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.

Sourdough For The SourMan

A smug-looking fleg in the breadshop line is on the phone. He says the following, loud :

"Bullshit. Even gunfire and RPGs can't make cricket interesting."

I don't know if his friend laughs or not, but some of the other customers do. I'm torn between wanting to pelt him with wheat-free Berry Delight muffins and acknowledging the fact that Australians were once very quick to make black-humoured jokes about the very worst of what was happening in the world, and now don't do that so much anymore.

I considered snapping the fleg's photo to run with what I overheard, but then realised I don't actually work for a Murdoch tabloid.

What Crap Can We Make Up About Heath Ledger Today?

Can you smell it? It's the tangy waft of another half-arsed Murdoch media beat up :



This story is total crap. The headline is woefully inaccurate.

The Imaginarium has an Australian cinema release deal in place. It was signed and sealed months ago. Heath Ledger's final movie also has cinematic release deals locked in across England and Europe.

A US cinema release has not been locked into place yet for one extremely obvious reason, and if they'd bothered to do some googling they would have the info easily - director Terry Gilliam hasn't finished the movie, though he's close to being done.

Pre-release deals for The Imaginarium all over the world have already just about put the new Terry Gilliam film, starring Ledger, Colin Farrell and Johnny Depp, into profit. That means the producers don't have to go begging to American movie studios like, say, Murdoch's Fox, to get a US cinema release signed and sealed before the movie is even finished.

The Imaginarium is not going to be another Batman Begins, obviously. It's a Terry Gilliam film, so it's going to be extremely weird, and more than a little non-mainstream. Gilliam knew there would be a fairly limited audience for The Imaginarium before he began shooting, which is why it was made on a fraction of the budget of, say, the Rupert Murdoch and Australian taxpayer funded epic 'Australia'.

The Imaginarium will make money for its investors, as almost every Terry Gilliam film has, eventually, despite the cliched guff about The Gilliam Curse. It will be controversial, and the story of how Gilliam refused to shelve the movie when Heath Ledger died mid-shoot and how it was finished with the help of Ledger's friends, like Johnny Depp, will draw the film plenty of attention as it moves closer to a release date.

And The Imaginarium will divide people firmly between those who hate it, because it is Gilliam weird, and those who love it, because it is Gilliam weird.

If the Murdoch tabloids are looking for a story angle, maybe they should have pursued this
one (and they probably still will): Heath Ledger filmed a shocking suicide scene for Gilliam's movie shortly before his death. Will it be cut? Should it be cut? Will scenes of Ledger hanging from a noose upset too many people for it to remain in the movie?

An image of the Ledger suicide scene from the Just Jared website



I can't wait to see The Imaginarium. Ledger turned down some major movies and big paydays to join Terry Gilliam on this adventure because he loved the story, and the director's vision for what he wanted to bring to the screen. It promises to be one very strange, fun, magical and challenging movie, like all of Gilliam's.

More On Heath Ledger And The Imaginarium Here



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He Only Helped Kill A Few Hundred Thousand People, What's The Problem?



The Professional Idiot hasn't actually seen W., the Oliver Stone biopic of the man who started and couldn't end two extremely deadly wars, didn't catch the terrorist leader he promised he would bring to justice "dead or alive", failed to stop the 9/11 terror attacks and bankrupted the United States. At least The Professional Idiot doesn't give any indication he has seen the movie in this dim bulb example of his ongoing, losing battle with his own post-conservative era hysteria.

But that doesn't stop The Professional Idiot from raging against the new movie about George W. Bush, that mostly disappoints because it goes so easy on one of the greatest calamities to ever befall the United States.

Does The Professional Idiot actually review the movie in this column? What? Do you think he's some kind of journalist or something? Hell, no. How can you serve up bizarre Oliver Stone-ish conspiracy theories about Evil Pagan Lefty Arts Community/Film Reviewers Anti-Bush Group Think if you'd seen actually the movie?

Instead The Professional Idiot reviews the reviewers :

Our arts community can’t tell a kiss from a kick - or not when the person being kicked is its pet target of group-hate.

......

Here, for instance, is Philippa Hawker of The Age: “If you were expecting director Oliver Stone to skewer George Bush, you’ll be sorely disappointed ...”

West Australian’s Mark Naglazas also claimed W was a “surprisingly understated and even-handed account”, yet, totally oblivious to the contradiction, continued: “the 1960s veteran Stone ... cannot resist depicting Bush as he has been for much of his presidency—a shallow buffoon who, in a just world, would struggle to get a job cleaning toilets in the White House.”

Pardon? That’s an “even-handed account” of a man who gained an MBA? Ran a successful baseball franchise? Served as a popular governor of Texas? Won two terms as president? Liberated two countries from fascism? Prevented another terrorism attack on US soil since 9/11?

Good God. That's the kind of glowing summary of a blindingly obvious failed double presidency that even Karl Rove wouldn't dare attempt to pass off under his own name. He'd have to use the Murdoch media to try and get that stupendous fluff into the media.

So what's behind this hilarious love letter to the former president who can now only get a bigger book deal than Condoleezza Rice if he promises to admit he really kinda sucked during his time behind Lincoln's old desk?

Is The Professional Idiot joining George W. Bush on a speaking tour double-bill when the former president tours Australia later this year?

Yet again and again this country’s leading reviewers repeat this patently absurd argument—that Stone has been even-handed by describing Bush as an incompetent, alcoholic, idiotic party-boy, haunted by his father....

Bush, by own admission, was an incompetent, alcoholic party-boy. He was still joking about those days when hundreds of corpses of Americans were rotting away in the flooded streets and submerged basements of New Orleans. And Bush's rivalry and clashes with his father are not exactly a big secret, nor that unusual, or even unexpected, in any father-son relationship when high levels of work-related stress and pressure are involved.

But forget all that. The Professional Idiot has uncovered a brimming latte barrel of anti-Bush Crazed Lefty Group Think conspiracy. A big conspiracy it must be, across dozens of Australian newspapers, following the opinion of more than 7 out of 10 Americans.

Here's Evan Williams of The Australian: “On the whole, Stone plays fair ... The portrait of (Bush) that emerges is rounded and humane ...”

Yet Williams then gloats: “Dubya comes across as inadequate and impressionable, driven by half-baked notions of revenge, troubled by his early experience of business failure, academic mediocrity and alcoholism.”

The Sydney Morning Herald also praised Stone’s “fair-mindedness” and “restraint”. The ABC’s Margaret Pomeranz called W a “not unsympathetic depiction”, while David Stratton agreed it was “not a strongly anti-Bush film”.

The group-think is the most unmissable thing about this baaing of reviewers who see the crudest monstering as the least Bush deserves.

No dissent from this party line is even considered or uttered. None of this tribe defend Bush as some will defend even Saddam Hussein, the psychopathic killer he toppled.

...what is most remarkable of all is that not one of these reviewers can detect their own blind bias, witlessly praising as “fair” and “understated” a sliming as juvenile and angry as graffiti.

But what is most remarkable about The Professional Idiot's run through of Australian film reviewers who he believes Group Think Hate Bush, with psychotic zeal, is that he managed to totally avoid mentioning one of the most pummeling and stinging Australian film reviewer's write up of the alcohol-abuse brain damaged former president. This review, from The Professional Idiot's own newspaper, The Herald Sun :

Demonised and declared a dunce, Dubya formally vacated the White House last month.

During his two terms in office, Bush generated both the highest and lowest approval ratings of any US President since the advent of public polling.

......

(Actor Josh) Brolin’s depiction of Dubya works well enough as a straight physical impersonation. However, what he really gets right is the unique mix of idiocy and innocence that planted this plonker on the world stage.

How did The Professional Idiot manage to miss that biased, tribal group-thinking and utterly scathing review of his hero George W. Bush in the pages of his own newspaper?

Maybe, like most Victorians, The Professional Idiot only reads The Herald Sun for its sports pages.

The Writer Is Dead, But His Fiction Is Our Reality


Philip K Dick portrait by GK Bellows

By Darryl Mason

Yesterday, March 2, was the 2yth anniversary of the death of one of America's greatest thinkers, novelist Philip K Dick. PKD basically wrote himself to death, at 54 years old, and he was very aware of what he was doing to himself, in the year before he died. Only a few months before his death, Philip K Dick sat down to watch the opening minutes of the cinematic classic BladeRunner, a movie adapted from one of his best and also strangest novels Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? PKD died knowing his legend was already all but set in stone, and that BladeRunner would most certainly, at the minimum, introduce new generations to his decades of writing, philosophy and wild imagineering.

I don't think Philip K Dick would be surprised (or should that be, is surprised?) to learn that nearing the end of the first decade of the 21st century, he is now one of the most famous, and most intensely argued and discussed writers, in history.

When he was physically alive, Philip K Dick recognised that the world, in particularly America, was becoming more and more like one of his novels everyday. This didn't bring him much pleasure. He rarely wrote about paradise on earth, or utopias.

He often said he wrote his books to stop certain realities becoming real (he believed, for a while, that the reality you experience is a reality of your own, and your loved ones, and your enemies', making), but life delivered up the ultimate of all ironies, which could have only made hm laugh : that what he so often warning-wrote about it, to stop it happening, became reality thanks to the effect (in part) his books and writing and imagination had on a generation of young tech-gurus in California, and England, and Japan. And yet, Philip K Dick gave those who saw both profit and power in using technology as a tool(s) for oppression plenty of inspiration, and help, as well.

Here's some of the things he wrote about as far back as 1955 that have become our reality :

Criminals being tracked by satellites, remote control robot sentries and machine-gunners, synthetic and cloned pets, robot hookers, swipe cards to enter buildings and malls, laptop computers, reality television, personalised advertising, hacker anarchists, mega-global corporations that rule entire continents, instantly globally shared information, android babysitters, a military controlled United States divided into police-state zones (post-Hurricane Katrina, this was New Orleans), whole towns as nostalgia amusement parks, a technology-interconnected global humanity and a president who bankrupted his country and created fictional wars to distract his people from their darkening reality.

Philip K Dick might not have been the first writer to detail a post-apocalyptic nuclear world where robots ruthlessly hunt down human survivors hiding in the ruins, but he was certainly the first to write about killer robots who, in imitation of their human creators, set about building robots to kill other robots.

More on Philip K Dick here

To finish off, here's a fat handful of Philip K Dick Quote(s) Of The Day, from Your New Reality :

"History executes those who will not go where the truth takes them. This is a fact."

"The future is not a place where we go but a construct which we create. The shared world, to me, is the only one worth living in; in fact it is the only one we can live in."

"The universe is an idea in the minds of men."

"....a barrier of of fear and doubt may universally lie between us and what we most want, want and deserve."

"Only when a man chooses to act does he become real…"

"If this is what you get when you win, what the hell do you get when you lose?"

"I promise I won't try to convert you; in any case my religion is not orthodox but really my own; for instance I never go to church, and so to creed Christians I'm a combination of atheist and heretic, if you can imagine that, which I evidently can."

"What amazed me, in my suicide attempt, was the way my body literally fought back."

"Either we're onto something important....or we're just nuts."

"Mental illness is nothing more than an unvoiced NO to experience, to the new, to adventure, to being; it is a calcification, an ossification, an ending of the unrolling spool of inner life."

"Sometimes I try to figure out where I went wrong in my life, and then I wonder if indeed I did go wrong. "

"I know the feeling of being a character in a Phil Dick novel. It happens to me, too."

PKD Quotes source : Philip K Dick Collected Letters, 1977-79


How Obama Reached The Presidency Preaching Philip K Dick Philosophy

Philip K Dick And Carbon Credits

"My Mind Is More Important Than My Possessions"

Philip K Dick's 1980 Top Ten Predictions For The Future That Have (Mostly) Come True

Robots Are Being Given Human Emotions

Philip K Dick Defines The 'War On Terror'....In 1963

Philip K Dick And Carbon Credits

Philip K Dick Does Disney - Disney Does Philip K Dick




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Not Again : The Victorian Fires Part Two

Five Million Australians Get "Emergency Warning" Text Messages

In just a few hours from when this story has been posted, huge, hot winds will begins blasting across Victoria, where at least four major fire fronts are still burning. Some towns have, reportedly, already been all but emptied, and during the night, hundreds more families fled what may, or may not, turn out to be another horrific day of death and tragedy.

From ABC News :

Victorians are being urged to secure their homes ahead of strong northerly winds expected around dawn.

Around 5,000 firefighters are on high alert with the winds due to hit western Victoria, before extending across the state and reaching Melbourne.

The weather bureau's Terry Ryan says wind gusts could top 100 kilometres per hour

"Those stronger winds will pick up in the Melbourne area about 6:00 am or 7:00 am, winds 60 to 80 kilometres per hour developing quite quickly, gusts possible to 100 [kph]," he said.

"The alpine area a little bit later, gusts to about 120 [kph] in the alpine area, those winds will turn west with a change entering the west of the state around midday to 1:00pm."

Hundreds of schools, 30 national parks and and Melbourne's Botanic Gardens will be closed.

It is feared the gusty conditions will result in four major fires jumping containment lines and spreading rapidly.

One of the most effective fire-fighting methods used so far in battling the weeks of fires across Victoria that have claimed more than 210 lives and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property, homes and businesses, has been waterbombing planes and helicopters.

But if wind conditions get too intense today, these aircraft will be grounded. Then it will be all up to the thousands of firefighters to do what they can to stop the flames.

Little rain has fallen anywhere in Victoria since February 7, and some of the biggest fires are now burning in what has been described, soberly, as "difficult terrain."

And once again, the fear looms of some pyromaniac setting fires in the path of the huge winds that could lead to further, and only recently unimaginable, carnage.

"If other fires start, if they are unable to be quickly pounced upon, those fires will rapidly spread and obviously wind is the great enemy in that case...."

Some three to five million mobile phones in Victoria (and some in Tasmania) have received messages warning of the terrible dangers that today could bring. A number of news reports have claimed that every mobile phone (registered and unregistered) in Victoria received a warning message.

Here's how it was done :

The state's major telecommunications networks — Telstra, Optus and Hutchison — sent warnings from Victoria Police to their mobile customers yesterday afternoon, warning of high wind and fire risk, and advising they listen to ABC radio for emergency updates.

The networks sent the messages to more than 3 million phones, using technology that isolated Victorian numbers, and sent the texts in bulk through a dispatch centre.

Premier John Brumby said the technology trial was a first for the state and a supplement to warnings made through the media.

However, he said the system was not suitable for an immediate threat, such as a terrorist attack or tsunami, because it could only deliver texts at a rate of up to 600,000 an hour.

"We can't provide an instantaneous warning," he said. "We're not in a position to do that yet, we don't have the capacity or the technology.

Maybe Victorians will get a weather miracle before the fires get out of control. A much-needed dose of unexpected, near miraculous, heavy rain, or a sudden shift in the predicted winds that will turn the fires back on themselves, back towards land already burned.

It's like firefighters are battling a war against an almost unstoppable enemy, huge fires have been burning constantly across Victoria for almost a solid month. How the fiirefighters maintain their sanity going in again and again to take on such a force of often unstoppable destruction is incomprehensible to those who have never had to do it.

No wonder so many firefighters talk about the flames as though they are living, killing, unstoppable beasts, monstrous things taller than buildings, longer than freeways, that burn your skin to a crisp long before you even see the flames.

Fire lives and breathes, and it eats and kills voraciously, without mercy.

They cannot stop it, they can only turn it back, calm it down, contain it, until it runs of breath, out of fuel, out of energy. Until it returns again later in the year. But not late enough for the many in Victoria who have been psychologically shattered by the horrors and loss of the past few weeks, and who must now dread next summer, like the arrival of hell itself.

UPDATE : Damn, maybe I should go into the miracle-predicting business (is there one?).

Rains doused Melbourne this morning, and winds have not been as strong, or as widespread, as expected. Threats to lives and property posed by fire fronts remain strong, but the rest of today is not expected to unfold as ultra-dangerously as predicted by weather forecasters and fire fighting officials :

While Melbourne, Geelong and surrounding suburbs are getting damp, fire authorities said the drizzle would be nowhere near the amount needed to douse fires.

However, a weather spokesman told 3AW radio that the drizzle has prevented winds reaching expecting highs, and should prevent temperatures rising to a forecast 32.

They Told Me To Tell You That They Do Not Control My Mind

Just brilliant. 'Nic' posting repeatedly deleted comments here, offers up another that I simply have to preserve here, so it will never be lost :

"Last chance. Leave this post up as confirmation that I have never suggested that you, freemasons and greys are controlling my mind and you will not hear from me again."

Last chance? Or what? The Freemasons and Greys will blow up 'Nic's' head with psychotronic weapons from their orbiting space station?

Of course, if your mind is actually being controlled by The Freemasons and the Greys, they're not too happy if you go blabbing about it all over the internet. Believe me.

Then again, if your mind is controlled by The Freemasons and Greys, would they not be able to stop you in the first place from blabbing about it? Unless they secretely, cunningly, want 'Nic' to get out there and deny they secretely control his mind, while secretely controlling it, in some kind of devilish exercise aimed at making 'Nic' look like some kind of downward-spiralling loon.

That's the problem when your mind is being controlled by Greys and Freemasons. You can never be 100% certain that they are, or are not, secretely controlling your mind.

Fantastic.

UPDATE : Now Nic realises that The Freemasons and the Greys may be monitoring internet communications for any big mouths, like him, spilling the beans about the existence, or non-existence, of their nefarious mind-contrology*, panic sets in :

If Jeremy won't let me respond without deleting, will someone else who has been following please do Jeremy and I a favour and post a comment stating that I have never mentioned freemasons, aliens, or Jeremy as controlling my mind?

Meltdowny.

* I think it says a lot about Google Blogger that the phrase 'mind-contrology' does not register in its automatic spellcheck. At least, it doesn't on my Blogger account, which may be further proof that Nic is really onto something here. Or on something....

Death To Bloggy Fun

By Darryl Mason

Well, the Australian blogstream is going to become a hell of a lot less fun, scandalous and interesting now that (apparently) News Limited's lawyers are threatening legal action against those who try and hold News Limited's more rank, intolerant and smear-spreading corporate bloggers (apparently) to account for the serious damage they inflict on Australian society (apparently).

Pure Poison, the blog set up on Crikey by Grodsters and Jeremy Sear, has caused all sorts of commotion and controversy in its handful of days of existence - an all round successful launch in other words - and while some of News Limited's corporate bloggers (apparently) have few problems with small audience independent bloggers whipping them for stirring up racism and intolerance, when it comes to a heavily trafficked, mainstream media site like Crikey, well, certain News Limited bloggers start getting all whine-y and litigious (apparently).

Certain corporate bloggers, protected by News Limited army of lawyers, love to dish it out to individuals who cannot afford or can't be bothered to defend themselves through legal action, but when it's them under scrutiny, with a media-and-politics-and-business heavy audience watching on, as with Pure Poison at Crikey, they sure can't take the heat.

Here's Crikey editor Jonathan Green apologising for allowing commenters at Crikey's Pure Poison to state some (apparently) all-too-obvious truths about The Professional Idiot (apparently), aka Andrew Bolt :

The first thing here is to apologise, sincerely, to Andrew Bolt. The second, to acknowledge the traps for the unwary in tapping too innocently into Web2 interconnectivity.

In recent days, comment strings on the new Crikey blog Pure Poison have been a little too lurid in their attacks on the controversial Herald Sun columnist. There are some things you can’t say in polite journalism. “Racist” is one of them. “Liar” is another.

But The Professional Idiot (apparently) sure likes to accuse so many others of being racists, or liars, or both, just about every day he takes another swim through his mind sewer.

The thing that Crikey has learned from its first real encounter in this past fortnight with the more floridly opinionated fringes of angrily politicised blog commentary is the importance not so much of immediate moderation of comments (that is now very much an given) but rather ensuring an overall tone in the conversation. To put it more simply we don’t want to be that kind of site. We’d rather build a reputation for reason and well-turned argument than for insult and glib denunciation.

Well, they certainly can't try and compete with certain News Limited bloggers when it comes to "insult and glib denunciation", they've pretty well conrnered the market on both (apparently).

The internet is a land of many underbellies. Apparently respectable newspaper sites court google traffic with layer on layer of celebrity-studded, skin-laden picture galleries, opinion bloggers draw short of the unmentionable under their own names and leave that dirty work to their legions of regular commenters … and given the right cues, that dirty work is done.

Oh, yes, it sure is. If you're a blogger who has ever had the unfortunate experience of being mentioned and linked to by certain blogger(s) now under the protective dome of News Limited, then you'd know what it's like to be bombarded with comments threatening violence, rape and "profesional ruins (sic)". I never felt threatened by any of those dimwits because where I grew up you learned quickly to spot bigmouth softcocks for what they were, and for the non-threat to you that they actually were.

More from Crikey's Jonathan Green :

The point is not to be outraged at someone’s argument, or their untenable, maybe mischievous, maybe pointedly distorted point of view. The argument is not with the writer, but with the view expressed...

What the hell does that mean? Is not the view expressed by a News Limited blogger that of the writer/blogger themselves? Or is this a sly confirmation/allegation from Green that what some News Limited bloggers do is not actually opinion-writing, or opinion-blogging, but simply hit-based-revenue-raising infotainment relying on fermented outrage and disgust for more comments and page views and thereby more revenue?

Eh, whatever. Blog Wars are notoriously boring for non-bloggers to read, or even hear about, most of the time.

And from what appears to (apparently) be a flurry of serious legal threats now hurricaning through the Australian blogstream (apparently), you probably won't hear much more about this current Pure Poison Vs Certain News Limited Suddenly Sensitive Corporate Bloggers' Blog War. At all.

Apparently.

The Flight Of The Conchords' Jermaine and Bret offer US President Barack Obama some solid, sound financial advice :

Any thoughts on the president’s new stimulus package? What do you recommend forthe U.S. economy?

Jemaine: Budgeting.

Bret: Yeah, the government should do a budget.

I believe we already have a budget.

Jemaine: It doesn’t seem like it.

Bret: They need to put aside a certain amount each week for rent and then some money for food and then some money for partying, having a good time.

Jemaine: Put aside some for invasions!





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Wreckage

The most haunting images from the Victorian Fires of February 7 are easily those of burned out, crashed cars spread along the road leading into and through Kinglake. Perhaps as many as 20 people died in a series of horrific car accidents that day, including at least six children, and one infant. Families perished as their cars slammed into each other at high speed, fleeing heat and fire so intense it melted tyres and alloy wheels as they tried to escape. Cars ploughed into trees and plunged into ditches as drivers became lost in the smoke of the massive blaze that few in Kinglake, that afternoon, even knew was coming for them.

We've heard the stories of hundreds of survivors of the February 7 fires, but we know almost nothing about the final moments in the lives of the people who died in these cars. The fear, and terror, they experienced is unimaginable.











All photos from this extensive gallery of Victorian Fires images



ABC reporter Michael Vincent on the crashed cars of Kinglake :

"I came in with a CSA officer and it was just here there was still smoke drifting across the road..."
"Lots of debris, trees, corrugated iron roofing, power lines dangling across and then the many, many, burned out car wrecks - close to, I'd say, 20 on the main road alone.
"[There are] obvious accidents, head-on collisions, and five cars concertinaed with a motorbike had gone into a ditch.
"It's quite scary to imagine what these people went through. And some of them apparently did survive.
"There were some cars being taken away last night by the police and I imagine there were bodies in those cars. I couldn't physically see any, but the police were taking them away.
"A lot of people did panic and jumped in their cars at the last minute. It came on that fast. They had 15 minutes between when they saw it over in the far distance, 25 kilometres away, before it hit.
"So a lot of people, last minute, not realising that it was the last minute by the time they were on the road."

A terrible, incredible story of survival amongst all the death :

A Kinglake survivor saved a family of five but had to leave another man to die.

Karl Amatnieks, 56, and his wife Jane were fleeing when they saw the family trapped in a car.
They stopped as the inferno bore down and pulled the family into their car.
But Mr Amatnieks says he is no hero.
"I could not leave five people lying there waiting to die -- it's that simple," he said.
The couple were racing along Kinglake-Whittlesea Rd when they saw the family in danger.
"As we got to the bottom of the hill, we came across this couple with three kids who were stranded. They were stuck on the side of the road after slamming into the back of another car. It was horrific."
He said heavy smoke and ember sparks made driving almost impossible.
"As we got them in the car and took off, another car came down the hill and slammed into (the first crash)."
He said he felt helpless as he drove away, leaving the crash driver to die.
Moments later the inferno engulfed the pile-up.

The story of Benjamin Banks is very different again. A car crash, he believes, saved his life :

Everything that could go wrong did go wrong when Benjamin Banks tried to escape the Kinglake inferno.
It was a head-on car crash, his third crash within minutes, that ironically saved his life.
He also survived a "fire tornado" that peeled the paint from his car, and another incident when the house he eventually took shelter in also caught fire.
After a "big night" on Friday that ended about 6am on Saturday, Mr Banks was woken about 2pm by his cousin Dean, 18, as smoke enveloped his Kinglake West home.
....Mr Banks' second car failed to start and he had to change the battery.
"I knew I had to save my cousin. I wanted to save him before me. I didn't realise how intense it was and didn't realise how thick the fire had gotten."
Mr Banks' car then hit a tree lying on the road. He ploughed through it before hitting a second.
"Then this big whirlybird tornado of flame hit us. I remember looking up at it and it was as high as the trees."
The car almost tipped over and Mr Banks watched the paint peel off the bonnet and the car window melt, dripping molten glass on to his hand.
"I tried to drive again but there were no tyres left. I could feel steel on steel and could hear the steel rims grinding on the road and I was stuck on this tree."
Suddenly, headlights appeared and collided head on with Mr Banks.
"But I think that was my saving grace because if it had not hit me we would have burned to death in the car."

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