iggy pop

I will take a short break from banging my head on the table to bring you news from the 2010 Ignoble Prizes. My favourites?

Engineering

Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse and Agnes Rocha-Gosselin of the Zoological Society of London, UK, and Diane Gendron of Instituto Politecnico Nacional, Baja California Sur, Mexico, for perfecting a method to collect whale snot, using a remote-control helicopter.

I'd have to look at the abstract to determine whether the researchers even considered those preceding questions which automatically suggest themselves. These include, of course, why does anybody want to collect whale snot, closely followed by (b), what do you do with it once you've got it? And then, presumably, how much do you get in a typical collection...er, raid?

Peace

Richard Stephens, John Atkins, and Andrew Kingston of Keele University, UK, for confirming the widely held belief that swearing relieves pain.REFERENCE: "Swearing as a Response to Pain," Richard Stephens, John Atkins, and Andrew Kingston, Neuroreport, vol. 20 , no.
12, 2009, pp. 1056-60.

If they need another control group to add weight to the hypothesis, I suggest they call around to my office during one the regular beating head on table episodes.

Economics

The executives and directors of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Magnetar for creating and promoting new ways to invest money — ways that maximize financial gain and minimize financial risk for the world economy, or for a portion thereof.

Emphasis added, probably superfluously.

Biology (allegedly, this seems too good to be true...)

Libiao Zhang, Min Tan, Guangjian Zhu, Jianping Ye, Tiyu Hong, Shanyi Zhou, and Shuyi Zhang of China, and Gareth Jones of the University of
Bristol, UK, for scientifically documenting fellatio in fruit bats.

Words fail me. The only good news is that if China is eventually going to take over the world, the means are going to be stupendously different to customary explanations such as shooting the Dalai Lama, artificially holding down the exchange rate or getting everybody hooked on Hainanese chicken rice.

I feel better now.

hold the line

This is a place holder post to assure my many reader that I am still breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, etc.

In the between the oppositionally directed breaths I am shouting a lot, banging my head on the table, sighing, whingeing, reading my blackberry, pacing, and generally carrying on like a pork chop.

I'd explain, but....

...I have to keep breathing.

killing floor

After his rehabilitation, Chang was described by Choi Jin-wook of the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul as having fewer enemies than other senior cadres "because when he purges people, they are not just sent away from Pyongyang, they are killed".

Makes you glad we live in a semblance of a democracy, eh what?

careless whispers

Unnecessary blood pressure raising inducement of the day was to see that the illogical and (again) unnecessary introduction of the American neologism "I could care less" to Australia. Saw this in a newspaper article.

Why and how does it happen. I used to have a theory that most of these fad sayings came in via FM radio, but I'm not so sure. Why do people do it? Does it really make you look hip to say "I spent a couple hundred dollars today?"

It would be supremely ironic were I now to comment, "meh."

So I won't.

Have started travelling for work again and needing to pass a couple (of) hours in airports and on planes last week, I bought myself a copy of Australian Guitar magazine, mainly for the article on Matt Bellamy from Muse, a band in which I've become quite interested, not least for their thematic obsession with aliens but mainly for their stage shows.

The song structures are nothing to write home about but oh man, the staging! Go to youtube and look at some of their Wembley concert from a couple (of) years back, and other concerts.

Imagining the sensation of being in the crowd puts me in mind of something I've read many years ago, but not sure what. Maybe taking a gram of soma and going to the feelies in Brave New World? Wasn't it Brave New World that had some type of super-saxophones playing music? That Wembley concert looks downright amazing in the number of senses it would assault.

Muse is coming to Australia shortly but I doubt I'll be able to get to a concert. In any case I kind of think I'd be a fish out of water, with or without soma.

Whinge of the day: I don't know what's happened with Blogger but now I can only move pictures within the post one paragraph at a time. And for the two photos in this post where I want jump the first photo further down the story, I can't do it. Like, bummer.

more than words

I like words, what I like even better is people who can use words well.

And what I like even betterer is people wot use words to make me larf.

Like this:

(links deleted for reasons that will become apparent later in the post...sorry)

'course it's all a little bit like shooting fish in a barrel (do people actually do that? and if so, what calibre gun do they use?), but a punchy turn of phrase is a damn good thing.

Speaking of calibre, did you read about the bloke who shot a doctor, then his own mother and then himself after the doctor presumably pronounced a suboptimal prognosis for the mother? With a handgun he just happened to have in his belt?

This, to me, is indeed a fish in a barrel. Tell me again about the right to bear arms? Of course you'd pack heat if you were visiting mum (or, as I overheard two little boys in Woolies today, "mom" - yes, I do live in Australia), you never know when you might need to protect yourself. Against germs, let's say.

Yes, intolerably sad, but they seem to be slow learners, these Yanks.

Wasn't the Colt 45 called the "peacemaker"?

Because you always create peace by shooting people quicker, harder, and faster.

Note: I drafted this a couple of days ago and then had problems with my little bits of html. I can't remember what the links were meant to be and can't be bothered going back to check now. But I've posted it all the same. Caveat lector.

Note note note - I drafted the note above several nights ago and then went to check whether I had remembered caveat lector correctly. That caused the pooter to keep hanging so I went away and completely forgot about what I was doing. Until tonight.

The question now will be whether it'll post.

Also I found a wonderful online comic - here. I read all 7 years' worth of it over a period of about a week, thereby rendering it more of a graphic novel in my eyes I guess. The writer always puts little noted at the foot of the panels which often illustrate the dilemmas he faces in constructing the story arcs as well as longer term character and plot development. It's a real insight into something I certainly had never given any thought to.

lifter puller

You don't often read this sort of thing in a newspaper report:

"... not all agreed with some of her pronouncements on issues such as masturbation."


Although later on we read:

"I think O'Donnell can pull it off against the Democrats,"
she said.

As they say, only in America.

I'd like to see a Tea Party candidate gain the Presidency.

From a distance, though.

working for the man

As someone just coming off a roughly 14 hour day on top of a number of others of similar length, and having allowed myself some 'free' reading time, I was underwhelmed to read this. In fact only earlier Mrs VVB and I remarked, en passant to each, our own pooters, why has work got this insane?

I'm sure you'll understand.

roundabout

So we have a minority government, you'd think it was either the end of the world or something never seen before (like what happens in Kitchen Stadium).

Just think of what the energy that's going into writing about what Julie Gillard, or Tony Abbott, or Tony Windsor, or thingo Oakeshott might or might not be thinking was actually directed at doing something positive?

No, it all just goes around and around and around and around and

Anyway it's a bore. Let's just see how it all works out. If I have to make another trip to teh local primary school this side of Christmas 2011 I'm going to be mightily peeved.

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, I'm so freakin' busy I ain't got time to scratch meself.

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.

holiday

"Ooh you're a holiday,

Every day such a holiday.

Now it's my turn to say,

And I say you're a holiday."

Back when the Bee Gees were a proper band.

Anyway we've been on holiday and I have 345 photos (bows before the great god Digital, in film days that would have cost me about $180 to get developed and printed). This is one of them. A lot more are very similar. It was a very therapeutic holiday.

you raise me up

So I go into this office block and the single (and solitary) lift has a sign in front saying, "Under repair. For your safety and convenience please do not use."

So for my inconvenience I had to use the stairs, for my safety I went up on all fours. The wheelchair bound and Daleks would have been in strife.

When I grow up I want a job where I get to write signs that really piss people off. It must be so gratifying.

roadhouse blues

Hello there

Been away on a big road trip to all - well, a lot of - points west. Lots of fun, lots of driving, sufficient work to keep the brian active, and so on.

Here's a picture of part of where I went. There was a lot more of that around, too.

No time for even following blogs and I have to say it wasn't long before I wasn't missing it at all.

So I come back and there's a new Prime Minister and there's thousands of words been writ about the new Prime Minister, and the old Prime Minister, and the manner in which the new became the new and the old became the old and I was like meh.

I know I shouldn't have been like meh but I was, rooly.

Of course on road trips it means you're eating out all the time and I have to say I have sampled, and in some cases actually eaten, a highly variable quality of food.

I can say with assurance, though, that I had the best thickshake I have EVAH had in this place. I recommend it highly if you happen to be in the neighbourhood. Although it may be some way away from your neighbourhood.

And at one place I went for lunch I hit the jackpot. All I wanted was the lunch time special and I got the meaning of life.

For real - see here.

We have a fault with this computer where it keeps going off line. And for some reason Blogger makes it it do that all the time, which pisses me off. It's taken me four goes at finalising this post. Along with the great dollops of meh, just another excuse not to blog, I guess.

the nice

Every now and again you run across a comment in a thread that just makes you exhale - or inhale, if you're different to most folks(*) - and go (ie say to yourself), "yeah, that's really cool."

Here is an example from tonight's meanderings (and I'm only meandering because my work e-mail is gestufft, thereby rendering me unreachable, irrelevant and incompetent).

Oh yes, here it is:

I have a TV, but it's not actually hooked up to anything
useful. (%)

(*) Or the other way around (#).

(#) But most definitely not "coffee/screen interface moment" which just wants to make me change sites.

(%) You can click through if you like but it's far from mandatory, I think I've clipped the best bit.

little white bull

What with it being Friday an' all, you need some light ennertainment.

Here it is:

Goya, Picasso, García Lorca, Hemingway, Orson Welles and recently Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear have handled bulls in such a way as to prove their artistic
importance.

Do have a lovely weekend.

Oh, NB: this isn't about bullfighting.

limbo rock

How low can you go?

Not much lower than me, I'm afraid. Overworked by whelm, and vice versa, I'm going to give up even trying to do the occasional post.

Maybe when the next election comes around there may be some unique...or possibly individual...VBB views, but until then... Mind you, someone's going to have to learn how to implement but shit, it's Canberra, implementation is what other people do. So maybe people in Canberra should stop trying.

When I say people in Canberra I don't mean all the people in Canberra, but you know who I mean.

prejudice

I really shouldn't be amazed at people's prejudices, but I am. Some classic comments from this story about dirty works in England's bid for the 2018 soccer world cup:

I wonder what the aide got out of disclosing such private information, dont say another vengeful money grabbing female?

Do the editors of the Mail on Sunday not want to see us host the World Cup? These comments were made in private and should have remained so. It would not surprise me to find out that the journalist who broke this story was Scottish...

eat to the beat

Tonight in the study chez VVBSea, a small exercise in David Attenboroughosity. I have to admit that I wasn't in the room when the seemingly inevitable happened. However, nor can I see the moth anywhere.

Meanwhile, what has happened to chocolate? All of a sudden you go into Woolies and (a) all the chocolate is in flat cardboard boxes, and (b) all the names are different. I can't keep up with life, people (well, I assume they are people) keep changing reality.

Which raises the question, are marketing people really people? I mean, inasmuch as you and I are people? Well, me anyway, I can't see out from here because of all the geckos.

happy days are here again

Someone's not happy about the UK election:


Myles Munro wrote:

This result makes it clear that the indigenous people of this English constituency are quite happy with their culturally, socially and racially "enriched" future, in which sharia law will soon gain the same status of English common law, multilingualism will be the norm, polygamous marriage will not only be acceptable but common, the ritual killing of animals widespread, women disenfranchised and homosexuals face losing their recently won freedoms. That's fine. But don't start whingeing when the reality kicks in - you voted for it!

Bring on the ritual slaughter, tourists are tired of the Changing of the Guard.

horse with no name

As I keep saying, you get much better comments in the UK papers. The election this week has whipped up a storm of tired old cliches.....oh, sorry, no, that was me. No, the sub themes apparent in the comments are just fascinating. The hatred of Gordon Brown not because of anything he may or may not have done, but because he's a Scot. Anything that's not absolute laissez faire is labelled as socialism or communism. And, of course, the whole disillusion with manufactured, tightly controlled political campaigns. Which the Poms don't have to themselves, of course.

.. The whole comments string here is a cracker, but here are two I liked, for different reasons:

When I was in the UK it seemed to me that the virulent marxist types were the ones who tended to live in squalor, he was usually dressed in old dirty ex army stuff , had a bag of roll up baccy in his pocket, didn't understand the complexities of shaving and tended towards habits such as picking his nose and eating it. left school at 14 and never worked a day in his life but was adept at finding others of the same ilk to bond with. Often has strong homosexual tendencies when drunk.The women similarly left secondary modern without a o level to their name and usually because they were pregnant, tends to live in council flats with giant TV in every room but otherwise also in filthy squalor with up to 8 children who's fathers names were either on the local constabulary roster or in prison for importuning or some such offense, Either way the mother of these unfortunate children had no recollection due to the long hours spend drinking during school hours.Is it starting to ring any bells san toi, stefanie jameson, or is it still a blur.whatever you are , that's the ideology you support and that's what broon has made the standard rather than eliminating these scum from society.That's why he is such a LOSER

I like Socialists, but I couldn't afford a whole one.

say my name

Overheard in the car park. Must have been shrieked at about 125dB, so you couldn't really miss it.

"Shontaya, stop that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

suede

I think that what we're seeing now is music in it's purest, rawest form, by actual musicians that aren't sueded or influenced by the potential to make millions.

Presumably musicians get sueded when you put tanning lotion on them?

Anyway it's another chapter in the ongoing discussion/argument/war over the impact of free downloads on the viability of - all parts of - the music industry.

For my part I still buy CDs because I spend a lot of time in the car and the e-cheapo model versions we buy for work don't have mp3 inputs. Yet, I guess. I also buy CDs because, while I have an mp3 player, I only use it for its voice recording function. I don't jog or do other activities that people seem to do when they are listening to mp3s and while I love music, I can get by perfectly well going to the supermarket without needing earphones in.

And while you may or may not agree with Brian Stoner's comment, from which the first extract above was taken, it doesn't warrant calling him a fag as a later commenter does. What is it with people who do that?

foreigner

Well it's a bit hard to get away from all things ANZAC today. Mrs VVB has managed this, however, by (a) asking me to turn off a TV channel which was suggesting that the best way to observe our emerging holy day was to go to Young and Jacksons for a beer and subsequently (b) retiring for a nap.

Fortunately, in other parts of the globe there is genuine silliness with which to amuse ourselves. For example, if you were a junior civil servant, what would you suggest as suitable events to mark a visit by the Pope?

I expect you'll be wrong.

50 ways to leave your lover

Via Bookforum as always, lists and comments on the 50 best and 50 worst books of the 20th century. However the "best" and "worst" categorisations are somewhat misleading.

Mainly because the lists are, more accurately, firstly the 50 books whose philosophy we support and, on the other hand, the 50 books that are incorrigible and quite frankly dangerous leftist crap that leftards everywhere sucked up to, but especially during the 1960s when as we know the whole world turned to leftist crap, and we disagree with them quite violently.

Or along similar lines, you get my drift no doubt.

Only two several things intrigue me:

• that Malcolm X's biography appears on both lists;
• why Atlas Shrugged isn't on the "goodies" list (maybe because it was so badly written even the perpetrators of the lists reckoned it would put bricks to sleep); and
• why a seemingly sensible professional body would put its name to such puerile rubbish.
  
  Life in all its mysterious incarnations, ya gotta love it.

i found a new love

And its arrival coincided not only with a massive increase in workload but also, and again, the 134th realisation that this blog has nothing to say.

But crikey it makes me smile and that's why I got it.

it's a long way there

There are people who, when you ask them how things are going, invariably reply, "gettin' there."

To which I invariably reply, "once you're there can you tell me what it's like" or something similarly inane.

It never fails to not crack me up.

Anyway, I don't know where I'm going but you can certainly tell where I've been.

back in the ussr

The Beatles' tongue-in-cheek wag at 60's US-centric pop suddenly gets turned arse about.

What do you reckon this is about?

Good for the Citizens? How does puttinhg people in jail for committing no crime, or taking their jobs away, actually help them? I really want to know that answer. Just think if your Government did that to you...

and this?

The EU is little more than a fascist dictaorship...they think you even cannot be trusted to by asprin or paracetamol, you have to buy it in packs of 10.

No, actually it's about Obama's health insurance Bill.

Did you guess? Pretty surreal, no?

bad english

A little funny for youse. Hope youse can read it.

losing my religion

Here's someone who just lost theirs - reads like it's not the only thing they've lost:

I guess it didn't get by the censors, but I ask again, why does England still hang on to the colonies she took from Catholic Countries (Gibraltar, Malvinas, Northern Ireland) whilst abandoning the rest -- including Hong Kong and Zimbabwe to Communists? Do Britain's ruling Protestant elites really consider communists to be preferable to Catholics?As for the Malvinas-Falklands row, the US should be neutral. No more wars, and constitutional government, is the way to our recovery. I think that would probably work for the UK too.

It never ceases to amaze me how easily people can use cliches so willy-nilly interpret data so randomly to suit their particular world-view*.

I'd give this one a label from sPeak you're bRanes, such as Retired Colonels, Self-appointed Sages and one of my favourites, Curtain-twitchers (my mother was one of those).

Anyway speaking of SYB, can you hold your sides while you plumb your way through this grand example, which includes writing in Klingon, increasingly heated exchanges on postmodernism (and credentialism) and many examples of very vulgar language. In one thread!

Too much workeee, not enough sleepeee, failing interest in bloggee.

*Where world-view=obsession.

happiness is a warm gun

Here comes another one:

The American way, she said, was simple. "There are two rights essential to freedom: private property and gun ownership."

'scuse me, I'm off to dive under the bedspread. There's only so many simple answers to complex questions that one person can take.

Back next week.

inherit the wind

Seems a bit incongruous that just when I'm posting much, much less frequently, I gain a new follower.

Of deluded souls, yes, I have a few.

Anyway the main reason I post less is because I work more, and this is a trend unlikely to cease before retirement, now likely to be 67.

Ze message in zis for all of youse is learn ze patience.

I just got a quite amazing e-mail:

This email is intended to inform you that there is a record of deposited funds of $1.5 Million US Dollars in our bank, with your details by Steven Coleman Company Ltd. The funds is entitled to be your overdue inheritance contract payment.

That last sentence certainly had me thinking, partly about the things you probably think I was thinking about, and partly about others things I was thinking about in a perfectly independent manner.

Because, you see, I did once inherit some money. I've inherited money when playing Monopoly (mind you, not particularly bloody OFTEN) but no, once in real life.

It wasn't $1.5 Million US Dollars but enough to, I dunno, pay off the monthly credit card account. Which is probably what I did with it, this being some time ago.

No, it's the "contract payment" bit that has me quite bemused because, well, I can't remember the last inheritance being tangled up in contractual obligations and what-all.

I mean, I'd send what's-her-face my bank account details in a trice because, let's face it, with $1.5 Million US Dollars I could buy a lot of stuff.

F'r'instance, I could hire someone to write blog posts for me on a more regular basis that I am - as explained above - now able to achieve. More to the point, if I was really careful about selection and briefed a headhunter firm appropriately, I might be able to hire someone who could write better blog posts than me.

We'd probably have to rename the blog, probably shut this one down and call the new one something awfully spiffy like Middling Missives or Tales of the Completely Expected.

Alternately, I could buy a brace of Maseratis or similar and, let's be honest, I'm more likely to do that than offer Don Watson $1.5 Million US Dollars to remove the capital letters from everything that currently boasts them in inappropriate places.

Speaking of pedantry which, in a peripheral way, we were, just the other day I accused one of our executives of jumping on the 'around' bandwagon.

You know: "I've got some issues around that."

I tell you what: I have bloody issues around it. Anyway what I hope ensues is that every time he's in a meeting - and he goes to lots - and hears someone use the phrase because it's bloody everywhere, I tell you, he'll start to get annoyed.

But not as much as the first time he hears himself use it.

And he will.

Anyway, I googled the Steven Coleman Compnay Ltd. It doesn't exist. Which doesn't surprise me really because, I tell you, it's a really weird name for a relative, no matter how deceased.

i feel fine

I can't get excited about programmatic specificity vs. the budgie smuggler kid, but the impending UK election still has me (the half-arsed VVB version of) enthralled.

The Times reports a Conservative idea to re-privatise the banks through a discounted share purchase scheme. But the peoplezzzz are not buying it:

I'm not interested in gimicks. What I am interested in is a long term economic recovery, safe streets and a future for my children. That means leaving the EU,
closing the door to further immigration and the deportation of a great many and
it also means an end to politicised laws and judicial processes that has put crime prevention in to the hands of the politicians rather than the police. All of these are fairly standard, non controversial, mainstream conservative ideas - at least they once were. As they are no longer I shall be voting BNP or if they don't field a candidate UKIP. As for the "big three", there is no perceptible difference between them either in ideology or morals.

Here's a few suggestions for you, lads.
1) Stop all immigration. We don't need it.
2) Promise to deport all illegal immigrants and recently arrived legals who
commit crimes.
3) Tell the EU to reform or we walk.
4) Cut all quangos. They waste money and are as big a threat to democracy
as the unions were.
5) Radical welfare reform.
And that's just to start you off. If you'd like more electoral tips, then,
in the words of Harriet Harman, you know where you can find me!

One QUESTION people, who remembers Mrs Thatcher and her side kick Ronald
Reagan? These are the two people who single handed, passed our countries monies
to the banks with deregulation. Oh they are also Tory and right wing in their
politics Rich=Richer, Poor kept in their place. Not one of the current political
parties will do what we really want, which are as follows:
1. Re-regulate the banks as they were before Twiddle Dee and Twiddle Dum
got their hands on them.
2. Tax the banks to the neck line on all their transactions and make sure
that the costs are not passed on to us.
3. Make them pay back all our tax monies plus interest before they dish out
bonuses.
4. Stop Immigration dead in the water, I don’t care where they come from.
5. Pull out of the war in Afghanistan, Iraq. Leave Iran alone and force
Israel to make peace with the Arabs.
6. Get shoot of the multi government guanos.
7. We do not need two aircraft carriers waste of money
8. Make the lazy British BORN trash get off their backsides and get a job.
Or no money, if there are no jobs, make them in areas that can be of use to the
country. Not in management positions, we need alternate power sources, use this
cheap source of labour as a means of enabling this pledge.
9. Oh and quit the parliamentary privilege / expenses your reward is having
a great job.
10. No ministers/MP’s (families members included) to be allowed to act or
seek employment in any area of business that they have passed legislation for in
parliament or have had access to secret government documents during their career
in government for at least 10years.Any party that would do these things and
really mean it, would get my vote!
HA HA HA HA!! FAT CHANCE

I am particularly interested in the government guanos - we get a lot of that here.

Finally, I'd have a better chance of understanding this one without so many apostrophes and quotation marks.

You "Can Knock Maggie"!,but she "Did have "Balls" even though she was a Woman"!
LEADER,put an Advert in the "Guardian"! Jobsworth's need "Not Apply"! Which
restrict's the "APPLICANT'S TO "10" MAXIMUM!!!!

taxman

They're thinking of putting up the Value Added Tax (VAT) in Britain. Comments are running about 95% that it's "Zanulabour's" fault and 5% think it's the greedy bankers. However, amongst all the ranting and the inevitable couple of comments from US readers that British folk are doomed because they allowed the government to take away their right to bear arms (failing to distinguish the difference in intent - and outcome - between a government that taxes you and a government that kills you, but nevermind..), we get to the core of the problem:

Since the 1970's, successive governments were convinced (largely by radical feminists) to create and fund a growing multitude of social programs for every cause imaginable.

Wait until Mrs VVB gets home and learns about this. There will be a very serious conversation, I assure you.

i want a new drug

I found one.

This is totally against Nature! People are meant to starve. Is an incentive for them to go to Church. Once you start feeding people who should rightly be dead, Heaven will be empty!

There is just so much goodness in this big wide wonderful world. I want someone to pay what I earn now - oh all right, pay me what I'm worth.....aaaagh OK, pay me a bit less than that - fuck it then pay me a lot less - so I can just trawl blogs all day.

I want to turn to blancmange.

Oh OK, I'm already blancmange, I wanna be more sort of custard-like.

Whatever.

talkin' bout my generation

Look Mum, they're talking about us.

What a shame there aren't 923 insightful - or asinine - comments to plough through.

Through which to plough.

Or plow.

Meanwhile, the Australian Financial Review reports that a lot of board members of the Business Council of Australia think that, now we have sailed through the GFC - no thanks to the government - we need to get back on the reform horse. Labour market deregulation. Taxation reform. The usual suspects.

On the front page, three of Australia's most patently right-wing radio talkback 'hosts' (Alan Jones, Neil Mitchell and Howard Sattler) reckon that the PM has lost the people, they're no longer listening to him.

On both of these issues I am reminded of Mandy Rice-Davies, a young lady who remains on the money nearly 50 years after making her famous quip.

Famous Quip would be a good name for a band, too.

trudge over bribbled water (*)

Surely this is a bridge too far:

Many young economists, scientifically oriented and so recognizing
the superiority of free markets, found the climate intellectually
stultifying.

Out of context of course, but jeez, really? Are all scientists free-marketeers? Someone need a little basic logic to get them to the end of their article?

If you want a countervailing argument to how free market ideas actually get promulgated, try this.

Alternatively, just bash your head into the computer while reading the comment stream of consciousness on whether Britain is broken. Just be prepared - you'll need several hours, not least because you can't put all comments on one page. Maybe Britain is broken.

(*) possibly not the correct title...

send in the clowns

We went to the local club tonight - we do this occasionally for exactly the same reasons that tens of thousands of our fellow Aussies do on a Saturday night: Mrs VVB doesn't have think about what to have for dinner, and I don't have to wash up.

We sat outside, it's warm but the onshore breeze is some consolation, although not as much as if it had been cooler.

Being patriotic Aussies we thought we'd better do the right thing and put a couple of dollars through the pokies.

Mind you, we haven't thought of doing this on previous visits...

Anyway, and this is where the story really begins, the last time either of us played a poker machine you had to put 20 cents in and pull a lever.

It's a bit more complicated now. The only reason it took us 5 minutes, rather than 5 seconds, to lose $2 was because we couldn't figure out which buttons to press.

There is an upside, of course. From now on we can go to the club and benefit from the subsidised food and drink, restful in the knowledge that we can't do the 'right thing' and put a few bucks through the pokies because we're too stupid to use them.

Earlier today I thought of a funny, and being of somewhat vindictive nature I thought I should share it.

Imagine, if you will, a crowd of Kevin Rudd supporters at a protest...

"What do we want?"

"Programmatic specificity!"

"When do we want it?"

"In the fullness of time!"

Laugh? I thought I'd never start.

who let the dogs out

Courtesy of the House of Pants, and only because one can no longer comment thereabouts, we bring you this story. Because, if you want to buy a dog, the first place you think of is Africa.

Her Pantsitude also comments on the appearance at the Chilcott Inquiry by Tony Blair. I've been following this myself including at some of the same links. And only once - which I'd be unable to find again inside a fortnight - have I seen a reference to the astounding lack of recognition of Australia's major, major role in the Iraq invasion as spruiked by our very own, once-was, Man of Steel.

Yes, we had a carefully manufactured minor role that could be embellished into something else, like a Special Relationship with the then US president. But no mention at all in the articles, it's like we weren't there at all. Now why would that be?

dance away

Note to makers of TV dance shows:

• rolling on the floor is not dancing


• calisthenics is not dancing


• lifting somebody is not dancing, unless it is interspersed with actual dancing


• just waggling your jangly bits and shuddering a lot is not dancing


• 'popping' certainly is not dancing.

What is dancing?

• ballet (without rolling on the floor or calisthenics)


• the Quickstep


• the Pride of Erin


• the Canadian Two-Step


• waltzing.

Also, comparing a national style of dance with some made-up contemporary rubbish is rubbish. Apples, oranges, pears. Also Calisthenics.

Sometimes you run across somebody who has Something Important to say to you, but they just can't articulate it.

Here's one I discovered earlier.

Many might truly believe that such is the Day to Day/ZeroDay to
ZeroDay Reality that Politicians Spin to their Own Sadly Crooked Advantage, for Great Vision and Advanced Intelligence is Missing from their Penny Dreadful Arsenals/Treasuries/MetaDataBase Mines which are Fixated on Hiding Dirty Secrets rather Eliminating and Illuminating Enlightening Secrets.

My response to this can be found in the venerable text of the Beatles' Strawberry Fields Forever:

Always, no, sometimes, think it's me
but you know I know and it's a dream
I think I know, I mean, err yes, but it's all wrong
that is, I think I disagree.

carry that weight

The Brisbane Sunday Mail carries a story about Huey Lewis and the News. Seems that Huey "was taught to play harmonica by his mum's tenant, Billy Roberts, a folk singer who wrote the classic Hey Joe, made famous by Jimi Hendrix. Roberts gave him a bunch of old harpsichords and with that skill under his belt, Lewis set off hitchhiking across America and then across Europe and North Africa, singing for his supper."

The story goes on, "'I was playing on the streets of Marakesh (Morocco), playing harmonica and surviving," he recalls.'

Presumably the skill he acquired was how to turn harpsichords into harmonicas, by taking them to Europe, where they know about these sorts of things.

Meanwhile, blood pressures around the country are rising as another fake squealer ruins a perfectly good tennis match. I would have thought a squeal that has two definite syllables was less an expression of effort and more a deliberate attempt to unsettle the other player, not to mention millions* of viewers.

* millions = "at least one"

watching the wheels go round and round

In a sign that Straya Day is just around the corner, today I saw my first car sporting its brand new, made in China, Aussie flag. Inhabitants - perhaps denizens is closer to the mark - of the car were four very large young men, tattoos very visible, dark sunglasses and a set to their mouths that indicated a little thuggery would liven up their day immeasurably.

And the Council wants us to go down to the beach to celebrate Australia Day, when the pub directly across the street closes its carpark to accommodate the queues for the bar. Last year was bloody frightening, to be honest.

I'm relieved that at last some notable Australians, who tend to get listened to seriously, are speaking up that the trend of lots of youths wearing the flag as an invitation to violence is not really what Australia Day should be about. The question is, how many years will it take to reverse the trend?

Meanwhile, the Democrats have lost the traditional seat of Massachusetts, previously owned by the Kennedy dynasty or, later in the evening, the Bee Gees. What this means is that the wheels have fallen off the communist, socialist, leftard takeover of the United States by B. Hussein Obama and we can expect his party - who like all communists, socialists and leftards are weak, spineless, traitors - will be running back to Iraq, Kenya, Indonesia or wherever the hell they came from, pdq. After which all will be well with the world because the filibuster will be reinstated. A filibuster is what I used to call it when I fell off my bicycle.

OK, you can stop laughing now.

In the UK, previously British owned Cadburys has been bought by US firm Kraft which means that its next product, the iChocolate, can only be months away. Thousands of good upstanding British citizens will lose their jobs specifically because someone said they wouldn't, and they'll be replaced by illegal immigrants from Islamia. The Times has all the commentary.

Finally, a nice young man visited us but people had to call him Your Most Extremely Extremeness, because that's what he is. His mother claimed to be the Queen of Hearts (tm), although I could have sworn that was Juice Newton. The only downside is the thousands of forests that had to be cut down to report on his extremelitude in the newspapers, and the coal that had to dug up and burnt to power the proverbial packetloads of pixels to those who are internetically energized, information-wise.

So that's all. Going forward, I forecast fewer blogposts and more meditation, including regular breathing. The political class have emerged from their summer hideaways to engage in their meaningless, forest-devouring, coal-munching, pixel creating twitter (not tm in this case). According to the PM, provided about 357,000 assumptions hold true, we'll all be $16,000 better off in 2060.

The PM also noted that we will be older but in fact, regrettably, many of us will in fact be deceased and I want to know what he's going to do about it.

in the mood

Some x months ago I would do a Friday night post featuring a YouTube clip of some band or song I really like or I thought was appropriate to a Friday mood.

Some y years before that I would occasionally do a post on one of the many cars that I have owned over the years, using as a motif the 1/43 scale model of that car from my 'collection.'

Now I don't do nothin'. Two weeks back at work - the first was great, whereas at about 9.10 am this last Monday I raised my voice (I think for the first time in the two and a bit years I've been here) and then punched a 4-drawer cabinet (definitely the first time).

Yes, we're back in the swing (insert YouTube clip of Sparks here, or not, depending on whether I can be bothered, no, I couldn't as you will have seen by now).

I'm still spending the odd angry hour trawling the comments threads of stories in the Times, because these provide the backdrop to the mood of the British nation as it heads into the general election which I suspect may be the major political story of the year. It'll put Kevin10 to shame.

But there's not much else to say, so I won't. I'm not in the mood and, as I've observed before, there's plenty of others who do it better if you really want to engage.

But some of this stuff will surely get you wondering.

The diversity of human...well, it's not really undertaking, is it?

woke up this mornin' (repeat)

What on earth, I wondered, was a "monkey woman"?

Learn the answer, and also learn a bit about pork.

Sounds like a rattling good read.

norwegian wood

Company name sign on a ute belonging to a tree lopping firm:

"Hugh Wood"

You wouldn't read about it, would you.

Would you?

baby don't speak no evil

Extract from an article in a journal I was reading yesterday:

Cloud computing is made possible by new technologies for virtualising
applications from hardware so they can scale, by architecting applications as standardised multi-tenant web services, by engineering for massive scale and by simplifying the way users access applications using the internet.

I was relieved to see that Blogger's spell check, which I usually find pretty useless (for example, it doesn't give me anything useable at my usual mistyping of 'start' as 'strat'), at least found itself flummoxed by 'virtualising' and (oh yes) 'architecting.' That said, I was somewhat surprised to see that spell check did not recognise 'internet', although, given that this is a blogging tool, maybe it was looking for 'intertubez.'

No, it doesn't like that either.

Anyway, back to the article. I imagine that a time-honoured way for the IT profession to gouge fees, where there aren't fees to be gouged, is to write their proposals, reports and recommendations in something approaching Klingon in the hope that management will be impressed. Or, more likely, that no-one in management will have the fortitude to admit that they don't understand what is being put to them.

Well, that's my theory (my other one is about dinosaurs).

Disclosure

(Whispers) Actually, it's not mine at all.

(Tee hee.)

(*)

Oh, and go here and here to read some interesting comments threads. The UK will be the place to watch this year. I've commented previously that the Brit papers (mainly) do comments better than here, although the stab 'em and throw away the key brigade can be found out in force elsewhere, and parodied to within an inch of their lives at speek yer brrrranes.

But the UK election will put the Rudd/Abbott megacagefightshowdown ofthedecade (that's provided the decade has actually started, of course) in the shade, I reckon.

* I promise never to write 'tee hee' in a post ever again, at all.

living in a child's dream

John W. wrote:
Why is it you so called ozzies try to upset people who are not annoying you?It shows a lack of brain power & comprehension about how a Nation shouldexhibit itself to the World. I'm pretty sure the rest of the World will be again reminded how really childish Australia is. Shame you have'nt grown up like the rest of us...Grow Up!!!

Some of the other comments are crackers, too. However I am bemused by this "so-called ozzies" comment. What would we be otherwise? What about "so-called brits?"

Anyway, I'm digging a big hole in the backyard, at bottom of which I will find either coal, bananas, or China.

Oggie oggie oggie - which is in fact what it used to be even here, when I was (not) growing up.

Hoo roo.

shout

All right. We are now in the teenies, having more or less successfully negotiated the noughties. And as it's New Year's Day, we have to make some resolutions. I'm not sure if there's a rule that you have to, for example, make resolutions before midday (oh no! too late!) or nanna-nap time (coming up soon), sort of like how practical jokes have to be performed (*) before midday on April first.

(*) Do you perform practical jokes or is there some more appropriate verb?

Anyway as we are not unduly hungover and cannot find evidence of any such rule (having cast quickly about the room for clues, no, no posters on the wall or similar) then let us, without too much further ado, make some resolutions. Are we sitting comfortably? If not, buy a new computer chair like we did back in the noughties. Let us begin. No, now.

1. Remember to breathe.
2. Breathe more deeply and slowly.
3. While we are breathing more deeply and slowly, try not to shout at the television as much.
4. Keep breathing.
5. Try to realise that not all other motorists are as stupid and incompetent as they appear, so don't shout at them either.
6. Review resolution No 5 regularly, as I don't believe it is soundly based.
7. Don't shout at the inutterably stupid letters and SMSs in the newspapers.
8. Try to be calmer - slow, deep, regular breathing is said to an aid to this.
9. Work on upper body strength, all the while remembering to breathe.
10. Remember that just because somebody writes something, it doesn't mean it's either true or makes sense. Particularly anything that starts with "all right-thinking people" or "it's just common sense" or anything attributed to any established religion (particularly religions with a financial improvement fixation, whether for their adherents or themselves).
11. Actually, try to stop shouting all the time.
12. Practise the piano.
13. If this doesn't work, practise playing the piano.
14. And the guitar.
15. Continue discovering that playing the piano or the guitar seems to slow the breathing and the blood pressure and you can't shout at things while practising.
16. Remember that if you are, for example, going to play the guitar for people who, just for example, happen to be at your house for a New Year's Eve party, then it makes good sense not to do this after you've reached the point of intoxication where you, just to pick an example at random, forget the words.
17. Try to write better blog posts.
18. For example, don't continue to be so inextricably literal.
19. Work on whole sentence structure, not just randomly used words to create an impression.
20. Don't be so competitive, it's not a race.
21. Review resolution no 20 regularly, as I don't believe it is soundly based.
22. Keep breathing.
23. And don't shout so much.

rain

In the olden days if you wanted to know what the weather was going to do, you'd listen to the radio and after about 5 months they would report whatever Lennox Walker said it was going to do.

Now you sit glued to the pooter monitor watching the Bureau of Meteorology website. Some times this is exciting, like when you are watching a big storm come over. Once we were watching a big storm come over and then there was a big bang quite close outside, and then the screen went black along with, it must be said, the rest of the insides of the computer, the cordless phone and a number of other eeee-lectrical appliances.

That was in the days when our part of Brisbane used to get storms. After a while we noticed we weren't getting as many and it became quite safe to watch the BOM website, secure in the knowledge that, inevitably, any big yellowy-red-rendered storm would bifurcate perfectly about a kilometre away and miss us entirely.

This is also true of our little corner of sunny Capricornia. It rains in Mackay, it rains over Shoalwater Bay, it rains over Gladstone, it pisses down over the Sunshine Coast but any random blobs of blue coming our way do the bifurcation boogie just the other side of Keppel and we get none.

What a bummer.

When I was at school we had to study Shakespeare and stuff. I don't recall us ever studying any contemporary literature, but that said I don't recall lots of things from school. Now of course the kiddy-winks get their heads stuffed with whatever flavour-of-the-month politically correct garbage the relevant State Teacher's Union deems fit to include.

Anyway it doesn't matter because you can go on the internet and find things like this. Sheer brilliance, not to mention hilarious, it gives you the shits that other peoples can write so good.

Found via Phillip CHallinor, who will bear watching as the UK elections draw near. He has a low tolerance of chicanery, he also seems to have more than one man's fair share of chicanery of which to be intolerant.

one world

You'll get "hours of fun reading the comments. The Trilateral Commission, the Jews, take away our guns at your peril, socialists in Canada, Obamascare, the Second Amendment, you only get true reporting in Britain, communists, bring back Joe McCarthy, the smell of sulfur (sic), the Second Revolution...

Looks like 2010 is going to be a waaaay baaaad year.

Courtesy of the ever-reliable sPeak you're bRanes.

(not) leaving on a jet plane

There 's been a lot of snow and ice and generally cold stuff in the Northern hemisphere recently. Not entirely surprising as it is the winter season. But the stupendousness of the degree of cold and amounts of snow and icy stuff has played merry hell with transport systems including trains, planes and automobiles.

On the news the other night they were telling us all about this - it is news after all - and there were interviews with seriously inconvenienced travellers on both sides of the Atlantic, people who were travelling to be with family and friends at Christmas and weren't going to make it in time or at all, at all.

The interviews were enlightening for those who, like yer estimable correspondent here, just lurrve to jump to stereotypical conclusions.

The Yanks interviewed were philosophical and some could even laugh a bit about it. On the other hand (or side of the Atlantic I suppose, for consistency), the Poms without exception whinged, and whined, and moaned, and bleated, and "the gummint should do summat about it" and "where's me compensation?" and on and on and on and on.

Do we still let them in here or is it only bomb-toting reffos who get a guernsey?

reeling in the years

So I'm thinking that we need to do a post, get back in the swing, you know.


The lack of posts has been the consequence of a couple of factors, including lots of work travel and also - probably of more import - a lack of inspiration.


I wonder whether anyone's done a carbon/pixel/heart attack count of the blogging over the non-event that was - eventually - COP15 at Copenhagen. You can just imagine them, can't you, banging away at their keyboards late at night, early in the morning, during the day when they were meant to be working, about how it was such a limp-dicked excuse for meaningful effort to combat climate change, or alternatively it is all just a resumption of teh left's desire for a collective State to reign over us in place of the poor excuse for representative democracy we have now, depending of course on where you happen to be.


VVB used to be driven by a loathing of John Howard so visceral, so elemental that if I'd been able to write better, do more research, actually concoct a rational argument, this might have been a successful blog. But...


Not sure where that last bit came from, it never appeared likely in the slightest.


Anyway with the workload not declining and spending a lot of time on the road away from even reading blogs and similar sources of bile and opinion, yet again the urge to blog has ebbed.


You get things that might induce a short post. Such as what is it about soccer that provokes levels of violence not associated with other codes of football. Even when it appears - and here I don't know as I don't follow the game - that the teams involved are not immediately associated with ethnic groups who used to provide the


(3 days later)


the what? damn good question. That and a

(2 days later again)

It's Christmas Eve and all around us are doing what people do on Christmas Eve which is, of course, blog.

I thought of something really good to blog about while Mrs VVB and I were wending (what is that wending stuff - I've never done it knowingly but it just jumped off the keyboard) our way home, but by the time I'd got home and had a little lie down it had utterly disparu.

Anyway Merry Christmas to all deluded souls who pass by here and I promise that 2010 will be another year.

Although in what way, I cannot foretell.

30 odd foot of grunts

Here comes another one...

Here it comes again...

Here comes another one....

When will it ever end?

it's wonderful wonderful

Some teasers:

I got a beef with Jay cos I don't know what his game is / Sucka says that Updike blows when compared with Martin Amis.

GO GO GADGET GONADS!

Now go here and I doubt you'll be back.

holiday

Look, you've probably noticed already but there's nothing going on here and, on current indications, this will remain the dominant paradigm until I retire in 6 or 7 years' time.

Or have a holiday.

In the meantime America will default on its debts, the Chinese will buy us, Christmas Island will sink under the weight of too many (evidently overfed) Sri Lankans and the West Indies may just, just purloin the Sir Frank Worrall Trophy.

There's nothing much in all of this except that I honestly don't think I've ever used the word "purloin" before.

It did make me feel all warm.

Oh no, that's the temperature doing that.

history never repeats

But one thing that you can bet will be repeated until your eardrums turn to something probably resembling licorice:

"Labor's gigantic big new tax."

You didn't hear that here first, either.

In the past I've kind of banged on about why government by targets supported by bureaucratic sausage machines doesn't work. I've noted that Blair introduced it with a vengeance in the UK, it didn't work, and of course that nice Mr Rudd is doing the same thing here, where the result will - unsurprisingly - be similar.

Today someone asked me did I "do the math" or "do the maths." I said that when I went to school, I studied mathematics, not mathematic.

Well, actually "studied" is not the completely accurate term. John McGee, you did well as a maths teacher. You taught both of them.

Vis-a-vis the introduction of more Americanisms into our lingua franca, something else has got up my throat recently but it's been dislodged. I think because I came to the conclusion that I, too, had allowed the cultural hegemon to slide a few of its popularly accepted neologisms into my cranial cavity.

Cavity being the operative word.

I'm now quite tired and am going to (a) pack for yet another trip and then (b) have a good lie down.

Good night, Mr Abbott. You just stay away from that naughty 'Cardinal' Pell.