addicted to loveseriously weird

From who knows where, some extremely addictive viewing fer yer pleasure.

I guarantee you'll be clicking madly for the next three days.

I know I was :-)

one

two

See y'all in a little while, y'all hear now?

cat power

Far be it from me to add to the squillions of words being writ, even as we speak I do likewise, about the election.


Well no, maybe not too far. Being of a recently improved, more optimistic, mind I hope that this campaign just past marks a low point in how these things are conducted in Oz. The relentless negative attack ads and fear-mongering, single focus on the leaders thereby distracting from pretty thin talent pools on all sides, and lack of a policy framework - call it a narrative if you will - all combine to have dumbed down what should be the most informed decision we all make.


Not to mention the role of parties' organisational wings, not to single any particular one out (ha!). The phrase 'out of touch' is one used with rare abandon to criticise leaders, but it should be aimed at the back room boys - and I guess they are mainly boys - who by their very definition cannot ever be in touch.


The instability of what we will be left with at Federal level might just start to get the 'players' thinking that maybe the political process needs some renewal. From what I read, the general public certainly thinks so.


What we do about the MSM and its corrosive influence, of course, is another thing.



Personally, I think it is more important to spend time with old cars and kittens.

only one woman

I blog
You blog
He, she or it blogs.

Not so much turning Japanese as turning Latin.

I love life, I love it a lot better after a few sherbets.



Ah, Graeme Bonnet. What a voice. My evening is complete.

No it's not, does anyone - I mean anyone - have a copy of Linda Sue Dixon by Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels? Genuine blue-eyed soul? It's seared into my memory, but nonetheless my memory would be improved by hearing that song again.

around and around redux (*)

So I'm sitting in this meeting and someone drops a paper in front of me, titled (roughly) "Options for solutions to issues around etc etc..." so I immediately cross out "around" and substitute "of".

Then the person comes back and picks up the paper, apologises for having given it to me and drops it in front of a person about 3 chairs down.

So I get up and go down there and point out my vandalism to both of them. Then the person for whom the paper was actually intended and I have a discussion about vandalism of language, in which I explain my distaste for this trend of misusing "around.

Then the person tells me about her hatred of apostrophe misuse and how she has educated her children to be on the lookout for such misuse.

Then we both punch the air and yell "pedants rule OK!" and I return to my chair.

I do so like meetings.

(*) Had you ever heard or read the word "redux" before blogs were invented?

la mer

Having been lolling about Villa VVB by the sea for a couple (*of) weeks now, I could have written an equivalent to War and Peace (by weight, if not content), but all I've mustered is one short post saying "we're back" with a picture. Well, here's another picture.



The little red car is hors de combat, it got considerably horser as soon as I starting trying to fix it. So I am denied the pleasure of farting around in it.

Mid-winter here is glorious, the sea is a metallic kind of azure with the odd spotless white sail swanning in the background.

I scan with the binoculars (one thing we noticed when house-hunting here was that every house with a sea view had binoculars to hand or a big fuck-off telescope in the corner of the lounge room). This arvo my naked (ooh-er, Bishop!) eye spotted...well, that's what it was, a spot. With the binocs, it was a bloke in a tinny that couldn't have been more than 3 and a bit metres. So flat was the sea, no swell, no waves, and he's standing up, fishing.

All of which is not conducive to blogging. I have been reading the sites (Grog has come into his own magnificently in the last few weeks) but even with some quickening in the pace of events within the election period, it still looks and sounds too scripted and focus-group driven. Then there's the meta-commentary, for example on the role of the media, and the meta-meta commentary on the role of the blogosphere in commenting on the role of the media, and...

The endless tea-leaf reading is unbelievably tiresome. There are far too many readers and far too few leaves - when you take into account statistical margins of error, electoral boundary changes and countless other unknown unknowns...

Yeah you get the point.

Been playing a few concert DVDs which started to get me thinking about an even bigger TV. For a little while I was kind of third guitar to Phil Manzanera and Chris Spedding in Roxy Music, I needed a bigger screen so I could in there. Fortunately for me, they're deaf. Or at least they were on this DVD.

Anyway, this all sounds like ennui which means it's a good thing I'm back at work next week.

Not really. But I've already started easing back in by reviewing a few documents I'll need to be familiar with when I return. And only 330 e-mails to deleteread.


* Maybe I should also adopt the recent US craze for not saying "of?"


**And while we're on pedantry, the misuse of "versus", from the Latin and meaning "against", seems to have also taken off. Listening to a lot of radio commentary while on hols, the usual pronunciation was "verse." Yes, really. But the other day I read a newspaper article in which it was spelt "verses."


I kid you not.


We're doomed, fucking doomed, I tell you.

The other thing is this being thrown offline every time I hit a function key. Is seriously pissing me off.