Getting Nostalgic For A Post-Apocalyptic Aftermath

By Darryl Mason

I've already covered the coming Mel Gibson-free, anime, Mad Max 4 movie and videogame(s), here. As promised, I've dug out a story I was working on in late 2002, for a mag in London, about the then live-action, Mel Gibson-featuring Mad Max 4 that was gearing up to start filming in mid-2003.

I never did get to interview Mad Max creator-director George Miller, and any info about what he was planning to do was thin on the ground indeed. There wasn't really enough detail for a decent feature length story, even though the editor said I could waffle on for a few hundred words about the 'Mad Max Legacy'. And so I waffled, for a few thousand words instead.

A few observations, that seem important now, from my notebooks of 2002 that I never managed to shoehorn into the dumped story :

It is fantastically curious, on viewing the Mad Max trilogy again in total now, that despite his reputation for extreme violence, Max is only seen firing his sawn-off shotgun a total of six times in the course of the three films, and, overall, there are remarkably few scenes of explicit gore or hardcore physical abuse.

Much horrific violence is certainly implied, instead of being seen, which can sometimes be much worse.

Something else I never noticed before, Max saves himself at the beginning and the end of Mad Max II with the one simple trick that is rarely seen in American car chase movies - Max simply slams on his brakes. Brilliant!

The live action Mad Max 4 was cancelled in early 2003 when it became clear that the Iraq War was about to get underway, causing big problems for Miller's plans to shoot his new Mad Max movie in the deserts of Morocco and the United States. Miller moved onto Happy Feet instead.

There's plenty of Mad Max history and waffle to soak up below, if you're a bit mad about Max, but there's also some interesting detail about what is very likely going to be the key plot of the Mad Max 4 movie (Miller said recently the anime script would be mostly based on the 2002 screenplay, which I managed to read a summary of).

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Mad Max 4 Feature Story

Draft Two : October 29, 2002

By Darryl Mason

Almost fourteen years after he last slipped on the torn, dusty leathers of 'Mad' Max Rocketanski for Beyond Thunderdome, Mel Gibson is set to return to the role that made him an international star. But only for half-an-hour or so of screen time, and yet it will earn Gibson the biggest paypacket in cinema history.

Although Gibson was only paid $15,000 for the original Mad Max movie, way back in 1979, this time around he will score one of the largest paydays in the history of Hollywood. A reported $40 million is on offer to Gibson, who is still not happy with the script. It's also rumoured Mel's Max will only appear in the first 30 minutes of the new movie, before being killed off to make way for a new generation, much younger, Max. His son, or it should be said, his genetic offspring.

Mad Max 4 is set to begin filming in desert locales in Australia, Morocco and North America in May, 2003, under the directorship of creator George Miller.

The new film is set two centuries on from where we last left Max, wandering the wastelands at the end of third instalment, Beyond Thunderdome.

While the first two films saw women and gasoline as being the most precious resources left to be plundered by biker road armies, and water became a plot catalyst in Beyond Thunderdome, this time around the unpolluted DNA of human 'pure breeds' will be the treasure all seek to possess.

Gibson's Max is expected to show up in the new film in flashbacks, to reveal what happened to him in the last years of his life, before the new Max, a 'son' derived from his DNA, takes over the story.

The new Max's mission will be to act as a 'protector' and escort a group of non-mutants across the wastelands with their precious stock of unpolluted DNA. This pure DNA stock is desired by the mutant hordes, as it can be used to clean up their genes, and make them resistant to the radioactivity that still infects the land.

The infamous post-apocalyptic wastelands this time, however, won't just be the ochre flats of outback Australia. One major chase sequence will be set on the floor of the Grand Canyon.


The Mad Max trilogy is generally recognised as being amongst the most, if not the most, influential action-adventure film series ever made, and three of the most successful films to ever come out of Australia.

But it was the first, low-budget Mad Max that was the most successful of the three. It's profit-to-budget ratio reined long as one of the highest in motion picture history. The first Mad Max movie cost less than $600,000 and took in more than $100 million at cinemas and drive-ins across the planet. This monumental cost-obliterated-by-profit performance was only recently eclipsed by The Blair Witch Project.

It seems almost incomprehensible, today, that the original Mad Max outgrossed such super heavyweights as Kramer Vs Kramer and Apocalypse Now in its first year of release in 1979/1980. And in the US, this Hollywood-busting feat was accomplished with American accents dubbed in over all raw Australian ones.

And, unlike most of today's filmic heroes, who come supplied with a bothersome back story, personal history, we were only ever given the most fleeting glimpses of Max' personal life, outside his role of vigilante and wasteland warrior, in any of the three films.

In the first film, we knew Max was part of a renegade cop outfit, trying to reign some law and order over the biker hordes who terrified country Australian communities. We knew there had been some kind of war, of the nuclear kind, that devastated vast portions of the world (or at least Australia) and resulted in an anarchic state quickly replacing one of law and order.

We knew Max was married with a wife and child, who were then killed by the biker leader ToeCutter, himself seeking revenge for the death of his friend NiteRider, who rocket-car'd his way to oblivion during a police chase.

The murder of his loved ones sent Max on an illegal mission of revenge, and on through The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome, the few, brief family and love scenes are the only glimpses we get into his personal history. We liked this. It was easier than to project ourselves onto him, to imagine it was us roaming free and dispensing the justice that crumbling civilisation was cyring out for.

At the end of Mad Max, we know almost nothing about the state of the world outside the cops-vs-bikers road war. So little in fact, that Miller had to use the first five minutes of Road Warrior, and an appropriately dodgy montage of historical stock footage, to bring us up to speed and explain the backstory of the first film so we might better understand the second.

Most fans of the Mad Max trilogy would agree, however, that the films were richer and far more involving because we didn't hear Max recounting his personal life for anybody who was interested in hearing it. Of course, Max barely speaks at all across the three movies. Gibson was given less than fifteen minutes of on-screen dialogue in the first film, only fourteen lines in total for the second, and barely triple that in the third.

It was always Miller's intention that everyone else did all the talking while Max bided his time, and then took care of the necessary business at hand.

With Max you didn't want to know what he'd done, or what had happened to him, or even what he was thinking, you only wanted to see what he was going to do next.



As is industry-standard for such a phenomenal success story, the Mad Max trilogy had the most painful of births. Miller was repeatedly laughed at by executives within the Australian film industry when he tried to shop around his Mad Max script, hoping to raise something close to a budget so he could begin shooting.

Like those who said no to Star Wars, there are people still working in the Australian film industry who had the chance but chose to say no to one of the most profitable films in all cinema history. The half-million dollar budget was eventually raised by Miller and producer Byron Kennedy through investment schemes, film funding bodies and personally guaranteed loans from friends and family.

Miller and Kennedy pieced together Mad Max over the course of six months; shooting chunks on weekends and three day bursts when cast and crew could be drawn, and coerced, away from their more secure, better-paying day jobs.

There was no budget, nor time, for any rehearsals, and stunt co-ordinator Grant Page had to make do with a stunt crew that comprised of, for the most part, himself and a few offsiders. Page turned up for the first day of shooting with his leg in plaster, and there was a long list of broken bones, fractured ribs and dislocated shoulder blades before the arduous shooting was finally finished. The chaos and tension of the movie shoot became the chaos and tension of the movie itself.

When Miller took a good long look at all the footage he had, and compared it to his mind-movie that he had set out to make, he thought, for many weeks, that the film would unsalvageable, that nothing would save it. It was a total bust. But something did save Mad Max. The same thing that saved Jaws. Brilliant editing.

There was no money for reshooting scenes, and some of the more impactful stunts and chase scenes were shot in only one take, with next to no other shots to cut to. When stunts went wrong, or did not go as planned, the changes were incorporated into the final storyline. So Goose breaks his leg, because his stuntman had a broken leg.

And although it appears that dozens of cars were crashed and trashed, and long, superfast, highly dangerous road chases were staged, most of the true action was pieced together in the editing suites. The car carnage poetry of Mad Max is more illusion than minutely staged, massive scale, crash and smash scenes.

After almost two decades of international silence, shattered only by the curious success of the fair-dinkum fare of The Adventures Of Barry Mackenzie in 1973, most in the Australian film industry in the late 1970s expected it would be the refined, deeply artistic works of directors Fred Schepisi and Peter Weir that would crash US and European screens, not some, ahem, car chase movie.

Few involved even considered, during its shooting and lengthy editing stages, that Mad Max would even make it into Australian cinemas, let alone find international release.

How very, very wrong they were.

Hobbled by the indignity of being entirely redubbed by anonymous American actors, Mad Max crept out across only a handful of screens in the US, UK, Europe and Japan. Few critics (even in Australia) bothered reviewing the film, and those that did were mostly, absolutely, scathing.

But the word-of-mouth on this unknown Australian action spectacle was red hot. Mad Max stayed in cinemas long after Academy Award winning vehicles like Kramer Vs Kramer ran their course. In some US cinemas, Mad Max was still showing in mostly packed midnight sessions two years later when the sequel The Road Warrior blasted onto screens.

By the time it was done, Mad Max had clocked up more than $100 million at the international box-office, dropping jaws throughout the Australian and US film industries. For a time, in 1979, Mad Max was turning a higher profit as an Australian export than the wool and coal industries, combined.

It was only while living in California, in 1980, writing the screenplay for The Road Warrior with Terry Hayes, that Miller stumbled upon one of the key secrets why his low-budget, revenge flick had performed so well.

The less venomous reviews from countries like Japan, Norway, Scandinavia would repeatedly cite how much the Mad Max character reminded them of their own historical, legendary warriors, be they Vikings or Samurai.

Miller's original intention was that Mad Max would leave audiences "exhausted, like they'd been on a really great roller-coaster", but he wound up unconsciously transposing into Max the tale of the Hero's Journey that appears to run like a seam through the cultural myths of every indigenous race on the planet, from North American Indians to Australian Aborigines.

As Miller and Hayes drafted the screenplay of The Road Warrior, they read up on the myth-deconstructing works of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, confirming what they had learned from the international reviews of the first film, : Mad Max, his character's story arc, was the absolute epitomy of the classical, and worldwide familiar, Hero's Journey.

Max was an everyman Hero, equal parts lone-gunman, shaman and mythical saviour, and Miller and Hayes quickly decided they had no intention of messing with the formula as they set about scripting the sequel.

The plotline of Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior) was even more simple than the original. Max roams the wastelands, looking for fuel, and meets up with an assortment of outcast characters, for adventures and brief friendship, before having his loner status tested one final time. He ultimately, willingly, sacrifices himself for the survival of the next generation, and is left alone, once more in the wastelands, his honour restored, ready for another adventure.

Beyond Thunderdome (Mad Max III), despite its larger budget and the addition of an international star to the cast, Tina Turner, did less box office business than either Mad Max or The Road Warrior, and it barely rates a mention now when passionate film-geek discussions turn to Mad Max.

Beyond Thunderdome was filled to the absolute brim with sub-plots, fights, chases, a chorus line of new characters and even more frenetic action scenes. But Max purists say it failed because it broke the golden rule. It took Max out of the wastelands, his home, and brought him into the societal madness of Bartertown. You don't take Rocky and send him to Japan to teach kids how to box.

There was that, and then there was the whole Peter Pan thing with the feral kids. Max is not a townie, and he's not a childcare worker. He's supposed to be out there, on the crumbling highways and dusty tracks, running down the bad guys.

Miller is not expected to make that same mistake in Mad Max 4.


As the Mad Max 4 crew readies the production to begin shooting, George Miller won't spill too many details to the media what he intends to do with the fourth instalment, only ready to reveal "it's going to take Max in a new direction".

Miller admitted last year, to the New York Times, that he found it remarkable, although equally amusing, that after all these years, there is still such a huge audience waiting for Max' return.

"People get nostalgic about the strangest things..." said Miller. "But who'd have ever thought the apocalypse, and its aftermath, would be one of them?"

END


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Newspaper No Longer Most Trusted Source Of News For Australians

90% of Journalism Students Do Not Read Newspapers

By Darryl Mason

Australians have lost their trust in newspapers. Where once we had seven or eight major dailies in our larger cities, we now have one or two, at most, with at least one barely managing to hang on as a newspaper. But people are not just forsaking the daily newspaper ritual because the medium is well overdue for a complete reinvention, we ditched newspapers because we no longer trusted them to tell us the truth.

Newspapers are dying because they broke the essential pact of trust that existed for a century between newspaper and dedicated daily reader : you print the news that you have made sure is true to the best of your abilities, and we will trust you on most of it.

In the rush to war, all the city dailies, and The Australian of course, printed pages filled with lies and distortions and myth for months on end. We knew it was bullshit, how did they not know? And so millions of Australian minds wondered : 'Well, if they can so casually lie to us about a fucking war, what else are they lying to us about, on a daily basis?'

Story One :

The journalists of the future are rapidly moving away from traditional news services, saying they are impractical compared to new media.

A survey of Australian journalism students found 90 per cent of students do not like reading the newspaper, preferring to source news from commercial television or online media.

Professor in Journalism and Media Studies at the Queensland University of Technology, Alan Knight, conducted the survey and says despite an aversion to newspapers, 95 per cent of students are very interested in following the news.

He says the move away from newspapers is of great concern because they are still the major source of serious news in Australia.

Professor Knight says the survey results indicated most journalism students strongly believe newspapers will eventually die out but it may take some time.

"The future of printed newspapers is looking grim as there is an evident shift towards digital journalism."

Story Two :

A study by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has found that the Internet is the most trusted media outlet in Australia.

The study found that 25% of the population list the Internet as their must trusted source of information, followed by newspapers at 20%, TV at approx 17%, and radio at approx 13%.

I certainly don't think newspapers are about to die out. There will be even more of them in the future, but they will be more like magazines, and the news will be more local, focused on the events and happenings of a few suburbs, instead of entire states or countries. There's more to say on that, but my last coffee buzz has worn off and it's too late now for a refresher.

Perhaps the major newspapers can make up on the weekend what they lose during the week from melting sales. The weekend paper is heading towards $5, so just make it $5 now, but make it worth $10. That means real discount coupons for supermarkets and petrol stations. Get rid of the awful, inky newsprint, make it more like a larger magazine, with a weekly free movie on DVD (or a memory stick), and perhaps also the week's worth of video stories produced for the websites that most of us never get around to viewing during the workday. Why not a standard CD every week, a compilation of songs from the albums reviewed inside? Why not a thin paperback as well?

Instead of the Saturday morning ritual being "get milk, get bread, oh yeah, get the papers", it should be, "If I don't get the paper today, my weekend will be ruined."

I'm sure all the major newspaper owners are preparing for what comes next, when the newspapers we have come to know and love, and now disrespect and distrust, no longer pay their way. But you sure don't hear them talking much about exciting, innovative ideas to refresh and re-invent their printed media, and save their own arses.

Try Not To Weep : Australia's Mega-Billionaires Now Only Multi-Billionaires

How much of the many billions lost by Australia's richest businessmen was actual, quantifiable wealth anyway? Most of it was imaginary, speculation, fake. It never existed, so if it's gone, does it really matter at all? Not so much when you've still got a billion or two left. For now.

From The Australian :

Just 10 Australian citizens made the Forbes rich list of US-dollar billionaires this year, down from 14 in 2007, with their total fortunes slashed by more than half.

The biggest loser has been iron ore miner Mr Forrest, who has seen the value of his stake in Fortescue Metals Group slump from $US6.5billion to $US1.9billion, causing him to slip from 145th on the list to 376th.

Westfield Group founder Frank Lowy also took a king hit, with his fortune plummeting from $US6.4billion to $US2.7billion.

He is followed by casino owner James Packer, worth $US2.5billion and iron ore heiress Gina Rinehart with $US1.9billion.

Damned Kids

By Darryl Mason

Tony "What? No Com Car?" Abbott takes time out from his busy schedule of political irrelevancy, charity work and visiting sick friends to complain about the youth of today.

It reads very much like the kind of "Another Complaining Old Geezer" letter to the editor I used to toss aside, daily, when I worked at a suburban newspaper. Tony Abbott, however, gets his Cranky Old Bugger ramblings published as 'opinion' in the Daily Telegraph :

There was a constant flow of boys and girls up and down the train, most smoking, some drinking, and nearly all using language that would make a brickie blush.

Tony doesn't get out much, these days.

It is, of course, illegal to smoke or to drink alcohol on a train.

One young man even attempted to urinate in the carriage.

Drinking, smoking, swearing and attempted urination.....Tony Abbott doesn't spend much time at night on public transport, does he? Has he never been on a late night train and heard someone down the other end of the carriage shout, "Bloody Hell! Throw me some newspaper down here, can you mate?"

If the transport police had put the first person who lit a cigarette or who swigged from a bottle off the train, there would not have been a problem. The police, though, were all on the platforms where there was no trouble, not on the train where the behavior approximated to a very rough pub at closing time.

The outnumbered police were showing how smart they are, or perhaps they saw the wide-eyed Tony Abbott trembling in that train carriage and thought, 'You know what? Let's stay here, this could be interesting....'

"If there’d been a police squad on the train and arrests had been made, people would have been let off with a caution at most.

I wonder if any of the drunk kids shouted at the former health minister, "Fuck You, Grandpa!"

Alcohol-related violence in Melbourne right now is terrible, it's almost back to 1950s' levels. But Tony Abbott sounds terrifically like a right sour old git. It's his best work yet.

And Abbott's hilarious ruminations on how kids today are ruining society also show why politicians don't like to spend too much time on public transport. They come across the Real People and it freaks them out.

Being Poor And Jobless Doesn't Suck Enough? Welcome To The Genetic Underclass

By Darryl Mason

It seems like only yesterday we were being told, "Don't be stupid, insurance companies will never get access to your DNA, and even if they did, they would never examine it before they decided if they'll cover you. That will never happen, it's science fiction stuff, you're just being paranoid..." and so forth.



It's going to be weird enough when our DNA becomes our identity, a string of numbers, without even getting into just how many government and private agencies will get access to your DNA because you will have no choice but to make your DNA available for scrutiny simply to exist in society.

If an insurance company can demand to examine your DNA before they'll do business with you, why not then anybody else who is taking a punt, in some way, on your continuing good health?

The boss of your new job will need to access your personal genetic database to determine if you are likely to keel over in his building from an age-triggered condition that has taken nine males from your family over four generations.

The Department of Aerial Transport will need to know if you're fast approaching an age where your uncorrected DNA may time-trigger in you sudden, unexpected attacks of vertigo before they issue with a liscence to fly that new convertible SkySoarer XV Flubble, unsupervised.

Offering up instant access to all the secrets and predictions of your DNA will become as everyday as how we now show photo ID cards to see a fucking rock band, the kind of ID that so many of us never believed we would be forced to carry. In a not so distant reality, you won't be able to get any ID cards, or credit cards, without revealing your DNA. Because your DNA will be right there, on that card, so whoever needs to know who you are can also find out if they are running a risk of having you die in their nightclub, or restaurant. Or hospital.

But getting rejected from a restaurant because you're there for the Butter Fried Platter and your DNA ratings warn that, at best, you should be served nothing heavier than a salad and a loud argument follows, won't be the worst of it.

Being identified by your DNA, and everything it reveals about you, will infuriate mostly for all the little ways it will intrude on your life, and change your plans :

Liquor Store, 7pm

"Sir, there's a problem here, on your card...."

"Oh, what the fuck is that thing telling you guys now?"

"Your card says that you have a propensity towards alcoholism rating of 5.7. That means instead of selling you two bottles of Wild Turkey, I am legally bound to recommend you try a half bottle of white wine, or perhaps some lovely fruit juice instead."

"Forget it." - exits muttering...

I Looked Up God On The Internet, And It Said He's Dead

By Darryl Mason

Opinonist Miranda Devine is worried about becoming as intellectually irrelevant in her children's lives as she is in the lives of her fading Sydney Morning Herald readers :

...my generation will be the last to remember life without a search engine to instantly satiate curiosity, we are the only ones left to contemplate a downside.

My sons' generation have never known a world without Google. If they have a question, whether about the Super Bowl or Frost/Nixon or penguins, they search for the answer online instantly. Why bother to explore the imperfect memory banks of parents and teachers when Wikipedia and imdb.com are at their fingertips.

Well yeah, why indeed? Why should kids waste their time asking their parents for information that is faster, more thorough, and more easily accessible online?

If they are betting each other about something, they immediately resolve the question online, leaving little room to develop the bush lawyer skills of browbeating an opponent and prosecuting your case....

Google is apparently stopping kids from learning how to "browbeat" others into accepting a false truth. It stops children from learning to stubbornly argue their own beliefs like highly opionated ignorants, locked into a belief system that locks in place an acceptable reality.

Google may be the cranial equivalent of those motorised scooters ridden by obese Americans at Disneyland. Initially a prop for a lazy brain, it soon becomes essential.

What apparently concerns Miranda Devine most is that the very act of going to Google, instead of just asking mum or seeking out answers through non-internet means, is actually transforming the presumably God-delivered architecture of our brains, and consciousness :

The way we use our brain actually changes its physical structure over time. It is a "lifetime work in progress" that retains plasticity - the capacity for change - as long as we live.

"Our brain's organisation will undergo greater changes during the next few decades than at any time in our history … This technologically-driven change in the brain is the biggest modification in the last 200,000 years …"

....if we always are to sate our curiosity with an answer provided by someone else, where is the room for original thought? Rather than taxing our brain, we only plunder the store of what the world already knows.

Google, like other search engines, gives easy access to the greatest collection of human history, opinion, events, art, design, obscure details and general information our species has ever collected, sorted, compiled. And it's nearly all free to read, to soak up, to wonder over, to then argue and debate. And correct, if necessary.

There were a few people in the mid-1800s who, while not knowing what bacteria was, realised that surgeons washing their hands before and after operations dramatically cut down on the spread of deadly infections in their patients. This essential truth was subject to much heated and career-destroying debate, for decades, and plenty of angry exchanges with those who refused to believe the truth. Surgeons continued to operate without washing their hands first well in the early 1900s. Hundreds of thousands of people died unecessarily because this essential truth was denied to the masses, was halted from becoming an essential common Truth.

A revolutionary, world-changing, life-saving discovery, such as the above, would now be dispersed across the wired world within minutes, and it would be all but impossible to ignore such a truth because everyone around you, from the receptionist to your patients, would be telling you you're an idiot because you still refuse to believe it.

I can't see how Google is essentially any different from the arrival of encyclopedia in homes more than a century ago, or the establishment of libraries in schools.

Wasn't having a Big Book Of Facts, a copy of the Guiness Book Of World Records and a couple of world history books kicking around somewhere in the house pretty much the same thing as basic Googling? Regardless of the technology involved?

Maybe the real pain is having your children listen to you explain how something works, or how an historic event unfolded, and then a few minutes and a few Google key word searches later hearing your offspring declare, "You're so wrong on that, you weren't even close."

An ABC News reader submitted the following image of a tornado in South Australia :



The tornado swept across farmlands on the Eyre Peninsula yesterday.

Matt Collopy from the Bureau of Meteorology said it was an unusual weather event for South Australia.

"To actually get a report of a tornado itself is very rare," he said.

There's a spectacular video of the same storm here.

Kangaroo Home Invasion

By Darryl Mason

Kangaroo attacks happen all the time in Australia. But we don't like to talk about them. Sure, you'll hear a lot about shark attacks, even shark sightings, "down under" at "Australia's Most Famous Beach" on BBC World News and CNN, but that's only because reporters will take any opportunity they can get to do a live cross from a sandy coastline location.

Occasionally, some brave American journalist will bust the news blackout and let the world know what is going, all but unreported, in Australia :



Eeee, any stitches to the groin are bad news for a bloke, but thirty?

And no, I don't think the tension-laden music and dramatic voiceover were over the top in the slightest.

The truth is, the human population of Australia has been under attack by kangaroos, and occasionally koalas, for decades. An entire generation of Australians were lulled into a false sense of security about kangaroos and wallabies by Skippy : The Bush Kangaroo. The show taught us that some kangaroos could learn to type, use a compass and dial rotary phones, but it never warned us of the true threat kangaroos pose to our way of life, and even the way we sleep.

Once, kangaroos would only kick ten kinds of crap out of you if you happened to wander into Kangaroo Country. But now, they are coming after us. Do they somehow know they are going to become a very popular red meat alternative in cow-reduced future?

They are hopping into our suburbs, they are invading our luxuriantly-lawned nursing homes, they are leaping straight into our homes :

A Canberra man was forced to wrestle a kangaroo out his house after it jumped through a window and landed on his bed in the middle of the night.

Nature's War On Humans continues....

They're Not Just Cute, Friendly Wallabies Anymore - They're Killers!"

Fossil Record Confirms Word & Art Aboriginal Legend Of Ancient Dog-Like Kangaroo


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So That's Where That Thing About Hot Alien Chicks Came From....



Phoenix Five is all but forgotten relic of Australian science-fiction themed television from the end of the 1960s. All but forgotten, but why?

Because it was low budget, science fiction TV, with Australian accents, with massive robots, with a plethary of control panel tech-babble? Maybe. But the costumes were pretty cool. And it had one of the most downright funky theme tunes in all Australian television history.







Twenty-six episodes of Pheonix Five were produced in 1969, on a miniscule budget, and aired on Sunday afternoons on the ABC through 1970. I'm sure it was shown again in the mid-1970s, because I remember seeing it as a kid. It seemed almost science fiction in itself to watch a space-based TV show full of Australian accents and locations (vaguely disguised as alien planets).

Here's Michael Pinto, of Fanboy :

“The year: 2500 AD. The ‘Phoenix Five’. The crew: Captain Roke, Ensign Adam Hargreaves, Cadet Tina Kulbrick, and their computeroid Karl. Their mission: to patrol the outer galaxies for Earth Space Control, to maintain peace, and to capture Zodian the humanoid, who with the aid of his computers Alpha and Zeta endeavours to become dictator of outer space.”

The first thing that hits your eye is that the visual style of the show is kit bashed from everything you can think of: The costumes have a Star Trek quality to them, the robot looks borrowed from Dr. Who and the industrial design of the spaceship is a throwback to either Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon film serials.

A brief, but interesting, Phoenix Five episode guide is here. Summaries from the guide of the more interesting sounding episodes :

Human Relics - Episode 03

Aboard the Phoenix Five, the crew receives a strange signal from the asteroid Arcticus. Responding, they find a 20th-century space capsule and an astronaut in a coma.

Two Into One Won't Go - Episode 08

Zodian devises a new plan to destroy Earth Control and rule the Federated Galaxies of Space. He bribes the pompous governor of planetoid 93 into injecting a micro transistor into Captain Roke's bloodstream.

Hmmm, maybe Episode 09, 'Back To Childhoods', explains why some of actresses on the show later complained production was unfocused, haphazard and that "nobody seemed to know what they were doing." :

Cadet Tina Culbrick finds a rare Cannibalis plant that Captain Roke decides to take back to Earth Control for examination.

A few more :

A Gesture From Kronos - Episode 11

Captain Roke is "reversed" when he falls victim to a Zodian time warp. He talks backward, his uniform colours are reversed. His reaction powers are severely tested as he flies the Astro-Scout Ship to the one person who can help him — Kronos, the guardian of time in space.

Space Quake - Episode 16

A doctor an a dying planet injects Adam with an aging serum but will only supply the antidote in return for safe passage to another planet.

The Planet of Fear - Episode 17

Exploring a strange planet, Roke and Adam meet an astronaut who was lost ten years earlier, and has acquired mysterious powers from the evil Platonus, turning him into a human booby trap.

And here's most of the full episode Pirate Queen :

Part One :




Part Two :



Part Three :



So why hasn't this yet come to DVD? Or even scored a long overdue repeat series on ABC (late at night, obviously)? There's probably a very good geek doco waiting to be made on the history and making of the show.

If the Americans can pull seven television series and 11 movies from the original and very patchy Star Trek, we can get, at least, an interesting doco from this, occasionally fascinating, relic of our box-staring history.

Stripped, Bare-Breasted Young Robots Don't Yet Know The Shame Of Being Naked, But They Will

It's bad enough that they're probably going to jump over the whole affordable perfect cook servant-butler period we've been dreaming about for decades and move straight onto local government, but I say if robots are smart enough to weld cars together, perform complex medical operations, play jazz music better than we can and parade through our streets and shopping malls, then they should put on some damn clothes.

Do you really want a naked robot looking after your Boomer parents in their dimly lit, lo-carbon nursing homes? Do you want a nude robot feeding mum and dad their dinner? No. Neither do I.

Before we know it, robots will carrying our groceries to our cars and selling us flowers on the street and tractor-treading their way up the stairs of state and federal government. They will also be managing restaurants, running our police force and looking after our children in automated child care centres.

Are we, civilised members of civilised society going to stand by and allow robots to do all these things for us while they're not wearing pants?

Stop Robot Nudity Now!





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Shitstorm Causes Storm Of Shit

By Darryl Mason

Imagine how loud the crowd in the below video would have applauded if PM Rudd had said : "Fuck those bankers. They fucked everyone. Some did it on purpose, some did it because they were stupid dumb fucks. But fuck them all anyway."



Did he fake it? To take the heat off himself? To make himself look like just another causal swearing Aussie like the rest of us fucks and pricks?

They also probably believe that three steel skyscrapers can collapse from the effects of fire alone, on the same day, but it's a conspiracy shitstorm over at News.com.au, where someone swearing on TV is always big news :

Just trying to be one of the working families hey Kev, but most of us saw through it, you and the Duck really are quite shallow.
Posted by: Ray of Tathra

He's just trying to appear to be "one of the boys" to win you over!
Posted by: Mick of Qld

Rudd is one of the biggest fakes I've seen in political office; and that's really saying something. Of course he meant to say it deliberately to appeal to "working families". Embarassingly, it shows how dumbed down "working families" are when they eat it up and think he's being real.
Posted by: Rob of Sydney

...he wasnt emotional at all he had a big goofy smile on his face when he said it this was no slip he was trying to sound like a bloke to bad krudd your still the kinda guy that would get wedgies at school.... i find it so funny how he claims understand the aussie battler yet he is completely loaded he wont feel the financial crisis personally he may lose a holiday home or two.... ahaha..... make no mistake this was completely fake
Posted by: Ej of Gold Coast

It worked, it was scripted and now everyone is talking about that 10 seconds of the address and not the other more important parts. He is the best spin doctor, curve ball throwing politician we have ever had.
Posted by: David of Syd

fter a week of being called "toxic bore", robotic and a host of other things that distance himself as a master of spin and bureaucratic methods, he lets slip a swear word that isn't even beeped out on a pre-recorded show? Script, script, script. PhD of Spinology at work once again.
Posted by: Seanous of the NT

If this was a genuine slip of the tongue wouldn't it have best to carry on as if nothing happend, but no, he bought attention to it by stopping correcting himself and appologising. If a good singer makes a mistake durring a song they carry on as if it didn't happen.
Posted by: suspicious of Melbourne

I'm convinced. How do we even know that was the real Kevin Rudd? Maybe he has a swear-crazy body double...the one who got hammered with the strippers in New York.

It's going to happen eventually, so why not be the first politician to come out on TV and speak like so many of them actually do when the cameras are not around?

"Can I just say of my opponent in this epic battle, you are a squirrely little fuckbag. You fucking shit me. You shit everyone. You're a goddamned fucking liar. And everyone fucking knows it, mate. You are so full of shit you could install a shit mining rig on the top of your head and everyday there would be another gusher. Fuckstick."

Yeah, well, they never will get that honest in Parliament, though it would certainly help to fill up the public galleries.

Later on : maybe I was wrong to be so sarcastic. With The Australian, Sky News, The Herald Sun, ABC Online and the Canberra Times waying in, clearly the prime minister saying "Shitstorm" is big news.

Somehow.





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Mad Max IV Is Coming Soon, Animated And Mel Gibson-Free



There will also be a video game to go with the new, animated, 3D Mad Max movie....or does the movie go with the game? Director George Miller told a vid game website two years ago he was deep into building a Mad Max gaming world, or series of video games. So now add in an anime movie and it's clear George Miller is thinking on a Lucasian scale :

The plot would be partly lifted from the script of the fourth “Max” film, which was set to shoot in 2003 until financing collapsed in the wake of the Iraq War.

Now Miller is resurrecting the idea as an R-rated, stereoscopic anime flick for theatrical release.

“The anime is an opportunity for me to shift a little bit about what anime is doing because anime is ripe for an adjustment or sea change,” he explained. “It’s coming in games and I believe it’s the same in anime."

Mad Max is really the ultimate post-apocalyptic Grand Theft Auto. Mad Max games have massive potential. But why just go anime?

There's probably a few hundred thousand Australian males aged 40 to 60 who will buy a games unit just to play a realistic Mad Max game on their monster plasmas. But it has to be the right game. Not just a game based on the anime Mad Max IV movie. We need Mad Max games that take us back to the first movie, and all those pristine cars. Do you want to be Goose, or NightRider, or Max?

And there would have to be a game to recreate Mad Max II (or Road Warrior as it was called in non-Australian lands) so we can do that sand-filled tanker run, fighting off the post-apoc. biker hordes all the way. Running wild with that boomerang as the Feral Kid, helping Max deal with all those badlands bandits, and diving into tunnels like a rabbit, would also have to be an essential option.

Beyond Thunderdome? Eh. If we get to play Mad Max I & II, a Thunderdome game (or chapter) might feel a bit "been there, done that", unless some of the action takes place in the post-nuking Sydney we only get a glimpse of at the end of that movie.

I'm looking over a piece I was working on for the British Airways inflight magazine back in 2001, when Mad Max IV was beginning to shape up as a viable Mel Gibson movie, not animation. There's some interesting details about a possible storyline. I'll post it here, later.

Queenslanders To Brutal Mother Nature : "Oh What The Fuck Is It Now?"

How absolutely, monumentally huge is the cyclone closing in on the WhitSundays this morning?

This huge :



From ABC News :

Cyclone Hamish has now intensified into a Category 5 system, creating winds in excess of 280 kilometres an hour, off the north-east coast of Queensland.

Residents and tourists are preparing to ride out the effects of the cyclone as it moves along the coast.

The outer edge of the massive storm, already 40km/h faster than Cyclone Larry which smashed Innisfail in 2006, will lash islands in the Whitsundays in the next few hours.

It continues moving south-east off the coast, and some islands in its path have been evacuated.

A Category 5 is rated as extremely dangerous and can cause widespread destruction.

It's not expected that Hamish will devastate Cairns, at least not right now. It is expected to stay far enough away from the coast to not destroy the place, so says the BOM, but The WhitSundays are apparently the big worry.

Winds hitting 180kmh be roaring across some of the islands by 7am.

"We Can Test Land Our Nuclear Bomber At Melbourne Airport?"

"Was That A Question Or A Statement?"

The good thing is there was an aiport that it could land at, safely, instead of....crashing :

The B1B Lancer bomber, which can carry conventional and nuclear arms over a large distance, landed at about 9.25pm (AEDT) on last night after reporting problems with its landing gear.

Media reports say the plane, which is capable of speeds of more than 1500km/h, was on its way to the Avalon Airshow but diverted to Tullamarine, with emergency services standing by as it landed.

Are more planes being 'forced down' recently? Or is it something you just start to notice after a lot of them?

Melbourne Rocks

It's not often you get to write a headline like that about Melbourne, but tonight it is true.

A small earthquake, measuring about 4.6 on the Richter scale, followed by a tremor, has rattled homes and buildings across numerous suburbs, up into the Yarra Valley and Kilmore.

Some report the shaking lasting from 5 to 10 seconds. No injuries or major damage reported in the media yet, but emergency services are getting so swamped with calls as they've asked people to stop calling unless they're injured or in a serious emergency situation.

Best description what the Melbourne earthquake felt like, so far :

"...it felt like a very long truck was driving past or maybe the washing machine getting extremely excited."

More here

UPDATE : Correction, it was a 4.7.

About three hours before Melbourne rumbled, a volcano in Indonesia erupted.

Murdoch Corporate Bosses Are Proud They Educated Billions On Climate Change Threat By Info-Dosing The Simpsons

By Darryl Mason

A very, very interesting Green Corporate video from ex-Australian Rupert Murdoch's News corporation, detailing how Fox has been purposely seeding its most popular TV shows, and in particular its highest rating cartoon shows like The Simpsons, The Family Guy and King Of The Hill, with what local Murdoch employees (the Herald Sun's) Andrew Bolt and (the Daily Telegraph's) Tim Blair would normally call "glorbal warmening" and "the most superstitious pagan faith of all".

TCFTV's Climate Change Commitment Video



Some of the key quotes from the vid, with deciphering of corporate speak in italics, in brackets, in the style of Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair :

"What could we do on a practical level to start making a difference (how can we get some taxpayer-funded action on this climate change scam)?"

"The biggest thing we've done is inserting messages about the environment into some of our content (he means TV shows like The Simspons, they're scaring our children and nieces with hysterical claims about a warming that does not exist)."

"The lifeblood of our company is the quality of our TV shows, and we would have accomplished nothing if we compromised that quality (they're sneaky bastards, these Nazi-Green Corporate Socialists)."

"....the most powerful way we could communicate the commitment on behalf of our company (corporate greenism), was to change the practices within the production (how many flights do you take? Huh? Huh?), as well as work in a message about global warming (that actually stopped in 1998), about environmental changes (the world's environment has been changing for billions of years, it has nothing to do with us), about empowering people to take responsibilities (they want to take away your plastic shopping bags and make you live in a dimly lit house and eat cold lentils)."

And how closely Murdoch's executives echo the declaration of their boss Rupert, when he pledged to turn his most popular TV shows into climate change education tools, back in June 2007 :

"We need to reach (our audience) in a sustained way. To weave this issue into our content-- make it dramatic, make it vivid, even sometimes make it fun. We want to inspire people to change their behavior.

"The challenge is to revolutionize the message.

"We need to do what our company does best: make this issue exciting. Tell the story in a new way.

"...we can change the way the public thinks about these issues..."

I never realised just how much I'd learned about the dire threats of global warming-induced climate change simply by reading The Daily Telegraph, watching Fox News and enjoying immensely, globally, popular entertainments like The Simpsons and 24.

The last word in the Murdoch Green Corporate video about how the most influential and powerful media company in the world has educated billions of people about the dire, catastrophic threats of climate change goes to an Al Gore clip from The Simpsons :

"Finally I get to save the Earth with deadly lasers instead of deadly slide shows."

In other climate change related news, a new blog has been launched called The Daily Degree.

I didn't know if Tim Blair, associate editor of the Daily Telegraph (a newspaper that seems to running many more Climate Change Is Humanity's Doom-type stories these days), was aware that there's a new blog pumping 'glorbal warmening' propaganda, because he normally loves to tear apart such blogs and mock their claims of climate change posing catastrophic threats, so I sent him an e-mail to give him a heads up on the new blog. Here's my e-mail :

Hey Tim,

I've found an hilarious new Climate Change blog for you to hammer and shred. And it's not one of those puny blogs run by one hairy old greenie with a few hundred deluded visitors, it's a big fat corporate blog. In fact, it's a new blog from the biggest and most powerful distributor of Global Warming/Climate Change propaganda in the world today.

I look forward to your witty, cutting takedown of these crazed warmenistas.

http://gei.newscorp.com/daily-degree/

Don't forget to include a 'hat tip' to me for the link if you use it.

Then again, you probably already got the memo from HQ, didn't you?

I was going to e-mail Andrew Bolt to tell him that there was yet another big money Corporate Green blog trying to pump the "the most superstitious pagan faith of all" and going on about hybrid cars and saving energy, and renewable and Green Energy initiatives that Bolt has said will "cost jobs" and destroy industries, and how this Corporate Greenism blog tells us we should ride a bicycle to work and take our own bags with us when we go shopping. You know, the usual mad claims exposed by Blair & Bolt that try to turn us all into eco-responsible, hairy, smelly, fat old hippes.

But seeing as Bolt has a number of helpers, I knew there was no way he was going to miss the launching of a major new Corporate Green blog like The Daily Degree. He doesn't need me to alert him to blogs like that.

I'm sure Bolt's attacks and comprehensive debunking of the claims made on The Daily Degree blog are all coming soon. No doubt, Tim Blair is writing up his takedown of The Daily Degree as you read this.

If past efforts are anything to go, Bolt & Blair should both be hammering The Daily Degree any moment now...because the fact they work for the same company that now admits to being the most powerful and most influential distributor of "glorbal warmening propaganda", by subtly inserting what Bolt & Blair call eco-hysteria into our favourite TV shows, won't influence their scathing criticism of a blog like The Daily Degree not one little bit.

Unless they're both total fucking hypocrites.

Wait...Does That Mean If I Don't Play Up, I Have To Pay Up?

NSW politicians are easily confused, and the headline for this story won't help a doddle to rein in their bad behaviour in state parliament :

Of Course It Was A Conspiracy

The instant reluctance, almost pathological refusal to consider or even mildly entertain the possibilities of Conspiracy is one of the main reasons why so many of the biggest, most deadly, and most damaging, terror attacks remain unsolved.

ICC referee Chris Broad, who was in a van behind the bus carrying the Sri Lankan cricket team through Lahore, is not afraid to explain why he fears a conspiracy is behind the horrific terror attacks, carried out by a well-trained, extremely well armed and thoroughly rehearsed team who escaped and remain at large today.

As he tried to make sense of what had happened, Broad said there were several questions he was struggling to answer.

"On the first two days (of the Test) both buses left (the hotel) at the same time with escorts. On this particular day the Pakistan bus left five minutes after the Sri Lankan bus. Why?" he said.

"It went through my mind as we were leaving the hotel - 'Where is the Pakistan bus?' But there were times during the Karachi Test when the Sri Lankans went first and Pakistan went afterwards.

"I thought maybe they were having five or 10 minutes more in the hotel and would turn up later, but after this happened you start to think: 'Did someone know something and they held the Pakistan bus back?'"

Broad said although he had no evidence for a conspiracy, the events he had witnessed had left him perplexed.

"At every junction from the hotel through to where we were attacked and all the way to the ground there were police in light blue uniforms with hand-guns controlling traffic," he said.

"How did the terrorists come to the roundabout and how did they start firing and these guys not do anything about it?

"There were plenty of police there and yet these terrorists came in, did what they had to do and then went again. It is beyond me."

It sounds like an ambush.



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The Conga Line Of SuckHoles Still Suck, But There Are Less Of Them

Mark Latham on the state of Australian political journalism :

“Perversely, the only press gallery specialists who have survived are the so-called sketch writers, frustrated comedians who, more often than not, are as funny as a burning orphanage.”

The Australian Financial Review keeps its Mark Latham columns beyond a payers-only firewall, so you can't read it unless you buy a copy. How very, very 1997.

Get Your Own Damn Pristine Beaches Of Paradise

Australia has plenty of the most beautiful beaches in the world. So many in fact, that other countries trying to lure holidaymakers to their comparably shabby shores think won't miss one or two of our lesser known beaches. Wrong.

Spanish officials have been caught passing off pictures from Australia and the Bahamas as their own in an effort to boost the country’s flagging tourism industry.

Officials from the Costa Brava Pyrenees Tourism authority have admitted using a photograph of a pristine beach and blue seas taken in Australia to illustrate a sun-baked strip of the northeastern Spanish coastline traditionally popular with British tourists.

They had to darken the colour of the sand to make it look more like a beach in Spain.