeared on page five of the Australian newspaper claimed that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had volunteered the use of the electorate offices as a child-minding service: "Each MP's electorate office will today be accepting newborns for a free child minding service. This is another example of Labor's commitment to working families."

Personally I think the kiddies would be safer at an ABC Learning centre, even if they do occasionally get locked in overnight.

Dummies for Climate Change

On March 31 a mannequin was found chained to the doors of a Bank of America branch in Boston. The mannequin wore a sign, "The real dummies evict people & fund climate chaos." A group calling itself Mannequins for Climate Justice took responsibility, saying it was getting a head start on Fossil Fools Day, an initiative to use April 1st as a day to mock and resist the fossil fuel industry.

Mannequins don't have brains. Methinks this creative prank may have backfired.

Ideological Search Engine

Yahoo! unveiled an "ideological search engine". Users could select between the Democratic and Republican ideology. Democratic results displayed in blue. Republican in red.

Apparently the White House was excited and asked for the algorithm, but didn't mention why.

Other pearls include $99 flights to Mars (savings of over $3 trillion- "at this price, you can't afford NOT to go!!"), an invisible car, and Turtle Wax made from free-range Turtles. All this and more at the Museum of Hoaxes.

..until next year, then.

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2009-03-31T15:38:00.000-07:00

More topically relevant hilarity from those twits at Archie McPhee's.

Social Networking Explanation Service

Have you given up trying to get your parents to understand your blog, let alone Twitter and Facebook? We're here to help. Hire us, and we'll have a patient ten year old call your parents and explain the intricacies of social networking and micro-blogging to them. Our 10 year olds are selected not only for their knowledge and expertise, but also for their ability to present the information like the kind of polite young ladies and gentlemen that appeal to parents. Plus, they call home every once in a while, which is more than we can say for you. For an extra $100 we can have our operators convince your parents that they shouldn't use any of these services or their identity will be stolen by a cyber-stalker just like they showed on that one 60 Minutes episode. We highly recommend you pay the extra fee. No one wants their parents on Facebook. No one.

By the way, I have a facebook page now.

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We have ways of making you laugh...

2009-03-30T22:17:00.001-07:00

Had to share this, a great article on the power of consensus over truth.

Having done a workshop in stand-up comedy shortly before I moved to Victoria, I am familiar with the concept of the "science of laughter". Our comedic instructor, SA funny man (apparently) Dave Flanagan, said that people will laugh at something even if they find it mildly offensive, wrong or just plain un-funny, simply from the mass laughter of others- the will to be amongst the peer group. The power of comedy combined with the power of the groupthink.

Take Good News Week 's recent little tirade against Christians and Christianity. Nothing new there, but the political and social bias of this show is now so overwhelming it's unashamedly declaring "laugh with us or you're not cool". It's not alone.

" Most comedy show audiences probably believe they possess a substantive understanding of the issues of the day...In truth, the live audience sycophants would cheer like trained seals no matter the content. Being on TV or around those that make TV is just - “cool.” Informed content is not required. Check informed opinion at the studio door. Allegiance to what is “hip” is all that is necessary. "

Yep. Include some of the TV viewing audience in that. Apologies to GNW fans, although I doubt GNW's lampooned victims will ever hear an apology from them.

Here's the article expanding on the manipulative power of entertainment, paying particular attention to how it can ruin politicians who probably deserve better, and sometimes save them when they deserve less. (Warning; lengthy)

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Formula One grows a heart

2009-03-29T16:48:00.000-07:00

It's funny, as I grow older I think I am becoming a little more aware of the little things in life, like beauty, compassion, concern for what is right rather than just what works.

Although some say I am becoming even more cynical, jaded and brutally conservative. Who the hell knows really?? But a true barometer of my social/personal leanings, can be measured from that yearly religious experience, the Grand Prix.

F1 teckos surrounding by opulence, no doubt discussing the GFC (thats Global Financial Crisis, for those who don't work around many TLA's. That's Three Letter Abbreviations, by the way)

You see, I have managed to shock some people, who rightly say they know me well, by saying that Formula One is a ridiculously indulgent, hideously expensive exercise in hedonism and half the money burned to live out these fantasies could better be spent feeding several small poor countries. Or freeing them from despotic regimes and installing healthy democracies (just in case you were worried I was sounding too progressive and compassionate there).

ha-HA, plebs!! If you want to get on my side of the fence, volunteer and help out. Unfortunately you'll have to give up being drunk, loud and annoying. Think you can handle that? Sure you can...

Indeed, I have even let slip once or twice that I reckon being manipulated by that greedy little Bernie Ecclestone into paying more bazillions and having a"twighlight race" to passify his Euro TV requirements is ludicrous. And, if Melbourne is really losing $40m a year on running it then we should say bye-bye GP, send it over to the Arab Bloc with their oil fortune, good riddance, Bernie and them are made for eachother. I could, believe it or not, live without it.

Button's winning car post race, awaiting weigh-in

But there's still that nagging tinge of respect: I love how humanity can achieve. Expertise, skill, and desire to compete are all good. There's just too much to like about that. And I will volunteer my time to help the event run well, and try and do the job well for the sake of doing it well, not just because I get the best seat in the house (for free).

No this is not Kimi Raikonnen walking on air toward me. Although I suspect if you interviewed this wall mural rather than the real Kimi, you'd solicit a more detailed response.

And occasionally I get rewarded for that. Not by getting to see these engineering masterpieces close up (which I do) or witnessing a cracking race (which I did). Not by getting two free access-most-areas tix which I seem to have trouble giving away (Adelaide peeps, are you listening? Need any more excuses for a trip to Melbourne?)

Nope. The big reward in 2009 was seeing F1 step up and pay tribute to those amazing folks who fought deadly bushfires over a month ago.

Officials' briefing usually consists of senior CAMS boffins telling us all how great we are. AS IF we didn't know.

So even the filthy, indulgent capitalism of F1 has a heart. Even if it is only a V8 Supercar clearing a $50,000 piece of advertising space on their bonnet for a Bushfire appeal notice. Or a bunch of second-string F1 cars and relatively unknown drivers doing runs up and down the main street of fire-ravaged Kinglake. Or an F1 driver's parade on CFA trucks, instead of shiny Corvettes and exotic open-tops.

And, as if humanity's massive outpouring of financial aid to the victims (during a GFC, no less) was not enough. Before the drivers' parade, these superstars of F1 milled around in the background while an army of fire fighting volunteers lined up in front of the grandstands, and guess who got the loudest in applause and cheers. And so it should be. Maybe our indulgent, money-dependent, planet-wrecking humanity ain't so bad after all.

As always, I got some great F1 shots this year. But here are the best ever.

The King Lewis congratulates Kinglake's finest

F1's 2008 oh-so-nearly man, Felipe Massa

Sharon's fave and the nicest guy on the grid, Rubens Barrichello

Webbo

Pole Robert Kubica and Colac.

Mark Webber chats to one of his heroes

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Air slow

2009-03-15T13:53:00.001-07:00

Huzzah! Finally some rain.

Problem is, it came smack bang in the middle of the Avalon Air Show and those brave fighter pilots are too scared to fly in the rain so many spectacular air displays were postponed/ cancelled*.

Still, birthday boy Sammy J Atherton, whose middle name is a tribute to his late great-grandfather, Wing Commander J. Gooch, got to take his dad to the airshow. We were able to poke a stick at a few cool toys before the monsoonal weather moved in and threatened to blow the little Pitt specials and those ridiculously over-pop-rivetted old DC-10's away. Their wings did make handy shelters though, and their flapping was almost comical.

*this is artistic licence. Air Force pilots really are really, really brave. The displays were cancelled because they don't like getting their planes wet.

Sammy J's favourite- the C-17 Globemaster of the US Air Force. U-S-A !!

Phwoar. You could fit an entire BMX stunt track in the rear of that baby!!

Of course, a show-and-shine of this epic proportion will often be cynically dismissed as a hedonistic glorification of imperialistic war machinery, glamourous portrayals of death and destruction.

However, it would appear that many, many people enjoy these hedonistic displays of imperialistic war machinery and weaponry. I cynically suggest there is a name for such people: "Normal".

Yes there are some depth perception games here, but the little old Ansett DC was only 30 metres or so behind the Qantas A380 tail, so how's that for perspective?

We're quite lucky that Avalon Airport is a stone's throw away from our place. Lucky, because there aren't a gazillion flights going in and out to make it a daily annoyance, but we can sit on the roof of the house and see a kickbutt airshow. For free. Despite this, I still blew $75 to go and get rained on. Go figure.

Anyhoo, here are more pics.

"So when I flew upside down over the Iraqi pilot and looked down at him, I waved like this..Hey Abdul!!" Yeah, good onya, Maverick. Ty-pi-cal Airforce pilot...

"He couldn't have been more than this tall. Maybe he was Mexican."

Off to see the Colonials, what...

Sam looks disappointed when he found out that the Bell 206 Jetranger may be maneuverable for low altitude recon but lacks the serious avionics to reduce vulnerability to ground attack, something which will hopefully improve with the Army's forthcoming batch of Eurocopter Tiger HAP's. Phew!

The evergreen C-130 Hercules, a remarkable aircraft whose attributes include extreme high-speed descent capabilities, as well as the ability to fly whilst the propellers aren't actually moving

Call signs? Or just some Rowan Atkinson fans?

High-way-to....the danger zone...da.da.daaammm...

I have no smarty-pants caption. That's just a freakin huge airplane...

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Which Baldwin?

2009-03-11T22:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, so maybe I don't have a problem with all celebrities! Although, whether or not Steven Baldwin is a celebrity is debatable. He certainly won't be now after these comments!

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I like Coldplay because I'm not cool. (...cool!)

2009-03-05T19:56:00.001-08:00

I heard a very deep saying the other day: "Does someone steal a car because they're a car thief, or are they a car thief because they steal cars?". Hmm.

No, I'm not really sure what the point was either but I think I can paraphrase it thus:

Do I like Coldplay because I'm not cool, or am I not cool because I like Coldplay?

If you're wondering about what I really think of stardom, popularity and general fashionableness, see my previous post. But there can exist a sub-culture within the subculture where it can actually be truly cool to be fashionable in a way that doesn't appear fashionable. Or not.

Okay I'm not making any sense. Let's just say I'm glad I'm not cool. The more I read fashionable, wordy underground blather about how much Coldplay suck, the more well-adjusted I become. Here's an article called Why I don't hate Coldplay which explains it more clearly, and will probably be about the only time I ever link to anything containing the word "Indy" (unless it's about that automobile race in Queensland).

To explain my own way; I took Sharon with me to see them play at Rod Laver Arena last Tuesday night. She doesn't really like Coldplay that much (for musical reasons, nothing to do with fashion), yet she found it "entertaining".

There's Coldplay's problem right there. They're supposed to entertain, so they do. Instead they should curse a lot, abuse their public status, carry on angrily about global warming, George W and Palestine, or be brazenly homosexual. Then they'd be "fashionable".

They met at a university where they were studying not arts or philosophy, but useful things like commerce and finance and classical music. They formed a band and made music which people actually like but won't admit it out of fear of being considered uncool.

So there you go. I don't mind the entertainment industry. As long as they entertain.

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I love celebrities. No, really...

2009-03-02T21:31:00.001-08:00

Now that I'm 40, I'm going to make a last ditch effort to fit into the mainstream. I've decided to stop being cynical about the entertainment industry, and cease insisting that it is full of shiftless, amoral, narcissistic, badly adjusted, willfully ignorant and poorly-brought-up substance abusers who should be pitied, not revered. I will stop pontificating about how pop stars pontificate about relationships while theirs constantly self destruct. Yessir. I'm going to take an interest and start reading gossip magazines. I will swoon at at such things as how crackingly good Jennifer Aniston looks in a frock.

Here's my first attempt. Let me know how I go:

Lindsay Lohan converts to Judaism

In order to marry her girlfriend, apparently.

Oh, GOOD GRIEF!! HAVEN'T THE JEWS SUFFERED ENOUGH??!

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Haalll-le-lu-jah!

2009-02-18T18:48:00.000-08:00

Cue "Handel's Messiah"...

Well it's only cupboards-in for now. As for the required stainless steel appliances, we are slowly accumulating from a variety of places such as Gray's Online, Ebay, and a seemingly nice Middle Eastern gentleman I bumped into when I took a wrong turn in West Sunshine.

Meanwhile...

Opal has moved paddock. She now lives with Churchy friends Andy and Cherie on their charming little 5-acreage only a short walk from Lara's Elcho Park Pony club grounds. Opal, or "Ope's" as she is now known in fine Aussie name-abbreviating tradition, has no other horsies in the paddock. As a result she appreciates our company and as such is now extremely well behaved. Our earlier brush with a potentially expensive horse illness turned out to be little more than a hormone imbalance.

In fact, Ope's is now the best behaved young woman in our family!

Notice I said "young" so I'm not talking about Sharon so I'm immune to...

...oh wait, that made it worse...

ANYHOO just t'other day, Omi, her new friend from her un-named school and me walked Opey down to the Pony Club. The thought of using a horse float hadn't occurred to me, partly because the Club is "just down the road", and partly because we don't own one (expensive billykart toy still not sold. Come on!!)

Trouble is, "just down the road" always looks different when you're driving. When you're walking two Year 7 girls and a Pony who has little exposure to moving traffic, it all seems much further.

In the end, Opey was less stressed about the passing cars than I was. Although she did get jittery at the sign of, um.....a sheep.

At the Pony Club grounds all the girls, two and four-legged, had a great time, according to Omi. Double Hallel-looo-yah!

I'll write more later, unless I get injured in a spectacular mountainbike crash, which is looking more exceedingly likely every time I venture out to the spectacular You Yangs. One can but hope...

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Fires

2009-02-10T19:37:00.001-08:00

I won't even attempt to summon any sarcasm or wit here. We knew it would be bad last Saturday when it was 45 deg and blowing a gale. But nobody mentioned a death toll until late Sunday, and then it was relentless. 25-50-70-"probably over 100"- 130...

Now as I write it's probably over 300 people dead. Including entire families. It's utterly, utterly awful and impossible to feel detached. Although I admire the pragmatism of the writer in this article here. An interesting take and good background if you live in a bushy area.

One survivor said they estimated the fire was ten kilometres away as they decided to stay. It was upon them in less than two minutes. The worst fronts at Kinglake and Marysville moved at 130km/h. They are (were) lovely areas. Nothing but bush.

If you find a reputable outlet taking donations, please give as much as you can. Cheers.

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Quote of the week

2009-02-09T15:41:00.000-08:00

"...So we are now being fired on from the north, the south, and the east. We're not being fired on from the west because the fish don't mind us being here".

-Shani, a Christian Israeli in Jerusalem

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Obama's Kitchen cabinet

2009-02-02T13:31:00.000-08:00

Raul Emmanuel, Bill Clinton's husband Hillary, and that Joe Biden fellow, whose mouth the Democrats are so desperate to keep from opening they keep yelling out "Look! Up in the sky!!" every time he's about to hold a press conference...

But that's not the real reason I used the above title for this post. I found out that "kitchen cabinet", the term used to describe a national leader's inner circle, was coined by the amazing Israeli PM Golda Meir, when she actually held meetings in her kitchen. But that's not the reason either.

It's because Sharon's new kitchen is growing in reality every day. More later.

I could bore you all with a wrap up of my farewell-to-the-thirties party held in Adelaide recently, but I suspect the only people who read this blog, if indeed there are any, were at the party so you all know what happened, unless you drank too much in which case whatever happened was nothing to do with me.

Still, I will say that it was just beaut to return to good ol' Adelaide and be reunited with old friends...

How did I ever leave you..?

Anyhoo, I wish I could thank each one of you for the amazing gifts, even more I wish I could remember who gave me what. Although I will single out the one person, who I know reads this blog, who didn't actually give me anything, instead bringing a gift for Naomi. I'm sure it resulted from a small miscommunication WHICH WILL BE RECTIFIED IN DUE COURSE.

In a material, worldly sense, the best gift was that of a mountain bike, to fill the small void left by my departure from motorsport . I made the quantum leap from cheap-heavy-Kmart-made-in-Taiwan bike which arbitrarily dismantles itself at the first sign of dirt or elevation change, to ultra-lightweight-dual-suspension-made-in-USA-who-cares-about-the-specifics-it-has-carbon-fibre-bits bike which will most likely outlast the owner.

With thanks to Fil for the bargain basement price on his magnificent mountainbike creation. Less thanks goes to Fil for taking me for a test-ride at Brownhill creek. Following him at any speed in or on any type of vehicle conjures up hallucinations of red Austin Sprite following dayglo yellow Austin Sprite in the 1980's, with competitive urges welling up to the surface. As Fil belted over narrow paths, steep inclines and jagged rocks, I did myself proud and kept up.

Then as we arrived to the more civilised flat concrete paths at the picnic grounds, I fell off.

When did irony become so painful? Still, since hitting some of the local tracks around Lara, I am convinced it does fill the void. Compared to billykart racing, the downside is it involves exercise, but the upside is I could get even more seriously hurt doing this. Yeah!!

Note that in the above footage of me I go by the name of "Gee" and lie about my age.

In other news; it is a social norm for husbands to spend as little time in the kitchen as possible, and now I have discovered why. I've also discovered that, on average, we only do renovations of any kind every four years (really). Our four years is up, so Sharon's laminate brown and orange kitchen has been wrenched out kicking and screaming.

Aahh! Israelis destroyed my kitchen

Well yes, okay, it was me doing the kicking and screaming. My least favourite bit was removing the big white tiles to find that the timber floors underneath, which I expected would take a mild sand and polish to be brought up to my exacting standards, actually looked like they had been peppered with machine gun fire and napalm.

A great thing about being in a Christian fellowship, besides the eternal salvation and personal growth and all that, is that you can meet all sorts of tradespeople. Sure enough, as the project's scope has "crept" somewhat, we have been graced with a champion plumber and electrician- men of such quality and resolve that they have not shirked from crawling under the house (barely foot-high stumps) or in the ceiling (lots of spiderwebs). HuzzaH !! Don't be offended, dear blog readers, if they are the only ones we ever invite around for dinner in our new kitchen.

In yet again even more news, as if I needed more reminding of how old I am, Omi started her first ever day of HIGH SCHOOL. I won't name the school, since some inexperienced blog readers here are paranoid about too many personal details being published on the interweb. I can understand that, since I am such an enormously high profile and controversial figure and terrorists are constantly scanning my blog to work out how they can destroy us.

Here's how the team looked prior to Mum's-first-day-of-relief-in-ages:

I mean, the only person who has sent me serious death threats actually knows my address so we either have nothing to worry about or my various nemeses (nemesii?) have not yet discovered vehicular transport.

Well, that's all for now so, and as they say at (whatever school Naomi goes to): Fortiter et Suaviter! Which I think means "strength and good fashion sense". Toodles.

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Happy New Year

2008-12-31T17:52:00.000-08:00

Well happy new year to all of our friends and family (some of whom are over here at present. Yay!). I hope you all remembered Rebekah's birthday also coincides with NY eve? Poor girl, her whole life will be stuttered with NY eve/ birthday party compromise.

Now, I hope you all counted down to New Years' according to the atomic clock "Leap-second" adjustment.

The correct way of counting down was FIVE-FOUR-THREE-TWO-ONE-ONE- HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Why they didn't just slip the extra second in after everyone went to bed is beyond me. Heck, I'm sure many sore heads could have done with the extra second's sleep-in. I suspect the NY parties at the atomic clock observatories are a cracking riot.

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Go right then left then right then...

2008-12-17T20:25:00.001-08:00

I lost my storeman this week. The downside is I have to work a little harder because I don't have a storeman. The upside is he was lazy, grumpy friend of gangsters who left me firing in a barrage of verbal abuse and mockery. Once I get over the irony of being called a d***head by someone who told me to stop using "big words" because I said "vilify", I'll pop some champagne.

Funnily enough, not two minutes after he stormed out the door, the place suddenly looked tidier.

I'm now hiring again. I'll only hire narcissists, psychopaths, people in therapy/anger management classes, ex criminals, terrorist sympathisers, or Jehovah's Witnesses. I don't know if it's my judgement of character, or just the Melbourne west.

Perhaps I could hire this person; the lesbian Asian bus driver who was fired by the council after she wrote a note calling some commuters "spear chuckers with prams".

Wow. A racist, Asian homosexual public servant. I don't think I could put it any better than the columnist who said I pity the thought police who have to untangle that discrimination spaghetti.

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E.T.S. phone home

2008-11-24T15:12:00.000-08:00

This is a little old, but apparently UFO sightings across the UK have experienced phenomenal increases this year. The phenomenon was studied by Strange Phenomenon Investigations, a group who I really, really, really really hope are not Government funded. And note that I squeezed the word "phenomenon" three times into the first paragraph (four including that one) in true UFO-reporting tradition.

A spokesmoonbat from Strange Phenomenon Investigations said of the phenomenon (six now)
"Some experts believe it could be linked to global warming and craft from outer space are appearing because they are concerned about what man is doing to this planet."

O........kay. "Experts". Should a quasi-scientific thinktank really be consulting Leonard Nimoy, Steven Spielberg and David Duchovny?

Now I'm going to attempt to sound balanced, un-dogmatic, humble and apolitical. Here goes: Even if it's true that human activities are causing catastrophic weather pattern changes (WHICH IT'S NOT) and that destroying capitalism and evil human achievements will stop it (WHICH IT WON'T even if it was true, WHICH IT'S NOT) I am officially incapable of ever believing it. Ever. That's just what happens when truth gets turned into religion. Or when remotely plausible theories are used to embellish theories which are completely insane.

Now if this Strange Phenomenon Investigations group want to make themselves really useful perhaps they can investigate phenomena which is truly baffling and challenging to the human race. Like why do photocopiers break down at the moment of highest urgency. Or why at work, after two hours of absolute quiet, a dozen floorsanding contractors suddenly and simultaneously pile drive their way into my warehouse, elbowing their way through the door and all claiming the same petty, imaginary problem with their machines. Or why people still actually believe what they see on MSNBC news.

Still, the SPI theories do help to explain one thing, namely why we keep calling them "little green men". Now, if these, um, experts, are so sure that aliens are concerned about mankind's inhumanity to the planet then we are assuming that those impressive flying vehicles of theirs, which are currently cluttering up the atmosphere above Britain, do not emit greenhouse gases. Otherwise that would make them little green hypocrites.

And we have more than enough of those down here.

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Bad father's day

2008-11-23T03:40:00.001-08:00

A disturbing look into a day in the life of the dark recesses of my brain;

Sunday morning, get up, curse at last night's dishes and the fact that the kids have helped themselves to brekky and left a mess to add to the whole ordeal.

Sharon's off to a rehearsal at the Geelong Performing Arts centre for Becky's dance classes' big concert. Curse the fact that these pagans must schedule things on a Sunday morning when we should all be going to church. I tell Sam to do the dishes which he does. Then I tell him to do them again properly. Grizzle.

I take the remaining two kids to church. During the service, for some reason, they play Butterfly Kisses, that masterpiece song of Daddy's-little-girl cringy schmaltzness. I fail to see the prophetic purpose of it.

After church, get together with the usual clique and complain about the state of the world. Grizzle about the fact that Becky's dance concert is tonight at dinner time and going for 2 hours. On a Sunday night. School the next day. Who arranged that? Dear little Becky has been annoyingly going on about this concert for weeks now. How important can it be?

Take Omi to see her four-legged friend Opal. She's misbehaving today. So is Opal. Stop at the supermarket to get something which didn't make it onto Sharon's shopping list earlier in the week. I expect to be going back to the supermarket at some stage later that day.

V8 Supercars on today. Good. Sammy and I can relax and watch them. Just when the race gets interesting I gotta go and pick up Omi from Opal's paddock. Grizzle. Too many kids. Can't I just sell one?

Get home and the in-laws have arrived for Becky's dance concert. I forgot about that. They're always here when there's some motorsport on TV. Grizzle. They must think all I do most weekends is sit around watching car racing. Okay, so I do, but that's not the point.

We scoff down tea early and I get indigestion.

The two Vodafone Fords are leading but with a fast closing Tod Kelly it's getting exciting and...now we all have to pile into the SUV to go to Becky's concert. Grizzle.

I'm as tired as all buggery by this time, as we wait in the foyer of the Geelong Performing Arts Centre. I kill the time by grizzling about the scam of getting parents to pay for dance lessons and then charge them for a limited number of tickets to the end of year show AND not let them take pictures!

The show starts as I am mid-doze wondering whether Jamie Whincup snared the V8 title or not. The seniors are okay and I admire the courage of the intermediate boys dancing ballet-like in front of countless mates. Back in my day that would have earned a fatal beating.

Some of the juniors have the coordination of those people who go ice-skating for the very first time when they really shouldn't.

Then out come the preppies, and something happens.

There's my little Becky Boo, and she looks gorgeous. I can't take my eyes off her. My Becky is the sweetest looking, has the biggest smile, and has the rythym of a dancer. She's just the best. Don't argue with me. I couldn't care less if all the other cute little girls are channeling Shirley Temple. I'm hardly looking at them anyway. They're okay I suppose.

Moments before she began moving so beautifully to the tune of "A spoonful of sugar" (Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins), several years of neglectful parenting flashes before my eyes and in an instant it's all gone. For a second there I was too conscious of how unfair and horrid I've been to her, but then I suddenly can't remember anything else that happened that day. She is blowing us butterfly kisses.

Monday morning, go to work with a spoonful of sugar stuck in my head. It has a calming influence. That's odd- normally it would fill me with rage...

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My new favourite cartoonist

2008-11-21T01:34:00.000-08:00

Apart from me, of course....

http://xkcd.com/

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More Archie

2008-11-12T19:44:00.000-08:00

I can't resist these guys. They're not just a shop, they're a state of mind. Archie McPhee's product range is out in time for the "holiday season" (PC way of describing the season without soiling one's tongue with references to any religious holidays such as Christmas, Chanukah, Secular Humanist why-believe-in-a-god festival, Obama's birthday, the Grand Prix, etc).

And it includes what must be one of the most innovative and useful gift items of all: inflatable fruitcake.

Seriously, who eats real fruitcake? It's like dark matter. Sharon and I have been married for (wait... I know this one...) 15 years and I'm sure there is still a piece of our wedding fruitcake stashed somewhere. It's probably become magnetised by now.

But with the inflatable fruitcake you can create some holiday cheer without having to worry about offending the person who gave you something you not only will never eat, but think is one of the most hideous recipes ever to be vomited up from the depths of hades.

Check out some of the testimonials for this amazing innovation:
I have an allergy to candied fruit. ... Now, with the Inflatable Fruitcake, I can experience the holidays without collapsing on the ground, gasping for air as hives break out on my skin. ... Candied fruit is poison and should be banned from airplanes and schools. Now if I could only find a girlfriend my life would be complete.

When can I buy a franchise of this place??

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What really caused the economic downturn..

2008-10-18T20:47:00.000-07:00

You won't see this on the mainstream news, but it might shed the best light on the recent financial woes...

A week. Any week.

2008-10-13T21:15:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know, how wrong of me that we have not been on a family getaway greater than a long weekend, for over 6 years. But hear my defence...

For some reason, the older you get, the more stuff you do. I've been doing stuff, Sharon's been doing stuff, the kids have been destroyi...doing stuff. You get the picture. I blogged earlier that this year was already the year of the date clash, and that was by month two.

It's basic maths. I must find ONE WEEK out of 52 where
1) I'm not desperately unable to leave work,
2) Sharon isn't at work, or a quilting weekend,
3) There isn't a pony camp, or
4) dancing lessons, or
5) the extended family (which extends across the entire Victorian midwest and some parts of Germany) doesn't have a 21st/ wedding/ birthday/ footy tipping competition which requires our presence
6) A child does not bring home from school a project due yesterday (actually brought home from school a week ago), or the flu, or gnits, or rabies.
7) The horse/cat/guinea pig(s) is/are sick

So, when you calculate that over 52 weeks of the year and factor in religious holidays such as Christmas, Easter, and the Grand Prix, the probability of being able to take a holiday successfully is actually around 1 in 10 to the power of 9, or 1 in 1,456,079,001.

Well, okay. I made that up. Poetic licence. Real mathematicians bugger off now.

So, you see, it's not always my evil billykart racing which is to blame. But we found one week, a little window of fortune which enabled us to get up to the Hawkeses' legendary Pretty Beach house. We'd heard all about this place but were beginning to doubt it actually existed.

So, armed with the Uebergang's DVD player for the trip up we headed off, not really at any stage believing it was really happening. Oh yeah we did...um...stop at Wakefield Park/ Goulburn for some billykart racing. Well, c'mon. I was doing all the driving. I needed to be rewarded with some....more driving.

Here's me giving my imaginary friend a drive in the Hyper Racer

By that time, the kids had learned at least half of the screenplay from the brilliant Flushed Away starring Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet and Ian McKellen and I was rather enjoying listening to it, sans pictures.

No you CAN'T all have puppies!!

As if feeding unexpectedly tame Kookaburras on the balcony was not enough, Pretty Beach is all it cracked up to be and more. I won't ruin the pictures with excessive verbage.

Besides, there is little to satirise about (finally) getting to relax with the fam, and do stacks of what I love doing the most: NOTHING. Just the ticket. For once I turned off the phone. Huzzah!

Sadly, Sammy discovered he didn't have sea legs. And this in a boat which had the power of an electric pencil sharpener

Thanks to this hungry Kookaburra, my hand modelling days are now over. MY HANDS..!! MY BEAUTIFUL HANDS...!!

We were also able to catch up with the Sydney Hawkeses at Parammatta on the way back. Particularly "smashing" was seeing chip-off-the-block Peter and wife Bams, both back from Chennai after doing some amazing stuff. Well, I can't be young anymore but I can let someone else do it for me.

There's something exceptionally manly about a Hawkes. Sammy catches up with The Godfather, carrying on a fine tradition

Even the Hawkeses' Parammatta oasis is worthy of a holiday. Hot-tub, brilliant company, beer, botanical gardens. Sigh. Bye for now.

.

Feeling horse

2008-09-03T22:58:00.000-07:00

Gee I'm smart. Back when I first got offered oodles of money to go billykart racing, I sold the whole idea to Sharon and the kids as a chance to spend time together as a family. The kids would be inspired watching their dad actually participate in something rather than watching him watching other people participating in stuff on the telly.

Indeed, once or twice, the family did get to come and stand in the pits at Phillip Island and try not to get run over by sports cars, while watching feral superkart people behave like idiots. So my next move was to commandeer the nice new company van only for races which mean I could sell the trailer. I sold this idea to Sharon by suggesting it would be one less thing to clutter up the driveway. Of course, that the van barely fits two other people failed to come up.

But, for the next race, it's back to the future; we're all going up on a (drumroll) FAMILY HOLIDAY to Sydney, beginning with a day of billykart racing at Wakefield Park/ Goulburn. Which means I need a trailer. Fortunately, the one I had was sold to a mate, who is lending it back to me, now with LED lights and a jockey wheel. What a great scam.

Now get this- apparently, when you buy a horse, even if it has rego papers, top-end breeding and pedigree, it can still get sick! Fancy that. I'm still not really sure about it so I'm going to check the contract again, but I'm sure the lady said our cute little Opal could never get sick.

I first noticed it when we were lunging her and she would bolt off, run around the yard, jump over stuff and buzz past us really close like Maverick and that other less important character in Top Gun. A couple of times she even had a nip at my nice jumper. Oh well, I thought, that'll learn me for wearing my Sunday best out in the paddock.

But our agistment lady said it wasn't right, so I rang the vet. After saying hello (which cost me $300) he suggested that our sweet, demure little girly pony Opal was suffering from an increased testosterone problem and was behaving like a stallion.

This was confirmed at the next visit, when we found Opal sitting back watching telly, sinking beer and chips, burping, scratching herself, leering at the other ponies and swearing at me every time I tried to talk about how it made me feel.

So it was off to another vet for an ultrasound, which meant towing a horse float. As mentioned earlier, when it comes to towing trailers I like to think I've been around the block once or thrice. But towing one laden with a 500 kilo animal who acts like it's just downed three kegs of Red Bull is unchartered territory. In the end, our big-bottomed friend towed well. What's more, my oil-burning Captiva drove no differently with 1-tonne of trailer full of hyperactive animal hanging off the back, than it does on it's own. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Moving on; we arrived at the home of our charming equestri-vet Emma, who pumped Opal full of enough sedatives to relax a gang of Hell's Angels. I'd always known that horses sleep standing up but never really accepted it, until now. Opal's eyes glazed over, her bottom lip hung like mine did when I got some fillings last week, her spindly little legs wobbled but by golly, she stayed upright.

And all this with Emma's arm, holding an ultrasound scanner, plunged right the way up her big horsey bottom. This was the ideal time to ask Naomi if she really wanted to be a vet.

Well folks the news is good and bad. Good because the enlarged ovarian tumour we thought she had doesn't seem to be there. Bad because now, we have no idea what's making her act like a bloke. Ideas, anyone?

Patron Saint of Drama

2008-08-07T19:26:00.000-07:00

Our Mum has been mistakenly referred to at times as a drama queen. Hopefully this is in reference to her love for theatre, rather than a propensity for losing control of her emotions at the slightest conflict. Because she doesn't have that problem. Give it time.

Personally I prefer "Patron saint of drama".

Now, since our folks can't stay in one place for more than, oh, about 19 years (darn transients!!) they are currently selling up the place in Nairne to score a place at Mount Barker. In the process, and through various comedies involving mainly sheer fluke, Mum discovered that there is in fact a Patron Saint of Real Estate: None other than Jesus' earthly dad, Joseph.

I've already had a go at Anglicans on my other blog here so I should tread carefully, but did you know that if you bury a statue of Saint Joseph in the back yard (upside down mind you) you will have no trouble selling your house?

Evidently, Saint Joe was quite the versatile one, being also the Patron Saint of Not Being Doubtful or Hesitant, Dying Happy, and Fighting Communism (I like him already).

Mum, determined to alarm Dad by appearing as though she actually may take part in some pagan-inspired, blasphemous church folklore ritual, went looking for a Saint Joseph.

Personally I don't think God would mind if Mum and a group of equally insane friends had a Saint Joe burial ceremony for no other reason than to take the mickey out of the whole idea, possibly downing a bottle of bubbly along the way. After all, this is the same woman who names her costume mannequins and talks to them.

It would worry me more if they did it, and then the house immediately sold.

Anyhow, she stumbled across this one;

Looking very holy and clutching a stainless steel corner edge, this Saint Joseph is sold by Archie McPhee, who's promo is "Slightly less disappointing than other companies" (I like them already). Their blurb on Saint Joe is;

It's never been easier or more affordable to bring the power of a Patron Saint to your aid. Each 3-3/4" tall, hard plastic Saint comes with a 3" stand embossed with the Saint's name and a removable backdrop with the Saint's title, patronage and a prayer to help invoke the power of that Saint.

AND, they provide a copy of the traditional prayer, which is:

Most holy St. Joseph, I beseech thee to intercede on my behalf to help me find a worthy buyer for my home, preferably one who will pay full price and waive inspection. Amen

McPhee's then advises you to exhume the little effigy once the property is sold, otherwise it will keep changing hands (the house, that is). It's only $4.95...US dollars what's more, even cheaper.

And if you need more information on various patron saints, McPhee's is the place. Why, they've got figurenes of
-St Anne- patron saint of lost objects
-St Martha, patron saint of Waiters and Waitresses (some theological humour there)
-St Homobonus, patron saint of business people
-St Vivian, patron saint of hangovers
-St Clare, patron saint of television, and
-St Adrian, patron saint of butchers, arms dealers and prison guards

Plus the obligatory Jesus Air Freshener, Moses Action Figure, Jesus decorative tape, Holy Toast (like a cookie cutter- you press it into the bread, toast it, and presto! The Virgin Mary appears in your toast and pilgrims come from all over and demand you build a shrine), and then these;

"The Fighting Nun is our most popular punching puppet, and with good reason: she has a habit of fighting for what's right". Oh, dear...

But what really rocks my boat about McPhee's, even after going through the range of action figures including Edgar Allen Poe, Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde and a skydiving Sigmund Freud, is that they have a whole different section entitled "our weirdest products". And all those other ones were...?

Here you will find a ceramic smoking baby, wind-up hopping lederhosen, cow acupuncture model, yodelling pickle and a bacon air freshener. All quite reasonably priced too, I might add.
Well, Saint Joseph or not, I hope and pray M & D have no trouble selling their house. I now have some housewarming gift ideas for the new place.

.

Superball lament

2008-08-01T02:49:00.000-07:00

I write this with remorse as I have just thrown a superball into my daughter's face.

It all started when Na'omi threw one of those chunky rubber superballs into the wall. On the other side of this wall was me, sitting down during my relaxing after work and not tolerating the slightest interruption phase.

I attempted to give all three kids a lecture on how they mustn't throw things inside the house because I cannot be bothered buying them another when they break this one. A house, I meant.

The lecture went quite well with all munchkins standing obediently and feigning attention. Then I tossed the ball back to it's owner as a profound act to punctuate the lecture. Unfortunately it hit Omi in the face.

I think right there my point got lost.

.

Iran photoshops victory over the Zionists

2008-07-14T21:10:00.000-07:00

And now, for a bit of fun, some military-related thingies:

Well, the first thing isn't so fun; a report into the fatal 2006 Black Hawk helicopter crash has been released. And boy, haven't the media jumped on it as a cover-up-conspiracy-safety-standards-deliberately-reduced-
to-save-costs-and-people-died-and-JohnHoward-knew-and-did-
nothing-about-it story. ABC Newsradio's Jennifer Byrne seemed to be on a mission to harangue the ADF's Neil James into admitting that defence funding cuts were directly responsible for the deaths of these young soldiers. He wouldn't, but did mention that lack of resources prevailed during the 80's and 90's. Labor years. Oops.

Some salient points from the report included factors like "personnel... took higher risks during operations...had a 'can-do' attitude.... were not adequately supervised..."

Higher risks? Can-do attitude? Working unsupervised? Egads! We cannot have that in our defence forces! And let me get this straight; military personnel tried different, often risky, maneuvers to land helicopters, as part of their training??

Yes, this IS shocking. After all, when they are called to extract wounded soldiers from the Afghani-Pakistan border under heavy Taliban rocket fire, they should take it slow and easy. Relax- the Taliban are fully respectful of Australian Occ Health and Safety procedures. Don't fire on the chopper, Aziz- he's obviously a learner. The last thing we want is the worksafe inspector spoiling our jihad with his high-viz jacket and clipboard an' all that. That would be really bad.

In more news, those madcap and zany mullahs in Iran have been test-firing rockets as a show of strength. They even sent one happy snap for western photo albums. Naturally, Reuters and AP jumped on it:

The Revolutionary Guards released this photo to the world to demonstrate it's unflinching readiness to defensively respond to the Israeli threat of responding to the Iranian threat to wipe out Israel. Problem is, some farsi-speaking genius in the Iranian agitprop department discovered how to use photoshop and one of those missiles isn't actually real. Here is the real, un-altered photo:

Well, okay, not entirely un-altered. The camera was way to far off to hear the clicking noise. But you get the point. Personally, if I was an Iranian Revolutionary guard, I'd be quite happy with three out of four Sahabs getting off the ground. After all, they were purchased at a Russian garage sale. So why the need to digitally alter a photo- to enhance the appearance of military might or computer geekness?

Of course, environmental groups were delighted. If you must insist on exterminating 6-7 million Jews, photoshopping the appearance of firing a fourth missile instead of actually firing it, reduces your carbon emissions by 25%!

Which got me thinking- why stop there? Surely Ahmadinejad can simply photoshop a picture of him standing atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, surveying miles of decimated Israeli population. Then the Iranians will have the impression of a conclusive victory over the "Zionist cancer". Reuters wouldn't even find out unless someone tells them. It would keep everyone happy and nobody has to die.

Anyhow, the major news agencies were advised about the deception. Not only were the photos pulled but in some cases the "farsi-cal" event made it's own story. Which is unusual, since normally the media stops caring once they've sold their quota.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard, however, were not swayed by the whistle blowing. They then released what they claimed was the REAL photo.

THIS time we're serious, Israel.

.

Don't kill a cow, man...

2008-07-10T19:52:00.000-07:00

Okay so I admit this blog has mutated from a family news update to a soapbox for my newly developed socio-political neuroses.

But face it, you love it, really. I'm only funny when I'm angry about something. And it's not entirely unrelated to our family life. I manage to indoctrinate Naomi constantly with all this stuff.

Before my current rant I want to make a couple of contributions to a book my paternal father (yes that was intended as a joke so please don't write in) was apparently writing some years ago; his own lexicon of words from the Strine Language;

Gum-mint. The country's administrative and legislative body
Sponsor Billy: ways in which one is accountable to one's community

Okay, rant time: According to the profit of doom Al Gore, and a bunch of gum-mint funded scientists whose numbers are greatly exaggerated, we are polluting the planet to hell. So much so, that young people are so scared they're almost suicidally delusional.

So I'm one of these unclean lepers who thinks the whole Anthropogenic Climate Global Warming Change religion is, demonstrably, a load of old bollocks (scientific term). Or, as we are apparently known now, Climate Change Denialists.

But that doesn't stop it from being bollocks with a lot of teeth. It could force us to pay $8.00 a litre for fuel. We could be arrested for not turning off air conditioners in summer. We will have to pay someone every time we flatulate. We will be forced to buy an expensive, stupid, small, queer-looking overpriced Toyota which doesn't actually emit less GHG than what most of us drive now, and whose construction involves processes more environmentally catastrophic than a Ford F100.

Never mind the common knowledge that burping cows emit more GHG than just about anything. Oh, and you can't simply kill them all and force everyone to become vegans. The cows' rotting carcass will emit more GHG. Talk about a rock and a hard place.

But get this; according to a former CSIRO scientist, not only is the fanatical AGW church hell-bent on sending us back to the stone age for an erroneous cause, they are actually putting us in great danger and preventing us from making advances in finding cheaper, more readily available fuel and food.

It reminds me of when our gum-mint gave $40m to the world's richest car company to build a large hybrid car they were going to build anyway. A Labor gum-mint lady was heard to say "The only downside is that the hybrid Camry will be too big, not like my little Prius".

Ah yes, Green Lady. But you see we need bigger cars sometimes, to help transport people. Remember people?

Anyhoo, I've posted the bulk of this banished CSIRO-reject's claims on my other blog here .
I strongly urge you to read it. I feel it is my highest sponsor-billy to do so.

How to deal with racists

2008-07-10T03:37:00.000-07:00

This is one well-adjusted chick (warning: some coarse language, sorry..albeit tastefully delivered within context). When it comes to amateur production, some people just have it...

Attention Journalists: generic article for international thinktank meetings

2008-07-08T19:40:00.000-07:00

No family news to report. But, in light of the G8 summit, I came across this "generic article". With some small tweaks and insertion of additional detail it can be cut-and-pasted by anyone, journalists even, to report on just about any international crisis meeting. It's a bit like recycling Jesus conspiracy theories, although not quite as profitable. Credit to Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times, link here.

By reporters everywhere

An ineffectual international organisation yesterday issued a stark
warning about a situation it has absolutely no power to change, the
latest in a series of self-serving interventions by toothless
intergovernmental bodies.

“We are seriously concerned about this most serious outbreak of
seriousness,” said the head of the institution, either a former minister from a developing country or a mid-level European or American bureaucrat. “This is a wake-up call to the world. They must take on board the vital message that my organisation exists.”

The director of the body, based in one of New York, Washington or an agreeable Western European city, was speaking at its annual conference, at which ministers from around the world gather to wring their hands impotently about the most fashionable issue of the day. The organisation has sought to justify its almost completely fruitless existence by joining its many fellow talking-shops in highlighting whatever crisis has recently gained most coverage in the global media.

(Insert picture of relevant World Leader at a conference, named by a caption, preferably followed by the word "...yesterday". Here we have chosen Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez in front of some marble pillars which denotes some kind of important conference)

“Governments around the world must come together to combat whatever this year’s worrying situation has turned out to be,” the director said. “It is not yet time to panic, but if it goes on much further without my institution gaining some credit, preferably some sort of grant, for sounding off on the issue, we will be justified in labelling it a crisis.”

The organisation... has long been fighting a war of attrition against its own irrelevance. By making a big deal out of the fact that the world’s most salient topical issue will be placed on its agenda and then issuing a largely derivative annual report on the subject, it hopes to convey the entirely erroneous impression that it has any influence whatsoever on the situation.

The intervention follows a resounding call to action in the communiqué of the Group of [number goes here] countries at their recent summit in a remote place no-one had previously heard of. The G[number goes here] meeting was preceded by the familiar interminable and inconclusive
discussions about whether the G[number goes here] was sufficiently representative of the international community, or whether it should be expanded into a G[number plus 1, 2 or higher goes here] including China, India or any other scary emerging market country that attendees
cared to name.

The story was given further padding by a study from an ambulance-chasing thinktank, which warned that it would continue to convene media conferences and sue government departments
until its suicidal plan to counter whatever non-existent crisis was gathering had been given substantially undeserved attention.

Article ends with your name and the location of where you are reporting from to make your non-journalist friends envious about how you get to travel to really cool and dangerous places on Murdoch's/Packer's/Taxpayer's tab.

Grey area

2008-07-02T23:15:00.000-07:00

I haven't been blogging much lately because I haven't been doing much thinking.

*warning: sexist comment approaching

Apparently when women get depressed they go shopping and get a new hair colour. Men are not much different. Not only did I change the blog to a soothing blue colour, so as to help minimise reader rage at my blatant conservatism-ness, I also did this;

Trainspotters amongst you will notice that it's got a sexy new colour. It made me feel better about a bendy weekend at Phillip Island recently, where yet another top three result went begging.

The only thing missing was a big expensive launch in a London function centre with lots of laser lights and smoke and dancing girls and live performances by Kraftwerk (the budget kind of ran out way before the final coat was applied). But we managed to run it in at Wakefield Park (Goulburn) without smashing it up.

Sammy made the trip with me so it was a great boys' weekend. Meanwhile, the girls stayed at home and no doubt did lots of girly things.

Yep, like I said. Not much thinking lately. BYE.....

I don't recall a bill of rights

2008-06-16T20:55:00.001-07:00

It's one of those things you think will never happen to you. My brand spanking new oil-byproduct-burning Holden Captiva...is being recalled!!

When I first got the recall notice, deep down I hoped it was some really interesting problem, such like: "Holden has identified a condition whereby if the vehicle's audio system is tuned to ABC Newsradio the vehicle will explode in flames the moment you drop below 100 miles per hour. This issue can only be rectified by a licenced Holden dealer, Keanu Reeves or Sandra Bullock. Please note this issue does not otherwise affect the normal operation of the vehicle's radio".

Sadly, it was only this: "Holden have identified a condition where the right hand side indicator lamp fitted to the driver's side door mirror will not operate if the rear window demister is switched on".

Which got me thinking- who designed this car- Microsoft??

On other matters- I have been asked recently why I oppose a Bill or Charter of Rights, one of the many ideas floated at the recent heavily-stacked-with-socialists 2020 summit.

I'm sure to come up with a more erudite explanation soon, but here's a good start: a stabbing murderer in NSW is suing the NSW Government for allowing her access to knives.

If anyone wants me, I'll be in Alaska.

Interfaith monologue

2008-05-27T03:30:00.000-07:00

Gidday y'all.

Now hopefully you'll look past that crude fusion of Aussie and Southern USA greetings, and read on. First the daily headlines;

Good news this week when Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeated his call that "Israel should be wiped off the map". An Israeli spokeperson choked back tears of joy saying "we're extremely encouraged by this news. Someone in Iran is actually acknowledging that Israel is on the map in the first place!"

Iranian president and very religious little man Mahmoud Im-in-a-jihad

In other news; leading up to the USA elections, Republican and Democrat campaigners have joined forces and designed a joint campaign sticker in an unprecedented show of bipartisan unity.

Apologies for the low level coarse language. I'm only quoting so it's okay.

In news closer to home, Becky is enjoying her dance classes. The other day I had the task of picking her up from dance lessons, for the first time. Admittedly, watching a motley bunch of 5 year old girls wearing brightly coloured tu-tus and stomping on the floor with all the rhythmic coordination of a peak hour freeway pile-up, is not my cup of tea. Of course, the standout performer was my Becky Boo. I'm not in the least bit biased.

The dance lessons are held at the local Anglican hall, where I realised what a trainspotter I've become, since all I could think about was how much their hardwood floors desperately needed to be touched up. Oh well, I suppose that's from a motley bunch of 5 year old girls wearing brightly coloured tu-tus and stomping on the floor with all the rhythmic coordination of a peak hour freeway pile-up.

Sam plays his Nintendo a lot and is getting really good on the race car simulator. He's dropped below 50 secs at Talledega and I feel this will really help him when he is old enough to drive.

On the weekend just prior to the weekday upon which I typed this very text which you are now reading (for any techno-nerds keen on learning exactly what day that was they can research this by examining the blog date at the top of this post and count back) we travelled to Horsham for Sharon's cousin Melissa's 21st birthday party. We made the trip in this type of vehicle, which I acquired only recently;

"Photo is for illustration purposes only". I've always wondered why people bother to write that. What else would we think the photo is for? Solving world hunger? Fixing our relationship problems? Hypnosis?

Ours is much like the one pictured in this advertising image, except ours will probably never be parked or driven on or anywhere near a beach, nor driven by perfect-bodied twenty-something parents with perfectly behaved kids who don't wreck the car's paintwork. And ours is a different colour- one called "Imperial Blonde", named after a woman who leads a small sovereign country whilst using her birth control pills to tell which day of the week it is.

I know, I know, what happened to the Falcon XR-6 Turbo I hear you all ask. Well, firstly it's my job to save my employer some money and having an XR6 Turbo would have the same weekly cost of running a tropical island resort. A diesel vehicle is a fuel/money saving measure. Well, it was, until Chairman Kevin hit us with a sneaky, lying, spin-doctoring, greedy, stupid and annoying diesel tax. To make up for the fact that it's a gutless oil-burner I got one with leather, big wheels, a big CD player, a refrigerated glovebox and lots of little storage spaces which we'll still be discovering for many years to come.

Secondly, it has SEVEN SEATS. So on long journeys we no longer endure the three children whining annoyingly about sitting next to eachother for the whole trip. Nope. Now we have two children whining annoyingly for the entire trip that they didn't get to sit in the cool, novel, rear seat. How did I fail to anticipate that little eventuality?

Okay, so I now have a 7 seater SUV. My life is officially over. But it will never qualify to live in the gararge, which is looking very healthy at present.

Moving right along, the 21st birthday party gave Becky Boo the chance to bust some moves on the dance floor

While some of us looked on with excitement...

No, really it was a typically rocking Horsham get together with the usual over-catering ensuring that lunch, dinner and breakfast was covered for several days for several families. However, we had to bolt early the next day (Sunday). Omi and I were keen to attend a Jewish festival known as Shuk Hashishim, celebrating Israel's 60th anniversary, being thrown at St Kilda.

You see, Naomi has chosen Israel as her subject country for a school project on nations of the "Asian Continent". To clarify if Israel was eligible, Omi asked the question of the teacher and without any creative licence whatsoever* I paraphrase the conversation thus;

Omi: Miss, does the "Asian Continent" include the Middle East?
Politically correct teacher gleefully assuming that Omi wishes to do a project on a Muslim country which is so multiculturally aware since us evil Western Imperialists have been so utterly cruel and oppressive to all of them: Why of course Naomi! That's a wonderful idea! I mean, yes it does include the Middle East.
Omi: Good. Because I'd like to do a project on Israel
Politically correct teacher with colour draining from her face believing that Israel is an evil Western Imperialist country oppressing poor multicultural Muslims but knowing she must feign approval lest she sound anti-semitic: OH...oh...well, right...YES...good...wonderful idea!

*a blatant lie

So there we were, at Mount Scopus College in St Kilda, soaking up the Hebraic celebrations. Mount Scopus College, by the way, was featured in SBS's Insight forum two days later. You know, the TV forum where they gather the extremes from each opposing faction, let them argue vehemently and call it "open discussion". On this occasion it was the topic of faith-based education. I'm surprised that Doctor Timothy Hawkes was not there. I expect he was invited but declined, being a little tired of the media attention. In the end it looked like a Kevin Rudd inspired socialist interfaith love-in.

Anyhow, back to our Jewish Experience. I cannot quite believe how excited Omi was just to see the ultra-orthodox, rabbinically-garbed gentlemen walking down Hawthorn Road at Caulfield, even before we'd arrived. I had to be careful we didn't act like tourists at a zoo..."Oooh! Look at the Joooz! Look at the cute little kids in their yalmukes!" I confess I had no idea this enclave of Melbourne's inner suburbs was like a Little Brooklyn, except classier. I was not at all surprised they need to congregate so close together.

"you mean I shouldn't feed him?"

I suppose I sound a little crass and patronising, but I'm trying to capture the innocence, beauty and purity of Naomi's developing heart for this special group, the apple of YHWH's eye. She was genuinely chuffed to be amongst them, absorbing a little of their spirit. She's picked up her Dad's firm belief that these people are living, breathing, walking proof of an eternal God's eternal promises.

Fortunately we weren't entirely at sea. We bumped into people I'd previously met at a Christian Supporters of Israel meeting at the Biet Weizmann community centre in Caulfield, a couple of weeks earlier.

Like Ori, for example. Ori is an Israeli "emissary" from Jewish Youth organisation Bnei Akiva, who will tell you some amazing, and little known things about Israel's (miraculous) achievements in agriculture, academics and technology.

Then I saw Avigail Zeiri, a welfare worker who assisted in the massive evacuation and repatriation of Ethiopian Jews from Ethiopia's unrest in the 1980's. In this operation over 15,000 people were shuttled to Israel in 48 hours. On one flight, apparently, they left Addis Ababa with 1014 people, and arrived in Tel Aviv with 1015, after a birth on board. Amazing stories, amazing people. Avigail is one of those people who smiles with her entire face, and she greeted Naomi in this fashion, with the predictable but charming comment of "what a beautiful name you have"

Omi and Ori

Me? I was just happy to see some Jews enjoying themselves, instead of only mourning their dead as I saw them do two weeks earlier at their Yom Hazikaron . It's hard to explain or convey how I feel around these treasured folks. Theres something infectious about their joy in the face of, not just hatred, but worldwide efforts to make them hate themselves.

As we left, Omi noted soberingly that she'd never seen a school with such high fences. We also noticed that even the vandals in St Kilda/ Caulfield had a certain spirit about them. Just look at the professionalism of this piece of urban revolutionary art, which should make it onto my list of interesting signs:

So, with a gleeful step, a batch of new ideas for Omi's project, a tinge of political incorrectness, and the unfortunate song "Can't touch this" embedded in the brain for a few hours, we headed off home in the new environmentally friendly economical multicultural interfaith nuclear family transporter to relax for the first time in 48 hours. It has definitely been run in.

For wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried. Adonai do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts you and me. Ruth 1:16-17

Breaking up is never easy...

2008-04-17T22:08:00.000-07:00

Hi groovers. Firstly, family news. As some of you know we've bought a small red block of land in the Iron Triangle and are waiting for builders to explain to us how much, exactly, it will cost to build a house on it. And we're still none the wiser.

Not content with simply having a stand-off with financial disaster, we went one better and stomped out to the dusty main street, spurs and all, for a full-on gunfight. We bought a horse.

Feed me! Expensively!

Well, actually she's a pony. A cute little Welsh Section B called Opal (correct stud name is "Orange Mist". Ooh-err!). Apparently I cannot ride her, presumably as she will be crushed under my mammoth-ness. But she is ideal for Omi's riding development, i.e., omi is capable of pushing this little critter around. She was better than my idea of buying a nice big macho brown animal which would buck like a bronco, rear up and whinny a lot, run like a wounded bull, and trample people. You know, one which the whole family could enjoy.

Nope. The girls decided on cute little Opal and before you blokes out there question my manhood, I plead the following; Not. My. Department.

Everybody: "Aawwwwww....."

She comes from good stock, a stud called Glen Gwin at Colac, and apparently other horsey people say she is quite well known. She is 7 y.o. and 13h. Right, that's the technical jargon outta the way. All I know is she eats like a, well, horse, needs to lose a few pounds, and if you slap her on her big fat bottom she runs away.

It also means we finally get to use the pinkie-coloured straps and horse blanket which god-mum Katie H sent Omi (three times). I really should brush up on my equestri-speak.

Oh yes, and Becky's doing dancing lessons and Sammy's learning tennis. You know when they say the eldest child gets all the attention? They're right.

I had my first race of the season at Calder Park for the Vic Club series and, as comic book guy says; "Worst...meeting...EVER". I got bashed from pillar to post, reminded that as sophistimacated as I make it look, superkarting is, basically, feral. To try and salvage some elegance for the racing website, I wrote a little article on the old Aussie Grand Prix days at Lobethal. Swotting for it was quite the eye opener. Motor racing was brave stuff in the first half of the 1900's (as opposed to now, when it's just plain stupid). Brave stuff indeed. I am now officially disappointed with my parents that they didn't have me 30-40 years earlier. Shame on you, Mum. And shame on you for this...

...a photo which looks eerily similar to this

Since when did you have Leftist leanings?? Or, more accurately, Leftist "slouchings"?

Speaking of which, I received a very important fax at work the other day (yes, I do attend a job occasionally). It said:

MELBOURNE CARBON TRADING EXPO!! Does YOUR business measure up?? Come to the Melbourne Carbon Trading Expo, a true business to business trade show where you'll find over 50 exhibitors who can help YOUR business CUT your carbon emissions, helping reduce your impact on Climate Change and save you money! Sign up now for free attendance...

I had cleared all available diary space to be able to attend this event, as I am very keen to learn how we can run our business premises entirely on lentils. But examining the flyer more carefully I couldn't find where it said attendance was compulsory. How disappointing. How else are we environmental vandals going to learn to contribute to The Greater Good TM unless we are gently encouraged to be forced to attend a carbon trading expo? Next year's Carbon Trading Expo had better be mandatory. If it's not, they're missing the point.

Still, being keen to reduce my impact on climate change TM, contribute to the Greater Good TM and raise awareness TM, I filed the flyer in the appropriate pigeonhole

It's good to see Chairman Kevin tirelessly promoting thinktanks, groupthinks, talks and summits. Evidently by month three of Chairman Kev's control takeover he had already formed 47 committees to talk about stuff. Forty-seven. That's the great thing about Kev. He lets everybody talk (except his own ministers).

As I write this, the coming weekend sees the much-talked-about, talk-of-the-town talk-fest of talky talk-ness, Kevin 07's '08 2020 Summit. I'm not sure if that last number represents a date, or the running total of Kev's summits thus far. This summit is all about "Fresh ideas for Australia's future" and "raising awareness of relevant issues".

Yep. "Raising Awareness" TM. About, what, things like Climate Change? Well, the only people who haven't heard of "Climate Change" are guys called Gilligan and the Professor, people in comas, and some Alaskans. But sure, why not raise more awareness. Many of Chairman Kev's hand-picked "Best and Brightest" (I take it that is now a trademarked term) are from SUV-driving green elite groups.

Chairman Kev. Doing it For The Children (TM)

And sure, brainstorming ideas is a great, um, idea. In fact isn't that why we have the public service, Cabinet, and Parliament sittings? And MP's? And their constituents? Nope. better still, assemble a massively expensive group of Chairman Kev's hand-picked and approved greens, jaded journalists, scriptwriters, prostitutes, potty-mouthed university radio announcers, lawyers, new-age spiritualists and actors to bring fresh ideas. The same fresh ideas they've all been brainstorming loudly and annoyingly for the last gazillion years.

Yep, as Chairman Kev says, having this Summit, is "throwing open the doors of democracy"...by putting pivotal national decisions into the hands of smug people we didn't vote for.

Don't get me wrong, I love Cate Blanchett. She's gorgeous, and she was hauntingly fantastic in Tom Tykwer's Heaven and quite brilliant as Hepburn in The Aviator. But if she keeps bleating about how taxpayers should fund more artists making movies that nobody wants to see, I'll cave in and buy an Australian Idol CD just to demonstrate that popular and commercial are NOT always dirty words. Cate, baby, if an Aussie movie bombs at the box office, it doesn't mean artists need more government money. It means they should learn to stop making crap.

Like this

Yep, if anyone can be "Australia's Best and Brightest TM", and bring "fresh ideas" vital to our national welfare, it's someone whose primary job is to pretend to be someone they're not.

Now, my last rant, and for a bit of a change, I want to extend my hand of solidarity to homosexual couples everywhere (some of whom I'm sure were at the summit). For years now, "gay" couples have fought pain, persecution, discrimination, banishment, disease, depression, AIDS (a disease created by Zionists), libel, stereotyping, headaches, migranes, coughs, colds, ingrown toenails and all sorts of other nasty redneck things, in their rightful class struggle to be married just like the rest of us imperialist, conservative straights. There has been many a public protest on the issue, involving anything from shouting loud, poetic slogans to displaying big, meticulously prepared banners, to baring boobs... all for Raising Awareness TM of course, as opposed to narcissistic exhibitionism.

In fact, I'd have joined them in their public protests if I hadn't been so darned busy working a normal job, staying with the one woman, raising a family, giving children the mother/father relationship they are psychologically proven to need, contributing to the economy, and so on.

Anyhoo, FINALLY, in some states in the USA at least, their struggle is being won. They are triumphantly walking down the aisle and getting hitched, legally. Huzzah!

Sadly however, and as a damning indictment on our homophobic, backwards society, they now have to fight another struggle to get divorced.

This kind of glorious irony is a bit like watching those groin-crushing incidents in Australia's Funniest Home Videos of Kids Seriously Maiming Themselves. You know you shouldn't enjoy it, you know you mustn't laugh. But you can't help it.

With so many people going from being gay, to married, to divorced, it may help explain why this girl here...

...can't find a man. Certainly this particular photo offers up no explanation whatsoever. Our gorgeous, street-smart godsister Katie has talents ranging from savvy wordsmith to brutally honest fashion critic, and she is bafflingly single. Clearly this is a problem. A big, inexplicable problem. And it requires a big solution. And I think I've found it...

We're going to place Katie's personal welfare in the hands of 1000 of Australia's best and brightest poets, actors, human rights activists, hemp-smoking lentil-eating SUV-driving greenies, jobless political dissidents, public servants and gay divorcees, and hold a summit. And if that doesn't work we'll just have another one. Next week.

Ads by Paddy (and a baby)

2008-02-17T16:34:00.000-08:00

Greetings favourite people and others.

2008 has already begun as year-of-the-date-clash (bet the Chinese haven't thought of that one). But I won't bore you with the reasons why. I still haven't learned to cope with the reality that when something happens, something else is usually happening at the same time.

I'm using this post to catch up with some belated family housekeeping matters. Firstly, congrats to big brother Matthew for landing a full time job as 2IC to the Director of Music/ Middle School at Pembroke, Adelaide, SA, Oz-Stray-ya. Kind of ironic that he gets a gig at Middle School level when his previous employer allegedly knocked him back for a promotion as he "didn't have enough experience at Middle School level". I won't name the institution, but it shares it's name with that of a luxury German car.

This photo is here for no other reason than to break up the monotony of the text

Speaking of no experience, our luddite mother is still throwing herself headlong into the world of patooters (that's Katie Hawkes-speak for computers). Apart from not being able to attach photos to emails without worrying whether or not they're still on her patooter after the email leaves, she's not doing too badly.

Here's an exchange we had after I sent her an email with a link to all the things which happen which are blamed on Global Warming.

Mumsy: I'm more interested to know if you're going to purchase (as seen on same webpage as the article) the 'CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED' dvd of "Jesus didn't Exist" by...such LUMINARIES as Jesus Seminar Fellow (what's that?) Robert M. Price, Professor (of what?) Richard Dawkins ... All this for an undisclosed price and in "crisp Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo audio"!!!!!

Me: Right, so Jesus doesn't exist now? Can't these cultural elite/ career atheists agree on anything? If he didn't exist, how could he have been married to Mary Magdelene? Or have been "revived by the coolness of the tomb"? Or been gay? Or an alien? Or "just a great bloke with some top ideas"? Or a virulent anti-semite?

You have just discovered the "automatically generated ads-by-Google". You see, they scan your browsing habits or key words in the article on the page and generate ads they think are related. So on sites which say nice things about Jesus, you'll see a google-generated ad saying "Jesus was a dangerous cult leader- read more here" or on a site satirical about communism, you'll see an ad telling you how to join the Australian Socialist Alliance. Clearly the programs which randomnly generate the ads haven't learned to decipher sarcasm.

And then, of course, there's Ebay- Google will look at what you're browsing, pick a key word and generate an ad saying you can buy that kind of thing on Ebay. So if you're reading an article about Kevin Rudd, there will be an advertisement on the side saying "Thinktanks! Great deals on thinktanks on Ebay".

I then attached, for Mumsy's benefit, an example of what happens when automated ad generating goes horribly wrong, after I was browsing for info on the Sudanese genocide.

So, as Mum and others are slowly learning, it's highly web-fashionable and trendy to leave prominent space on your webpage to the mercy of a Google-owned, automated random ad generating robot. Never mind that people reading your website about healthy eating will be lead to a site promoting suicide by weed killer. Or, that the net resource for Rabbinical Judaism will contain links to Hog's Breath. Or that whilst reading an online speech by the Archbishop of Canterbury, you'll be redirected to a site demanding sharia law (oh wait...that one was synonymous).

That reminds me, and I digress with another transcript of an exchange, this time with my highly talented godsister Katie on the subject of music, late last year:

Katie Eleanor: I'll serenade you anytime, godbrother. I'm currently working on an acoustic version of Prodigy's inspirational hit "Smack my Bitch Up"
Me: Is that what they're saying? I always thought it was "Smack my Bishop". Never had Prodigy pegged for Anglicans.

That was quite a prophetic comment now that I look at it. And once Katie has finished her acoustic version maybe we can serenade the Bishop of the Diocese of the Mu...

ANYWAY, where was I? Oh yeah, automated Google ads...

So, wanting my blog to be trendy regardless of the risks, my comrades at The People's Cube have come up with some similar ads to spice this blog. Really, they are randomnly generated.

Now, on a more civilised and far more enjoyable note, another congratulations goes to our German Frau Claudi, or more specifically her sister Katherine. Katherine has just given birth to, as they apparently say in Germany, "a little dwarf". Rather than lecture Claudi on the political incorrectness of such phrases, as they are insulting and demeaning to dwarfs, people suffering from dwarfism and garden ornaments, better just to post a piccy of Auntie Claudi and her new dwarf. I mean nephew.

Recently I have noted a spate of dwarfs born with lots and lots of hair. Our nephew Zane, and a couple from church to name some. Obviously whichever mutated gene causes this has not yet found it's way to Germany, which is good because Nicolas's father Uwe's hair is very, very grey.

Herzlichen Glückwunsch to Katherine, Uwe and Auntie Claudi.

Now click on a google ad and see where you end up. A site about tall people, perhaps.

Warning: gross pictures, may be deemed offensive to bloated cows

2008-01-29T02:55:00.000-08:00

Well howdy and happy noo year.

While I was off racing at Oran Park late 07 we got a new government, and I forgot to blog about it. Mum always used to say "Don't talk about religion and politics". Well, I've pretty much stuffed that bigtime for the last 38 years. But it seems our brilliantly gifted Naomi shows the same disregard; late last year, I noticed she had defaced a copy of the Herald Sun which was lying around. It must have been following a visit from the Horsham Grandparents, since that's the only way the Herald Sun would ever find it's way into our house (what can I say, I prefer to be correctly informed, not dazzled with magic). It was also about the time a bit of cheap journalism had dragged up footage of poor Kevin Rudd eating his own ear wax during question time. Big deal. So I chew my fingernails. Besides, everybody knows poor Rudd, like so many others, have been forced into eating their ear taters due to the crippling poverty caused by the evil John Howard (because before JH and GWB there was no such thing as poverty).

Anyhoo, on this day in November 07 Omi had taken a pen to every page of this beacon of media integrity, occasionally by drawing moustaches on people, which is fine and befitting of someone in her age group, but also with some interesting commentary. One of them was written below a current picture of our new PM, and said;

Kevin Rudd needs some cotton buds for Christmas

No cynical, jaded and sarcastic political commentary from me could possibly top that. So you're all off the hook.

Apart from this:

One of these people appears to wear lipstick, and it's not the one on the left. Seriously Kevin, stop licking your lips so much. We will not be taken seriously as a nation and as a result will probably be attacked by terrorists, or worse, Iranians, who hang men who look like they wear lipstick

As I write this Sharon has just enjoyed her first half-day without 3 kids for almost 2 months. Little Becky-boo was a first time school kiddy today and has been rabitting excitedly on about her impending promotion for most of that 2 months. Well, most of last year actually. But I was a good Dad. Not once did I say anything like "you don't know what you're saying" or "the novelty will wear off instantly" or "glad you're looking forward to it... mwhahahBWAHAHAHA....".

No this not the offensive photo (more on that later). This one is quite cute

No, I should just be glad she relishes the idea of school. I am not-too-old enough to remember that I used to HATE being told "Ha! School! They're the best years of your life!". Used to hate it. Don't now- because it's BLUDDY WELL TRUE.

What the...are they...is that...are they... actually ALL SMILING AT THE SAME TIME??! What are the odds?

So that was two months of grafitti-ing, denting, scratching, spreading rodent-related debris around and other general carnage. Although we did hear, from some other parents, of this thing where you "find things for them to do, like going to the pool or a park". Brilliant idea. We'll note it down for next time.

However, one of the things I cannot blame the kids for breaking, and (finally) a good excuse for not taking them to the park, is this;

Before.

That's right. Jan 7th was the date of my postponed-from-'07 surgical procedure- Hallux Valgus correction. Which is just a sexy name for angle-grind-bits-of-bone-from-bunion and force-the-big-toe-straight operation. Sharon once described to me exactly how they do it and I really wish she hadn't. So now my foot looks like this.

After.

But that's not the gross and potentially offensive photo I was referring to, I'll get to that at the end of the post. Now in case you're wondering, the post-op foot in question is the one on the left. I put the right side one there, partly because I had no choice because it's attached to my other leg, and partly for comparison purposes. Or maybe you already worked it out because the left one looks like the udder from a dead, bloated, purple cow.

So I won't be walking for a while without some assistance. It did involve two and a bit weeks off work which was gainfully used to watch the Oz open tennis and over $100 worth of DVD's.

When the DVD supply ran out and with two weeks of total boredom and immobility, I found it amazing what you can do with that interweb thingy. Between the cricket and the tennis finals I managed to locate the Ark of the Covenant, just by googling (Indiana Jones was wrong, it ain't in Tunisia). Then I learned that Bill Clinton's husband Hillary is really a confused woman with a potty mouth, and Gazan Palestinians apparently need over half a tonne of flour per day...each. I was about to discover a cure for Alzheimer's but I had to go back to work.

Okay, now for the gross and potentially offensive photo. I can't let a posting go by without a rant, so: This post was brought to you by the government agency who rejected an online literary award for a version of The Three Little Pigs because it was deemed too offensive to Muslims, cowboys and builders.

Oink oink!

Quick rant: "Mt Grandpappy didn't fight wars and restore classic aircraft so you ingrates could..."

2007-12-20T19:44:00.000-08:00

I'll try and keep this brief. Yep, I chose the wrong time to leave Adelaide. The onset of the gorgeously agreeable yellow-tram-purchasing Mike Rann, rampant speed camera abuse, the commodities boom, and world famous wannabe terrorist David Hicks.

The Premier of SA and his speech writer. (Seriously).

Yep, I can proudly tell the Vics, sure, I know where Hicksy lives. Sharon used to work there. Huge place up on Grand Junction Road. Just around the corner is the original landing site of the Vickers Vimy, after it's historic Atlantic crossing flight in 1919. The aircraft was restored in 1954 by my grand-pappy Wing Commander Jim Gooch and is currently hiding in a hangar at the old Adelaide Airport terminal. He got no credit for the restoration, of course, even though he had to singlehandedly source the individual bits of the aircraft from all over Australia. Apparently he found the prop hanging over the mess hall doorway at Point Cook RAAF base, which is just down the road from where I'm working now.

I say Ross ole' chap, we make a historically significant landing here and they go and build a ruddy gaol round the corner! Poor form what??

But I digress. Hicksy was big news when he finally was freed from the oppression of the evil Dubya at Gitmo and returned to his rightful home and family, who clearly gave him such a loving, stable upbringing. After all, he was just a small town kid who made a few mistakes, hung with the wrong crowd. That's no reason to put him in a concentration camp, hang him upside down for days on end, electrocute him via the testicles and make sexual jibes about his mother for SIX WHOLE years.

I was also a small town kid who made a few mistakes and hung with the wrong crowd so I totally dig where he's at. I too actively sought out training with the hideous terrorist organisation Al-Qaida, underwent training in heavy arms and explosives for 8 months whilst writing to my family that I welcome death in the glorious name of Allah and desire the death of all non-believers from...

...wait a sec, no I didn't.

Now at the risk of sounding way too pragmatic instead of emotional, angry, I-hate-John-Howard-and-Dubya-and-if-I-ever-do-anything-bad
-it's-all-their-fault-because-they-made-me-angry type, here's the facts on Hicks: Terrorists, especially the Islamic kind (which seem to be most of them these days...boy I bet there's a lot of Northern Irish who are thrilled about that) practice a certain brand of deadly attacks on civilians which earns them the title of "unlawful combatants". This concept hearkens back to the days of the Nuremburg trials where, although some German soldiers did kill people lawfully (!) in battle, it was their genocidal habits towards around 6 million Jews and other demographic groups which landed them in hot water.

Oh, by the way, some of Hicksy's jihadist dear-mum letters were venomously anti-Semitic.

Yes I know the concept of "lawful war" is a bit detestable, but we live in a fallen world. What are you gonna do. Anyhoo, the unlawful combatants earn themselves different treatment to that afforded to prisoners-of-war, and do not necessarily earn civil criminal treatment either.

Now normally you'd accept these harmless (sic) hanky-headed jihadis running around in the Afghani desert doing commando crawls in khakis screaming about killing infidels are just full of hot air. In fact it actually looks like a lot of fun through the fuzzy resolution. Likewise, Hicksy never actually killed anybody although he did boast about firing on the Indian army in Kashmir. He was just a small town kid who blah blah bla....

Problem is, these jihadis are more than hot air. The same ideals to which Hicks proudly spruiked have perpetuated 10,200 deadly attacks on civilians in the last 7 years, and countless others prior. A long list of Islamic terror attacks beyond the scope of this blog. Islamic media littered with vile, Jew-hating and West-hating rhetoric. Killing almost daily in Philippines, Pakistan, Thailand, Indonesia, Russia, Jordan, "Palestine", Lebanon, Syria, India, slightly less killing in Israel (for some reason Jews have learned how to defend themselves) and...well, you get the idea.

Yet our mass media and entertainment industry are bent on convincing us that Hicksy and his ilk are the victims. Just what we need. Tell the murderers with their hate-filled ideology, which they practice to the letter, that they are the true victims. Talk about empowerment.

Admittedly, it's not hard to make them look like poor abused puppy dogs. After all, as bloodthirsty as these terrorist savages are (with unarmed civilians) I have it on the best advice that when they are confronted with a real soldier, they run screaming like little girls.

Now I'm not suggesting it's okay for some GI's at Gitmo to take nudey pictures of a poor terrorist or point him in the wrong direction for Mecca at prayer time and have a giggle about it. And yes there are shortcomings in the way the Government dealt with this Australian citizen (presuming he still deserves that title).

But I do wish, just sometimes, the cultural elite of our media would show the same outrage for entire villages of raped, murdered and enslaved Sudanese women or their headless husbands, or the mutilation and killing of Pakistani Christian children, or the gleeful joy with which "Palestinian" children declare their desire to kill the Jewish "swine", or the massacre of Phillipinos and Indonesian Christians, or the...well, you get the idea. It's not as if there isn't enough of this going on. And it's not all unrelated. And apparently it was even going on before Dubya was callously invading those peace-loving, human-rights havens like Iraq.

After all, wasn't he just a small town kid who....

Bright, sun-shiny day

2007-12-01T04:47:00.000-08:00

On the weekend of Nov 24-25 I drove to Sydney, raced at Oran Park, then drove home. You can read about that here . Not satisfied with completely over-doing it for an entire month, I thought I'd squeeze in another activity, at least this time, for kid(s). Well, in this case, Sammy at least. The plan was to get up early-ish, drive to Queenscliff, take the leisurely ferry-ride to Sorrento, then drive calmly to Phillip Island for the V8 Stuporcars, since Sammy has become as tragically addicted to car racing as I was when around 12. Sad, that.

Seriously, I actually do think it's sad. The only reason I haven't taken him to a race yet is because I'm kinda over standing on the side of a hill with yobbos who actually think the cars racing are the same as the car they drove to the track .

But no, this time would be different. After all, the previous weekend my van to Sydney contained not only my race kart, but one belonging to the team manager for established V8 Supercar driver Jason Bright. Hence, he owed me a favour. So we would get the full garage tour etc.

How cool. When I was a little motorsport-junkie-tacker, the first touring car race I saw was as a guest of our local Holden Dealer. Things were a little more casual then but still, to be shown through Brocky's car and meet the man himself was pretty special. So, I suppose I have always tried to avoid joining the masses when attending these events. Why force the same unrealistic standard on my own boy? Because I can. Hehehee.

UP until recently all Sam had eyes for was "Craig Lowndes!!" He has now been converted to "Jason Bright!!" (Unfortunately Craig Lowndes is up the right end of the grid. Jason is up the other end).

HOw quickly the smile faded from this girl's face when she realised Triple Eight Racing's Jamie Whincup was just rushing towards his race car

So anyhoo, that was the plan. What really happened was that we missed the first ferry, took an ill-fated shortcut through the Mornington Peninsula which ended up in a road closure, got stuck through Saturday am shopping traffic, then drove anything but calmly to Phillip Island in a trip that took, all up, four and a half hours.

But it was all worth it with a slightly shy but enthused Sammy having the meet-and-greet with Brighty, sit in the car, photos, and some cool (free) team merchandise which yes, ahem, included some for daddy as well.

I was also told some (confidential) interesting stats on the money thrown around to run a V8 Soupedupcar team and sponsorship brokering. Britek's level 2 (Fujitsu-series) V8 Car is currently looking for a driver. They can't really advertise on seek.com because unlike most jobs, this one costs you a cool $350,000 for the year, and you still have to find your own accommodation and travel. The level one team costs around $7m to run per year. At the moment, they have a total of around $5m in sponsorship.

That's just a sniff. On the way home, Sam rather predictably said "I wanna be a V8 Supercar driver!!". I'm currently in the process of encouraging him toward something more economical, like an astronaut or airline pilot. More piccys soon, so if you happened upon this posting before I told you about it, go away and come back later. (Please).

US Dollars or Bernies?

2007-11-15T03:15:00.000-08:00

As you know I'm a bit of a Formula One buff. This year has been rather interesting for reasons you'd have to be somebody named Gilligan or The Professor to have missed.

Basically, the sport's governing body's head honcho revealed he's actually Joseph Stalin reincarnated, as well as a huge Ferrari fan. Meanwhile the sport's largest shareholder, who is also the world's smallest person, Bernie Ecclestone, managed to oversell Grands Prix to more countries than there are places on the calendar- in much the same way airlines oversell seats then hope that someone turns up late and forfeits their ticket.

Bernie is so rich that the UK will soon re-name their currency after him. The longevity of his control over F1 has been of Castro-like proportions. In fact, there are rumours that when Bernie dies, he has ordered that his corpse be ferried around to F1 venues so that his management company continues to rake the revenue. Although, this will probably be ineffective since a rotting, dead Bernie would not be as scary as the live one. Anyhow, it was this order which inspired the Hollywood film Weekend at Bernie's.

You can prise F1 from my cold, dead fingers...

Ever since Victoria poached the Oz Grand Prix from Adelaide by offering Bernie more than the Gross Domestic Product of South Australia, Bernie's wallet has never quite recovered from the strain. Now he signs up long term contracts everywhere and then finds ways of making them short term.

Before I go on any more, for the uninitiated, here is an excerpt from my new book Running a Grand Prix for Dummies, from the chapter on "How to get a Grand Prix".

Hopeful Nation: Hi Bernie, we'd like a Grand Prix. We have very little industry, massive unemployment, social problems and crime, terrible lack of infrastructure, but the Government's prepared to pay...
Bernie: Sounds fine. That'll be 50 million...
HN: ...and we've got oil
Bernie: I mean...that'll be FIVE HUNDRED million Bernies.
HN: Great. Here's the cheque. So when will the track be ready?
Bernie: OH, you wanted a TRACK with that?? Goodness me no, it doesn't work that way. Track's not included. Here's the card of someone who can help. He'll build one for you.
HN: (reads card) "Herman the German". Uh-huh. How much?
Bernie. Dunno. Nothing to do with me. Probably another 500 million.
HN: Do we HAVE to use this guy??
Bern: Good Lord no, it's a free country (Well, mine is. Can't speak for yours) You can use whoever you like.
HN: Right then. Who else is there?
Bern: Nobody. You have to use Herman.
HN: How many races do we have?
Bernie: The standard contract is 6 races. But in reality it's one, maybe two, until I get bored with you and come up with an excuse to void the contract or make unreasonable demands on you such as you must stage the race at night or upside down.
HN: What if we can't meet those demands?
Bernie: Well, you'll lose the race and have nobody to blame but yourselves.
HN: If so, will we receive a partial refund of our 500 million Bernies?
Bernie: (loses control in fits of annoying laughter) Excuse me, I have to sit down...(loses it again)
(HN goes back to it's Parliament/Senate Committee/ Caucus/ Tribal Council to pitch the idea)
Tribal Council: It will cost HOW much?
HN: 500 Million. But it will bring IMMEASURABLE benefit to the local economy!
TC: So what you're saying is, you have absolutely no idea whether we'll make any money out of it, but the local corner store will sell more of those cheap little Kodak snappy cameras and toilet paper, and there'll be lots of spoilt, pompous journalists moaning about how bad our taxi drivers are?
HN: Well yes. But, by gosh, we'll get on the Telly! And no-one will think we're a backwards, mountain goat-infested dump anymore!

...and so on. Anyhoo, it turns out even Melbourne is eligible to cop a legendary Bernie change-of-heart. You see, this year Bernie mentioned that he had, after ten years, only just realised the shocking truth- that the Oz GP is on just a little too early for Poms and Europeans to watch it on their tellies, i.e. several hours before they all get up and go to church. So, says Bern, why don't you chaps hire some of those floodlights from Coates Hire and stage a race at night to boost my Telly ratings! Oh, and while they're at it, Coates Hire might also like to build a nuclear reactor in Albert Park to power it.

Count To Zero wins, only to be excluded and fined 100million bernies for receiving a 780 page technical dossier from Efficient and copying their horseshoes

How Melbourne managed to ride that one out I don't know but no sooner had that blown over that the Vic Socialists looked at their invoices and discovered that the GP had lost them $34 million. That's a lot of speeding fines. So, all sorts of novel ideas were floated to make the GP a little cheaper. None of them were really impressive since the Vic Socialists aren't that crash at fixing problems in any way other than throwing more money at them.

One suggestion, earlier in the year, was that a consortium of Geelong people would build a massive racetrack on the western plains near where I live, which would be nice. The problem with this idea was that the consortium consisted of Drag Racing legend and very large man Victor Bray, and there were concerns he would build a track without any corners.

Another suggestion was to stage it at Sandown, a horse race track which has a motor race track running around it. But they already spent gazillions on the very same idea in the early 1980's, only to be gazzumped by Adelaide (huzzah!!). So they're still sulking.

Another more recent suggestion was to stage it at Phlegmington, a horse racetrack which has no motor race track running around it, at present. However, this idea was dismissed as too problematic because Melbournians might confuse the GP with the Melbourne Cup, as well as confuse Bernie Ecclestone with a (very, very old) jockey.

Country and Western Ring Road

2007-11-11T17:36:00.000-08:00

Normally I wouldn't post something quite so brief and pointless. I'd rather my posts are long and pointless (with photos).

I've never really understood music. For example, a singing idol, I would have thought, would be someone who is unique in some way.

So why do we keep manufacturing more, every year? Does the main market for this product constantly get bored? Well, the main market for new album buyers consists of young girls aged 11-15. Okay, that explains a bit.

Dont get me wrong, I love the sound of a nice voice, and yes I'm talking to you Alicia Jane Hawkes, Pippa, Katie, and to a much lesser extent, Delta Goodrem and, um, whoever the last Australian Idol was.

But producing more idol singers is like producing more ambulance chasing lawyers- we love them, we really do, but the world doesn't exactly need any more of them. Or, it's like taking all the office stationary pens and claiming them all by labelling them with your name. Eventually nobody will care and take them anyway.

It's not like I don't try to keep up with the hip young with-it trendy underground indy stand-up-to-the-man viva-la-revolucion mu-zak. Why, recently I purchased an album by one of Australia's finest Eskimo Joe; Black Fingernails Red Wine. Firstly, I was very impressed that lead singer Kav Temperly is about the most poshly pronunciated indie-pop-rock singer out there. No-one else can sing "I should hah'v stayed in buh'd" like he. The album also has a song with the curious lyrics of

Sarah!!
Won't you tell me your name

Well, I can help you there Kav. It's...."SARAH".

Anyhoo, speaking of music, the roads here in Melbourne are more musical than me. I drive on the Western Ring Road every day. This engineering masterpiece is unique in that, in the areas where there are lots of exits and entrances all within a short distance, and therefore more lanes are required to accommodate the merging congestion, there are actually less lanes. It was apparently constructed some time in the late 70's, a the height of the hemp usage boom, which could explain a lot.

The other beauty of this road is that peak is not confined to any particular direction. In theory this means the traffic volume is evenly distributed. This is certainly true. In peak hour, both sides are a car park.

But that's not what I'm writing about. Recently they've scraped the surface of the bitumen for several kilometres, in preparation to resurface. Perhaps they plan to add some of those lanes which went missing in the 70's, along with the engineers' brain cells.

The scraping has produced fine corrugations in the direction of the road. As you drive, it makes a humming noise. It took me a while to realise what it was, and that I wasn't going even more insane than usual. It's actually quite tuneful. Between Sunshine and Keilor, I'm sure it's making a rendition of "What a wonderful world" by Louis Armstrong. Apparently if you drive on Bridgestone radials it goes up an octave.

Bird takes up race driving

2007-11-07T15:42:00.000-08:00

So, what's been happening lately?

After a brief Viktorian spring, we got an entire winter's worth of rainfall in one weekend. Lara was looking a bit soggy for a while, but not quite as soggy as the Gippsland region, which I seem to recall flooded back in July no doubt due to Global Warming. Damming the Mitchell River would apparently increase our water supplies by 4%, which is a big deal. But of course damming also affects the local ecology and frogs, and contributes to Global Warming. So, the good residents of the Gippsland region are contributing to the Greater Good by occasionally putting up with this:

At least we're thinking of the children..

To do my bit for the environment I threw the kart in a diesel powered van, drove to Adelaide, left it there, jumped on a big plane, flew to Sydney, attended a trade show, flew back to Adelaide, raced in the Superkart Nationals then drove home. Then I took a breath.

The trade show is a great event. I've blogged on about it previously but it basically is a chance to stand up all day and talk to people about floor sanding machines. Whether this actually does any good for business or not is still undecided but the relevance of the social events is unanimously agreed upon.

Where I spent two whole days talking about drum pressure and swirl marks

So much so, that boss Cam flew Sharon and Louise (his wife) over to join in and provide some female company and conversation pertaining to something other than Floor Sanding. Wednesday night, cocktail party. Thursday night, dinner with guests from Singapore. Friday night, big awards dinner with celebrity speaker to which I didn't go, but more on that later.

Before it all began, Tuesday night, I managed to steal away from our lush hotel at Coogee Beach, battling two hours of Sydney peak to visit the esteemed Godfather at the famous Kings' School Paramatta. It's always a treat to be "given an audience" with Dr. Timothy Hawkes, i.e. get hugged sensless, drip fed beer and red wine, and dined in a massive dining room with furniture dating back to the first settlers.

Archive footage of big blokey manly men

The Hawkeses are, without overselling them, a wonderful, wonderful family with infectious cheer. Absent was Pippa, up at their Pretty Beach house, um, "studying" and of course Peter and Amber are still in India rescuing slaves. Jane's nephew Chris, from the UK, was still down and working in Sydney with the occasional commute to NZ, and the lovely Alicia Jane was there after another day showing injured and sick people how to rehabilitate. Quite frankly I think they all lead such boring lives.

So it was back to the relative drudgery of the timber flooring show, made interesting by my inclusion of the race car simulator. It was intended to draw a crowd, although day one it looked more like it would simply serve as a creche, since the visiting tradespeople's kids flocked to it. I was outraged. It's a race car simulator, not a bluddy video game, you little cretins. It's for grown men to run motorsport simulations, although it is kind of like, well...a....

...game. Anyway, it ended up being quite successful. Friday night I missed the you-beaut gala dinner evening with guest speaker Mike Whitney (you know, the guy who once played cricket and was in a couple of reality TV shows. Woo-bluddy-hoo). Instead I was on a plane back to Adelaide. I would rather have been at the dinner but I chose this sport and the Superkart Nationals just happen to be scheduled right on top of our trade show. I think 2007 will be known as the Year of The Date Clash. Sharon went to the Awards dinner, presumably masquerading as one of Cam's two wives.

The Superkart Nationals were at Mallala, my favourite old place. I did okay, finishing fourth out of the Victorians but the South Aussies were too strong. I was buried mid-pack most of the weekend so in order to draw attention to myself I wore a silly hat.

Fourth seems to be my groundhog-day result. A week after all this date-clashing I had the final round of the Viktorian Club series at Phillip Island. I came fourth. Fourth is good.

Then after all that beingbusyness things got mostly almost back to some kind of normal-ishness. For Omi's birthday we drove across the other side of Melbourne (a distance equal to crossing several European countries) to visit the famous Healesville Sanctuary. It was about as touristy as you can get and personally, give me Cudlee Creek in the beautiful Adelaide Hills any day. Mind you, the birds of prey show was worth the drive. The park ranger would ask the large audience questions like "Do you know what the largest bid of prey in Australia is...?" in patronising, Wiggles-style tones. Omi would reply "Wedgetail Eagle" in who doesn't know that?? tones. And yes, it was one huge Wedgie.

To keep the tone of the show going, after having birds of prey swooping low over our heads (apparently the lower you duck, the lower they fly), a person claiming to be an aboriginal came out and started throwing boomerangs over our heads. We then went to their lavish new animal hospital, but I didn't see any muppets. There they taught you that if you find an injured native animal, you must not try and look after it, you must hand it over to the local wildlife concern.

After that day, by a strange quirk of fate, Naomi found an orphaned wattle bird, know as Winnie, who has now decided that a big gangly human kid is really her mother.

Race driving is a complex art. First, you must be facing the front of the vehicle when sitting in it. Well, actually, this creature isn't neccessarily less smart than most race drivers

So in our suburban dogbox block of land we now have a menagerie of squeaking piggies and chirping birdies and Lord knows what other critters Omi will adopt. Still, I have to admit that it's kinda cool having this little native bird come and land on your shoulder. From our Healesville training we did the right thing and asked the local wildlife concern to take on little Winnie, but they suggested "ah, just feed it and let it go, it should be okay."

So we did. And it keeps flying back to us. Of course, Omi isn't exactly heartbroken about this. More later. BYE.

Oh, Viktor, you are very unattraktive sign...

2007-09-04T18:43:00.000-07:00

Hullo Komrades

Yes I know I like a whinge about the Stalinist kontrol exerted by the VSP (Viktorian Socialist Party). Yes I tend to carry on about their tendency to force motorists to drive so unfeasibly slow, that it would be faster to walk or wait until someone invents teleporting. Yes, I regularly lament how such road slowness causes a kind of drowsy stupor intended to make people more susceptible to Party brainwashing- such as the propaganda telling us that if we don't drive with our eyes glued to our speedos (NB I'm not talking about the budgie-smuggling kind), several children and their tricycles will be impaled on the bullbar of someone's big, nasty four wheel drive.

But hear me out once more. Now I am convinced the Stalin Government of Viktor-ia simply loves putting signs everywhere.

Dang!! Of all the days to be in a Landcruiser

And of course, I've mentioned once or twice how we're urged that every 5 k's over the speed limit contributes to GLOBAL WARMING (may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon Al Gore). Road safety TV ads are Logie-award winning masterpieces using graphic images to tug at the heart strings. Not a trace of evidence, facts, or pragmatism about them of course. That is the modus operandi of the VSP. Their roadside "road safety" signs are a smörgåsbord of catchy-slogan-fests. Like this:

No thanks. I need it to, um, go places and stuff

Yes, it's official. The Viktor-ian Gov just loves signs in general. Here's proof:

I would have taken photos of the sign warning of this sign and the sign warning of that sign warning of this sign, but there was no time

They need little encouraging to drop a speed limit, only the smallest alibi. "Road Works" is one such alibi. For some reason, 100,000 motorists need to slow to walking pace where a bloke was digging a hole 50 metres away some time earlier today, having long since gone. But that's not enough. The VSP have finally realised that their roadwork speed limits need a touch of their feelgood propaganda to explain to us why we must hand our driving brains over to The Party so as not to endanger road workers who aren't actually there. Forcibly obeying laws is not enough for the Viktor-ian Gov. We must also agree with them.

On my daily crawl through Altona, where they're building a new overpass, I've noticed these signs preceding the speed zones:

Real risk? No kidding. There's your problem right there. A roadworks site is no place for kiddies, especially if they're not wearing hi-viz like dad. Granted, a bloke with a shovel needs to be protected from us homicidal motorists. But isn't that all the more reason NOT to let their kids run around in the same area? Are they safer amongst giant earthmoving machines? What feelgood signs will we see if some pre-schooler gets buried under several tonnes of landfill?

Even more disturbingly, I would have thought the VSP would shy away from being gender specific in Party-approved advertising. I suppose it doesn't necessarily imply that "Dad's" partner is a wife. It could be a de-facto or another "Dad", or nobody.

So anyway, after seeing a string of these expensive looking signs showing cheerful-hardworking-roadworker bloke-with-kid as you drive along slower than a snail with heavy shopping, you're well and truly in stupor-land, complete with dribble hanging from your mouth. Then, you are released like a bird, free to resume at a whopping 100km/h, and the final cheerful-hardworking-roadworker-bloke sign appears thus:

Obviously, they would never use correct Imperial English. Apart from the fact that anything Imperial is evil, the whole concept of correct language usage is just a bourgeois ploy to oppress the working class.

If you pay close attention, the progressive socialist values promoted by the VSP are still subtly evident in this series of feelgood advertising: You see, roadworker guy looks like a member of the Village People. And we are to assume his gay de-facto partner works full time, exercising the civil right not to stay home and look after their child. That's why roadworker guy has to bring the little brat to the roadworks site.

But I'm just hypothesizing. Quick, somebody erect a sign to explain to me what's really happening.

.

Rodent Opera and good old Alzheimer's

2007-08-01T20:30:00.000-07:00

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.

The Untouchables

2007-03-07T18:47:00.000-08:00

The remarkable Lewis Hamilton

There's a lot of photos to load, so be patient. PATIENT I TELL YOU!!

Much has happened which I haven't posted here so there's some making up to do. Immediately post-Christmas 06 was spent with our great friends the Hawkeses. For those unfortunate enough not to know them, Twin brothers Tim and Nick Hawkes are my godfathers. Hence their kids are my godbrothers and sisters.

All of the exquisite piccys on this page are courtesy of the amazing Miss Katie Hawkes. She has a knack for bringing out the best in her human subjects.

The divine Miss Katie and my divine Mum

Tim and Jane and family live in Sydney. Tim holds the rather low-brow position of headmaster of the famous Kings' School in Parramatta. Nick and Mary and family live in Adelaide as pastor of a non-denominatonal church. Tim's eldest son Peter wasn't present for our Chrissy bash as he was in India helping the impoverished set up businesses, while his new bride Amber was busting major slavery rackets. Peter is my Sammy's godfather. Nick's daughter Katie is my Naomi's godmother.

Geddit?

Pippa and Becky Boo

Right, that's all the intros out of the way, you're all acquainted now. Sadly my dear godsister Katie has jetsetted off to Manchester indefinitely to do PR. I'm not sure exactly how her career is going but we can be sure she has completely outclassed me in the blogging department. If you're reading this Katie, please be advised that only German motorways are speed unlimited, not English ones.

Omi with proud godmummy

The godfathers. Do ya think I like talkin' wid a dry, sore troat??

Now, in my family, we take the role of godparent very seriously. This time honoured role is maintained by many families. Some keep this tradition out of genuine desire for a role model for their child other than themselves, who can be a positive Christian influence. Some do it out of genuine need for legal guardians in case of an unforseen tragedy. Others do it to passify some token family members who just want to be included for the sake of it and who couldn't care less if the little tacker grows up to be a crack whore.

That's why it's a fact of life that when such "god"parents are selected, a few will disappear either through lack of interest or, in my case, sheer frustration at the near irretrievably poor behaivour of the little tacker whose well being was thrust upon them. It's understandable. But me- I was blessed enough to have at least two who really stuck. And they are Tim and Nick Hawkes.

Doctors Timothy and Nick Hawkes discovering light reflection and refraction for the first time.

This dedication seems to run in the family. Sam's godfather, Tim's son Peter, never fails to keep in touch and takes a real interest in my boy. Nick's girl, the lovely Katie H dotes over her goddaughter Naomi. We are very lucky.

Besides, it also means if my kids turn out to be horrors I have someone else to blame.

2007 Grand Prix Edition!!

Now, onto more important stuff. Between Christmas and that other major religious festival, the Grand Prix, the only other sacred weekend, for me at least, was my first race of the season. But you can read about that here.

The most remarkable bit was getting the new Hyper Racer Kart completed in time. Team boss Jon Crooke, a former Aussie Formula 2 National Champion and Touring car driver, bit off way more than he could chew attempting to build five new karts for the new season. This meant I was in Mount Evelyn (the complete opposite far far away side of Melbourne to Lara) to 10pm Thursday night before the race weekend.

What followed was a) driving back to Lara by midnight b) early start to open the office Friday morning with kart in tow to have the beast check weighed at a freight forwarder down the road from work but not before c) getting stuck in the 2 hour long Geelong freeway jam after a double fatality d) doing an illegal u-turn to escape said traffic jam and getting sprung by Geelong's finest e) giving Geelong's finest a non-abusive but extremely long winded lecture about how ludicrous it was for them to prey on stressed motorists doing perfectly safe u-turns and why don't they just ride in the bluddy car with me and do all my bluddy thinking for me, and subsequently f) worrying that my first race weekend of the year would be spent clinging bars in Geelong.

Fortunately Constable Sheedy of the Geelong Road Mismanagement unit resorted to merely fine me, I think mainly just to shut me up. I gotta say, paying $113 for the privalege of explaining to a police officer that they do not need to protect me from myself is actually good value.

Anyhoo, on to the actual subject of this post- Grand Prix 07. As you may know from previous GP posts such as 2006 or 2005 (scroll to the bottom) I am a track lackie. Some years you get posted on boring corners and nothing happens. Some years you have the entire F1 field crash in front of you and you must chaperone Michael Schumacher to the medical staff. Sometimes you get fed crepes and strawberries by caring corporate caterers, sometimes you get yelled at by post pubescent spectators getting publically drunk for the first time.

This year I hit paydirt. I got posted on start finish line. This mean little perks like standing in pit lane during Qualifying, taking part in photographing the official FIA driver's class photo, walking the grid before the F1 race, then getting sprayed by Kimi Raikkonen's champagne.

Really, there's no need for me to do this again next year. The only way is down. Enough prattle. Here's some pics.

Kat the spectator marshal going for a career cange

Whiz kid Hamilton's McLaren post-race

Class of '07

My watershed photo- Kimi returns to parc ferme victorious. None of the F1 mags had one this good!!

2007 Motor Show Edition!
March 7th 2007

We got a new camera! The old one was kaput. Not many technological things we own last as long as they are meant to. The great thing about waiting for insurance companies to cough up was that, in the meantime, the model of camera was upgraded so..we got a better one! It does some groovy b&w and colour feature things.

Like this.

Sam's birthday was three days ago. So if anyone reading this forgot, hopefully this post will help you to become racked with guilt. More on that later.

In other news I've been getting into stacks of trouble with my karting website. Every time I run into more examples of sheer bureaucratic bloody mindedness-ness within this measly little sport, I satirise it. I only do that where I attempted to communicate the issues directly with the individuals in question, and had an unsatisfactory response. It's my way of dealing with it. It's much easier than dressing in army fatigues and going on a gun-toting, murderous, disgruntled-postal-worker rampage.

Actually, I've been doing it for yonks but some of the karting folks have only just started to notice, making it somewhat like a Homer Simpson moment when they contact me.

Yo man, just chillin' with my peeps listenin' to some Snoop Dog. Doof doof

But God works in mysterious ways. Just when I'd endured what seemed like a plethora of people emailing with clayton's complaints about the site's content (i.e. they say I've written something wrong but can't seem to explain what exactly is wrong with it) there was actually an unexpected piece of healing and reconcilliation.

It was borne out of an incident in an unspecified race in June last year when I spun during practice and got collected by someone in a prang which looked nastier than it was. In the pits afterwards I approached him to apologise (in the way you do to a bereaved person- it's not my fault they died, but I'm saying sorry anwyay) and he bellowed some very unseemly language and called me some names. Apparently somewhere in there was some advice about how to spin properly, but I couldn't pick it out from the expletives.

So 9 months after the fact, the chap (we will call him "M") rings me. The conversation went like this:

M: I don't like what you said in your website
Me: Why, was I unflattering in some way?
M: Well, it said I "went on like an idiot".
Me: Yes, it said that didn't it.
M: What's ya problem? It's not like I called ya a ******* ****head or anything
Me: Well, um, that's exactly what you called me. Actually your words were ******** ***** ****** ****head
M: Oh. Did I?
Me: Yep
M: Sorry about that.

Isn't that nice? Our conversation went on for a while. I sympathised with him on the two other nasty crashes he's had since that race and assured him they were nothing to do with me. He even volunteered to educate me on which of the other people hassling me about my site are ******* ****** ****heads.

Sam in flight

Fun. We almost purchased a horse for poor Naomi last week. I was just about to blow 300 bucks on a vet inspection when the noble steed saved me the trouble by assaulting the same electric fence several times in a row. Again, quite a blessing that the expensive animal didn't do it after we bought it, and a gazillion dollars worth of tackles, saddlings and other horsery. Or whatever that stuff is called. Hoisery?

But I was determined to educate myself on how to avoid buying an animal that would try to jump off a bridge or throw itself at a train or something. So I asked our very own horse owner and expert, Claudia from Germany. She explained the situation to me using rather high-brow equestrian terms. The conversation went like this:

Me: Why did it go through an electric fence?
Claudia: Because horses are bloody stupid dumb animals.

I'm learning more about horses all the time.

Meanwhile Sharon's sister Pamela had herself a little baby boy, name of Zane. Check out the bushy head of hair. He has more hair on his head than his Dad has on his back!

As I mentioned earlier, it Sam's birthday. That can only mean one thing- it's Grand Prix time!

But with a busy month ahead, what with baby births, Grands Prix and Jordy and Irma's wedding in Adelaide, Sharon can't manage to chaperone Sammy to the Grand Prix this year. As a consolation, I took him to the motor show. You might say I went to town on that black and white/colour feature. That was a pun, of course. The motor show is in "Jeff's shed" opposite the crown casino, or as Sharon calls it, "Biff's casino". You can literally hold the camera up in the air, tell it to pick out all the red cars, and viola, there's half a dozen Ferraris and Golf Gti's. Tell it to pick out all the pastel, garish, pukey, loud weird coloured cars and voila, all the Commodores and Falcons stick out.

It's Grand Prix time in Melbourne Town next weekend but I haven't time for my usual tomfoolery with pre-season details. We know Schumacher has retired (thank the good Lord), Mark Webber will be trying to steer a dead bull, and some guys who were driving really good cars have moved into less good cars. My marshalling duties this year have plonked me at "Turn 0".

Every year, despite keeping you in the same team, they try to rotate you. First time (in '01) I got turn 2 and helped scrape 5 F1 cars off the road so that Mark Webber could finish a memorable fifth in the Minardi. The following year was turn 3, in the precise same spot where the poor track marshall was killed by the flying wheel from a car with the unfortunately ironic sponsor of "Lucky Strike". I've always said they should put bigger warning labels on cigarette packets.

Like this one

Anyway, the point is, sometimes you get a good spot, like turn 1 / 2 where you see everything and get some action. Sometimes you get a cruddy one like turn 9 when there are nothing but drunk spectators. Sometimes you get posted in front of corporates who feed you crepes, coffee and strawberries, sometimes you get posted in front of drunk corporates who yell out "so how much d'ya get paid for that job?!" Although, since the V8 supercars are not on the program this year, I suspect there will be less drunk people.

As a rule, it's better to be on a braking area or on corners, instead of halfway down a straight. Except this year. You see, "Turn 0" is the start-finish line. I reckon it will worth it just to see 22 F1 cars blast off the line, in the flesh (and kevlar).

What will also be worth seeing- if the Victorian Government pump a gazillion megalitres of water into the Albert Park swamp to make it look pretty for the TV cameras. All this while the rest of us have to take 1 minute showers and water our lawns with sink flotsam and belly-button lint. If they do you'll be sure to hear it here first.

MUFTIS AND MUFFIN TOPS

2007-01-16T17:14:00.000-08:00

Of all the posts to NOT have photos, it just had to be this one. The one which really needs "before and after" photos. Sharon's expensive Canon digital had a breakdown recently and Dick Smith cannot give us a clear idea on who honours the extended warranty for which we paid handsomely.

I may have to dig up an archived photo or two just to entertain you. For further entertainment, I have placed deliberate spelling errors in this post. See if you can find them.

First up, there were to be two or three extreme makeovers in our family, and I only succeeded at one.

As some of you know, I have an impressive bone problem called "Hallux Valgus" in my feet. It's just a fancy way of saying "bunion", but mine are particularly incomfortable. So, after a year of fiddling with a million different specialist consults and no private health insurance, I settled on a self-funded operation with a nice orthapaedic surgeon in Geelong. He does knee reconstructions on football players, so shaving some bone off my bunion and cracking my toes back into place should be a walk in Kardinia Park for him.

We were booked in for January 16th, and I don't mind admitting I was as nervous as one can possibly be. Sharon and Omi (the other two are at Horsham) waited with me for two hours in the Hospital before I was finally called in to be sliced up.

Then the surgeon tells me we cannot do the op because I have a small amount of tinea on the same foot and this constitutes a major infection risk.

So the good news is I can still, momentarily walk. Infortunately I have to find another window some time this year where I won't need any mobility for 6-8 weeks.

So much for that makeover.

Archive footage

Before all that, and in anticipation of it, I decided that my forthcoming new toy (see here , or here ) needed a decent home to live in. So, the garage got a huge makeover. The "studio" has been reassigned the title of "storage room" and the garage had an enima which would impress the most militant lentil-eating hippie vegan.

I even had a crack at welding some benches. Welding is fun- apart from the bit where molten slag hits you in the eye. I then stained and coated the floor with polyurethane. It looks a zillion bucks, but you can't actually walk on it and leave dusty footprints.

My obsession with dust-free living lead me onto the roof with a can of that sticky expandable foam. I don't want one single speck of dust in that place. Not one. Every hole has been plugged, and even the door gaps have been padded. I am determined to have something close to a Formula-One Laboratory style environment, and will maintain it with a zeal equalled only by ancient Jewish Levitical Priesthood. Now the garage is the cleanest, most uncluttered room in the whole place. I'm actually thinking we should hold our home Bible study group there.

Yes, I think I am really quite ill. Help me, please.

More archive footage from March 06. The yard still looks like this.

Of course, what may be contributing to the dust problem is the fact that there is no grass anywhere in our back yard. It has either been dug up, died, or eaten by guinea pigs. For a more detailed environmental impact statement on this issue, go here.

These water restrictions are getting too much. Perhaps I have become an old cynic and don't believe anything the Government says. But I have to admit, I drove past one of Vic's main dams near Ballarat the other day, and it looks like a pile of dried up seaweed, and it is forcing people to engineer different solutions for being frugal, and some of them are quite creative.

Grey water systems are popping up all over the place, where people plumb their shower and washing machine drainage into a pump system, connect hoses up, and away they go- watering their gardens with gay abandon.

The problem is, their neighbours see them watering their lawn and dob them into to the Water Restriction Police. So the Water Restriction Police are suggesting we all signs in our front yards saying "grey water system installed" so they don't have to follow up so many reports. Methinks they want nothing more than for their jobs to be made a little easier. Well, they bluddy well started it!!

So, not only do the Water Nazis insist that all our properties should look less attractive than a desert, now we must have big ugly signs in our front yards boasting that we water our gardens with washing lint and armpit hair. Shall we dump a burnt car wreck there while we're at it?

Our front yard

Now I am wondering about those little things, which never caused a stir in pre-Water Nazi days.For example, will the state Government plumb millions of litres of water into the Albert Park lake as they do every year, to make it look nicer for the TV cameras at Grand Prix time? (see HERE ) Can't wait to see that one. It will be more entertaining than the event itself. If they do, I'm having another 20 minute shower, thank you very much.

Speaking of entertaining, I'm sure you are all expecting me to comment on that Muslim Mufti fellow, Sheik al-Hilali shooting his mouth off. He is most famous for his witty little jibe about women getting themselves raped because they dress funny.

Okay, I will comment. I think he's a fine representative of Islam and hope he stays in Australia for as long as possible. Especially for the "women/ raw meat" comments.

After all, the Profit Mohamed himself loved women. He thought they were great. He believed every man should own at least one.

Yes, I admit to a little chuckle when I see an Islamic leader portrayed poorly by the media. I wince, of course, when the same media portray Christians worse. But is there a chance that ol' Moofus HAS been taken out of context?

After all, us Jesus freaks are always suggesting women should dress modestly. Meaning, they shouldn't wear nothing, but then they shouldn't wear a tent either. When having a conversation with a woman, you should at least know whether she's facing you or not. And, I have to admit I do like the odd pierced belly button.

Nope, that's not the problem. The problem goes back much further. Perhaps we should stop bombarding men with pornography, and de-sensitising them to visual stimulus. Then we wouldn't have the problem of uncontrollable male urges being unleashed at the sight of a young muffin top. Now there's something our postmodern culture cannot handle- men and women are different (gasp). Especially the way they handle visual stimulus. Men handle it very badly.

So there's no point in attacking the symptom and not the cause. No, to properly understand Sheik Mufti Imam Al-Halali Bin Laden Alladin whatsisname's comments, you need to understand where he is coming from. Or, more specifically, where his "faith" comes from. Seriously, get a coffee, sit back, and have a look at THIS . Sheik Mufti Muffintop's comments should come as no surprise. In fact, they were tame. In Saudi Arabia, he would be made Royalty.

Why my fascination with Saudi Arabia? Well, let's just say I see it every time I look at my front yard.

Just when you'd lost all hope...

2006-12-03T21:39:00.000-08:00

Hi folks. It's me again. To those of you who were on the brink of hopelessness, contemplating suicide to end the utter desolation and emptiness, the nothingness and futility of a world without my blog updates...

...sorry about that. For everybody else, which would be all of you...how's things??

I would like to say that nothing's been happening so there's been nothing to report. That wouldn't really be true, but most of it involves little four wheeled machine business and spending money and you can find all that out by clicking here .

The new toy should be ready before Christmas. Whilst dismantling the old one to pilfer the engine and other parts, I discovered my silencer had broken in three places. I wonder how long it was like that? - he says, grinning quietly to himself at the notion that the motor might actually be coaxed to go FASTER...

But other things have happened. We've grown a little older, for a start. And that's non-trivial, because life is a journey.

We also went to the U2 concert. "We" being Sharon AND me. Which is scary. It's the second time the vast chasm which is our respective musical taste has actually met in the middle.

It was fantastic. Sure, Bono did his usual get-into-a-cause thing, and I don't see how paying $140 for a U2 ticket is going to make poverty history. If anything it's going to make poverty worse. But anyone who doesn't complain about Global Warming is alright with me. And I would put up with anything to hear the guitar chime of Beautiful Day...

The downer was we had to park at the Exhibition Centre and walk to the Docklands and Sharon was wearing the wrong shoes. The upside...the docklands are really nice.

Now that we're up to stage 58 water restrictions, our front lawn is brown and the back yard has no lawn at all. So the kids have a sandpit to play in and I didn't even have to build them one. At least the Bracks Government can blame Global Warming for the fact they had absolutely no preparation whatsoever for a drought.

You see, Global Warming only started happening immediately after the lastVictorian election, and nobody saw it coming. It had nothing to do with the screaming, bleeding heart, pagan humanist green-worshipping Left crying "Burn them!!!!" the moment someone mentioned making dams, or enlarging catchments. Nope, who could possibly have foreseen the sudden effect of 100 years of greenhouse gas.

Note carefully that I inscribe "Global Warming" with capitals so as to afford the appropriate respect to the deity of the Green religion. The messiah is Al Gore, who is still on his I'll-save-the-world-from-Global-Warming Tour. It's a worldwide tour, and Apostle Al (PBUH) flies busily about, in planes that belch hordes of greenhouse gases...

Currently there's an Inquisition to root out the heretics who are skeptical of the seriousness of Global Warming (peace be upon It). That includes those pesky scientists who just won't shut up with all their "facts" about largely cooler temperatures.

Then with all the healthy skeptics gone we will be panicked into making laws that planes must run on lentil juice. Planes will fall out of the sky and thousands will be killed, but it will all be worth it.

Religion comes in all sorts of weird shapes and sizes, huh?

Meanwhile Naomi has adpoted yet more Guinea Pigs, which further worsens the grass problem.
While Mum was over in October for 'Omi's birthday, she tripped over some piles of junk and discovered a spare room underneath it. There were no Egyptian Tombs, Hebraic stone etchings or anything else of note, mainly just odd socks, long disused toys and junk mail. I came home from work to find an elegantly decorated formal sitting room with two new suede chairs, a little coffee table replete with a marble chess set we picked up in Brazil ten years ago, and a rug.

I'm not sure where all the junk has gone but I'm sure it may have been shifted into one of those spare dimensions I talked about earlier in the 'blog.

I gotta go. There's a Greens party member at the door, I suspect they are arresting me for blaspheming the God of Global Warming. Tell my kids I lov...................

=end transmission=

A post about nothing

2006-11-01T00:58:00.000-08:00

Yes, this is about nothing.

Haven't posted for a while because I've been busy driving performance cars, celebrating Naomi's TENTH (!!!) birthday, Mum's visit, and racing karts at Wakefield Park (link on right)

Catch y'all when I've got some time.

Peace out