Disordered Thoughts and Curmudgeonly Ramblings
For crying out loud!
That bastion of high quality journalism Today Tonight is running a story about “Gypsies and the suburbs where they’ve set up to STEAL!“.
What is this? The 1920’s?
(next week they’ll probably be telling us about the yellow peril)
End of Chapter One
Well, they got him.
I don’t know that it’ll solve anything, but I suppose it’s justice – of a sort.
I won’t celebrate anyone’s death. I’ll just acknowledge the end of one chapter and worry about the start of the next.
I’d have called it a Chuzwozza!
I am, by default, a Monarchist.
What I mean by this is that I’m not a Republican. I’ve never really seen the point in Australia going through all the hassle and expense of dumping the monarchy when they don’t cost us that much, and don’t really do anything to us. I mean, sure, the Queen could mess with our laws and such, but she’s far too smart, and hence doesn’t. I can vaguely appreciate the points made about our head of state being a foreigner, but then issues of nationality and patriotism and such have always seemed slightly suspicious to me – I’ve always instinctively felt that patriotism is but one step from nationalism, and nationalism one step from fascism. Put me down with H.G.Wells – my true nationality is mankind.
So I’m a de-facto Monarchist.
Which is not to say I have any great affection for the Windsors. If the majority of Australians want to kick them to the curb and have a Republic, I have no objections whatsoever. That’s democracy. And it’s going to happen, probably within the next 20 years when all the die hard Monarchists (ie: the Elderly) die off and the die hard Republicans (ie: the Young) take over. It’s inevitable, and is known as progress. On the day the papers are signed and the Australian Monarchy abolished – well I won’t be out there in the crowd cheering, but neither will I be in the crowd booing and hissing. I’ll just be watching the whole hoo-haa on TV, thinking “what a waste of time”, and probably eating a sandwich.
So, my reaction to the Royal Wedding has mostly been one of wishing they’d just get it over with so the TV schedule can get back to normal. Or at least that was the case until the Chaser scandal.
The story in a nutshell. The Australian national broadcaster – the ABC – has purchased two live feeds of the wedding from the BBC. One with commentary by some BBC bigwig, the other without commentary. The commentated feed will be shown on ABC 1, while the uncommentated feed was going to be shown on ABC 2 with local commentary by comedy troupe the Chaser. Was is the operative word as as soon as Clarence House heard about it they whipped off a communiqué to the ABC saying that if the Chaser broadcast wasn’t cancelled, then both feeds would be cut, and the ABC wouldn’t get to show the wedding at all.
This violates what I consider to be one of the most important functions of the Australian Monarchy – leaving us alone to do our own thing. If the monarchy is suddenly going to start interfering in Australian domestic affairs and – even worse – inflicting censorship, then as far as I’m concerned they can go do physically implausible things to themselves. Mocking our (supposed) social superiors is part of the Australian identity, and if the monarchy isn’t willing to go along with that then they no longer represent who we are as a people, and are as redundant as the most rabid Republican claims they are.
So, basically, what I want to say is Queen Elizabeth, if this kind of thing continues you’ve lost my vote!
Vale
Doctor Who Star Elisabeth Sladen Passes Away at 63
Damnit! Damnit!
Here’s to another 50!
In a sane world today would a day of global celebration. Parades, parties, fireworks and balloons. But instead it’s just another ordinary weekday for the ordinary, dull, citizens of this dirtball who daren’t look up and see the stars but belch instead…
Fifty years ago today, for the first time in our species’ two million year existence, one of us left our home planet. That’s amazing – yet the majority are content to sit around on their arses trading opinions on how we never went to the moon, the space program was a hoax, and aliens are abducting people and sticking probes up their nethers.
Well I’m celebrating damnit! Happy Yuri’s Night to you all!
The state of journalistic play
Keep in mind Perth only has one daily newspaper, and it’s pretty much of the same calibre as the Herald Sun.
Maybe my opinion of journalists is a bit harsh
I can’t tell if this is a case of a journalist being rather clever, or a journalist being an idiot and backing into cleverness (‘pulling a Homer’ as it were).
Yesterday there was bit of a scare in London when a police training exercise involving an entirely fictional gunman running up and down Oxford Street somehow leaked out into the Twittersphere as warnings of a real gunman running up and down Oxford Street. An article on one of the news sites I peruse (I can’t remember which one, and frankly I don’t care enough to go back and try and track it down) reported on this situation, including a comment about “the illusive gunman”.
At first I assumed that this was a typically (typical for Australian online news sites anyway) illiterate misspelling of “elusive”. But as it turns out “illusive” is that rarest of things – an English word with which I’m unfamiliar! It means “illusionary” or “imaginary”, and is hence a perfect description of the gunman in this case.
So, did the author pick the word deliberately, or simply mean “elusive” and fall backwards into brilliance? I guess we’ll never know (and they’d hardly admit it if they did :))
News Limited jumps on the bandwagon
Well, News Limited have certainly gone all out to help flood victims! They’ve created a page on their news sites where you can go to add a blue ribbon to your twitter feed to show your “support, strength and comfort” for Flood Victims. You can even go to certain stores and get your own blue ribbon to wear in real life! Fantastic!
Excuse me, but how does this actually achieve anything short of making people feel like they’re doing something without actually doing anything at all?
If News Limited actually gave a damn about flood victims they’d put the instructions for decorating your twitter feed behind a donation wall. And rather than give the ribbons away for free, they’d sell them. But no, they’d rather pander a feel good solution that makes them look like heroes without having to do any work.
If you want to help flood victims then donate money, goods or time. Changing the background on your twitter feed achieves nothing but making you look like a massive tool.
The stupidity of the masses knows no bounds…
I don’t know what’s sadder…
1: People have only just realised that the signs of the zodiac are 2,000 odd years out of date.
2: People are freaking out that their zodiac sign has ‘changed’ (apparently a lot of them are worried that their personality is going to alter).
3: People actually believe astrology has any connection to reality at all – as opposed to being a load of complete horseshit.
(In the interest of full disclosure I should state that I’m a Pisces. The traits of Pisceans include being born in February/March. No, wait, that’s the only trait of Pisceans…)
See the small person I don’t like wearing jewellery and makeup.
Reading my feeds this morning I stumbled over the news that a regulatory body in Canada has banned Dire Strait’s Money for Nothing from the airwaves for reasons of being offensive.
My initial reaction was “WHAAA?”, however on reading the article this was revised to “Oh, yeah – that bit”. The problem is of course the third verse – not one of Mark Knopfler’s best moments – where the song repeatedly uses a rather nasty pejorative. Someone complained – quite justifiably in my opinion – and away we go.
There seems to be a lot of outrage floating around over the decision, but personally it doesn’t bother me that much. I’m as big a Dire Straits fan as the next guy (assuming the next guy is also tragically out of step with modern music) but the verse really is in rather poor taste. More importantly there’ve been versions of the song without the offending verse available ever since it was released – as long as these versions are still allowed on the radio, what does it matter? You don’t listen to Money for Nothing for the words, you listen for the durn-d-d-d-duuuurn! durn-durn-durn – durrrrrrn-durn! d-durn-durn-durn! d-d! (and for Mr Sting wailing about MTV).
The people who complain about this sort of thing are typically the ones who want to keep on using the offensive terms in question. They hide behind a facade of second-person artistic integrity, but fundamentally they want to keep the word ‘faggot’ in the song because they want to keep calling gay people – or simply anyone they don’t like – faggots. The idea that their apparently God given right to hate and belittle others is under threat is what upsets them – not that a song from 30 bloody years ago will now have to be played in slightly modified form.
Sheeze. You might as well complain about not being allowed to sing that verse from Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport.