Marty's Insight

That's it! I'm leaving for good this time!

2004-02-19T18:44:00.000+10:00

It is with a heavy heart that I announce that this blog is finished. I have finally succumbed to the dark side and joined the Gravett empire with fellow blogmates Vikki McNaughton, Random Prose and Mike Jericho.

This blog will cease to be.

You can now find me at www.gravett.org/TRP/ -- The Rat Pack.

Adios, Blogger!

FINAL UPDATE EVER:

It wouldn't be proper of me to call it quits without finalising the last ever poll to be held on Marty's Insight.

What should you be doing right now? --- 215 votes taken.

1) Plotting against Marty --- 29 votes (13%)

2) Eating a sandwich --- 64 votes (30%)

3) Voting in some dumb poll --- 39 votes (18%)

4) Kicking cute little puppies --- 83 votes (39%)

You're all a bunch of sadists. Really.

New satire site sits on sidebar!

2004-02-17T18:33:00.000+10:00

Decent Australian funnies are hard to find on the internet... Until now! You should all head on over to Meat Pie and Sauce and laugh at your inner-Aussie. Or better yet, check out the stories on the site. They make me laugh more than you do.

No cable and no cable makes Marty something something...

2004-02-17T18:26:00.000+10:00

I spoke too soon. I mentioned it in one of the running comments threads, but I'll actually post it up here for all to read. I've had a couple of delays in getting my cable connection up and running, so until then I have to live with rather limited dial-up internet access. No blogging until I have my cable!

At this stage it's looking like another two days or so; perhaps earlier, perhaps later, but in that general ball-park. I'm still accepting insults to David Marr, Margo Kingston and Mark Latham, remember.

As for what you can also use the comments to this post for, feel free to fling wild accusations around about other readers and commenters. Hop to it!

Hiatus schmiatus

2004-02-15T07:12:00.000+10:00

Did I say I'd be away from here for one or two weeks? I meant one or two days!

I write this from a friend's place, as I prepare to move all my crap into my new place today. Hurrah for all! One of the best things as far as this blog and its readers is concerned is that there is cable internet there waiting for me.

In other news, it's a completely alien feeling for a 19-year old to be awake at 7:00 on a Sunday morning. Then again, why don't you try driving 750km in one day and see how you feel about consuming vast amounts of alcohol and then staying out all night. It was very tempting though...

Wow, I love my one-track mind.

P.S. Oh yeah, the times have changed -- literally. You'll notice that all post timestamps have been changed from NSW time to Queensland time... due to me being in Queensland and not NSW.

I'm leaving!

2004-02-13T05:52:00.000+10:00

Further to my previous notice, issued last Monday, I'd like to advise that I'm temporarily leaving this blog for an unspecified amount of time (perhaps even up to a week or two, although I hope it won't be that long). I'm moving house so I can't specify how long it will be before I get stable internet access again.

Until I return, everyone is invited to insult Margo Kingston, David Marr, or Mark Latham in the comments. The funniest insult wins! If the winner happens to live in the Brisbane area, I'll buy them a beer.

Only arselickers want to privatise things!

2004-02-12T15:22:00.000+10:00

We've all heard about Telstra's massive profits that they just announced, right? Laborites don't like profits:

Telstra was fuelling its massive profits by charging consumers too much in telephone line rental fees, opposition communications spokesman Lindsay Tanner said today.

Mr Tanner's comments came after Telstra posted a 93.7 per cent rise in first half net profit to $2.3 billion.

Mr Tanner said Australia's biggest telecommunications company had propped up its profits by increasing line rental fees to up to $26.50 a month for a standard plan.

Fair enough. Thing is, however, Labor don't want to privatise Telstra. The only way to make Telstra competitive and not overcharge customers is to throw them fully into the marketplace. Er, so I guess this is just more Labor whinging about something that they couldn't fix, but won't stop trying to get everyone to think they can.

The inevitable happened

2004-02-12T11:47:00.000+10:00

My computer sure did die yesterday. Windows didn't want to load, and I managed to get the Blue Screen of Death on every startup. This is in Windows XP where the BSoD is a thing of the past... unless something really buggers up.

Luckily I had an old install of Windows 98 on my second hard drive, so I fired that up. It had trouble coping with all the new hardware since it had last been loaded up on my old, deceased computer (I pinched the hard drive out of it because it had only been replaced a few weeks before the computer totally carked it). All I could really do with Windows 98 was backup as much data from that disk on CD's as I could, since it wouldn't connect to the internet or do anything else pertaining to even the late 1990's (with the other exception of 3D graphics). This wouldn't do...

So I bought the sick computer into my father's office this morning to dump as much stuff from my computer onto another computer in the office; format both of my disks and then reinstall Windows on both. When I put my main drive into the office computer as a slave, Windows XP decided to do a full disk scan of it -- which was something I couldn't do beforehand -- and it all loaded fine after Windows found a few bad sectors or something and acted accordingly. I dumped my most important stuff on the office computer anyway, then took my main drive back out and put it in my computer.

I started it up and everything works fine now.

The thing is, I have just replaced the graphics card in my computer and with the heat we're experiencing lately (it got to 42°C here yesterday), I thought that it may have been too hot to operate and as a result Windows would refuse to load. If anybody reading this is more of a techno-geek than I am, is this possible or does it sound more like a Windows / hard drive error?

Pilger pilfered

2004-02-11T12:54:00.000+10:00

Hey! I found the Green Left Weekly's new favourite tune!

~~Al-Qaeda's~~ John Pilger's newest weapon against the West is a violent English-language rap tune urging young Muslims to wage holy war.

The song is being broadcast on the internet in an attempt to lure music-loving youth into the terror network, which is blamed for the September 11 attacks on US cities and other bombings around the world.

Titled Dirty Kuffar or Dirty Infidels, the song is performed by a London-based group which Islamists said was deeply sympathetic to Osama bin Laden's network.

Given last months revelations, Pilger probably financed this project.

More bloggery

2004-02-10T21:12:00.000+10:00

I've added some more blogs to the sidebar. Everybody should take a look at:

Mythusmage Opines - Alan has his head screwed on the right way and comes armed with an American accent.

Running at the Mouth - A lawyer from Ohio, who considers me to be a kindred spirit. Well, at least when it comes to beating up on lefties anyway.

Silent Running - I should have added this link a long while ago, but I figure even I am allowed to slip up sometimes, so forgive me. Or I'll kill you.

UPDATE: I managed to slip up twice! I also forgot to include Dissecting Leftism in this blogroll update.

More FTA shiznit

2004-02-10T09:33:00.000+10:00

It's a little confusing to me that people like Mark Latham -- who would have favoured the free-trade agreement with the United States had we managed to get them to open up fully to farming and agriculture sectors -- are labelling the agreement as "a dud". Gerard Henderson has more:

Yesterday the Opposition Leader, Mark Latham, criticised John Howard for not delivering for the sugar industry and for not doing enough for beef and dairy farmers. This overlooks the fact that if this Prime Minister cannot do a deal on agriculture with this President, then no one for the foreseeable future can. It was a case of compromise on sugar - and, to a lesser extent on beef and dairy - or there would have been no FTA.

The exclusion of sugar will not make cane growers and sugar producers any worse off. Yet the junking of the FTA would have adversely affected the prospects of other Australian industries seeking to sell goods and services on American markets. Howard has indicated that he is sympathetic to the plight of the Australian sugar industry and that his Government is willing to consider additional assistance for it. No doubt, his concern is genuine. But, no doubt, Howard is also conscious that the industry is based in a number of marginal seats on the coast of Queensland and northern NSW.

Sugar growers are being misled by the likes of Queensland-based independent MP Bob Katter (formerly a National Party member) who maintains that government intervention - at federal and state level - can save the sugar industry in its current form. This is pure mythology.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: The Gnu Hunter has a conclusive roundup.

The few industries that are not covered by the FTA will not be disadvantaged, they just won't benefit. Why then must every other industry suffer with this nutty "all or nothing" approach from Mark Latham? Because it fits with the general style of Australian politics where the party in opposition opposes everything for the sake of it, to discredit the government and try to win office for themselves.

Read all of that too, along with his initial roundup from yesterday. Perhaps I should shout this guy a beer or something.

UPDATE II: There are varied opinions at the Sydney Morning Herald's Your Say page:

I am an Economics Student and this Trade deal is just plain common sense to me. Free Trade is great. The US has always held stupid Tarrifs etc to protect their ineffecient farming industries much to the detriment of Australia.

I can't believe people like Angry Aussie and Dominic Agostino (the Push Pop Pusher) who are whinging as with the vast majority of you about this.

Howard has done an exceptional job and has proved himself to be probably the greatest Prime Minister in history at steering this country into the powerhouse it has become today.

Rusty Crawford

Don't forget that Australia also has stupid tariffs to protect inefficient industries, as does the European Union. The fact that, unlike the European Union, Australia is readily willing to abolish these tariffs is truly a great thing. The eloquence level goes down after this:

Their are 2 things that we don't need to have a university degree for, self interest and Greed. We all have it and we all use it.

Both Governments live by it, if you have 276 million consumers and your opponent has 20 million consumers, who has the upper hand?

[...]

ben with a little b (in his bonnet)

It's simple - mediocrity flourishes in a protected environment. Open the gates to competition and everyone benefits due to the need to develop superior products at cheaper costs. People aren't forced to buy crap then. And another thing: What on earth makes you think that the U.S. is our economic "opponent"? Idiot.

This one was awesome:

Hooray! Crappy Australian TV drama is saved from having to lift its game. More "Australians telling Australian stories" - not that you see any Chinese Australians, Lebanese Australians etc etc unless they been thrown a tokenistic "let's all rejoice in happy multicultural land for 30 minutes" role by Australias legions of talentless scriptwriters.

By the way - are there any Australian content rules for newspapers? What's the proportion of Sydney Morning Herald articles sourced to offshore newswires and "syndicated" newspaper articles these days?

Tiu Fu Fong

I don't even think I need to comment on that.

Finally, this is what all sane people are thinking:

Seven times in a row the Liberal/National coallition has delivered us a budget surplus. Look at the two thirds of state Labor governments that are running defecits and the choice is simple. Accuse Howard of everything you want but dont be stupid, the man knows after 30 years in politics how to run the economy.
I cant understand for the life of me how anyone can see unrestricted entry to the worlds biggest economy as a bad thing. I think some people confuse their jealousy and hatred of John Howards power for a belief that Latham (the taxi driver bashing thug) could do better.

Greg

For once, a SMH reader-input page where sanity prevailed!

Notice

2004-02-09T09:53:00.000+10:00

Blogging will be light this week as I have quite a few things to do, and then I'll be away from the blog entirely for an uncertain amount of time after next Saturday when I'll be moving house. The usual connectivity issues will be taking place, and it wouldn't surprise me if I'm away from here for more than a week. I'll provide updates when I can!

Until then, I'd like to express my happiness that we got our free-trade agreement with the United States. Woohoo!

UPDATE: Tim Blair addresses the issue so I don't have to.

A post on Saturday...?

2004-02-07T10:12:00.000+10:00

I don't normally do updates on weekends, and this weekend should probably be no exception. Though, thanks to reader TokenModerateGuy, I have a strange urge to direct you to this FrontPage Mag article:

Former President Bill Clinton on Dec. 16, 1998, stated, "Other countries possess weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. With Saddam, there is one big difference: He has used them. Not once, but repeatedly. Unleashing chemical weapons against Iranian troops during a decade-long war. Not only against soldiers, but against civilians, firing Scud missiles at the citizens of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Iran. And not only against a foreign enemy, but even against his own people, gassing Kurdish civilians in Northern Iraq. . . . I have no doubt today, that left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again. . . . "

That's right! It's yet another article on why removing Saddam Hussein was the right thing to do! Read the whole thing. Andrew Bolt also has a column saying that the war in Iraq was still justified, and it is also worth reading.

Officially honourable

2004-02-06T18:39:00.000+10:00

My campaign to become an honorary* bastard has been short, sweet and to the point. I always knew I was a bastard!

On another note, I'd like to express my sincere thanks to all the idiotic nutcases that took my bait hook, line and sinker. You guys rock!

*I spelt it "honourary" before, but I think the correct spelling, even in Australia, is "honorary". Even if it's not, it looks more correct.

Attention stupid, stinky, flea-ridden commies!

2004-02-05T22:33:00.000+10:00

To all the left-wing citizens of the Western world,

I hate you. I hate you all. I hate you so much that I choose to waste my time writing this just to tell you that I hate you! That's how much I hate you!

It's been mentioned to me that I should relish my time in the spotlight. I immediately thought, "bugger that! I'll just prolong my time in the spotlight instead!" So this is what this post is all about. So if you're a stupid pinko dipshit and this doesn't enrage you much, please leave tips on how I can better improve my technique next time.

The first and main thing I hate about all you dumb lefty idiots is the fact that you are all stupid left-wing morons. If you take that as a compliment, then it means that I hate you. It means that the only good thing you'll do in your life is get pummelled by somebody that I don't hate quite as much as I hate you.

The second thing I hate about you is your nature. All you do is whinge! For example, the 12-year "rush to war" to remove Saddam Hussein was plagued with stupid slogans. "No blood for oil"? Are you stupid?! Sure, we conservatives may be evil, but we don't barrell our victims blood up and send it to rogue states like North Korea. They can't pay us enough to do that! You stupid nutbags are so dumb that you can't even see that!

Thirdly, what the hell is the go with calling conservatives "fascist"? Having a large government in place ultimately stops us from doing what we like doing best: Screwing people over in order to gain a profit. This is why we want large amounts of deregulation; it's why we want the government to keep their noses out of our business! If anything, it's you that is fascist! "We have to regulate this! There needs to be a new government agency put in place to watch over the activities of watchdogs who police the office that keeps a menacing eye on what is shown between 2:30 and 3:00 in the morning on free-to-air television!" There's no problem that a bigger government won't solve, right lefties?

Fourthly, get a damn haircut! And shave! You almost have a chance of me not wanting to beat you with a lead pipe when I walk past you on the street if you can follow basic hygiene.

Fifth and finally, don't you think you're a little bit hypocritical when you call people such as myself a "sheep" for having the opinions and political stance that I do? I mean, the traditional lefty stereotype is for the best part entirely true. And no lefty that I've ever talked to has disproved the stereotype. Well, there are variances in how much you stink, which op shop you bought your clothes from, or even how much your welfare payment is per fortnight, but they're all rather superficial differences in the end. My point is, if you weren't all full of the same kind of crap, you wouldn't have such an accurate stereotype! Sheep!

I could ramble on here for a lot longer with the reasons why I hate you, but I think you'd all lose interest after this point anyway due to it being roughly 38 seconds since you last put your bong to what can very loosely be described by yourself as "good use". So by now you're probably not even comprehending what I'm saying. That's why I'm choosing to end this message now.

May death rain down upon you forever.

With love,
Marty

Around the place

2004-02-05T11:45:00.000+10:00

* Yobbo's site administrator Bailz has gone bonkers. Be sure to read the comments.

* Frank J. has compiled the Universal Democratic Underground thread. It's a must read, especially for those of you who have been to the DU forums.

* Vikki has disappeared off the face of the planet.

* I'm working on becoming an Honourary Bastard, due to my filthy capitalist beliefs.

More on Mark

2004-02-05T10:34:00.000+10:00

It is always interesting to watch Mark Latham. He's trying to be everything to everyone, which, as logic would have it, doesn't really work:

"Disadvantage is not an alibi for bad parental behaviour," Mr Latham said. He said he could not tolerate the view that it was all right to do whatever a person liked.

"Some people on the extreme left say personal responsibility doesn't matter," Mr Latham said.

"People on the extreme right underfund, under-resource and under-value the government contribution.

"I'm in the centre saying you need both."

Obviously his heart is in the right place, right? Patrick Cook nailed his folly in this week's edition of the Bulletin:

Mark has some pretty firm ideas about responsible parenting, doesn't he?

He certainly does. Under a Mark government a new ministry of social order will be established, with astonishingly sweeping powers, possibly based on ASIO, to enforce individual responsibility. Government operatives will be entitled to accost any parent, dawn raids are a preferred option, and insist that parents chew their food at least fifty times per mouthful, that parents tidy their rooms and do not sit in front of a computer screen all day. Parents will further be forced to get inside out of the fresh air, where appropriate, and to get their noses into a book.

Read all of Patrick's column. Funny stuff.

Get on with it!

2004-02-05T10:09:00.000+10:00

Things are looking better:

THE Federal Government was confident of finalising a free trade agreement with the US by the middle of this year, it said today.

Good.

My arrogance is finally starting to pay off!

2004-02-04T14:34:00.000+10:00

Come one, come all! I've been the subject of some discussion over at the mono.net forums that I haven't bothered reading. I just checked my referrer logs (I won't bother linking to those shitstains, but thanks for the traffic guys).

Anyway, check out these comments, all posted by some crazy person that goes by the name of "Evilegg". This is awesome (check comments to each post):

You Marty are a fat assed private school cock smoking cunt headed fucker if ever Ive seen one.Do you know what you need?You need to be kicked in the sack 50 times for being a pompous Alexander Downer looking rich scotch college fucker.
Assholes like you need to move out of ya mums house and get a fucking reality check.
I hope you have a heart attack and choke on ya own crap idiot!!!

Then this:

Fuck off you zionist pig fucker...

***

This fuckfaced arrogant teenager Marty needs to go outside his tree lined rich suburb and get some fucking life experience.What a little pratt you are mate.You remind me of a young fumbling premature ejaculating posh speaking Alexander Downer.
Have you even had sex?

Followed by this regarding Janet Jackson's boob-slip:

Admit it !You pulled your tiny cock for hours over that footage didnt you fucker

... Which was followed up with this:

Your Biggest problem is that you worship a racist ass licking prime minister.
You need to get a life and go outside rich kid.I bet your a fat piece o shit too.

And it all finished here:

THIS IS ABSOLUTE RUBBISH
When you finally get that priests cock out of your ass marty and wake up to the world you might get somewhere.Now fuck off and have milk and cookies you pizza faced richboy brat!

There seems to be some misconception that I'm a rich, fat, private-schooled kid. Quite the opposite, actually. I don't know if there's any point to me responding with similar amounts of juvenile rage, especially due to this character having an obsession with my penis that my lawyer says I should probably be worried about.

He's generating quite a bit of traffic for me though, which is nice of him!

UPDATE: Couldn't help myself. I had to check out what they're saying about me. Funny stuff:

Hes in my favourites now and will be abused daily
***EVIL-EGG***

Competition idea: Guess how many times he uses the word "cock" in an insult.

He reminds me of some of the up front fee paying students I have to deal with. When they fail, their mummies or daddies ring me up and say, they cant fail him, I'm paying full fees for this!

1) I'm paying HECS.
2) I don't fail. Want to see my results?

This is bloody hilarious.

BOB BROWN = HITLER!!1!!11!

2004-02-04T12:25:00.000+10:00

John Ray, a sociologist from Brisbane, has recently come under attack from leftist law student Rob Corr and also from James Russell due to Ray apparently being a Nazi. Yobbo has sorted them out and Ray has responded. I found it all interesting reading.

Anyway, moving along, another thing I noticed at Ray's site was a comparison between Nazis and greenies. Here is part of the email that Ray published on his site:

If you remove the nationalism and racism from the party platform of the National Socialist German Workers Party of Hitler it becomes virtually identical to the modern Greens. Here is a partial list of the common positions:

National socialist health care
Strict government oversight of corporations
Extreme labor rights versus employers
High taxes
Big government
Strict gun control
Deification of nature
Aversion to Judeo-Christian theology

I've long considered Leftist doctrine as a form of fascism -- they'd rather entrust the government to provide for the "welfare" of everyone -- and if you look into the comparison given there, the pieces do begin to fit. Ray goes on to write:

Hitler was being a perfectly orthodox socialist in having those beliefs. Since then, however, the Left have switched sides and now make just as big a play of being anti-racist as they once did of their "racial hygeine" (eugenic) beliefs. And the Greenies follow suit. But they are all still Leftists with the same desire to tell everybody else what to do. And Hitler showed where those desires lead if the people concerned actually get power.

So is it plausible to consider modern-day leftist beliefs as neo-fascism? The left-wing mind police are out to tell the public what to do and how to think because they just know best. It's not, obviously, "fascism" per se, but as I said, it's kind of like a new derivative of it.

Onya Mark!

2004-02-04T09:28:00.000+10:00

Mark Latham's biggest problem as a politician is that he's in the wrong party:

MARK Latham has backed a hardline stance against the spread of heroin injecting rooms to counter government claims that Labor is soft on drugs - a move that will place him at odds with many in his own party.

The Opposition Leader has also ruled out Labor support for gay marriages, as the country's political leaders adopt a conservative values framework to try to lock in voters in key marginal seats.

Take that, lefties! I wouldn't dare go as far as to say it's a win-win situation for somebody like me in the federal election later this year though. Latham does have plenty of his own problems.

Am I the only one that doesn't give a shit about Janet's boob?!?

2004-02-04T08:56:00.000+10:00

I don't care! I DON'T CARE!

MUSIC stars Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake would be allowed to appear at next week's Grammy Awards despite Jackson's televised flash, but the broadcast would be delayed to weed out any more surprises, officials said.

Who cares? Why all the fuss? Jesus Christ, it was only a fucking boob! Who hasn't ever seen a boob before?

The boosted time delay will give the CBS television network, which also broadcast the Super Bowl, time to "delete both inappropriate audio and video footage from the broadcast", CBS said.

This is stupid. Absolutely stupid. Stupider than stupid. That's the nature of live television and big shows - occasionally people slip up. Occasionally boobs slip out. In the end though, why are people so retarded that they can't just go "haha! Oops!" instead of "OH MY GOD, I SAW HER BREAST! MY EYES ARE SOILED FOR LIFE!"

Gaaahhhh, all this fuss over a fucking boob is really, really annoying me.

Another witty anecdote

2004-02-03T12:36:00.000+10:00

When I caught up with some old high school friends last weekend, I forgot to mention a particular series of events that took place.

A guy that I was good friends with in about Year 9 was at this particular pub, and I hadn't seen him for quite a while, so we exchange life stories. As of this year, he's off to Lismore (in Northern NSW) to do a degree in Environmental Science, or some crap. He's also become quite the hippy, so as one would imagine, I took the liberty of ridiculing him in my own inimitable fashion.

ME: So, Environmental Science, huh? That sounds like fun.

HIM: Yeah, man. It's gonna be so fun. Are you going back to uni this year?

ME: Of course. I've got two more years until I get my Business degree.

HIM: So you're gonna be one of those rich corporate guys, are you?

ME: Yup. While you're out there doing field work on why an obscure variation of some toadstool is set to become extinct in 250 years, I'll be on the other side of the forest signalling it's destruction whilst also ordering the go-ahead on another oil-pillaging war in the Middle East. Oh, and I'll also give myself a $75,000,000 bonus for all my hard work.

HIM: *stunned look*

This stunned silence continued for roughly ten seconds; he obviously had nothing to say.

ME: ... I was joking. I'll be too busy hoarding illegal refugees into slave-labour camps in a secret deal with the government to care about bloody rainforests.

HIM: ... That's a joke too, right?

ME: Umm, yes.

HIM: ... Good. Anyway, best of luck man.

ME: Yeah, you too.

I'll be buggered if he ever says any kind words to or about me ever again.

UPDATE: Check out the comments for the jubilant return of my pet troll, Tigga!

Corporations, like, suck!

2004-02-03T12:11:00.000+10:00

Hooray for anti-corporatism!

... money is in short supply in Georgetown, an industrial town 100km north of the charming city of Charleston on the Atlantic coast. It is still reeling from the news last December that its steel mill had gone bust, leaving 600 workers without jobs.

Towns like this in South Carolina, which has been hit hard by the flow of jobs offshore, make the state fertile ground for the senator's populist anti-corporate message.

These guys are obviously economic geniuses. Greedy Americans keeping jobs and wealth away from those stupid poor countries. They don't need them! Socialist America, here we come!

Margo's embargo

2004-02-03T09:29:00.000+10:00

Margo Kingston is the newest champion for worker's rights. Her annual holiday has been extended from over one month, to two months:

Margo will be back on deck by the middle of February.

I wonder how long it'll be before Bob Brown's "I wish I could vote" vote picks up on Margo's shining example.

Like, everybody should, like, have a couple of months off at the end of the year. Like, why should anybody work for more than 10 months per year in a job they probably think is shit anyway. Actually, I think that even working for 10 months of the year is, like, criminal and stuff. Margo is an example of all the stuff that I'm, like, fighting for. By the way, Bush is Hitler!

Such brain-power is beyond me, obviously.

Janet knew!!

2004-02-03T07:16:00.000+10:00

Can we all get over Janet Jackson's boob-slip? I really don't care that it happened in front of millions and millions of people. It's just a female breast, and it was pretty much covered up with that star anyway. What's the big deal? The stupidest statement on the matter goes to Justin Timberlake for calling it a "wardrobe malfunction". The funniest statement I've read goes:

My brain and my penis are still arguing over whether that was hot...

Finally, Matt Drudge has a report saying that it was actually planned. That would certainly explain that big chrome star on Janet's nipple.

UPDATE: Adam provides his take on the matter, which includes this mock-letter:

"I beat my children with a big piece of wood every night but I'm DISGUSTED that the Superbowl would feature such EVIL. As a committed Christian I have been forced to lock my four sons under the stairs for an extended period of time to cleanse their eyes of the foul scenes that have been forced onto them. I will be closely examining the photo later to see what action can be taken. Yours sincerely, the Bishop of something. West Virginia"

Heheh. Also, best of luck to Adam and his ambition to rank at the top of Google for three or four minutes!

UPDATE II: As expected, here come the idiots that want to legislate their way out of this:

But outraged critics called it pornography and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched an inquiry into what its chairman called a "classless, crass and deplorable" stunt.

Thank you, Mr. Authority. I'll never accidentally look at boobs again.

UPDATE III: The site that hosted that GIF previously seen is down; I'm assuming due to an over-abundance of traffic. I guess all you guys that came here to see the pictures will have to make do with the big close-up provided on the Drudge Report link, until it is eventually moved too.

UPDATE IV: I also realise the irony of me updating this post numerous times after saying "can we all get over it!" so there's no need to point that out.

Latham in diapers?

2004-02-03T03:32:00.000+10:00

I hate not being able to sleep. It's 4.30 in the fucking morning!!!

All is not lost, however. I was catching up on the latest group of Andrew Bolt's columns, and came across the best description of Mark Latham's government if it was to get power:

Latham's actual policies won't give us what he calls a big country, "big in character", with hard-working folk.

The only big thing they'll produce is Big Nanny and big bills.

Nowhere in Latham's speech is there a problem a bigger government can't solve. Big Nanny is everywhere, even in your home.

Bolta strikes again! Another column by Bolt that even lefty Rob Corr found merit in points out that in this year's federal election, John Howard is going to have to come up with a vision in order to stay on top.

True, a freedom-loving conservative must be wary of Man-with-the-Plan politics of the kind socialists, and Labor, love. But voters do want to know what a leader is on about -- what motivates him and what kind of sunlit Australia he's working for.

What has Howard given them? In 1996, he simply promised to make us ``relaxed and comfortable'', and won only because he wasn't Paul Keating. In 1998, he promised the GST, so he'd at least look like he believed in something, unlike Labor's Kim Beazley.

In 2001, Howard ran on fear. He'd protect us from terrorists and fake refugees -- which is great, but not a vision. How weak Labor was to have lost.

Sure, in a few circles the mention of Andrew Bolt results in some sneering, but you have to admit that the guy has a good point in almost every sentence he writes. Although I would ultimately prefer Howard's government over anyone else's, I think it's pretty safe to say that we haven't seen the current Liberal government face a really tough opposition. Whether they're a good opposition is another thing, though.

I'm the cause for global warming...?

2004-02-02T15:15:00.000+10:00

Mike Jericho has found yet another waste of taxpayer money at the ABC website. It is a calculator that, quite charmingly, tells you how long you should live.

Here is my result:

Bwahahaha! It's pretty cool how I'm cancelling out all those stupid hippies.

OMG!

2004-02-02T12:39:00.000+10:00

I just can't understand geek humour. Well, I can to a certain degree, but I simply cannot find this funny:

New dad Jon Blake Cusack decided that tacking Jr or II onto a boy's name was too common and talked his wife into naming their son Jon Blake Cusack 2.0.

I suggest he call his next daughter: "OMG Lisa ROOFLEZ!!11"

This article is lame. Although it does have one funny part:

Version 2.0 was born last Tuesday at Holland Community Hospital in Michegan, USA, and the proud parents took him home on Friday.

Although I bet the geek thinks the email he sent out about his newborn son was hilarious:

"I wrote in the birth announcement e-mail stuff, like there's a lot of features from version 1.0 with additional features from Jamie," Mr Cusack said.

Yawn. Somebody shoot this guy, so I don't have to.

(Link pillaged from Kev Gillett.)

Another non-offensive, non-denominational post for the prudish fuckheads out there who jerk off over that shit

2004-02-02T12:16:00.000+10:00

More PC crap:

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- The state's school superintendent has proposed striking the word evolution from Georgia's science curriculum and replacing it with the phrase "biological changes over time."

The reason? To "alleviate pressure on teachers in socially conservative areas where parents object to its teaching." Sounds logical, eh? The funny thing is, the lefties who would normally support something like this (remember how the term "Founding Fathers" was replaced with "the Framers" in Californian textbooks?), think it's a load of crap and they're just appeasing the American Christian Right:

"Here we are, saying we have to improve standards and improve education, and we're just throwing a bone to the conservatives with total disregard to what scientists say," said state Rep. Bob Holmes, a Democrat.

Funnier still is the last two paragraphs of the article:

Social conservatives who prefer religious creation to be taught instead of evolution criticized the proposal as well.

"If you're teaching the concept without the word, what's the point?" said Rep. Bobby Franklin, a Republican. "It's stupid. It's like teaching gravity without using the word gravity."

Take that, PC idiots!

Da shiznit!

2004-02-02T11:21:00.000+10:00

You know, all of a sudden the letters page at the Sydney Morning Herald is interesting to read:

Apropos Alan Ramsey's article on da Prime Minister's press conference ("Here's yo' question, 'n my reply", Herald, January 31-February 1), how refreshing that shiznit would be if da Prime Minister wuz again call one of tha dude's manipulative press conferences, da press declined participate in tha dude's little charades, no one turned up 'n da press published that fact."

Severino M. Milazzo, Maroubra, January 31.

I think many letter-writers have actually improved their coherence level! Normally, this would be a bit of garbage, but thanks to the Shizzolator, it's almost funny to read:

I has just returned from da United States where, over da past few months, I has listened a number of versions of da reason fo' da invasion of Iraq, know what I'm sayin'? Few believed da WMD reason n' shit. Many thought that shiznit wuz 'bout getting Saddam Hussein n' shit. However, most agreed that that shiznit wuz needed because Russian oil companies had poured paper into Iraq shore up da supply of oil, be used once da sanctions had been lifted, know what I'm sayin'? The US had act before sanctions wuz lifted n' shit. Americans has no problem wit that, know what I'm sayin'? After izzall, they are da biggest users of energy 'n they need are greater than those of any other country, know what I'm sayin'?

Nobody understood why Australia became involved."

Ray Lanham, Manly, January 31.

This is my personal favourite, however:

I can't believe muthas are still splitting hairs 'n wringing hands over izzle liberation of Iraq, know what I'm sayin'? For heaven's sake, da coalition actions has been vindicated time 'n time again, culminating in Saddam Hussein's arrest, know what I'm sayin'?

The existence - or not - of WMDs is irrelevant n' shit. One day there will be peace 'n democracy in Iraq 'n da world will be a safer place, izzall because of da initiative of leaders like MistaBush 'n MistaHoward n' shit. Then da nit-pickers will need find something else whinge 'bout, know what I'm sayin'?

Peter Maresch, Lane Cove, January 31.

This is the shizzle, yo fizzi-pizzle iddy nigga.

Mmm... Beer

2004-02-02T11:03:00.000+10:00

There's something about pubs in smaller towns. I've always been told that I should at all times think positively, so instead of saying what I was originally going to say (that being "they're some of the most depressing places to drink in"), I'll just say that they have a lot of... character.

The regional NSW town I'm in for the next 12 days before returning to Brisbane is, in fact, the town I grew up in. The pubs here are the first I hit as a bright-eyed 18 year old, though needless to say, I was a red-eyed 18 year-old a few hours later. Back then, it was really exciting. There was one pub in town that was simply the place to go. All of the people my age went there on a Saturday night - it was fantastic!

I returned to this particular pub on Saturday night, as many of my old friends from high school were due to be there before returning to their respective cities for university in a week or so. It was really great to catch up with them all again, although we all simultaneously agreed that this particular pub lacked the, erm... class that we had all become accustomed to in our time away.

Needless to say, next time anyone wants to throw some kind of reunion party, I'll be jetting off to somewhere like Sydney or Coffs Harbour. Though many of my old friends go on impromptu trips to the Gold Coast or Brisbane, so maybe I'll just stay put.

It was rigged! Rigged I tells ya!

2004-02-01T11:00:00.000+10:00

Bugger. I lost. Congratulations to Jonas of 85 George St. for taking out Best Queensland Blog.

A few things

2004-01-30T22:39:00.000+10:00

* Aren't whales supposed to be pretty smart animals? They've obviously got a few coaches hanging around the middle east. They're starting to explode.

* The BBC is going to apologise for things that, unlike John Howard, they are directly responsible for.

* This little Flash game must have amused me for... I don't know, probably about two or three minutes. Pretty cool.

* I think my main hard drive is about to seriously die on me. Yippeee!! If I mysteriously disappear, you'll know what happened.

Vandals vandalised

2004-01-30T11:56:00.000+10:00

Some guy my age was caught by police publicly vandalising business premises in Southport's CBD. This is what I love about the Gold Coast:

"It's terrible – it makes the place look like a ghetto," said sewing centre manager Kym Graham, a former police officer.

"We spent about $7000 on our signage and it's been ruined. We work hard and pay taxes to pay these vandals' dole and they want to destroy our property as well."

I've been trying as hard as I can for the last 15 minutes to add to and subsequently out-do that comment, but I can't.

UPDATE: Further awesome comments, this time regarding public transport, have been made by Paul Bickford, but I think commenter 'Osamas Psychotic Proctologist' takes the cake:

Why is it if you apply the prefix public to anything, it automatically changes the meaning to include dirty, slow, inefficient, surly, expensive and ultimately pointless

Hey it works !! I just tried that with the following:
-toilet
-swimming pool
-road
-transport
-funding
-servant

I'm not going to even bother trying to out-do that one.

I've read it so you don't have to

2004-01-30T10:34:00.000+10:00

In today's Sydney Morning Herald:

The editor still can't get Margo to return, so instead they have called on somebody equally as crazy: Maureen Dowd. I only bothered to read the first couple of paragraphs where she somehow managed to get rid of the "Bush = Hitler" meme and try and start up a new "Bush = Saddam" meme.

Also not worth your time is Sydney performance poet Tug Dumbly trying to be funny about Che Guevara. I don't think there's any point to his article.

The letters page is full of crazy wanks like this:

Once again Ross Gittins has got it right, this time arguing for higher taxes to pay for, among other things, repair of the environment ("Why higher taxes are healthy", Herald, January 28).

And half the site won't load, for some reason. In other words, it's just another day at the Silly Moaning Hilmer.

Dying a fowl death

2004-01-29T11:51:00.000+10:00

Okay, this is the last you'll hear from me today. I couldn't let this go un-commented on:

Slaughter key to containment: WHO

Three international agencies - WHO, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Organisation for Animal Health - have urged killing birds as the best approach. [to containing the bird flu disease]

That's right! Kill the suckers! I wonder what the animal rights groups are going to say about this one...

Public service announcement

2004-01-29T11:22:00.000+10:00

I ~~can't be arsed~~ am busy for the rest of the day, so I wouldn't be expecting anything else from me until tomorrow.

I'm alert and alarmed

2004-01-29T11:04:00.000+10:00

Tim Blair noted an ominous event looming yesterday. We're reliably informed that Sydney Morning Herald Webdiary loon, Margo Kingston, is due to be "back on deck at the end of January". I don't know if it's going to happen, due to there being only one weekday left in January. Maybe Margo is silently protesting workers rights? I mean, she's been on holidays for well over a month now. The SMH is working her so hard!

Eww. That's a very disgusting thought.

The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy strikes again!

2004-01-28T13:08:00.000+10:00

In the latest Green Left Weekly, inveterate moron John Pilger has already been blasted for being even more idiotic than usual (I thought it was impossible too, but he's obviously trying to prove something).

Anyway, there was another article I stumbled across on that typified the sheer lunacy of the Left. Apparently, Bush has launched a war on dissent, according to Doug Lorimer:

As former US treasury secretary Paul O'Neill recently confirmed, Washington's post-9/11 "war on terror" was a coldly calculated conspiracy by the administration of US President George Bush, begun from its first week in office, to conquer Iraq, take control of its oil resources and restructure the entire Middle East in accordance with US corporate interests.

Funny how the introduction had almost nothing to do with the article itself, but I guess Lorimer couldn't help himself. I wonder how much money they get for every instance of the words "conspiracy" and "Bush" in the same sentence? ... Actually, scratch that, I'm sure all ~~journalists~~ barely-literate imbeciles that ~~write for~~ dribble all over their keyboards for the Green Left Weekly are on government support anyway. Let's get started:

Ostensibly targeted against the organisers of the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration launched a dizzying flood of near-daily edicts, executive orders and "rule changes" to gut the constitutional protections of the American people's rights to free speech, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, and a fair and speedy trial.

Wow. It's a good thing you're writing this in Australia so your dissent can be heard... And subsequently crushed, of course. I fail to see how dissent is being so actively crushed in the United States (and, by extension, Australia). I think I saw thousands of ~~idiots~~ anti-war protesters taking to the streets nearly a year ago. As far as my not-quite-omniscient knowledge goes, nobody was killed, taken prisoner or even assaulted by secret service agents. Many of the anti-war marches were sponsored by socialist groups, and other far-left factions. Yet, no dissent was crushed by the government or authorities. You're not over-reacting, are you? I think you might be...

Lorimer continues to crap on about the Patriot Act and then somehow manages to string this together:

Bush himself was even more explicit in affirming that the government's aim was to terrorise domestic political dissent. On January 6, 2002, Bush told an audience that anyone "who espouses a philosophy that's terrorist and bent, I assure you we will bring that person to justice".

In congressional testimony given in May 2001 -- four months before 9/11 -- FBI director Louis Freeh indicated just what US government officials meant by "a philosophy that's terrorist and bent". Describing the FBI's targets, Freeh stated: "The second category of domestic terrorists, left-wing groups, generally profess a revolutionary socialist doctrine and view themselves as protectors of the people against the 'dehumanising effects' of capitalism and imperialism. They aim to bring about change in the United States through revolution rather than through the established political process."

Being an emotion-driven bunch, left-wingers and fringe-dwellers alike took that straight to heart. What Bush said on January 6, 2002 is so straightforward that only the Left could misunderstand it. Sure enough, Lorimer has pulled out some quote from Louis Freeh to reassure me of his inanity. He obviously hasn't quite picked up on the fact that Osama Bin Laden himself has preached about the "'dehumanising effects' of capitalism and imperialism". He obviously hasn't picked up on the fact that most known Islamic terrorist groups do actually favour a socialist doctrine. There are some far-left groups out there who do seriously believe that the only way to attain their dreamy utopia is through some kind of vaguely-holy revolution and destruction of modern society. Just because somebody believes in socialism doesn't make them a target, Doug. There is a democratic way to bring socialism to your country, and a neo-fascist way to enforce it upon your country. Unfortunately, you freaky left-wingers can't seem to distinguish between both methods. I would explain it to you more fully, Doug, but I'm sure your brain has enough troubles struggling with a door handle in your house.

This is getting depressing. Later on, Lorimer gets onto the presence of police at anti-war protests:

The New York Times reported on November 23 that the FBI "has collected extensive information on the tactics, training and organisation of anti-war demonstrators and has advised local law enforcement officials to report any suspicious activity at protests to its counterterrorism squads".

"The FBI is dangerously targeting Americans who are engaged in nothing more than lawful protest and dissent", American Civil Liberties Union's executive director Anthony Romero told the NYT. "The line between terrorism and legitimate civil disobedience is blurred... What the FBI regards as potential terrorism strikes me as civil disobedience."

Your idea of civil disobedience is similar to my idea of mad protesters. Oh, sorry, the violence happened outside America, but on more than one occasion, so it's proof that your dissent is being crushed! I like how there were no arrests for suspicious terrorist actions to put any substance to this claim of "the FBI dangerously targeting Americans".

Feel free to get on over to the Green Left site and do some of your own dissent crushing! I'm not going to bother with this stupid article anymore.

Stuff that isn't mine

2004-01-28T09:41:00.000+10:00

* Random Prose has a new design. Good work!

* Tim Blair's latest column in The Bulletin is definately worth reading. He tackles the current education debate, among others:

Religious schools should receive nogovernment funding. By "religious schools", I mean state schools, where the religious training is in various fundamentalist environmental faiths. The Gospel According to Saint Bob Brown is preached constantly. Drew Hutton, Greens candidate for Lord Mayor of Brisbane, is a former "teacher educator" at the Queensland University of Technology. "I am proud to say I used my position as a teacher educator to influence the content of social science curricula," he writes at his web site, "and to champion peace and environmental education in schools." At least he admits it.

* Paul Bickford takes his shot at Germaine Greer. It is impossible for anybody to disagree with his conclusion:

Note to editors- next thing you publish about Looney-Looby-Loo, try and make it her obituary.

* Even Mark Latham is managing to outsmart Bob Brown nowdays. I guess I need to find a new pet enemy.

* Bald Monkey is in very good form, and delivering scarily plausible ideas. Everyone should promote these guys!

* John Hawkins rounds up this whole scenario regarding David Kay. It's a must read. One of his greater points -- which I wholeheartedly agree with -- is that George Bush doesn't necessarily need to explain himself for his misleading information on Saddam's lack of WMD's; the global intelligence community should really be explaining themselves to the world. John writes:

...even if Saddam did not have significant stocks of WMD when we invaded, it's very clear that he had the capability and intention of creating them when the heat was off. And the reality is that Saddam couldn't be contained forever. At some point, even the anti-war crowd has to acknowledge that if a decade of sanctions and the threat of war didn't get Saddam to give up on WMD for good, then nothing short of an invasion was going to keep WMD out of his hands once for all. That's the reality of the situation and as far as I'm concerned, we made the right decison. Heck, even if Saddam wouldn't have had any WMD programs or a desire to create them, taking him out would have still been the right decision.

Hear hear!

* It's yesterday's news, but I have the urge to point everyone towards Gerard Henderson's column, published somewhat surprisingly in yesterday's SMH and Age newspapers.

Last June novelist Marion Halligan complained that "there is a sense now that artists are beleaguered because they're not valued by the Government". She added: "I can't imagine you'd find an artist anywhere saying 'I love working under the Howard Government'." Well, perhaps not. But why should artists care whether they are appreciated by government?

It's an unusual ask. Increasingly, artists gather together to hear themselves condemn the Howard Government. Then much the same group can be heard calling for more money and/or recognition from the very same government.

Read the whole thing.

I've now seen the error of my ways...

2004-01-28T08:32:00.000+10:00

This conversation is completely real. No, really, it is. I assure you:

Guy Marty Knows: That guy inspecting weapons in Iraq resigned. Proof that they didn't have any!

Me: You mean David Kay? This story doesn't really matter much in the long run, you know...

GMK: What're you talking about? This is fantastic! It's proof that the media are finally reporting the real state of play in Iraq -- that stupid America is going to fail miserably and George Bush is going to lose the election!

Me: That sounds awfully prophetic. Have you been hanging around at the Democratic Underground again?

GMK: No. I read it on Michael Moore's website. He's been telling the truth about what's happening in Iraq all the time. Now everyone else is finally catching on!

Me: Oh, right. I'm sure it is incredibly easy to distinguish between both, right? Michael Moore and a bunch of looney conspiracy theorists. They couldn't be more different!

GMK: You think Moore is wrong about everything just because he's fat? You right-wingers are so prejudiced! I bet you think Noam Chomsky is an idiot too just because he's spent all his life in the intellectual haven of academia!

Me: Well actually...

GMK: I knew it! You're so intolerent of other people's good ideas!

Me: Whatever. Going back to David Kay...

GMK: Yeah. He resigned because Bush lied about WMD's.

Me: I take it you've read his interim report on inspections in Iraq?

GMK: No. But why bother - he's resigned. He didn't find anything.

Me: The report contained conclusive proof that Saddam had very serious programs developing chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons. He may not have built them yet, but...

GMK: Exactly. He didn't have any. What's with the dumb American invasion then?

Me: But he was building WMD's. The report is available in full on the CIA website.

GMK: CIA?! No wonder it says only good things. They probably edited the report to make it appear to be all positive and make Saddam out to be worse than he really was.

Me: Are you seriously suggesting that the United States government would have edited a report that was delivered publically and recorded by many sources?

GMK: It wouldn't surprise me.

Me: ... You're completely nuts. There is no way you can listen to reason or logic. None at all. Get into rehab.

GMK: Haha! Oh, that's rich. You're calling me nuts! HAHA! I know what's really going on in Iraq and the world. What do you know? You run a website that just regurgitates George Bush's propaganda! All you do is read the "opinions" of other suckers that is also just rehashed propaganda! You're so brainwashed! I pity you, my friend.

Me: Hmm. Whatever. I'm going to grab a beer.

Everything was a bit of a blur after that...

Bugger!

2004-01-27T12:33:00.000+10:00

It is a crime against humanity (by which I mean me) that Glenn Reynolds doesn't pay any attention at all to this blog. He overlooked this post on the resignation of David Kay as the chief weapons inspector in Iraq, but still managed to find 4 other posts that said pretty similar things to my post, albeit slightly more eloquently.

I feel so gypped that it is not funny! I would feel rather awesome to get my first Instalanche, but unfortunately it won't be today.

*sigh*

Beattie cries foul

2004-01-27T11:44:00.000+10:00

According to the Courier Mail, the gloves are off in the Queensland election campaign. It's about damn time too!

THE gloves finally came off in the Queensland election campaign yesterday with Premier Peter Beattie launching a thinly veiled attack on his opponent's negative advertising.

Calling for more positive campaigning from the Opposition, Mr Beattie was seething at television advertising which ridiculed him for repeatedly apologising on issues.

Hang on, Pete - you want the opposition to run ads that make you look good?! Well, I guess it would be pretty cool if they did, but what on earth makes you think that they wouldn't attack your credibility (assuming there is still one or two shards of it left)? I'm hereby calling on the coalition to pull out the big guns in this campaign so we can at least be mildly entertained by it.

Naturally, deputy coalition leader Bob Quinn's response to Beattie's bitching is solidly grounded on planet Earth:

Mr Quinn said the Coalition had sought to highlight Labor's record.

"If (Mr Beattie) has performed as well as he says, we wouldn't have anything to run in our ads," he said.

Laborites take note.

Dispelled rumours

2004-01-27T10:56:00.000+10:00

You're Genghis!

Which Historical Ruler Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

That should finally get rid of those stupid rumours that I actually have a conscience and compassion.

(Thanks to Mike Jericho for making this quiz!)

Another dumb idea...

2004-01-27T09:58:00.000+10:00

I would often consider it to be a very, very long shot to call 'fascism' in this day and age, but hey, quite a few people like to throw the word around recklessly, so here goes...

For some reason, the current government is deemed to be rather fascist. Persuing free trade agreements, privatisation and blasting unions for generally being too nosey with people's lives is fascist, apparently. Oh, how the wonderful socially liberal policies of the Labor Party appeal to me (note sarcasm):

The get-tough policy would require some parents to take special parenting classes to bring troublesome teenagers into line and make sure they attend school.

Parents of troubled teenagers would be initially encouraged to sign voluntary contracts, requiring them to take more responsibility for their children's behaviour.

When all else failed, courts would impose an order on parents to go back to school themselves.

I'm not disputing the fact that there are genuinely careless parents out there, but having the government constantly assessing your parental competency is kind of... authoritarian, isn't it? How does it work? An on-the-spot fine for having your kid out on the front lawn after 9pm? Your child is not in your control! Back to school for you! What are the qualifications to become a teacher in parenting anyway? What makes a good parent, anyway? Wouldn't it depend on the nature of the kid? There are too many variables.

I agree with John Howard's rejection of this absurd idea:

"I think there are a whole range of ways in which Parliament can encourage and influence parents but, in the end, you derive your values and your attitudes to how you bring up your own children from your own parents," Mr Howard said.

"I mean, I learned more from my mother and father about how to treat my children and how to bring them up than I ever would from a member of Parliament, from a lawmaker, a social worker or indeed anybody else."

Basically, Latham's dumb idea would prove to be a fantastic waste of government funding. I agree.

It's Australia Day!

2004-01-25T23:01:00.000+10:00

Today will be spent drinking beer and watching cricket. Being an Aussie is great!

This Australia Day marks the first time that I will refuse to listen to Triple J's Hottest 100 countdown. Although I'll probably listen to bits and pieces of it anyway just so I can gauge how shit the music of 2003 really was. On a note of language, I think today will be the only time that I'll use the words "mate", "sheila" and "flamin' drongo" outside of a joke. Maybe. Okay, maybe not, but I'm just trying to get into the spirit of things!

In the meantime, head on over to Todd McKenzie's place and have a gander at this.

The WMD saga continues...

2004-01-25T20:04:00.000+10:00

You've just gotta love this:

THE federal government's case for war against Iraq had been destroyed by chief US weapons inspector David Kay, Labor said today.

I'm almost certain this isn't the first time that Labor has said that the government has lost all credibility for it's commitment to Iraq, right? This is coming from a party whose leader asserts that the U.S. president is "the most dangerous and incompetent president in history", then drapes himself in the U.S. flag pledging his allegience. Quite rich, isn't it?

Dr Kay, who led the US survey group's search for chemical and biological weapons in Iraq after the war, resigned saying he did not believe Iraq had stockpiles of the weapons.

It didn't stop Saddam from killing millions of Iraqis though, did it? Besides:

As recently as last December, Mr Downer said the interim Kay report showed Saddam Hussein was still working on chemical and biological weapons programs and maintaining his nuclear aspirations.

Interim report can still be accessed here, of course. And it's all there. Saddam was working on WMD's. He just hadn't had them built yet. Therefore, by anti-war logic, he's perfectly harmless. You know, kinda like that serial killer that just dropped his knife in to be sharpened at that "While-U-Wait" shop. No biggie.

Also bear in mind what Dr. Kay said about his findings in October of last year:

In fact, I'm sort of amazed at what was powerful information about both their [Iraq's] intent and their actual activities that were not known and were hidden from UN inspectors seems not to have made it to the press. This is information that, had it been available last year, would have been headline news.

That's good enough for me. It's almost as if the downplaying of what's contained in the interim report served as a testament to the anti-war Left's commitment to making George Bush look like a failure, rather than seeing hope and prosperity in Iraq.

This the last I want to hear about Kay's resignation, though I anticipate this story will be flogged like a decomposing horse.

It's an evil syndicate!

2004-01-25T19:28:00.000+10:00

Blogger has enabled syndication of this site. I've added the appropriate link ("site feed") to the sidebar. Enjoy.

DissentCrusher?

2004-01-23T09:58:00.000+10:00

It's time once again for some crushing of dissent. Here are the letters on today's SMH letters page...

Let's apply Mr Howard's free market principles to the education debate: if, after receiving billions of dollars, a system which offers academic success, connections with the right people and freedom from troublemakers and inefficient teachers can attract only a 30 per cent market share, why does the Prime Minister persist in subsidising it?

Grant Heaton, Port Macquarie, January 21.

Grant,

Yours is a rather biased and invalid argument, don't you think? Why are you applying free-market principles to what would largely be regarded as a socialist idea (of the government providing free schooling)? Isn't that a bit like trying to explain how a boat will react to a large wave by applying the physics model of a car? Or, to simpify it for you, like trying to fit a square into a circle? I'll apply some free-market principles to your brain, because it's the only logical thing to do: If, after being "educated" at the expense of Australian taxpayers, you offer no thoughtful logic at all, you don't understand what you should have been taught, and are now making a public idiot of yourself, why do you bother letting your body function?

Howard is subsidising private schools to entice them to lower fees, you imbecile. Howard is promoting the freedom of choice for parents by attempting to offer a larger range of viable alternatives for parents. You also seem to have deliberately omitted an important fact: The number of kids in private schools is growing rapidly, and that figure jumps to 40% when you look at Year 11 and 12 kids. Looks like your education taught you a lot.

Tony Abbott thinks "politically correct" teachers are imparting too much tolerance. Perhaps that's because, looking at the Middle East and around the world, it seems to be a value in short supply. But then, elections are never won by preaching tolerance, are they?

Nick Parsons, Lithgow, January 21.

Nick,

You are saying that Israel should tolerate being blown up by crazy, suicidal Palestinians? You're saying that the people of Iraq should have tolerated being thrown into industrial shredders by Saddam's regime? You're saying that, hey, the United States might as well just tolerated the September 11 attacks, yeah? Meanwhile, many Australian teachers are supporting violent "peace rallies", teaching kids about the "evil invasion" of Australia with the First Fleet, and pushing their own heavily-biased agenda onto children and disguising it as "an education". Yep, it's a pretty rock-solid argument you have there. Fool.

Peter Costello believes schools should teach the value of "achievement by effort". This is interesting given that he supports the achievement of significant wealth and income without effort for an advantaged minority via the mechanisms of untaxed, or lightly taxed, inheritances and capital gains.

Brent Howard, Rydalmere, January 22.

Brent,

You're obviously a disgruntled, unemployed loser. Shut up.

Germaine Greer can go to hell

2004-01-23T08:25:00.000+10:00

Vikki McNaughton blasted Germaine Greer about her column in yesterday's Australian. It turns out Vikki isn't alone:

Ms Greer, who abandoned Australia for London 40 years ago, also branded us "too relaxed to give a damn" and vowed never to return here to live.

Angry Australians yesterday made their own vow ? to make sure Melbourne-born Ms Greer keeps that promise.

I'd like to raise 'her keeping the promise' to 'me taking a cricket bat to her head while screaming "CALL ME SPORTS-MAD, WILL YOU?"'.

Yet another boring day in Queensland politics

2004-01-22T10:47:00.000+10:00

Wow, something is actually happening (to use the term very loosely) in Queensland politics today. The stupid civil liberties groups are up in arms about something that really doesn't matter one iota to anybody else. Opposition leader Lawrence Springborg apparently broke the law when he disendorsed Maryborough candidate Michael Giles for failing to "disclose that he was the subject of a domestic violence order (DVO)."

As I said, this really wouldn't matter to 99% of people. It matters so little that even Peter Beattie doesn't care:

Mr Springborg found support from Premier Peter Beattie.

"I think that's a bit rich," Mr Beattie said.

"In the heat of an election campaign, leaders need to make decisions and if he believes he needs to take an action on a certain reason, I don't think he could have realistically got up before the [press] gallery and said 'I am asking for this candidate to be disendorsed' and when you said to him 'why', he said 'ah da, da, da, da, da, I'm not sure'."

Come on, we need scandals! We need excitement! I don't want limp-wristed civil libertarians crying foul over tiny issues that really don't matter. Yawn.

Bouncers are stupid

2004-01-22T10:10:00.000+10:00

Also in The Australian is a claim by the thuggish crapbucket bouncer and his dumb moron associates that Hookes started the confrontation and that, apparently, he deserved to be king-hit. This part is good though:

Yesterday, The Australian sought comment from Micevic's employer, Peter Clare Agencies.

A man who answered the door of Peter Clare's home, but who refused to identify himself, said press reports of the incident had been wrong.

The man, who claimed he was not Peter Clare, initially refused to speak to The Australian, but then agreed so "(Micevic's) story can be told". He said Micevic was suicidal following "inaccurate media coverage".

Good.

UPDATE: The Australian pulled the plug on that story. There is another one here, but it doesn't carry the same vibe.

Howard Dean is a nutbag - Official!

2004-01-22T10:02:00.000+10:00

The Australian is on the money:

THE morning after acting like a man requiring urgent medical attention, Howard Dean yesterday diagnosed his post-caucus fit in Iowa as a case of needing to have "a little fun in this business".

I'm glad Dr. Howard Dean isn't sticking much to doctoring these days. It'd be like a brain surgeon cutting your head open with a pizza cutter, stealing your brain and making you stupid. Actually, any Dean follower probably is like that anyway.

And while Dr Dean might have found his primal scream therapeutic, Democrats were left wondering whether he was stable enough to take on George W. Bush in November.

That's something I've known since... well... forever. It's actually pretty cool that the mainstream media are picking up on Howie's nutbaggery.

"There were 3500 young people that came to Iowa to work for me, and they worked hard. We didn't get as many votes as I would have liked to ... I thought they deserved everything I could give them."

Dr Dean's fire and brimstone might have inspired his youth army but it raised questions about him.

"Like, he was, like, yelling and stuff! No politician has ever, like, done that shit, man! Like, he's so, like, y'know... daring and stuff! If only I was old enough to vote... (sob sob)."

Fair and balanced...?

2004-01-22T07:10:00.000+10:00

The Sydney Morning Herald has outdone itself again. Here is the most objective news story (not opinion column) ever. Here's the gist of it:

Andrew Wilkie, who quit as a government intelligence analyst because he could not stand the way Iraq intelligence was being "sexed up", was vouching for the truthfulness of Andrew Bolt, the right-wing Melbourne Herald-Sun columnist who claimed to have possession of "the only secret report that Wilkie ever wrote about Iraq".

...

Wilkie had "no doubt someone gave Bolt either a copy of the report or significant parts of it".

You might think a security-conscious government would be moving heaven and earth to find out how a journalist - even one who appears excessively friendly - got hold of a top secret intelligence document.

...

In Parliament, the Government continues to pooh-pooh the importance of the leak, on the basis that the recipient did not publish any classified contents.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer was hosing it down again yesterday, saying he saw nothing in the Bolt report that went beyond what was already publicly known.

It's most atypical of the control-freak, leak-sleuthing Howard Government.

...

You see, the article he wrote from the secret report was later used by the Government in a briefing of National Party Senator Sandy Macdonald, who used the information to attack Wilkie when he appeared before a parliamentary inquiry on Iraq.

It would have been illegal for the Government to have supplied Senator Macdonald with the report. But Bolt's report of the report is another matter.

You have to admire the neat circularity of it: top secret information is leaked to a government-friendly journo, who puts bits of it deemed damaging to Wilkie on the public record. Downer's office briefs Senator Macdonald using that information.

Then the excuse is that "only publicly available material was provided" to help Macdonald with his hatchet job.

I think I might have to get in touch with the superiors of the appropriately typoed "MIke Seccombe". He's more at home at Indymedia, especially if he can't even type his own name. It's funny how the Sydney Morning Herald would publish garbage like this and call it "national news", and yet they still have the hide to say this about themselves:

The Sydney Morning Herald is Australia’s most prestigious daily newspaper, reaching discerning and involved readers who trust its independence, authority and integrity.

Everyone should get in touch with the SMH and, well, give them hell.

(Via Random Prose)

UPDATE: I just noticed it was published on September 12, 2003 (the story itself should have hinted at that, and it did, but at 8am, I'm not the most observant person in the world). It's a little old to give feedback on, but my point about what this says about the Sydney Morning Herald remains.

State of the Union

2004-01-21T13:30:00.000+10:00

Stephen Green blogged the State of the Union as it happened. I'm not going to link to all 33 posts, so just scroll down and read.

I'll offer my take on it later, when I can be bothered to write one up.

UPDATE: Can't follow through with my offer. Busy. You people don't care anyway, right?

As requested...

2004-01-21T10:57:00.000+10:00

Yobbo's quest is going well, but there is still room for improvement.

Read again what Yobbo thinks of Qantas.

Produkt of pubic skooling!

2004-01-21T10:49:00.000+10:00

Following on from yesterday's post where I kicked Bob Brown for violating the age-old saying, "Tis better to be thought of as a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt", it is becoming more and more obvious that the idiot Left don't even know what they're arguing for anymore:

The Federal Government does not control what is taught in State schools, but it has pursued a policy of increasing Federal Government funding to private schools to encourage new low-fee independent schools to open and offer more options for parents.

Howard's government is promoting choice in schooling, which is certainly not a bad thing at all given that most State schools are run by idiots. But, as you'd expect, Labor and the other looney leftists are playing the man, not the ball, by attacking and blaming Howard for their own seemingly inadvertant screw-ups.

It would be hard to disagree that most, if not all, State school syllabuses are set by leftists. I was State schooled in NSW and it was blindingly obvious to me throughout my high school years that the NSW Board of Education was pushing a very biased left-wing agenda onto students. For example, most of my year 7 core history classes were spent with teachers badmouthing Europeans for "invading" Australia and setting up a colony there. Sure, it may not be how things are done these days, but that's how things were in the 18th Century. Why can't the powers that preside over this garbage leave their own personal feelings out of it and just deal with it?

It's no secret that more and more parents are sending their children to receive private education. I am of the opinion that this is the by-product of a generation of leftists setting their own agenda under the guise of "education", and there's just not enough choice left for Australian parents in the way that their child is educated.

Oh, and of course, it's all John Howard's fault.

...Shadow education minister Jenny Macklin said Labor would ensure adequate funding for State schools.

She said the Prime Minister's comments insulted the majority of Australians who sent their children to State schools.

Sure thing Jenny. Throwing money at State schools will certainly fix the problem! Idiot. Furthermore, why on earth would Howard's comments insult the parents of these children? His attack is aimed at the clowns in charge of public education, and they can't even recognise that.

UPDATE: A fantastic article by Kevin Donnelly appears in today's Australian. Here's an excerpt:

And why are so many parents turning their backs on public schools? One reason is that the teachers unions are their own worst enemies. Instead of advocating high standards, school accountability and a balanced curriculum, unions promote an ideologically driven, dumbed-down view of education.

Take the unions' response to the Iraq war. Not only did unions across Australia vehemently argue against our troops' involvement, but teachers were told that they, in the words of the NSW Teachers Federation, should "take action in your workplace and community" and "support students who take an anti-war stance".

This is hardly surprising. After all, since the late 1970s, teachers unions such as the AEU have been captured by the Left. Not only is the eduction union a member of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, but year after year it campaigns to elect state and federal Labor governments.

The whole thing must be read.

Idea...

2004-01-21T10:17:00.000+10:00

Get a group of RWDB's together to all write seperate chapters on lunatic lefties like Michael Moore, Noam Chompsky, Robert Fisk, Naomi Klein and all their associates. Make sure it's all well-researched writing with plenty of relevent citations so readers won't think it's all fluff, and it conclusively proves these people to be the complete twats that we know they are.

Get publishing deal. Sell. Get famous.

.... Finally, wake up and decide not to act on the idea because cartoons are on tv.

Hurricane Howie

2004-01-20T19:24:00.000+10:00

The world's angriest left-wing nutbag, Howard Dean, has entered the fray of World Championship Wrestling:

We're going to California and Texas and New York! And we're going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan! And then we're going to Washington, D.C.. To take back the White House! YEAAHHH!!

It's only funny after you hear it.

(via Tim Blair)

Senator Clown makes me frown

2004-01-20T14:33:00.000+10:00

I had a hard time figuring out who I was going to rail against in this post, because I have two articles with differing takes on John Howard's attack on public schools and teachers unions (yay!). I decided to go with the Sydney Morning Herald article, because it's always fun to give Bob Brown a good fisking (although he's a third party to the article.... whatever).

Mr Howard has attributed the shift of students from public to private schools to too much political correctness in the government school system.

He told The Age and The Australian newspapers the state system was also too values-neutral.

Australian Greens leader Senator Bob Brown today accused Mr Howard of taking a "small town snob attitude" to the issue

And then pretty much the rest of the article was Bob Brown mouthing off at Howard.

"He has become an anti-public school snob," Senator Brown said.

"When he says he doesn't like the antiseptic, which is the clean point of view, he means he wants the septic which is the despoiling, dirty, contaminated point of view.

Right. I spent my primary and secondary years in state schools, and I wholeheartedly agree with what John Howard said. The amount of Howard and America-bashing I sat through during years 11 and 12 pretty much said to me that the public school system is run by a pack of elitist dickwads who only have their own agenda to push. That is most teachers brainwashing the next generation of public-schooled kids to think that America's rise and success is a bad thing, that all white kids should be ashamed of themselves because of their ancestors, that the government should be relied upon for every single aspect of your life, and that it's always good to strike over pay when you clearly don't want to be there teaching anyway (and get paid more than private teachers). How is that giving kids a clean education, Bob?

"He has labelled state schools systems as politically correct because they teach tolerance and compassion.

"But this is the prime minister of the new political correctness, which says if you are going to be compassionate and tolerant and if you accept that racism is a bad thing there is something wrong with you ...

You're always so passionate about your free speech getting heard, but you still haven't realised that being P.C. is the opposite to free speech. It's okay for you to say that you hate George Bush, but if I say that I think Kofi Annan is a useless twat, I get branded a racist! Or if somebody jokingly refers to the Premier of Victoria looking like a Lebanese Used Car Salesman called Crazy Omar, he ends up on page 14 of the Herald-Sun under the headline "Racist slur against Bracks Family"! How does that work, Bob? You don't equalise all races by highlighting their differences - the key is indifference.

"It is septic, it is intolerant, it is a germ-ridden point of view which has no place in this country of a fair go."

Which is why he has been elected Prime Minister 3 times, and probably will be re-elected, and you are still out on the fringes looking like a looney.

Senator Brown said Mr Howard's attack on the state system was quite extraordinary given about 70 per cent of Australian children were educated in public schools, which often accepted students rejected by private schools.

My God! Really?? I never would have guessed, since they're public schools and all... Bob has one final mouth-off:

"But instead of that he is coming out with a warfare of words against our wonderful public schools system because it happens to treat tolerance, compassion and honesty as good old-fashioned Australian virtues.

"This prime minister is now very much in One Nation territory."

Ha! If it's so wonderful, why are so many parents sending their kids to private schools? Since you believe we're so much into One Nation territory, maybe it's time for you to pack up and fuck off, because we sure as hell won't miss you.

The David Hookes tragedy

2004-01-20T11:09:00.000+10:00

It's a sad day for Australian cricket after the death of David Hookes yesterday. Tim Blair has a fine tribute, as does Scott Morton (although that link will only last a day, according to Bernard Slattery).

As details of the circumstances of Hookes' death unfold, it's becoming more and more apparent that his death should be classified as an act of manslaughter:

Witnesses claimed that Hookes became involved in a dispute with the security staff shortly before midnight. Then, when he and his companions left the pub and walked some 65 yards towards their parked cars, they were allegedly followed by three bouncers, one of whom struck Hookes with a single punch.

That pretty much says to me that the oafish thug that hit Hookes is the aggressor, and should be dealt with accordingly. I have no idea why he was released on bail. This takes the cake, however:

Police are considering whether to lay further charges against the bouncer - Zdravco Micevic, 21 - who was bailed in Melbourne Magistrates Court yesterday after being charged with one count of assault.

Hurry up and arrest the fucker! I hope you burn in hell, Zdravco. I can only hope that the justice system won't fail.

UPDATE: Here is a very good account appearing in The Age. As Slatts writes: "When The Age forgets social and political issues and concentrates on news, it does it exceptionally well."

UPDATE II: Sam Ward tells it like it is much better than I could.

Technology fails again!

2004-01-19T14:00:00.000+10:00

I thought the necessity to buy newspapers in print only came about when I went on holidays (that is where I'm away from daily internet access). Not so. The Daily Telegraph site is broken, and is being diverted to news.com.au now. I'm annoyed with it because I'm trying to access Tim Blair's column about Mark Latham charging into a bright new past.

I guess I'll have to go and get the print version. Bastards.

Attack! Attack!

2004-01-19T11:41:00.000+10:00

Mark Latham attacks! Check out the comments to this post over at Vikki McNaughton's bloggerific blog.

Also over at Vikki's blog is a discussion about universities and how all us students are going to have to deal with left-wing scum (read comments).

And all this university talk brings me to the trouble that Tex is facing at the Australian National University. Tolerance and an open mind? Yeah, right!

(Everybody has been linking to Tex's rant with that line, so I thought I would too, just to fit in.)

Genius!

2004-01-19T11:05:00.000+10:00

The smrat peeple at the ABC are really showing there intilectualism now what with headlines liek this:

Israeli ambassador gets art attack please explain

The story itself is crap, too.

The Israeli ambassador to Sweden, Zvi Mazel, is being asked to explain why he attacked an art exhibit in a Stockholm Museum featuring a Palestinian suicide bomber.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has praised the ambassador and says the entire Israeli Government supports his actions.

Mr Manzel will have to explain to the Swedish Government why he threw a spotlight at the exhibition which features the photo of a Palestinian suicide bomber attached to a boat in a pool of blood red liquid.

I'm stumped. I have no idea why he attacked it. Nope. None at all.

Why driving in regional towns pisses me off more than the city

2004-01-19T10:54:00.000+10:00

Let's face it - if you spend too much time driving around a city, you'll eventually become so entrenched in your style that driving on narrow, trecherous, pot-holed country roads will bring you undone. Inversely, if you have spent too much time driving on narrow, trecherous, pot-holed country roads, you'll not last very long on any major 3-lane thoroughfare in a city. I feel that I am expert enough to comment on this, having learned to drive on crappy, regional roads (I don't want to say "country" because I was only 20 minutes drive from the beach), and then having been thrown onto city roads for a substantial amount of time too.

Now, I'm as impatient as any driver out there - don't get me wrong - but there are some things that just piss me off about regional drivers more than any city drivers can. Here are the top ten things that peeve me about driving in non-metro areas:

10) I'm used to speed limits through main streets being interpreted as "50 = 60"; not "50 = 35".

9) I wasn't aware that smokey, old VB Commodores still existed until I returned to a regional area.

8) You just feel bad about blasting some little old granny with the horn after she cuts in front of you via her own inability to see over the steering wheel, or even into her mirrors. She also follows Peeve 1 religiously.

7) People blocking one way, and occasionally both ways, of traffic whilst trying to score an on-street park on their 5th attempt.

6) P-platers that think you're tailgating them so they keep jumping on the brakes, despite the fact that you're at least a car-length behind them. Hi-beams and horn blasts work very well, especially at night.

5) Drivers who just aren't accustomed to having other cars around, so they panic when you get alongside them going through a roundabout. Or anywhere, for that matter.

4) Getting caught up behind L-platers. Plain and simple. I know they've got to learn somehow, but ... geez! You think they're bad in cities? Multiply that by about 25 and you've got a regional L-plater.

3) When you get into the next lane in order to pass the slowcoach ahead of you, they decide to merge in your lane at the same time as you. They see you getting up beside them, so they stop merging and sit with half their vehicle in either lane for a little while.

2) Elderly drivers who, realistically, have reached their use-by date in terms of driving ability. They end up being a more of a danger to other road users than land mines arbitrarily placed on the road.

And now, the thing that pisses me off most about driving in a regional area:

1) The humiliation I face when I'm forced to admit to actually having been there.

UPDATE: Mr. Random Prose has trouble with traffic too.

Further blog-related updatery

2004-01-18T07:18:00.000+10:00

This whole week has seen me introduced to many blogs, many of them containing vast amounts of quality. Yet another addition to the sidebar and my bookmarks folder is the Gnu Hunter. If you haven't already been there to say hi, then do it now. If you have, then just go there again, and tell them that Marty sent you. Because he did.... Yeah.

While I'm here, I'd also like to point out my joy at the return of the Evil Pundit! I thought I was starting to go a bit sissy, then the evil kicked back in. I'm so grateful!

UPDATE: In a fit of idiocy, I forgot to also include Mike Jericho. Sorry about that, Mike!

Joy has raptured my life!

2004-01-16T20:58:00.000+10:00

In a rather unfortunate scenario, I'm stuck at home on a Friday night. This has a large amount to do with no drinking money, and no people around who are worth using any drinking money I would hypothetically have anyway. Instead, I've done this week's third sidebar update.

All the blogs in this update are quality and I urge you patronise them, if you haven't already:

After Grog Blog
Alan Anderson
Bastards Inc.
Bitchin' Monaro
Kev Gillett
Patrick Hawke

Go!

DissentCrusher™

2004-01-16T11:48:00.000+10:00

On the SMH letters page today, there is a surprising amount of logic flowing:

Mitchell Beston (Letters, January 15) says Australia is a terrorist target because of our "free lifestyle". I thought it was because we invaded other countries and reflexively supported the most dangerous US administration in generations. However, I suspect that either way, a science fiction-based missile defence system won't do a damned thing to protect Australians.

John Sparkman, Curtin (ACT), January 15.

John,

Even a complete imbecile like you should know that terrorism against the West isn't a new thing. We were a terrorist target before we allied ourselves with "the most dangerous US administration in generations". How long have we had "Jihad" against us? I suggest you find out. Secondly, I don't know how right you are with the claim that the Bush Administration is the most dangerous in decades, because no matter how much you whinging lefties ask for it, we don't throw you away in concentration camps and/or torture you.

Now, onto the missile defence system. What are the co-ordinates for your house again?

Next stupid letter:

So George Bush wants to send people to the moon and Mars. Must be oil there.

Rob Parkhouse, Kellyville, January 15.

Rob,

So if Howard Dean or whatever fuckwitted (that's un-PC for "mentally challenged") Democrat wants to do it, it's all about progressing the human race into the next age, I guess? I reckon Bush should shoot you off to the moon. We wouldn't have to put up with your incessant dribble then. That's doing everyone a favour!

Finally, I have a question for you, Rob. Can you tell me how you manage to remain conscious after it's obvious that your brain expired many years ago?

Answering these letters is fun. I wonder if the SMH will give me a job?

Smear campaigns, political thuggery, etc. etc.

2004-01-16T11:16:00.000+10:00

Todd McKenzie has more commentary on the Queensland election. I'm going to give it a rest for a little while now. Todd explains why:

Marty K and I seem to be in the business of compiling what everybody else is saying without actually saying anything ourselves. Its an old trick and it fills up Blogs on an otherwise very dull rainy day.

...

All in all, unless this bloody election gets interesting soon, I think I am going to just drop the whole thing. You can only beat a dead horse so many times before it starts to smell.

Curses! My plans are foiled! I just hope a lot of Queenslanders become aware of just how much of a fucktard Peter Beattie is.

UPDATE: I would also like to point out that Todd has joined the elite group of "Bloggers on Marty's Sidebar". Beers all round!

BigPong will get panged!

2004-01-16T11:12:00.000+10:00

Telstra had yet another opportunity to be very, very awesome. But they have, predictably, buggered it up:

Telstra stepped into the online music business yesterday, launching Australia's first large-scale legal download site.

BigPond Music is the second player in what is expected to become an area of hot competition for the nearly $1 billion-a-year recorded music market.

...

BigPond customers will have automatic access to the music site, which offers more than 250,000 music tracks. They will pay $1.49 per track for most songs, and will be charged through their normal monthly bill. Other customers will be charged $1.89 per track, paying up-front by credit card.

That is crap. I don't mind paying $1.50 per song (so long as it's a good quality rip), but the WMA format, in my opinion, completely sucks. It's obviously some alliance thing with Microsoft that Telstra have got going here, but it's going to hurt them financially. Especially once all the competition starts up:

The Telstra site will soon face fierce competition. Apple's iTunes Music Store, now only accessible to US users, is expected to be available in Australia in the next few months. Ninemsn, jointly owned by Microsoft and the Packer organisation, is due to launch its music site within weeks.

My prediction: iTunes store will be awesome. As will be my iPod when I finally get around to getting it. Hopefully the Apple store will be cheaper, but also allow initial payments so customers can buy 'credit' and use it up that way, using BPAY or something.

Four score and seven years ago...

2004-01-15T12:46:00.000+10:00

Paul Bickford has taken this test, as has Murph and Alan Anderson. It's obviously a Gravett blog thing, but that didn't stop me from taking it!

What Famous Leader Are You?

I seem to be doing a lot of dumb quizzes lately... But it's mildly amusing.

Another crazy theory debunked

2004-01-15T11:03:00.000+10:00

John Hawkins received an email from a 15-year old high school student asking how to combat idiotic moonbats that are common throughout high schools not only in America but obviously here in Australia, too.

The email reads:

...So by now we're insulting each other's parties, pointing out the evils of each other, until those dreaded words escape my enemy's lips: "Well...Bush is some communist Nazi bent on conquering the world for his own evil schemes!"

Remember how I mentioned the quotes that leave me paralyzed in silence?

Well, this is one of them.

That would leave me in silence too. I just have a problem with the term "Communist Nazi" when referring to Bush. Although the term itself isn't too far from the truth (I believe Hitler was a socialist); Bush is pretty much the opposite of a communist, and probably isn't a Nazi.

Simple.

InstaFamished

2004-01-15T10:48:00.000+10:00

It's assumed that you've all been to InstaPundit at some stage of your life, right?

Glenn Reynolds is taking the blogosphere's most popular blog in a new direction. Say hello to the InstaChef!

In today's edition, Glenn whips up a lovely dish that resembles something between roasted chicken and coq au vin.

I'm coming round for dinner!

More election business

2004-01-15T07:09:00.000+10:00

I just have a couple of things to write about regarding the upcoming Queensland state elections. Expect more commentary at a later date.

* Remember how Beattie has vowed not to personally attack his rival? I wonder if it has anything to do with what he could be slammed with in return? Heh, I think the Coalition should rip his throat out.

* More bad news for Beattie after yesterday:

• Out of the blue, former Labor stalwart and senior ALP office holder Kevin Rose announced he was entering the fray for the seat of Townsville as an independent. The 27-year Labor veteran said he had let his membership lapse and would run as an independent because he believed the ALP no longer represented ordinary Australians or the grassroots membership.

• Southern media outlets continued to follow up on the Townsville Bulletin's story last weekend reporting Greens candidate for the seat of Townsville Theresa Millard's allegations that Labor had made an attempt to bribe her into running a soft campaign against the ALP's sitting member, Emergency Services Minister Mike Reynolds. Mr Reynolds vigorously denied the charges, accusing Ms Millard of harbouring personal malice towards him and labelling her accusation "smear, innuendo and arrant nonsense."

• Both Ms Millard and Mr Reynolds referred the matter to the Crime and Misconduct Commission, which is sending a senior investigator to Townsville today to probe the allegations.

What Paul said is true:

Everyone knew Joh and his hideous covey were so bent they had to screw their pants on, but this current government makes them look like choirboys; not only are they corrupt, they are hopelessly inept and in some cases, alcoholic nutcases.

* Finally, Todd McKenzie does a round-trip of the Queensland blogosphere to see what everyone else is saying about the election. Best quote ever:

Niall is making usual shithouse crap comments but I'll be buggered if I link to that shit stain. If you really want to listen to the rantings of a left wing lunatic, then look up the dickhead yourself.

I'll follow his lead and not link to Niall either. He makes up part of my competition for best Queensland blog. You have voted, right?

And the stadium erupts!

2004-01-14T14:45:00.000+10:00

Wow, this quiz really is accurate:

You're Brazil!

You're athletic, charming, and probably a good dancer. You don't really mind chopping down the rain forest, and you probably consider homeless people expendable in certain circumstances. Of course, your personality is so diverse that it's hard to track down exactly what you're like. You definitely like Pele, the World Cup, and shouting "gooooal" at the top of your lungs.

Take the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

(Pinched from Vikki, who nicked it from Yobbo)

New sidebar addition

2004-01-14T11:43:00.000+10:00

I finally got around to adding Mangled Thoughts to the sidebar. For some quality reading, go there.

Queensland Election roundup

2004-01-14T11:20:00.000+10:00

It's election time in Queensland. I can't say that I think very much of Peter Beattie, although Labor must get kicked out of 22 seats in this election in order for Lawrence Springborg, the Queensland National Party (and Coalition) leader to take office. There's no question that it's a long shot for the Coalition to scrape through. One thing I'm not particularly fussed on, to begin with, is Beattie's campaign technique:

"We will absolutely be outspent by the Labor Party on advertising," Liberal state president Michael Caltabiano said yesterday, while refusing to reveal his own budget.

"They will probably spend $3 million to $4 million on advertising and we won't be near that amount so we have to ensure our messages are crisp and clear."

Your tax dollars at work, Queenslanders.

I usually attribute promise-breaking to any political party during election time to gain votes, but some of the broken promises that made Lawrence Springborg's list are blindingly obvious to me in day-to-day life:

Jobs: Beattie Labor promised to achieve a 5% unemployment rate by 26th June 2003. In fact in the first half of 2003 over one quarter of Queensland's electorates actually experienced an increase in the unemployment levels. In fact Queensland has the highest level of unemployment in mainland Australia and there are actually more Queenslanders looking for work today than there were when Labor came to office.

Taxes: Beattie Labor promised their election commitments were fully funded and that there would be no new taxes and charges. The fact is Labor actually costs Queensland taxpayers over $1 billion extra in taxes, fees and fines now then when they first came to Government. Labor failed to fund the ambulance service resulting in a new Ambulance Tax and failed to properly cost the Lang Park stadium resulting in a new poker machine tax to raise revenue.

Crime: Beattie Labor promised to reduce crime and make our prisons safer - but crime rates and prison assaults have increased by between 15% and 30% under Labor. In fact every day in Queensland there is an average of 32 serious assaults.

Our Children: Beattie Labor promised to make Queensland the 'Smart State' - but it has cut 1100 staff from our TAFE colleges and there are 50,000 students trying to learn in 2,500 overcrowded classrooms. Labor's failure to ensure appropriate behaviour in our classes has also resulted in 1300 teachers being assaulted in Queensland by students over the last 5 years. Beattie Labor also promised to send pedophiles to jail. But one in every three convicted pedophiles escapes a jail sentence all together.

The part that I bolded really should have done Beattie so much more more political damage than it did, given last May's Queensland Labor bombshell. There was much political gain to be made by the Queensland Coalition when the ALP was heavily persecuting Peter Hollingworth for pedophilia, while downplaying their own covering up of sex abuse with Queensland ALP deputy Bill D'arcy. Not much seemed to come out of a potentially disastrous situation for Labor. Here is an email that Bernard Slattery received and was put up on Gareth Parker's site:

Bernard, I am a frustrated man. From 1970 to 1986 I was a member of the A.L.P. During this time I became a foot soldier for many political aspirants. Bill D'Arcy was one of those whom I supported during this time, we had a good working relationship because of our shared political views and the fact that I used to service his Jaguar.

During this time it was common knowledge to all those I knew in the Labor Party that D'Arcy had sex with students at a school in Beaudesert when he was a student teacher.

The sexual exploits of Baptist lay preacher and state school headmaster Keith Wright were widely discussed.

On a day in the early eighties I had serviced D'Arcy's Jaguar and returned it to parliament house. D'Arcy was deputy leader at the time and Wright was the Opposition Leader.

I was having a beer with D'Arcy in his parliamentary office when Tom Burns (former leader of the opposition) stuck his head in the door and asked if Darcy had seen "Wrightie" D'Arcy replied "Wrighties in his element he has a group of High School Girls from his electorate showing them around parliament house". Wink Wink.

Tom Burns nodded knowing full well what D'Arcy had meant. Peter Beattie was an executive of the A.L.P. at this time (state secretary I think) and if he had not heard of or even discussed the exploits of both men he was the only one in the state A.L.P. who had not.

Strange that Beattie can be so critical of the Prime Minister and the Governor General when he had knowledge of the paedophile activities of two of its parliamentary members.
Regards xxxxxx

This actually did make the news, but the story has been archived and I can't be arsed to pay to see it. Tim Blair quotes:

Pedophile allegations rocked ALP governments in Queensland and NSW yesterday, prompting accusations by Peter Beattie of a smear campaign by the Howard Government as payback for Labor's stand against Peter Hollingworth.

The Queensland Premier was forced to defend claims that in 1997 he protected former state MP Bill D'Arcy - a convicted pedophile - when he knew he was a child abuser.

I'm wondering if this will come back to bite Beattie in this election. If it does, expect a similar reaction to his one back in May, where it was a "smear campaign" or "political thuggery".

A result of extra taxes brought on during the Beattie regime has pushed Queensland into a surplus, which will probably pay for his campaign. The headline is the only part I need to quote to prove it:

Taxes boost Budget's bottom line

Thanks, Pete. Nice to know that you're sucking away more of people's money, doing nothing with it, announcing a surplus and now I anticipate you'll waste it:

The major economic problem facing the state is an external one, over which it has no control. The spectacular rise in the value of the Australian dollar, particularly when measured against the US dollar - a rise of about one-third in 12 months - is drastically affecting the incomes of Queensland's principal export industries. It is hurting employment in the primary industries and has cut mining royalties paid to the state by $60 million this financial year. The danger is that the US dollar could continue to depreciate if the Bush administration continues to ignore warnings from the International Monetary Fund about the increasing size of the US Budget deficit.

I know that primary exporters are a big part of Queensland, but c'mon Pete, give us a tax cut, or at least invest in things that would move the state forward.

UPDATE: I must confess that, having only spent a year in Queensland so far, I'm not too familiar with the effectiveness of the opposition. From reading around a bit more, the general consensus is that the opposition aren't particularly strong themselves:

Everyone knew Joh and his hideous covey were so bent they had to screw their pants on, but this current government makes them look like choirboys; not only are they corrupt, they are hopelessly inept and in some cases, alcoholic nutcases.

It is a sign that they are in real trouble (sad in itself, when you look at the opposition) that they are looking to do dodgy deals with yahoos like the Greens in what should be ultra-safe seats.

What can you do? I guess the only thing left for me to do is turn this into a California-style race where I nominate myself for premier!

Just for larfs

2004-01-14T10:03:00.000+10:00

This is pretty... um... funny...

What do people really think about you?
Name
Age
favorite song
Parents think	You work too hard
Strangers think	You have bigger boobs than Pam
Friends think	You need a fuck buddy

Created with quill18's MemeGen!

It has to be said...

2004-01-14T09:48:00.000+10:00

To set the scene, imagine this being spoken my Jerry Seinfeld:

"What is the deal with morning talkback radio?"

I don't listen to it by choice (that's why I wear headphones whilst doing computer work), but over the last couple of days I've been consumed by a bit of non-computer work around the office, or at least work that doesn't involve my computer. Since I ~~keep forgetting~~ can't be bothered to bring my MP3 player to work, I can't take my music around with me to the other computers. As a result of this terribly unfortunate scenario, I end up being forced to listen to morning talkback radio.

I realise it's not anything new to say that a great deal of these programs consist of old people calling in, telling the announcer that he's tremendous and then proceeding to go on about how corrupted the youth of the nation is. Mind you, I think that too, but my definition of "corrupted" is very different to theirs. They call in complaining about the "young hoons" on the roads. It seems that most of the time this is all they complain about. They never seem to talk about much else other than why younger Australian drivers (that is, drivers below age 50) are so reckless and careless!

In the end, however, I'd like to reverse the argument by asserting that, in fact, it is the elderly drivers that are more of a menace on our roads. Comedian Tony Martin said it best circa-1995:

Who amongst us at some point hasn’t been able to make any progress up a three-lane street because all three lanes are occupied by an indecisive Cressida, lurching from one lane to the next because the designated driver, like his three equally grey-haired companions, is so busy going the point at every imperfect nature strip and unretrieved wheelie-bin, that selecting one lane and sticking with it is simply too far down the list of priorities?

I wonder if anyone has had occasions, like myself, to find themselves hemmed in by a panzer-formation of Volvo’s doing a frustrating 30km/h; the team leader only able to see over the steering-wheel with the help of three inflatable back-support cushions; his mauve-haired co-pilot paying out on approaching drivers with the audacity to come within single figures of the speed limit; and both of them unaware that the symphony of car-horns they’re attracting is a vain attempt by fellow motorists to draw their attention to the picnic basket and thermos still balanced precariously on the roof of their car!

I don't really need to add to that, do I?

Welcome to the plugosphere

2004-01-13T20:42:00.000+10:00

I've just been reading over Bald Monkey and I have come to the conclusion that if they updated more often, they would surpass The Chaser as the funniest Australian-based satire site.

A dead giveaway to this revelation is that, unlike The Chaser, the stories at Bald Monkey are funny.

Following orders

2004-01-13T16:26:00.000+10:00

The Yobbo wants to make the front page of a Google search for "Qantas" with his anti-Qantas post. In the vain hope that he'll repay me for my efforts, I'll help his cause.

Go Qantas, go!

Guide 2 NetSpeak™ LOL!

2004-01-13T13:22:00.000+10:00

After yesterday's tips for being a teenager, I've had a couple of enquiries about net shorthand. So, as a semi-follow-up, I'll offer you this handy-dandy guide to NetSpeak™.

The Basics:

LOL = Laugh out loud
LMAO = Laughing my ass off
ROFL = Rolling on the floor laughing
u = You
ur = Your / You're
urs = Yours
wat = What

This stuff is pretty basic, yeah? Lets move on...

NetSpeak™ Stage 2:

In stage 2, you'll learn how to abbreviate certain words in the sentence to make the conversation go quicker (which is debatable due to the time saved typing it is used up when the other person tries to decipher it). Here are a couple of examples of common abbreviated sentences:

So u goin to the party on the weekend?

Wat r u doin 2morrow?

I went 2 the beach today... there were heaps of hotties! LOL!

It's not too hard to decipher yet, is it? Moving along...

NetSpeak™ Stage 3:

Stage 3 NetSpeak™ involves further abbreviation along with extra additions at the end of words. This stage of NetSpeak™ also entails the writer replacing most instances of "s" with "z", along with typos. Examples:

U goin 2 da party on da wkend?

Wat u doin 2moro?

Went 2 da beach 2day... heapz of hottiez! LOLZ!!1

That's about the severity that most teens work their way into. Statistically speaking, it is mainly 13-15 year old girls that fit this kind of category. I'd know; I've hijacked my younger brother's instant message conversations that many times!

NetSpeak™ Stage 4 and Beyond:

By now you should be getting an idea of where this is headed. I'm only going to offer one example, but some abbreviations can be merged together (such as "ROFLMAO"). First person to correctly decipher this gets a gold star:

Waz @ da beach 2day n heapza hottiz waz dere n u shoodve been dere 2 coz it waz so fun! den dere waz dis guy hoo waz lyk hey baby! ROFLMAOZOLOLZORZLOOL!!11!1~1!!11

Um, yeah. I didn't actually write that either...

So there you have it; the handy-dandy quick guide to NetSpeak™ for those who, until reading this post, were left in the dark.

Sorry I'm late...

2004-01-13T11:50:00.000+10:00

Whoops! I'm two days late to acknowledge my first blogging anniversary! Probably a good thing though, because I'm pretty sure I don't want to alert too much attention to my old posts. This blog has come from a "hey, having a journal thingy is pretty cool I guess" to what it is now - a "link to me more, you bastards!" affair.

I've actually increased my literacy tenfold in the last year of operation, and also other skills required for quality (?!) blogging.

So a big thank you to all out there who read, comment, have linked, have e-mailed, have done nothing other than inspire me to blog more and especially for those of you who have left comments referring to me as a "dman fool" and "wanker".

Oh, and a big thank-you in advance to the two or three of you out there who may actually consider voting for me in the Australian Blog Awards.

WMD! We have WMD!

2004-01-13T11:25:00.000+10:00

This news is actually a couple of days old, but you could be forgiven for not hearing about it yet. From Bernard Slattery:

Yet as NewsMax points out, the leading US Bush-hating media are ignoring or downplaying the discovery -- a pretty good indication there's substance in the report.

Fox News' Greg Palkot said a Danish official told him: "They've run four different tests on that liquid inside those shells. And all those tests do indicate that there is blister gas – that's a deadly chemical weapon - inside of those shells."

The argument that the anti-war mob will take up will come from this:

These would be the first real chemical weapons discovered in Iraq since the U.S. invasion.

But Army Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt also cautions the 36 mortar shells were some ten to 20 years old. He notes the 120-millimeter mortars were found near the Iraq-Iran border.

Therefore, Kimmitt says they were probably left over from the Iran-Iraq war, which ended in 1988.

So what? I thought Saddam completely disarmed? He should have no weapons like this. It's like claiming you've given up cigarettes, then a half-used packet is found in your bedside drawer. Sure, it's not like a warehouse in the middle of nowhere was opened up and found to have 15 brand-spanking new nukes, a plethora of nerve agents and Osama Bin Laden drawing up blueprints to kill all Jooooos, but I think it's a good start at least.

Voting for Marty: A Guide to Doing It

2004-01-13T10:15:00.000+10:00

Right, in order to get you to vote for me in the 2004 Australian Blog Awards, I suppose I'll have to make it easy for you to do so. It's a rather manual process, which is pretty much ruling out me rigging the votes. Damn. Oh well, I hope at least one of you out there can find it in the kindness of your heart to vote for me as Best Queensland Blog. The voting system is an optional preferential voting system, and the ballot paper has more information on it. Here's how to go about voting for me:

1) E-mail Keks requesting a ballot paper. Keks assures that one will be e-mailed to you ASAP.

2) Fill out the ballot paper, making sure you've put a big number 1 next to me in the Best Queensland Blog part, then e-mail it back to Keks immediately.

3) I go on a murderous rampage because not enough people voted for me, yet a surprising amount of people vote for Pat Buchanan. He gets Best Queensland Blog. I demand a recount.

Tradin' up yo' mama!

2004-01-13T09:49:00.000+10:00

I really like free stuff, which is probably one very flimsy pretext for me to talk about free trade. There is a bit of talk now and then about Australia's negotiations with the United States about a free-trade agreement. Personally, I think both sides should hurry up and just sign the damn thing, but apparently some people are standing in the way of the holy FTA.

The Australian economy is doing very well at the moment, and our dollar is trading very strongly. Of course, if anybody is asked, this is all bad news because Australian exporters are suffering. I don't have a problem with this, however, due to us now facing the need to either:

1) Destroy our economy so a few wheat-farmers can compete with Argentina; or
2) Finally ditch a lot of our primary industry to persue innovation and more wealth for Australia.

So it's a question of going backwards or forwards. My inclination is to go forwards, so it's my suggestion that Australia should be aiming to innovate and finally adhere to the economic theory of comparitive advantage. That is, Australia should concentrate on what it's good at, and I can tell you right now, that ain't agriculture.

Anyway, I digress. Have you noticed that most of the complaints about the Australia-U.S. free-trade agreements are coming from the largely taxpayer-funded Australian film industry? That's a dumb question - of course you have. Hey, if they started making television shows and movies worth watching, maybe they would survive against the huge amount of competition from the United States. All in all, however, I don't care if I don't hear as many Australian accents on television. It means I have to put up with less suckery.

Heh. Indeed.

2004-01-13T06:29:00.000+10:00

Frank J. has posted one of the funniest In My [Possible Future] World stories in a long, long time. Therefore, you must go and read. My favourite part:

The Bike Path War did not last long. When the U.S. sent nukes at Israel and the Palestinians, it also preemptively attacked Europe and Asia. All nuclear countries quickly responded. France nuked itself to try and preempt any attacks against them. North Korea launched its entire arsenal, some having enough range to even reach outside of its own borders. Other countries were more accurate, and now the entire world lies in ruins. The last image I saw before television went out was of Howard Dean, an insane smile on his face as he peddled over the smoldering ruins of the former world. Damn his eyes!

Obviously you'll have to read it all to know how it got to that stage, but I had quite a laugh reading it. Go!

Don't make me resort to blackmail...

2004-01-13T06:11:00.000+10:00

I've been nominated for best Queensland blog in the 2004 Australian Blog Awards. I probably should have been campaigning harder for this, but I didn't realise it's been voting time for nearly 2 days. Voting ends on January 25th, so hop to it!

Oh, and don't vote for anyone other than me. That's just lame.

On a personal note...

2004-01-12T21:26:00.000+10:00

I only did a one-year filler course at university this year, hence the need to apply for second-year entry for this year's studies. The Queensland tertiary application results are supposed to be released tomorrow. Er, but I got my application results tonight, for some reason.

My new uni.

Marty's tips for being a teenager

2004-01-12T15:08:00.000+10:00

At 19 years of age, I'm nearly old enough to say "I'm not a teenager". As a result of my age and wisdom, I've compiled some tips for those young whipper-snappers out there aspiring to be a good teenager who won't let the team down.

1) Words like "knob", "stick" and "pole" are funny until you hit the age of 16, when they become immature and, like, you know, stuff.

2) When anybody else gets a boyfriend/girlfriend, it's stupid and it's just further proof that they are a moron. When you get one, it's the best thing in the world.

3) You are completely homophobic until age 16. Then you are only except when it's deemed funny, like when the bench is full at lunch time, so you sit on another guy's lap to get him to move.

4) You don't know, or care to know, anything about the government, but you do know that they, like, totally suck man.

5) It's so wrong for lying, deceitful people like Bill Gates to have so much money because of their successes in business. Millionaires who legitimately earned it through honesty and integrity like Michael Moore are perfectly acceptable, however.

6) The "system" is fucked. You have no idea as to which "system" you're talking about, but it sure is fucked.

7) Being the same as everyone else sucks. Grow your hair long, pierce your tongue and listen to death metal just to be different. Oh, learning guitar and writing angsty "poetry" can also help to be different.

8) You're not, like, incoherent. Man, everyone, like, has ideas and stuff, like, and you know, like, umm... Yeah, what was I saying? Oh yeah, that's right, umm, yeah, like, it's just that English is too, like, hard to learn properly and, like, yeah, shit like that.

9) Wear a Che Guevara shirt despite not being able to string a complete sentence together about him either.

10) Once you're on your P's, make sure your car is a pre-1990 model; deck it out with a "fully sick" sound system and compliment that with tinted windows and ridiculously huge spoiler kits. Onlookers can then observe your novelty-sized rear spoiler and see the back of your car burrow into the ground due to all that downforce as you take off from the lights.

11) Like, you should be able to get, like, welfare payments from studying Arts at university. Dream about spending your life making arty films about "the human condition", writing anti-capitalist books (and selling them), and writing industrial-speed-metal music with anti-corporate rhetoric. Expect to sell heaps because "everyone will wanna buy it, man! It's so awesome!"

12) Natasha Stott-Despoja is a political genious (sic).

13) Hate America for no reason other than "man, all the money there is, like, controlled by 5 corporations! They should at least give more aid to the third world or something, y'know." Don't admit that you know nothing about macroeconomics.

14) All drugs should be legalised, like, because ~~they'd be easier to get~~ ... umm, the level of drug-related crime would, like, go down. Kind of like what would happen if we lowered the legal age for, like, alcohol. Because, like, younger kids would be, like, more responsible with it if they could get it from, like, 15 years of age and stuff.

15) When actually talking, replace most full-stops with question marks? You know, like most teenagers do? Also learn 2 type in net shorthand LOLZORZ!!!111

That's just a snippet. A full-colour guide will become available soon for aspiring teens in A4 and paperback size for convinience. Cash to be paid up-front. More about sex will be covered in the full version too, of course.

Cuba: Haven for civil libertarians...?

2004-01-12T10:31:00.000+10:00

Cuba, a free socialist paradise for many teenagers, once again shows us the way forward:

A new law has been passed in Cuba which will make access to the internet more difficult for Cubans.
Only those authorised to use the internet from home like civil servants, party officials and doctors will be able to do so on a regular phone line.

The bill says the state telephone company Etecsa will use technical means to detect and impede access.

Correspondents say the law will affect thousands of Cubans who access the worldwide web from their homes.

Maybe we should send all angry teenagers and Castrophiles to Cuba so we'll never have to hear from them again. Sounds good to me!

(via Tim Blair)

Today's big news

2004-01-12T10:07:00.000+10:00

The Bush administration started making detailed plans for the invasion of Iraq within days of coming to office, with the President himself anxious to find a pretext to overthrow Saddam Hussein, a high-ranking former cabinet member said yesterday.

So?

Move along, there's nothing to see here

2004-01-12T09:48:00.000+10:00

It was mentioned to me that I cannot possibly put the best face on anything so long as my picture is displayed at the top of my blog. Therefore I've removed it, and now my server is loving the fact that every time somebody loads the page it sends about 7KB less than it otherwise would.

This has nothing to do with death threats.

Miscellaneous Debris

2004-01-12T09:40:00.000+10:00

Here's a few things that I've been meaning to write about for a while, but haven't yet.

* I was watching Fox News earlier this month and they had a roundup of Donald Rumsfeld's greatest -- or most curious -- moments of 2003. Since I don't live in America, I haven't seen very many of his press conferences, but I now can appreciate Rummy more next time he appears in Frank J.'s "In My World" stories.

"RARR!"

* Has anyone seen that MBF ad that is all happy and cheery, with this bubbly song telling the viewer to "accentuate the positive"? The thing about it is that you wouldn't know what is being advertised if the MBF logo didn't briefly flash up on screen at the end of the commercial. They may as well have just had a bar of text quickly scroll across the bottom of the screen that said "by the way, we're a private health care company." I mentioned this to my sister, who was sitting next to me at the time, and she responded with "... GET THE FUCK OUT!" I guess I ruined the ad for her.

* In a related matter, have you noticed how ads for firms like MBF, along with all the major banks et. al. are happy, cheerful and generally feel-good? I've got no problems with that, I just find it interesting how ads for World Vision, the Christian Childrens Fund or any Labor Party campaign sit in contrast. See, banks put out those ads and basically make you happy to hand over your money to them. Then you and all those obscenely sexy tellers can go out and do the Can-Can on the beach at some fantastic tropical resort. That sounds fun! The contrast in the other kind of ads for charity organisations or the Labor Party is that they make you feel greedy for having the audacity to have a $20 note in your wallet when there is so much wrong with the world. That $20 could feed a family of travelling Gypsies for a month, you know! These ads don't work as well though, mainly because you're probably going to come to the conclusion of "Bah! I can get a half-decent cigar with that money!" I think these other organisations should change the tone of their ads to be happier. Just so long as they don't feature Mark Latham with an unbuttoned floral print shirt at the head of a conga line with other skimpily-dressed members of the Labor Party. That's a sure-fire way to halve your voter numbers... But then again, half of zero is still zero.

* Best slogan ever:

North Coast Auto Wreckers - "We wreck everything!"

* A lot of anti-everything morality-nazis like the crowd that hang out at the Adbusters forums aren't big fans of consumerism. They assert that fast food companies like McDonalds and Burger King aren't offering us healthy meals (no shit, Sherlock), and they're corrupting the youth of the world with their corporate propaganda, creating an overly obese society. These guys also are huge fans of Michael Moore and his preachings. Yet we never hear Michael Moore dissing consumption of fast food. I know the reason why he doesn't is obvious, but a big hero (no pun intended) of many anti-consumption leftists is hit hard by irony a lot of the time, don't you think?

Intilectualy stimulating thoghts from teh Democratic Underground

2004-01-11T19:19:00.000+10:00

Over at the ~~Democratic Underground~~ looney bin, they are throwing around conspiracy theories that Bush was behind 9/11. I'm sure we all know how absurd that is, but not all of the morons that frequent those forums are that idiotic. Well, they are, but... you know. Anyway, here is a guy who thinks 9/11 happened because Bush is an idiot and didn't protect America:

1. Why did Bush bunny-hop around the country like a scared rabbit that day? He could have stepped confidently up to the microphone with a prepared speech and looked like a hero -- if he knew beforehand.

Thank you, Captain Obvious. Would you like a gold star?

2. Why did Bush sit in that classroom for 5+ minutes after being told of the second plane hitting the WTC towers? The second plane hits, he is told, and he just sits there. Once again, if he knew in advance, he sure could have made a better showing.

Yeah. Only an idiot like Bush would have just sat there not knowing how to react. Gee, the intellect of this guy sure is mindboggling. Yet, the "BUSH KNEW!" crowd still can't see this.

3. Why did Rove try to tell people there was a credible threat to Air Force 1? That ended up being a lie to explain Bush's bunny-hop.

BUSH LIED! Well, his administration did. At that stage, I don't think anybody knew what was going to happen next. Thankfully nothing did, but after those three massive attacks, I think I'd throw a dummy out so I could get elsewhere quietly too. But that's not good enough for these howler-monkeys, obviously.

4. Why was Rumsfeld in the Pentagon when it was hit?

Because Bush was secretly trying to kill him? Hey, such a theory isn't that far-fetched when you look at other stuff from the Democratic Underground.

I am a LIHBBIIIer. (Let it happen because Bush is an idiot.)

Wait... what? Let It Happen Because Bush Is In Idiot? Uhh, unless you're going on the principle that "it takes one to know one", you should probably shut up right about now. But he doesn't, of course. Now I have more dissent to crush:

It happened because Bush signalled a tectonic shift in petro-politics, dumped the Palestinians, and isolated the United States in the world -- all at the same time. In short, Bush increased our risk by pushing a whole bunch of buttons intended only for use by grown-ups. He also reduced our security by ignoring Al Qaeda. The Bush presidency (technically he is president) is both a major impetus behind increasing U.S. risk and reducing U.S. disaster preparation.

Right, so if Bush did anything to prevent 9/11, you wouldn't complain about any extra security measures in airports? The increase of security that took place after September 11 would have seemed totally alien to you back then, so it wouldn't have been able to have been implimented. Look what happened. Now a lot of people accept it. How many terrorist attacks have there been on U.S. soil since then? None? Interesting...

As for what provoked the terrorist attacks; I'm pretty sure that terrorists would want to attack America whether Bush was in or not. We in the West are alcohol-swilling, freedom-loving infidels (one of the Bali bombers said something along those lines). It's not who is in power at any one time, it's our way of life that makes us targets. Terrorism and Jihad isn't a new thing and I'm actually thankful we've got people like Bush, Blair and Howard out there who are finally doing something about it.

Now, to lighten up this post a bit more, here's proof that the Democratic Underground supergenius really is a moron:

LIHBBIII baby. That's where it's at.

Living In Hate Because Bush Is In Iffice. Er, close enough. I guess.

Australia ousted

2004-01-09T12:32:00.000+10:00

Remember all the crap circulating about 6 months ago that Australia was set to become America's 51st state? I seriously doubt it'll happen; especially now that crackpot lefties at the Democratic Underground think Iraq will take our place. It's still all about the ooooiiiilllllll!

It really seems that the best way to make news these days is to voice your dissent. Yet SMH letter-writers still think their dissent is being squashed:

Besides the plight of those behind the wire, our cherished freedom of speech and democracy are disappearing.

Grahame Wilson, Lane Cove, January 7.

There is a lot of dissent that needs crushing in today's SMH letters. Suffice to say, they don't know what they've got 'till it's gone...

The Sydney Morning Herald: Breeding idiocy since 1831!

2004-01-09T10:16:00.000+10:00

In today's SMH letters:

What a bloody selfish country this has become: we can go anywhere and do anything but God forbid a few uninvited guests should drop in. Lock them up and throw away the key.

Ron Co, Moonta (SA), January 7.

I'm assuming that you are very hospitable to uninvited guests that rock up to your place out of nowhere, Ron? I mean, it's a pretty cool party you've got going on; I don't see why I can't just drop in off the street? How about I sew my mouth shut because the beer sucks? Get better beer! I'm your guest after all! (See also: Tim Blair's similarly-themed response to a similarly-themed letter)

And here's another dumb letter:

If the United States can grant citizenship to 12 million illegal immigrants why can't Australia do the same for 500?

Allan Thomas, Lochinvar, January 7.

We have, you moron:

Number of Unauthorised Boat Arrivals July 1999 to June 2002: 9160
Number of Successful Asylum Claims by Unauthorised Boat Entrants July 1999 to June 2002: 8260

I guess it goes to show what most intilectuals are capable of.

Laughs a-poppin'!

2004-01-08T12:58:00.000+10:00

New addition to the sidebar is the hilarious Iowahawk. For a taste of the hilarity, check out this piece he wrote back in October 2001, then has recently re-posted on his site.

Go! NOW!

Give me your money!

2004-01-08T12:32:00.000+10:00

I am sooo getting one of these:

“What’s your fave?” Steve Jobs asked me as we admired a row of the Apple CEO’s just unveiled mini-iPods. Each one of the five tiny digital music players, no bigger than a lottery ticket and half an inch thick, was a different hue.

Ooooh yeah. It's all looking good so far...

Instead, Jobs tossed a curveball. When he announced the mini’s [US]$249 price tag in his keynote, the reaction—from a crowd predisposed to give standing ovations when the maestro cleared his throat—was like the air being let out of a volleyball. The price is neither fish nor fowl: more than a high-end flash player but not much less than the entry level maxi iPod.

Crap! Oh well, I'm sure I can cheat my way into getting one. I might sell my little brother into animal testing or something. After all, that's what being a RWDB is all about, isn't it?

Evil French plot uncovered!

2004-01-08T12:27:00.000+10:00

I'm wondering if the hunt for the no-show terrorist suspect that was to fly from Paris to Los Angeles is typical of the French:

French officials said they were looking for a man called Abdoulaye, who failed to turn up for the Air France flight on Christmas Eve. US intelligence believes he may be called Abdou Hai, an Afghan al-Qa'ida suspect.

France will not rest until he flies on that plane! A lot of Europe can sneer all they want at the United States for not finding people and other artifacts, but they're no better. Ignorant bastards!