Enviro Mental

While we all wait to hear about the big trees, here's a bit of a blast from the recent past, Environment minsiter Ian Campbell on the Insiders on 25 July 2004:

Cassidy: You mention plastic bags – of course Mark Latham has made much of his ban on plastic bags. Are you going to try and trump him on that issue?

Campbell: One of the things I've already done this week, Barrie, is I'm working with retailers to bring in a new series of bags. We want some blue bags, for example. People like these green bags, I want a new initiative to link the importance of the damage that plastic bags can do to our rivers and oceans to send a strong message by saying this is a very important measure for the world's oceans and Australia's beaches.

Cassidy: What message does a blue bag send?
Campbell: The blue bag will be the same as a green bag, Barrie, but it's going to be blue.
We want a series of different colours, we want to keep the initiative going and keep re-invigorating it every few months with different coloured bags.

Cassidy: I'm sorry, I missed the point – what's the significance of changing from green to blue?
Campbell: Well, you can basically have your choice of colours.
Some people like green, some like white. Some of the supermarkets I visited yesterday had calico bags. The colour's not important, but I want to link the colour of the bags to environmental outcomes. And one of the things I'm working with retailers on is bringing in a new blue bag.

Cassidy: Minister, we're out of time. Thanks for your time.
Campbell: My pleasure.

Utter Brainiac.

small victories

Went to Medicare today and passed a big pile of "Strengthening Medicare" brochures at the top of the queue - the only available reading material.

Conveniently, I have just hit the "safety net". But, as I said to the poor woman smiling wanly at the desk, "that mongrel still hasn't bought my vote."

Look at moiye!

I'm the little one in the "It's time" t-shirt.
Even with my nappy hangin' outta my pants I knew what was going on. Except for those sandals, they were my mum's idea. The bowl haircut was all her work, too.

C'mon Alan, C'mon

Maybe he should settle for screwing white people in foreign toilets if it's that much of a problem?

From the e-zine Crikey, which I subscribed to because the election was coming, and has been well worth the dough.

Just don't ask me about the NewMatilda.

It shouldn't happen to anyone

But as it did happen to one of my absolute faves, Tony Abbott, I don't feel so bad as I otherwise might. I just feel sorry for the people who cleaned it up. Not THAT sorry, because they work for him, but you know what I mean.

PS - If you are not registered with fairfax log in with london.pm as id and password

Election pomes

I noticed that the SMH is soliciting election limericks. The best of a bad bunch was by a bloke called Doug Steley:

There once was a a sniveling coward
who went by the name of John Howard
He tortured the poor
And for an encore
gave tax cuts to those he'd empowered.

But most of them are more like this one, from David Barwick:

We're headed towards Australia's federal polling day
When Aussies will finally get to have their say
About issues, and taxes, and whether they believe
That John's telling the truth, or that Latham can lead
Whoever wins, you'll still have few rights, if gay.

Doesn't that last line scan beautiful?

Now, I have never been a fan of limericks. They are often dumb and almost always irritating. Being a cultural elite type person, I'm much more a fan of haiku. I will start the ball rolling and I encourage others to join me. 5/7/5 syllable format, special points for nature references, points deleted for rhyme. God knows we'll need a new hobby after the election, and bugger me if it'll be knitting.

Tony Abbott. Lawd -
the things that I would forgo
just to box those ears

Peter Costello
your "credibility" staked
look up my black hole

Dennis Shananhan
Do you have a second eye?
I didn't think so

Update: I see I have failed to capture the zeitgeist on this one. Think I'll leave the pomes to Darp from now on.

Mama Spice

I bet Gianna and Helen wouldn't have thought this quiz was so cool if they ended up as:


You're a girl power mommy! You love to be girly,
but you're no pushover. Your kids are learning
that gender differences don't have to mean
gender inequality. You've taken back pink, and
you don't care who knows it!


What kind of a freaky mother are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Dolly is a cracker

Daytime blogging is restricted to toddler nap time, so it's always nice when news of some goverment idiocy breaks at midday.

Dolly Downer has assured our powerful neighbours that we would never make a pre-emptive strike against them. We would only ever make a pre-emptive strike against our powerless neighbours. He said:

"... imagine a situation. It's not likely to be Indonesia or a country which has a strong counter-terrorism capability, but a failed state in the South Pacific, as the Solomons once was and is not now, and terrorists were about to attack and the country involved either didn't want to or in their case couldn't do anything to stop it."

Now, let's see, who'd be a good failed state, nice and local, uumm ... I know!

More at back pages.

In praise of glorious stupidity

I love the Australian tradition of glorious stupidity, our affection for dags and respect for those who step up to the line and give it a red hot bloody go.

So thank you, Reg and friends, for your inspiring and nostalgic new video I saw this morning, "Bring back the biff", a pointed consideration of focused touch and lovingness in the League, to the tune of the Radiators' "Am I ever gunna see your face again?".

Where we used to scream "No way, get fucked, fuck off" in an adolescent frenzy (Extremist behaviour egged on by extremist fuel - $1.99 Passion Pop one week, $50 Dimple the next, depending on financial presence and parental absence), they shouted "Bring back, bring back the biff!." Pity they didn't look like they meant it.

Half wit Nelson

BRENDAN NELSON.

STOP BANGING ON ABOUT "SACRIFICE".

IF THE GOVERNMENT HAS TO COMPENSATE YOU, IT IS NOT A FRICKIN' SACRIFICE.


Thanks, I feel better now.

People like her

"Latham trips on 'them' to reach us" - what a brilliant headline for Miranda Devine's article this morning, the one I was so eagerly awaiting in my last post. No quotation marks around the "us" in that headline, notice - it must be the same "us" as Howard's in 1996, "For all of us".

Miranda does identify "good elements of Labor's education policy - like the extra $1.9 billiion to government schools". However she remains convinced that these good works are destroyed by the "clotted class envy" that will be Latham's downfall.

Well why shouldn't there be a bit of class hatred directed at the kind of upper class twits who write things like:

"We all know Ascham women who won't go out with men who don't drive brand cars or didn't go to a 'brand' school".

(SMH, 25/03/04, archived and only available for a fee)

I don't for a minute think that she agrees with or admires these women, but she's still a moll to think it's a reasonable thing to publish.

We don't all know Ascham women of any description, Miranda, although as it happens I met a couple at Uni. I bet they couldn't tell you where I went to school.

Miranda winds up by saying that Latham has "based his political persona of the 'ladder of opportunity' metaphor, which is all about Us becoming Them, the ones he hates. It is a crucial inconsistency."

Wrong, wrong, wrong. His persona is based on the concept of decency, which is as class ridden as her formulation, but has the virtue of being a value rather than an explanation of a value.

Underhand attacks on master bastions

It is not news that Brendan Nelson is a twerp, and a heartless one at that. But check out his response to the marvellous ALP needs based funding policy for schools, released yesterday:

The Education Minister, Brendan Nelson, accused Labor of persecuting parents who had worked hard and made sacrifices for their children. "As a consequence of Mr Latham's announcement today there are children who will be forced to be removed from the schools which they love and which love them."

Well, I don’t think that’s too big a sacrifice to make for disabled kids in public schools to get some more appropriate funding. Pretty much every parent works hard and makes sacrifices for their kids. They still are unlikely to be able to afford the $9,956 charged by the Woodleigh School in South Frankston, the cheapest of the “Group of 67” schools. (The most expensive is Ascham School in Edgecliff, at $17,142.)

No, the kind of people we're talking about are the kind of people written about in this article:

Pay your money and take your chances. That's the deal for newcomers wanting to enrol in some of Sydney's top private schools, writes Kelly Burke.

Shore can already name its entire junior high class of 2016. It is made up of students yet to take their first steps in the world and delight their parents with the words "dadda" and "ta".

Still making the transition from infancy to toddlerhood, these boys have yet to give their parents many clues as to who they might become: timid or extroverted, quick-witted or a plodder, carefree or anxious.

There is only one certaintly at this early stage. The friendships most of these toddlers will forge
as teenagers - the young men alongside whom they will battle on the rugby field and in the examination room - have already been determined.

If for no other reason, this policy is worth it to see what will spew forth when Miranda Devine starts frothing at the mouth over it.

Note to self:

next time I am 37 weeks pregnant, I must not attempt to wax my own bikini line.

Deb, one of the women in my mother's group, is due to have her second child in two and a half weeks. For some bizarre reason probably explicable on the basis of hormones or misguided nesting, she decided it would be a great idea to have a smart looking downstairs at the birth centre. Like the midwives care, or even appreciate the thought.

Now Deb is an intelligent and sensible woman. Her sister is a beautician so she has all the necessary kit at home. She got it all ready while her two year old slept and then realised that there was a full term infant blocking her view and reach.

Instead of intelligently and sensibly abandoning this endeavour, Deb constructed herself a platform of pillows and cushions on the bed and got a mirror. And prayed the two year old wouldn't wake up. Of course, all this effort proved useless. She burnt herself (ouchies), got wax all over the eiderdown (not noice) and had to give up half way through. She should have spent the $15 bucks in the first place.

Wentworth in the Balance


Not sneakers with a mini-skirt. Not with that hat. Not in the Eastern Suburbs, where if you can't do it in Manolo's you needn't bother. Must try harder.

At least the punters won't be frightened by any green hair.



... and in the beginning was the word

... and the word was something very much like “life”, which is what my name means. Unless you’re into Kabbalah - and how could you be if you’d seen the movie pi? - in which case, my name means I’m fucked. Funnily, it seems that most names leave you a bit fucked, and needing to spend some more money to find out precisely how fucked thou art. I did get a bit of a chortle out of their Madonna definition – apparently her old moniker has been leading her “to place considerable importance upon the material aspect of life”. Well, derr! I knew it had to be something big to justify the change to Esther –“there are artistic, creative abilities in this name that you could express through music or singing, or, in a practical way, through sewing or interior decorating”. We could get very lucky, and she could go nuts for the Florence Broadhurst any minute.

A further alternative of course, is that my name means "Eve", which it does if you know anything much about Greek and Hebrew, or type “zoe eve meaning” into google, which will take you here. (And more about that spooky uroborus some other time.)

This is all a very long winded way of getting to the fact that on the weekend I went to my friend Fred’s wedding, where I saw my first husband for the first time in about four or five years. And I got to meet his new wife, who I just loved. Not only is she warm hearted, interesting and beautiful, she bears a tattoo of the name of her best friend when she was 15 on her left breast. Yep, kids, another Zoe. Same name as their 5 year old’s invisible friend.

The goddess does not pay her debts in money.

Blogger Rage

That little “next blog” button over in the top right of blogspot/blogger sites is a cracker. It reminds me of the Olden Days, pre-toddler, when sometimes you could hang out at night watching Rage on the ABC. I remember the enormous number of crap videos, and that endless waiting until one kyool video came on. It’s a nasty addictive thing, but every now and then you get to see something like Aphex Twin’s “Windowlicker” which will never leave you. Especially if you might have been having a little bit of a marijuana moment at the time.

Still, you never know where you will get to. Sometimes really interesting, if not yet sublime. And there is plenty of the ridiculous. I mean, where does Gloria go from here? Most of the blogs I read are about politics and/or things that crack their writers up. But your own tits?

An update: don't go look at Gloria. "I mean, where does Gloria go from here?" Derr, Zoe, derr. She started with bizarrely sweet if ridiculous pictures of her nipples sticking through home rendered cuts in her Marks & Spencer's bra, but has now decided it's a really good idea to put up a picture of her front bottom. Moral: never rely on the restraint of a self-declared exhibitionist.

Byron without romance

Byron appears to be a new gardening dude around these parts, judging from a couple of signs and the absence of listed phone number. He has recently "fixed up" the front yard of a house around the corner that's just been bought and is now for rent. It is, I tell you, utterly vile.

Viler than Byron's landscaping (and his name, but let's save our fire) is his vehicle. It is an oversized B&S fancier type ute, spotlights, trailer 'n all. Across the front of the bonnet is one of those plasticky crap things with ridiculousness written on it, an uber-bumper sticker. His has a very attractive line drawing of a woman bending down, encircled by what I am guessing is Byron's motto, mantra and epitaph: "Doggy Style".

I was wondering out loud to the mummies who come to Thursday Sanity Sessions in my backyard (I live in the middle, on a bus route, so it's always my place) what kind of aim Byron had in putting his message out there?

He likes to screw doggy style? He thinks he would like to screw doggy style if he ever got to try it, more likely, I said. I agreed with the beautiful and stylish Colette (mama to Magdalena), that it's about his male friends thinking him a legend, not setting out to impress the ladies.

However,the killer blow was delivered by the groovy and slightly mysterious Pam (mama to Stirling and Clyde, and yes, she knows that at present both those names are borne by Canberra Brumby players, and no, of course that has nothing to do with it, you goose. She didn't even find out that Clyde meant "heard from afar" until he was a couple of months old and it was too late).

Anyway, Pam and her husbang Dan were at a service station early one afternoon. They had seen said ute and were as amused as I was. Dan popped in to pay and saw the female occupant of the car. She was purchasing servo porn. With loose change.

Way to go, Byron. Canberra's inner north salutes you.