Although my head had been splitting yesterday, I crawled into the nearest school and cast my votes in the local election.
We live in a Labor stronghold here - the goons around here would still vote Labor even if Frank Sartor and Co went through the place with the Angel of Death slaughtering all the first borns.
At the local level, the Labor councillors and the mayor are pretty competent. I have no complaints about our council - they seem to be well run, solvent and motivated. I also personally like the deputy mayor, even though he is Labor to the eyelids.
So I was a bit torn when I went to the polling place. The local Liberals have not articulated any policy positions that sounded more attractive than what we have now. In fact, I was unable to determine what exactly the local Libs stood for, apart from being elected.
But as I walked into the booth to mark my papers, a vision of Angela D'Amore, our local MP, appeared before me. At that point, I put a "1" against the Libs and walked out. I could not bear the thought of her gaining any comfort from the local elections. In fact I want her to feel as bad as Reba Meagher, and to quit next week and disappear into obscurity.
I guess a lot of other people felt that way.
Sunday, 14 September 2008
How do you know when a politician is guilty of moral turpitude?
When they start parading their kids before the press.
When an MP starts trying to make a visual statement about family values, you know they really were running around in their undies.
When an MP starts trying to make a visual statement about family values, you know they really were running around in their undies.
Wet, wet, wet
I have become disgustingly sedentary since starting the new job. All I do is wake up, get in the car, sit in the car for 45 minutes, sit in the office all day, then sit in the office for another 45 minutes to an hour on the way home. My exercise is limited to walking from my parking spot to the office, which is about 100 metres. It's easy to see why the population is blobulating at an incredible rate.
After the killer ride last weekend into the hills (nay, mountains) of Northern Sydney, I stuck to the flat bits of the west today. Unfortunately, there was this thing called "weather" heading my way, and I rode smack into the equivalent of that red blob in the middle of this rain radar picture. Without any wet weather gear of course, or any preparation such as sticking my wallet and phone in a plastic bag before setting out. You know that it is raining hard when the raindrops hit the ground, then rebound up enough to whack you in the face. It's always a fun experience when the rain hits your underside as hard as it hits the topside.
I didn't care a bit, since it was quite warm and pleasant, and the traffic was light. The only thing that bugged me was the salt running out of my helmet liner. Over time, I have sweated enough into the helmet liner to turn it into a salt lick. If I ever stop somewhere in the country, I am going to have cows licking my head before I can say "moo". The problem is that when it really pours down, the rain gets into the helmet liner, where it turns into brine, and that then runs into my eyes. I thought I had ridden into an Al Queda mustard gas attack there for a minute, it hurt that much. The salt water coming out of my helmet was much saltier than the sea, so it really stung. One moment, I was riding along with the odd rain drop whacking me in the eyes, and the next, I was standing on the side of the road trying to rub the salt out of my now red and thoroughly shut eyes. If there is one thing you need to do when on the road, it's keep your eyes open, and that was impossible.
When I got home, I walked into the shower and found that after 5 minutes, I was not as wet as when I walked in the door. That's how hard it had been raining.
After the killer ride last weekend into the hills (nay, mountains) of Northern Sydney, I stuck to the flat bits of the west today. Unfortunately, there was this thing called "weather" heading my way, and I rode smack into the equivalent of that red blob in the middle of this rain radar picture. Without any wet weather gear of course, or any preparation such as sticking my wallet and phone in a plastic bag before setting out. You know that it is raining hard when the raindrops hit the ground, then rebound up enough to whack you in the face. It's always a fun experience when the rain hits your underside as hard as it hits the topside.
I didn't care a bit, since it was quite warm and pleasant, and the traffic was light. The only thing that bugged me was the salt running out of my helmet liner. Over time, I have sweated enough into the helmet liner to turn it into a salt lick. If I ever stop somewhere in the country, I am going to have cows licking my head before I can say "moo". The problem is that when it really pours down, the rain gets into the helmet liner, where it turns into brine, and that then runs into my eyes. I thought I had ridden into an Al Queda mustard gas attack there for a minute, it hurt that much. The salt water coming out of my helmet was much saltier than the sea, so it really stung. One moment, I was riding along with the odd rain drop whacking me in the eyes, and the next, I was standing on the side of the road trying to rub the salt out of my now red and thoroughly shut eyes. If there is one thing you need to do when on the road, it's keep your eyes open, and that was impossible.
When I got home, I walked into the shower and found that after 5 minutes, I was not as wet as when I walked in the door. That's how hard it had been raining.
Good and bad podcasts
Until now, I have never been much of an iPod user. Although I have ears the size of a woolly mammoth, my actual earholes are too small to fit those new-fangled earbuds into. I have been forced to endure them for the last week because for the first time in nearly two decades, I am driving to work. The last time I had to drive to a place of employment was when I worked in a video shop whilst at Uni. Back then, which was the late 20th century, it took less than 10 minutes to make that drive. Now, my commute is 45 minutes on a good day and 90 on a bad one.
I will never wear headphones whilst on the bike - you need your ears to keep you out of danger.
For the first few days, I tried listening to the radio, but I spent so much time changing channels trying to find something interesting to listen to, I just about wore the buttons out. Then along came Father's Day, and my very own iPod (how is it that everyone else in the house that is over the age of 12 had an iPod before me?)
So, here is my list of stuff worth listening to, and that which is not.
Good - Counterpoint on the ABC, which features Michael Duffy. They put the last 4 weeks on line, and the 2 that I have listened to so far were good.
Mixed - Bath University. Some have been excellent, others have been utter duds. One was by a bloke that enunciated around 5 words per minute. Another was by a yank that insisted on reading a prepared speech, which sounded terrible. Even though the speakers were on the other side of the planet, and I couldn't see them, I could tell who was ad-libing to their slides and who was reading from a text. I hate boring speakers. The site is worth a look, but be prepared for mixed blessings.
This week, I am going to give a Tim Fischer talk on trains a go. It could be entertaining, or a very short lived feature in the memory of my iPod.
If you can suggest anything worth listening to, please leave a comment.
I will never wear headphones whilst on the bike - you need your ears to keep you out of danger.
For the first few days, I tried listening to the radio, but I spent so much time changing channels trying to find something interesting to listen to, I just about wore the buttons out. Then along came Father's Day, and my very own iPod (how is it that everyone else in the house that is over the age of 12 had an iPod before me?)
So, here is my list of stuff worth listening to, and that which is not.
Good - Counterpoint on the ABC, which features Michael Duffy. They put the last 4 weeks on line, and the 2 that I have listened to so far were good.
Mixed - Bath University. Some have been excellent, others have been utter duds. One was by a bloke that enunciated around 5 words per minute. Another was by a yank that insisted on reading a prepared speech, which sounded terrible. Even though the speakers were on the other side of the planet, and I couldn't see them, I could tell who was ad-libing to their slides and who was reading from a text. I hate boring speakers. The site is worth a look, but be prepared for mixed blessings.
This week, I am going to give a Tim Fischer talk on trains a go. It could be entertaining, or a very short lived feature in the memory of my iPod.
If you can suggest anything worth listening to, please leave a comment.
Re-evaluating Henry Rollins
In my younger days, I was quite partial to a bit of Henry Rollins, as seen here.
(The sound is terrible, but it gives a good idea of his musical style). Probably not the kind of thing that people over 40 would appreciate much. I saw him at Selina's (Coogee Bay Hotel) once at back in the mid 1990's. I think my eardrums melted that night. It was after that show that I started wearing earplugs to gigs, since I was still yelling at people in the office three days later on Tuesday.
Henry was true to form - loud, well inked, well toned and pumped. I think he sweated on me when I was in the mosh, which was a silly place to be. Spending time in a Henry Rollins inspired moshpit could easily lead to a trip to the dentist the following day to have all your teeth replaced.
I am pretty sure this was the gig where Damien spent the night on my porch, wrapped in washing. We had become separated, and as I was very drunk, I fell out of the pub, grabbed a kebab and staggered straight into a waiting cab. Once home, I stumbled straight onto the couch and fell asleep with a half eaten kebab on my chest and Rage on the TV. I was also completely deaf as well.
Damien was going to crash the night at my place, since he lived out in the western boonies, but when he arrived about an hour later, I was too far gone to hear him banging on the door. He walked down the side of the house and banged on my flatmate's window, which only completely freaked her out, as she thought he was a rapist and/or axe-murderer, and since I was snoring on the couch, she did the only sensible thing and hid under the bed for the entire night with her cat.
Unable to find an open window that he could crawl through, Damien grabbed our washing off the line, made himself a nest and slept on our front doorstep. I'm not sure who looked worse when the sun came up - me, with half a kebab smeared all over my body; Couchy, who was covered in cat scratches and fluffballs from under her bed, or Damien, who had spent the night on a concrete slab with just a few shirts and a sock to keep him warm.
Years later, I saw Henry when he did a spoken word tour. I think we went to the Enmore to see him talk. It was a great talk - funny as hell and really entertaining, but I didn't like his politics. He got quite political towards the end, and I would have walked out, only I had seen him with his shirt off and figured that he'd rip my head off before I made it to the exit.
So it was nice to find this clip on youtube. Just be aware that he says "fuck" about 80 times in 10 minutes. If you can put up with that, it's very good.
(The sound is terrible, but it gives a good idea of his musical style). Probably not the kind of thing that people over 40 would appreciate much. I saw him at Selina's (Coogee Bay Hotel) once at back in the mid 1990's. I think my eardrums melted that night. It was after that show that I started wearing earplugs to gigs, since I was still yelling at people in the office three days later on Tuesday.
Henry was true to form - loud, well inked, well toned and pumped. I think he sweated on me when I was in the mosh, which was a silly place to be. Spending time in a Henry Rollins inspired moshpit could easily lead to a trip to the dentist the following day to have all your teeth replaced.
I am pretty sure this was the gig where Damien spent the night on my porch, wrapped in washing. We had become separated, and as I was very drunk, I fell out of the pub, grabbed a kebab and staggered straight into a waiting cab. Once home, I stumbled straight onto the couch and fell asleep with a half eaten kebab on my chest and Rage on the TV. I was also completely deaf as well.
Damien was going to crash the night at my place, since he lived out in the western boonies, but when he arrived about an hour later, I was too far gone to hear him banging on the door. He walked down the side of the house and banged on my flatmate's window, which only completely freaked her out, as she thought he was a rapist and/or axe-murderer, and since I was snoring on the couch, she did the only sensible thing and hid under the bed for the entire night with her cat.
Unable to find an open window that he could crawl through, Damien grabbed our washing off the line, made himself a nest and slept on our front doorstep. I'm not sure who looked worse when the sun came up - me, with half a kebab smeared all over my body; Couchy, who was covered in cat scratches and fluffballs from under her bed, or Damien, who had spent the night on a concrete slab with just a few shirts and a sock to keep him warm.
Years later, I saw Henry when he did a spoken word tour. I think we went to the Enmore to see him talk. It was a great talk - funny as hell and really entertaining, but I didn't like his politics. He got quite political towards the end, and I would have walked out, only I had seen him with his shirt off and figured that he'd rip my head off before I made it to the exit.
So it was nice to find this clip on youtube. Just be aware that he says "fuck" about 80 times in 10 minutes. If you can put up with that, it's very good.
Saturday, 13 September 2008
I never thought I would be grateful for personal injury lawyers
It's over two years since I was cleaned up by a car that failed to give way. The car hit my bike just forward of my knee, catapulting me sideways onto the concrete. I didn't break anything, but I got a pretty bad case of whiplash as I went over.
Until then (actually, until 3 days after the crash), I had always viewed whiplash as a method for con-artists to milk money from insurance companies. It's been given a horribly bad name thanks to people running around in neck braces.
Whiplash refers to the act of tearing all the muscles and ligaments in your neck. Now to someone that might have played a bit of sport, that doesn't sound so bad. People get hamstring tears and knee injuries all the time, and you don't see them running around squealing like stuck pigs. They are usually lying on the ground, rolling around and squealing like stuck pigs, but the injury heals and there are no demands for compo.
The problem with whiplash is that your neck is supporting a great, big, fat melon, and it has to do that 24 hours a day. If you pop your knee, you just elevate it for a while and hobble around on crutches. You can take the weight off it, and allow it to heal.
Necks aren't like that. There is no downtime for the neck, so healing takes forever - up to 18 months. During that time, you can experience an awful lot of pain. I was off work pretty much for 3 months after the crash, and I am a workaholic that would work in an iron lung. It was pretty amazing to be laid out so badly that I was unable to function for that length of time. The killer was the headaches - headaches so bad, no amount of painkillers could blunt them. So doing any work was out of the question, let alone driving, weeding in the garden, lifting the kids - even carrying much in the way of shopping.
To put it bluntly, I was thoroughly fucked. I would lie in bed for days, trying to find that perfect position where the pain eased off enough for me to snatch a bit of sleep. At times, my head would feel like a large multi-faceted crystal, with each point a source of throbbing or needle-sharp pain, and any action that set off the pain would cause it to bounce and rebound around inside my skull. I'd see colours behind my eyelids. I had dreams whilst I was awake. The pain was intense enough at times to make me throw up.
Why recap all of this?
Because every now and then, it recurs. I had another relapse today. I woke up around 3am with a bit of a throb in the head, and by 7am, it had turned into a fullblown riot inside my skull. By 10am, I was reduced to trying to sleep in the bed closest to the bathroom, lest I had to bolt quickly for the toilet to chunder. That turned out to be the Monkey's bed, which is a single bed and about 4 feet long. With a mattress 2 inches thick. I made the best of the vaguely milky-smelling Bob the Builder pillow, and the short doona with penguins in it, but my feet froze and my knees locked up from having them tucked under my chin.
1000mgms of the strongest legally availably anti-inflamatory pills and 12 hours of rest eased it to the point where I could line my stomach with KFC. Funny how at times like this, grease and salt and sugar appear to be the answer to most ills.
This happens every few months. I'll be laid out for 1 or 2 days, utterly unable to function. Which is where the personal injury lawyers come in. I pursued the other guy's insurance company, and got a payout earlier this year. It was not huge, but it will cover me being too sick to work on days like this for about 10 years - ie, loss of income, some medical treatment and an ongoing need to buy anti-inflamattory pills for the rest of my life. The ambulance chaser pocketed 1/3 of the payout, but at least I got some cash out of it.
The lesson from this is that if you do get clocked by a car, take the other bastard to court. Your injuries could follow you around like a bad smell for the rest of your life.
Until then (actually, until 3 days after the crash), I had always viewed whiplash as a method for con-artists to milk money from insurance companies. It's been given a horribly bad name thanks to people running around in neck braces.
Whiplash refers to the act of tearing all the muscles and ligaments in your neck. Now to someone that might have played a bit of sport, that doesn't sound so bad. People get hamstring tears and knee injuries all the time, and you don't see them running around squealing like stuck pigs. They are usually lying on the ground, rolling around and squealing like stuck pigs, but the injury heals and there are no demands for compo.
The problem with whiplash is that your neck is supporting a great, big, fat melon, and it has to do that 24 hours a day. If you pop your knee, you just elevate it for a while and hobble around on crutches. You can take the weight off it, and allow it to heal.
Necks aren't like that. There is no downtime for the neck, so healing takes forever - up to 18 months. During that time, you can experience an awful lot of pain. I was off work pretty much for 3 months after the crash, and I am a workaholic that would work in an iron lung. It was pretty amazing to be laid out so badly that I was unable to function for that length of time. The killer was the headaches - headaches so bad, no amount of painkillers could blunt them. So doing any work was out of the question, let alone driving, weeding in the garden, lifting the kids - even carrying much in the way of shopping.
To put it bluntly, I was thoroughly fucked. I would lie in bed for days, trying to find that perfect position where the pain eased off enough for me to snatch a bit of sleep. At times, my head would feel like a large multi-faceted crystal, with each point a source of throbbing or needle-sharp pain, and any action that set off the pain would cause it to bounce and rebound around inside my skull. I'd see colours behind my eyelids. I had dreams whilst I was awake. The pain was intense enough at times to make me throw up.
Why recap all of this?
Because every now and then, it recurs. I had another relapse today. I woke up around 3am with a bit of a throb in the head, and by 7am, it had turned into a fullblown riot inside my skull. By 10am, I was reduced to trying to sleep in the bed closest to the bathroom, lest I had to bolt quickly for the toilet to chunder. That turned out to be the Monkey's bed, which is a single bed and about 4 feet long. With a mattress 2 inches thick. I made the best of the vaguely milky-smelling Bob the Builder pillow, and the short doona with penguins in it, but my feet froze and my knees locked up from having them tucked under my chin.
1000mgms of the strongest legally availably anti-inflamatory pills and 12 hours of rest eased it to the point where I could line my stomach with KFC. Funny how at times like this, grease and salt and sugar appear to be the answer to most ills.
This happens every few months. I'll be laid out for 1 or 2 days, utterly unable to function. Which is where the personal injury lawyers come in. I pursued the other guy's insurance company, and got a payout earlier this year. It was not huge, but it will cover me being too sick to work on days like this for about 10 years - ie, loss of income, some medical treatment and an ongoing need to buy anti-inflamattory pills for the rest of my life. The ambulance chaser pocketed 1/3 of the payout, but at least I got some cash out of it.
The lesson from this is that if you do get clocked by a car, take the other bastard to court. Your injuries could follow you around like a bad smell for the rest of your life.
Reba quits
Reba Meagher has pulled the pin on state parliament.
From the story:
"She was handing out how-to-vote cards at Cabramatta for the council elections this morning when she decided it was time for a change," the spokeswoman told AAP.
Did she suddenly discover that no one wanted to take a how-to-vote card from her?
Standing around at an electoral booth can be a brutal way to gauge your popularity (or lack thereof).
From the story:
"She was handing out how-to-vote cards at Cabramatta for the council elections this morning when she decided it was time for a change," the spokeswoman told AAP.
Did she suddenly discover that no one wanted to take a how-to-vote card from her?
Standing around at an electoral booth can be a brutal way to gauge your popularity (or lack thereof).
Friday, 12 September 2008
How did our newspapers remember 9/11?
The local coverage of the anniversary of 9/11 should be an object lesson for anyone who wonders why the traditional media are being hammered by the "new" media.
I read this coverage in the SMH with incredulity - the story gets six short paragraphs before it somehow makes a jump to the presidential election, and Obama's "pig" comment. Who on earth thought that it would be sensible and sensitive to link the murder of thousands of people with pigs?
The Daily Telegraph is no better. The lazy sods at both papers have sourced their stories from the same news agency.
I am disgusted.
My old school sent me some stuff the other day. On the back, they had printed the school prayer, which I had never appreciated properly until now. Here it is:
Teach us good Lord to serve You as You deserve
to give and not to count the cost
to give and not to ask for any reward
to fight and not to heed the wounds
to toil and not to seek for rest
to labour and not to ask for any reward
save that of knowing that we do Your will
through Jesus Christ, our Lord
Amen
It's the best I can do to make up for the pathetic and disgraceful coverage by our media.
I read this coverage in the SMH with incredulity - the story gets six short paragraphs before it somehow makes a jump to the presidential election, and Obama's "pig" comment. Who on earth thought that it would be sensible and sensitive to link the murder of thousands of people with pigs?
The Daily Telegraph is no better. The lazy sods at both papers have sourced their stories from the same news agency.
I am disgusted.
My old school sent me some stuff the other day. On the back, they had printed the school prayer, which I had never appreciated properly until now. Here it is:
Teach us good Lord to serve You as You deserve
to give and not to count the cost
to give and not to ask for any reward
to fight and not to heed the wounds
to toil and not to seek for rest
to labour and not to ask for any reward
save that of knowing that we do Your will
through Jesus Christ, our Lord
Amen
It's the best I can do to make up for the pathetic and disgraceful coverage by our media.
Tuesday, 9 September 2008
Stop the War Coalition does a Lancet
I was poking around the Stop the War Coalition site today in order to determine whether I could photoblog an upcoming protest next month.
Turns out I can't. I will be at work miles away.
However, I did find this incredible statement on their website:
Coppa said that “about 120” US war veterans commit suicide each week. She referred to an investigation by the CBS television network that found that in 2005 alone at least 6200 veterans killed themselves. In that one year, US military losses to suicide were higher than the official figure of US troop fatalities over five years of war in Iraq.
Take note of this term: US military losses to suicide
10 seconds worth of googling turned up this story:
...findings of preliminary Veterans Affairs Department research obtained by the Associated Press revealed for the first time that there were at least 283 suicides among veterans who left the military between the start of the war in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001 and the end of 2005 and a total of 147 troops have killed themselves in Iraq and Afghanistan since the start of the war. So on the whole 430 troops have killed themselves over the past six years...
And then there was this story which noted:
There are 25 million veterans in the United States, 1.6 million of whom served in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to CBS.
There's no doubt the suicide rate per 100,000 is not that good:
While the suicide rate among the general population was 8.9 per 100,000, the level among veterans was between 18.7 and 20.8 per 100,000.
That figure rose to 22.9 to 31.9 suicides per 100,000 among veterans aged 20 to 24 - almost four times the non-veteran average for the age group.
But let's go back to the original statement made by Stop the War:
in 2005 alone at least 6200 veterans killed themselves. In that one year, US military losses to suicide were higher than the official figure of US troop fatalities over five years of war in Iraq
It might help to start with a definition. I was initially confused here, because I usually define a "veteran" as someone who has seen active service. That is, served in a war zone. Being shot at helps. However, the US definition of "veteran" appears to be anyone that has served in the armed forces and been honourably discharged. By that definition, I could pretty much call myself a veteran, but I am buggered if I ever will. Someone who served in Vietnam for instance deserves to be called a veteran. Someone that ponced around in peacetime can put up with being an ex-serviceman. Or ex-chocko.
That is why the US has 25 million living veterans - more than the entire Australian population. I guess it's also why they have the VFW - Veterans of Foreign Wars - so as to distinguish those who have gone overseas to face the elephant from those that haven't.
The dopes over at the Stop the War Coalition don't seem to grasp any of those ideas. To them, serving in the Boy Scouts is probably a sign that someone will grow up and work for Halliburton as a torturer in Guatemala.
So out of 25 million living veterans, 6200 killed themselves in 2005. We do not know how many of those were veterans of WW II, Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Gulf War I or even Grenada. We do not know how many actually served in a war zone, as opposed to sweeping snow off runways in Alaska during the Cold War. Somehow, Stop the War turns the suicide of (say)a 48 year old who served as a clerk in a motor pool in Germany from 1980 to 1983, and who was discharged in 1986, into a "US Military loss", and associates that loss with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I don't get it. Tell me if I am missing something here, or whether Stop the War are just completely misusing statistics that they don't understand. I guess they will stoop to any means to inflate the body count.
The Veterans Affairs Dept does tell us this:
...there were at least 283 suicides among veterans who left the military between the start of the war in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001 and the end of 2005...
Again, these people committed suicide after they had left the military. That is how you become a veteran. You leave the military. You become a civilian again. How do they become a combat loss? Do we know that all 283 of these people served in Iraq and/or Afghanistan? Just because someone joins the military, it doesn't mean that they automatically serve a tour in somewhere like Iraq. Remember, the military is not just the Army and the Marines - it includes the Navy and the Air Force. What if some of these suicide cases actually served on submarines in the Navy, and never got anywhere near the Persian Gulf or Afghanistan? (Pretty hard to get close to Afghanistan in a sub.) Or they might have spent their time in the air force based in Japan, running the PX.
This is all part of the perception on the part of some of these lefty wankers that all veterans come back as damaged goods, and I resent that.
But let's recap on the numbers.
Stop the War think 6200 veterans killed themselves in 2005.
With a suicide rate of 20.8 per 100,000 and 25 million veterans, I make that 5200 suicides per year. And remember, the suicide rate in the general population is 8.9 per 100,000, so of those 25 million, you'd expect 2225 to take their own life each year anyway.
But the DVA tells us that 430 troops who actully served in Iraq and/or Afghanistan have killed themselves over a 6 year period, or about 70 per year.
If you really wanted to make a case for some suicides being cases of "delayed combat deaths", then I might let you add a portion of those 70 per year - but not all of them. At most, you'd get those over and above the suicide rate in the general population.
Whichever way you look at it, it's a long way short of 6200.
The Ghost of Lancet walks again.
Turns out I can't. I will be at work miles away.
However, I did find this incredible statement on their website:
Coppa said that “about 120” US war veterans commit suicide each week. She referred to an investigation by the CBS television network that found that in 2005 alone at least 6200 veterans killed themselves. In that one year, US military losses to suicide were higher than the official figure of US troop fatalities over five years of war in Iraq.
Take note of this term: US military losses to suicide
10 seconds worth of googling turned up this story:
...findings of preliminary Veterans Affairs Department research obtained by the Associated Press revealed for the first time that there were at least 283 suicides among veterans who left the military between the start of the war in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001 and the end of 2005 and a total of 147 troops have killed themselves in Iraq and Afghanistan since the start of the war. So on the whole 430 troops have killed themselves over the past six years...
And then there was this story which noted:
There are 25 million veterans in the United States, 1.6 million of whom served in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to CBS.
There's no doubt the suicide rate per 100,000 is not that good:
While the suicide rate among the general population was 8.9 per 100,000, the level among veterans was between 18.7 and 20.8 per 100,000.
That figure rose to 22.9 to 31.9 suicides per 100,000 among veterans aged 20 to 24 - almost four times the non-veteran average for the age group.
But let's go back to the original statement made by Stop the War:
in 2005 alone at least 6200 veterans killed themselves. In that one year, US military losses to suicide were higher than the official figure of US troop fatalities over five years of war in Iraq
It might help to start with a definition. I was initially confused here, because I usually define a "veteran" as someone who has seen active service. That is, served in a war zone. Being shot at helps. However, the US definition of "veteran" appears to be anyone that has served in the armed forces and been honourably discharged. By that definition, I could pretty much call myself a veteran, but I am buggered if I ever will. Someone who served in Vietnam for instance deserves to be called a veteran. Someone that ponced around in peacetime can put up with being an ex-serviceman. Or ex-chocko.
That is why the US has 25 million living veterans - more than the entire Australian population. I guess it's also why they have the VFW - Veterans of Foreign Wars - so as to distinguish those who have gone overseas to face the elephant from those that haven't.
The dopes over at the Stop the War Coalition don't seem to grasp any of those ideas. To them, serving in the Boy Scouts is probably a sign that someone will grow up and work for Halliburton as a torturer in Guatemala.
So out of 25 million living veterans, 6200 killed themselves in 2005. We do not know how many of those were veterans of WW II, Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Gulf War I or even Grenada. We do not know how many actually served in a war zone, as opposed to sweeping snow off runways in Alaska during the Cold War. Somehow, Stop the War turns the suicide of (say)a 48 year old who served as a clerk in a motor pool in Germany from 1980 to 1983, and who was discharged in 1986, into a "US Military loss", and associates that loss with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I don't get it. Tell me if I am missing something here, or whether Stop the War are just completely misusing statistics that they don't understand. I guess they will stoop to any means to inflate the body count.
The Veterans Affairs Dept does tell us this:
...there were at least 283 suicides among veterans who left the military between the start of the war in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001 and the end of 2005...
Again, these people committed suicide after they had left the military. That is how you become a veteran. You leave the military. You become a civilian again. How do they become a combat loss? Do we know that all 283 of these people served in Iraq and/or Afghanistan? Just because someone joins the military, it doesn't mean that they automatically serve a tour in somewhere like Iraq. Remember, the military is not just the Army and the Marines - it includes the Navy and the Air Force. What if some of these suicide cases actually served on submarines in the Navy, and never got anywhere near the Persian Gulf or Afghanistan? (Pretty hard to get close to Afghanistan in a sub.) Or they might have spent their time in the air force based in Japan, running the PX.
This is all part of the perception on the part of some of these lefty wankers that all veterans come back as damaged goods, and I resent that.
But let's recap on the numbers.
Stop the War think 6200 veterans killed themselves in 2005.
With a suicide rate of 20.8 per 100,000 and 25 million veterans, I make that 5200 suicides per year. And remember, the suicide rate in the general population is 8.9 per 100,000, so of those 25 million, you'd expect 2225 to take their own life each year anyway.
But the DVA tells us that 430 troops who actully served in Iraq and/or Afghanistan have killed themselves over a 6 year period, or about 70 per year.
If you really wanted to make a case for some suicides being cases of "delayed combat deaths", then I might let you add a portion of those 70 per year - but not all of them. At most, you'd get those over and above the suicide rate in the general population.
Whichever way you look at it, it's a long way short of 6200.
The Ghost of Lancet walks again.
Donate, or I will kill this kitten
I got an email from the red-topped one today asking me to milk the masses of their hard-earned readies. In this case, I am not talking about Gillard and her desire to tax us all into the ground in order to pay for one-legged lesbian street theatre depicting the evil repression of the HoWARd era.
I am talking about sending money to the people who are being turned into crispy stick people by the bastards that run Sudan. I would normally say that I've done my bit by being supportive of the move by Kargo some months ago to take leave from the Army in order to go to Darfur and hoover up all the UN allowances on offer.
But in this case, we are not supporting Kargo on a marathon session at the public finance trough. Instead, we're being asked to support the mum of an Australian soldier who will shortly deploy to Darfur - she is doing a fun run to raise money for the people of Darfur. Her son Mark will be doing logistics stuff. Which probably involves drinking beer with Kargo and discussing travel allowances.
You can follow this link and contribute your bit.
I am talking about sending money to the people who are being turned into crispy stick people by the bastards that run Sudan. I would normally say that I've done my bit by being supportive of the move by Kargo some months ago to take leave from the Army in order to go to Darfur and hoover up all the UN allowances on offer.
But in this case, we are not supporting Kargo on a marathon session at the public finance trough. Instead, we're being asked to support the mum of an Australian soldier who will shortly deploy to Darfur - she is doing a fun run to raise money for the people of Darfur. Her son Mark will be doing logistics stuff. Which probably involves drinking beer with Kargo and discussing travel allowances.
You can follow this link and contribute your bit.
Monday, 8 September 2008
Did Penny Wong kill my phone?
Regular readers who put up with my occasional diatribes may remember that I am the not-so-proud owner of a Nokia N95, which shall henceforth be known as the "overcomplicated, useless pile of crap", or the OUPOC, pronounced Oh-You-Pock. Which is probably Finnish for headjob.
Since the stupid thing is supposed to be an MP3 player, I downloaded some podcasts over the weekend and tried to load them onto the phone. It will accept any amount of music, but refuses to take on board any of my podcasts, even though they are all in MP3 format. Thankfully, I got an iPod for Fathers Day, so that solved that little problem. Unlike the Nokia, I was able to get 5 podcasts onto the iPod in no time flat with no recourse to the manual and no requirement to replace the firmware or sim card. And people scoff at Apple and their design philosophy. How little do they know.
But I have been perservering with the phone. I like the idea of having a camera on the phone, since I use my Canon camera an awful lot, and I'd prefer to have one less device to lug around. There's just one problem. No, sorry, there are two problems with the camera on the OUPOC. Hang on, maybe there are three.
Screw it, I'll just start listing the problems and we'll see what the total number is.
To start with, it takes an age for the camera feature to load. With my Canon Ixus, I can have it out of my pocket and taking photos in 2 or 3 seconds, and I do that all the time when cycling. I can whip it out of my back pocket at 40km/h, take a photo and have it turned off and back in my pocket before I start to get speed wobbles. It's that quick.
The Nokia, oops, the OUPOC is a bit more sluggish. Waiting for the camera to start is like standing behind a woman at the checkout counter at the supermarket as she searches through her handbag for her purse, then searches through her purse for a method of payment. Before she finally decides to pay the bill in 5 cent coins. All $87 of it. Waiting for it to load is like waiting for Kevin Rudd to say something meaningful. It takes so long to get going, if you turned the camera on at the start of an Obama speech, it might fire up in time for you to photograph his back as he left the stage. Elizabeth Taylor goes through husbands in less time than this thing takes to get ready to take a photo.
And once it is ready, it then takes an aeon to actually take the photo. You line up the photo, press the "shoot" button, and it just sits there and looks at you. Remember the scene in Titanic where the Captain orders full reverse on the engines? The Captain yells an order at the First Mate, who yells an order at the Second Mate, who yells an order at the Third Mate, who yells out an order for two long blacks and a slice of toasted banana bread.... sorry, went to sleep there and woke up halfway through the next movie.
Anyway, the Third Mate yanks on the big handle thing, and someone down below decks then yells into a speaking tube, and the person on the other end sends a carrier pigeon with a message down to the engine room, whereby an Engineer yells at the stokers to stoke more coal, and after that catches fire, more steam is produced which turns the turbines faster in reverse and..... blah blah blah, by that time, the boat is in two bits and they are settling on the ocean floor and the fat bloodnut is being rescued. Hope I didn't spoil the movie for you there.
But that's about how long it takes it to actually take a photograph. Things went more rapidly in the 1860's when a photographer stuck his head under a curtain and set fire to some flash powder than went "poof", and he then spent two days developing a glass plate in several bath tubs of chemicals. I have managed to take some photos with the phone, but I am yet to entice it to transfer them to the PC that I am writing this on. I have USB, bluetooth and a Vulcan mindmeld program for all I know, and I still can't get a few fucking photographs to move two feet from my OUPOC to my PC.
I have used two different Canon cameras, and have transferred about 8,000 photos and videos from the two of them to this PC with no problems at all. Even Monkey, who is not yet three, is able to take a photo with the Canon and transfer it to the PC. You plug in the USB cable and flick a switch on the back down to "transfer" mode, and it takes care of itself from then on. And trust me, Monkey might be smart, but he has not yet learned to read Bananas in Pyjamas, let alone a fucking instruction manual for a camera.
I then discover that using the camera has one detrimental side effect - it requires about as much energy to capture an image as it takes to boost a space shuttle into orbit. I was at work today when I heard a funny beeping sound that I had never heard before. I searched my desk, eventually tracking the noise down to the OUPOC, and discovered that it was the "I'm about to turn off" sound it makes when the battery is out of juice.
Now my first mobile phone, issued in around 1992 or 1993, spent most of its life parked in a charger on my desk. If you actually took it out of the charger and popped out for lunch, it went flat. It was mobile to the extent that you could talk and walk around the office, so long as you never went more than 50 feet from the charger. And kept calls down to something like, "Hi, I'm on the mobile. Bye." It was good for showing off the fact that you had a mobile phone, but not much good for actual conversations. And it caused your ears to go crispy and fall off.
But as mobile phone technology improved, so did battery life, and it got to the point where I almost never used the desk charger with my last phone. I simply stuck it in the car kit whenever I drove anywhere (which was every few days), and that was sufficient to keep the battery topped up enough to never run flat.
The new OUPOC went flat so fast, I turned it over a few times and inspected it minutely to make sure that there were no holes that were leaking electricity. It went flat faster that a Woin Swan economic statement. In fact by lunchtime, it was flatter than Julia Gillards vowels. If I'd stuck a red merkin on top of it, I would have been arrested for taking the PM hostage (Gillard is PM now, isn't she?)
I came to the conclusion on the way home that my phone was attacked by an emission trading scheme. I have reconstructed the crime, using forensic techniques rarely seen outside prosecutions for terrorist crimes:
Penny Wong: "Does your phone have electricity in it?"
Me: "I believe so, unless you vote Green, and in that case, you'd believe it ran on pixie dust."
Penny Wong: "Did that electricity come from a coal fired power station?"
Me: "No, I have George Obama at home in the basement. I feed him a bag of rice a week, and he runs on a treadmill for me, which powers our home. Of course it came from a fucking coal fired plant. Where do you think we are? France?"
Penny Wong: "In that case, your electricity is bad. I must take away 90% of it in the form of a carbon tax. Give me your phone."
Me: "Fuck off".
Penny Wong: "Green Goons, beat him to a pulp."
Green Goon 1: "We've just come from a protest at the Gunns pulp mill, so we can't do that in good conscience."
Penny Wong: "In that case, beat him with your truncheons."
Green Goon 2: "Are they made of wood?"
Penny Wong: "Of course they are. They're meant to hurt."
Green Goon 2: "Hurt? Yes, they're meant to hurt all right. Trees have been hurt! Fellow goons, we must make a circle and pile our truncheons in the middle and scream and wail like demented attention seekers. We must ask forgiveness from the trees."
Penny Wong: "See here, you must hand over 90% of your electricity. It won't cost you anything, and you must think of the children."
Me: "Which children?"
Penny Wong: "THE children. You know, the children. The CHILDREN."
Me: "I meant which ones in particular?"
Penny Wong: "THE children are our FUTURE. You must think of them."
Me: "The children are our future? Have you been watching too much Doctor Who? Time travel hasn't been invented yet, unless you count going to Tasmania as a trip back into the past."
Penny Wong: "Forget the children. Give me 90% of your electricity. Or we will all die."
Me: "But you just told me to think of the children, and now I am supposed to forget them? And how are we all going to die?"
Penny Wong: "From global warming. It will kill 9,763 people in 2018, plus a budgie."
Me: "Plus a budgie? How do you know that?"
Penny Wong: "Because our computer models have predicted it. A granny will die of heat stroke as she cleans her budgie's cage, and she will smother the budgie as she collapses".
Me: "That's quite impressive. By the way, it looks like rain. Will I need an umbrella this afternoon?"
Penny Wong: "How should I know. Now, give me 90% of your electricity. It won't cost you anything"
Me: "Won't cost me anything? I'll only be able to make 10% of the calls that I need to, and you tell me that it won't cost me anything?"
Penny Wong: "I am convinced it won't cost you anything, because you don't actually need to make most of those calls."
Me: "How do you know what calls I do and don't need to make?"
Penny Wong: "Ah, you see I am one of those special people that know what is best for you, and I am telling you that you need to make 90% fewer phone calls."
Me: "Fuck off".
Penny Wong: "Do you really have George Obama in the basement?"
Me: "Why?"
Penny Wong: "Well, you'd really be doing us a favour if you did have him down there, because it will help to get the Messiah elected."
Me: "Why do you want that overinflated windbag to get elected?"
Penny Wong: "Because with a like-minded environmental socialist in the White House, me and all my friends will get invited to fly over all the time for conferences and working parties and informal get-togethers."
Me: "Yes, you lot really are special".
Since the stupid thing is supposed to be an MP3 player, I downloaded some podcasts over the weekend and tried to load them onto the phone. It will accept any amount of music, but refuses to take on board any of my podcasts, even though they are all in MP3 format. Thankfully, I got an iPod for Fathers Day, so that solved that little problem. Unlike the Nokia, I was able to get 5 podcasts onto the iPod in no time flat with no recourse to the manual and no requirement to replace the firmware or sim card. And people scoff at Apple and their design philosophy. How little do they know.
But I have been perservering with the phone. I like the idea of having a camera on the phone, since I use my Canon camera an awful lot, and I'd prefer to have one less device to lug around. There's just one problem. No, sorry, there are two problems with the camera on the OUPOC. Hang on, maybe there are three.
Screw it, I'll just start listing the problems and we'll see what the total number is.
To start with, it takes an age for the camera feature to load. With my Canon Ixus, I can have it out of my pocket and taking photos in 2 or 3 seconds, and I do that all the time when cycling. I can whip it out of my back pocket at 40km/h, take a photo and have it turned off and back in my pocket before I start to get speed wobbles. It's that quick.
The Nokia, oops, the OUPOC is a bit more sluggish. Waiting for the camera to start is like standing behind a woman at the checkout counter at the supermarket as she searches through her handbag for her purse, then searches through her purse for a method of payment. Before she finally decides to pay the bill in 5 cent coins. All $87 of it. Waiting for it to load is like waiting for Kevin Rudd to say something meaningful. It takes so long to get going, if you turned the camera on at the start of an Obama speech, it might fire up in time for you to photograph his back as he left the stage. Elizabeth Taylor goes through husbands in less time than this thing takes to get ready to take a photo.
And once it is ready, it then takes an aeon to actually take the photo. You line up the photo, press the "shoot" button, and it just sits there and looks at you. Remember the scene in Titanic where the Captain orders full reverse on the engines? The Captain yells an order at the First Mate, who yells an order at the Second Mate, who yells an order at the Third Mate, who yells out an order for two long blacks and a slice of toasted banana bread.... sorry, went to sleep there and woke up halfway through the next movie.
Anyway, the Third Mate yanks on the big handle thing, and someone down below decks then yells into a speaking tube, and the person on the other end sends a carrier pigeon with a message down to the engine room, whereby an Engineer yells at the stokers to stoke more coal, and after that catches fire, more steam is produced which turns the turbines faster in reverse and..... blah blah blah, by that time, the boat is in two bits and they are settling on the ocean floor and the fat bloodnut is being rescued. Hope I didn't spoil the movie for you there.
But that's about how long it takes it to actually take a photograph. Things went more rapidly in the 1860's when a photographer stuck his head under a curtain and set fire to some flash powder than went "poof", and he then spent two days developing a glass plate in several bath tubs of chemicals. I have managed to take some photos with the phone, but I am yet to entice it to transfer them to the PC that I am writing this on. I have USB, bluetooth and a Vulcan mindmeld program for all I know, and I still can't get a few fucking photographs to move two feet from my OUPOC to my PC.
I have used two different Canon cameras, and have transferred about 8,000 photos and videos from the two of them to this PC with no problems at all. Even Monkey, who is not yet three, is able to take a photo with the Canon and transfer it to the PC. You plug in the USB cable and flick a switch on the back down to "transfer" mode, and it takes care of itself from then on. And trust me, Monkey might be smart, but he has not yet learned to read Bananas in Pyjamas, let alone a fucking instruction manual for a camera.
I then discover that using the camera has one detrimental side effect - it requires about as much energy to capture an image as it takes to boost a space shuttle into orbit. I was at work today when I heard a funny beeping sound that I had never heard before. I searched my desk, eventually tracking the noise down to the OUPOC, and discovered that it was the "I'm about to turn off" sound it makes when the battery is out of juice.
Now my first mobile phone, issued in around 1992 or 1993, spent most of its life parked in a charger on my desk. If you actually took it out of the charger and popped out for lunch, it went flat. It was mobile to the extent that you could talk and walk around the office, so long as you never went more than 50 feet from the charger. And kept calls down to something like, "Hi, I'm on the mobile. Bye." It was good for showing off the fact that you had a mobile phone, but not much good for actual conversations. And it caused your ears to go crispy and fall off.
But as mobile phone technology improved, so did battery life, and it got to the point where I almost never used the desk charger with my last phone. I simply stuck it in the car kit whenever I drove anywhere (which was every few days), and that was sufficient to keep the battery topped up enough to never run flat.
The new OUPOC went flat so fast, I turned it over a few times and inspected it minutely to make sure that there were no holes that were leaking electricity. It went flat faster that a Woin Swan economic statement. In fact by lunchtime, it was flatter than Julia Gillards vowels. If I'd stuck a red merkin on top of it, I would have been arrested for taking the PM hostage (Gillard is PM now, isn't she?)
I came to the conclusion on the way home that my phone was attacked by an emission trading scheme. I have reconstructed the crime, using forensic techniques rarely seen outside prosecutions for terrorist crimes:
Penny Wong: "Does your phone have electricity in it?"
Me: "I believe so, unless you vote Green, and in that case, you'd believe it ran on pixie dust."
Penny Wong: "Did that electricity come from a coal fired power station?"
Me: "No, I have George Obama at home in the basement. I feed him a bag of rice a week, and he runs on a treadmill for me, which powers our home. Of course it came from a fucking coal fired plant. Where do you think we are? France?"
Penny Wong: "In that case, your electricity is bad. I must take away 90% of it in the form of a carbon tax. Give me your phone."
Me: "Fuck off".
Penny Wong: "Green Goons, beat him to a pulp."
Green Goon 1: "We've just come from a protest at the Gunns pulp mill, so we can't do that in good conscience."
Penny Wong: "In that case, beat him with your truncheons."
Green Goon 2: "Are they made of wood?"
Penny Wong: "Of course they are. They're meant to hurt."
Green Goon 2: "Hurt? Yes, they're meant to hurt all right. Trees have been hurt! Fellow goons, we must make a circle and pile our truncheons in the middle and scream and wail like demented attention seekers. We must ask forgiveness from the trees."
Penny Wong: "See here, you must hand over 90% of your electricity. It won't cost you anything, and you must think of the children."
Me: "Which children?"
Penny Wong: "THE children. You know, the children. The CHILDREN."
Me: "I meant which ones in particular?"
Penny Wong: "THE children are our FUTURE. You must think of them."
Me: "The children are our future? Have you been watching too much Doctor Who? Time travel hasn't been invented yet, unless you count going to Tasmania as a trip back into the past."
Penny Wong: "Forget the children. Give me 90% of your electricity. Or we will all die."
Me: "But you just told me to think of the children, and now I am supposed to forget them? And how are we all going to die?"
Penny Wong: "From global warming. It will kill 9,763 people in 2018, plus a budgie."
Me: "Plus a budgie? How do you know that?"
Penny Wong: "Because our computer models have predicted it. A granny will die of heat stroke as she cleans her budgie's cage, and she will smother the budgie as she collapses".
Me: "That's quite impressive. By the way, it looks like rain. Will I need an umbrella this afternoon?"
Penny Wong: "How should I know. Now, give me 90% of your electricity. It won't cost you anything"
Me: "Won't cost me anything? I'll only be able to make 10% of the calls that I need to, and you tell me that it won't cost me anything?"
Penny Wong: "I am convinced it won't cost you anything, because you don't actually need to make most of those calls."
Me: "How do you know what calls I do and don't need to make?"
Penny Wong: "Ah, you see I am one of those special people that know what is best for you, and I am telling you that you need to make 90% fewer phone calls."
Me: "Fuck off".
Penny Wong: "Do you really have George Obama in the basement?"
Me: "Why?"
Penny Wong: "Well, you'd really be doing us a favour if you did have him down there, because it will help to get the Messiah elected."
Me: "Why do you want that overinflated windbag to get elected?"
Penny Wong: "Because with a like-minded environmental socialist in the White House, me and all my friends will get invited to fly over all the time for conferences and working parties and informal get-togethers."
Me: "Yes, you lot really are special".
Another case of the SMH going soft on Labor
What is it with the SMH these days? Why do they feel they need to continually apologise for Labor, when it seems all the voters want to do is boot them out at the state level?
Here we have a story on the elections over the weekend. The big news of course was the WA election, which actually mattered. But the SMH decided to mix in the outcomes of two by-elections to soften the blow to Labor, and to try and undermine Nelson once again.
In Mayo, John Howard's former industrial relations adviser Jamie Briggs won narrowly after battling against 10 independent and minor-party candidates, none of whom directed preferences to him. He suffered a swing against him of more than 10 per cent.
I'd say that if he got no preferences whatsoever, then he did very well to retain the seat. Do these people not understand the importance and power of preferences in our electoral system? And this from a man who is described as the "Chief Political Correspondent"? What planet is he on?
The inclusion of the words "industrial relations adviser" is presumably an attempt to re-ignite supposed voter anger over Work Choices, and to have another stab at John Howard, now long departed from the national stage. Philip Coorey is really showing his true colours here.
By late yesterday, Mr Briggs held the once-safe seat by 52 per cent to 48 per cent over the Greens' Lynton Vonow.
Once safe seat? I am old enough to recall an election where it was thought Downer was going to get done-over by that Redgum fellow. Safe? Balls! Downer firmed up his majority over time, but the seat has always been awash with idiots like these (thanks to the Devils Kitchen for that). The video at that link is a must-see by the way. Listen out for the idiot hippy saying, "Bring me to this rock, which has had the most incredible life".
But back to the SMH. Check out the language:
Labor - "bruising"
Nationals - "obliterated", "massacre in Lyne", "thrash the Nationals candidate"
Liberals - "almost lost" (as opposed to winning 52 to 48 on the 2 party preferred vote, which is more than Kevin Rudd scored in the last election)
There is not a single word of analysis as to why Oakeshot won in Lyne. Not one word about the factors governing that byelection, just the fact that the Nationals did badly, and hence "Nelson is on the nose" - but it was the Nationals that got wiped out, not the Liberals! Does Coorey not understand the difference between the two parties, and the oddities that surround anything to do with the National Party?
So the real story, which is the probable defeat of Labor in WA - against all odds mind you - is whitewashed by two by-elections that have no impact on how the country is governed. In essence, the kick in the balls for Rudd is washed away and belittled by a nasty little attack on the coalition.
Coorey - what a complete tosser.
PS - just as I published this article, Bolt published one on the Mayo by-election which better describes the recent history of the electoral ups and downs that Downer had.
PPS - apparently the main theme of the Mayo by-election was the Murray-Darling, which presumably means there was a cavalcade of Green fear-mongering about climate change and all that other tripe. If that's the case, the the Libs did very well to retain the seat in the face of hysterical tirades by the likes of Wong, who would have been accusing the Libs of being "soft on climate change" etc etc.
Therefore, the result of this by-election is, if anything, a slap in the face for those that believe that the electorate has been suckered by this climate change hocus pocus. If a seat with one of the biggest Green votes in the country, and one affected directly by problems with the Murray-Darling, can't be captured by the loons, then climate change is dead in the water. Fatally holed below the waterline (assuming there is any water in the Murray-Darling) by Mayo.
Here we have a story on the elections over the weekend. The big news of course was the WA election, which actually mattered. But the SMH decided to mix in the outcomes of two by-elections to soften the blow to Labor, and to try and undermine Nelson once again.
In Mayo, John Howard's former industrial relations adviser Jamie Briggs won narrowly after battling against 10 independent and minor-party candidates, none of whom directed preferences to him. He suffered a swing against him of more than 10 per cent.
I'd say that if he got no preferences whatsoever, then he did very well to retain the seat. Do these people not understand the importance and power of preferences in our electoral system? And this from a man who is described as the "Chief Political Correspondent"? What planet is he on?
The inclusion of the words "industrial relations adviser" is presumably an attempt to re-ignite supposed voter anger over Work Choices, and to have another stab at John Howard, now long departed from the national stage. Philip Coorey is really showing his true colours here.
By late yesterday, Mr Briggs held the once-safe seat by 52 per cent to 48 per cent over the Greens' Lynton Vonow.
Once safe seat? I am old enough to recall an election where it was thought Downer was going to get done-over by that Redgum fellow. Safe? Balls! Downer firmed up his majority over time, but the seat has always been awash with idiots like these (thanks to the Devils Kitchen for that). The video at that link is a must-see by the way. Listen out for the idiot hippy saying, "Bring me to this rock, which has had the most incredible life".
But back to the SMH. Check out the language:
Labor - "bruising"
Nationals - "obliterated", "massacre in Lyne", "thrash the Nationals candidate"
Liberals - "almost lost" (as opposed to winning 52 to 48 on the 2 party preferred vote, which is more than Kevin Rudd scored in the last election)
There is not a single word of analysis as to why Oakeshot won in Lyne. Not one word about the factors governing that byelection, just the fact that the Nationals did badly, and hence "Nelson is on the nose" - but it was the Nationals that got wiped out, not the Liberals! Does Coorey not understand the difference between the two parties, and the oddities that surround anything to do with the National Party?
So the real story, which is the probable defeat of Labor in WA - against all odds mind you - is whitewashed by two by-elections that have no impact on how the country is governed. In essence, the kick in the balls for Rudd is washed away and belittled by a nasty little attack on the coalition.
Coorey - what a complete tosser.
PS - just as I published this article, Bolt published one on the Mayo by-election which better describes the recent history of the electoral ups and downs that Downer had.
PPS - apparently the main theme of the Mayo by-election was the Murray-Darling, which presumably means there was a cavalcade of Green fear-mongering about climate change and all that other tripe. If that's the case, the the Libs did very well to retain the seat in the face of hysterical tirades by the likes of Wong, who would have been accusing the Libs of being "soft on climate change" etc etc.
Therefore, the result of this by-election is, if anything, a slap in the face for those that believe that the electorate has been suckered by this climate change hocus pocus. If a seat with one of the biggest Green votes in the country, and one affected directly by problems with the Murray-Darling, can't be captured by the loons, then climate change is dead in the water. Fatally holed below the waterline (assuming there is any water in the Murray-Darling) by Mayo.
A good website
In terms of posting interesting photos of the nooks and crannies of Sydney, this guy has me beaten by a country mile. His webiste is brilliant - have a look.
However, he died last week at the ripe old age of 93, so if I last that long, I have another 42 years to put together a collection that is half as good. My bike has taken me to a lot of the spots that he's photographed, but whoever takes his photos (a son?) is much better at finding an interesting vantage point and framing the shot. I just tend to point and click without much thought.
It's nice to know that someone else shared a passion for photographing the quirky and bizarre things that you can see whilst getting a bit of exercise. It also shows that taking the path less beaten can reveal the most fascinating things. For me, it's a nice reminder that exercise should not be about getting from A to B by the shortest possible route in the least amount of time. A meandering course that involves a few stops can do just as much for your physical fitness, whilst doing wonders for your mental fitness and motivation.
RIP Alan. What a legend.
However, he died last week at the ripe old age of 93, so if I last that long, I have another 42 years to put together a collection that is half as good. My bike has taken me to a lot of the spots that he's photographed, but whoever takes his photos (a son?) is much better at finding an interesting vantage point and framing the shot. I just tend to point and click without much thought.
It's nice to know that someone else shared a passion for photographing the quirky and bizarre things that you can see whilst getting a bit of exercise. It also shows that taking the path less beaten can reveal the most fascinating things. For me, it's a nice reminder that exercise should not be about getting from A to B by the shortest possible route in the least amount of time. A meandering course that involves a few stops can do just as much for your physical fitness, whilst doing wonders for your mental fitness and motivation.
RIP Alan. What a legend.
Sunday, 7 September 2008
Shattered by North Shore hills
A post about cycling.
It is a common misconception that Sydney is not well suited to cycling. The usual reasons that are trotted out are:
- geography, as in enormous hills
- weather, as in humid summers
- bad roads with no cycle paths or cycle lanes
The problem with that reasoning is that such a situation really only exists north of the Harbour Bridge. Which only re-inforces my view that the prats who write for Fairfax publications all live on the lower north shore. (I knew this to be true in one case - when I was living in Neutral Bay, I had a Fin Review journalist downstairs. My cousin used to be an editor of some sort with the SMH in the good old days, and he lived in Double Bay).
Out here in wogland, it's pretty flat. In fact, once you go west of Balmain, there is hardly a hill of note before you hit the Blue Mountains. It's like Holland with a few wrinkles. Yes, it does get humid, but having been locked in train carriages without air conditioning, I can attest to the fact that it gets disgustingly hot and humid on public transport as well - and that includes public transport in the east and north. One of the worst experiences along those lines that I ever had was to be stuck on a train between Edgecliff and Bondi Junction in a tunnel for about an hour one summers afternoon. By the time we alighted, so much sweat had run down my legs, my shoes were overflowing. It was disgusting.
The trouble with our media elite of course is that they live, work and play in a closely circumscribed area bounded by Coogee in the south, Willoughby in the north and Balmain to the west. They describe a Sydney that is cosmopolitan, multi-cultural and replete with good food and coffee. That describes the inner suburbs quite well, but once you venture outside that zone, the locals hate poofs, live in mono-cultural ethnic ghettos and spend their days stuffing their faces with McDonalds and KFC. The number of copies of the SMH sold west of Burwood can be counted on one hand, and the ABC might as well not bother to power up any transmission towers out this way. When gay friends come for dinner, it's usually by means of an armoured taxi, and they like to leave before the lynch mob with the pitchforks and burning torches breaches the front door.
Which means when it comes to Sydney being cycling unfriendly, they are of course referring to the tiny enclave that they inhabit which makes up less than 10% of the Sydney area. Hey, I used to live there too, and any trip west of George St usually required a pith helmet (no explorer ever ventured into the savage backwoods of Africa without a pith helmet). Out here, one can cycle for miles on either dedicated grade separated bike paths, or on back streets where an easy and bike friendly route has been laid out by the RTA or Councils - when I read an article saying that Sydney is not bike friendly, I wonder whether the idiot writing it is living in the same city as me.
The unfortunate effect is that it discourages people who live in very cycle friendly places from giving it a go because they believe everything they read.
All that aside, I decided to tempt fate today by cycling into the great unknown, which is the region north of the Gladesville Bridge (and north of North Sydney). Because it is comparatively flat out this way, I completely lack hill fitness. I wanted to find some hills and see how I went.
Fuck, I almost died. And not from the fucking maniacs driving Mercedes like they own the road. I am talking about heart attack brought on by having to attack hills that would make good launching pads for Scud missiles. I went over the Harbour Bridge to North Sydney, then up Miller St and over the Castlecrag Bridge. That was not too bad, and I have no photos of that part of the trip because trying to pull the camera out when you are descending a hill at 60km/h is a trip to certain asphalt covered death.
It was at the top of the hill after crossing Castlecrag Bridge that I started to understand that I might have bitten off more than I could chew. It was at that point that I called the Chickenman on the pretext that I needed directions to Waringah Rd, but more importantly, to stop my heart from leaping out of my ears. I even spent a few minutes fiddling with the new Nokia, trying to get the GPS function to work. I was so glad of all the fiddling that I had to do to try and make it work that I lost my desire to toss it into the nearest gorge. There's nothing like a bit of pain in the arse, not functioning properly technology to waste some time when you really need a break.
From there, I kept going north over a few more hills until I pretty much cracked and decided it was time to try heading home by a different route. I had to stop in Crows Nest for a restorative Coke and a bit of a lie down on the grass - I was that shattered. In the end, it was "only" a 44km round trip, which ended up involving 2 hours of actual riding in a 3 hour trip. Every 20 minutes of riding required almost 10 minutes of recovery. I feel like I covered more distance vertically than I did horizontally.
The problem was not the hills themselves - I've done hills that steep and long and nasty before. The problem was the traffic, and the lack of a safe bike lane. I just couldn't cruise up the hills in low gear, taking my time and hogging a lane. I wanted off them hills as fast as possible to get away from all the lunatic Mercedes drivers, which meant pushing it as hard as I could until the body was not capable of giving any more. I am just not fit enough to push the bike up those hills as hard as I did. It was a case of get off the hill or die by being rammed up the arse by an idiot in a Merc.
In short, the only thing holding back cycling on the north shore is not the hills or the weather, but a lack of safe bike lanes. Forget about riding on the footpaths - I tried that in a few places, and they're about as smooth and nicely formed as a prodigiously-mined Afghan goat track. That is, if such a thing as a footpath exists. There must have been a great Concrete Famine or Concrete Drought on the north shore at some point, because they certainly ran out of the grey stuff when it came to laying paths for pedestrians. That denotes a certain amount of cunning on the part of the city fathers, who probably figured that if they forced people to drive, they could exclude people too poor to afford a car.
I pulled into a bike shop and asked them about safe routes to the Roseville Bridge, and they laughed at me. They told me that there are a few cycling paths north of that area, but essentially nothing in the area between the Roseville Bridge and the Harbour Bridge.
If they won't build paths for bikes, the answer is to clear the road of idiots in Mercedes with one of these.
Don't tempt me....
It is a common misconception that Sydney is not well suited to cycling. The usual reasons that are trotted out are:
- geography, as in enormous hills
- weather, as in humid summers
- bad roads with no cycle paths or cycle lanes
The problem with that reasoning is that such a situation really only exists north of the Harbour Bridge. Which only re-inforces my view that the prats who write for Fairfax publications all live on the lower north shore. (I knew this to be true in one case - when I was living in Neutral Bay, I had a Fin Review journalist downstairs. My cousin used to be an editor of some sort with the SMH in the good old days, and he lived in Double Bay).
Out here in wogland, it's pretty flat. In fact, once you go west of Balmain, there is hardly a hill of note before you hit the Blue Mountains. It's like Holland with a few wrinkles. Yes, it does get humid, but having been locked in train carriages without air conditioning, I can attest to the fact that it gets disgustingly hot and humid on public transport as well - and that includes public transport in the east and north. One of the worst experiences along those lines that I ever had was to be stuck on a train between Edgecliff and Bondi Junction in a tunnel for about an hour one summers afternoon. By the time we alighted, so much sweat had run down my legs, my shoes were overflowing. It was disgusting.
The trouble with our media elite of course is that they live, work and play in a closely circumscribed area bounded by Coogee in the south, Willoughby in the north and Balmain to the west. They describe a Sydney that is cosmopolitan, multi-cultural and replete with good food and coffee. That describes the inner suburbs quite well, but once you venture outside that zone, the locals hate poofs, live in mono-cultural ethnic ghettos and spend their days stuffing their faces with McDonalds and KFC. The number of copies of the SMH sold west of Burwood can be counted on one hand, and the ABC might as well not bother to power up any transmission towers out this way. When gay friends come for dinner, it's usually by means of an armoured taxi, and they like to leave before the lynch mob with the pitchforks and burning torches breaches the front door.
Which means when it comes to Sydney being cycling unfriendly, they are of course referring to the tiny enclave that they inhabit which makes up less than 10% of the Sydney area. Hey, I used to live there too, and any trip west of George St usually required a pith helmet (no explorer ever ventured into the savage backwoods of Africa without a pith helmet). Out here, one can cycle for miles on either dedicated grade separated bike paths, or on back streets where an easy and bike friendly route has been laid out by the RTA or Councils - when I read an article saying that Sydney is not bike friendly, I wonder whether the idiot writing it is living in the same city as me.
The unfortunate effect is that it discourages people who live in very cycle friendly places from giving it a go because they believe everything they read.
All that aside, I decided to tempt fate today by cycling into the great unknown, which is the region north of the Gladesville Bridge (and north of North Sydney). Because it is comparatively flat out this way, I completely lack hill fitness. I wanted to find some hills and see how I went.
Fuck, I almost died. And not from the fucking maniacs driving Mercedes like they own the road. I am talking about heart attack brought on by having to attack hills that would make good launching pads for Scud missiles. I went over the Harbour Bridge to North Sydney, then up Miller St and over the Castlecrag Bridge. That was not too bad, and I have no photos of that part of the trip because trying to pull the camera out when you are descending a hill at 60km/h is a trip to certain asphalt covered death.
It was at the top of the hill after crossing Castlecrag Bridge that I started to understand that I might have bitten off more than I could chew. It was at that point that I called the Chickenman on the pretext that I needed directions to Waringah Rd, but more importantly, to stop my heart from leaping out of my ears. I even spent a few minutes fiddling with the new Nokia, trying to get the GPS function to work. I was so glad of all the fiddling that I had to do to try and make it work that I lost my desire to toss it into the nearest gorge. There's nothing like a bit of pain in the arse, not functioning properly technology to waste some time when you really need a break.
From there, I kept going north over a few more hills until I pretty much cracked and decided it was time to try heading home by a different route. I had to stop in Crows Nest for a restorative Coke and a bit of a lie down on the grass - I was that shattered. In the end, it was "only" a 44km round trip, which ended up involving 2 hours of actual riding in a 3 hour trip. Every 20 minutes of riding required almost 10 minutes of recovery. I feel like I covered more distance vertically than I did horizontally.
The problem was not the hills themselves - I've done hills that steep and long and nasty before. The problem was the traffic, and the lack of a safe bike lane. I just couldn't cruise up the hills in low gear, taking my time and hogging a lane. I wanted off them hills as fast as possible to get away from all the lunatic Mercedes drivers, which meant pushing it as hard as I could until the body was not capable of giving any more. I am just not fit enough to push the bike up those hills as hard as I did. It was a case of get off the hill or die by being rammed up the arse by an idiot in a Merc.
In short, the only thing holding back cycling on the north shore is not the hills or the weather, but a lack of safe bike lanes. Forget about riding on the footpaths - I tried that in a few places, and they're about as smooth and nicely formed as a prodigiously-mined Afghan goat track. That is, if such a thing as a footpath exists. There must have been a great Concrete Famine or Concrete Drought on the north shore at some point, because they certainly ran out of the grey stuff when it came to laying paths for pedestrians. That denotes a certain amount of cunning on the part of the city fathers, who probably figured that if they forced people to drive, they could exclude people too poor to afford a car.
I pulled into a bike shop and asked them about safe routes to the Roseville Bridge, and they laughed at me. They told me that there are a few cycling paths north of that area, but essentially nothing in the area between the Roseville Bridge and the Harbour Bridge.
If they won't build paths for bikes, the answer is to clear the road of idiots in Mercedes with one of these.
Don't tempt me....
Kaboom! Just open fire on the bastards
Kaboom provided the perfect answer to how to terminate car chases with this quote:
In order to end these problems with the police pursuit psychology, my theory has always been "don't chase, just open fire!".
Here's another cop story for you from my mate the ex-copper. He was chasing a Landcruiser one night being driven by a couple of teenage blackfella petrol sniffers/chromers/off their nut car thieves.
There was no way the driver would ever pull over, since they enjoyed being chased by the cops (for the rush), so my mate poked a shotgun out the passenger window and blew out the rear tyre on the Landcruiser.
The driver of course lost control and rolled it, and a carload of blackfellas ended up face down in the dirt, each sporting a new set of handcuffs.
They now had a small problem - how to explain the blown rear tyre.
A quick trip to the rubbish tip solved that. The town in question had many, many 4WD's, so the tip was well supplied with 4WD tyres of all makes and models. They quickly located one of the right size, did a swap and hey presto - the crash report was written up about a Landcruiser on its roof with 4 inflated tyres and a blackfella who "lost control".
When it went to court, the blackfellas all complained about their tyre being shot out, but the judge took one look at the photos of the upside down Landcruiser with four intact tyres and locked them all up.
Me, I'd make that the SOP*, but without worrying about the pretense of having to replace the tyre. My message to those that refuse to stop would be, "You will be able to drive rapidly until such time as we can cock and aim our weapons".
Car chases should last a maximum of 15 seconds and maybe half a dozen rounds.
* SOP = Standard Operating Procedure. Your TLA** for the day.
**TLA = Three Letter Acronym
In order to end these problems with the police pursuit psychology, my theory has always been "don't chase, just open fire!".
Here's another cop story for you from my mate the ex-copper. He was chasing a Landcruiser one night being driven by a couple of teenage blackfella petrol sniffers/chromers/off their nut car thieves.
There was no way the driver would ever pull over, since they enjoyed being chased by the cops (for the rush), so my mate poked a shotgun out the passenger window and blew out the rear tyre on the Landcruiser.
The driver of course lost control and rolled it, and a carload of blackfellas ended up face down in the dirt, each sporting a new set of handcuffs.
They now had a small problem - how to explain the blown rear tyre.
A quick trip to the rubbish tip solved that. The town in question had many, many 4WD's, so the tip was well supplied with 4WD tyres of all makes and models. They quickly located one of the right size, did a swap and hey presto - the crash report was written up about a Landcruiser on its roof with 4 inflated tyres and a blackfella who "lost control".
When it went to court, the blackfellas all complained about their tyre being shot out, but the judge took one look at the photos of the upside down Landcruiser with four intact tyres and locked them all up.
Me, I'd make that the SOP*, but without worrying about the pretense of having to replace the tyre. My message to those that refuse to stop would be, "You will be able to drive rapidly until such time as we can cock and aim our weapons".
Car chases should last a maximum of 15 seconds and maybe half a dozen rounds.
* SOP = Standard Operating Procedure. Your TLA** for the day.
**TLA = Three Letter Acronym
White Bay Hotel burns down
The first I knew of the pub burning down was when J got home a few hours late last night, having been caught up in the traffic chaos that resulted from the pub partly collapsing over Victoria Road. Apparently it fell down enough for there to be bricks on the road, which would not be a fun thing to drive over.
I went past it today and it was a complete mess. I had a chat with another cyclist as we rode over the Anzac Bridge together, and he said that a DA for the site had been rejected two months ago. The whole thing is looking mighty dodgy.
I'm really glad it's gone. With luck, the Council or RTA will buy a slice of the block and widen the footpath along that stretch of Victoria Road so that pedestrians and cyclists can use it without killing each other.
All we need now is for the old power station next door to blow up, and we might get some better infrastructure in this area.
Premier Who? And who is to blame for that?
Another brainless and utterly demeaning headline from the SMH yesterday. "It's Premier Who?"
Hell, I am not a Labor supporter by any stretch of the imagination, but who is to blame that we hardly know who this bloke is? Who is supposed to be telling us about what is going on in the world of politics and government? Would that be papers like the SMH for instance?
God, what a cavalcade of boneheads we have to put up with at the SMH. They print nothing about this bloke for a year and a half, and then they snidely snipe at him on day one because the public don't know him.
I know more about obscure British MPs because I read The Spectator, and that magazine does a profile each week on a different politician - and they don't care which party they come from. They publish a profile, that may run to several pages, on anyone that they think has an interesting future ahead of them, or who happens to be making an impact behind the scenes.
Unfortunately, our journalistic expertise out here in the colonies does have the depth and intelligence to run to doing that, so we, the public, sit here in the dark like mushrooms.
The lack of knowledge that we have about our new Premier is the severest indictment yet on the awfulness of the Fairfax press. I look forward to the SMH undergoing the same treatment as The Age.
Hell, I am not a Labor supporter by any stretch of the imagination, but who is to blame that we hardly know who this bloke is? Who is supposed to be telling us about what is going on in the world of politics and government? Would that be papers like the SMH for instance?God, what a cavalcade of boneheads we have to put up with at the SMH. They print nothing about this bloke for a year and a half, and then they snidely snipe at him on day one because the public don't know him.
I know more about obscure British MPs because I read The Spectator, and that magazine does a profile each week on a different politician - and they don't care which party they come from. They publish a profile, that may run to several pages, on anyone that they think has an interesting future ahead of them, or who happens to be making an impact behind the scenes.
Unfortunately, our journalistic expertise out here in the colonies does have the depth and intelligence to run to doing that, so we, the public, sit here in the dark like mushrooms.
The lack of knowledge that we have about our new Premier is the severest indictment yet on the awfulness of the Fairfax press. I look forward to the SMH undergoing the same treatment as The Age.
Using a teleprompter
We've had a few speechmakers in our family, and I don't just mean at occasions like weddings and a retirement party at the office. I'm talking big time speeches to a big audience. Count me out though - I think the biggest speech I made was at my 21st, and it was a disaster. Instead of making speeches, I have stuck to speechwriting (I've written a few over the years for the odd CEO, and had to write remarks for Ministers and the Premier, but nothing that I would describe as notable. I never want to hear those speeches uttered again).
I've asked various family members over the years how they prepare for a big speech, which were always made without notes or a teleprompter, and the answers usually went like this:
"To start with, you write it out in longhand (get that? Write it. Not type it - write it using a pad and pen.) Then you write it out again - the process helps to reinforce retention."
"Then you practice it whenever you can - standing in front of the mirror having a shave is always a good time to do it. You need to run through the entire speech, speaking every word as you would on the day in question, at least half a dozen times (get that? A half hour speech may require 3 solid hours of practice beforehand, if not more).
"You might take along a few index cards with note points on them, just in case you get lost at some point, but that should be it. By the time you make it, you should be able to recite it in your sleep. A good, 10 minute speech can require weeks of preparation."
I only saw one of these speeches in question being made, and it was at a fairly major convention that was a big deal about 9 years ago. Many speeches were made at this convention by the great and good, who had gathered from all over the country to thrash out a thorny question, but my relative was the only one to stand up and talk to the convention without notes. They were the only one not to stand there with their head bowed as they read a prepared speech in flat monotones. Some clearly didn't understand the words they were expected to declaim - I cringed whenever I heard one of them stumble over a word they had never seen before in print.
I found it to be the only interesting speech from the entire convention, and that was not due to family pride. The other delegates and observers were riveted by the spectacle of someone actually speaking, as opposed to reading a speech. I'm not sure they got the message, but the shock of not having to sit through another boring monotone certainly grabbed their attention.
Now this relative was a contemporary of Menzies when he was Prime Minister, so we are going back aways here. But they told me once that Menzies only made a few speeches each year as PM, and spent months preparing them. Of course Menzies wrote them all himself, and practiced them again and again and again until they were pitch perfect. The idea of a speechwriter would have been completely alien - what was the point of going into politics if you were unable to clearly articulate your ideas? Not somebody else's ideas - your ideas. Maybe that's why we think politicians used to be more trustworthy and had more conviction - what they said were their words. No one will ever trust a sock puppet.
I have written all of that to explain why the teleprompter is de rigeur these days.
When Menzies was on the election trail, there was no electronic media pack following him around recording everything he said and showing a 5 second grab on the evening news. Menzies made pretty much the same speech in every town hall that he visited during the campaign. He didn't need notes as he said the same thing over and over again - perhaps 50 or 100 times in a few weeks. I have an excellent biography on Montgomery, and he did the same thing when he was a General visiting the troops in the desert - he would stand on the hood of a jeep, hand out cigarettes to the men and then say the same things that he had said at dozens of other dusty locations in the middle of nowhere. One of his aides threatened to shoot him if he heard the same talk ever again. But that was the nature of the beast back then.
Public figures give a lot more speeches these days, and the media expects them to say something different every time. The likes of Obama and Palin don't have the time to write a speech, let alone practice it so many times that they can learn it by heart. They can't give the same speech every night at a different location - the media would ridicule them for failing to say something "new and refreshing".
The modern campaign has killed the art of speechmaking as we once knew it, and we might as well accept it.
Personally, I deplore the use of the teleprompter, but I completely understand why it has to be used, and I don't think any less of someone for using one.
I've asked various family members over the years how they prepare for a big speech, which were always made without notes or a teleprompter, and the answers usually went like this:
"To start with, you write it out in longhand (get that? Write it. Not type it - write it using a pad and pen.) Then you write it out again - the process helps to reinforce retention."
"Then you practice it whenever you can - standing in front of the mirror having a shave is always a good time to do it. You need to run through the entire speech, speaking every word as you would on the day in question, at least half a dozen times (get that? A half hour speech may require 3 solid hours of practice beforehand, if not more).
"You might take along a few index cards with note points on them, just in case you get lost at some point, but that should be it. By the time you make it, you should be able to recite it in your sleep. A good, 10 minute speech can require weeks of preparation."
I only saw one of these speeches in question being made, and it was at a fairly major convention that was a big deal about 9 years ago. Many speeches were made at this convention by the great and good, who had gathered from all over the country to thrash out a thorny question, but my relative was the only one to stand up and talk to the convention without notes. They were the only one not to stand there with their head bowed as they read a prepared speech in flat monotones. Some clearly didn't understand the words they were expected to declaim - I cringed whenever I heard one of them stumble over a word they had never seen before in print.
I found it to be the only interesting speech from the entire convention, and that was not due to family pride. The other delegates and observers were riveted by the spectacle of someone actually speaking, as opposed to reading a speech. I'm not sure they got the message, but the shock of not having to sit through another boring monotone certainly grabbed their attention.
Now this relative was a contemporary of Menzies when he was Prime Minister, so we are going back aways here. But they told me once that Menzies only made a few speeches each year as PM, and spent months preparing them. Of course Menzies wrote them all himself, and practiced them again and again and again until they were pitch perfect. The idea of a speechwriter would have been completely alien - what was the point of going into politics if you were unable to clearly articulate your ideas? Not somebody else's ideas - your ideas. Maybe that's why we think politicians used to be more trustworthy and had more conviction - what they said were their words. No one will ever trust a sock puppet.
I have written all of that to explain why the teleprompter is de rigeur these days.
When Menzies was on the election trail, there was no electronic media pack following him around recording everything he said and showing a 5 second grab on the evening news. Menzies made pretty much the same speech in every town hall that he visited during the campaign. He didn't need notes as he said the same thing over and over again - perhaps 50 or 100 times in a few weeks. I have an excellent biography on Montgomery, and he did the same thing when he was a General visiting the troops in the desert - he would stand on the hood of a jeep, hand out cigarettes to the men and then say the same things that he had said at dozens of other dusty locations in the middle of nowhere. One of his aides threatened to shoot him if he heard the same talk ever again. But that was the nature of the beast back then.
Public figures give a lot more speeches these days, and the media expects them to say something different every time. The likes of Obama and Palin don't have the time to write a speech, let alone practice it so many times that they can learn it by heart. They can't give the same speech every night at a different location - the media would ridicule them for failing to say something "new and refreshing".
The modern campaign has killed the art of speechmaking as we once knew it, and we might as well accept it.
Personally, I deplore the use of the teleprompter, but I completely understand why it has to be used, and I don't think any less of someone for using one.
Another incoherent SMH story
The SMH is running a story this morning on Speed blamed for deaths.
Here are the opening paragraphs:
You have to read another six paragraphs before discovering that:
The 24-year-old male driver of the Mazda RX-8 was taken to Nepean Hospital in a critical condition with head and chest injuries.
It was only at that point that I worked out that the two women were not in the RX-8.
Is there something wrong with my comprehension abilities at 7am on a Sunday morning, or is the SMH employing people who can't write coherently?
Here are the opening paragraphs:
A MOTHER and her teenage daughter were killed following a high-speed police chase in Windsor, north-west of Sydney, yesterday.
A blue Mazda RX-8 was travelling west along Windsor Road at high speed when it overtook a highway patrol vehicle at 8.30am.
The vehicle was clocked at more than 170kmh before police gave chase.
I read those words and gained the impression that the RX-8 was carrying the two dead women, and I was wondering who was driving - the mother or the daughter. I thought it strange that a 40 year old woman would drive in such a way, or allow her 19 year old daughter to do the same.You have to read another six paragraphs before discovering that:
The 24-year-old male driver of the Mazda RX-8 was taken to Nepean Hospital in a critical condition with head and chest injuries.
It was only at that point that I worked out that the two women were not in the RX-8.
Is there something wrong with my comprehension abilities at 7am on a Sunday morning, or is the SMH employing people who can't write coherently?
Saturday, 6 September 2008
Shopping in Chatswoo
"Chatswoo"? you say? Chatswoo? Where is Chatswoo?
Chatswoo is how one of my Hong Kong born Chinese staff used to describe Chatswood, and he lived there himself. The "woo" refers to the idea that it has become Sydney's 2nd Chinatown.
I had an argument with a ticket machine in a carpark today. I drove up to the boomgate and pressed the button to get a ticket, which the machine duly spat out. However, the gate refused to rise after I removed the ticket. I waited a few seconds, then figuring that the ticket was a dud, I asked the machine nicely for another one (by pressing the button marked "ticket"). Some fool programmer had built some smarts into the system whereby the machine refused to issue another ticket because my car had not moved, and it had not moved because the boom gate had refused to budge.
A catch-22 situation.
I pressed the "help" button, which was not much good. I was jammed in tight, with cars behind me, and thankfully they were all too polite to start honking and beeping and swearing. Eventually, a security guard of some sort wandered over to see what the problem was.
Just as he started talking, so did a voice from the speaker on the ticket machine. And both were in fractured Chinglish. It would have been alright if I only had to listen to one of them, since I am pretty good at understanding accents*, but there was no way in hell that I could follow both of them at once. The guy on the speaker could see me via a security camera, and he could see his fellow security guard standing at my car window, and he could even hear the other guard talking - but that didn't stop him from yabbering away.
The bloke standing at my window was telling me to drive in and park on the left so that I could get a ticket from some machine, whilst at the same time I was telling the bloke on the speaker that I had a ticket (which I was waving around) but the boom gate would not open.
That message finally got through, so the bloke on the speaker pressed something and the gate went up. But the guard at my window kept on insisting that I go somewhere that I didn't need to go. I eventually got him out of the way by pointing at the now raised gate, and he stepped aside.
Of course as soon as my bonnet had passed under the boom, than it came crashing down into my windscreen. Thankfully, it was made of flimsy plastic, and it just bounced back up again. But it was one of those moments when you know dozens of people are looking at you and thinking, "What's up with this idiot?" I hate that.
To round out a great day, when I went to leave, the machine refused to acknowledge by ticket, and I had to explain the entire story again.
Next time, I'm taking the train.
* At uni, we had a Dutch lecturer. Of the 50 or so people in his lecture, I was the only one who could understand him. I had to hand over my notes at the end of every lecture for 49 photocopies to be made.
Chaos ensued when I failed to make it to a lecture once (hangover was the cause). From that point on, I had 49 people very interested in making sure I made it to that Economic History lecture. It has the only unit where I did really well, thanks to their interest in making sure I got out of bed.
Chatswoo is how one of my Hong Kong born Chinese staff used to describe Chatswood, and he lived there himself. The "woo" refers to the idea that it has become Sydney's 2nd Chinatown.
I had an argument with a ticket machine in a carpark today. I drove up to the boomgate and pressed the button to get a ticket, which the machine duly spat out. However, the gate refused to rise after I removed the ticket. I waited a few seconds, then figuring that the ticket was a dud, I asked the machine nicely for another one (by pressing the button marked "ticket"). Some fool programmer had built some smarts into the system whereby the machine refused to issue another ticket because my car had not moved, and it had not moved because the boom gate had refused to budge.
A catch-22 situation.
I pressed the "help" button, which was not much good. I was jammed in tight, with cars behind me, and thankfully they were all too polite to start honking and beeping and swearing. Eventually, a security guard of some sort wandered over to see what the problem was.
Just as he started talking, so did a voice from the speaker on the ticket machine. And both were in fractured Chinglish. It would have been alright if I only had to listen to one of them, since I am pretty good at understanding accents*, but there was no way in hell that I could follow both of them at once. The guy on the speaker could see me via a security camera, and he could see his fellow security guard standing at my car window, and he could even hear the other guard talking - but that didn't stop him from yabbering away.
The bloke standing at my window was telling me to drive in and park on the left so that I could get a ticket from some machine, whilst at the same time I was telling the bloke on the speaker that I had a ticket (which I was waving around) but the boom gate would not open.
That message finally got through, so the bloke on the speaker pressed something and the gate went up. But the guard at my window kept on insisting that I go somewhere that I didn't need to go. I eventually got him out of the way by pointing at the now raised gate, and he stepped aside.
Of course as soon as my bonnet had passed under the boom, than it came crashing down into my windscreen. Thankfully, it was made of flimsy plastic, and it just bounced back up again. But it was one of those moments when you know dozens of people are looking at you and thinking, "What's up with this idiot?" I hate that.
To round out a great day, when I went to leave, the machine refused to acknowledge by ticket, and I had to explain the entire story again.
Next time, I'm taking the train.
* At uni, we had a Dutch lecturer. Of the 50 or so people in his lecture, I was the only one who could understand him. I had to hand over my notes at the end of every lecture for 49 photocopies to be made.
Chaos ensued when I failed to make it to a lecture once (hangover was the cause). From that point on, I had 49 people very interested in making sure I made it to that Economic History lecture. It has the only unit where I did really well, thanks to their interest in making sure I got out of bed.
How men shop
Every time I change jobs, I seem to need a new set of clothes. The job before last, I spent some of my time in the "office" wearing shorts, a T-shirt and bare feet (we were 50 feet underground, the air conditioning didn't work and no one ever visited us, so I could have gone nude if I was working alone). The last job was a mix between suit and tie sometimes, good casual at other times and hard Yakka and steel capped boots for the rest. I am now in yet another job, and this place is a kind of "suit, but without the jacket and tie" outfit.
So today was clothes shopping day - a day dreaded by most men, especially if they have bad memories of doing it with their mother. I suspect most men have memories like that, which is why they still hate doing it 30 years later. So I have unresolved issues - so what?
Luckily, I have found the perfect shop for me. Don't laugh, but it is a Ron Bennett store in Chatswood. Ron Bennett is a chain of "gentleman's outfitters" - they have a few stores in the CBD, plus more in the suburbs, and they specialise in putting a bloke into a suit. They don't seem to carry much in the way of high-end suits - you won't see many $3,000 Armani or Zegna suits in their shops, but they do sell what I would call comfortable, not too expensive, stylish kit. If I had to change a tyre on the way to work and wrecked a pair of pants that I bought from Ron Bennett, I would not be crying for the rest of the month.
I drove into the carpark at Chatswood at 10:21. I then had to negotiate a few levels of car park, find a spot, find the lifts, wait for the lifts, get out on the wrong floor, find the escalators to the right floor..... then I did my shopping... and I had my bags of clothes back in the car at 10:56, after finding the lifts, finding the car in the carpark etc.
Not bad for a trip that netted me 5 shirts and 3 pairs of pants, which have to be taken up of course.
Which is why I like this shop. They don't fart around with their sizes every season, so I never bother to try the shirts on. They know that I only wear 100% cotton business shirts, preferably with a normal cuff rather than a French cuff (but I will wear a French cuff if I particularly like the shirt), and they have my size on their computer. I tell them roughly what I am after (business attire with no tie) and they just go to the shirt shelves and start throwing shirts on a counter in front of me, allowing me to sift them into piles marked "definite", "maybe" and "no". I tried on the "maybe" shirt today, and moved it into the "definite" pile. They'll suggest colours and styles that they think are in this season, and see if I bite. But most of the time, I just get them to keep piling up the shirts until I have 4-6 that I like. I have to work hard at this point not to end up like the Mickey Rourke character in 9 1/2 weeks with a cupboard full of the same white shirts. I really could be that person if I wanted to.
The same with the trousers. Once I had tried on two pairs to firm up the size I wanted, they laid a swathe of them out in front of me and I selected three pairs, and that was that. The staff are all great salesmen - I think they knew this time not to try to push a tie onto me, since I told them up front that it was a "no tie" office. A suit jacket was out for the same reason. But they still got 8 articles of clothing out of me in about 20 minutes, which was nearly $1,200. I like the symetry of that - spending money at $1 per second.
It took me just as long again to go to the supermarket to buy some milk and washing up liquid.
I have blogged before about a great book by Paco Underhill called "Why we buy - the science of shopping", and he has some fantastic descriptions in it of the differences between how men and women shop. Men are on a mission when they are buying clothes - if you can get a man to walk into a change room with some clothes that fit, there is something like a 75% chance he will buy them. With women, it's like 10% (I'll have to find the book and confirm that number). Men go shopping for clothes when they have a need, and if it fits, it's theirs.
Which is why men get driven nuts when they go shopping with women. Men are sitting there going, "Like, does it fit?"
"Yes".
"Then let's get it and go."
"I'm not sure about the hemline."
"Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhh!"
I'm sure the divorce rate would be about half what it is now if wives never, ever took their husbands shopping with them.
So today was clothes shopping day - a day dreaded by most men, especially if they have bad memories of doing it with their mother. I suspect most men have memories like that, which is why they still hate doing it 30 years later. So I have unresolved issues - so what?
Luckily, I have found the perfect shop for me. Don't laugh, but it is a Ron Bennett store in Chatswood. Ron Bennett is a chain of "gentleman's outfitters" - they have a few stores in the CBD, plus more in the suburbs, and they specialise in putting a bloke into a suit. They don't seem to carry much in the way of high-end suits - you won't see many $3,000 Armani or Zegna suits in their shops, but they do sell what I would call comfortable, not too expensive, stylish kit. If I had to change a tyre on the way to work and wrecked a pair of pants that I bought from Ron Bennett, I would not be crying for the rest of the month.
I drove into the carpark at Chatswood at 10:21. I then had to negotiate a few levels of car park, find a spot, find the lifts, wait for the lifts, get out on the wrong floor, find the escalators to the right floor..... then I did my shopping... and I had my bags of clothes back in the car at 10:56, after finding the lifts, finding the car in the carpark etc.
Not bad for a trip that netted me 5 shirts and 3 pairs of pants, which have to be taken up of course.
Which is why I like this shop. They don't fart around with their sizes every season, so I never bother to try the shirts on. They know that I only wear 100% cotton business shirts, preferably with a normal cuff rather than a French cuff (but I will wear a French cuff if I particularly like the shirt), and they have my size on their computer. I tell them roughly what I am after (business attire with no tie) and they just go to the shirt shelves and start throwing shirts on a counter in front of me, allowing me to sift them into piles marked "definite", "maybe" and "no". I tried on the "maybe" shirt today, and moved it into the "definite" pile. They'll suggest colours and styles that they think are in this season, and see if I bite. But most of the time, I just get them to keep piling up the shirts until I have 4-6 that I like. I have to work hard at this point not to end up like the Mickey Rourke character in 9 1/2 weeks with a cupboard full of the same white shirts. I really could be that person if I wanted to.
The same with the trousers. Once I had tried on two pairs to firm up the size I wanted, they laid a swathe of them out in front of me and I selected three pairs, and that was that. The staff are all great salesmen - I think they knew this time not to try to push a tie onto me, since I told them up front that it was a "no tie" office. A suit jacket was out for the same reason. But they still got 8 articles of clothing out of me in about 20 minutes, which was nearly $1,200. I like the symetry of that - spending money at $1 per second.
It took me just as long again to go to the supermarket to buy some milk and washing up liquid.
I have blogged before about a great book by Paco Underhill called "Why we buy - the science of shopping", and he has some fantastic descriptions in it of the differences between how men and women shop. Men are on a mission when they are buying clothes - if you can get a man to walk into a change room with some clothes that fit, there is something like a 75% chance he will buy them. With women, it's like 10% (I'll have to find the book and confirm that number). Men go shopping for clothes when they have a need, and if it fits, it's theirs.
Which is why men get driven nuts when they go shopping with women. Men are sitting there going, "Like, does it fit?"
"Yes".
"Then let's get it and go."
"I'm not sure about the hemline."
"Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhh!"
I'm sure the divorce rate would be about half what it is now if wives never, ever took their husbands shopping with them.
Don't crash into ambulances
If you ever use the blogroll listing on this blog, you might have noticed by now that I link to two ambulance blogs and a couple of police blogs. I particularly like Random Acts of Reality and Inspector Gadget, both for their views, but mainly for the interesting stories that they tell about the viscitudes of their jobs.
I almost became one of those viscitudes yesterday. I was driving down Burns Bay Rd on the north shore, which is a steep and twisty road, when I spotted an ambulance with flashing lights coming up fast behind the traffic. Burns Bay Rd is two lanes each way, but it is twisty and nasty enough to have a concrete barrier down the middle of it to stop cars coming down the hill from crossing over and smashing into cars coming up the hill. I managed to get out of the way of the ambulance in a jiffy, which was not easy by the way - as it got really close, I realised it was also on sirens, but I didn't hear them until it was only about 50 yards away. I didn't have the radio blaring at all - I was listening to a talk on Radio National of all things (more about that some other time). Modern cars as so well insulated, you just can't hear sirens anymore if all the windows are up.
So I gets outa da way by getting into the left lane and slowing to about 30 to let it past. There was a bit of traffic, but it was all ahead of me, so once the ambulance was past, I just ambled down the hill behind it.
OK, here's the picture. It's raining lightly (as opposed to now, when it is pouring down), and the road is slightly slippery. The speed limit is 60, and anyone with an ounce of sense keeps to that on this road, and slows down a bit for the really nasty corners. If your tyres are good and the suspension is in good working order, any vehicle should have no concerns keeping a grip on the wet tarmac at that speed.
So I am in the left lane, doing about 40, and the ambulance is in the right lane, doing about the same. I had expected it to speed up to 60, thinking that it was on its way to a hospital somewhere, but it just stuck to about that speed, so it didn't get away from me. It simply stayed off my right beam a few lengths ahead, with both of us doing the same speed.
Then we came around a corner, and the ambulance swerved into my lane and came to an abrupt halt right in front of me. Now that was a surprise, and I managed to avoid plowing into the back of it by a quick application of the brakes. There, on the side of the road, was a small black car (like a Barina) that was entirely off the road (in the trees) and facing the wrong way. It was not badly smashed up by any means - it looked like it had gone for a spin and collected a small tree, resulting in some panel damage but not much else. From my 1 second glance as I went past, I reckon I would have driven it away if it was me behind the wheel.
But who knows what happened to the driver (and passenger?), and what the other side of the car looked like. There could have been a star picket stuck through the driver's door for all I know, impaling the driver.
Anyway, I got around the ambulance and continued on my merry way.
Now, here are the interesting points.
The car was just sitting there, with no one around. I have been in a few prangs, have witnessed a few prangs, and have turned up moments after a prang, and there have always been people around. Someone gets posted at either end of the road to warn traffic and flag down the emergency services when they arrive (I have an orange reflective vest in the back of the car, which I nicked from another job, just for this purpose, and a torch for night time prangs). Someone is usually leaning over the car door, comforting the driver or passenger if they are hurt or shaken up etc. Cars are parked on the side of the road with their hazard lights on. If someone has been thrown out of the car, people will be clustered around that person, and there will be blankets (again, got one of them in the back as well, along with the first aid kit). There might be a tarp covering something if it is raining (got one of them too).
But in this case, there was nothing. It was like a neutron bomb car crash. There was just the black car, and no people. Not even an open car door. No one had stopped. I had at least expected to find someone standing there in the drizzle on the side of the road, waving a mobile phone at the ambulance. But there wasn't.
I wondered afterwards if this car had been driven by an idiot who had decided to zoom-zoom down this winding, slippery road, and had come to grief as a result of their own stupidity. If they had been driving like an arsehole, the drivers that had been putting up with their antics might have gone, "Ha ha ha, you deserved that, now I am going to go home and laugh about it with my friends and family".
I certainly did.
In other words, was it a Darwin Award type of crash? I could see no other reason for losing control on that stretch apart from incompetence or stupidity.
I almost became one of those viscitudes yesterday. I was driving down Burns Bay Rd on the north shore, which is a steep and twisty road, when I spotted an ambulance with flashing lights coming up fast behind the traffic. Burns Bay Rd is two lanes each way, but it is twisty and nasty enough to have a concrete barrier down the middle of it to stop cars coming down the hill from crossing over and smashing into cars coming up the hill. I managed to get out of the way of the ambulance in a jiffy, which was not easy by the way - as it got really close, I realised it was also on sirens, but I didn't hear them until it was only about 50 yards away. I didn't have the radio blaring at all - I was listening to a talk on Radio National of all things (more about that some other time). Modern cars as so well insulated, you just can't hear sirens anymore if all the windows are up.
So I gets outa da way by getting into the left lane and slowing to about 30 to let it past. There was a bit of traffic, but it was all ahead of me, so once the ambulance was past, I just ambled down the hill behind it.
OK, here's the picture. It's raining lightly (as opposed to now, when it is pouring down), and the road is slightly slippery. The speed limit is 60, and anyone with an ounce of sense keeps to that on this road, and slows down a bit for the really nasty corners. If your tyres are good and the suspension is in good working order, any vehicle should have no concerns keeping a grip on the wet tarmac at that speed.
So I am in the left lane, doing about 40, and the ambulance is in the right lane, doing about the same. I had expected it to speed up to 60, thinking that it was on its way to a hospital somewhere, but it just stuck to about that speed, so it didn't get away from me. It simply stayed off my right beam a few lengths ahead, with both of us doing the same speed.
Then we came around a corner, and the ambulance swerved into my lane and came to an abrupt halt right in front of me. Now that was a surprise, and I managed to avoid plowing into the back of it by a quick application of the brakes. There, on the side of the road, was a small black car (like a Barina) that was entirely off the road (in the trees) and facing the wrong way. It was not badly smashed up by any means - it looked like it had gone for a spin and collected a small tree, resulting in some panel damage but not much else. From my 1 second glance as I went past, I reckon I would have driven it away if it was me behind the wheel.
But who knows what happened to the driver (and passenger?), and what the other side of the car looked like. There could have been a star picket stuck through the driver's door for all I know, impaling the driver.
Anyway, I got around the ambulance and continued on my merry way.
Now, here are the interesting points.
The car was just sitting there, with no one around. I have been in a few prangs, have witnessed a few prangs, and have turned up moments after a prang, and there have always been people around. Someone gets posted at either end of the road to warn traffic and flag down the emergency services when they arrive (I have an orange reflective vest in the back of the car, which I nicked from another job, just for this purpose, and a torch for night time prangs). Someone is usually leaning over the car door, comforting the driver or passenger if they are hurt or shaken up etc. Cars are parked on the side of the road with their hazard lights on. If someone has been thrown out of the car, people will be clustered around that person, and there will be blankets (again, got one of them in the back as well, along with the first aid kit). There might be a tarp covering something if it is raining (got one of them too).
But in this case, there was nothing. It was like a neutron bomb car crash. There was just the black car, and no people. Not even an open car door. No one had stopped. I had at least expected to find someone standing there in the drizzle on the side of the road, waving a mobile phone at the ambulance. But there wasn't.
I wondered afterwards if this car had been driven by an idiot who had decided to zoom-zoom down this winding, slippery road, and had come to grief as a result of their own stupidity. If they had been driving like an arsehole, the drivers that had been putting up with their antics might have gone, "Ha ha ha, you deserved that, now I am going to go home and laugh about it with my friends and family".
I certainly did.
In other words, was it a Darwin Award type of crash? I could see no other reason for losing control on that stretch apart from incompetence or stupidity.
Friday, 5 September 2008
More on hootchies
Thanks to the movie "Platoon", every man and his dog seems to know the term "hootch" or "hootchie" - although in the movie, it referred to the original meaning of house or village, as in "Burn down all the hootches".
Armies love adopting words from foreign campaigns. Dixie, which I think comes from India, and presumably means "pot". Gook, from Korea, which is a bastardisation of the word for person. There is a whole vocabulary that the military uses which would be completely foreign to anyone that has not been inducted into it. Anyway, hootchie is one of those terms.
Unlike a grass hut, the military hootchie is not much good at keeping the rain out. A hootchie is made up of two "shelter-halves" that are put together with press studs along one edge. Every soldier is issued with a single shelter-half, and they then buddy up with someone else and together they build a hootchie.
You start by finding a spot between two trees, assuming you are not digging in at a spot without trees. With luck, one of you will have managed to snavel some comms cord from somewhere - that is essentially army issue green string that is very strong. It had 1000 uses, but is always in short supply. You use a few lengths of that to attach the hootchie to the trees.
You then either bang in the plastic tent pegs (that you bought yourself in a camping store), or you hunt for some sticks that can be used as tent pegs - the army would never do something as sensible as issue tent pegs to go with a "tent".
A hootchie however is not a tent. A tent is a wonderful piece of kit that has an integrated floor and walls, a door that zips up to keep out the weather and the bugs and a window and vents to let the farts out. It's usually quite warm and dry, and if put up properly, rarely blows over.
A hootchie on the other hand is just two bits of plastic stuck together and erected any old how without benefit of poles. Rain leaks through the seam at the top. There is no floor. There are no walls. There is no door. Wind blows in from four directions, bringing rain if that happens to be falling. If you are on a slight slope, you might find that a stream of water is soon running underneath your sleeping place. Bugs use it as a place of shelter and food.
You often don't get to spend much time sleeping under it anyway (night patrols, radio duty and guard duty take care of that), so it can be much easier to forget about erecting a hootch and to simply wrap yourself up in the shelter-half like a coccoon. Living under one is a miserable experience. Once it starts raining, the only way to avoid utter misery is to huddle in the middle of the hootchie with the mate that you are sharing it with.
If you are cold and wet and shivering and wearing every stitch of clothing that you own (that is, one pair of trousers over the top of the other, one shirt over another), then you huddle together to keep warm. Call it cuddling if you like - I call it surviving. The best hootchie mate I had later came out of the closet - at least he wasn't worried about being close to another bloke in order to share warmth. It's why I am totally unfussed about gays in the military. So long as he didn't want anything more than a cuddle, I was happy.
The big advantage of the shelter half of course is that it weighs close to nothing and folds up into a mess of plastic the size of your fist. You can carry it in your pocket if need be, which guarantees that soldiers will carry it. If someone issued me with a tent, it would be the first thing to be dumped, which would mean no shelter at all. The hootchie, whilst providing crap shelter, provides some shelter rather than none at all.
Armies love adopting words from foreign campaigns. Dixie, which I think comes from India, and presumably means "pot". Gook, from Korea, which is a bastardisation of the word for person. There is a whole vocabulary that the military uses which would be completely foreign to anyone that has not been inducted into it. Anyway, hootchie is one of those terms.
Unlike a grass hut, the military hootchie is not much good at keeping the rain out. A hootchie is made up of two "shelter-halves" that are put together with press studs along one edge. Every soldier is issued with a single shelter-half, and they then buddy up with someone else and together they build a hootchie.
You start by finding a spot between two trees, assuming you are not digging in at a spot without trees. With luck, one of you will have managed to snavel some comms cord from somewhere - that is essentially army issue green string that is very strong. It had 1000 uses, but is always in short supply. You use a few lengths of that to attach the hootchie to the trees.
You then either bang in the plastic tent pegs (that you bought yourself in a camping store), or you hunt for some sticks that can be used as tent pegs - the army would never do something as sensible as issue tent pegs to go with a "tent".
A hootchie however is not a tent. A tent is a wonderful piece of kit that has an integrated floor and walls, a door that zips up to keep out the weather and the bugs and a window and vents to let the farts out. It's usually quite warm and dry, and if put up properly, rarely blows over.
A hootchie on the other hand is just two bits of plastic stuck together and erected any old how without benefit of poles. Rain leaks through the seam at the top. There is no floor. There are no walls. There is no door. Wind blows in from four directions, bringing rain if that happens to be falling. If you are on a slight slope, you might find that a stream of water is soon running underneath your sleeping place. Bugs use it as a place of shelter and food.
You often don't get to spend much time sleeping under it anyway (night patrols, radio duty and guard duty take care of that), so it can be much easier to forget about erecting a hootch and to simply wrap yourself up in the shelter-half like a coccoon. Living under one is a miserable experience. Once it starts raining, the only way to avoid utter misery is to huddle in the middle of the hootchie with the mate that you are sharing it with.
If you are cold and wet and shivering and wearing every stitch of clothing that you own (that is, one pair of trousers over the top of the other, one shirt over another), then you huddle together to keep warm. Call it cuddling if you like - I call it surviving. The best hootchie mate I had later came out of the closet - at least he wasn't worried about being close to another bloke in order to share warmth. It's why I am totally unfussed about gays in the military. So long as he didn't want anything more than a cuddle, I was happy.
The big advantage of the shelter half of course is that it weighs close to nothing and folds up into a mess of plastic the size of your fist. You can carry it in your pocket if need be, which guarantees that soldiers will carry it. If someone issued me with a tent, it would be the first thing to be dumped, which would mean no shelter at all. The hootchie, whilst providing crap shelter, provides some shelter rather than none at all.
Hollowmen and the child obesity episoide
If you haven't been watching Hollowmen on the ABC, then I suggest you find the back episodes and get into it. This post is meaningless unless you've seen it, and I am not going to waste time at the keyboard trying to explain it.
One of the early episodes skewered a "war on childhood obesity", and now parts of what they talked about have become real.
We're only getting weasel words on junk food ads.
Those of you who have seen that episode may recall these terms:
One of the early episodes skewered a "war on childhood obesity", and now parts of what they talked about have become real.
We're only getting weasel words on junk food ads.
Those of you who have seen that episode may recall these terms:
- Code of conduct
- Awareness campaign
Thursday, 4 September 2008
A dog pen would be a nice place to spend the night
One thing the infantry taught me is that it doesn't matter where you are in the world, it's likely that you will spend at least a few nights being wet, cold and miserable. It's the nature of the places where you operate, the jobs that the infantry has to do and the way the infantry has to operate.
To start with, whilst it was very common in Napoleonic times for the army to accomodate itself in private houses (a practice very much in use during WWII), it doesn't seem to happen much these days. A small unit (such as a squad or a section) might run an OP (observation post) from a private dwelling, but they are only in that dwelling for the purpose of observation, or to use it as a fighting position. They are not using it as a place to cook, wash, eat and sleep.
The most luxurious accommodation I ever had during an exercise was a school hall, which meant that I got to sleep on concrete covered in a very thin layer of the cheapest carpet that the education department could buy. Which of course was then worn to a crisp by years of abuse by thousands of kids.
But it had a roof, which kept the rain off, and walls which stopped the wind whistling in. It had a floor, which whilst hard, was not made up of lumpy rocks and sticks mixed in with mud, and it lacked the creeping and crawling insects and other things that usually found their way into my sleeping bag during the night.
That's because we generally spent the entire exercise living out in the open. We had a few 10x10 tents, but they were not for sleeping in. One of two would be occupied by headquarters and the signallers, another by the RAP (Regimental Aid Post, which housed the medics) and another two by the Q store (quartermaster) and transport (the truckies). If we had some engineers or mechanics, they might rate another tent as well.
The reason those groups had tents is because they had stuff that had to be kept out of the weather, and that stuff was not people. Radios work better when dry. Paperwork is easier to do at night when you have light to work with (and that requires working in a tent that keeps the light in). Stores are less likely to be nicked if they can be held in an enclosed tent. Even though the CO had a tent to work in, he slept like we did - under a hootchie, or in warmer weather, maybe on the ground wrapped in a large plastic garbage bag.
We were light infantry, which meant we walked everywhere, and everything we owned was carried on our backs. We carried as much as possible, but as little of everything as possible. Toothbrush handles were cut down to save weight. A two week exercise would be done wearing one set of clothes, with a spare set in the rucksack. The spares might only be worn at night (because it is more comfortable to sleep in clean clothes), or when the regular set got wet and muddy. When we were issued with rat packs (rations), we'd go through them before packing them away and strip out anything nonessential to save weight.
This of course meant no luxuries, because luxuries meant weight, and too much weight could kill. It meant spending your own money on a good, lightweight sleeping bag, because the army issue ones were bulky and heavy. It meant buying your own lightweight self inflating ground mat, because the army issued inflatable mattresses were a joke. In summer, a sleeping bag might be dispensed with entirely, with the rougher types simply using a few Glad garbage bags as insulation, because garbage bags are lighter to carry than even an expensive lightweight sleeping bag.
Can you imagine going out into your backyard tonight and sleeping in your garden, wrapped only in two garbage bags? You put your legs into one, and cut a hole in the bottom of the other, put your head through the hole and use that to cover your torso. And I don't mean sleeping on your nice soft lawn - I mean sleeping in amongst the plants, in the dirt. Perhaps on the bark or woodchips that you use to keep the weeds down. Your pillow will be the bumpack or waterbottle on your webbing. And don't even think about taking your boots off. If the ground is not too hard, you can dig a small hole for your hip, making lying on your side more comfortable. But you'll be rolling over constantly, because bits of your body will fall asleep as the rough ground cuts off circulation to one part or another.
If it's really cold, you'll be wearing both your clean uniform and your dirty uniform to provide two layers of warmth. You might even have your rifle in your sleeping bag in order to keep it warm and dry. Ever slept with 5 kilos of metal and wood with all sorts of protruding edges? Ever slept for two weeks with your boots on every night? You get to rotate your socks every few days, but you're sleeping with boots over socks that have been worn on and off for two weeks with maybe the odd rinse here and there.
Depending on where you are, there might be clouds of mosquitoes. They army issues you with an incredibly nasty insect repellant, which can also be used as a gun lubricant in a pinch, but it never seems to keep the little biting bastards away. Sleeping with a balaklava pulled right over the head can help to keep them away, but then they just bite you on your eyelids and lips.
If it rains, it's just tough. Gun piquet still has to be done, even if the temperature is just above freezing and the rain is pouring down. We never had time to really dig in properly, so our fighting positions never had overhead cover to keep the rain out. If we were in one place for a few days, we might manage to dig a U-shaped gun pit that was deep enough to stand in and fight from. If we were really lucky, and were supplied with corrugated iron and star pickets and fencing wire, we might get to line the walls with tin (to stop the dirt from caving in) and to put some overhead protection on the arms of the U (ie, a roof to keep out shrapnel from mortars and the like). But the bit where we stood and fought from was never covered due to a lack of time, so we simply stood in the rain like drenched sentinels, willing our two hour stag to be over.
I spent quite a few nights on gun piquet with my upper body draped in empty sandbags, because the hessian cover was reasonably good at keeping the water out and the body heat in. The sandbags had all been filled with sand at some point, so although they kept most of the water out, it meant that I finished the two hour stag covered in a fine layer of mud if it was raining. And of course the bottom of the gun pit would have a few inches of water or mud in it, which would mean absolute misery if your boots leaked.
In short, life in the light infantry could be tough and miserable and cold and nasty. It was not a life for the faint hearted or the weak. I have slept in a shallow trench, wrapped in nothing but sandbags and lying in a couple of inches of cold mud with the rain falling on my face. I have had the misfortune to bed down in a slight hollow for the night and discovered in the morning that it was a kangaroo nest, meaning that it was full of kangaroo ticks, which meant I spent an hour with a mate burning ticks out of my skin. I've slept on the ground in places crawling with leeches, and had to salt them off my skin in the morning. I watched our section commander gently remove one from the end of his cock one morning, much to the amusement of everyone around him.
My experiences of sleeping rough in the bush have conditioned me to sleep just about anywhere. I have slept on a pile of rucksacks in the back of a truck bumping along rough bush tracks. I have slept on the bare metal of a tray ute under a tornau cover (in order to stay out of the rain). I have slept on hay bales in shearing sheds. I can sleep happily on just about any form of couch in anyone's loungeroom. A mattress to crash on in a mate's living room floor is luxury. In my youth, I have made it halfway home from the pub after a few too many drinks and slept the night in the odd garden, happily wrapped in newspapers gathered from neighbouring lawns. I have cuddled dogs for comfort. I have made it home from the pub as a batchelor, only to be greeted by an unmade bed and the sheets in the washing machine, and slept on the bare mattress under a pile of dirty laundry.
Which is why I viewed the whole "dog pen" story with such disdain. If that wanker Bob Brown had actually spent some time serving his country in any of the combat arms, he'd know what it can be like at the pointy end of military service. The infantry do it tough, so their prisoners have to do it tough too, because there is no comfortable place for anyone to spend the night. A patrol base is not a 5 star B&B. Even the homeless bums stumbling drunkenly around Sydney can find a better place to sleep tonight than some of our servicemen in Afghanistan.
That's not because of pennypinching or bastardry on the part of the army - it's because that's what operational conditions dictate, and it's because a good infantryman will sleep anywhere at anytime. I'd rather sleep in a dog pen, which is warm and dry and offers some protection from rockets and mortars, than in a location which is cold and wet and exposed to fire. Any sane person would. Only softcocks who have never spent weeks sleeping rough would fail to understand that.
To start with, whilst it was very common in Napoleonic times for the army to accomodate itself in private houses (a practice very much in use during WWII), it doesn't seem to happen much these days. A small unit (such as a squad or a section) might run an OP (observation post) from a private dwelling, but they are only in that dwelling for the purpose of observation, or to use it as a fighting position. They are not using it as a place to cook, wash, eat and sleep.
The most luxurious accommodation I ever had during an exercise was a school hall, which meant that I got to sleep on concrete covered in a very thin layer of the cheapest carpet that the education department could buy. Which of course was then worn to a crisp by years of abuse by thousands of kids.
But it had a roof, which kept the rain off, and walls which stopped the wind whistling in. It had a floor, which whilst hard, was not made up of lumpy rocks and sticks mixed in with mud, and it lacked the creeping and crawling insects and other things that usually found their way into my sleeping bag during the night.
That's because we generally spent the entire exercise living out in the open. We had a few 10x10 tents, but they were not for sleeping in. One of two would be occupied by headquarters and the signallers, another by the RAP (Regimental Aid Post, which housed the medics) and another two by the Q store (quartermaster) and transport (the truckies). If we had some engineers or mechanics, they might rate another tent as well.
The reason those groups had tents is because they had stuff that had to be kept out of the weather, and that stuff was not people. Radios work better when dry. Paperwork is easier to do at night when you have light to work with (and that requires working in a tent that keeps the light in). Stores are less likely to be nicked if they can be held in an enclosed tent. Even though the CO had a tent to work in, he slept like we did - under a hootchie, or in warmer weather, maybe on the ground wrapped in a large plastic garbage bag.
We were light infantry, which meant we walked everywhere, and everything we owned was carried on our backs. We carried as much as possible, but as little of everything as possible. Toothbrush handles were cut down to save weight. A two week exercise would be done wearing one set of clothes, with a spare set in the rucksack. The spares might only be worn at night (because it is more comfortable to sleep in clean clothes), or when the regular set got wet and muddy. When we were issued with rat packs (rations), we'd go through them before packing them away and strip out anything nonessential to save weight.
This of course meant no luxuries, because luxuries meant weight, and too much weight could kill. It meant spending your own money on a good, lightweight sleeping bag, because the army issue ones were bulky and heavy. It meant buying your own lightweight self inflating ground mat, because the army issued inflatable mattresses were a joke. In summer, a sleeping bag might be dispensed with entirely, with the rougher types simply using a few Glad garbage bags as insulation, because garbage bags are lighter to carry than even an expensive lightweight sleeping bag.
Can you imagine going out into your backyard tonight and sleeping in your garden, wrapped only in two garbage bags? You put your legs into one, and cut a hole in the bottom of the other, put your head through the hole and use that to cover your torso. And I don't mean sleeping on your nice soft lawn - I mean sleeping in amongst the plants, in the dirt. Perhaps on the bark or woodchips that you use to keep the weeds down. Your pillow will be the bumpack or waterbottle on your webbing. And don't even think about taking your boots off. If the ground is not too hard, you can dig a small hole for your hip, making lying on your side more comfortable. But you'll be rolling over constantly, because bits of your body will fall asleep as the rough ground cuts off circulation to one part or another.
If it's really cold, you'll be wearing both your clean uniform and your dirty uniform to provide two layers of warmth. You might even have your rifle in your sleeping bag in order to keep it warm and dry. Ever slept with 5 kilos of metal and wood with all sorts of protruding edges? Ever slept for two weeks with your boots on every night? You get to rotate your socks every few days, but you're sleeping with boots over socks that have been worn on and off for two weeks with maybe the odd rinse here and there.
Depending on where you are, there might be clouds of mosquitoes. They army issues you with an incredibly nasty insect repellant, which can also be used as a gun lubricant in a pinch, but it never seems to keep the little biting bastards away. Sleeping with a balaklava pulled right over the head can help to keep them away, but then they just bite you on your eyelids and lips.
If it rains, it's just tough. Gun piquet still has to be done, even if the temperature is just above freezing and the rain is pouring down. We never had time to really dig in properly, so our fighting positions never had overhead cover to keep the rain out. If we were in one place for a few days, we might manage to dig a U-shaped gun pit that was deep enough to stand in and fight from. If we were really lucky, and were supplied with corrugated iron and star pickets and fencing wire, we might get to line the walls with tin (to stop the dirt from caving in) and to put some overhead protection on the arms of the U (ie, a roof to keep out shrapnel from mortars and the like). But the bit where we stood and fought from was never covered due to a lack of time, so we simply stood in the rain like drenched sentinels, willing our two hour stag to be over.
I spent quite a few nights on gun piquet with my upper body draped in empty sandbags, because the hessian cover was reasonably good at keeping the water out and the body heat in. The sandbags had all been filled with sand at some point, so although they kept most of the water out, it meant that I finished the two hour stag covered in a fine layer of mud if it was raining. And of course the bottom of the gun pit would have a few inches of water or mud in it, which would mean absolute misery if your boots leaked.
In short, life in the light infantry could be tough and miserable and cold and nasty. It was not a life for the faint hearted or the weak. I have slept in a shallow trench, wrapped in nothing but sandbags and lying in a couple of inches of cold mud with the rain falling on my face. I have had the misfortune to bed down in a slight hollow for the night and discovered in the morning that it was a kangaroo nest, meaning that it was full of kangaroo ticks, which meant I spent an hour with a mate burning ticks out of my skin. I've slept on the ground in places crawling with leeches, and had to salt them off my skin in the morning. I watched our section commander gently remove one from the end of his cock one morning, much to the amusement of everyone around him.
My experiences of sleeping rough in the bush have conditioned me to sleep just about anywhere. I have slept on a pile of rucksacks in the back of a truck bumping along rough bush tracks. I have slept on the bare metal of a tray ute under a tornau cover (in order to stay out of the rain). I have slept on hay bales in shearing sheds. I can sleep happily on just about any form of couch in anyone's loungeroom. A mattress to crash on in a mate's living room floor is luxury. In my youth, I have made it halfway home from the pub after a few too many drinks and slept the night in the odd garden, happily wrapped in newspapers gathered from neighbouring lawns. I have cuddled dogs for comfort. I have made it home from the pub as a batchelor, only to be greeted by an unmade bed and the sheets in the washing machine, and slept on the bare mattress under a pile of dirty laundry.
Which is why I viewed the whole "dog pen" story with such disdain. If that wanker Bob Brown had actually spent some time serving his country in any of the combat arms, he'd know what it can be like at the pointy end of military service. The infantry do it tough, so their prisoners have to do it tough too, because there is no comfortable place for anyone to spend the night. A patrol base is not a 5 star B&B. Even the homeless bums stumbling drunkenly around Sydney can find a better place to sleep tonight than some of our servicemen in Afghanistan.
That's not because of pennypinching or bastardry on the part of the army - it's because that's what operational conditions dictate, and it's because a good infantryman will sleep anywhere at anytime. I'd rather sleep in a dog pen, which is warm and dry and offers some protection from rockets and mortars, than in a location which is cold and wet and exposed to fire. Any sane person would. Only softcocks who have never spent weeks sleeping rough would fail to understand that.
More reasons to hate the SMH
There are mornings when I wake up and want to club someone at the SMH. This morning was another of them.
Here is the first paragrap of this story, titled "Nine Diggers hurt in ambush" by their defence correspondent:
AN ambush of Australian troops in Afghanistan has left nine special forces soldiers injured - including one fighting for his life - in a battle that resulted in more casualties than any encounter since the Vietnam War.
Note that this "defence correspondent" used two words that soldiers would never use to describe being shot in battle - injured and hurt. The proper term is "wounded". You get hurt when you cut your finger when slicing carrots for dinner. You get injured when you are riding your bike and get hit by a car. But when you get blatted by the enemy, you are wounded. That's why we have terms like WIA, which stand for Wounded In Action. We don't have acronyms of IIA and HIA to describe Injured In Action and Hurt In Action.
What on earth did Jonathan Pearlman do before getting this gig? Was he a restaurant critic perhaps?
At least he got the term "casualties" right.
I don't know how the SMH can think that it is a serious paper when it gets simple things like this so very, very wrong. Like calling an APC a tank, or an AK47 a machine gun. Or calling an F16 a "warplane". If a figher aircraft is a warplane, what is an Airbus 340? A peaceplane?
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
Getting back to nature
Some years ago, I visited Kakadu and had a look at rock paintings that had been there since Adam was a boy. There were quite a few tourists walking around, oggling the pictures of fish and kangaroos and crocodiles and birds. Many photographs were taken, and much was said about the beauty of the artworks.
The paintings that we looked at were on top of an island of rock in the middle of a plain. A river flowed through the plain, with small lakes appearing here and there in its course. The rock formation stuck up enough so that from our vantage point, you could see right across the plain in all directions.
It struck me that what we were looking at was not art. It was a combination between a menu and a map to the ancient version of the supermarket. That was so obvious, I couldn't understand why all the tourists around me thought that what we were viewing was painted for aesthetic reasons. It wasn't. It was painted to stop people from starving, or just as importantly, to avoid being eaten by a croc whilst out fishing.
I'd love to send some greenies out with some proper blackfellas for a while for a tour of the local fauna and flora. I imagine the conversation would go something like this:
Bob Brown: "That's a fine looking turtle you've got there. What do you call it?"
Blackfella: "Mirabong".
Bob: "What's that mean?"
Blackfella: "Waxy turtle. This other fella here, he mirapilli. That mean floury turtle. One good for roasting, the other stewing".
Bob: "But aren't turtles a sacred part of your dreaming? Aren't they part of how you connect with nature?"
Blackfella: "Sure, we tell whiteys that they're sacred - means there's more for us. As for connecting with nature, I connect via this stick I have over here."
Bob: "Is that one of your mystical totems?"
Blackfella: "Nah, this is a spit. You stick it up the arse of the turtle and then roast him over hot coals. You have to connect the turtle real good, or he falls off and gets charred."
Bob: "What about this plant over here - what do you call that?"
Blackfella: "We call that the 'black sky grass'".
Bob: "Why do you call it that? Is it because the sky weeps for the suffering of your people?"
Blackfella: "Nah, when we get lost, we set fire to it. Whole sky goes black with smoke. Then chopper know where to find us."
Bob: "Chopa? Is that an ancestral spirit that will guide you home?"
Blackfella: "No mate, it's the Parks and Wildlife Service. They got Bell choppers and a nice Huey. Real useful when the GPS goes flat."
Bob: "And is true that you can connect with your kinfolk at a great distance?"
Blackfella: "We used to be able to do it over huge distances, and then analogue died."
Bob: "Anna Log? Was she one of your elders who kept the secret mysteries of your tribe?"
Blackfella: "No - analogue. As in when Telstra turned off the analogue network and forced us to go digital. Reception out here is shit. Jimmy over there, he use Blackberry. I tried an iPhone, but the signal strength out here is too flakey for it to work properly."
Bob: "What can you tell me about wallabies?"
Blackfella: "They go well with rosemary."
Bob: "And lizards?"
Blackfella: "Saute them in butter and lots of garlic."
Bob: "What about crows?"
Blackfella: "I hate them almost as bad as Collingwood."
Bob: "No, no - crows. The annoying black things that fly."
Blackfella: "You mean like Mick Dodson and all his mates? Yeah, they fly everywhere at our expense. I'm surprised that bastard doesn't own a Gulfstream by now."
Bob: "No, no - the birds. Like that one over there."
Blackfella: "Them? They taste like shit. Wouldn't waste a bullet on one."
Bob: "How about crocodile?"
Blackfella: "Ah, crocodile. We found one last week that was a lancruisa crocodile."
Bob: "Lancruisa? Is that a term that you use in one of your ceremonies, or in a dance?"
Blackfella: "No - a lancruisa crocodile, as in a big, fuck-off crocodile. You need Toyota Lancruisa to get the bastard home. You know Toyota? Made by slanty-eyed little Chinese rice munching fucks."
Bob: "Um, the Japanese make them, and we don't normally refer to them that way."
Blackfella: "Japanman, Chinaman - who can tell them apart? My great grandpa, he called Chinaman 'long pig', and thought them awful tasty. Nice and fat. But he hated Japanman - he got a few shotdown pilots during the war and said they were stringy and tough. But they all the same, hey? Got tiny little dicks."
Bob: "I think I need to go home now."
The paintings that we looked at were on top of an island of rock in the middle of a plain. A river flowed through the plain, with small lakes appearing here and there in its course. The rock formation stuck up enough so that from our vantage point, you could see right across the plain in all directions.
It struck me that what we were looking at was not art. It was a combination between a menu and a map to the ancient version of the supermarket. That was so obvious, I couldn't understand why all the tourists around me thought that what we were viewing was painted for aesthetic reasons. It wasn't. It was painted to stop people from starving, or just as importantly, to avoid being eaten by a croc whilst out fishing.
I'd love to send some greenies out with some proper blackfellas for a while for a tour of the local fauna and flora. I imagine the conversation would go something like this:
Bob Brown: "That's a fine looking turtle you've got there. What do you call it?"
Blackfella: "Mirabong".
Bob: "What's that mean?"
Blackfella: "Waxy turtle. This other fella here, he mirapilli. That mean floury turtle. One good for roasting, the other stewing".
Bob: "But aren't turtles a sacred part of your dreaming? Aren't they part of how you connect with nature?"
Blackfella: "Sure, we tell whiteys that they're sacred - means there's more for us. As for connecting with nature, I connect via this stick I have over here."
Bob: "Is that one of your mystical totems?"
Blackfella: "Nah, this is a spit. You stick it up the arse of the turtle and then roast him over hot coals. You have to connect the turtle real good, or he falls off and gets charred."
Bob: "What about this plant over here - what do you call that?"
Blackfella: "We call that the 'black sky grass'".
Bob: "Why do you call it that? Is it because the sky weeps for the suffering of your people?"
Blackfella: "Nah, when we get lost, we set fire to it. Whole sky goes black with smoke. Then chopper know where to find us."
Bob: "Chopa? Is that an ancestral spirit that will guide you home?"
Blackfella: "No mate, it's the Parks and Wildlife Service. They got Bell choppers and a nice Huey. Real useful when the GPS goes flat."
Bob: "And is true that you can connect with your kinfolk at a great distance?"
Blackfella: "We used to be able to do it over huge distances, and then analogue died."
Bob: "Anna Log? Was she one of your elders who kept the secret mysteries of your tribe?"
Blackfella: "No - analogue. As in when Telstra turned off the analogue network and forced us to go digital. Reception out here is shit. Jimmy over there, he use Blackberry. I tried an iPhone, but the signal strength out here is too flakey for it to work properly."
Bob: "What can you tell me about wallabies?"
Blackfella: "They go well with rosemary."
Bob: "And lizards?"
Blackfella: "Saute them in butter and lots of garlic."
Bob: "What about crows?"
Blackfella: "I hate them almost as bad as Collingwood."
Bob: "No, no - crows. The annoying black things that fly."
Blackfella: "You mean like Mick Dodson and all his mates? Yeah, they fly everywhere at our expense. I'm surprised that bastard doesn't own a Gulfstream by now."
Bob: "No, no - the birds. Like that one over there."
Blackfella: "Them? They taste like shit. Wouldn't waste a bullet on one."
Bob: "How about crocodile?"
Blackfella: "Ah, crocodile. We found one last week that was a lancruisa crocodile."
Bob: "Lancruisa? Is that a term that you use in one of your ceremonies, or in a dance?"
Blackfella: "No - a lancruisa crocodile, as in a big, fuck-off crocodile. You need Toyota Lancruisa to get the bastard home. You know Toyota? Made by slanty-eyed little Chinese rice munching fucks."
Bob: "Um, the Japanese make them, and we don't normally refer to them that way."
Blackfella: "Japanman, Chinaman - who can tell them apart? My great grandpa, he called Chinaman 'long pig', and thought them awful tasty. Nice and fat. But he hated Japanman - he got a few shotdown pilots during the war and said they were stringy and tough. But they all the same, hey? Got tiny little dicks."
Bob: "I think I need to go home now."
SMH tries to smear Palin as well
The SMH runs a story entitled "Is Sarah Palin's baby really hers?", and then starts it with the line:Prospective Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin said today that her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant.
Note that the story was published at 5:56am, long after lefties in the US started backtracking on the story that the baby belonged to her eldest daughter.
Why headline a story like that? Almost the entire story is about the fact that she is about to become a grandmother, with only one sentance addressing the rumours that Trig was not hers.
Talk about twisting the facts.
Monday, 1 September 2008
Geek rating
Via the Devil's Kitchen, I have completed a geek test.
77% Geek
I am pleased to note that I am even geekier than the Devil. I think what might have upped my score is my age - I was old enough to be able to afford video games in 1986.
I managed to make it to 83% geek on my second attempt, but I consider that cheating, so 77% geek will have to do.
77% Geek
Created by OnePlusYou -
I am pleased to note that I am even geekier than the Devil. I think what might have upped my score is my age - I was old enough to be able to afford video games in 1986.
I managed to make it to 83% geek on my second attempt, but I consider that cheating, so 77% geek will have to do.
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