people get ready

Things about America that you're unlikely to read in a Murdoch owned newspaper.

And a bit more, but this one includes a sliver of hope about what happens when people take charge.

Must be a very strange country.

Via bookyforum as always.

eat the meek

Just remind me, who's going to inherit the earth? The meek, right?

Looks like a few forgot the training manual.

art of noise

It's not absolutely necessary, but every once in a while it's fun to get a reminder that organised religion really is a blight on humankind.

I was like.....like....what's the answer, Jesus dude?....

Britain is a nation of heretics and nothing can change the fact until your nation reverts back to Roman Catholicism.

(That comments thread is by turns quite, quite hilarious and deeply disturbing).

I looked for some other interesting stuff to link but there's nothing interesting anywhere. Everywhere I look, it's not interesting.

We bought Mrs VVB an iPhOnE today in what must have been one of the most deeply unsatisfying exercises in consumerism (ie buying something you want) in which I have ever been involved. Even being ripped off by second-hand car salesmen when I was younger was better than this.

For reasons that needn't be gone into here, we were happy to stay with the existing carrier (service? plan provider? some other blinkingly inane metaphor for supplier?). Also Mrs VVB had decided she wanted an IpHoNE and nothing else would do. So, a straight-up walk-in sale, "I'll have one of those over there please and don't spare the horses."

Given this you would think that the young salesperson, of the type the old man usually typified as a "popsy," could have negotiated her arduous assignment without pissing us off, but we were pissed off within the first 30 seconds with a series of demands for personal information that any passing Stasi recruiter would have applauded and stuck straight into the training manual. By about minute 3 I was asking her would she mind appending her snapped directions to us with the occasional "please." It didn't seem too much to ask, but she snapped that she had said please already. Must have been in Braille because I certainly missed it.

Well it took us about 15 minutes so it could have been worse. We eventually decided that popsy must have been either suffering from commission payment deficit or was so wired on something that it was a wonder her eyes didn't shoot across the shop and into the crowd.

Ah yes, the crowd. We left the shop clutching our IpHOOOne and what was left of our dignity and patience and slammed into....the NOISE! The PEOPLE, the NOISE, it was just horrific. No wonder salespersons are so stressed with (a) nowhere to sit and (b) all that NOISE just outside.

And people go to shopping malls voluntarily? As a form of recreation?

It's a wonder there aren't more murders.

i alone

What's happened to the Oz Politics site? Haven't been able to get there for ages.

Oh, and some people debate songs with great solos.

we are the champions (2)

Here's an article that also concludes something that I've observed: accolades go to people who don't seem to deserve them. I liked the reference to the Presidential Medal of Freedom: didn't a former PM of ours get that one? Love the company he's in. I also liked the rocket scientist comment.

Anyway, I always get bemused by architectural awards, which seem to go to buildings that are plain ugly to the general passer-by, and often hopeless for those labouring inside.

Also business awards, which seem to go to entrepreneurs or companies that go down in flames a few years after.

Apart from that, not much.

every day is exactly the same

Excerpt from discussion on ABC news forums today:

"you're forgetting that we were all born with exactly the same opportunities as each other."

Discuss, particularly if you believe you can support the proposition.

kind of a drag (2)

For no reason that I can remember, I've never thought Liza Minelli was much chop. Daughter of, that's not a CV that works for me. As I'd never seen her live or on film, this judgement can only be described as judgemental, certainly not informed by any rational or supportable process, if you catch my drift.

Anyway it seems she's here and I saw her interviewed on TV.

To my mind, it was awful. She's 'on', she's acting, every waking moment, it would seem.

Must get tiresome.

Anyway, I feel kind of vindicated for being so judgemental.

Kind of.

Any other views?

Roaring Jack

I'm advertising widely.

I have only one song of Alister Hulett's, Destitution Road with his band Roaring Jack, and I am now reminded to go and put it on, very loud.

What a shame I can't be in Sydney that weekend.

i'd like to teach the world to sing

I'm feeling violently antisocial, so I inflict this on all my reader. Make of it what you will. I'd like to teach the world to be confused.

I've been progressively going off rugby league ever since the end of the halcyon days of Raiders superiority when even Mrs VVB used to get a tad enthusiastic about our then local team and the incessant reports about the state of Ricky Stuart's groin, but if this ever comes off the game will be rooted for all eternity and I'll be around at the end to say "I told you so in 1996 and you didn't bloody well listen then, now look what you've done."

Unfortunately, I suspect it's an unlikely prospect, surely he saw the damage Rupert et al inflicted in the Superleague wars and will have realised that not everything dear about communities and their tribes can be reduced to a simplistic, reductionist, knuckle-dragging profit-driven view of the world.

Oh, ummm, yeah...

nothing

Friday = nothing.

This probably = something. Tozer was supported through publicly funded programs to take his work, and Australia, to the world.

This = nothing we didn't expect, but is wrong beyond 99% of Australians' understanding.

This = I don't know what, but it probably relates to a clause in the US Free Trade Agreement under which any US multinational can monster anyone else if its dodgy IP is infringed, which is certainly not free trade.

Back to nothing.