And life goes on...

So, 2 years later, this blog remains in a state of torpor. Well, I've been busy.

Nostalgia

Sifting through old piles of stuff continues. At the 1960s layer now, I marvel at the memories that gush forth. An old picture from Go-Set reminds me of wagging school to hang around their offices in St Kilda Road, and of the awe in which we then held Ian Meldrum. He was irresistibly gorgeous & fascinating, despite being gay. This picture from the web gives a very poor hint of his ineffable beauty. Such lusciousness was relatively rare in the Melbourne pop scene, so Molly was a veritable Adonis arrayed in the sharpest of sharp threads. His transformation into the venerable grandfather of Australian pop is a marvel of senescence.

A life of leisure

Enjoying endless days of doing next to nothing is so good for one. My friend the Recipe Queen commented on how well I was looking the other day. The explanation is that I am excessively happy no longer to be toiling for a Labor government. Hours can now be devoted to reading, baking cakes, watching tradies undertake house and garden improvements, talking to cats, interfering in local Liberal affairs, staring into space, surfing teh interwebs and smiling the secret smile of the finally free.

A little light archeology among the detritus of a life in the service of the public, or as near to it as is possible under a socialist administration, has revealed various embarrassing pictures of politicos, a collection of misguided briefings, some frank and fearless advice provided over the years, not sparing in its use of pointed and personal invective, and a stash of christmas cards from people who will never be renowned for anything much. Oh and numerous pieces of glossy pap designed to promote the all round wonderfulness of government intervention in what would otherwise be perfectly adequately functioning markets. I am very sorry to say that not a few of these egregious wastes of taxpayers' funds flowed from my own pen/keyboard, a sin for which a particularly vile punishment no doubt awaits in hell, should that place turn out to exist.

Still, even with this heavy burden of guilt, life is inordinately fine, despite Krudd ensconced in Canberra and Brumby the most popular Labor premier in the nation. And we can all play our humble part in changing these unfortunate facts.

You know you're getting really old when...

You turn around & hey presto more than a year has passed without a blog post. Well maybe it's severe laziness rather than age but anyhoo there has been real RWDB work to be done. Sadly all for nought as we lost the federal election & Krudd now sits in Canberra smirking like the proverbial cat. And speaking of cats, the fact that he has one is the sad, inadequate little wonk's only redeeming feature.


What has stirred me from sloth & torpor is the Kruddfest, awesome in its banality & luvvieness. Christopher Pyne opines - someone called Pyne should opine in my opinion - that it is all the ghosts of Keatings past rising from the pit to which they were consigned by our victory long, long ago. And he's right. The arrogance. The willingness to spend other people's money like pre-1989 koruna. The overwhelmingly airheadedness of the Blanchett bubble & her cohorts. The bloody avalanche of motherhood that flowed from it. With any luck the Australian populace will smell the bulldust pretty damn quick & make the Kruddites a one term government. Please god let it be so.


Bill Leak in the Australian summed up the Kruddfest beautifully. The man deserves an AO for his services to journalism.

A Backdown

Well how perceptions do change. In an early post on here I called Andrew Landeryou an irritating little tit. But his blog has become one of the most entertaining going. Of course he backs the ALP right all the way, and frequently praises utter scum as patriots, but by and large it's a good read, even if only to see how over the top his pieces are. So anyone coming here (and the numbers are dismal) should take a look at http://andrewlanderyou.blogspot.com/.

Lebanese Ambulance

The amazing story of the bomb-defying ambulance & its gallant crew has been engaging the attention of the blogosphere for some time. Alexander Downer has been vilified for doubting its veracity. I'm with him. No Pasaran has a nice powerpoint. Can't work out how to post a direct link to the vid, so go here & look at posts for 14 October 2006 & go to the Whack a Mole header.

http://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/

Update: the No Pasaran thing has disappeared, but Zombietime has a comprehensive analysis of the incident http://www.zombietime.com/fraud/ambulance/.

Bye Bye Slobbo

Great news from The Hague - Slobodan Milosevic is dead. Nature has done what the farcical UN tribunal could not do in 5 years: delivered a measure of justice. And saved the world the expense of keeping him in jail. It's a great pity, however, that his fellow Serbs didn't have the chance to mete out retribution after his insane war-mongering regime, dedicated to a glorious Greater Serbia, collapsed. Now what we need is for Mladic & Karadzic to die in a horrible car crash, preferably together.

Frivol, Frivol, Frivol

Yes, yes. I know we're celebrating the first decade of the Reign of King John, but the most startling thing on the news (apart from the usual killing & maiming in Iraq & other very hot places) was Julia Gillard's new hair. Burnt orange with black blodges. So chic. So stylish. So, so... what was she thinking?

Czechs Support Press Freedom

In heartening news from Europe, where governments are apologising left, right & centre for publication of the controversial Mohammed cartoons in national newspapers, the Czechs are refusing to knuckle under to political correctness. Muslim leaders & the Iranian embassy have demanded apologies, & assurance the offence will not be repeated, but the Czech foreign affairs minister Cyril Svoboda has said nup. In a nice twist Svoboda means free man.

There are 10,000 muslims in the Czech Republic, out of a population of 10 million plus. For this tiny minority to want to change press freedoms is presumptuous in the extreme. It's like Tongans coming to Australia & demanding that all labour should be banned on the sabbath. After decades of brutal repression of freedom of expression & opinion under the soviets, it is not surprising the Czechs want to retain the freedoms they have paid for with blood, pain and hardship.

Read the story here: http://www.praguepost.com/P03/2006/Art/0216/news1.php.

Ollie Off The Trolley

It's rumoured Andrew Olexander plans to go the Liberal Party for deselecting him, on the basis that he was dumped because he is gay. What a crock. He was dumped for stupidity - getting behind the wheel when over the odds makes him a bloody idiot, & no party wants bloody idiots running for office. There are plenty of gay people in the Liberal Party, & not a lot of us give a fat rat's about their sexual orientation.

Open Thread

Too lazy to think of something banal & inane to say. Comments welcome.

Political Biographies

A little while ago in Crikey (which by the way is becoming more like Margo Kingston & less entertaining every day), there was a piece by Charles Richardson posing some reasons for biographies of Labor identities outnumbering Liberal ones. He deftly bypassed a couple of obvious explanations. By and large Libs tend not to be so keen to rat on their ex-colleagues, as Mark Latham so spectacularly and entertainingly has. They are also less likely to preside over debacles that require ongoing rewriting of history - the hagiographers keep churning out Whitlam and Keating myths and legends in the vain hope that they can obscure the awful truth. And Libs move on, recognising there is life after politics and that history will judge them (or most probably forget them if they aren't Prime Minister or didn't cock up big time).

Tis The Season To Be Erm...

Well now, how is Xmas shaping up? Just out of hospital, it's looking pretty good to me. Flowers, chocs, books, mags & a great excuse not to engage in any of the folderol. Coles online has closed orders till next week, so, hey, don't have the stuff to make a pudding even if i could with the current strength of a sickly kitten & deeply suss bladder control. Oops, sorry about those Manolos dahlink - maybe if you don't come so close while i'm lifting food. So absolutely no prospect of Santa making my house a base of jollity & merrymaking. Suits me. Lucky friends are escaping to the Cook Islands. If i didn't already have a good enough excuse for non-participation, that would be a grand idea.

Meanwhile in the real world... ah who gives a tinker's cuss. Pass me another mango juice.

Wake Up Ollie - The Dream's Over

Much handwringing by the leftoids over the expulsion of Andrew Olexander from the Liberal Party, and characterisation of all of us as raving homophobes. Not helped, may I say, by Robert Clark worrying about what other people do with bits of their anatomy in the privacy of their own bedrooms. As in any party, you get the gay haters, the gay lovers & the overwhelming majority of Liberals who don't give a toss either way, taking the sensible view that if you fuck your boy/girlfriend (or both) sideways with a monster dong while whistling advance australia fair, or whatever you fancy, it's your business not theirs, unless you're doing it to children or animals, in which case we call the police.

It's totally uncool to flake out while drunk/fried, total a few cars, lie about where you live, sulk & not turn up for work for days when you lose preselection (due to selectors being able to spot a liabilty), and then whine about homophobia when your Parliamentary colleagues decide to dump you too. What's been done to Olly is called cutting out the dead wood, not homophobia.

Windbag Wankery

Kim Beazley's on the telly as we speak, calling for stronger anti-villification laws: the proscription of "hate books" that say it's a good thing to kill jews, christians or muslims. I wonder if he's read any of the major religious texts lately. There's a fair bit of incitement to smite infidels in the koran, and fanatics have managed to find justifications for violence in the bible and torah.

Wicked Witch of the West

Rose Porteous is threatening to help the Liberal Party with public relations. Perhaps while she's at it she can recruit Alan Bond & Pixie Skase to lend a hand. No thanks.

More Reds Under the Bed

Another pinko site pops up - this one is truly bizarre - glorifying Craig Johnson, the thick thug jailed for trashing workplaces & scaring workers. What planet are these throwbacks on?

http://thehouseexposed.blogspot.com/

Commie Watch #56,488

On SBS tonight, another heartwarming tale of stubborn resistance in the face of overwhelming force deployed by the evil empire of democracy:

Storyline Australia Vietnam Symphony Time: 8.30 Channel: 28 Duration: 60 Minutes In 1965, when Hanoi was under threat of massive US bombing, students and teachers from the conservatorium fled Hanoi for the safety of the countryside. Villagers helped them build an entire campus underground ­ including a 500-seat auditorium and individual caverns for 40 pianos. The students and teachers lived, studied and played music there for five years. Real Life PG

All kinds of questions spring to mind.

How big was this village? To build an underground complex like that you'd need a lot of people with time on their hands. The local economy would have to be exceptionally prosperous to allow this. Were these villagers perhaps growing opium or something equally lucrative that would allow them to purchase diggers & such? As well as supporting the students & teachers, who presumably weren't diverted from music to planting rice & raising pigs.

Why go underground? Why not put pianos in village huts, much easier to build? Were they afraid the enemy would hear the tinkly sounds of, say, The Trout, & go holy crap, let's bomb those pianos before they go nuclear?

How did they ventilate a 500 seat underground auditorium? Aircon circa 1965, for which the Vietnamese countryside at the time was of course well known? Or a few villagers pedalling away on modified bicyles driving fans?

You get my drift.

Liberal Party State Council

A fine weekend for right wing death beasts in freezing Ballarat. Pre-selections are reaching a crescendo of activity, so the place was full of hopefuls searching out delegates. The savvy would-be candidates actually listened to the views of the people who would be their selectors. Others were not so smart. One MP seeking pre-selection for a new Bracks-designed unwieldy travesty of an upper house seat brought along a folder of his achievements and bored his victims to sobs with the wonders of his career to date. He has obviously not yet learned that when you're asking for someone's vote, you do well to find out how they see the world and what they want from the political process. Another hoot was the party's perpetual adolescent (there's only one - no prizes for guessing) being greeted by a groan from the auditorium full of delegates when he raised a point of order. But apart from these sideshows, Peter Costello & Robert Doyle performed well and there was sensible debate on some good issues. Not enough women candidates yet for the 2006 election, but we live in hope.

Blogspam

Comments containing advertizing will be ruthlessly eradicated. Trenchant repudiation of my views & all kinds of abuse remain perfectly acceptable.

Andrewslandersyou

Do check out The Cheek, an ALP socialist left response to Andrew Landeryou's blog The Other Cheek. These 2 sites epitomise what is wrong with Labor - totally self obsessed & eating their own entrails, leaving the field free for us right wing death beasts. Long may this continue.

http://www.andrewslandersyou.blogspot.com/

Aaaaaaaawwwwww

Poor ickle Jon Stanhope, Labor Chief Minister in the ACT. He's complaining he's underpaid compared to State pollies. Well he should be. The ACT is just a glorified local council.

Saddam's Underpants

Saddam Hussein has been punished for his crimes. No, not the cruel and brutal repression perpetrated by him personally and his vile & murderous cohorts, but the style crimes of his houses & wardrobes. Will we ever forget the horror of the "art" in his palaces or the spivvy civvies and Ruritanian military gear he got around in? Well he is now literally suffering in his jocks - outsize baggy y-fronts that are the male equivalent of nana-pants. I suppose we must be grateful for this small manifestation of justice as we await his trial for incidentals such as killing around a million Iraqis & matching Iranians & Kurds.

Parallel Universe

Andrew Landeryou has returned to Melbourne, broke & blogging furiously in an orgy of self-justification. http://www.andrewlanderyou.blogspot.com/
This hypocritical little tit is a typical champagne socialist. Solly Lew is to be congratulated for ensuring he can no longer enjoy his mansion lifestyle.

ABC Garbage

Trolling through the TV guide I happened upon this:
Get Up Stand Up Next Step Vietnam Time: 10.00 Channel: 2 Duration: 60 Minutes
Protesting against unjust wars has been one of the recurring features of the history of politically charged music, and the success of pop culture in the Vietnam era became a benchmark for successful musical activism. Historical M, language

Love that "unjust", as if the Viet Cong had brought democracy to the Vietnamese, not death marches, labour camps & wholesale disposession.

Welcome...

... to team members Innocent Bystander, Recipe Queen and Dr Death. Innocent Bystander is our resident political correspondent, Ms Queen will provide us with ideas for yummy things to cook, and Dr Death will give insights into partying culture. I hope to see some contributions soon.

An Interesting Development

Well now, Tony Abbott's long lost son turns out to be no such thing. Guess this demonstrates the folly of dragging one's personal dramas into the spotlight.

Fashion Mysteries Of Our Time

Down to Fitzroy Street for an 80th birthday party. All very pleasant. But what is it with these guys who, on the balmiest evening in our pallid excuse for a summer, wear hoodies hiding their faces? They look like puny extras from a bad parody of Lord of the Rings. Surely they can't all be on the run after murdering security guards or suchlike.

A Delightful Website

Please have a look at rathergood.com, an excellent site boasting such delights as the mango biscuit song, fearsome stomping kittens and a ditty about the dangers of being soluble. Enjoy.

Happy Happy Joy Joy...

Happy to be Joy Snedden and dead, thus spared the edifying spectacle of one's children squabbling over the family assets. The fragrant Fiona is reported to be challenging the will which already leaves her more than a fair share of the dosh, with her brother describing her as a "life-long sponger". And this hard on the heels of, according to the blatts, being dragged "kicking & screaming" into a paddy wagon after being sprung drink driving. What an ornament to the Liberal Party & Melbourne City Council. The sooner she departs, willingly or not, from both, the better.

Potato Guide #1

Using my laptop in daylight reveals gunge in & on the keyboard. Where does it come from? Obviously typing fingers leave a residue of skin cells & such, but there's some bright blue fluff in there that defies explanation. If it were beige or brown or green or pinkish I could put it down to detritus from some snack shoved into my gob while browsing for recipes, failing to learn Czech at U Gandalfa, looking up weird breeds of cats, cacking myself at far more interesting blogs than this, or playing solitaire. But bright blue? Blue food is pretty rare. It could be lint, but from what? Bright blue's not a colour seen much round this house. Where are the cotton buds?

A Very Nice Night & Weird Stuff

Back to an old favourite for dinner this evening - Blue Tongue in Elwood - where the food was delish as per, but the previously savvy & amusing waiters seemed, except for one, to have been replaced by a phalanx of 14 years olds with complete humour bypasses. And the music was too loud. Am disturbed that this may mean the start of a descent into serious fogeydom.

The main topic of discussion was the cynicism or otherwise of the motives behind the breaking of the Tony Abbott Finds Adopted Son story to the Bulletin. One view was that Tone is backing his anti-choice crusade with the "thank god Daniel wasn't aborted" angle. The other was that the timing is entirely coincidental and there is no spin-doctoring going on. It was almost forks at 5 paces, with no grey area between the two views. Will wait for the facts to emerge before venturing an opinion.

A second hot topic was who will win the next Victorian election. Some of us were rubbing our tiny paws in glee at the results of recent published polls, while others were putting real money on the prospect of Braxtopia remaining a socialist paradise. It's far, far too soon to be wagering cash.

Some amazing stuff out there. Such as this question on Ask An Imam:

Do we believe in the evolution of animals such as birds etc. How old is the earth and for how long has there been life on earth according to Islam. What is the ruling on hair gel.

Somebody is surely taking the piss. Must go to bed before surfing twists my brain past usefulness.

Good Evening

This blog may or may not eventually contain something of interest.