I am so looking forward to The National’s new album, out in May, called “High Violet”.  They previewed one of the songs from it on US TV last week, and I love this song, “Terrible Love”.  Looks very promising that the new CD will be every bit as good as “Alligator” and “Boxer”.

Also in May, The New Pornographers release their new album, “Together” … judging from the one song off that has been released, “Your Hands (Together)” that sounds promising too.

"Lara Bingle will not be commenting on her personal life,"

Thank fuck for that is all I have to say about that.  Please, please stick to this promise Lara.

How stupid is it that the lead story on the news the last couple of days has been the apparent breaking off of the engagement between Lara Bingle and Australian cricketer Michael Clarke.  Media has even camped outside their Bondi apartment doing live crosses during news programs.

However, I’ve got a feeling that she will eventually talk, once the price offered by one of the media outlets is right.  She’s just too much of a famewhore to resist another moment in the spotlight.

It would seem that Bingle’s career and life had become just too much of a circus for Clarke to tolerate.  The straw that broke the camel’s back looks to have been her decision to sell her story in response to the publication of a nude photo taken of her allegedly by former lover, AFL player Brendan Fevola, in the Womans Day magazine.  While the wise decision would have been for her to lay low, and say very little about it, her decision was to give an exclusive tell all interview about what she felt, how she planned to sue Fevola etc.  She would have enjoyed privacy, come across as the victim of a dickhead like Fevola having taken a nude photo of her and then circulated it around his mates.  End of story – Bingle comes out of it sympathetically, Fevola pathetically.  But being a famewhore desperate to remain in the public eye she had to sell her story to the highest bidder.  Stupid woman!

Actually, I’m suspicious that the nude photos being made available to the magazine and the subsequent interview with the same magazine were all orchestrated by Bingle and her management to gain publicity and hopefully open up some commercial/career opportunities for her.  Hopefully its backfired badly, and she fades quickly into obscurity.  But I don’t hold out much hope of that … someone will figure that they can make money out of her.

Speaking of careers, what actually is she famous for?  Modelling, well yes marginally, but more so isn’t it just for the people she’s been screwing – she seems to have a taste for prominent sportsmen – Michael Clarke, Brendan Fevola, supposedly also footballers Craig Wing, Benji Marshall and Greg Bird (although she denies at least some of them).  She also is said to be friends with some interesting characters – colourful Kings Cross identities (usually code for criminal) and the sons of a deceased alleged Sydney major crime figure.

Wouldn’t surprise also if Clarke’s decision came about because Cricket Australia dropped a few hints about his circus sideshow of a girlfriend not being the sort of image that an Australian captain would want to be presenting (and by inference, ditch her or forget being the next captain).

What about trimming your pubes?  Ever thought of that as something you could do while driving?

Megan Barnes, a 37 year old Florida woman, obviously thought it was something she needed to take care of while driving along.  It was obviously distracting, as she ran up the back of another car while doing it.

Not only that, she was doing this while in the car with her ex-husband on her way to visit her boyfriend (somehow I think there’s got to be trailer parks involved here).    Apparently the ex was steering the car, from the passenger seat, while she was doing her gardening.

Patrol officers say they determined that in addition to this bit of "landscaping" behind the wheel, Barnes was already driving with a suspended license, just one day after she was convicted of driving under the influence.  She was charged with reckless driving, driving with a revoked license, leaving the scene of a crash with injuries, and driving without insurance. Trooper Gary Dunick, describing what Ms. Barnes was thinking, explained,

"She said she was meeting her boyfriend in Key West and wanted to be ready for the visit."

An episode of the ABC TV show “Hungry Beast” generated a bit of controversy this week with a story about the (soft) porn industry’s airbrushing of female genitalia, which gave an unrealistic image of what was “normal”.   Soft porn magazine publishers claimed they were forced to airbrush pictures due to classification rules which deemed explicit depictions of female genitalia to be inappropriate.  So all they tend to show in their pictures is a neat crease – nothing with any poking out or dangly bits.

It is claimed that this in turn influences women who are concerned that their vagina is not “normal”, and the increase in the number of women having plastic surgery on their genitals is largely due to this – labiaplasty is a growth business for cosmetic surgeons, apparently.  Personally I think you’d have to be incredibly vain, insecure or have too much money and time on your hands to want to get this done – no doubt it goes with another useless procedure, anal bleaching.

The show attracted some complaints, although not large numbers.  This could be a product of Australian TV viewers being less prudish than our American counterparts, or maybe simply that hardly anyone actually watches the show.  It could also be that there was plenty of warning before they showed the story.

“Certainly, it contained strong scenes. However, viewers were given clear warnings about the content – one before the show began, and one before the actual segment – and so had ample opportunity to avoid the segment if they felt it might make them uncomfortable.”

said an ABC spokesperson.

Now, I know a lot of my readers come here in search of pussy – so click on the “Hungry Beast” link above for today’s treat.  Don’t say I don’t deliver to my readers.

Now, for something a bit different, but related in a roundabout way, and to highlight the prudishness of Americans in particular, check this out.

A woman in New Jersey made a snow figure based on the famous Venus de Milo statue which is kept at the Louvre in Paris.  However the nude rendition of a female torso, including (shock! horror! oh my god the children might see it!) boobs, was too much for someone.  Said the lady who made the snowman:

"We had a visit from the local police who told us that a neighbour had complained about the statue and we needed to cover it up or knock it down,"

"We didn’t want to have any problem with the police so we covered it up."

Hence, what you see above.

Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong was Ghana’s first Winter Olympian, competing in the mens’ slalom skiing event.   His objective – to finish, and not last.

His result – 47th out of 48 competitors.

Charming!

As one parent said:

"It’s very scary, I mean, these are only 12-year-olds.”

I wonder what the parents of those kids think of it.  Probably couldn’t care less unfortunately.  Davoren Park is a disadvantaged area, and according to a Primary Principals Association spokesman:

"In areas like Davoren Park, unfortunately a lot of parents of students there haven’t been successful at school and don’t see a lot of value in school. There’s not that positive reinforcement about schools as places to go to where you can be successful,"

while a representative of the teachers’ union said this:

"In the recent arbitration case, for example, we’ve been pointing to that that staff are dealing with social problems, not just educational issues. Poverty. Violence. Neglect. All of these things are just part and parcel of a teacher’s daily work,"

I know this has been going on for years but is there anyone who doesn’t think its wrong that teachers spend so much effort trying to deal with social and family problems rather than concentrating on providing the best education for children.  It shouldn’t be their role.

But the problem of the behaviour at this particular school has been dealt with.  According to the Deputy Chief Executive of the Education Department:

"We’ve had a school assembly and spoken to the students again. The whole approach of the school, the students and the school community needs to be focused on appropriate behaviour."

So the kids have been told that chucking bricks at teachers and stealing from them is wrong.  It beggars belief that any kid more than about 3 years old doesn’t intrinsically know this (and I’m probably being harsh on most 3 year olds in this assessment).  What were their parents doing for the 7-12 years that the primary school kids had been their responsibility?  Oh hang on, all you need to be a parent is the capacity to have sex and conceive – no requirement to have even some basic life skills, parenting skills, the economic capacity to provide for them or anything like that.   (and the scary thought is that those poorly equipped to parent children tend to have more of them than people who do have the personal, financial and other resources to do it … so if we continue down the current path things will get worse over time).

Well done!

For sale:  1 American President.  Location:  Shanghai, China.

She’s almost a local, coming from Cooma, NSW, about an hour and a bit down the highway from my home.

Spot the error. 

Still I suppose most of the bogans who get tattooed probably don’t notice bad spelling before defacing their skin with shit like this.