Gliberty

Conroy - keeping an open mind as usual

2012-02-01T17:36:00.000-08:00

The ABC reported Minister Conroy's open mindedness:

'This morning, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said Ms Rinehart was not breaking the law as it stands, but said he wanted new laws to include a public interest test on media diversity.

"Clearly she is seeking to exert her influence but is she breaking the law by exerting an influence? No," Senator Conroy told ABC Local Radio.

"Do we need stronger laws in this area? Yes.

"We want to see a debate around a public interest test."'

He wants a debate but on an issue he's already decided. Gliberty has experienced this kind of debate manipulation in the communications sector before. In Beijing. We shit you not.

ABC. All biased coverage?

2012-01-11T17:29:00.000-08:00

The ABC is biased.

Compare the BBC news website’s reporting of two events - the murder of an Iranian nuclear scientist and a video which appears to show US troops urinating on corpses.

The ABC headlines shout “Israel accused of killing scientist with magnetic bomb” for the former story and “Marines filmed urinating on Taliban corpses” for the latter.

The BBC headlines? “US Marine Corps probes 'Taliban desecration' video” and “US condemns bomb attack on Iran nuclear scientist”.

No doubt the ABC’s defenders will say the articles make the stories clear, but to the browser of news websites the message is completely different and grossly misleading.

Note the caution of the BBC with its use of inverted commas within the headline around ‘Taliban desecration’ video.

Privatise the juvenile creeps, now

If only he could have lasted a little longer

2011-12-18T19:55:00.001-08:00

The brilliant and irreplaceable Christopher Hitchens died a few days too soon. Not that we’d wish him to suffer any more discomfort but, selfishly, we’d have relished his eulogy of Vaclav Havel and his bidding good riddance to Kim Jong-il.

Hilarys wank

2011-10-31T21:55:00.001-07:00

While some Hollywood celebrities preach about world affairs, others don’t know much at all about the world. Or, it seems, technology. For, if the star of Million Dollar Baby had heard of the series of connected data networks (a network of networks, if you will, AKA the “internet”) or of a company called Google, she may have avoided her recent brush with unsavoury Chechens .

Instead, Misss Wank, outsourced her life to managers who booked her for the gig, which she apparently accepted without question and for which she took payment - until word leaked out. Then, of course, it was time to donate the money to charity and fire all involved.

Swank’s new management represents Kim Kardashian – a team with a proven track record of landing gigs on terms which permit you to make a deal, dupe the public, break the deal and keep the $.

Role model lets down youngsters (again)

2011-10-27T00:33:00.000-07:00

Is there no end to misbehaving celebrity role models trashing the dreams of youngsters who hope to emulate their glorious success?

Now we must add to the long list of celebrity shockers that begin with “C” (Carney, Carey, er…) the name Cullen.

Aspiring artists across the country were appalled to learn that Adam Cullen has been caught by police driving while intoxicated and heavily armed.

Parents collecting their children from pre-school today were questioning whether “artistic” “activities” like finger painting and pasta gluing were sufficiently structured for young minds. Some parents openly worried whether a blank bit of card really was a gateway to self-expression or a seductive portal to anarchy, alcohol and firearms.

In thrilling entertainment news…

2011-09-26T23:36:00.000-07:00

INXS has just announced…

Sorry, what was that? INXS. IN–X-S. Yes, just like “in excess”, indeed I think it’s a play on those words. Yes. A band. No, more a kind of soft rock. From the 1980s. Well, early 80s.

INXS has just announced a new lead singer just in time for Grand Final Season! In case one of the other “popular music” performers booked by the AFL and NRL, Sherbet and The Little River Band, respectively, nap through their 10 minute call, INXS will be free to step into the frame.

Andrew Farris, guitarist, said “I haven’t been this excited since we announced our last new singer. Or maybe even since the one before that one”.

Donny Sutherland said the announcement was thrilling news, adding that he'd heard the Ted Mulry Gang was in rehearsal.

Molly Meldrum was literally unable to comment.

The Italian solution

2011-08-23T22:29:00.000-07:00

In a surprise move Italians have floated and, in some cases, decided to resolve their financial woes by getting others to do it.

It’d be too inconvenient to give up their second salary and pension from the job they don’t often attend or for them to pay even some property or income tax. And for the state to enforce tax laws? What a bother.

It’s far more sensible to require foreign visitors or foreign states to pay money to government - a brilliant and quintessential Italian solution.

Dear Mr Albanese

2011-08-10T21:17:00.001-07:00

11 August 2011

The Hon Anthony Albanese
334A Marrickville Road
Marrickville
NSW 2204

Dear Mr Albanese,

Thank you for your letter.

I apologise for not recalling when we met. I assume we’ve met as you used my given name in your salutation. Mind you, if we’ve been introduced, it’s more likely you’d have employed the common abbreviation of my given name.

Anyway, thanks for the invitation to hear you and Mr Combet discuss the carbon tax. Regrettably, I was unable to attend, though I do have a few questions for you.

In your letter, you say the carbon tax won’t be a tax paid by “ordinary Australians”. I was wondering if you could tell me the criterion by which you determine which of us is ordinary and which of us is extraordinary?

If some of us are not considered ordinary, will we be paying the tax?

What do you say to the proposition that Australians, regardless of their ordinariness, are less concerned about who’ll be paying the tax directly to your government than with whether they’ll be paying for it indirectly?

Can you provide an assurance that even “ordinary Australians” won’t face increased costs and charges as a result of the tax? I’m happy to pay my share, but I’d just like you to be straight with me.

Finally, though I applaud you getting young people involved in the democratic process, it does seem a bit tough to have primary school children signing your letters for you.*

I look forward your reply.

Yours sincerely,

Merely Being

* Oh, sorry, it’s just been pointed out to me that’s what your signature looks like. Suddenly, things are becoming clearer.

Well that’s a relief, Commissioner

2011-08-09T19:10:00.000-07:00

It’s not been a good few weeks for Police Commissioners.

Adrian Handstock, the Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police, said, “We kept a dignified response to that to allow that protest to take place. However, once that extreme violence - and it was violence that could not be anticipated on that scale – occurred, we moved the appropriate level of resources in”.

Dignified? How heartening for those who were beaten, robbed or had their homes destroyed. Fuck dignity, where’re the water cannon? At least if they didn’t use them on the rioters they could have put out some fires.

But more ridiculous was his defence of the police response. Wouldn’t an appropriate level of resources have snuffed out the rioting?

What would Aussie cops do? Not much better - unless the rioting was confined to a single mentally ill person, preferably a teenager. Then we’ve no doubt they’d show great bravery in shooting the poor kid to death from a safe distance.

No shame? She ate it.

2011-07-28T21:45:00.000-07:00

Gliberty thought there was a whiff of fatty bashing going on with the outrage concerning Nibbles Nixon’s pie eating during the Victorian bushfires. She ate dinner? But people were dying!!

But Nibbles made a super goose of herself on the 7.30 Report last night when she said (with a straight face, while promoting her autobiography on national television) that she wasn’t a person interested in protecting her reputation.

No doubt every one the 320 pages she’s just written about herself is a scorching indictment of her life and career.

Wadafuggineejit!

Why Australia sucks at cricket

2011-07-25T20:33:00.001-07:00

If England wins the current test cricket series against India, it’ll be the undisputed number 1 test nation.

Australia has been beaten at cricket by England a lot in recent years and yet many Australians won’t face up to the fact that there’s only one reason for this. It’s the same reason Australia hasn’t done very well in the football World Cup or at rugby union: Our teams are not as good at cricket/football/rugby as the other teams.

Got it? No? The other teams have better and more skilful players than our teams*.

The common Australian delusion that our players automatically possess the greatest natural gifts and physical prowess on the planet and, therefore, deserve to win is insular as it’s adolescent. It’s also demonstrably not the case. Worse, it holds us back.

As Mr C. Evans has recently demonstrated, success comes from guts, determination, skills (natural and acquired) and bloody hard work. When we face the truth that it’s not bad luck but lack of talent that’s seen us bested in the test arena we will begin to win again.

* Messrs Genia and Cooper excepted.

Leading physicist backs Gliberty

2011-06-30T16:17:00.001-07:00

Well, not explicitly…

A while back Carlin Romano used The Chronicle of Higher Education to give Stephen Hawking a kicking. This was in retaliation to Hawking’s provocation that philosophy was dead as it hadn’t kept pace with science, which alone can explain the universe, and that it isn’t necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.

Gliberty couldn’t see the point of that debate, other than as spectator sport as the confrontation became increasingly spiteful. It caused us to ask – Science Vs Religion. Why bother?

Now Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, who oversees the CERN laboratories in Switzerland, wherein lies the Large Hadron Collider, has neatly sketched the distinction between the two to The European and, blow us down, if he doesn’t concur with Gliberty.

Here are some extracts.

The European: The Higgs Boson has been described as the “God particle”. Many scientists dislike the name. Why?
Heuer: It is too flamboyant and misleading. Why should it be a “God particle”? It is one of the building blocks of the Standard Model, the cornerstone without which the model would not be valid. But there is nothing divine to it. I think the name primarily serves as a publicity tool to attract the attention of publishers.

The European: Let us talk about the idea of the divine. For much of human history, religion and science were deeply intertwined. Galileo was expelled from the church for questioning those links. How would you separate the two realms?
Heuer: We separate knowledge from belief. Particle physics is asking the question of how did things develop? Religion or philosophy ask about why things develop. But the boundary between the two is very interesting. I call it the interface of knowledge. People start asking questions like “if there was a Big Bang, why was it there?” For us physicists, time begins with the Big Bang. But the question remains whether anything existed before that moment. And was there something even before the thing that was before the Big Bang? Those are questions where knowledge becomes exhausted and belief starts to become important.

The European: What is the difference between justified opinion and belief?
Heuer: Justified opinion or knowledge is something that you can at least partially prove. Belief or philosophical thought cannot be examined through experiments.

The European: For Aristotle, physics was the primary science that could tell us almost anything about the cosmos. But he also thought that all things had an innate capacity – the telos – to develop to their full potential.
And so it fell to philosophy to investigate the nature of things.
Heuer: At the edge of physics, it becomes linked to philosophy. But in the case of particle physics, it is really not a question of “believing” but of deducing something from a larger theoretical framework or from experimental data. Once you can prove something, it is no longer a question of philosophy.

To know them is not always to love them

2011-06-14T19:15:00.001-07:00

There’s been a lot of bollocks written about Julia Gillard’s cringe making appearance on 60 Minutes. The usually estimable Annabel Crab blithers, “Surely she has earned the right not to endure infantilising questions about whether she really loves her boyfriend”.

But the real question is - surely the PM should have exercised better judgment than to submit herself and her office to such a tawdry, vulgar and undignified encounter?

Not since a former Governor-General, desperate to keep his job, appeared on Australian Story has a senior Australian figure been so poorly advised or exercised such appalling judgment.

As those who’ve endured lengthy encounters with celebrities or politicians know, it’s uncommon for the experience to leave you with a better impression of them.

While we’re at it, we deliberately chose our words when drawing a distinction between celebrities and politicians. They’re not the same, though you’d be forgiven for thinking they were, what with Clooney lecturing us on foreign policy and Costello dancing on Mornings.

The dignity and power of high office is preserved by appropriate distance. But the PM let us come too close to her - close enough for our vomit to splash her boots.

We should be confident that our leaders are of sound judgement. Clearly, this one is not.

Henry Ergas and Gliberty – fine judges of character

2011-06-02T16:25:00.000-07:00

Gliberty has long admired Henry Ergas’ elegant turn of phrase and forensic demolition of sloppy policy. Today he shows himself to be fine judge of character with his acute observations concerning Professor Ross Garnaut's “I-ism”.

Of course, you read it here first.

Gliberty loves Charlotte

2011-05-18T20:07:00.000-07:00

Charlotte Rampling sums up a familiar visceral burn when she says, "Ever since I was a small child I've had this feeling – it's in my nature, and so it's not even pretentious – that if everyone's going one way I will go the other, just by some kind of spirit of defiance. That's how I can keep myself alive and interested and my emotions going".

In fact, the love is so great she’s even forgiven for saying, "I could have been a superstar in America".

Fulfilment

2011-05-05T18:39:00.000-07:00

Geoff Robertson, who knows a thing or two about how get your mug on the box (e.g. marry a slapper), reckons America played into Bin Laden’s hands by shooting him.

According to Geoff, Bin Laden’s vaulting ambition was to be shot in the face in a scuzzy bedroom while wearing (very recently) soiled PJs.

I am sure we can share Geoff’s telepathic certainty that the last thing the Big Bin thought before his face spouted a leak was, “I’ve won!”.

The NSW Election. What really happened.

2011-03-26T19:29:00.000-07:00

Seriously. What happened? Naturally, last night chez Gliberty was lit only by natural bees’ wax candles in observance of Earth Hour.

Note: Inspired by the, err..., glittering example of Earth Hour, this post is being written and uploaded using power generated by four local tabbies chasing each other on the household treadmill.

There, but for the good fortune, goes you

2011-03-07T20:16:00.000-08:00

If you were single, cashed up, attractive to your preferred sex and had a predilection for all intoxicants and a lot of spare time, what would you do?

Charlie’s chosen porn stars, liquor and the drug which shares his name.

Out of control? Troubled? Honest and fortunate, perhaps.

Gives pause for thought, hey Julia? Anna?

2011-02-21T21:00:00.001-08:00

Lucky all these Queenslanders were in Christchurch holidaying or there’d have been no volunteer rescuers.

Christmas Eve 2010

2010-12-23T16:29:00.000-08:00

It’s too grey and cool to be Christmas. And it’s too quiet. Calm, even.

Panic shopping, customary 24 hours before a cyclone, Easter or Christmas, wasn’t apparent this morning. There were no fights over car parks, no tugs of war over the last tray of ripe mangoes and no unseemly jostling at the ice fridge.

After dropping off the easily won spoils – ice, hard liquor, lobster, champagne – it was time to commute on roads seemingly empty but for the prowling constabulary.

Yet, over the ANZAC Bridge it started to feel a bit more like the festive season, for, beneath it lies the fish market in all its foetid, piscine glory.

The traffic tail backs were enormous. Every ingress and egress was a car park. Was that the reassuring sound of tooting? And, yes, is that a head out a window screaming Yuletide invective? Is that a carload of grim faced children and red faced adults?

Only extreme heat, melting the bitumen and flaring the stench, could have enhanced the unpleasantness.

That’s more like it.

Happy Christmas!

English Overreach

2010-12-08T18:08:00.000-08:00

The Simon Barnes award for journalistic hyperbole, this week goes to James Lawton of The Independent.

“This is not to devalue the scale of England's triumph in the exquisite Oval ground that was as silent as a mausoleum the morning after the most crushing of defeats, one that has provoked a burst of countrywide introspection so deep it might even be linked to a loss of national identity.”

Countrywide introspection? So deep? Loss of national identity?

Mate, wet your terry toweling hat to soothe that fevered brow. Or try cooling off in an art gallery or concert hall.

What an excitable tosser.

In his own modest words…

2010-11-14T15:44:00.000-08:00

In time, this will find its way to the right hand side of this page but first deserves greater billing.

Writing an introduction to a section of Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks: The Essential Alan Coren (for Christmas please Santa), the grossly over exposed Stephen Fry has come up with this priceless titbit:

Fortunately the censoring membrane of wit never allowed him to become pompous about the genuine intellect within. Something else I could well learn from him…

Legalise it!

2010-11-02T22:08:00.000-07:00

So sang, Bob - or as he was known on GLR (the B.B.C.’s now defunct radio station for London) - The Right Honourable Robert Nestor Marley.

At least decriminalise it.

After all, “Our last three presidents used marijuana during their reckless days of youth but went on to successful careers because they were never busted. Millions of others [sic] Americans are not so lucky.”

Unless it’s instructive, keep your teen longings to yourself, mate

2010-10-20T18:03:00.000-07:00

Sometimes a piece appears that makes one wonder if there are any editors.

On the flimsy pretext of publishing a paragraph from Lolita, Nick Antosca* shares his teenage sexual fantasies, though, thankfully, without explication. There is no insight here, just a dry rendering of wet dreams.

Anybody who suggests Lolita is anything other than an account of adult weakness may not have sufficient insight to see their need for treatment.

It’s a rare man or woman who hasn’t been moved by the beauty of youth. It’s only the weak who are moved to act.

Youthful beauty is at its most poignant and powerful during transition from childhood innocence to adult knowing. That beauty is entwined with innocence. As soon as its darker implications are recognised by the beautiful, the beauty begins to evanesce. The moment is lost.

The very act of observation unalterably affects the object. Any expression of appreciation has a more pronounced effect. But to act upon it, is to destroy it.

Not that Antosca told us any of this.

*Ed. Nick Antosser?

Science Vs Religion. Why bother?

2010-10-13T20:32:00.000-07:00

The increasingly ill tempered debate between scientists and religionists has become a bum fight – an unedifying tragicomedy offering some guilty laughs for bystanders. Here we see Dawkins applying his knee to the Papal groin for something he didn’t say while down the alley Monsignor Carrasco affords the Nobel committee a taste of asphalt for recognising a man who has made millions of people happy and, no doubt, added to the Catholic flock.

Now in a bitchy article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the usually estimable Carlin Romano has tried to use a cripple as a punching bag for poking his tongue at God. And Romano has emerged from the encounter with his credibility damaged.

Eschewing Jesus’ advice to turn the other cheek, (the most selectively applied of Christian maxims), Romano has risen to Stephen Hawking’s recent baits that philosophy is dead as it hasn’t kept pace with science, which alone can explain the universe, and that it isn’t necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.

But Romano has not just risen to the bait, he’s leapt from the still waters of religious reflection, performed a few unbecoming epistemological contortions in flight, and impaled himself on Hawking’s twin barbs.

Once the smooth surface of his prose has been scratched, his response is a combination of nastiness, contradictions and illogicality. Most clearly, Romano demonstrates the futility of the debate. The two sides aren’t even playing by the same rules.

Romano is a Fellow of the John Templeton Foundation which he spruiks as specialising in prodding believers and nonbelievers to discuss things in a civilized way. However, with his next breath he refers to Hawking’s statements as an “ex cathedra squawk” – a combination of sarcasm and, as he’s referring to a man with a mechanical voice, tactlessness (at best).

Elsewhere, he refers to Hawking’s smugness, sarcastically to Hawking’s “media echo chamber”, the media’s portrayal of him as a genius and that “a genius, presumably, must be right about anything. Especially if he managed to sell nine million copies of a book.”

Miaow! Do we detect a twinge of jealousy, perhaps, Romano?

The main criticism of Romano’s article does not concern his incivility but his attempt to dupe the reader into thinking that there is a philosophical “antidote” to Hawking’s claim that only science can explain the universe.

In doing so he invokes Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stephen Toulmin, the latter of which he claims “inoculated us against the naïve view that science shows God does not exist and is irrelevant to cosmology”. Us? Perhaps Romano means “me”. And where is the claim that science shows God does not exist? Indeed, one page earlier Romano quotes Hawking as saying, that “one cannot prove that God doesn’t exist.”

For that matter, what does Romano mean by “cosmology”? Is it the same as Hawking’s meaning? If Hawking only refers to the modern meaning of the science of the origin and development of the universe and Romano to the ancient meaning of holistic theories of the order the universe not confined to science, then they are using different linguistic tokens. They are speaking different languages.

At least Romano allows Toulmin to speak on this, noting that in ancient times, “Toulmin pointed out, cosmology meant more than how the universe mechanically operates. Rather, it captured the Greek notion that the entire world ‘forms a single, integrated system united by universal principles’”.

This is the point. Romano, Wittgenstein and Toulmin are speaking from the perspective of a “‘traditional world picture’ [that] happily combined ‘an astronomical, a teleological and a theological picture’”. Hawking is not. But that doesn’t stop Romano from seeing a dispute when there isn’t one. Sure, Hawking started it (this time) but for Romano to rush into the melee, head down, windmilling his arms when there is no fight isn’t smart - particularly when the first casualty is his credibility.

After a bit of Hawking bashing, Romano settles into his work by offering what he describes as a thumbnail of what Wittgenstein and Toulmin “taught us” about religion, science, and cosmology. Again, he presumes to speak for “us”. He also informs us of what we were “taught”. Their arguments are not described as such, nor presented as but one perspective. Rather they are lessons learned – truths told. From this point, all Romano tells us of the thinking of Wittgenstein and Toulmin is taken as (ahem) gospel truth and, therefore, anything inconsistent with it is treated as incorrect per se.

One might be tempted to say that geniuses (for that’s clearly what Romano thinks they are), must be right. Especially if there are two of them and they’ve been elevated by their one man media echo chamber. But that temptation should be resisted.

The thumbnail is the real start of Romano’s problems. One paragraph in we’re informed that Wittgenstein’s God is beyond human understanding. That’s convenient.

Once that cat is out the bag there follows a flurry of felines:

“‘Christianity is not based on a historical truth; rather, it gives us a (historical) narrative and says: now believe! … through thick and thin.’” (Wittgenstein) This is a defensive position religionists quickly turn to under pressure (though increasingly it’s used offensively) - my belief is above criticism or parody precisely because it is a belief.

“‘If I am to be really saved – then I need certainty… and this certainty is faith. And faith is faith in what my heart, my soul needs, with its passions… not my abstract mind.’” (Wittgenstein) No comment required there.

“In contrast to his enormous respect for truths of religion that cannot be said, but only acted on, Wittgenstein displays little appreciation for science’s hard-won descriptions of physical reality.” (Romano) Just read that again! And Romano accuses Hawking of having a closed mind by ignoring philosophy of science developments! Here he lauds Wittgenstein for believing in the notion of truths of religion but for rejecting science’s descriptions of physical reality – notwithstanding that they’ve been hard won.

“Wittgenstein in his later work sought to preserve ‘the integrity of a non scientific form of understanding’”. (Romano quoting Ray Monk, biographer of Wittgenstein)

Is any further evidence required that the physicists are riding a spaceship to one part of the universe while the philosophers are being lifted by angels to another? Well, one more can't hurt.

“For Toumlin, ‘human candor should also lead us to admit that matters of faith are intellectually unprovable and accordingly uncertain’”. (Romano quoting Toumlin) But a few pages earlier Romano quotes Hawking as saying just that.

Perhaps this is what Romano is saying - keep your hands off our version of cosmology, Professor, and play with you own. It’s just a pity it took him eight pages of self defeating twaddle to inadvertently achieve it.

In a recent article, a visiting fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex raised the spectre of the universe being by design but not by God’s. Upon reading that, two things came to mind. First, please don’t let Carlin Romano read it.

Second, if these designers ever revealed themselves in this universe, it’s a good bet that the scientists would shake them by the tentacles.

The religionists would prostrate themselves.

And both would claim they were right all along.

Respect for the dead

2010-09-23T01:36:00.000-07:00

In the poem The Quality of Sprawl, Les Murray says that hitting animals is not part of it. He’s right. Animal cruelty is very not cool. But it can be funny in the same way that zombie movies and racist jokes are funny. The sheer outrageousness, the fundamental wrongness (mixed with more than a frisson of audience guilt), gets the laugh.

The story of the famous footballer reaching into a bird cage, biting the head from the budgie and returning the stump to the perch still makes me smile. A mate drop kicking a cat from a verandah, another place kicking a pigeon with a toe to the date – were hilarious at the drunken youthful time. Cleese smacking the rigid parrot on the counter top remains extraordinarily popular amongst those suffering arrested comedy development.

The last couple of weeks haven’t been the best for inter-species relations. Aussie teens made the US news for smacking around a kangaroo and a pissed Pom popped a hamster in a microwave. Neither was funny, though I warrant a few smiles flickered across lips upon reading about the last.

Better to be speedily zapped than slowly suffocated in a movie star’s poop chute, you might think.

Now, now, that’s enough.

The hysterical reactions to these events are funny. Most are of the “jail’s too good for ‘em” kind. The anthropomorphism on display is staggering as it is delightful and the high level of inter-species telepathy is impressive.

The Pom got nine weeks in the slammer for killing a rat.

But most outrage seems to be have been reserved for the Kiwis (I love Kiwis) who raised money for the local school with a good old possum toss (as in, throw). I wasn’t even too outraged when I thought the possum was alive. They’re extremely agile and have tough tails. Indeed, they’re perfect candidates for a fling (as in throw, not movie star tryst). The possum wasn’t alive. Sure it had to become not alive, but it didn’t suffer while it was being chucked around.

So, lighten the fuck up.

If you anthropomorphising nutjobs want to pick on someone, pick on the killer whales. Now that’s mean. And funny. At least to them.

What’s wrong with this picture?

2010-09-19T23:33:00.000-07:00

There so much of interest in the weekend protest by some members of Sydney’s Muslim community.

For a start, this sign caught the eye - “You ban ‘Quran’ you burn in hell. United in Islam we stand”.

A weird feature is that each letter is balloon shaped and alternately rendered in a different primary colour. This lettering was last deployed by hippies in the late 60s and early 70s to preach love or peace, man. Here it’s been used to convey eternal and fiery damnation.

Perhaps small Muslim children were encouraged to join in the fun of the protest against oppression. Or is it a reflection of how entrenched and, therefore, pro forma Muslim protest is that it didn’t strike anybody as odd that the message of damnation was made to look so friendly. Naïve or malign, it’s bloody peculiar.

Could the explanation be that the sign maker was only allowed out of the house if she tricked her sensible but illiterate parent that she was off to a school sports day? It’s hoped so.

Then there’s the message. The protest ostensibly was against moves to ban the burqa. So what’s Quran burning got to do with it?

But, hang on. According to the SMH, the NSW Premier, Kristina Keneally, has recently made a statement re-affirming the right of Muslim women to wear the burqa. So what’s the point of any of it?

Weave all these strands together and surely one gets closer to the truth. This fight has nothing at all to do with Australia. It’s about reflexive Muslim grievance, some strange desire to paint yourself as oppressed.

Sure enough, the give away is not far off. As the spokeswoman, Ms Ardati said, the support of key politicians did not mean Muslims could ''relax''. ''Even if this bill is not passed in NSW now, who knows what will happen in one week, one month or one year?''

But the suspicion is that the whole thing really was just an elaborate ruse by the poor protesters to get out of the house and express themsleves in the only way their men permit.

Soccer skills impaired by shagging. Religious skills, not.

2010-09-06T16:49:00.000-07:00

Experts have stunned the medical research community with the discovery that infidelity, particularly with prostitutes, might adversely affect the coordination, speed and tactical decision making of elite sportsmen.

In related research, the ability of church representatives to provide moral and spiritual guidance has been found to be unaffected by the representatives' acts of sexual depravity and breaches of trust.

A Kiwi super city?

2010-08-25T21:20:00.000-07:00

Ever hired a car in New Zealand? When you drive it around, people stop and stare. I’m not talking about a European convertible here. More like a 5 year old Holden with 160,000 on the clock.

“Nice wheels, bro. Iz thet the ‘04 ‘dore. Sweet.”

You see, it’s a bit cut-off. Lost in time and space. Lost in a reality all of its own. And despite the warrior image, it’s gentle, friendly and, shall we say, slightly old-fashioned.

In keeping with this other worldliness, the New Zealand Herald is in the middle of a major series: “Auckland the Super City: a Herald special feature”.

The series charts the city’s “spectacular growth since 1945” as it prepares to become a “single Super City”.

Super City! Capitalised for superness!

Bless.

Speaking of spectacular growth, are you prepared to have your mind boggled?!! From 1976 to 1986 the population skyrocketed from 707,000 at a density of 19 people per hectare to a crazeeeee 755,000 at a crushing, err… 19 people per hectare!

In the last 24 years the population has gone bonkers – 1.16 million now with 23 people per hectare. That’s 4 more people! Per hectare! In 24 years.

I wonder if they know that Paris has 2,000 people per hectare.

I love Kiwis. They’re so cute.

Couples we’d like to see - Part 1

2010-08-23T20:49:00.000-07:00

As a selfless and romantic organ, Gliberty is kicking off a free introduction service. Some people just deserve each other and we're here to help.

Let's get these two together as soon as possible - Keli Lane and Matthew Newton.

They’ve so much in common – self-love and, ahem... allegedly , a tendency to violence as the ultimate expression of it.

Mugshots

2010-08-12T19:58:00.000-07:00

The Chicago Tribune runs mugshots of the recently arrested. Yes, it’s voyeurism but fascinating all the same.

Who said those cop shows were realistic? Even actors don’t look this stupid or unfortunate. But more interesting than the dull eyed slack jawed mugshots are the crimes for which the mugs have been arrested. Personal favourites include:

Theft of manholes – Say no more.

Murder, neglect of a dependent, battery and false informing – As if she wasn’t in enough trouble without stooping to false dobbing?

Murder and attempted battery – How do you fail at battery but successfully kill?

False impersonation of a police officer – Are you really going to do it like that? OK, that's bad, you’re under arrest.

And take a look at those who resisted arrest. They're easy to spot. Ouch.

More evidence of panic

2010-08-11T17:51:00.000-07:00

Does Warwick McKibbin have a web page? If not, he should emulate Henry Ergas.

Panicked decisions are bad decisions. Lying to cover your ineptitude is contemptible.

Promising to repeat your mistakes is arrogance and narcissism.

They’ll do anything

2010-07-04T20:49:00.000-07:00

Feeling queasy? Dare I say, sea-sick?

Appalling politicians will do and say anything to keep the smell of ministerial leather in their (in some cases, capacious) nostrils.

NSW Labor about faces at the drop of a hat. Now Federal Labor has been taught the same steps.

Perhaps Red Gillard should reflect on the negative consequences of her desire to send ‘em home so she can stay.

Could someone pass me the anti-emetics?

Everybody loathes a boaster, but…

2010-06-23T22:15:00.000-07:00

According to The Age, Professor Warwick McKibben, “university economist and member of the Reserve Bank board deliver[ed] a scathing critique of Kevin Rudd's response to the global financial crisis, saying his government 'panicked' and 'rammed through' decisions fraught with risk”.

Around two and a half years ago, Gliberty predicted this panic in the face of financial crisis (before the crisis hit), accurately assessed Rudd’s bad character, predicted who would undo him, and let all know about his expletive ridden communications, and all in fewer than 500 words.

Hurrah for us! Oh, and everybody else who did it too.

What do the French and Julia Gillard have in common?

2010-06-23T20:32:00.000-07:00

A lot:

In the vernacular of Straya, to “French” a lamb cutlet* is to use a very sharp knife to trim it of excess fat.

In the world of football, to “French” a coach is for a group of players to openly and publicly revolt against him in act of disloyalty reflecting ill on all participants.

Ajourd’hui la Gillardine, well and truly Frenched her boss.

Not much:

The Elysee Palace, Paris, France

Le petit but dapper Nicolas Sarkozy and the tres elegante Carla Bruni greet the Prime Minister of Australia and her partner, [insert name here], for dinner.

During dinner, though initially sensitive to the Australians’ confusion with the cutlery, the French hosts become concerned and finally alarmed when each time [INH] wished to speak he got up and stood behind the chair of the person to whom he was speaking.

As he said good night to his guests, President Sarkozy was overheard politely declining [INH's] enquiry as to whether "sir required anything for the weekend".

* Don’t use this expression in the United States where to “French” has an entirely different meaning not usually associated with raw meats.

Short memories

2010-06-22T20:41:00.001-07:00

General McChrystal has been recalled to Washington for a carpeting by the President of the United Sates following a Rolling Stone interview. At that meeting he offered the President his resignation.

The worst thing said about President Obama was by an aide to General McChrystal. Mr Obama appeared "uncomfortable and intimidated" by the military and "didn't seem very engaged" when he first met General McChrystal.

Ouch. Stop hitting me with that cooked spaghetti.

It wasn’t so long ago that the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, wrote the epitaph for her candidature by using Congressional hearings to call General David Petraeus a liar. He didn’t complain.

It seems the price of military service is honourable behaviour. The privilege of political service is freedom to behave appallingly.

... and, a day after this post, just to prove its thesis, General Petraeus again serves those who publicly failed to support and ridiculed him for the sake of their political skins.

Bigwiggery

2010-05-24T21:10:00.001-07:00

‘Bigwig’ is a favourite word. Its internal rhyme and firm consonants make it a pleasure to say. But its best feature is the visual imagery it conveys. This comes from its straightforward etymology - early 18th century, so named from the large wigs formerly worn by distinguished men.

Was it the case that the bigger the wig the more distinguished the wearer? Or did those with delusions of grandeur suffer ridicule for presumptuously lavish headwear? Perhaps the real swinging dicks sported tiny wiglets as an expression of their power?

The plural holds greater delights, for when circumstances permit its use there’s more than one bigwig about, and nothing is more risible than a gathering of them, for the inevitable result is bigwiggery.

Bigwiggery is on display each morning Federal Parliament sits when a line of taxpayer funded limousines idle, each waiting in turn to deposit its puffed-up occupant.

Ricky Gervais knows a thing or two about bigwiggery. Witness the delightful scene in Extras when he is finally admitted to the celebrity area in a nightclub, indistinguishable from the area available to the hoi polloi, other than for the rope surrounding it.

But real life examples delight and appal just as much.

A favourite occurred at the unveiling of the statue of the New Zealand soldier on the ANZAC Bridge in Sydney, the companion to the Australian soldier on the other side of the road. Bigwigs, in the form of State politicians and senior bureaucrats were present front and centre near the statue. Onlookers, including relatives of fallen veterans, some of whom had flown from New Zealand, were prevented by police from getting too close and were relegated to positions behind barriers out of earshot of proceedings and with the statue almost out of sight.

That’s bigwiggery at its very, very best.

From opening of a playground to a blockbuster's premiere, bigwiggery abounds.

Notice of further examples will be gratefully received.

Picking on the fat fag

2010-05-20T22:16:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Jason Akermanis for clearing up any remaining doubt as to whether he’s a tool.

We’ve noted before what we think of taking advice from celebrities.

And thanks to Channel 7 news and some sections of the Sydney press for clearing up any remaining doubt as to whether they’re scum. An undercover operation to spot a middle aged man leaving a gay sauna is nearly as petty and pathetic as the Fitzgerald Inquiry getting Don Lane for fiddling his expenses. More fatty bashing?

Apart from his family, who gives a toss (poor choice of words perhaps) what David Campbell tickles with his walrus?

As for Akermanis’ advice that gay sports people should stay in the closet, we’ve only to look at the damage done in the Campbell case to see the folly of suppressing one’s sexuality.

Food for thought for the Catholic Church?

Fish ‘n chip paper before it hits the newsstands

2010-05-17T19:14:00.000-07:00

Are you really surprised by many of the ‘big’ stories? Wouldn’t these have been at lot more interesting if they’d not been true?

Politician doesn’t tell whole truth all the time.

Big business fails to thank government for increased taxation.

Labor stacks branches - preselection corrupt.

NRL player uses fists to remove girlfriend’s stuffing. (Too may links too choose from.)

And my personal favourite from today - Russel Crowe claims to be greatest actor in the history of the universe.

Hurrah! The President of the United States likes me!

2010-04-15T22:25:00.001-07:00

I know I am not alone in having a slightly sore chest this morning. It’s been stretched with pride at President Obama’s praise for our Prime Minster!

Gosh, if he likes Mr Rudd, do you think he might like me too? Oh, I hope so. He did say that the Australian people were hospitable and I’m an Australian person so, really, he was saying that I am hospitable. Don’t you think?

And as the Prime Minster is our elected leader, perhaps when he praises Mr Rudd he is really saying that we are, and therefore I am, smart and humble and helpful around the house too!!

Oh joy! Oh life! Oh love! ♥♥

Picking on the fat kid

2010-04-06T21:56:00.001-07:00

Churchill spent most of the Second World War rat arsed. Kennedy was up on pain killers and down on actresses during the Cuban Missile Crisis and, if Coppola is to be believed, every American serviceman spent the Vietnam War strung out.

Piggy Nixon scoffed a pie at a pub during the Victorian bush fires.

What we now know is that, wearing her dress uniform and a furrowed brow, she should have been in a glass control room to be seen pinning tiny flags on a wall map with her left hand and pushing toy fire trucks across a table with the miniature rake in her right.

Later, we should have seen Piggy read them their rights and place the fires under arrest.

Anything else was a greedy dereliction of duty.

We posed a question about Matty…

2010-03-24T21:37:00.000-07:00

We asked the question and all along we knew the answer - not very steep at all. The path to redemption is flat and short if someone can profit from making it so.

Public Hospital Outrage as Wrong Baby Given to Mother

2010-03-15T17:44:00.000-07:00

Calls for the NSW and Federal Health Ministers to resign have followed revelations of a scandalous incident at Broken Hill Hospital in which a mother was given the wrong baby to breastfeed, for 5 minutes.

The woman given the child in the very early hours of the morning noticed it wasn’t hers and altered hospital staff.

“I was totally disgusted. I mean, it saw me half starkers. It even touched my nipple.”

The woman, who prefers to remain anonymous until she has spoken to A Current Affair, has demanded an apology from the Governor-General.

The nurse has been counselled and procedures reviewed to ensure this atrocious infringement of human rights can never been repeated.

The baby was unavailable for comment but was said to be considering all its options.

In what authorities claim is an “unrelated incident”, two visitors to the hospital cafeteria were allegedly given the wrong meals.

“We was here visiting me mother who was gettin the boils under her back fat squeezed out and we got real hungry. I ordered lasagne n chips and Josie aksed for chicken schnitzel, chips n salad”, said Bevania Slap.

“When they handed us the tray the lasagne had the salad on it and I hate salad. It’s todally unaccepal”, she added.

Ms Slap has not ruled out legal action.

Therese Rein – That letter of apology in full

2010-03-14T19:03:00.001-07:00

Dear Premier,

I was mortified at Kevin’s behaviour in Sydney on Friday and I extend my sympathy for the discomfort and embarrassment he caused you. After the first 5 years of our marriage I gave up apologising to people he was rude to as it began to occupy too much of my time, but seeing his treatment of you was enough to make my blood boil.

We were having coffee in the living room when it was replayed on the Insiders program. As the segment started, Kevin got up to scuttle out of the room but I told him to sit right back down. Of course, he busied himself behind some papers and didn’t emerge until the whole show was over.

At the end of the program, I asked him what he had to say for himself. He said he had to ring Wayne urgently and began walking out but, thanks to my new lithesome frame, I got to the door first and blocked his escape.

I offer the exchange which followed verbatim as, I hope, you will find some comfort in it.

“Kevin, what do you have to say about the way you treated that lovely Kristina?”

“Who?”, said Kevin, looking at his shoes.

“Kristina Keneally.”

“Who's that?”, he said while removing some invisible lint from his shirt cuff.

“The Premier of NSW to whom Australia has just seen you being rude.”

“She’s a poo. And she smells.”, he said to an area just over my left shoulder.

“Kevin, don’t be ridiculous. You were horrid to her.”

He stamped his foot and closed his eyes and shouted, “She started it!”

“How did she start it?”

“She was all smiley and looking.”

“What do you mean ‘looking’?”

“She was looking at me in my face and I didn’t like it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She was looking at me. I hate it when people look at me. I bet she was looking at my fringe. I hate my fringe and I hate her and I hate you!”

Anyway, Kristina, this went on for some time but you get the general idea.

If it’s any comfort you’ll remember he’s treated another charming, polite and intelligent woman this way. That time it was on the BBC when he refused to look at the Chinese Foreign Minister.

I apologise for Kevin’s incivility. I understand how you feel. After all, I live with the odious little twit.

Yours sincerely,

Therese Rein

Canada: New Zealand with moose

2010-03-11T21:12:00.001-08:00

An irrational jealousy (is there a rational kind?) came over me when an extremely attractive American girl said she found New Zealand accents very sexy. She might have been English, it was long ago. I can’t even recall what she looked like, though I know I wanted to get close to her that night, until she said that.

I don’t find the New Zealand accent sexy. Nor does any of Australia’s fauna. New Zealanders are friendly and, particularly in their own country, incredibly helpful and inexplicably cheerful. That’s also my experience of Canadians, other than Norm Verdec, my high school chemistry teacher, who was a fat, box-headed imbecile.

Canadians and New Zealanders share other traits. They both have bigger and richer neighbours and lots of people who poke fun at them and their accents. Both have tried to reach agreements with those who occupied the country before European settlement and both seem willing to embrace policy for the furtherance of mushy, non-specific ends such as social justice.

Most importantly, Canadians and New Zealanders share irrepressible smugness.

They’re smug because of what they are not. Canada isn’t the USA and New Zealand isn’t Australia. Turning a negative to a positive is a common survival technique of the relatively weak. Note that they’re not elevated by superior virtue, intellect or management but by what they lack. That is, neither is materially or spiritually big enough to blunder like their neighbours. Any mistakes they do make cause barely a ripple. Their smugness at big brother’s excesses, in reality, is driven by inability and insecurity.

The people of these lands of lakes and mountains have a lot in common. To flip it, their differences seem few. Indeed, all that springs to mind is that seal isn’t on the menu in the New Zealand Parliament and New Zealand’s vice-regal representatives don't rip the hearts from baby seals. Oh, and moose are scarcer in New Zealand - at least, in the wild.

Sadness anticipated in the belly of a mountain

2010-03-10T20:28:00.000-08:00

Sparklehorse may not have been my favourite musician but he was the only cure at certain times and this news has hit hard.

The gentle beauty of his music offered this listener the glimmer of first light, the fragility of a new day and an affirmation of the primacy of love.

But this was an illusion.

The songs of love were reflections of loss. Those suffused with the promise of morning, in truth, chased in vain the evanescent light of a dying day.

Listen when very late.

Australia sends in the big guns

2010-02-24T20:23:00.000-08:00

In a sign of its anger at reports that forged Australian passports may have been used by suspects in the Dubai murder of Hamas leader, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the Ambassador of Israel has been spoken to, sternly, by the Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith.

“He really was quite firm with the Ambassador”, said a spokesman for the Foreign Minister. “We didn’t even offer him a cup of tea”.

“When we asked what arrangements we should make for the visit, Mr Smith said that we were only to provide water, on request. He said, ‘I’m not having them [the Israeli delegation] enjoying our yummy ginger snaps when I feeling as cranky as this’.”

“He [Smith] was quite quivery during the meeting”, said an insider.

In the face of the dressing down from the Australian Foreign Minister, the Israeli security agency, Mossad, was said to be reviewing its tactics and possibly renouncing the use of violence in the defence of Israel.

“We've had along hard look in the mirror and we're a bit ashamed at what we've been doing for the last sixty years”, said a senior Mossad commander.

“Good luck with the roofing insulation problems”, he added, “We can only imagine how tough it must be for the Australian people to cope with a threat to safety as serious as that”.

Keeping down with Joneses

2010-02-23T15:42:00.000-08:00

This is getting ridiculous. Now the Tories (yes, the Conservative Party) want to use social pressure to improve household energy efficiency.

Party leader David Cameron has said, "We need to apply gentle social pressure on people to bring down their energy use. So just as they're doing in California, we will make each energy bill come with an illustration of how much energy people's neighbours are using in comparison to their own usage, inspiring them to consume less in competition".

But what will the pious, smug, Prius driving little git who lives next door to you do when he learns that you’re using much more energy than he is? Leave helpful pamphlets your letterbox? Tsk as you walk past?

The ultimate outcome will be violence.

As J.S. Mill observed (and as noted here before), protection against the tyranny of authority is not enough, “there needs protection also against tyranny of prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct”.

Sooks, wimps and whingers

2010-02-22T20:11:00.001-08:00

Uncharacteristically, I was at work very early. When the entry buzzer sounded for the door to the secured area I inhabited, I walked 25 meters from my office to answer it. Nobody was there and I returned to my work. Just as my bottom touched the chair, the buzzer sounded. I retraced my steps and found the invisible man. Annoyed, I opened the door, shoved my head into the corridor and called out. No reply.

The third time I tried to ignore the buzzing, but its insistence was irritating and distracting. I jogged (no mean feat) to the door. Nothing. I went outside into the corridor and walked around the nearest rooms calling out. Nothing.

The fourth buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz was infuriating. You might think that I’d discharged my duty. But as it was not uncommon for people (i.e. me) to forget their passes and in this desolate industrial estate there was little to pass the time until office hours, I again went to the door.

There stood a large, thickset and powerful air-conditioning repairman. Being a coward, one look at this monster caused me to abandon my plan to blast my tormentor’s chin whiskers off with a string of high volume invective. All I managed was an arms outstretched, “Mate, what the fuck are you doing? This is my fourth trip to the door and it’s the only time you’ve been here”. My delivery was exasperated but at normal volume.

He looked a bit surprised and said, illogically, “I didn’t think anybody was here”. I shook my head and returned to my office.

Two days later, following a complaint, I was summoned to explain my offensive language and aggressive and intimidating attitude. Naturally, my response was sarcastic. I refused to apologise, noting that I had received none for my inconvenience and, as for intimidation, it seemed unlikely that a labourer who stood at least 10 centimetres taller and whose muscular form outweighed my slope shouldered blancmange by 20kg could be intimidated by little, plump me.

My smug written report about the incident was informed by my contemporaneous reading of Theodore Dalrymple’s, In Praise of Prejudice. These days, I noted, quoting Dalrymple, the exercise of any authority exterior to that of the ego is a wound to personal sovereignty. My chastisement of the repairman was to me an exercise in social interaction, a not unreasonable request from one person to another to be more thoughtful. However, as I was an office worker and lacked a broad accent, the interaction was seen by the repairman as one of power. The repairman’s dignity as absolute sovereign of his soul had been infringed. For him life was a long series of acts of lese-majeste by others. His ego was “like a wound that is never allowed to heal, that is constantly reopened by reality, into which salt is ever rubbed by those [he thinks to be imbued]* with greater power and prestige than” himself (pp 61-62).

Recently a headmistress has been so intimidated by a petite female parent that she’s had the parent banned from school premises. There’s some dispute about whether there was touching but if the principal was assaulted why weren’t the police called? If not and there was only a verbal disagreement, even shouting, it sounds suspiciously like sookiness from the principal. Perhaps she was unhappy that her authority was challenged? The principal’s dignity as absolute sovereign of her soul had been infringed.

How many parents when reasonably chastising their children hear the modern line that the chastisement constitutes abuse? In the relativist world their teachers inhabit, all possess the right not to be disciplined (unless, of course, some right of the teacher has been infringed).

In the work place wimps abound. Workers cannot be disciplined or chastised or can be only in highly controlled circumstances. The incompetent survive, their behaviour and inept practices uncorrected.

Recently during tense negotiations, when the last of their specious arguments had been demolished by cold logic, our opponents accused us (me) of being overly aggressive and terminated the meeting. They could not distinguish the issues from their egos. Any effectual challenge to their arguments was interpreted as a challenge to them, to their legitimacy, to their essence. It was a violation of their rights. But, of which right? Their right for their wrongness to remain unidentified? Their right not to lose? Their right to be undisturbed wimps?

As for Prime Ministerial bullying, the point’s been well made that in the highest office in the land there’s bound to be bit of pressure and emotions could run high. Surely we want those associated with that office to possess a backbone and, if not, they’re not emotionally qualified to be there. I wonder if staff crumpled and ran from Churchill’s war room blubbering. Possibly. But I warrant they didn’t allege bullying.

So here’s the essential advice for many of you feeling pressure at home, at work or in school:

Harden the fuck up.

* Square brackets added.

We don't like to brag, but...

2010-02-14T20:36:00.000-08:00

Everyone digs it. Audi’s Superbowl advertisement featured the Green Police. The backing track is Cheap Trick’s Dream Police, with new lyrics. Of course, you saw it here first.

Dear MB

2010-01-24T21:01:00.000-08:00

Gliberty is not a well run organ. Correspondence is seldom answered. It’s time to put that right.

Merely,

I’ve just seen the wonderful Avatar. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live so close to nature?

Green with envy,

Bob

Dear Bob,

I didn’t notice a dentist, a fridge or a sit down flush toilet (or any bog roll, for that matter). And I’m not sure how subsistence tribes would deal with your lifestyle choice. Harshly, I suspect.

So, no, life there would be dangerous, painful and, particularly for you, very short.

Regards,

Merely

MB,

What did happen to you the night you went to see the Glibertine?

You owe us an ending.

A

Dear A,

Once I recover enough of my dignity and a little more memory, you’ll be the first to know.

Yours sincerely,

MB

Dear Merely Being,

Is Kevin Catholic or Anglican? After his flirtation with Rome members of my communion are asking awkward questions.

Yours sincerely,

Therese

Dear Ms Rein,

I’ve had many similar enquiries. Following his very public fancying of Mary MacK, some indignant Indians have asked me to confirm his Hinduism, others that he’s a Jainist. I’ve even had bewildered Buddhists saying he’s one of them.

As I told them all, Kevin’s one true calling is Ingratiatist.

With sympathy,

Merely

Athlete has last vestiges of modesty surgically removed

2010-01-03T15:31:00.000-08:00

Hot on the thrilling news that Yawna Rawlinson will remarry her coach, Yawna has told an edge of the seat nation that her breasts have been reduced in the national interest.

In news just in, Yawna’s once husband-to-be-again has cancelled the rewedding and was last seen drinking in the public bar of the Oxford Tavern.

A Christmas miracle

2009-12-13T16:13:00.001-08:00

In act of divine inspiration, local Australian saint, Kevin Rudd, yesterday visited Mary MacKillop’s Chapel when an ABC TV crew was there.

Always content to work in humble and mysterious ways, St Kevin didn’t speak to the media. However, the film crew was privileged to catch footage of St Kevin waving benediction to the grateful Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart.

According to the ABC, speculation over Mary MacKillop’s imminent canonisation intensified after St Kevin visited Mary MacKillop's Chapel in Sydney before flying to Copenhagen.

His spokesman reflected upon St Kevin's humility, saying that the timing of his visit to Mother Mary's tomb was not significant and that he attends a range of churches.

The selfless diversity of his ministry is a credit to one who modestly insists he is but a man.

St Kevin’s miraculous powers again will be put the test in Copenhagen. May God (be lucky enough to) be with him.

Eye of the Tiger

2009-12-10T18:18:00.000-08:00

Amidst the great golfer’s one in holes scandal, there are only two women deserving of sympathy. They’re feeling very silly and sick with embarrassment. But we’ll come to them soon.

Golfers are seldom accused of sartorial good taste, but Tiger’s taste in women is jaw droppingly awful. These ladies are uniformly hideous - skanky, nasty, plucked and pumped.

One models a hydrocephalic bonce, another looks like a bible cult escapee. Then there’s that very creepy humanoid who claimed the number 3 spot by holding up unusually dwarfish fingers (even counting the nail extensions in tasteful white).

You just know the perfume they douse themselves with is more Britney than Guerlain.

So who’s feeling ripped off and sick in the guts?

Kate Neil (the one on the left, I think). All she got was a light to medium covering of John Della Bosca’s sweat. And poor old Michelle Chantelois (now that’s a name for a mistress) – shagged by… Mike Rann, who may even be heterosexual*.

Kate and Michelle. You chimps. If only you’d hung out at the golf and waited to catch Tiger's eye. You seem to meet his specification.

Eye don't know about you but eye've had an eyeful of this eye thing. Oh, perhaps one more...

Allegedly golfers' have an eye for distance. Surprising, then, that Tiger so abjectly failed to judge how short a drop it is from the top to the bottom.

* That might be unfair. I’m told most people from Adelaide, at least the ones with front teeth, talk like that.

Which would you rather read while getting pissed?

2009-11-18T18:56:00.000-08:00

I don’t know about you but I’d reckon I’d rather go to a party thrown by the public health department of the Basque government in San Sebastian than the miserablist gits at the National Preventative Health Taskforce.

More wine, Nicola*?

* Roxon, that is

Exceedences? Surely not from Robbo.

2009-09-22T21:49:00.000-07:00

Hang on, was Robbo affecting intelligence or just unintelligible?

Robbo’s department predicted, ahem, good air quality today because of expected rain.

Staff didn’t even have to open the freakin’ window to work out that it was a tad dusty outside. That they couldn’t see through it might have been a hint.

It was all OK in the end because, as Robbo may have said, "as soon as air quality exceedences began to be recorded at air quality monitoring stations health alerts were automatically generated."

Of course, Robbo is a mega-brain so, perhaps, dust in the reporter’s ears resulted in a misquotation. Perhaps he was adopting No. 5 of this organ’s past advice.

Litigation is unlikely. Anyone affected by dust who had relied on the NSW Department of the Environment’s website would be pinged for contributory negligence. The letters "NSW" and the name John Robertson are all the evidence required for a successful government defence.

The Critic in Chief

2009-09-07T18:30:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow Obama will urge kids to stay in school!

On Thursday the President will remind Americans that peace is good and that fighting is bad.

Friday will be marked by Presidential confirmation of the deliciousness of apple pie, preferably still warm from the oven with a dollop of cream*.

The President also has said that The Wire is his favourite television program.

OK, some of this is made up. But the ABC has breathlessly reported that Obama will say that staying in school is good and it is advertising the multi-award winning and critically acclaimed television series, The Wire, with a Presidential endorsement.

What is he, Critic in Chief? Platitudinor in Chief?

Just as nobody should take Kevin Rudd seriously as an art critic, nobody should give a fig what Obama thinks is good television. And a motherhood statement from a President or Prime Minster doesn’t elevate it beyond the bleedin’ obvious.

Good grief.

*Not to be taken as a Presidential recommendation to eat pie, which may contain butter and traces of nuts, or cream. Butter and cream have been linked to heart disease, obesity and planetary warming.

The Glibertine is unwell (2)

2009-08-31T21:38:00.001-07:00

Shambling back up the hill, the white face I’d just seen floated before me. The skin beneath the make-up had been uneven, pitted below the zygomas, blotchy on the chin. How would she know the Glibertine? For that matter, how did Ronnie know she’d be there? Was I the only non-member of a Darlinghurst sect? Surely Glib, who, despite his dishevelment, I had pegged as a snob, wasn’t a card carrying member of Club Ugly.

You will understand, if I don’t disclose the Glibertine’s address. I’ve already revealed more than is prudent and I don’t want him to be leered at through windows or hounded by those who would judge him degenerate.

In keeping with the serendipity of the evening, the door opened just as my knuckles were about to strike the dark green paintwork. The Glibertine stood in the centre of the room and with the merest tip of his head acknowledged my arrival.

Welcome, my boy. It’s good of you to come.

I looked behind the door to find who had opened it but only saw an elephant’s leg, sprouting two canes, a golf umbrella and an ancient cricket bat.

Recovering myself, I advanced to him, hand extended. He waited for me to reach him fixing me with a look of indulgent bemusement. He was in black tie. The studs of his starched shirt appeared to be gold, his silk black bow was hand tied and his shoes buffed to a gloss.

Close your mouth, dear boy, you’ll start to dribble. He took my hand in his own, warm, dry and firm

Um, hello.

Yes, indeed. Hello. How apt and economical. Would you care for a drink? I’m having Manzanilla, I find Armagnac too much these days. I have most things.

He didn’t wait for an answer and walked behind a drinks trolley. I looked around the room. Book shelves from floor to ceiling on two sides. Lucite lamps on black side tables at either end of a five seater sofa, dark rugs on a herringbone parquet floor, large paintings, one landscape the other abstract, each side of the main central window below which was a desk, illuminated from the left by a modern floor reading lamp.

As he brought our drinks he motioned me to the sofa. He sat opposite me in one of a pair of exquisite chairs which appeared to be from the 1920s, with elegant curved wooden arms and a heavy square bases which fell evenly to the floor.

I thanked him again and sipped my drink, the sherry instantly drying what little moisture I had left in my mouth.

Where have you been?

I’ve been at dinner.

No, where have you been of late. Nobody has seen you. We all thought you were sick. And what are you wearing? And this place… it’s beautiful. What about the girl – she knew you and where you lived.

This place is my home. As for my dress, I’ve been to dinner. And I am quite well, thank you. I just haven’t been to the local for a while. You’ll have to be more specific about the girl.

I had nothing to say in reply. My mind was racing. The Glibertine - the man who wore pyjamas to the pub, the filthy hair, the yellow fingers, the confidant of hookers and the homeless. What had happened to him?

He sat back in his chair, saying nothing, and waited for me to recover my composure. His eyes never left my face as he reached into his inside jacket pocket and produced a tarnished silver cigarette case. The opened case was extended to me.

From it I liberated one, from among ten, of the most expertly rolled spliffs I had ever seen.

The Art Gallery of N$W

2009-08-30T17:51:00.000-07:00

Let us assume that the purpose of a publicly funded art gallery is to make art available to the public in an engaging manner without compromising the beauty or integrity of the art works on display.

Does the Art Gallery of N$W achieve this? Not on the evidence of several recent visits.

The permanent non-contemporary and Asian art collections are solidly, if uninspiringly, displayed. The Australian contemporary collection on the upper level is starting to look a bit tired and needs to be refreshed.

The presentation of modern art on the lower levels is appalling - an uncaring mess which cramps some fine work into awkward spaces and treats other, brilliant, work with disdain. The majority of work though, with some notable exceptions (mainly British), is tosh characterised by its inherent worthlessness and poor presentation.

Lighting has always been a problem at N$W. Patchy at best, in some cases, it actively detracts from the work displayed.

One example will suffice. Anish Kapoor’s Void Field (1989) (please note the title) consists of four waist high blocks of Nothumbrian sandstone each of which has been hollowed out. According to one of the few intelligible curatorial descriptions, the large discs atop each appear to be black velvet “but on close inspection are revealed as holes in the rock”. Indeed, they are. They appear as velvety menisci, impenetrable to the human eye. What’s more, after realising that the velvet discs are holes, the viewer gradually becomes aware that, “there are no apparent sides to the holes and there is no visible end to the space”.

Not at N$W. The block at the south western corner has been so indifferently lit that the interior of the stone is illuminated, utterly destroying the illusion and instantly detaching the viewer from the work’s magic.

Kapoor is a master of space and this treatment not only undermines the integrity of the work but its very reason for being. The illusion on which it relies has been destroyed. A disgrace.

That the security guard watched as a family disported themselves on the work to better grease the stones with body oils (and shoved recently French fried mitts into the holes) confirmed the apparent contempt with which N$W treats artist and patron - at least, those patrons who don’t think they’re at an amusement park.

Sensitive lighting is essential for the proper display of art. Does N$W employ professional lighting experts? That is, professionals expert in the illumination of art, rather than fashion shows or cocktail parties.

Leaving N$W at 4.00pm recently, further contempt for patrons was on display. The main entrance gallery was given over to a score of waiters setting up for dinner. Here the real preoccupation of N$W was revealed in all its corporate hideousness.

If you want to see public art, don’t waste your time in Sydney. Head to the public galleries of Melbourne, Brisbane or, better yet, North America - places which have not lost sight of their reason for being.

The Glibertine is unwell (1)

2009-08-25T21:09:00.000-07:00

It’s the darkness of my local I find most welcoming. Most pubs are bright enough for microsurgery but the Greenie is dim at the start of the night and keeps getting darker. The bar staff work the dimmer, gradually blunting the edge of the amphetamines. Theirs and the punters'.

By closing, the patrons almost look attractive. OK, normal.

Apart from darkness, a visit to my local is worthwhile for an audience with the Glibertine, though for several weeks he’s been absent. On Tuesday night, the babymaids confirmed he’d not been seen for a while. They didn’t seem to miss the wet end of his harangues, a mist of Irish and spittle.

Sandra, the St Vincent’s sister, grey from years of night shifts, said she’d not seen him for weeks. Nor had Ronnie, the former tart who’d only ceased to practise her profession when after 15 years of paying for it, Frank, a small, possumy client, proposed that he do so no longer. Instead he would look after her in his damp inherited terrace.

Why don’t you pop round and see him, love?, Ronnie suggested, whiskey and coke briefly glistening her septum before being channelled to her mouth along the smoker’s crenulations of her lip. To my surprise, I agreed.

Frank, who’d been sitting unnoticed in Ronnie’s lee, squeaked sketchy directions, punctuated for emphasis with wide eyed blinks. For a moment, I was paralysed by an image of him, pink fingered and toed, startled up one of Ronnie’s ample legs, pausing at knee for a whiskery twitch, and then on, possibly to safety.

I left.

Though it’s escaped much of the poncification of the Cross, Darlinghurst isn’t once what it was. Hookers and the detritus of drug use are on the decline but I kept my head down and walked fast down Liverpool to the Glibertine’s digs.

The darkness deepens outside the First Church of Christ Scientist. I knew this is where a single girl might stand, the texture of her face in shadow but the height of her hem illuminated by any car crawling back up the hill.

I still jumped when a woman stepped out from the shadows.

Wanna girl, darling?

She was close to me and stepped closer. Somewhere between 18 and 38. Thick powder with a red gash for lips. Very white. Very thin.

Sumfin special? Whatever you want.

She was beside me now, as I kept walking. I blurted out that I was late to meet a friend. She grabbed my elbow and we stopped.

You the bloke lookin for Doug? I frowned and looked at my shoes. Thought so. Ronnie called me.

The woman was waving a child sized telephone covered in stickers.

You come too far. She knew ya would. Back up there, to the right.

I thanked her.

No worries. Be good to Doug, right.

It wasn’t a request.

Just then, I felt very tired and out of my depth.

Speak for yourself

2009-05-27T23:05:00.000-07:00

This week 2 events exposed Australians as a bunch of thin skinned sooks. Apparently, poor Aussie men have been “vilified and shamed” by an advertisement for premature ejaculation. And then there’s our ridiculous overreaction to Sol Trujillo’s claim that this is a racist backwater trapped in the 1960s. Come on, cobber! The 80s, maybe, but the 60s!

In saying we’ve been vilified and shamed by these ads, the Advertising Standards Bureau has admitted that making love with Aussie blokes takes less time than soft boiling an egg. Trouble is, the ASB didn’t ask if it could admit this. Until the ASB blundered into the bedroom, most people thought the ad only applied to the skinny little bloke who starred in it. The ASB has done more damage to men’s egos than the ad ever could have achieved. But here’s some comfort. If you think about it, it was the complainant and the male members of the ASB who felt shamed and vilified. You can daw your own conclusion as to why. Nice one, fellas.

If Sol’s outburst made for good reading, the reaction was depressing. How easily Ostrayens were goaded into a response. He wanted to get a rise out of us and, oh boy, he did. Were some of us feeling extra sensitive because it came in the week the thickest thug playing any earthly sport called an opponent a black c***? Was it because we were embarrassed that some make-up on a stick babbling about fat and skinny wogs scored a squillion hits? If so, that’s worse.

Who gives a rat’s arseSol what Trujillo thinks of Australia? If a bloke you don’t respect criticises you, you shrug your shoulders and walk on. Mind you, if you’re black and someone calls you a black c***, you’re entitled to do whatever you want.

So, be cool Straya. If you’re a bit quick to the finish, practise, practise, practise. And if you’re easily offended by charges that your country is a racist backwater, you’re a thin skinned wimp. Or are you worried that there’s a grain of truth in the charge?

The path to redemption is steep. Unless you’re gifted and good looking.

2009-05-14T15:46:00.000-07:00

Poor old Johnsy. Amusing to mungos, one of the lads, married to a surprisingly articulate woman, possessed of a bob or too, on the tele and then, all of a sudden, shafted (poor choice of words, perhaps) by a Kiwi bird dug up by the ABC sisterhood.

Mind you, a few smacks around the nut and a trip OS(!) to play footy might cause a smarter man to act like he was invisible. How many an Aussie bloke on his first business trip has been one minute face down in a Thai hooker and the next awake, starkers, on a stained Bangkok mattress with no passport and a vague memory of a surprising appendage? Next thing Bruce knows, he’s nursing his conscience as tenderly as a Don-Muang pre-flight Bloody-Mary trying to remember where to get a blood test for cash.

Cleary Johnsy is no genius - if you’re going to cheat on your wife, perhaps doing it in front of 12 witnesses isn’t a good game plan. And here's the problem at the centre of THE GAME. The code of silence - the stock in trade of simpeltons the world over, from the police to the Freemasons. What goes on tour stays on tour. Ha, ha, wink, wink - or, in this case, wank, wank. Johnsy knew his exposure wouldn’t be exposed by his mates. But what kind of mates want to have sex together? None I know.

Annabel Crabb, damn her, has already nailed the homo-erotic weirdness at the heart of this tale. It’s been on display for some time. Long has The Footy Show been dripping in camp and man love. But this kind of tribal primitivism was described much earlier in the brilliant but deeply disturbing Alms for Oblivion Series by Simon Raven. In one novel, Fielding Gray (or was it Sabre Squadron?), Raven describes two men indulging in a competition of sexual prowess, in front of half their regiment, many of whom watch in silence, masturbating, solo or in expedient pairs.

What the hell has that public school creepiness got in common with the working mans’ game?

Let’s see how fast Johnsy gets back on the box. His better looking and more talented brother, Johns-e, was sent to Rugby League Coventry for an alarmingly short time.

Mind you, all he fucked in front of his mates was his brain.

Why? Just because!

2009-04-28T21:38:00.000-07:00

Robert Manne tells us that it’s not a question of what to believe but who to believe. However, if Robert Manne isn’t someone to be believed, we shouldn’t believe him when he tells us that. Should we?

How do we know that he’s someone to be believed? Maybe there’s someone else who can tell us that Robert Manne is someone to believe. But how do we know we can believe that person? Ask Robert Manne, perhaps?

I could go on in this tedious manner for some time.

The unwritten foundation for Manne’s argument is an assumption (or, dare I say, a belief) that he is one of the people we should believe. The logical lacuna in this argument is bigger than the hole left by the ice shelf falling off Antarctica.

The bottom line is that Manne is telling us that we needn’t worry our tiny minds with big issues. Instead, we should outsource our thinking to a big brain like him and the people he tells us we should believe.

Why? Because he’s one of the ones we can believe.

Just ask him.

Unbefreakinlievable!

Rudd's Vegetarian Dummy Spit (not in full)

2009-04-02T19:58:00.000-07:00

The Queen said
"Oh!"
And went to
His Majesty:
"Talking of the butter for
The royal slice of bread,
Many people
Think that
Marmalade
Is nicer.
Would you like to try a little
Marmalade
Instead?"

The King said,
"Bother!"
And then he said,
"Oh, deary me!"
The King sobbed,
"Oh, deary me!"
And went back to bed.
"Nobody,"
He whimpered,
"Could call me
A fussy man;
I only want
A little bit
Of butter for
My bread!"

AA Milne

AIDS, bollocks and the Pope

2009-04-01T19:49:00.000-07:00

Gliberty is an organ unlikely to express sympathy for Pope Benedict XVI but the increasingly unedifying attack on the vermilioned one is little more than vicious opportunism. Indeed, it’s down right cruel to kick an old man in a dress when he’s down. What’s more, there’s more than a whiff of condescension in the recent attacks.

Last month when flying to Africa the Pope spoke to journalists of the battle against HIV/AIDS, saying that AIDS, "is a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, and that cannot be overcome by the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems".

This statement has been summarised, in reports too numerous to cite, as "condoms makes AIDS worse". Plainly, the proposition that condoms makes AIDS worse is bollocks, indeed, bollocks so rank you wouldn’t find them in the mouth of any sane person. A point taken up by the increasingly evangelical Richard Dawkins who wonders, "on what basis anyone can say condoms make AIDS worse. The Pope is either (sic) stupid, ignorant or dim".

Whoa there Dick! Take hold of yourself. Let’s break down Il Papa’s statement.

Can AIDS be overcome by money alone? No.

Can AIDS be overcome by the distribution of condoms? No.

Does the distribution of condoms aggravate the problems of AIDS? No. But, hang on Dick, you’re a professor and all, so you’re smart enough to see why Benedict XVI, the Pope, the Pope of the Catholic Church, you know the bloke who believes he’s God’s representative on earth and His number one conduit to the masses, yes that bloke, the one who’s an octogenarian virgin, would say that, right?

You’re probably even smart enough to know that the Pope isn’t stupid, ignorant or dim, so what was he saying? May be he was saying in an overblown and poorly constructed sentence that distributing condoms alone might aggravate the problem of AIDS, say by making the epidemic last longer, because it focuses on a prophylactic (ha ha) approach and ignores education and the promotion of abstinence and fidelity. And even if you know promoting abstinence or fidelity won’t succeed, there’s little harm in their promotion, provided it doesn’t stop condom use.

Frankly Dick, your stridency and intemperate language are unbecoming and detract from your message.

And what does this sorry episode say for the West’s opinion of African intelligence? Just because an old virgin in a dress says that condoms might aggravate the problem of AIDS, will their use decline? Dawkins might accuse the Pope of stupidity but are he and the others who've lined up to kick the old bloke saying that Africans are stupid?

Africans are just as capable of identifying the Pope’s bollocks as super smart Europeans.

Have they read the poems?

2009-03-25T15:23:00.000-07:00

Nicholas Hughes, son of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, killed himself in Alaska. The New York Times asked a few old boilers and a couple of nonces to react. Two (one boiler, one nonce) rehashed the old chestnut that Hughes drove her to her death. Two others (boiler/nonce) wrote quite well about death and suicide. Most surprisingly one of the best pieces was by that aged boiler, Erica Jong. Wow, she must have improved since she feared flying and had sex with many dirty footed freaks. One boiler was so far up her own intellectual fundament she seemingly forgot the topic and babbled on in praise of Plath’s poetry, not even mentioning Nicholas. Read them if you must, but better yet, read the poems.

I defy anyone who has read The Bell Jar to conclude anything other than that Plath was (a) barking mad – hell, barking, flea scratching and butt sniffingly mad; (b) obsessed with her dead father well beyond healthy bounds; (c) severely depressed and (d) as far as it is ever possible to be, destined to suicide.

But it’s too easy to resort to that collection. Instead, try these for size, from Ariel (1965).

From Lady Lazarus:

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me.

And I am a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

Would a quote from Death & Co help? No need when there’s this, from Daddy:

I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

And from Edge:

The woman is perfected.
Her dead

Body wears the smile of accomplishment…

Nearly every poem in the collection features, death, skulls, bones, blood and blackness. She was married to Hughes at the time, so the charge could be that he made her this way, but Daddy, at least, suggests a pre-existing malaise.

The Birthday Letters (1998) does nothing to contradict this opinion as when Hughes writes of making a writing table for his wife (The Table):

…With a plane
I revealed a perfect landing pad
For your inspiration. I did not
Know I had made and fitted a door
Opening downwards into your Daddy’s grave.

Ted could be a miserable git too – his Crow poems are so depressing as to be almost unreadable. But, for this reader, The Birthday Letters most powerful message is that Ted Hughes loved Sylvia Plath.

The only people who know what goes on in a marriage are the parties to it. The rest is gossip and arid speculation. So, boilers and nonces, hold your tongues and judgment and revel in their language.

Perhaps the third boiler got it right after all.

The minutes of that MEETING OF THE MINDS, not in full

2009-03-24T20:22:00.000-07:00

The President of the United States has engaged in a Vulcan-like mind meld with Prime Minster Kevin Rudd. Here, in a world exclusive, Gliberty reproduces the last couple of pages of the Australian delegation's meeting minutes. Sadly, the rest is badly stained (mayonnaise?) and illegible. The good news is that the lost pages seem to relate to matters of protocol.

Mind 1: Wow, there’s a lot more room in here than I was lead to believe.

Mind 2: Oh boy! Mmmmm! MMMMMMmmmm!!

Mind 1: Hey, can you knock that off, it’s freaking me out.

Mind 2: Sorry.

Mind 1: It’s OK. Let’s stay focused.

Mind 2: Yes sir. First, I’d like to say, welcome aboard!! It’s great to have you in here and back in synch.

Mind 1: Whassat?

Mind 2: You’ve come back to the fold and I welcome you.

Mind 1: Look, buddy, did anyone tell you how this mind meet works?

Mind 2: Well, I just assumed we’d meet, in the mind, so to speak, and have a bit of walk around each other’s, you know, oohing and aahing at each others great stuff and you’d see that a lot of your stuff is much like mine…

Mind 1: Whatever. Can you just keep it down while I have a look? I want to be in and out of here as fast as I can and you’re kinda distracting me.

Mind 2: Oh. Ok. Can I just point out this idea over here? It’s one I had about isolating toxic debt. And over here is one I had about the need for better Australian like world wide financial regulation and this one is an idea I had that neo-liberalism and greed and a whole lot of other bad stuff, which are not my ideas, ha ha, caused the crisis. And here’s a beauty I had about Australia having a seat on the Security Council and that one over there is about China getting us out of this mess…

Mind 1: Look, I’ll say it one more time. Be quiet. Whoa! What’s that!?

Mind 2: I have no idea. I don’t know where it came from.

Mind 1: She’s pretty good looking. And she’s American! Where’d you see her? Looks like the inside of a club.

Mind 2: I have no recollection.

Mind 1: Sure. Do you know, surprisingly, I do have one question. Why are there no other women in here? I mean we’re both married but we all carry around a memory or two.

Mind 2: Um. Well. Here’s an idea I had for Australia being really very important in the Asian region and here’s an idea I had about me being Secretary General of the UN, after I’ve stopped being president of The Republic of Australia (that’s one of my ideas too). Hey, why are you squeezing your fingers on my neck…

Mind 1: I’m out of here.

(POTUS releases subject from Mind Meld)

VP Biden: Send in the next one?

POTUS: Sure. Anyone but Brown.

The green police, they live inside of my head The green police, they come to me in my bed The green police, they’re coming to arrest me

2009-03-22T19:28:00.000-07:00

A UK public company dismissed Mr Nicholson from his position as an environmental policy officer. But Mr Nicholson, who doesn’t fly, eat much meat or buy foreign food and spends a lot of time worrying about his waste, wasn’t taking this sitting down. He sued and at a preliminary hearing successfully argued that he can bring an action under the UK’s Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003 on the basis that his conviction that climate change is the world's most important environmental problem was a “philosophical belief” under the legislation.

It’s being hailed as a victory for a “green martyr”, a label which reveals another worm at the heart of the environmentalist bud. However, any green group claiming this as a victory is mistaken.

In the kind of delicious irony that the law occasionally produces, Mr Nicholson had to argue against the company’s submissions that his conviction was based on fact and science and therefore did not amount to a philosophical belief.

Mr Nicholson’s argument is consistent with believers of a religious stripe. You can’t use science or logic to criticise my position because it’s a belief. You see, belief has faith at its centre and faith is impervious to empirical ammunition.

Mr Nicholson, who sounds like my kind of bloke, hopes the decision sets a precedent that will support anyone who shares his views on climate change and the environment. But it looks like he didn’t read to the end of the regulations. The UK Equality Act of 1996 which amended the regulations to ensure that they were not confined to religious beliefs, also amended the definition of belief to include lack of belief. So, the law equally will protect from discrimination those who do not believe in climate change.

Mind you, if the funsters holding a conference at the University of the West of England have their way it won’t matter because unbelievers will be in the loony bin. Oh to have been a fly on the wall. Oh to have experienced the trio of Glastonbury based poets, Strange Sisters (do check them out, you won't be disappointed), who “attempt through … poetry to take you on a journey through fears, resistances and courage to the visions of hope that will sustain us”, all the while enjoying my locally produced or Fairtrade tucker. Resistances? What about courages? Who cares? At least I can draw comfort from the fact that my journey will sustain them.

If ever there’s a movement that’s captured the intellectual low ground, it’s one which resorts to faith for protection and attacks opponents with charges of psychological disorder.

The 80s. Or was it the 70s?

2009-03-11T21:27:00.000-07:00

There’s a lot of misplaced nostalgia for the 80s. Some elements were fantastic but, like any decade, there was a lot of shite. Do you who were there really miss any of the following?

Flaming drinks and the inevitable droplet shaped facial scabs.

Winged collars for black tie.

Young women’s hair sculpted into the shape of the male glans. Misogynist homosexual hairdressers chortled as they were paid to create a sea of bobbing knobs.

Any film with “Any Which Way” in the title.

Bob Hawke’s hair.

Bob Hawke.

Body shirts.

Nancy fucken Reagan.

The mere thought of Reagan fucking Nancy.

Taffeta gowns.

Oaked chipped chardonnay.

The beer strike.

Ian Chappell (a shite feature of any decade).

Smokey, the band.

Smokey the Bear.

Smokey and the Bandit.

Indeed, any 80s film starring Burt Reynolds.

Joh Bjelke Petersen. What a c**t!

That girl Deborah with the mind boggling over bite. Yikes.

So what’s the point of this? It’s a reminder that it’s what’s going on now that matters. Go forward. Move ahead. Try to detect it. It’s not too late.

Nostalgia sucks (as The Scotsman says) and seeking comfort in it is unwise because it's susceptible to the frailty of memory. Hell, it's quite possible half the things listed occurred in the 70s.

Nostalgia should be reserved for quiet nights at home in the company of a few old friends, a bottle of Sambuca and a lighter.

Dear MB

2009-03-04T21:00:00.000-08:00

Dear Merely Being,

As you built your reputation on quality, impartial advice and have inside access to the sage of the age, The Glibertine, you’re ideally placed to offer advice on the GFC and other confusing aspects of the modern world.

Will you, please?

Yours ever,

Rachel

Dearest Rachel,

You are right. I’ve eaten a lot of chicken.

I will.

Swooningly yours,

MB

Dear MB

When interviewed, why do pollies say, “Good to be with you”?

Regards

Leigh Sales

Dear Leigh,

It’s an abbreviation. The missing words are “Jeez it’d be…”

Yours,

MB

Dear MB,

Please ask The Glibertine what’s his current tipple.

Love,

Kingsley Amis

Kingsley, darling,

How sublime to be consulted by you on the topic of tipples. And from beyond the grave! It’s a thrill.

When flush and not banned from the venue, you can’t beat a Negroni from Will at the Bayswater Brasserie. He makes it with Punt e Mes. When you’re super flush, get him to make you one with Antica Formula Carpano.

By the way, you’d hate it around here. It’s all anti-booze, smokes and women loving blokes.

Glib

Dear MB,

My boyfriend has trouble communicating his feelings.

Yours sincerely,

Lady

Dear Lady,

Lady? Check his mouth for massive oral trauma or a gag.

Yours sincerely,

MB

Thin-skinned Aussies snub common sense

2009-02-22T23:32:00.000-08:00

My New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) states that to snub is to “rebuff, ignore, or spurn disdainfully” and goes on to define the noun as “an act of showing disdain or a lack of cordiality by rebuffing or ignoring someone or something”.

The same weighty tome reveals that inherent in “disdain” is an element of contempt or superiority in the mind of the person expressing disdain. All pretty clear. Not at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation which has it arse about and thinks that inherent in “disdain” is a feeling of inferiority or a perception of the snubber’s contempt in the mind of the snubbee.

Today the Motion Picture Academy snubbed Aussies. Oh My God! Some of us were snubbed! By Americans!

Turns out some Australians didn’t win a prize. Perhaps it was based on the Academy’s view of what was meritorious? Or does the ABC think so little of Australian cinema that it assumes disdain for its participants?

The Budgie, Mr Kidman and even AC/DC have already been snubbed by those awful Americans this year!

Did Lindsay Tanner really deny snubbing the Reserve Bank, as claimed by the ABC?

The Age is at it too. Some aged rockers were recently snubbed but, horror of horrors, this time we snubbed ourselves!

The capital’s organ claims Red Gillard and the Commonwealth Government snubbed the entire nation and government of Japan. Sure, Red isn’t a diplomat but, though he’d snub anyone else who went to Nambour High, Chucky Rudd was, so it seems unlikely the Commonwealth would snub its biggest trading partner. And so it turns out. It merely refused a request from Japan that a ship not be allowed to dock here.

What does this say of the opinion of the national psyche held by many in the media? By using “snub” these media outlets seek to appeal to some emotion in Australians that would make us read their publications. Inferiority.

Something is inferior - the media’s conduct, or at least its usage of the language it purports to employ.

Robbo! R-o-o-o-bo!

2009-02-18T20:14:00.000-08:00

For the last several months there hasn’t been a lot of activity on Robbo’s parliamentary website (see adjacent Genius Thy Name is Robinson). In fact, there’s been none. But Robbos’ been sweating it out in the caravan in his singlet and undies, two finger typing an update to let us know of his elevation (that means “promotion”, Robbo) to the Ministry (that’s all those blokes and lady blokes who meet in that room with the big table).

Sadly he hasn’t been in the news much either. Probably been too busy hooking up the new gas bottles or hanging out at the shower block canvassing opinion on the wisdom of introducing soap on a rope to prisons. “Hmmm…no more bending, you say”.

He’s in the news now. Premier #!!*%!#, says Robbo can’t be expected to work in a caravan park. And he’s right. Carnies are distracting enough at the best of times, but when you’re a special Minister of State and you’ve got to do all that reading, the thunk of stubby on cranium from the next van must be intolerable.

However, it’s not the van that’s the problem, it’s the van’s location.

The solution is obvious and the parallels of history make it not only the best but the right solution at the right time.

During the last great depression the Domain was a haven for homeless men. So I say, let’s sell off the Parliamentary Annex to the developers and issue all our representatives with a nice van up on chocks in the Domain. The budget bottom line will be boosted, the pollies would be setting us an example of frugality and we’d all benefit from the resurgence of the indomitable spirit of the ‘30s.

My only question is - Why hasn’t Robbo thought of this already? He’s smart enough to think of this all on his own.

Shocked by home invasion

2009-01-19T17:50:00.000-08:00

What has happened to the world? How low have standards fallen? A man’s not safe to read the newspaper in the privacy of his own home without the intrusion of theft and violence.

The story of robbery and pet murder shocked many Australians this week. I was as outraged as the next man to read of the death of a Welsh budgerigar at the hands of merciless home invaders. I mean, Welsh! If I don’t give a rat’s about the Welsh, why would I give a fig about their pets?

But after my initial outrage subsided, certain details in the story began to chafe. Not only did real mystery lie at the heart of the tale, there was much to be taken from it. Perhaps the editors weren’t filling the papers with worthless bilge. Maybe they too had detected magic in the story and their inky brains had cunningly anticipated the excellence of reader responses.

And what magic there is.

What price a Welsh woman’s soul that a budgie should be her soulmate (sic)?

Sure, the elderly woman was traumatised, but spare a thought for the door, said to have been insecure before the robbery.

The diligence of the Welsh constabulary in ensuring the international circulation of the wanted men’s description is to be admired (in their 20s and wearing dark beanies). Amateur sleuths may think it implausible that Cardiff robbers during winter wore so little.

But the deepest mystery lies in the behaviour of the Welsh biddy. Oh, yes, she played for sympathy with her “trauma”, deep “upset” and so called “elderliness” and, no doubt, many were appalled at her terrifying fate - being pushed back into her comfy chair - but if she was so upset why would she pay the “thieves” 50 quid more than they asked for?

If I was a Cardiff copper I’d be looking for a contract killing.

As ever, Australian readers’ comments give one confidence in the nation’s future. Pick any at random but a few favourites:

R of Adelaide goes for the jugular with: And guess what, these guys don't care a bit and will actually hurl insults at the majority of us who are disgusted.

Ouch!

Anne of Maitland looks us in the pocket and appeals to the famous Aussie generosity that saw us unselfishly respond to the Asian Tsunami: How do we as people donate moeny to this lady as not only did she have to go through this she lost her money which was properably very hard for her too? So come on people dont just read HELP

Thanks, Anne, for starting the collection with a sixpence and some pocket lint.

Paul Mcneilly shows real insight and more than a working familiarity with bird brains - As a professional working in grief counselling the lady must know her budgie would never want her to be upset . A budgie can love and be loved unconditionally . This is one case where I would offer the lady a replacement bird , not the same but would help her grieve . As for the thugs who were responsible I am convinced the budgie had more courage than those low life . I hope they go to jail with broken backs to feel the pain they inflicted on a defenceless but dearly loved living creature .

Thanks Paul. Thanks a lot. Then again, how did you know she was a professional grief counsellor and who are you to say she wouldn't want the same one, with it's little feet sticky taped to the perch?

Can it be true?

2009-01-12T18:13:00.000-08:00

I didn't get everything I wanted for Christmas but the possible elevation of John Robertson helped ease the pain of disappointment.

At last!

2008-10-19T19:22:00.000-07:00

Oh happy days! Gliberty’s favourite public figure has nominated to take a seat in the Upper House of the News South Wales Parliament. John Robertson, certificated genius and all round great guy, will add some much needed intellectual rigour to current political discourse.

He and that other potential giant of the Australian political landscape, Nathan #&%@##! Rees, are bound to feature often in these pages.

Mr #&%@##! wasted no time in challenging Mr Robertson to a race to become the smartest man in politics when he warned rail unions that if they didn’t improve their work practices their bosses would be sacked.

Brilliant!

An interview with Professor Garnaut

2008-07-04T07:18:00.000-07:00

Professor Garnaut thank you for joining us.

Good for you to be with me.

Err… indeed. Your report on climate change…

The GARNAUT report on climate change.

I beg your pardon?

It’s the GARNAUT report on climate change.

That’s what I said.

No, you said, “your report on climate change”.

Of course, but you are Professor Garnuat and is it not your report?

Yes, I am. I am PROFESSOR ROSS GARNAUT. And it’s MY report. Didn’t you see the cover?

I did.

Looks good doesn't it?

Yes, lovely. Tell me, why didn't you only publish the report on-line? A lot of paper must have been used in printing so many copies of the report.

But there wouldn't have been a cover!

Quite. Your report says…

The GARNAUT report says…

As you wish. The Garnaut report says that…

You’re not quite getting it. It’s like playing a wind instrument. First, one must inhale, deeply, and, then, as you come to “Garnaut” one must exhale from the lower diaphragm, much in the manner of a member of the brass section before undertaking a particularly important and vital phrase of the piece. A trumpeter, for example…

A first trumpet? A solosit, perhaps?

Quite so. One inhales, deeply, and then exhales with great force as one speaks, with emphasis all on the initial word of the title. Like so, “the GARNAUT report on climate change”. After all, with a subject as complex and diabolical as this, it’s important we get the basics right. For how can we get the policy right if we can’t even understand the most important factor at the heart of the report? The report upon which the country's future depends.

And the most important factor at the heart of the report, I’m sorry, of the GARNAUT report…

…on climate change

Yes, the GARNAUT report on climate change, upon which the whole nation depends, the most important factor at the heart of which... is?

ROSS GARNAUT, Professor.

Professor Garnaut, we’re grateful for your time.

Yes. You are.

Our Fonzie

2008-06-19T20:57:00.000-07:00

Do you remember the Happy Days episode when Fonzie had to admit he was wrong? Well, old timer, at least do you remember Happy Days?

Anyway, the Fonz stood there trying to get the words out, “I was wr… . I was wrrr…. Wrr… rrrrrr….” Eventually he gave up and stormed off, with or without a flick of the collar of his leather jacket – I don’t remember.

He couldn’t do it. After all, he was Arthur ‘the Fonz’ Fonzarelli and he was never w-w-wro…

Kevin Rudd is very relaxed, so he keeps telling us, but even he might admit that he’s not cool. Hell, he’s not even cool as Richie. He certainly isn’t the Fonz.

Yesterday in Parliament, our relaxed Prime Minister channelled the Fonz when he refused to admit he was “wr..ooo …o” over having mistaken an inflation target.

It was as cringe making and revealing. Had he just apologised and said the number had momentarily popped out of his mind he would have got a ribbing but nobody would have given a fig. Some might have found his candour refreshing. Instead, the lipless one squirmed and scuttled and obfuscated and showed himself to be vain and weak. His behaviour was w-r-o-n-g.

As the Fonz would say, “Not cool, Cunningham. Not cool.”

No escape

2008-05-05T21:50:00.000-07:00

An intelligent acquaintance declared that the difference between those on the right and left of politics is that the former don’t trust individuals to act responsibly. He was and remains incorrect.

It is the left which doesn’t trust individuals and increasingly seeks to micromanage our lives. It was on the left’s watch that the British nanny state became entrenched. It is under centre left rule that a NSW minister has been empowered to use subordinate legislation to declare that you (but not your neighbour in the next suburb) can’t drink alcohol in your living room. And it’s the same flavour of government which prevents citizens from going to more than one nightclub per night, outlaws plastic shopping bags and all but bans smoking.

It’s not only new laws and, their unchecked nasty little brother, regulation, which threaten individual liberty. The cities are infected with correct thinking which allows this to happen. As Mill noted, protection against the tyranny of authority is not enough, “there needs protection also against tyranny of prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct”.

It is the comparatively well educated members of society who have acquiesced in, and in many cases encouraged, government intrusion into corporate and private life to the extent that few question the wisdom of state regulation of “junk” food advertising, compulsory exercise regimes, the size of car you’re allowed and what you do in your living room.

As those who govern accumulate greater power to wield against us for our own good, flight from society increasingly appeals. Though the tentacles of regulation reach all communities in this Commonwealth, at least running away will help those of us who choose to drive a 4WD home from the pub via the kebab shop, have extra chicken salt on our chips and finish off with a smoke avoid detection. That is, unless you retreat too far, to our most remote communities, where nothing is permitted and everything is tolerated.

Running away will also provide escape from the too frequent intrusion of the kind bien-pensant non-thinking that refuses to question, even for the sake of debate, whether there is a causal link between global warming and human economic activity, or which has led my local authority to erect street signs declaring that its ratepayers inhabit a nuclear free zone*. Woe betide the nation which dares to incinerate Ashfield with a thermo-nuclear device in defiance of those abundant warnings!

Mr Rudd came to power promising new thinking. The extent to which this new thinking represents old left orthodoxies and, more importantly, the extent to which Mr Rudd will accept valid criticism and make necessary adjustments, will be the real test of the man and the government.

The test for us will be the degree to which we are prepared to challenge new orthodoxies and insist that the smugly self-satisfied justify the intellectual and moral superiority they draw from their uncritical parroting of accepted wisdom.

If all else fails, I’ve got a spare room in my remote bunker. Just bring whiskey and a few cartons of smokes.

* Did the council remember to inform local radiographers they are no longer welcome?

Night time in the switching yard

2008-03-17T20:30:00.000-07:00

The secretary of Unions NSW, John Robertson, believes that as Sydney’s transport problems are so bad, workers should be paid for the time they spend commuting.

To facilitate productivity during this time, governments should pay for wireless internet connections to be installed on trains to enable white collar workers to work while commuting.

This is a brilliant plan and long overdue. But does it go far enough?

No, it does not.

It is suspected the many collateral public policy benefits of Robertson’s suggestion may have escaped even his capacious intellect.

It’s discriminatory

Blue collar workers must not miss out.

Trains should be fitted with metal shops, work benches and tools. Hydraulic lifts for mechanics are also needed.

Long trains are excellent venues for outside workers, such as dog walkers and personal trainers, to put their charges through their paces.

What about the professionals?

If they lined the seats up to face the same way and replaced route maps (which won’t be needed – see below) with a few whiteboards, teachers could conduct classes. After all, the kids are already on the trains.

Small courts must be constructed to enable litigants, lawyers and members of the judiciary who live in the same area to do their bit to knock over the depressingly long civil list on the way to the office.

Surgeons could conduct elective surgery and the already bright lighting would afford dental hygienists the opportunity to de-scale and polish en route to the surgery.

Waiting times for justice and health care will be reduced at a stroke.

What about housing?

Sure, Robertson is onto something identifying the time spent by workers commuting, but is he addressing the root cause of all this commuting?

No, he is not.

The real evil is the housing affordability crisis which pushes workers out to the city fringe forcing them to commute in the first place.

However, at the price of some bunks, an ablutions carriage or two and a few dining cars (why should chefs not work while they ride), the state would be providing accommodation for the price of a season ticket.

With work and living facilities on the train, commuting would be obviated. The new trains then could be shunted to switching yards where the wheels would be removed. Not having all that rolling stock moving around will save energy and help us win the battle against global warming.

It’s all in a morning’s work for Mr. John Robertson, secretary of Unions NSW and future Nobel laureate.

I’m no wowser, but…

2008-03-10T18:11:00.000-07:00

Never trust a bloke who says he’s trustworthy. The second biggest liar I ever met said to me on my first day at the company where he was a senior executive, “I’m honest”.

I was grateful for this admission, as he immediately marked himself as warranting close scrutiny. And so it was later confirmed - he was unethical, corrupt and a liar and I was delighted to play a not insignificant part in his dismissal, defeat in the courts, deportation and, for the sake if his long suffering wife, divorce.

We’ve all previously heard and, most likely, adopted the same self-exculpatory formulation:

I’m no homophobe, I even live in Sydney, but…

I’m not racist, some of my favourite food is foreign, but…

Well, I don't stand before you as some sort of saint. Never have, never will do. But…

I mean, I'm no wowser on this sort of stuff. I mean, everyone likes to go out and have a good time, good on them. But…

Experience dictates that the safest way to interpret such language is to treat the word “but” as reversing the polarity of all that has gone before. That is, the reader should conclude the opposite of what has been claimed and, in turn, read the word “but” as “and”.

Applying this to the last two sentences we are rewarded with:

Well, I’m a saint and I’m going to make you behave a little more like me…

I mean, look at me, I’m a wowser and I’m going to dictate how young people spend their recreation time…

Who would have thought we could enjoy the style of government enjoyed by the British without leaving the sun.

Big Words by Lord Black of Crossharbour

2007-12-12T20:37:00.000-08:00

"It was hilarious," said a former Fairfax worker yesterday.

"We'd go down to the Fairfax annual general meeting, record his speeches that would go on forever, and then we'd all run back to the office and get out our dictionaries.

"Most of the words we'd never heard of before, but they all existed even though they hadn't been used for 100 years."

To prologise - gadzooks!

One does not expect perpetual encomia when one confronts peripeteia involving incarceration but, really, the peons are getting above themselves. I could understand insubordinate compositors but for wordsmiths to oppugn my linguistic felicity is extraordinarily odious. In what times have we arrived when it’s hopelessly optative for me to assume comprehension when speaking to persons in their native tongue? During peroration, all too quickly do the functionally illiterate cry grandiloquence.

Let’s be clear here, I’m not being accused of verbosity or prolixity but of the sin of learning and if crapulent mediocrities can’t understand me, I say the fault lies with them. I trust you will not think it rodomontade to point out that I have written well received biographies of Nixon and Roosevelt when the best these half-wits have knocked out is 500 heavily edited words on a collision between a small goods pantechnicon and a Peta protest. That story writes itself! But to capture on page the essence of quixotic FDR or mercurial Nixon is as elusive and fraught as the conjugal right.

No doubt the jaundiced hacks will beat timbrels as conveyed by tumbrel I commence incarceration. But armed with Roget and several years, my revenge will be exhaustive, if lacking concision.

Flightmares*

2007-12-10T22:29:00.000-08:00

Those boxes in the weekend magazines or the appalling Australian Financial Review magazine in which jetsetters relate their travel secrets:

Name: Earnest Most

Position: Vice President, Excellence**

Preferred carrier and seat: QANTAS, because they know me! 1A - in the event of an accident I like to know I’ll be the first atomised.

Most frequent destination: Singapore. The place really works and I just love sweating. It’s wonderful to see how the ethnic Chinese treat anybody who is not ethnically Chinese.

Hotel: The Fullerton. It’s very expensive but its close to the office, has really cosy rooms, is great for working and has a super bar where drinks are 5 times more expensive than outside.

Never fly without: I always work on the plane so I never forget my laptop, adaptor and Bose noise cancelling headphones. Some people say I am a gullible fool for buying the headphones but I say, Sorry, are you talking to me?

Tips: Don’t drink too much when flying or you might forget to work. Haggle! The locals really enjoy it and you could end up with a bargain!

As a one time Platinum QANTAS, Gold Kris and blah, blah, blah member here’s the truth about international travel in any class. It’s shite.

Practical advice:

Always watch the safety demonstration so you remember to forbid your children from being hosties.

To meet Asian hosties, leave your business card on your seat. To meet Australian hosties, cash.

Passengers who work on flights are invariably tossers.

Consuming 2 large valium and 3 martinis before boarding is a great way to meet people during the flight but less helpful in an emergency evacuation.

They’re not called hosties anymore.

Waitress in the Sky is still the best song about hosties, by far.

American hosties have no sense of humour. Nor do Singaporean, German, French, Dutch, Japanese, British or Australian ones.

If you give hosties a hard time, they will wipe your teabag round the bowl.

Don’t eat the food unless it comes in tamper proof packaging.

People who don’t drink on the flight are wasting their time (and money).

Lest departure be delayed, drug your children after take off.

Don’t tuck in your 1st class jammies.

Mr. Bean is no funnier at altitude.

1st class jammies tend to bunch and creep. Pull out before heading through cabin.

Other people’s children are best avoided on the ground and threatened in the air.

If you see a morbidly obese man when checking in, he will have frequency and be sitting next to you.

The hostie call button is there to be used. Don’t be shy!

* Not to be used as a nickname for QANTAS hosties.

** This is a real job title.

Age shall not weary some of us

2007-12-06T20:58:00.000-08:00

Please remain clam, but, according to a host of books, if you look out the window you’ll notice society under threat from marauding packs of adults who refuse to grow up.

It’s hard not to panic when, at any time, you could be run over by fifty year olds on skateboards, but you are urged to stay focused and read on.

Even the Archbishop of Canterbury has concerns about dysfunctional infant adults, apparently the product of non-caring childhoods. Perhaps their parents were busy playing Twister.

We’re told to look at the alarming trends – more American adults between 18 and 49 watch the Cartoon Network than CNN. What’s more, there’s been a rise in the “obscene popularity” of toys and video games among adults.

Oh, come on! Toys? Obscene?

Maybe I’ve been playing Xbox on ganja too much to notice this latest threat to civilization (#3255, I believe). I have seen a few school mums who dress like their daughters. The only threat they pose is to dignity. Mind you, if you squint your eyes really, really tightly, some of them look pretty good.

And, thanks all the same, I’ll take SongeBob over the Late News and Even Stevens over Californication any day.

Where’s the evil?

We’re not talking about Oskar Matzerath from The Tin Drum – an adult in a child’s body, born with all his intellectual faculties intact and who deliberately stopped growing (I always thought in protest at how disgustingly badly adults behave – his mother’s adultery with her first cousin, for example) and later became a criminal.

On the whole, we’re talking about adults who have evolved as society allows. If you create a nanny-state you end up with a society of babies. If you diminish the importance of individual responsibility why should adults act responsibly?

If the relevance of tradition and social mores has been eclipsed by the rise of rights without concomitant duties, we can all damn well do what we like until we run up against a law. With no authority or guide but the state, we might as well make the most of the free space between it and the individual while we still can.

But this isn’t really about adult irresponsibility. It’s about jealousy, conformity and prosperity.

We're talking about adults who have the resources and time to disengage from real world concerns and indulge in the distractions which modern society has created. If the dude in board shorts at parent teacher night pays his taxes and discharges his responsibilities, it’s nobody’s business but his if he wants to don children’s clothes, play frisbee and spend his time pissed. This makes the guardians of culture uneasy and this "concern" is really about the snootiness and insecurity of the self-appointed intelligentsia.

Around 1890 Wordsworth wrote that the world is too much with us. The intervening century certainly has not made the world less present. Creepy little anti-establishment bugger though he was, those alarmed about the alleged rise of immature adults couldn’t find Oskar’s disengagement uninformed. Could it be that, while some adults indulge themselves childishly because they can afford to do so, others just want to get away from it all?

As ever, I’m talking my lead from poetry and rock ‘n roll.

Keef is only going to stop rocking when he croaks and Led Zep expose the young pretenders as, well, pretenders. As a Welsh drunk wrote:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light...

Well done us!

2007-12-02T20:53:00.000-08:00

The world has watched in awed wonderment as Australia changed government without a single drop of blood being shed!

Congratulations to us all!

Every foreigner is smarting with envy at our grace, civility and maturity. The Chinese people I was entertaining on election night were dumbstruck that Mr. Howard should pass the baton to Mr. Rudd without first beating him around the bonce with it a few times and applying a swift knee to the goolies on the way down.

Sure, there was some initial confusion as I explained the concept of an election to my communist visitors. Oh no, no, Mr. Hu, the word I am using is election! How we laughed! But, they understood soon enough and the look on their faces could only be described as deep admiration.

While I was at it, I took the opportunity to explain to my guests that Australians aren’t just good at peaceful exchanges of power - we have many things to be proud of. For example, I explained, we buy our groceries. In most countries, those that actually have food, citizens steal them – often at the point of a gun. I told the delegation that Australians, as peaceable people, queue patiently to buy comestibles which we pay for with “money”, a kind of exchangeable token of little inherent value.

And you know what else?, I asked Mr. Hu and his colleagues as they stood before me, mouths agape, shaking their heads in disbelief, We’re really very good at sport too, as you will see in Beijing.

I could see they were at once impressed and a little worried.

What a country we have! What a people we are!

FEKR Association - December Newsletter

2007-11-21T22:03:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the end of year newsletter of the Former Employees of Kevin Rudd Association.

Things look bleak. For years we’ve clung to the hope that we would be vindicated and Chucky caught out. It seems this is not to be.

Frankly, each of us has failed*.

Chucky not only has a multi-millionaire wife, apparently normal children, massive superannuation from the Queensland Government and, most likely, the prime ministership, he has proved, truly, that Chucky cannot die.

We know Chucky doesn’t have the strength of character to do the job and will soon be exposed as the brittle, conceited, vindictive and odious little man he is. The good (?) news is that, quite soon, everybody will know.

Asian and European debt markets continue to tighten and the true scale of US bad loans is unknown. Bad times are on the way. The combination of international events and the inability of Team Chucky to cope means that, late in the first term, the pressure will tell and Chucky will crack.

Will he again be found under his desk whimpering and sucking the corner of his hanky?

We can only hope that Red Gillard will get a snap of it on her mobile phone for sharing.

At the end of the life of the Association, I urge all members to continue to provide mutual support. Thanks to all who answered the call to talk Dwayne down from the top of the Executive Building after the national media failed to ask Chucky a hard question at Labor’s cringingly parochial campaign launch.

Please join us on December 20th, for the last time, at Association headquarters to sink a few VBs (XXXX is out as Chucky had one (yes, one, surprise, surprise) on Cup Day) to give comfort to each other and to recite our creed:

We are the FEKRs but Chucky is the one true fecker.

*Sorry if, notwithstanding the lack of expletives, that phrase caused you shiver inducing flashbacks to your time working in the Queensland Government.

Where’s a benevolent dictator when you need one?

2007-10-24T17:58:00.000-07:00

Attention is called to the health of our civil society, the strength of the polity and the engagement of the citizenry in the democratic process. After all, there’s an election on.

How does one place a finger on society’s political pulse to determine which issues furrow the commuter’s brow? Hitting the streets would lead to undesirable physical contact with Mr. and Mrs. Citizen and watching television, exposure to harmful mediocrity waves.

In the information age, electronic organs of record can help us keep in touch with the Zeitgeist. So, to illustrate the current affairs which most interest Australians, here is a list of the 10 most popular stories from the http://www.news.com.au/ website yesterday (and a helpful summary of each).

Man levitates outside the Whitehouse –Yogic flying in the no fly zone.

I love The Chaser, says TT host – A cry for mercy destined to fall on smug, deaf ears.

Idol's Dicko canned by US critics – That’s Dicko, people.

Mum cleared of killing babies - Surely that should read “Woman cleared…”?

Schoolgirl, 11, smashes record – ...after mistaking it for a very thin Frisbee.

Local whiz speeds up broadband... – Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Dannii and Shaz in TV 'bust-up' – Minor Minogue fails to pass sugar to Mrs. Prince of Darkness.

Prices jump, rate rise coming – A misprint?

Five years' jail for digital rape – Most readers clicked this looking for digital images (and not of a digit).

Falzon 'stronger' after Sonny – From repeatedly lifting him against the lavatory wall, perhaps?

Careful analysis reveals two indisputable facts. First, a hard news story snuck in at number 8. Second, we do not deserve the vote.

An American friend was recently bailed up by an elderly bore. American, are you?, he enquired. People get the government they deserve, you know.

My friend was too polite to raise the obvious retort: Actually, aged dipshit, I think you mean, 50% of the people get the government they deserve.

However, in the light of this research, the aged one may have been more prescient than he could have imagined.

In case you’re wondering if the popular stories list was an aberration, further research today reveals that “Man levitates outside the Whitehouse” is now the most and the fourth most popular story. So, things are looking up.

Voluptocracy

2007-10-22T22:35:00.000-07:00

All human life is a genetically driven struggle for sex and protein. For these 2 things we’re viscerally compelled to strive, to compete. We have no choice in the matter. And yet, our, so called, rational minds have come to view government, business and even recreation through the lens of self-denial.

Fiscal conservatism is another name for stinginess. Efficiency is code for repression. A healthy lifestyle is cipher for a miserable pulse munching subsistence. Those new alcohol guidelines - a conspiracy of the pious, the temperate and the insufferably meek.

The Glibertine turned his head slightly, Oi, Merely, your push.

Taking this as her opportunity to escape the Glibertine’s halitosic, red-eyed rant, the babymaid scampered to the other end of the bar. He shifted his glaze in my general direction.

What we need is government by the fat. No, f*ck that, by sensualists. Hell, yes, what the world wants is sensualist rule.

Those poor Islamists. Do you know why they want to kill us? Because they’re jealous of all the sex and meat we get. They’re jealous that our civilization has better realised the promise locked within our genetic coding. In their minds we loll on beaches, men and women, in a mass meat-greased grope, sucking icy beers and licking drugs from between the natural folds of virgin skin. But we know that’s not true. We know we’ve not yet reached that Arcady. There’s much more to do!

To anybody watching, it would have seemed unlikely that the grey mullet masquerading as the Glibertine’s tongue had ever ventured past his browned fangs to traverse any skin but his own, yet his eyes shone with the light of truth.

The Islamists don’t respect us because we’re equivocal about our freedoms. Because we try to see their side, to view things from their arid perspective, they see us as weak, as having no confidence in our way of being. Bugger perspective! I say, let’s rededicate ourselves to ourselves. Let us show them how deeply we cherish our indulgences, our gluttonousness and our wanton lusts.

Our leaders will be voluptuaries, one and all. This new system of government will be voluptoccray. Henceforth the parliament shall be the Pleasure Dome. We’ll rid it of that dreadful Spartan native timber and procure furnishings befitting our decadence – cushions and the like, really comfy ones, rich brocades, velvets and silks. As they recline and govern, the voluptuaries will be served sweetmeats, sherbet and betel from trays of beaten relic gold. We’ll turn down the lights and get rid of the cameras, other than the feed to Al Jazeera.

The Glibertine drained an Irish and turned his back to the bar. He surveyed the dimly lit room, packed with punters laughing and drinking with admirable purpose.

He outstretched his arms and threw back his head in celebration, This is what we do best! Join with me, brothers and sisters, in love and desire. Hold my hand and together we’ll draw a generously proportioned crease in the sheets. The demarcation between our civilizations will be stark. Voluptocracy here, theocracy there. We will truly live as we were meant to live. We will fight and love and eat and drink and we will deeply inhale. We will lick and suck and nibble. We will use all our resources to scour the earth for protein and pleasures. We will draw to us disciples of the true way.

And, when the opium cloud lifts, we will find the world in our lap, entwined in an exhausted, sweet afterglow, Civilization’s sensory circuitry pulsing the last pleasure packets to the endings of the earth.

We will be as one and, most importantly, have won.

The proxy pratfall

2007-10-02T22:38:00.000-07:00

I give a lot of advice, for 3 reasons. I know a lot of stuff, am always available and don’t charge.

The advice is trusted because it’s confined to limited areas of expertise. Don't ask me about habit breaking or organic gardening. Do ask what to read or drink or where to drink and read (The Warren View beer garden on a spring afternoon).

Choose your expert carefully. No diplomatic advice from Dr Mahathir. No medical tips from Tomkat.

Don’t look to Kate Moss for anything other than the clothes she wears and all you should ask of Pete Doherty is fewer hats, though, if he could see his way clear, a gram would be triffic. Fanks, Pete. Preciate it.

Having said that, it’s absolutely right to look to footballers, models and rock stars for guidance on how to live. Indeed, society should demand that footballers get dribblingly pissed before driving high powered automobiles. We should delight when sportsmen violently compete for the dimmest girlfriend. Let's applaud minor celebrity sex in public conveniences and honour supermodels for snorting lines on camera. By the way, what about a little understanding? They’ve got to suppress their appetites some how.

You may not watch them, but I say rejoice every time a B-list narcissist abases themselves on the internet, indulging in what, in this century, passes for sex. But for them, there goes (or comes) someone you may really care about.

Who still thinks it would be a good idea to cruise for oral relief on Hollywood Blvd after Divine attended Hugh? What politician still relies on the discretion of a high-class madam (a wonderful oxymoron, that) or indulges in the toilet two-step?

If, after Paris, Pam, Eva, Britney, Dannii and the lesser Macpherson, your sister can be persuaded to let her boyfriend video them in bed, maybe she deserves the humiliation. And if you haven’t learned from these incidents, when you get caught in the boss’s office with bourbon, Bouncy Betty and a bong, you do too.

You can take that advice from one who should know.

Minutes of the Liberal Party leadership meeting in full

2007-09-18T23:52:00.000-07:00

Yes, that wimp Merely Being is absent still. Lucky I am here to reveal, in full, the minutes of the Liberal Party's recent leadership meeting.

My friend Roger McGough, a poet of some promise, was there to record it.

The Leader

I wanna be the leader
I wanna be the leader
Can I be the leader?
Can I? I can?
Promise? Promise?
Yippee I'm the leader
I'm the leader

OK what shall we do?

That Beattie retirement press conference in full

2007-09-17T20:35:00.000-07:00

You stand here before me humble and grateful, your Premier.

This is not the time to reflect on the many successes and proud achievements I’ve had in my time as Queensland’s leader. It’s for others to judge the scale of those.

As I said during the audience I gave that ABC chap, I’m far too modest to sing my praises.

And now’s not the time to talk of any errors made by my colleagues. Hell, they’ve made mistakes. I’m the first to admit that.

If I am really honest, maybe I’ve been too honest. But that’s me - warts and all. Well, not warts, just minor excrescences, really, quite normal for a man my age.

Look, I'm not perfect. But nor was Jesus.

I am who I am and I'm sure many biographers will tell the truth - the unvarnished and unperfumed truth – about me and the many battles I’ve won for the people of Queensland.

This is God’s country up here, now I’ve finished with it. I am proud of Queensland and, let’s be honest about this, I’m proud of God. We've had our differences but he does some good work. I'm the first to admit that and I make no apologies for God or for Queensland.

Right, who wants to help me push these trolleys down to Cabinet?

Love and dignity

2007-09-12T20:54:00.000-07:00

I hate you being in love, said the Glibertine. Thank god I am here to persuade you to give it up. There's no dignity in love for you.

Flushing, I started to defend myself but the Glibertine continued, leaving me with lips parted, as if waiting to receive a withdrawn kiss.

You shuffle around, head down, squeezing out whimpers. Your shoulders are slack, eyes dull. And you’re unreliable about drinking. One minute you’re complaining about depression, the next backstroking across 4 martinis just off world pace. All I ask from a consumpanion is consistency. How did you get yourself into such a state?

While he paused to draw breathe, I took my chance.

Sure, there’s no dignity to be found in martinis 3 to 6. But there is dignity in love.

Balls. Not for you.

That’s when I made my mistake. Irked by his negativity, I turned.

What would you know about love? You lacerate your liver night after night, sitting here with your ridiculous attire and foppish hair, philsophising through the bottom of your glass, shouting and spitting and rolling your eyes at all who pass. The only love you know is self. Don’t lecture me on love.

He sat quite still, his eyes fixed on mine. He said nothing. This was always worrying. Then he stood, turned, and went to the bar.

Nothing was said as he unloaded the tray, lining up 4 glasses in front of each of us. Beer on the left, triples of Irish in the middle and a shot glass, contents clear, on the right.

You may commence, said the Glibertine.

I lifted the shot glass and drained it, trying to suppress the twitch in my right eye.

I hate grappa.

I know.

He sat back in his chair, rested the corner of an Irish on his dressing gown cord, and ran yellow fingers through his abundant, filthy hair.

I do not presume to lecture on love, but on dignity. However, your insolence means you will receive guidance in both. When I'm done, you will understand 2 matters. First, you'll know how to love with dignity. Second, you'll appreciate there's no man better qualified to speak on the subject than I.

Tempted though I was to point out the incongruity of receiving a dignity lecture from a man in dressing gown and slippers in a pub at 4.00pm on a Wednesday, I remained silent.

Love is a feeling you cannot control. Dignity concerns how you conduct yourself while under love's influence. You're in love but you plague the object of your affection with every insecurity your brain chemistry produces. You're in love but adopt a mournful countenance. You see your love and your tongue thickens like a roed salmon but still you prattle at her like a convent girl fresh from detention. When you close your eyes you see hers but you TELL me about it.

For you, there is no dignity in love. QED.

And don’t for a moment think that's because your love is unrequited. It’s true the lovelorn are especially pathetic – who wouldn’t want to slowly crush Werther’s wind pipe beneath their heel – but you're pitiful at every stage .

With you, there's cow eyed sighing and, if I may be frank, creepy longing at the start. Then, if your nauseating patter manages to dupe some poor sap into returning affection, you're insufferably happy. And when your malformed personality kills the very love you’ve so assiduously cultivated, you loathe yourself... until the shabby carousel again rumbles into life.

Take it from me – cut out the start and the middle - just loathe yourself the whole time.

By now, my second glass was empty. I took some beer to wash away the bitterness.

As he looked at me, he seemed to soften. Not so.

If you must love, and it seems you must, at least follow these rules:

- Never tell ME about the nape of her neck or the curve of her ankle.

- Don’t aim too high. You are a plain man. Stick to your kind.

- Don’t trouble her with your saccharine sentiment and snivelling insecurities.

- Walk as if your spine has not been crushed.

- Consistently buy me drinks.

- Avoid disappointment by extinguishing hope.

On and on he went. Glass levels rose and fell. His dressing gown opened and, mercifully, closed. But I heard no more.

I was far away, in a different land, sipping Lacryma Christi beside a glittering sea. With my baby.

Sydney Vs Melbourne. The winner is…

2007-08-23T20:12:00.000-07:00

The critical question in the Sydney versus Melbourne debate is –

Does Melbourne know it’s on?

Sydney sure as hell does.

From QANTAS captains welcoming passengers to ‘the greatest city in the world’ to the Sydney Festival slogan, ‘A Great Festival for a Great City’[1], Sydney is gauche, parochial and boorish.

Proof is Sydney’s obsessive dubbing of local sites ‘iconic’. By the way Sydney, consult a dictionary on what that word means.

Here’s an unbiased assessment of 3 of them.

The Opera House is pretty at sunset but as a venue its nasty. Its once cutting edge design was superseded by any number of buildings long ago.

Inside, the public areas are cramped and the bars as tiny as they are scarce.

The seats were designed by the acoustician and the acoustics by the upholsterer.

If you’re disabled, don’t bother. If you want to take a leak, use a bottle.

This might come as a shock, but other cities have opera houses! They may not have been elevated to the ultimate i-c-o-n status, but even a Sydney resident might be impressed by La Scala, Teatro Colon or the Paris Opera.

The National Trust says that Harry's Cafe de Wheels is not only a “quintessential Sydney icon”, it’s an institution. So is Villawood.

Located between a four lane road and a harbour backwater, Harry's has dished out pies since the 1930s. Some stock could be original.

To be fair, the service is considerate - food cooled to avoid mouth burn and drinks warmed to avert too great a contrast.

The rear of the Cafe affords a fine prospect of Her Majesty's Australian Navy ships disgorging bilge into a stagnant lagoon.

Customers can test their reflexes swatting flies and dodging seagull shit. And at night, motorists can dodge inebriates as they jauntily totter into the street. Police manning a recent speed trap joined in the merriment, laughing as drunks showered cars with half eaten pie 'n peas. Ha ha![2]

There are few Sydney landmarks of which its residents are prouder than Bondi Beach.

Though its only 5km from the CBD, visitors feel a world away from the big city bustle. Except for those days[3] when every man, woman, child, backpacker, carjacker, halfling and hobbit sit squeezed together, buttock to jowl, rubbing coconut oil into their hirsute abundances.

The beach is 150 metres from the shops - across a six lane road, a median strip, a footpath, a car park, another bigger footpath, another road and a promenade.

If you’re an out of town surfer, the locals will give you a memorable welcome.

The life guards use a public address system operated by the profoundly deaf with auxiliary mobile loud hailers, just in case you missed your orders.

Get there early to play chicken with the beach cleaning tractors.

If you’re from a country other than Australia and want to experience Bondi after dark - register with the local constabulary and move in groups of 20.

With both a south-easterly aspect and no protection from the northwest, the beach is blasted by southerly squalls and baked by westerlies - sometimes on the same day.

Don’t worry, if you’re too cold or hot, you can always seek relief in the piss warmed surf.

These 3 places maybe iconic to some, but they’re comic to many.

And that’s just fine.

I’ve recently returned from Pig City in Brisbane.

Those people might have skin cancer and bad clothes but they don’t give a toss if they’re cool or anybody likes their city. This suggests they just might have their shit together.

If Pig City had been in Sydney, the crowd would have been checking itself out, not the bands. Of course, that wasn’t a bad idea when Chris Bailey was on stage.

If Melbourne is the golden retriever of cities, Sydney is the foxy constantly trying to sniff the big dog’s arse.

And Brisbane?

It’s the old blue heeler asleep in the sun, occasionally waking to lick its balls.

I think we all know – particularly the men - which has the greatest appeal.

[1] When Schofield presided over that, Dublin was celebrating its millennium. There was not a relative epithet to be seen. Dublin was content with being Dublin. Sydney needed to reassure itself that it was, err… New York? [2] In keeping with the carnival atmosphere, Harry’s Café de Wheels actually has no wheels!
[3] Those falling in summer.

Manners - the mark of an older man

2007-08-09T20:16:00.000-07:00

It’s taken a while to work out. I thought I was forced to repeat orders at my local because my voice was at a frequency undetectable by youth.

When drinking with the Glibertine recently, the real reason emerged.

Each of his, ‘Please may I have a triple Irish and a Cartlon’, left the youthful staff with gobs open, and not because of the frequency and scale of his personal order.

All around, people were barking, ‘VB’ or ‘2 Carltons’. They were rewarded with drinks and smiles. Our polite requests were met with uncomprehending blankness.

Could it have been the Glibertine’s burgundy smoking jacket and beaver pelt slippers?

‘What's wrong with those serfs?’, huffed the Glibertine. ‘Deaf, stupid or both?’

I suggested his attire might have struck them dumb. He scowled.

I wondered if his complex sentence construction and the insertion of the unfamiliar ‘may’ and ‘please’ might be the reason.

Spraying me with Irish mist, the Glibertine roared to life.

‘Good god man, you’re right! I might have been speaking Dzongkha to those babymaids.

May has gone for good. Please has passed away. Manners are dead.

We’ll be overwhelmed by the loathsome uncouth.’

Now he was on a roll and heads were turning.

‘I was in the East Sydney the other day. F*cking crowded.

Trying to get back to the table, I ran into two of those short browed humanoids. Couldn’t get around them.

Would you excuse me, please?, I say.

One monkey man instantly adopted an aggressive stance. The other didn’t bother to look at me, just uttered a venomous, No.

They were so unused to hearing good manners they thought they were being reproached.

Maybe I should have sprinkled a few ‘mates’ around. Aussie blokes are all mates, right, mate?’

The Glibertine sucked hard at his Irish.

‘And what about those f*ckers on Virgin Blue? Every time I board a flight, the babyface at the door says, G’dday, Douglas.

Familiar little oiks. I shake their tiny damp hands and say, I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t know we had been introduced. I’ve forgotten your name.’

We discussed whether we were afflicted with some bourgeois manners hang up.

Unsurprisingly, you might think, we decided it wasn’t our fault.

Manners oil the joints of society. Except in pubs, apparently, manners make the machinery of living run just a little more smoothly.

So, to all you public bar inhabitants, if the Glibertine and I offend you with our politeness, let us know - gently.

Please?

Inner-city cool

2007-08-02T19:11:00.000-07:00

My thanks to Merely for having the good sense to invite me to share my wisdom.

I admit to not being cool. Indeed, I abhor cool, loathe its pursuit and despise those therein engaged.

Never would I possess porn star sunglasses. My trousers are of the denim variety and rest on the upper hip. I’ve no black clothes, do not own a car, let alone a sleek one, and my sort of pinkish complexion will never adorn a magazine cover. Other than Dermatologists’ Monthly.

But I do live in Potts Point and, like it or not, living here once afforded collateral cool.

Alas, things have changed. As the area has become infected with the self consciously cool, it has lost its ability to splash a little cool on the uncool.

Potts Point was cool when it was blithely unaware of itself. It had an accidental, disheveled style attractive to the similarly afflicted.

There was nowhere to buy provisions. Locals were nourished by alcohol, tobacco smoke and cocktail garnishes. Now there are delicatessens, gourmet butchers and a host of up market emporia of ephemera.

Never before has Potts Point been invaded by so many dogs of the fluffy, yapping kind. Never before have so many alighted from Porsche Cayennes to fill the bistros with their vacuous cacophony. Vacuophony?

Overnight the local bottleshop sprouted a Simon Johnson. Pate doesn’t even go with beer. Beer does. Speaking of beer, the place now features more foreign than domestic.

Each day sees fewer discarded needles, less vomit and precious few puddles of piss, other than from said fluffy yappers.

No longer gibbering to themselves on the street, Potts Point’s eccentrics have taken their delusions inside. The slim figured, plucked eyebrow crowd with furred collars and well turned heels have scared away the mad.

This purification is insidiously snaking its way up the hill from Potts Point and west from Elizabeth Bay which has always been little more than a poor man’s Point Piper.

While it’s too late for Potts Point, one hopes that sticky puddle of neon nasty, the glorious Cross, can resist this creeping ponciness.

One prays that the smart restaurants and flash bars, sprouting like spring daffodils at the tip, will never expunge the grunge.

But, let’s face it, the few Kings Cross foot soldiers left to stop the invasion don’t make the most reliable or sober army. And, when I last checked, they can be bought. Cheaply.

See you in Redfern. Just get there before Rusty Crowe and his homey a Court stuff that too.

Coping with the everyday

2007-07-21T18:42:00.000-07:00

“Living’s mostly wasting time and I’ve wasted a share of mine”. Townes Van Zandt, sadly departed country legend, knew more than most about time and talent wasting.

Like many of his ilk, Townes spent a lot of time looking at the world through the bottom of a glass.

This document could stop with that advice but, in the spirit of this healthy age, I offer a dozen less destructive ways to make your day at least a little different from the one before.

1. Make Wednesday night, drunk night. Forget Friday and get plastered on Wednesday (why should you ruin Saturday with a hangover when you could suffer on company time?). At least work on Thursday will feel different from every other.

OK, make that 11 less destructive ways.

2. Cereal. Try a new one every week. Start at the top left hand supermarket shelf and work your way through them. You’d be surprised how the prospect of a new box of cereal can lift the weary heart. On Monday, anyway.

3. No undies day. I’ll say no more - just don’t get involved in a car accident or you’ll never hear the end of it from your Mum.

4. Spend the day only eating round food. There’s more of it than you think. Bowl essential.

5. Latinate. Make up words and see who calls you on them. Not many, is my guess.

6. Apply for employment for which you are manifestly unsuited. I’ve still not heard back from the Dallas Cowboys.

7. Draw up a list of time wasting activities.

8. Borrow the MD’s dictafone and hit the streets to interview strangers.

9. Disability day. Affect a disability for a day. Try a few out and see which handicap is right for you – speech impediment in the call centre, deafness in the class-room, uncoordination on the assembly line or rictus in social work. You’ll be amazed how the day whizzes by.

10. How much cooked meat is too much?

11. Ring up your ex-lovers out of the blue. For legal reasons, only repeat annually.

12. Sprinkle a little sand in your bed and wake up thinking you are on holidays. During winter, deploy twigs and sharp pebbles to give the illusion of camping.

You see, there’s no need to succumb to the humdrum. Try something new. Try something old. Try someone else’s.

If all else fails, fall back on the tried and tested - lie in bed with a bottle of whiskey and the remote. In fact, bugger the remote. You’ll lose it anyway and halfway through your vision will go.

After all, as Townes sang, “To live is to fly, low and high”.

Baby body

2007-07-17T23:03:00.000-07:00

I well remember the day my self-image fell apart. As I walked on to the beach for a swim, one of my friends called out, a little shocked and, I reckon, a little too triumphantly, 'Look out, here comes baby body'.

The group laughter was loud, lusty and, frankly, went on a bit long. I immediately turned crimson, rearranged a towel over my paunch and walked into the ocean to swim to Tonga.

Despite energetically embracing the pleasures of young adult life, I believed I was blessed with the physique of the sportsman I possibly had been.

Obnoxiously pleased with myself, I had failed to notice the ample contrary physical evidence.

After several days deep reflection on the changes inflicted upon my body by my embrace of a sedentary and sybaritic lifestyle, I decided what I was going to do about it.

Absolutely nothing.

Thirty years later, though I make occasional concessions to common sense, I remain committed to a life of consumption.

Perhaps I consume to fill a moral vacuum, to distract myself from personal failure or to assuage my bitter guilt at the cruelties I’ve inflicted upon others.

Then again, perhaps I consume because I adore cheese, Tokay, grass fed steak, scallops, wood fired Peking duck, mushrooms, snapper, eggs, cream, brioche, Riesling, any sausage, the wines of Burgundy and Alsace, smoked haddock, sauerkraut, sashimi, dumplings from gyoza to Shanghai, cassoulet, onion tart, beer, oysters, salt beef, pickles, biryani, labna, holy basil, mango, tomato and soft shell crab.

Never have I had to struggle with my weight - I’ve simply refused to step into the ring with it. After all, have you seen the size of that bloke?

I’ve got a big head (figuratively and literally), so a big stomach doesn’t bother me. (Repeat x 10 each night before bed)

What does bother me is that my shirt keeps coming untucked.

What bothers me is that once my waistband overcomes the friction at my belly’s apex, it slips to the floor as swiftly and silkily as an oyster down a throat.

What really bothers me is that when I bend to do up the Velcro straps of my comfortable shoes I emit a silly involuntary whistle and turn puce.

I’ve had some positive feedback.

A woman I know seems to quite like my tummy.

As they say it’s as big as a whole other person, some children of my acquaintance have assigned it a name and personality. When they see me, they give Angus a pat and ask him how he is. They profess affection for him.

As I see those vital people flogging around the park or punching their trainer’s hands, I realise I’ll never be like them.

They’ve buns of steel and abs of iron. I’ve the body of a reader.

Though John Cheever wrote of a man who can’t decide at what arbitrary point to locate his belt line and, in Quintets for Robert Morley, Les Murray (not a small chap) has written with his usual grace and wit about the fat, it’s not literature but journalism that’s given me most heart.

The apparently brilliant, astute and talented Tobsha Learner (she of exceptional taste) claims in the Times that not only are fattypuffs funnier, more modest, cleverer and better company than thinifers, we are better in the clinch as well!

I knew I was gifted in all those departments but had never attributed it to my gut.

OK, the article is really a love letter to her boyfriend, but it makes a compelling and serious point which I will be happy to confirm with any single and attractive young women* who care to volunteer.

* No porkers, thanks all the same.

A rock 'n roll guide to the leaders: Part 1 K. Rudd and Irish pop

2007-07-08T16:47:00.000-07:00

Something about Kevin Rudd bothers me and, until recently, I hadn’t been able to pin it down. What is it about him that gives me an involuntary shiver? When I see him why do I get the creepy feeling my nervous system has hitherto reserved for unexpected encounters with larger lizards?

He does share the lizard’s liplessness. Has anyone measured his blood temperature? Hell, has anyone tested for blood?

His skin has that waxy sheen not seen since the Politburo presided at seventies May Day Parades.

Being no oil painting myself and remembering the injunction against judging books by covers, I decided it was unfair to condemn the man on looks alone. But then I saw him limply air punching in a soft roundhouse style at the news the Australian cricketers had won the World Cup. Even some children of my acquaintance emitted a collective and involuntary “eeeewww” at that.

That half hearted air prod got me wondering about him again. Anyone who works so hard at being seen to be good can’t be.

Anyone who so loudly professes his commitment to balance must be imbalanced.

A person who conspicuously needs to show he is capable of love (by licking his wife in public at every opportunity) is only capable of self-love.

There must be a cavity at his core - a soft centre that’s not there. Trying to be all things to all people leaves you being nothing at all.

I couldn’t help but think he reminded me of someone I’d met or seen or heard about. And when I remembered who it was, bugger me if that bloke wasn’t called Kevin!

All that need be said about Kevin Rudd was sung by The Undertones, the infectiously enthusiastic Irish rockers of the late seventies and early eighties.

These purveyors of perfect 2 minute pop precisely nailed a lot of teenage experiences – just listen to “Teenage Kicks” or “Here Comes the Summer” and try not feeling the old stirrings of longing and angst.

In “My Perfect Cousin”, Feargal Sharkey, the band’s lead singer bemoans the goodliness of his cousin Kevin. Read this in your head at top speed in an Irish falsetto, imbued with the timbre of a 44 gallon drum being dragged over concrete and the exasperated tone only teenage injustice can inspire:

Now I've got a cousin called Kevin
He's sure to go to heaven
Always spotless clean and neat
The smoothest you can get them
He's got a fur lined sheepskin jacket
My ma said they cost a packet
She won't even let me explain
That me and Kevin were just not the same

Oh my perfect cousin
What I like to do he doesn't
He's his family's private joy
His mother’s little golden boy

He's gotta degree in economics
Maths - physics and bionics
He thinks that I'm a cabbage
Cos I hate university challenge
Even at the age of ten
Smart boy Kevin was a smart boy then
He always beat me at Subbuteo
Cos he flicked the kick and I didn't know

Oh my perfect cousin…

His mother bought him a synthesizer
Got the Human League in to advise her
Now he's making lots of noise
Playing along with the art school boys
Girls try to attract his attention
But what a shame it's in vain total rejection
He will never be left on the shelf
Cos Kevin he's in love with himself

I bet Kevin Rudd did like The Human League and, worse, didn’t have the guts for the haircut.

Better than read it, let the boys sing it for you. Play it LOUD!

Cocktails – teetering on the brink of disaster

2007-07-07T00:16:00.000-07:00

I used to think the best part of a martini was the olive.

In those days I drank them for effect. I still do, though the result I now seek is more anaesthetic than pyrotechnic.

Let there be no mistake, incaution still leads to remarkable and unfortunate consequences.

My youthful appetite also involved affect.

John Cheever warned of the sorrows of gin and the dark vision of his melancholy characters, surely, was attributable to the pitchers of martini they swilled, their inhibitions dissolving as the ice in the blue oils; short-term fulfillment and long-term guilt the inevitable consequence.

But there was also much joy, romance and, at cocktail hour at least, hope.

I affected sophistication. Suburban Brisbane, blessed with happiness and safety, didn't notice.

There wasn’t much sophistication in evidence the night dinner guests arrived to find their hosts sprawled on the lawn in the dark, martini making paraphernalia littered around our supine bodies.

There wasn’t much dinner either.

As we were in our early twenties, the shaker was revived and we were quickly forgiven.

We’d only sat down for a sundowner before we began cooking.

False bravado, public kissing, nudity, regretted copulation, abuse, declarations of love, drunken dialing and fisticuffs follow cocktail capers.

In case of residual doubt, cocktails get you very pissed very quickly and, unless you have wide experience of them, they should be approached with respectful caution.

For me, a mysterious alchemy occurs between the second and third martini.

One moment I'm the personification of urbane sophistication, wit and charm, captivating my companion.

The next, an olive up each nostril and a cocktail umbrella tucked behind my ear, I am propositioning the Maori bouncer.

An old friend called from the duty free lounge asking what tipple to bring. I suggested the makings for martinis.

He was silent for a while, running through his memory bank . Then he said, “OK. But I’ve packed a book for this holiday, not a crash helmet”.

Now I know what cocktails can do, I'm (nearly always) sensible. Alas, as a visit to Kings Cross on a Friday night will attest, lots of people, usually young women, haven’t acquired this wisdom.

If young motor cycle riders need to work there way up to big bikes, so young drinkers should work their way up to calamitous cocktails.

I suggest each bar have two cocktail lists. The first, readily available, may only catalogue the fruity, fancy and mainly harmless for the young.

Those of us with crinkly eyes should be able to ask for the “other list”.

In there will be found serious drinks that young people don’t even like – the Vesper, the Rusty Nail, the Negroni.

Inevitably, all this writing has made me thirsty.

I am off to see my favourite barman, Charlie, for a martini, very dry, with a twist.

Possibly, three.