My My...At Waterloo, Napoleon Did Surrender

Hope the outcome for Nelson (er....my Dad has just pointed out that it was the Duke of Wellington not Nelson....history is soooooo yesterday) will be the same for Kevin! Here's Jock and me at Waterloo with our Kevin07 shirts. Shame the RV was in the way. We've sent it to the Kevin07 website, so look out for us on the web. (And thanks Mad and Jamie for supplying the t-shirts!)

Whinge...
I can not believe Malcolm Turnbull. For one thing, we have an Environmental minister who refuses to say whether he believes the Kyoto Protocol should be ratified or not and secondly - he leaked the cabinet discussion during an election campaign! I think this could really damage the Libs.

Hoorah...
Labor definitely won the second week of campaigning - only four to go. I likened it to being 13 points up in the final quarter of the grand final with 7 minutes to go. Jock then added that this scenario doesn't cater for a football team punching members of their own squad in the head and giving the ball to the opposition. I think this could have been true for campaigns of yore, but not this one. I think it's the Libs who look undisciplined.

Whinge....
Except of course stupid Joe MacDonald could surface during a stop work meeting once the temperature's reached 25°C rendering it too hot to work and reveals all of Labor's dirty washing.

Hoorah!....
But of course, before this happens, one hopes a Labor heavy (or should I say a Labor Heavier) would have tied him to a lamp pole with his braces in a far away place or maybe given him a one way ticket to Cuba where he can bang on about the revolution whilst smoking cigars.

Whinge....
Piers Ackerman really gives me the shits. It's one thing to sit on the special chair reserved for right wing columnists from trashy dailies during Barry's Insiders program, it's another thing to be so blatantly pro-Howard that you start blurting spin from Liberal adverts. I'm happy to hear the views of conservative commentators, as long as they're putting their argument forward rather than regurgitate ad nauseam Liberal spin.

Hoorah!.....
Thank goodness for Annabel Crabb and Karen Middleton.

Wine!..
Had some lovely wine and beer at Jamie and Jeannie's in Belgium this weekend. Met the gorgeous Jasper and it was just lovely to hang out at their home chewing the fat all weekend.

Cone Head

This poor wee fella was playing Harry Potter when he got this traffic cone stuck on 'is 'ead. Silly duffer - but look at all the fire fighters it took to pull it off!

It took thirty minutes for the fire fighters to arrive and another 45 to remove it from his head. If only they had used the Alohomora
spell from Hogwarts. Hawaiian “Aloha” means “hello/farewell” and Latin “mora” which means “obstacle”. So...Farewell obstacle, hello nasty 21st birthday story!

Kevin 07

It's all happening! And I'm not there to soak it up :(

Here's some cyber badges I made for Facebook with my friend Killer's new application. Facebookers can upload a badge and stick it on their profile. Better still, you can make your own and others can use it. What delicious fun!

And my mate Flicka got her pic in The Australian today by raising her jumper and showing off her Kevin 07 shirt to John Howard as he drove to the GG's house! Good onya Flicka!

Jock and I have decided to go to London for election day. Here's the outcome in order of best to worst case scenario:

1) Labor and Rudd win government, Maxine wins and Family First, John Howard, Malcolm Turnbull, Peter Costello and that evil conservative preacher boy Tony Abbott lose their seats.
2) Labor and Rudd win government, Maxine wins
3) Labor and Rudd win government, Howard retains his seat
4) the Coalition win government and Maxine wins
5) the Coalition win government and Howard wins his seat

I don't even want to contemplate number 5 happening....

Jock and I have been given Kevin07 shirts and I think we'll wear them to Belgium when we visit Jamie, Jeannie and Jasper.

The Election - 24 November - Bring It On!

Sorry for being AWOL...I've been to Australia and back again and it's been difficult to be in a headspace to write my blog. What a difference 18 months away makes. In a nutshell - Perth seems really expensive and John Howard and Kevin Andrews et al seem absurdly racist.

Firstly, can I just say there must be an awful lot of people missing out on the economic boom. I walked out of Sainsbury's today with three bags of shopping totaling 10 quid. That's $AU25. The equivalent canvas bags of shopping in Perth, including standard items such as El Paso Taco Kits (Hot), capsicums ("peppers" in the UK, where the equality agenda has pushed through the glass ceiling of capsicum colour - yellow ones are the same price as green ones), non-evil chemical-leaching-into-urban-waterways fabric softener of dubious quality and buy one get one free ginger snaps would have cost me in Coles around fifty bucks. So I now believe that the UK is actually relatively cheap when it comes to groceries.

Which brings me to the notion of "working families". Working families are the ones paying the price for the lack of dividend from the economic boom. With the election being called for 24 November, I sincerely hope that Kevin Rudd's "working families" does not become the "ladder of opportunity" so over-used by Latham (who???). I believe "working families" has become a euphemism for the following:

• Cashed up bogans with offspring who have their own televisions and game consoles in their bedrooms
• Bigoted folk who last voted Labor when Dennis O'Connor and "winged keel" were part of the everyday Aussie vernacular whom now vote for Howard because "boat people" no longer means hanging around Freo in deck shoes waving Aussie flags
  
• Single parents on workplace agreements that were not generated by a mining company
• Any family with an income that's above the disability pension and below, say, um, like, $300,000
• Swinging voters
• Flying pigs

Basically, "working families" means people who are not very very very rich and people who are not on guest visas working for Manpower. I just hope that the people whose hearts the ALP need to touch consider themselves "working families".

I think Howard's five point plan (it's the economy stupid, families with a mum and a dad and baptised kids are best, fridge magnets for all, the environment RULES OK! and black people are now cool too) is too little too late and I hope Australians see it for what it is - a last minute attempt to tap into the public mood to win over the public.

I think it will be very difficult for Rudd to win - but I hope he can do it! Bring it on Australia! I wish I was there - I'd spend every waking second campaigning.

Meet Kelly

You may remember Nicki from X Factor in an earlier blog entry who sung I Will Always Love You by Whitney Housten (yes, I know it was originally Dolly Parton, but it was ole Witney Crack Ho Housten who put the song on the international karaoke map). Well, meet Kelly.



This new phonomenon of instant fame - just add water - tears and lots of them - brings a secondary phenomenon. When once your bad performance being likened to a singing Lassie would be relegated to the fish and chip wrappers of collective audience memory, it is now uploaded in celluloid cyberspace perpetuity. You've donned your best frock, practiced with your toothbrush and signed away your rights for a shot of five minute fame, only to be a star performer for all the wrong reasons with a YouTube fan base in the millions.

I wonder what this next chapter of infamity does for Kelly's self esteem. The YouTube viewer comments about her and her family are filled with bile and vitriole based on five minutes of telly. The next question is whether or not this family is always truly hideous, or whether the Jerry Springer devil had posessed them for the five minutes of Kelly's audition and made them act like pretentious, self righteous fools. Which is what reality TV preys on, but rarely considers the after effect.

Take this clip for example:



and here's what the show and the subsequent uploading of her horrendous performance has had on her life:



Should we have sympathy? I say not. They want instant fame, they get infamous instantly and become an outlet for cyber punters to vent their spleens at people they don't know, don't care about and can laugh at. I sure did. That's entertainment.

Glastonbury Pics

I never added them, but you can see them on Facebook by clicking here. They are very cool lomo pics.

We went to Don and Christine's fabulous English wedding in a field on the weekend, complete with drum and bass music in world war II bunkers, Pimms and a pork pie wedding cake. Everyone wore black, red and white to make for a very St Kilda look. One of the readings was "The Owl and The Pussy Cat", and when read out loud at a wedding, rather than in the context of a bedtime story, it is rather hilarious, haughty and entirely rude.

After that, it was straight to London to see Prince with Ros who had joined us for the weekend. Prince funked it up at the Millennium Dome and we had el primo seats bought on eBay. Nice.

Can't wait to be coming home to Australia. I'm most looking forward to being in the thick of it when it comes to John Howard's demise. Oh what a joy it is to watch it unfold. Of course, I'm also looking forward to seeing our families and friends. Look out for invites etc on Facebook - I'm sure there will be a gathering or two.

Che nessuno dorme, soltanto voi Luciano.

Luciano Pavarotti is dead. I heard the news today on my favourite form of news sharing - no, not Facebook, but the radio. His signature tune, the aria from Nessun Dorma from Puccini's Turandot, was just played and it woke me up good and proper from my breakfast slumber.

He made opera accessible and popular. I don't have anything else to add really, except I wish I had seen him perform in person.



PS - YouTube is going bananas today. It's a wonderful phenomenon that folk are turning to YouTube to post their message about Pavarotti's death.

Ode to Kevin

Ode to Kevin

Oh KEVIN07
Heaven
It would be
To hear you ushered in
Before the black rod for
Question time.

Your glasses,
Steaming up in mandarin diplomacy
While you passionately argue for
Fair Trade

Fair hair
Thick and mousy
I don't mind if you got drunk
And frequented
One of those bars

A sneaky peak....

I went to Edinburgh on Friday and Saturday to soak up the last the fringe festival had to offer. I managed to blag my way in to the Edinburgh Television Festival, a five hundred quid per head affair. A friend of mine, Claire, was going so I sneaked in to hear some of the lectures and plenaries. I even asked a question regarding my pet interest of micro audiences during the plenary on Who will win the web? The panel for this plenary included TV execs from ITV and Channel 4 and reps from Reuters, the Telegraph and the my favourite daily tome, The Guardian.

I asked them if in the future, a parishioner from a Pentecostal church might download their church's news from the web, where they would receive ten minutes of Reuters news followed by ten minutes of Jesus news. A different person might download the same ten minutes of Reuters followed by ten minutes of union news if they were downloading from the Transport and General Workers Union Website. I asked what impact this would have on traditional forms of news and whether it would be a source of income for news outlets, given traditional methods such as newspapers' revenue was falling.

I couldn't believe my luck at sneaking in to this amazing conference. During morning tea, I scored a lanyard so I thought I didn't have to sneak around anymore. But, an observant usher noticed I was sans name tag and refused me entry into my next plenary, a role play involving news desk editors from the Guardian, the BBC, Sky News and Al Jazeera and a "real time" kidnapping on British soil of a highly decorated Iraq War vet. I was shown the door, but luckily it was via the wheel chair entrance, so I sneaked back in and befriended Conservative MP John Whittingdale, the head of the House of Commons Select Committee on Communications. We had an interesting chat - he used to be Margaret Thatcher's press secretary and was there the day she was dumped by her Party. We watched Terror Tapes - Broadcast or Be Damned together and concluded that we would both seek the resignation of the Sky News editor for showing the live footage of the hostage takers being raided, which resulted in the death of the hostage. Click here to see more.

And then of course, I ate my free lunch, which included fruit kebabs, mushroom tapenade on spinach flat bread and boccini cheese with tomato and basil. And a free t-shirt for both me and Jock and some fair trade chocolate. I didn't eat the t-shirt in case you were wondering...

To show you that the state of television in the UK is all the better for this conference, where the greatest minds in this TV nation get together over a weekend, here are two clips which appeared on telly last week....

The Royal Post - standing in the bread line

If there is one thing the British know how to do well it is form a line. There is a unique order to lining up in Britain. If, for example, there are three ATMs, one single line will form in front of them so the first in line goes to the next available magic money machine.

This is equally true of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and Gatwick Airport, places where I have had further opportunity to stand patiently in an orderly queue talking about the weather to British people I don't know and won't meet again.

However, the Partick Post Office queue really doesn't cut the mustard. The floor of this post office is slightly concave where thousands have stood before me, making the once blue, now grey carpet threadbare . There is no banter about the weather, just a sombre line of people, staring forward waiting for their turn to shout through a small window to the post office clerk.

Invariably, I will be behind the person who wants a passport, holding up the line for ten minutes while the clerk checks the list for official justices of the peace ensuring tight personality checks under new terror laws of said passportee.

This is the worst of the wait, for now my iPod would have run out of batteries and the personal sanctuary in my head is now at the mercy of the post office line. I am now hearing a repetitive symphony of ambulance sirens on their way to the western infirmary, the warbling call of the Big Issue seller outside (Biiiiiig issue...tae help the homeless buy ye biiiiiig issue ootside....ah only harve one left, buy it so ah can gae hame") and the bloop te bloop blap followed by Ringo Starr saying "Come on Thomas and Friends" of the coin-operated child's Thomas the Tank Engine ride which hides some carpetless floor boards in the Post Office.

Finally it's my turn. Now I have to make a decision about whether to buy a first or second class stamp - surely Britain is the only country to extend the class system to small sticky bits of paper....

The clerk asks me what I would like. "I loaf of bread" I say. He gives me a funny look. "Well, for the amount of time I've been waiting in this line, I thought I had been transported back in time to a communist Russia bread line.

A wry smile. "A second class stamp for you then?"

Get Up! Support the ad and vote Howard OUT!

I'm a big supporter of Get Up as you know. Here's the latest venture from the team:



Pass this on to as many friends as possible!

Now, I've been totally slack with the blog lately and it's not just because of (evil) facebook, it's also because I have:

• been going to the movies
• getting DJ lessons (what fun!)
• working way too hard - it really has been insane
• visiting Grannie
• going to the Edinburgh fringe festival (more fun!)
• it's all a bit of a blur

So I'm sorry - I will try and be creative on Monday. The same day I[m going back to the gym...

DYB DYB DYB

DOB DOB DOB. It's the centenary of Scouts this week. I was a Scout once. And a guide and a brownie. I have mostly fond memories of this organisation, but towards the latter years of my involvement things began to change.

Amid the frivolous fun of meeting at the dingy halls in various towns and cities across Australia, singing songs and baking cakes, I recall para military activities such as marching in and out of parade to raise the flag, playing stalking games in the bush (which included camouflaged faces and various native shrubbery stuck in piggy tails) and truly evil commando courses which I never finished because of inferior arm muscles unable to a) pull me over the wall, b) get me across the rope bridge over water - very troubling for me or c) I managed to convince Brown Owl/Akela that as the patrol leader I would be best served making sure the possums were not finding a way into our larder rather than spend the afternoon searching for muscles I didn't have.

As scouts from across the planet gathered in Brownsea this week, the young lad invited to speak at the celebratory jamboree quoted a speech from Baden-Powell where he called for peace, comradeship and cooperation instead of rivalry between "classes, creeds and countries which have done so much in the past to produce wars and unrest". All good stuff from Robert the Powell. However, what he was really saying was "you can't run an A1 empire on C3 men".

This is always overlooked when folk romanticise about the Scouting movement. That it was meant to celebrate the fact that boys could be trusted to run errands during the Boer War, it was really started to give the lower class boys something to do and prepare them for war - and the "unrest" he spoke of was of the lower classes' expectation that they should be socially mobile and question their place in society. He spoke of bricks in the wall being civilisation and if you were a lower brick that was rotten, the wall would fall down and the higher bricks would not be able to look out for the country.

As I look back I can forgive this quasi caring sentiment of the great unwashed, because practically, I got more out of Scouting than the sum of being slightly bitter about the underlying reasons for starting it. I did learn to pitch an A frame tent, tie a bowline and slip knots (v. helpful for tying up protest banners) and later in Scouting life, learned how to chair meetings, change the oil in a car and put a succinct argument forward as to why I had a problem organising Scouts to be waiters at a Masons function, all under the watchful eye of volunteer leaders.

If we all dybbed and dobbed our way through life, perhaps there would be less rivalry among us.

Google circa 1960

haha
lol

Face Off

I'm addicted to facebook. This online community is shared by about 40 of my friends and we communicate by sending cyber gifts, poking each other, planting flowers in each other's virtual gardens and playing realtime scrabble.

I've also joined online groups within facebook such as:

• If You Can't Differentiate Between "Your" and "You're" You Deserve To Die ▪
  
• I wish I lived in Bennelong so I could vote for Maxine ▪
  
• Antony Green Appreciation Society ▪
• Ipsophiliacs Anonomoustache ▪
• Screw WorkChoices, I'll keep my penalty rates thanks ▪
• Every Time I Find Out a Cute Boy Is Conservative, a Little Part of Me Dies ▪
• Kevin Rudd for PM! ▪

My personal favourite is the "I wish I lived in Bennelong so I could vote for Maxine" group (1505 members). I have been buoyed by the amount of political discussion on Facebook and any old fogie luddite out there who thinks that young people or indeed the general proletariat aren't interested in politics is wrong. A good measure of this is the high level political debate going back and forth in cyberspace. There are many new facebook groups that have emerged, such as the "I wish I lived in Bennelong so I could vote old Johnny Boy back in" group with 51 members, the "Maxine McKew should go back to the ABC where socialists like her belong" group with 176 members and my personal favourite - the "I wish I lived in Bennelong so I could vote Green but pref. Maxine" group, advertising broadly that the Greens are well and truly finished. The good news for the Greens though, is this group has ten more members than Howard's group!

John Howard has his own profile on facebook, although I question its authenticity. I sent him a cyber present in the form of a bucket with the message "you make me ill". He sent a cyber-present back in the form of a roadside witch's cap with the message "Kevin Rudd is a health hazard".

I am most pleased about joining the apostrophe group. We have a lot of fun picking up spelling error's where apostrophe's or the wrong words are used when they shouldn't of(sic).

Best get to work - facebook has made me late again!

Pic - it has nothing to do with this entry except to say that I miss my family and friends and am looking forward to seeing everyone when I get home.

GoBag

I am delighted to introduce my personal contribution to Sydney's Be Afraid Be Very Afraid Terrorism and Natural Disaster campaign. I feel that the current GoBag is not reflective of these modern times in which we live.

Hence, please consider using my GoBag for the impending apocalypse. I'm not sure where you would actually go after the inevitable large scale disaster that is coming your way given that Australia is surrounded by water.

The Bag: A fine quality "I'm not a Smug Twat" bag taking after its cousin "I'm not a plastic bag". You'll note that it has a non-fastening top for easy looting on your way out of town.
2b pencil and ballot paper: for stuffing ballot boxes to overthrow the Government.
Economics for Dummies: in case you pass by John Howard on your way out of Australia....he wasn't a good treasurer apparently.
"Unafraid" tube: This looks like a tube station sign, giving the terrorists a piece of "what for", but it's actually an inflatable ring that you can wear whilst trying to catch the gulf stream so you can find Nemo and get the hell out.
You Tube: "if you are watching this, I have been herded...out of Australia with my GoBag"
A half eaten chocolate bar: the best survival food on the planet
Dolce and Gabbana's reflective disco pants: As seen on the catwalks recently in Milan. It may be a state of emergency, but that doesn't mean you have to a) lose your sense of fashion and b) lose your sense of fun - a good boogie is the cultural heurism needed to remedy a mass panic.

I feel better now....

MySpace Cadet

I was only just getting the hang of MySpace and Bebo, and now Facebook has come along. It's an online community that is addictive and unhealthy. Jeannie pointed out that Jock and I were sitting in the same room on different computers facebooking instead of talking. I don't think that is normal.

Facebook - you can poke friends, send them cyber presents, throw cyber food. The good thing about it is you can find friends who you haven't seen for years.

Facebook made me late for work the other day.

I added the magic 8 ball application and was relieved to discover that after I asked it if summer was ever going to arrive in Glasgow, it said "Most Definitely". It really has been a shite summer.

On a completely different subject...

Today has been a great day. It started off at David's flat, v early in the morning, who has a fancy telly that can receive live Dockers matches. They lost...bloody Dockers. But hey - my heart went flutter flutter when I saw Subi oval bathed in glorious winter sun. Bloody Dockers.

Then, it was off to Graeme and Jenni's to meet their new baby, Alex, who was like an Anne Geddes photograph. I did a Celebrity Chef, and made everyone lunch (polenta with smoked shitake mushrooms, proscuito and rocket; bruschetta with yellow tomatoes and avocado oil; fruit platter and wait for it.....TIM TAMS, which Jock found at Sainsburys - who now have none left on their shelves).

This arvo, Avril is coming over for a Sunday roast (we bought a corn fed organic chook at the farmers' markets). YUM.

Life doesn't get much better! Here's me at the Live Earth concert while Metallica was playing. I am SO ROCK CHIC.

Pipe Dreams

This is so cool! Are you bored at work? Tired of daydreaming when what you really wished you were doing is the amazing pipe cleaner dance???

click here! I highly recommend E and F as a good starting point....click on the link and have fun!

Live Earth Wembley

I was there with my mate Mike!.. (who you'll recall from such wedding performances as "Under Milkwood"). I flew down especially to be at the London concert. Now, before anyone shouts "hypocrite!", I offset my carbon miles by donating to Oxfam and GetUp and soon in the not too distant future I'll point to a group of trees and say "we should plant more of those"... There's been some criticism about the Live Earth concerts because of the private jets to ferry rock stars and the amount of energy required to put on the lighting show. Bob Geldof summed it by saying: "Everybody's known about [it] for years. We're all fucking conscious of global warming".

If you're already on the global warming hydrogen fueled solar panelled bus, there wasn't much to be gained from the preaching that went on via crappy films and cartoons between artists and the didactic warbling of the artists themselves. I was there for the concert and the excitement of being at Wembley stadium and for no other reason than that. It was awesome. When else am I going to see Madonna, Metallica and Spinal Tap all on the same day?

The concert was like getting a tasting plate at a restaurant -each artist only did four or five songs. The Foo Fighters, Metallica and the Beastie Boys were all madmen and the stadium was electric during their performances. But it was Madonna who did it for me. She was all class. This video does not do the performance justice, but here it is anyway...she's a bit like a girl version of Iggy Pop - cavorting sinew....


The Abba rift in this song is genius.

Also genius is the band Nunatak, who made Live Earth truly global by making sure there was a concert on every continent. Nunatak are a bunch of scientists on Antartica.

Can I end this entry on three points:

1. The Live Earth pledge: we've been asked to pledge something we're going to do for climate change. I'm already doing the canvas bag thing, the light bulb thing, the turn your telly really off as opposed to sort of standby off thing and the public transport to work thing. So, from now on, I'm going to take a reusable lunch box to work to use at the local tuck shop instead of the polystyrene one they give me. That's the little thing. The big thing, and I'm going to have to think about whether its feasible, is to see about following my friend Rachael Robert's lead and get an Environment House for my local suburb of Partick. That's a mammoth commitment, so I need to think about it.

2. The Logistics: Can I just say that the logistics of Wembley stadium are truly wondrous. 80,000 people leave the stadium at the same time and we basically just walked down the path at a steady pace and onto the tube at Wembley Park.

3. Resource Security: When the Australian Government says the term "resource security" why does it mean oil and not water??????

Take your hat off to Nelson II

How very apt. Cartoon borrowed from Steve Bell at the Guardian.

I love the way Blair has just collapsed.

What a joy it was to read the Guardian today and see this image in the letters page!

Take your hat off to Nelson!

Good onya Brendan Nelson for telling the truth about the war in Iraq. I like the new spin "resource security" that Nelson put on his gaff.

I wonder if they use the term "resource security" when it comes to water?

Meanwhile, back in the Get Up bunker, Louise Barry has made a video for Mr Howard. You will recognise Louise as the woman who questioned Howard on Australia's foreign policy when he visited her in hospital after the July 7 attacks in London. I'm urging everyone to donate some $$ to Get Up so this can be aired on TV. It is about oil. We knew it was about oil all along. We knew it was all about the alliance with the US.

In fifty years time, we'll be the deputy sheriff to China and we will be at war with some small nation with a large underground lake over "resource security"...The Water Wars...I can't wait...hang on....doesn't Australia have an underwater lake somewhere??????