Austrayan Values: a sense of bollocks

I was quite inspired by the Prime Minister's Austraya Day address on history. In fact, I came over all Melleuish.

After reflecting, I decided that our plans to celebrate the beginning of the asian lunar new year in fact were a black armbanded slur on this magnificent country. So we went to the show in Bungendore, a little town just north of Canberra, secure in the knowledge that we were contributing to the continuation of our shared Judeo-Christian British culture. I found it quite enlightening, and the Prime Minister's words sprang unbidden into my head as I wandered.

There is much in American society which I admire, but I have long held the view that the absence of an effective safety net in that country means that too many needy citizens fall by the wayside.


Indeed. No one will flog yer bundy while you're stonkered at 11 am at a country show. And don't you find a sense of balance is often best accomplished when supine?


I said that Australia’s crowning achievement, borne of its egalitarian tradition, was its social cohesion. I still believe that.


And it's true. Everyone hates a frickin' pipe band.


Australians, whatever their background, deserve to be treated with tolerance and with respect.


Except the dog fanciers. They're weird.



What's more, since we're now rid of the oppressive yoke of political correctness, I am free to include this photo solely to point out that there were a large number of midgets hanging around this dog. Three is a large number of midgets to casually encounter, right?


As I’ve said before, as a Government we are willing to meet the Indigenous people more than half way on this road.


And they will not fear us, as we will be bearing cuddly tokens of comfort and esteem.


Within limits, all Australians have the right to express their culture and beliefs and to participate freely in our national life.


Upper class gits can now roam free, dressed as once they would only be in private. Except those in Parliament, who shall continue to wear suits in public.


Nor should it be at the expense of ongoing pride in what are commonly regarded as the values, traditions and accomplishments of the old Australia.


Like that great spirit of enterprise and ingenuity that led some cobber to fashion an Anzac rising sun out of antique sheep drenching equipment, right?


And too often, history, along with other subjects in the humanities, has succumbed to a postmodern culture of relativism where any objective record of achievement is questioned or repudiated.

Here, I begin to falter, fearing that this could endanger the "every entrant wins a prize" philosophy that makes the country show the joy it is.


Because what will happen to vegetable sculpture in an open market?



And if the winner of the 70 years and older category isn't productively filling her time with making Miss Havisham dolls what horrors might befall those idle hands?


But then I remembered - to grasp what I mean when I say that Australia occupies a unique intersection of history, geography, culture and economic circumstance is quite simple. Simply look at what we do.


Simply. Look. In fact I dare you to not stare at this strangely compelling shiny silver elf in early labour.


We have great cause for optimism, if we keep our balance.

Sometimes, that's trickier than you'd think.




Welcome to the Coalition of the Gulling(TM).

Hope springs

There's a lot of whinging about the calibre of ALP candidates, largely because many of them are crap. So I was very sad after the last ACT election that we'd missed out on electing the magnificent Mike Hettinger by 300 or so votes. It took days for the count, and there was much biting of nails and bemoaning that I had only discovered Mike the night before the election, preoccupied as I was with the federal election the week before.

Time passes and you get on with things, of course. But excitingly, ACT Treasurer Ted Quinlan (yes, we have one) has resigned. The way things work in the ACT, all votes that counted for Ted (and only those) get recounted.

Yes! We may yet find ourselves with a Jesuit-educated Soviet-saving greenie peace-loving decorated war veteran rocket scientist romantic in the Assembly. Who has fundraising costumed pirate cruises on International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Join me in sending your good vibes Mike-wards!




















If he wins, I'm buying him a new tie to celebrate.

All over including the shouting

Results are up in the Australian Blog Awards, and congratulations to all the winners.

Email of the day

I wonder what Janette's thinking?

New Parliamentary Secretary for Pissing from Inside the Tent

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and for Water Policy holding hands with the Prime Minister. I didn't even have to make that up.

The Reshuffle Bingo book is now running, comrades. Even money that Brendan Nelson floats the idea of compulsory national service within the next two years. Suggestions for other interesting wagers are solicited. The new Ministry list is available for inspiration here.

For namesakes

By popular demand*, a report of the latest goings on in the menagerie.

Firstly, Miss Elizabeth Bennet has been Sent To The Country. She had gone horribly broody, which was a pain because she kept sitting in the box when the others were trying to lay. The big boofers just layed on top of her, but the lowest in the pecking order, Miss Ginger Rogers, got horribly hen-pecked.

So it was orf to the country for the uncharacteristcally nasty Miss Bennet. She's gone to Mr Darcy's chook pen, believe it or not, but appears to have hooked up with Colonel Fitzwilliam instead. Here's a picture of them together. Poor Lizzie.



Could be worse. Darcy is a Plymouth, and about two and half times the size of Fitzwilliam.


Secondly, and more cheerfully, we have rescued a poor lost pusscat from the RSPCA. Kids, meet Mischa.




Mishca likes the fishies. A lot. It's just as well they're in water.



According to my name origin book, Mischa is a diminuitive of Michael and thus means "Who is like God?" I think we've found a much more apt name for her than we did for poor Lizzie.


* yes, really.

Creative Genius

I drove past a bus on the way to work and saw a huge ad for "Ease a Cold", aka uppers for people with a sniffle. It had a sluggish tortoise being roundly beaten by an athletic bunny, and the tag line "We're the Hare!"

Have another line, dudes. The hare lost.

Things What I Have Read In Garbage Magazines

Yes, it's a new series! lately Mum has taken to giving me things and saying "there has to be a blog post in that", which is very kind, don't you think? (I am enormously glad that poor old Mum wouldn't even know how to turn a computer on, btw, but she knows blogging makes me happy and she likes that. Love you too, Mum.)

Anyhoo, Mum has made a new friend on her morning constitutional. Her friend lives next door to a newsagent who rips the cover off unsold magazines and gives them to her (I think they only need send the cover back for the sale-or-return thingo). So I have acquired a pile of quality magazines that are totally without merit of any kind, except insofar as they provide blogfodder.

Our first entry is from the August 2005 Girlfriend, tagline "Australia's Best Girls Mag". Jeez the others must be crap. There are almost no articles, just lots of scraps of text in little boxes. Also there is much pink. The best section is called "How Embarrassment" and features humiliating anecdotes allegedly penned by teenyboppers desperate to win an outfit from one of those shops that makes all their clothes a size 4.

My second fave (and I only made up the italicised bits):

Dropped for droppings, from Poo Head of Wangaratta

My crush and I were going on a date when we decided to find a spot at the park. As we were sitting down, an extremely large bird (an albatross?) flew past, leaving its markings on my face. My crush was disgusted and left me alone in the park covered in poo (well, who's to say that wasn't his intention in the first place?)

Rather good, I thought, but no match for:

Pooper Scooper, from Grotty of Curtin

I was over at my BF's house and we were talking about taking our relationship (heh) to the next level. I was down to my knickers (which I agree makes the conversation really flow) when all of a sudden they felt wet and heavy. I'd just experienced a bad case of diahorrea and some of it landed on his bed. I quickly scooped it up with my hand and apologised. Needless to say we never took our relationship to the next level. (which is good, isn't it, because I think we'd all agree that coprophilia is really one step too far until you're a proper grown-up. Who does their own washing.)

Coming soon: Wild Deer and Hunting Adventures, Spring 2005

It's a very nice thing to do

to buy your little boy some goldfishies. However it is wise to keep an eye on him for a few days, particularly if his mate comes over and they disappear for a suspicious length of time and you can hear none of the usual hilarity/tragedy.

This is what a fish tank looks like just after an entire container of fish food has been tipped in it by two eager three year olds:


1 fishie, 1 snail down. 2 fishies, 1 snail with an uncertain prognosis.

Blog Awards

This year's nominees list is up at Collective Apathy, who are hosting for Vlado of Keks. Careful, you can lose hours of your life before you even notice they've flown by.

Unlike those other ones a while ago, these ones are (a) not a marketing exercise for a blog hosting company and (b) you don't win ten grand, you win the infinitely preferable nice warm feeling inside(TM).

Meme-ing on a sunny afternoon

Pavlov's Cat has tagged me with a "Meme of Fours". Lovely afternoon time waster, bless you PC.

Four jobs you've had in your life:

Prosecutor of naughty doctors and nurses. That was a VERY good job.
ESL teacher.
Senior Investigation Officer.
Report writer at the Police Integrity Commission. I have to kill you now I've told you that. Sorry.

Four movies you could watch over and over:

Withnail & I
Nashville (or any other Robert Altman film)
Matewan (or many other films John Sayles has had a hand in. Not "Piranha" though. Once was enough for Piranha.)
Clueless

Four places you've lived:

Sao Jose dos Campos in Brazil.
New Farm in Brisbane.
Enmore in Sydney.
Downer in Canberra. Heh.

Four TV shows you love to watch:

The Insiders
Star Trek - TNG, of course
Big Brother. Yes, really, don't be tiresome about it.
Random ABC cooking shows.

Four places you've been on holiday:

New York
Uluru
Las Vegas
Mimosa Rocks National Park

Four websites you visit daily:

Gmail
Bloglines
Lavatory Rodeo
ABC politics - which today makes me think about why it may have been that Craig Emerson couldn't keep a hold of Julia Gillard. Check the Trumptastic do:














I don't know that I could wake up to that every morning either.

Four of your favorite foods:

White peaches
All leafy green things
Panfried butterflied sardines with lemon and garlic
Tallabung pork (I picked up a whopping great shoulder of it at the Farmer's Market this morning. Happy Zoe.)

Four places you'd rather be:

In bed.
At the beach.
In the bush.
With old friends who live a long way away.

Four Play:

Ampersand Duck
Amanda
Coz
and Fyodor the Blogless

Summernots

My darling Pammy and I had planned to take our three year olds to Summernats this year, but she rooned that plan by cruelly moving to Brisbane. *sniff*

Undeterred, I hatched a scheme to pop my Summernats cherry today with my mate Ross. We had planned to make an anthropological excursion but as he disappeared out our front door with a scary gleam in his eye on Friday night and hasn't been heard from since I think I will wait 'til next year and go on the Saturday - Sunday's events are mostly presentations, although we did hear some roaring late this morning (it's held about one and a half k from our place).

There's plenty of fun to be had outside the compound of course, driving around behind cars like this one:


with a couple of nice looking kids in the backseat. Wonder what they think it means?

It's also been tops spotting the funnies, like the crappy old car with half a dozen toilet rolls covered in foil stuck on the bonnet, or the slightly flasher one with "Not for sale" and a mobile number written on the window.

Last night Sage had a sleepover at my Aunty Tiser's, so we rode our pushies down Northbourne Avenue just as the cruising hotted up. I highly recommend this, as it provides an opportunity to follow particularly groovy cars into hotel parking lots, befriend the charming owners and be invited to HAVE SITS IN THEIR COOL CARS!!! This one's numberplate is "PUBCAR". Give 'em a wave for me if you pass by.



Then we rode to Canberra Hoon Central, aka Braddon. We went to Debacle, and scored a prime kerbside table. We ate yummy seafood pizza and drank giant Erdinger beers and tekillya and got to enjoy the parade without the bosoms rampant. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Here are some entertaining, if not quite rampant, bosoms kindly offered for photography:



I tried to take a picture of the excited baby hanging out the window of a parked car, eyes huge, but it was too dark. However there were many beautiful and entertaining vehicles, and numberplates. Owy's favourite was this one:



This one I found a bit unsettling. Personally I'd want something a bit flashier than a Commodore for that particular deal:



Glen Fuller has posted some thoughts and some triffic photos too.

For the dedicated, the official site photos are here.

The bogans are coming! The bogans are coming!

I used to whinge about Summernats, but I saw the error of my ways and came to utterly heart it. One sleep to go, and the engines are already throbbing.

On a somewhat tangential point, they say you can't tell whether an adult was breastfed or artificially fed just by looking at them, but I'm not so sure. What do you think?



Update: if you're thinking of driving into Canberra from the north tonight, you'd probably want to know that there's about 30 cops pulling every single car off the highway for tough-but-fair looks, random hoon checks and general demonstrations of territorial supremacy. A 15 year old beige Camry sedan with local plates seems to get you waved through.