When crustaceans attack!

Bump

2005-05-02T21:26:00.000+11:00

Do the hustle.

What are you doing?

2005-01-13T20:12:00.000+10:00

Go to the new blog at once!

The crustacean is dead. Long live the crustacean!

2004-12-14T22:33:00.000+10:00

To live is to change, to stop to die. The natural world rises and falls in cycles. Just as the hermit crab must move to a larger shell when he gets a fat arse so too must I move to, er, a different blog host.

I’ve accepted the kind offer of Mark at donotuselifts to be hosted on his blog-host-server-thingy and be schooled in the arcane ways of non-blogspot blogging. Mark has already been voted Canberra ex-teenager of the year and is a veritable Black Mountain Tower of Canberra bloggers. (He also won the ‘fresh face of the retail industry’ award – liquor & tobacco division, 2002, 2003 and 2004. He’s a champ.)

The new URL will be crustaceans.donotuselifts.net but this blogspot site will be maintained for some time in the delicate transition phase. What can you expect? Plenty more of the same sporadic half-baked musings and anecdotes that go nowhere, that’s what!

Alas, you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs (unless you happen to like omelettes with a high ‘crunch-factor’). While I can salvage my old posts, I can’t import comments from ordinary people like YOU who make it all worthwhile. But they’ll still be around on blogspot.

But I’d appreciate it if those of you who link to me could update their links in due course. Those of you who don’t link to me (New York Times, the Economist, I’m looking at you) well then maybe you should get with the program…

Hope to see you at the new digs…

Tokyo crustacean

2004-12-12T22:23:00.000+10:00

When I was in Tokyo last week (sorry, elsewhere, there’s no other way to say it) I wandered around with a borrowed digital camera trying to take the kind of hurried random snaps that will capture forever the soul of a complex and exotic nation.

Alas, I’m a crappy photographer and I have to say I feel self-consious taking photographs in public, especially if those photographs are of strangers.

So after a few shitty attempts at Tokyo night life:

And a crappy portrait of the author taken by a colleague (a little out-of-focus, I normally look better than this):

I decided to give up and fall back on that old standard: funny signs made by people who don’t speak proper English! as well as other vaguely amusing signs. Signs are easy. They don’t move, they don’t look at you accusingly and they don’t require any aesthetic input.

So as I shopped, I snapped. And here are the oh-so-amusing results.

Japan has been plagued by r’n’b and hip-hop created by robots. At last, there is a remedy:

A delightful pair of stickers on a Department store lift that demonstrates to Japanese and foreigners alike that when the doors close crustaceans attack!

Ever hunted for a spare key? Wondered where it went? Wonder no longer… (this Department store sign also explains soil erosion).

And from the tee-hee-hee department:

From a sign on a hotel in the Shibuya district (if you get any rest, you’re not doing it right):

I’m glad to say that it took me a while but I finally found Japan’s dark side beneath all the commercial glitz:

Yes, it was heady few days of profound cultural exchange. I like to think that when I flew out of Narita, both Japan and I were richer for the experience…

Homeless in Hokkaido

2004-12-08T20:07:00.000+10:00

In Tokyo last week, I was returning by metro from a frenzied but largely unsuccessful shopping trip in Shibuya when another Westerner entered my train compartment. He looked like Santa Claus in a lumberjack outfit, with a great beard stretching to the middle of his chest and kindly blue eyes.

‘You look familiar,’ he said as he sat next to me, which immediately marked him as either a jocular fellow whitey in a sea of Japanese or a common or garden public transport full bull goose looney. And he turned out to be a little of both.

Once seated, he immediately began removing clothes, a process which continued for most of the journey, so many layers was he wearing.

‘Where are you from?’ He asked.

‘Australia.’

‘Oh, I’ve heard that’s a great place. But a hard to place to retire in. Do you think they’d let someone like me move there?’

I said I didn’t know. But that wasn’t what I was thinking. He then said something about immigration to Australia and black people which I didn’t quite catch. I couldn’t be sure it was racist but I felt myself tense. Regular train loonies are amusing as long as you don’t have a three-hour journey but racist camel-jobs* are no one’s idea of a good time.

He asked me if Australia had any troops in Iraq. I said that we did but he wanted to know if they were actually shooting or just building bridges. It seemed somehow important to me that he not confuse us with the kindly Czechs, Koreans or whomever, who are solely there to dig latrines and get shot while dispensing oral hygiene leaflets.

‘No, we were there for the actual war,’ I said. And he seemed doubtful of this, miming the shooting of a rifle to make sure I understood. I assured him Australia had been in Iraq for the combat phase (as opposed to the current ‘non-combat phase’) but I don’t think he believed me. He probably thought there are only two countries, other than Iraq, dumb enough to have been there from the start.

He asked me why I was in Japan and I did something I don’t normally do with camel-jobs: I lied through my teeth. I knew the truth about my job would just cause more and more questions so I told him I was there for a wedding.

‘Oh I’m a protestant minister,’ he said, ‘I’ve done two weddings this week already.’ I imagine he does look like the Japanese ideal of a godly Christian priest.

I had my story roughly sketched out but he side-tracked back to war, saying that Australia had been there in Vietnam, now that he recalled. He told me an anecdote about having been around an Australian infantry unit who were stuck without their supplies and he tried to get them into an American mess tent for a feed. He talked them past the soldier on the door – an, er, black soldier – only to be challenged inside by a cook, to whom he replied: ‘I reckon we need all the men we got to do the fighting. You want to go up country to fight? Neither do I. But these men will. So let ‘em have a meal.’ Apparently this did the job.

Then he started talking about a friend who had been sleeping in Ueno park (which is the park around all the Tokyo art galleries and museums). And I was suddenly now sure that he himself was homeless, looking down at his enormous cheap plastic bag and his layers of clothing.

He showed me a photograph of his friend, who was a Japanese man with a long black beard lying on the foothpath. Inexplicably, the old man I was talking to also featured in this photograph, leaning into the frame and holding a banana in front of his friend’s grinning face. Go figure.

He never actually said he was homeless but he said that a hotel cost ‘two hundred Australian dollars’ a night and he could think of a lot better things to do with two hundred dollars than a bed for a night.

We parted a Ginza station; he to change trains and me to take my sad purchases back to my three hundred dollar a night hotel.

(* ‘Camel-job’ is a term invented by British comedian Jasper Carrot to refer to public transport loonies (as in the person sitting on his own, rocking gently, and saying ‘camel camel camel’ over and over) and is not to be confused with a racist epithet for a person of arabian origin.)

Heirophants & grilled swordfish cutlets

2004-12-06T20:22:00.000+10:00

The Great Canberra Blogger Picnic was abruptly changed from the botanic gardens to a private home – allegedly because of the weather. But it wasn't raining and it didn’t rain at all that day.

I had to check if I had the address right because when I pulled up to the ‘house’ it turned out to be a disused sardine cannery on the edge of a light industrial suburb in Canberra’s north.

I knocked three times and, just as I was about to leave, the roll-a-door on an adjacent building began to open slowly and noisily – like the sound of a robot being disemboweled in a snuff film for engineers.

Inside, all was dark except for one flickering fluorescent light. I called out as I warily entered.

‘Hello? Hello? Zoe?’

Only when I got to the other end of the warehouse, which still stank of the mechanised slaughter of a generation of tiny fish, did I hear another sound -- the sound of the door closing again. I hesitated for a moment before sprinting back to the entrance.

Too late. One hand flapped stupidly for a moment at the airy freedom on the other side but then I was trapped.

‘Hello?’ I called again, somewhat more nervously. ‘Zoe?’

Slowly, light after flickering light filled the room and a shape appeared on a steel balcony bolted to one water-stained wall.

‘Are you…Zoe?’ I asked, shielding my eyes from the glare with one hand. I approached until I could see the figure more clearly. It was a large dwarf – and by that I mean an obese dwarf, straining at the fabric of the only garment it was wearing, a hessian sack bearing the image of a single grey fish. The dwarf was wearing eye-shadow and appeared to petting a cat that looked for all the world like a shaved ferret. I peered more closely and discovered that it was in fact a shaved ferret.

‘I am Zoe.’ It said, in a voice like distant thunder recorded on a toy microphone underwater.

‘Er, you’re Zoe? From crazybrave? Ah, OK. So is, uh, Kay, here?’

‘I am Kay,’ it said.

‘Uh, OK. Carolinkus? Rachel? Are they here?’

‘They are here,’ the dwarf said, pointing to its forehead with a long discoloured bone which it produced from underneath the ferret. ‘I am Carolinkus. And I am Rachel.’

‘Um, OK, mate, look, I’ll just be going now.’ I started to back away, unsure of how I could make my escape.

‘I am everyone you are seeking. Everyone,’ it said, with a piercing stare. ‘And I am you!’ It shrieked, and with a sudden movement which sent the ferret flying through the air in my direction, it pulled a crab’s pincer from a hole within the sack. I screamed as it pointed the pincer at me and ran back to the roll-a-door.

As the dwarf howled with laughter, the ferret scampering at its feet, I pulled savagely at a chain on the door until I had opened it just enough to slide out.

I stood outside gasping at the fresh air, hugging my sides. And then from inside my ribcage there was a raucous new sound, stabbing at my heart.

My mobile phone. Ringing. And vibrating.

It was Zoe, with an update. Right address, wrong suburb. I hate it when that happens.

So we had the Great Canberra Blogger Picnic. And it was great and there were bloggers there, as well as blogger-nippers and blogger-bits-on-the-side. A fun time was had by all. Yay!

[* This story is obviously a work of fiction because I don’t own a mobile phone. And yes I was stuck for a title.]

Lost in transubstantiation

2004-11-30T20:10:00.000+10:00

Just days after promising a resurgence in crustaceanist blogging, I’m back to announce another hiatus. I’m going to Japan tomorrow and will be back on Sunday morning. Just in time for the great Canberra blogger picnic.

But please... let no one else say: 'hey, it will be just like that movie...with you know, that funny guy, and that girl. And they're, you know, lost.'

----------------------------------

Here’s a question picking up on a few blog posts of late: is Canberra bloggery increasing or does it just seem that way. Are we on the egde of a new golden age of prosperity?

Also, let me nominate Mark as Canberra’s loveliest blogger.

Sayonara.

By the light of a silvery moonbase

2004-11-28T21:09:00.000+10:00

I’m a bit of a fan of B-grade horror and SF films. The other night I noticed that channel nine was screening a film called Moonbase at 2:30 am so I strolled on over to IMDB to see if it was worth taping.

It turns out to be your basic tale of a disgraced astronaut seeking redemption in charge of an obscure moonbase waste disposal unit which is about to be taken over by a handful of homicidal escaped convicts.

The comments about this film aren’t kind. From one commenter, ‘rsoonsa’:

‘The plot involves an escape of life sentenced prisoners from a space station penal colony to a waste landfill upon our moon and their various attempts to obtain passage back to Earth, with some few capable players present who are execrably directed by first-timer Paolo Mazzucato, whose production team wastes effort upon such as holographic pornography while ignoring a pressing and basic requirement for the creation of states of suspense and of impetus.’

Which is all good fun until you see a later comment entitled ‘A note from the director...’. Yes, Mr Mazzucato himself weighs in:

“IMDB: While the following is not exactly a review, I think "equal time" is warranted when you do post a review that is so flawed. Your consideration is appreciated.

Regarding rsoonsa's "critique":

I suppose if one chooses to work in the sewer of low- budget production he should not take offense when his efforts are referred to as excrement. And perhaps you are correct in opining that with "essentially no budget... special effects of space opera warfare (will) appear only clownish." It might have been nobler, on my part, if when handed the script for "Moonbase" and asked if I wanted to direct the film, I had flatly refused on the grounds of the implausibility of the story and the impossibility of filming it for the meager budget allotted. But in the real world, those who seek to create something, anything, have to seize the opportunities afforded to them and do their best within the parameters set by the given project”

Ouch!

He then proceeds to offer paragraph after paragraph of defence of the allegedly implausible science behind ‘Moonbase’, including the fact that all exterior shots in space should be silent, the possibility of the establishment of an orbiting station at a stable point within the moon's orbit equidistant from the Earth and the moon, and the ‘problem of Earth's accumulation of garbage and the proposition that some future government might consider dumping refuse in a lunar crater out of view on the moon's far side.’

Jeez, lighten up, dude.

Still, I feel for Mr Mazzucato. ‘Moonbase’ is indeed his only credit as director (alongside a scattering of writing, art direction and ‘miscellaneous crew’ credits). And that was released in 1998; he hasn’t directed anything since then (in fact, he doesn’t seem to have worked at all since 1999).

He evidently invests something of himself in his film career and the products of his labour, only to see some random internet dude who happens to catch his one and only movie on late-night cable slam it into oblivion.

As he says: ‘You don't have to like it, I just wish you didn't get so much glee from tearing it down in your own "execrable" fashion.’

That’s the internet for you: recording what would otherwise have been private thoughts and feelings permanently so that somewhere, somehow, someone will be hurt by them.

I give the final word to my man, Paolo, a man who tried hard to tread the fine line between art and the commercial dictates of the motion picture industry to produce a little cinematic gem that might stand the test of time:

“Now, regarding your objection to the holographic stripper...well, okay. Let's just say sometimes the people who have to sell the end product request a little skin. And as my producer explained to me: It's the golden rule; He who has the gold, makes the rules. In my defense I will point out though, that I reworked that story point and the climax in Act 3 so that the holographic nudity was not entirely gratuitous.”

Well, that’s alright then…

(And it was pretty execrable by the way...)

Nick is winner, loved

2004-11-27T21:49:00.000+10:00

‘Nick is winner, loved, generous wise’ is how my novelty personalised socks – the pride of the South-East Asian garment manufacturing industry – describe me. Oftentimes this boast from my feet is an idle one.

But tonight it just happens to be true. I am winner, loved. For I have completed by nanowrimo novel two days ahead of schedule (why I rushed to complete it early is a hoary tale for another blogpost.) Suffice to say, I’m great.

That’s right, I have pumped out a 50,000 word novel in the last 28 days. (Actually it’s 50,079 words. And funnily enough I have more or less tied off all plot threads in the novel and have come to a reasonably satisfying conclusion – which is either evidence of the brutal Soviet-style efficiency of my writing or padding in the extreme.)

For those who want to congratulate me, I say: go right ahead.

For those who want to ask me: what it’s about, this novel of yours, I say: aw jeez, I hate that question.

For those who want to ask me: can I read it, I say: aw jeez, I guess so. The proprietor however accepts no liability for losses or damage incurred.

And finally, for those who want to ask me: is it any good, I say: see the answer to the third question. Then you’ll probably know more than I do.

Your regular crustacean blogging will shortly be resumed.

Bastard poms landed us on the wrong beach!

2004-11-21T19:16:00.000+10:00

Jack: What are your synapses?
Archy: Springs. Steel springs.
Jack: What are they going to do?
Archy: Hurl me down the word-count.
Jack: How fast can you write?
Archy: As fast as a leopard.
Jack: How fast are you going to write?
Archy: As fast as a leopard.
Jack: Then lets see you do it.

33 000 words down, 17 000 left to do in eight days including today (three and a half hours left!). I have to finish on the 28th rather than the more traditional end-of-the-month marker, the 30th, because I'm off to Japan for work on the 30th and I need the 29th to get ready.

So the next 8 days will see me charging the Turkish machine-gun nests of my own imagination in a rematch of Gallipoli. This time, it's personal...

This has been your official nanowrimo update.

Taste my desperation. It doesn’t taste like strawberry icecream

2004-11-15T21:31:00.000+10:00

Well, this is the end of week two of the nanowrimo rock festival in my brain and I’m sitting pretty (or as James Thurber would have it, in the catbird seat, God bless you high school English) on just over 25 000 words. Which is exactly on schedule for those of you without calculators.

But there’s a storm cloud on the horizon (see! I am a writer! Only a true original talent could have compared an impending writer’s block to a black wall of bad weather. It’s never been done before.)

The kind folks at nanowrimo HQ pop out a weekly pep talk. Here is how they describe first day of week two:

“If there were a zodiac sign for each cycle of the noveling escapade, Week One would undoubtedly be a magnificent galleon at full sail. Week Three would be a road-tested marathon runner, smiling as she catches her second wind. And Week Four would be a lone figure silhouetted against the setting sun, arms raised in triumph.

Unfortunately, Week Two would be represented by a pack of rabid weasels hurling themselves from the treetops onto a group of screaming campers below.

[…]
Because Week Two is when you'll likely begin having some second thoughts about your participation in NaNoWriMo. It's the point when the effects of sleep-deprivation, mind-wearying creative output, and a shortage of leisure time will combine to create the infamous Week Two Wall.”

Actually, the week two wall was made of foam and tasted like mango as far as I was concerned. (Though I love the weasels metaphor and will steal it at some point in the future.)

And here’s how the muthas describe week three:

“You just spent two weeks paying your noveling dues. And Week Three is when payback begins.

And how! This week, the whole thing gets easier. The words will come more fluidly, and your characters will finally start pulling their own weight, solving plot dilemmas and spicy personal dramas in surprisingly readable ways.”

Trust me to be contrary and counter-cyclical (how I love that word – it’d be worth doing a bachelor’s degree in economics just to be able to use that word every day) but I’m starting to hurt right now.

Tonight’s quota is no playful monkey slapped off its perch. It’s a 200kg mountain gorilla (much like the enourmous silver-backed male we saw in Melbourne Zoo three weeks ago about which the Dude said to me: Gettit!’).

And it’s playing knucklebones with my kidneys and pancreas.

So, in the interests of teaching the quota primate who’s top of the evolution tree, I beg your assistance.

Insert plot developments in the comments box and I SWEAR* I’ll use them.

*offer not valid in conjunction with any other offer or in South Australia or if I don’t actually feel like it or if your idea is really crap.

The loneliness of the long-distance punner

2004-11-10T22:06:00.000+10:00

I have nothing to declare but my genius and a few soft apples which may or may not be harbouring fruit-fly. Also known as drosophilia, which sounds like a nice name for a girl if you're so inclined.

Well, it's 11:09 pm and I still have 500 words to write before the quota monkey gets off my back and takes a quick nap until 12:00 am when he gets up and flings faeces once more at my tiny screen. Curse you quota monkey, why can't you be more like those freaking bonobos?

Yes, this is a nanowrimo post. My word count stands at 18 222 (believe me, I know because I hit that word count function more often than I press the space bar.)

On the good news front, I rediscovered Andy's CD from the great Canberra blogger CD swap. It was in the car, not in the stolen bag. Yay! It really is a fine compilation. Pulp's 'Babies' may be one of the finest tracks written by a skinny Englishman with bad teeth (and there are plenty of those).

OK, quota monkey, we do one more round. This time you my bitch.

Crime doesn't pay (very well and there's no super plan)

2004-11-07T21:08:00.000+10:00

Last night we were burgled. I went to bed at about 1:30 am, woke briefly at about 2:30 thinking that I’d heard a noise, listened for a moment then went back to sleep. (In the past, I’ve got up upon hearing strange noises. Last night I didn’t – chiefly because I thought the noise was outside.)

In the morning, Wifely found that the burglar had taken things from the empty bedroom he entered and from the hallway, before leaving. He (presumably it’s a he) didn’t venture any further into the house.

At first we thought nothing of significance had been taken, only to find that my wallet had gone, along with my bag which contains my MP3 player (including the only two CDs I’ve received from the great Canberra blogger CD swap – the other two are, shall we say a little tardy). Bummer!

When the police arrived, Wifely asked if it would have been better if somebody had got up when the burglar was in the house. Immediately and in unison, the two young cops said: ‘Yes.’

Wifely said: ‘So if you disturb them while they’re still here, then they’ll bolt, will they?’

One young cop: ‘Generally, generally, yeah. Sometimes you’ll get a nutcase.’

My humble view is that the police may need to re-think their automatic support for the ‘get up and interrupt a burglar’ strategy. Just saying, that’s all.

Later that afternoon, I got a sudden jones to get into the novel I started reading two days ago. (The Da Vinci Code -- no snobbery please, it was a birthday gift from an in-law and I'm contractually obliged to read it). I realised it was in my bag with my MP3 player for bus-trip distraction. Bummer again.

Later still, I’m working on my nanowrimo novel when my mind turns to the two notebooks with my scribbed ideas in them. The novel is at about 13 000 words after almost a week and I’m starting to stuggle a little. A fresh idea injection could be just the thing. Guess where the two notebooks were? The insurance company can reimburse me for the $5 cost of the notebooks but they can’t replace the ink.

This is what pisses me off most about crime like this. The burglar got away with a small amount of cash (about $40) and an MP3 player that’s probably worth about $100 at the back of a pub. But the cost to the victim in terms of psychological distress (a criminal walked through our house while me, Wifely and the Dude were sleeping!), of irritation (replacing all the plastic cards and other emblems of modern life in my wallet) and of genuine loss (of things like the notebooks) is enormous.

Mr Burglar, if you read Canberra blogs in between hits of smack: mate, you’re a jerk.

Southern fried electoral chicken

2004-11-06T01:29:00.000+10:00

Something that I’m surprised I haven’t read in connection with the Kerry loss in the US presidential election is that once again a Northern Democrat has failed in his bid for the Whitehouse. The last Northerner to occupy the White House, from Massachusetts no less, was Kennedy. Johnson (Texas) succeeded him and won in 1964 but did not contest the 1968 election. Carter (Georgia) won in 1976 and Clinton (Arkansas) in 1992 and 1996.

For the Democrats, that’s just 4 victories in 40 years, and all Southerners.

Gore, a kind of Southerner from Tennessee kind of lost in 2000, though he won the popular vote. The parade of losers before him:

Michael Dukakis (1988, Massacusetts)
Walter Mondale (1984, Minnesota, hammered 525 – 13 by Reagan)
George McGovernn (1972, South Dakota, hammered 520 – 17 by Nixon)
Hubert Humphrey (1968, Minnesota).

The simple message here is Democrats don’t win much and Democrat Northerners (after Kennedy) don’t win at all. And for God’s sake give Massachusetts and Minnesota a miss next time.

Everyone is wise in retrospect but maybe the best pick would have been smooth-talking Southerner John Edwards, despite his inexperience. Give him the nod in 2008 (probably against McCain or Jeb Bush), make sure he uses the word ‘God’ a lot and he may be in with a chance…

Post with no name

2004-11-03T19:51:00.000+10:00

OK, blogspot, now you're just making me look stupid. Aren't you? Feel better about yourself, do you, to lay somebody else low....?

Curse you, blogspot and President Bush, villains both

2004-11-03T19:38:00.000+10:00

I have no mouth and I must scream.

I have no mouth because blogspot just erased my freaking US election post. After many days of trekking across a vast desert on a horse with no name to find ink for my quill to scrawl my disbelief at the US election result, a blogspot shaped tornado swept over me and sped off into the distance, taking my hastily penned scroll with it.

It was a nice little post which featured tortured extended metaphors about pigeons, pendulums and sunbeds (I swear!) but it’s gone now. The horse read it and liked it but he has no name.

Pigeons, Pendulums and Sunbeds (Bush is returned)

2004-11-03T19:14:00.000+10:00

Two words: speech & less.

I have to say, I didn't see that coming. I was convinced that Kerry would win and those freaking exit polls -- playthings of the devil -- seemed to confirm it.

It's possible that Kerry might still finesse his way through Ohio and across the line but it doesn't look good.

Back in the bad old days when a Kerry victory was not inevitable (and way before those bad old days returned on November 2), I was thinking that a Bush re-election might not be such a bad thing: that Bush's pigeons, warped, stinking things that can't fly straight, would come home to roost for him and result in the destruction of the Bush/Rove/Delay wing of the Republican Party (and that electing Kerry might just have brought those same stinking pigeons winging their way to him in the same way Kennedy's Vietnam pigeons shat on Johnson).

But, jeez, how much self-destruction can one blogger foresee? Barely have I come from predicting that the Coalition in Australia will destroy itself now that it faces no native predators, when I find myself having nought to take comfort in but Bush's theoretical groundward trajectory.

All self-destruction all the time, here at Crustaceans...

But I do believe in this, I think. Everything comes in cycles. Pendulums swing and then they swing back. Conservatism is enjoying its moment in the sun while liberal types cower in the shadows, dreaming of sunbeds and sangria. But it won't stay that way forever. And the pendulum does not begin swinging back until it has reached the furtherest point of its swing.

Enjoy your poolside sunbed, President Bush, because even now a pigeon of your own making is headed your way with a pendulum in its beak. Or something.

In your face, blank screen!

2004-11-02T22:51:00.000+10:00

My word count for nanowrimo is now a tasty 5,005. This means that I’ve done 10% of my ‘novel’ in just two days.

If I can keep this up, I’ll be able to offer up the biggest piece of crap the world has ever seen in just nine more days!

Blogging will be light for the rest of November as a consequence….

Coalition self-destruction watch, part II

2004-10-31T19:46:00.000+10:00

In an earlier and highly perceptive post: Bad news for the Liberals: they control the House and the Senate... I offered the view that the Coalition would find control over the Senate less than fulfilling, mainly due to the fact that it would allow internal divisions to come to the fore.

And barely had the electrons dried on the AEC’s computerised election score card when this was reported:

While the Government will from July 1 next year no longer be forced to
negotiate with minor parties to pass legislation, newly elected Queensland Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce declared he wanted public funding for abortions stopped and restrictions on the market share of retail giants Woolworths and Coles Myer in return for his controlling vote.

The demands come on top of warnings from Mr Joyce and two of his four other Senate Nationals colleagues that Telstra service levels in the bush were not yet up to scratch and could stand in the way of the full sale of the telecommunications giant.

Mr Joyce, who with Liberal Russell Trood snared the last two Queensland spots in the declaration of the poll yesterday, insisted he was not obliged to toe the Coalition line.

’I will be a senator for the Queensland National Party first and foremost and it's the policies of the Queensland Nationals that I'll support,’ Mr Joyce said.

Jeez, the guy isn’t taking his seat for 8 months and is already laying down (politically very difficult) demands.

Nevermind the fact that Joyce is only part of a fourth-term governing coalition because of the Prime Minister’s amazing political acumen (love him or hate him, you’ve got to admit, he knows his stuff), he apparently believes that being the 39th confirmed Coalition Senator entitles him to behave like a bizarro world Bob Brown.

Can civil war and a breakdown of the rule of law be far away?

One blade of grass lies, the other tells the truth

2004-10-31T01:08:00.000+11:00

This morning I went to get petrol for the lawn mower (which doesn’t run on love, alas). The cashier dude engaged me in cashier dude banter as we waited for the massive apparatus of financial exchange to let us know that my electrons were sufficient payment for his employer’s petroleum.

Cashier dude: doing some lawn mowing, are you?

Me: yes, gotta be done.

CD: It’s always the way. Lovely day for it.

Me: well, I started yesterday and then ran out of petrol.

CD: it’s always the way, isn’t it?

Me: yes.

[Pause]

CD: so what’s your tip for the Melbourne Cup?

Me: I don’t really know the names of the horses.

CD: not into gambling?

Me: well, I only really get into it on Tuesday.

CD: it’s always the way, isn’t it?

Me: yes.

I imagine that when cashier dude got to work that morning he was given a cash float for the till and an envelope containing the catch-phrase of the day. Sunday’s will be: ‘you wouldn’t read about it’ and on Monday: ‘as you do.’

Alternatively, he moonlights as a zen master. ‘It was always this way, grasshopper, and always shall be so.’

It wasn’t always this way, you know. It used to be different. But not anymore.

Segue!

Later that day, I was actually mowing the lawn. As I vroomed along the side of my property, I was kicking up great clouds of red-brown dust which settled on the white 4WD Subaru station wagon belonging to my neighbour.

He came running out, objecting to my dust-related program activities. (That’s a deeply-buried and quite unnecessary Iraq War joke by the way).

I asked him if he could appreciate the irony of being bothered by dust landing on a car called the ‘Outback’.(Please don’t write in to tell me I’m misusing the word ‘irony’ because I might be and I don’t care. You irony police (and you know who you are) are getting out of control).

Actually I made this part of the anecdote up. It’s the first in a new series entitled ‘Imaginary retorts to imaginary complaints from real-life situations’. I’m in discussions with Fox about a late-night cable special.

I really did kick dust all over his car though. And -- and I guess you can tell this by the very fact of this blog post – I do feel a little bit sorry.

A little.

Choose life

2004-10-28T22:09:00.000+11:00

I would have first seen Trainspotting when it was released back in 1997. Tonight was the first time I’ve seen it since then.

The heroin-taking begins early, with the added bonus of a young infant crawling amongst the junkies, something which quietly horrified me.

But then – and how the FUCK could I have forgotten this scene – the child dies, presumably of dehydration, in her cot.

Yes, I know, the horror, the horror of drug-taking, warts and all. (After the mother wails in grief she begs for another hit).

Just how could I have not remembered that this scene was coming?

Well, I won’t forget now, thank you very much, Irvine fucking Welsh.

Man versus nature in a fight to the porch

2004-10-26T22:31:00.000+11:00

Two days ago it rained. (Hold the freakin’ front page!). I was walking home from the bus stop with about 150 metres to gone when it began to spot.

Pit-pat. The rain said.

Tap-tap. My feet said.

And from that moment, a contest sprang up between my feet and the cosmos as a whole. Would the rain fall fast enough to force me to break my gentle rhythmic stride and start running? Or would my shoes retain their honest working man’s dignity and casually snub any meagre increase in precipitation?

Would the pit-pat become a plop-plop forcing my tap-tap to become a thump-thump (to express the problem musically)?

It was a lot like duelling banjos (but with out the river rafting and the anal rape). I met the sky’s firm accelerando pit-pit-pat with a delightful allegro non troppo tap-tip-tap.

And gradually the rain quickened, forcing my feet to march in time with the new beat, but not yet quite forcing me to quit the race and begin the sprint.

So what happened? Who won? Me or God?

Actually I can’t remember. Who even gives a shit?

I got a bit wet though.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from the Wiggles

2004-10-24T16:30:00.000+11:00

The process of children learning about the world fascinates me. They take so many amazing things at face value because these things are presented to kids as utterly ordinary and because children have no means to understand the underlying systems.

Take television, that object of love and hatred in every parents home: a screen on which things can be made to appear (using videos or DVDs) and on which some things simply appear of their own accord (broadcasts).

It is frustrating for children (and therefore for their parents) that some images cannot be brought back for a second (and 87th) viewing. A quick burst of the equestrian events at the Olympics (the first ‘sport’ to be ditched the very second they make me IOC President, along with syncronised swimming and competitve antique clock-fixing) has the Dude clamoring for more: horses! Horses!

How to explain to the Dude that his father, normally Lord of all he surveys, cannot bring back the horses but can show Bob the Builder stuck atop a scaffold again and again? And again.

When I was a child I remember having a conversation with a chum about what we had seen on our respective TV sets:

‘Wow, you watched The Flintstones? Hey, The Flintstones was on my TV too!’

I mean, why would a child assume that every TV set, each a different shape and size and in a different home, is capable of showing exactly the same thing? A TV is just an unquestioned source of sound and vision

On Saturday morning, we had a friend over for brunch. On Sunday morning, the Dude saw her again on the TV on one of those journalists-chewing-over-the-week shows. At what point will he realise that family friends do not ordinarily turn up on that screen in the corner? (I quickly rang another family member to see if our friend was on their TV as well. She was! Unlike children, I remain amazed by television and all its wondrous ways).

One for the Gipper

2004-10-23T21:21:00.000+11:00

I actually wrote this little piece of US election whimsy in a comment on Tim Dunlop's Road to Surfdom site as part of my on-going obsession with the US presidential election. And then I thought such a thing of quality deserves its own post! (Thereby freeing me from the tyranny of originality this evening. Did I mention I got home last night at 1:30 am drunk as drunk person after drinking too much, only to have to get up at 5:30 am to look after the Dude and his tonsillitis...)

In other news... U.S Conservatives objected to the way that Edwards visibly blanched as Vice-President Cheney ate his own off-spring on stage before a television audience of 20 million Americans.

'Edwards' inability to hide his disgust whenever Cheney opened his mouth was very much reminiscent of Gore's sighing and eye-rolling from 2000' said Chuck Storer, a retired bank manager from Branson, Missouri.

And Rudiger P. Stoat, an unemployed billionaire from Akron, Ohio, questioned the commitment of liberals to racial and cultural diversity: 'If you're black, yellow, red or brown, the Democrats can't sign you up fast enough but if you happen to draw nutrition from your own young then suddenly the much-vaunted tolerance disappears. What I want to know is: who will stand up for the Predator-American community?'

'You know what their problem is?' said Stephen D'Eth of Houston. 'Pussy democrats are all vegetarians. They can't take it when a red-blooded American chows down on a little red meat.'

Breaking news: Howard plays down ‘early’ retirement talk

2004-10-20T21:45:00.000+11:00

Prime Minister John Howard, speaking today at the Holsworthy Army base in Western Sudney, played down speculation that he might retire only a year into his fourth term.

‘All this talk of retirement is highly premature,’ the Prime Minister said, ‘I still have much to contribute to Australia’s future.’

Howard posed with members of the Seventh Royal Australian Regiment while joking that they should be renamed ‘the Green Howards’, a reference to a British Army unit of long standing. ‘Or maybe just the Howards,’ he said, laughing with the soldiers, ‘that would be my preference.’

Although Mr Howard gave national security and economic management as the focuses of his incoming Government, he denied that his administration was in danger of becoming stale.

‘I totally refute the suggestion that I am not open to new ideas,’ he said, ‘for example, I feel I am having a change of heart on the Republic issue.’

Mr Howard said that he could see ‘considerable merit in the notion that the Australian Head of State should be born in Canterbury-Bankstown or anywhere else in Australia for that matter.’

‘I hold the Queen in high esteem, very high esteem, as you all know, but she has a lot on her plate. I will therefore be pressing ahead with a referendum for a President so that I can again give the Australian people more of what they want.’

Mr Howard would not address speculation that he might run for the Presidency of an Australian Republic.

‘Look, I’ve won four elections now. I can’t see that a fifth victory would add anything. No one has a better idea of the wants and needs of the Australian people than me.’ He said.

‘I intend to serve up a cocktail of greater security, lower interest rates and more prisons, with much less of the kind of ugly parliamentary squabbles that people are so tired of seeing on television.’

Mr Howard finished his tour of the base with a visit to the officer’s mess, the child care centre and the quartermaster where he accepted the gift of a field-marshal’s uniform before leaving for Canberra at the head of a column of armored personnel carriers.