FightFightFight

We don't get a lot of brawling amongst authors in Australia, certainly no good knife fights at the writers' festivals, or blaring headlines about Tara Moss slapping Thomas Keneally into a blithering heap at a double-booked Dymocks instore, and we are a poorer literary nation for it. When was the last time you read about two Australian novelists smashed out of their minds on borboun punching the effluvia out of each other? It must be decades.

So we must settle for this violence-light, envy heavy online exchange between John Birmingham and Nick Earls.

Birmingham :

I've been on a book deadline for about four weeks now, I think. I have another two to go.

Oh sure, I could be like those suck-ups and panty-waists who get their manuscripts in on time, or even early, with minimal fuss and a daily regimen of cold showers, birch-whip floggin's and a steady, metronomic rhythm of a thousand words a day, every day, for as long as it takes. Yes Nick Earls I'm looking at you. But those Playboy Bunnies up on the hovercraft's pool deck aren't gonna chop their own lines or massage each other's buttal regions with extra virgin olive oil all by themselves you know.

Earls : Wish I could help JB. I sympathise with you, locked away in that cage, your every pore pumping out the ugly deadline pheromones. But what can I tell you? I got my manuscript in about a year early, and everything feels very mellow right now in the hot springs in which I'm luxuriating on my pre-book-tour junket in the mountains just outside Taipei. They brought the laptop over to the edge of the pool in case I could contribute, but the screen's steaming up faster than I can type. I'd like to at least say I feel your pain but, you know, right now I don't think I'm feeling any. Might have to go - I have a sudden rush of nothing to do, and all day to do it in.

Birmingham : Damn you. Damn you to hell, Earls!!! It's just like kindy all over again. Always turning up with finished forts and castles on box construction day.

John Birmingham, now a self-confessed airport novelist (and a damned good one), has been using Twitter to detail exactly what it is like to punch out thousands of words a day of action-fat novel as a hovering, shadow-heavy deadline twists his ears and repeatedly rams his head into the desk to keep those words flowing. It's been very interesting, funny and fascinating to follow.

Birmingham should publish a selection of those twoots at the end of his new book, so readers can see a bit of the process behind it, the airport novel equivalent of a DVD extra.

Pistols from the mid-1800s through to the early 1900s used in Australia by bushrangers, traps and bank robbers. On display at the Sydney Police & Justice Museum

Who Are All You People? What Are You Doing Here?

Thursday was a very, very good day, so thank you :





Unlike blog's that claim "one million hits a month", this readership came mostly from people who read a couple of stories then left, without leaving a dozen or two dozen comments. The Liberal Party comment crew obviously don't see it as worthwhile to come around spraying comments and insults, and thank fuck for that.

Readers clearly have more important things to do than hang around a blog like this posting comments and checking back a few dozen times a day to see responses to their comments and then posting another comment, then checking back to see who responded to their last comment. If that was happening on a daily basis around these parts, there'd be "one million hits a month", and more.

I appreciate comments, when they come, but it doesn't make any difference to why I do this, and keep doing it. I'm glad readers, like you, don't have the time to post hundreds of comments, you get more time for more worthwhile pursuits and I get a lot more other writing, fiction writing, done.

Some new short stories for the ED Day prequel, covering the 90 days of pandemic waves that lead up to ED Day, will be ready soon, and of course they'll be free to read online.

Riveting Viewing, If Your Head Is Filled With Rivets

Rupert Murdoch wants all his journos and bloggers to get used to the idea of reporting and opining in word and video. If they can't cut it across multi-media platforms, and pull those hits, they'll be gone.

The Daily Telegraph's Tim Blair dips his toe into these tepid new waters with this video.

The flanno is for bogan cred.

He doesn't seem to get it. You don't score three or four million views because you are reluctant to do the jump, you score that kind of traffic when you attempt the jump and fail, smash into the ground at 70kmh and catch a bouncing motorcycle to the spine.

Hopefully, this bit of snark won't upset him too much, I'd hate to get another 'Be Nice To Tim' letter from a lawyer, they must cost a packet.

Exclusive? We Got Nothing

By Darryl Mason

Sydney's Daily Telegraph, Melbourne's Herald Sun, the Courier Mail, the Adelaide Advertiser, proclaims a Mad Max 4 "EXCLUSIVE" today :



MTV had a story with far more detail back in early March, including the fact that director George Miller has already stated the fourth Max Mad movie is going to be animated, not live action, meaning there will be no "shooting" in Sydney :

“We’ll probably go a different route,” Miller told MTV News about the potential talent voicing the lead role. 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. It’s a curious undertaking, to be sure, but one made all the more certain to happen after the runaway success in 2006 of his computer-animated “Happy Feet”—not that the newest, ever-violent “Max” film will have much in common with that kid-friendly penguin party.

“I see myself as someone who is very curious about storytelling and all its various media,” Miller said. “I’ve always loved anime, in particular the Japanese sensibility. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”

The Orstrahyun covered this story back on March 8 :

Max Mad 4 Is Coming, Animated And Mel Gibson Free

So what's the big Exclusive all these Rupert Murdoch daily newspapers have nabbed?

Nothing :

The Daily Telegraph could not confirm casting intentions because nobody at Kennedy Miller was available for comment.

Nor could we confirm whether Miller intended to direct Mad Max 4 himself. And if he did, whether he intended to direct it simultaneously with Happy Feet 2, which is currently in production in Sydney.

Nothing about Mad Max 4 as anime, or the extensive video game that will see release before the fourth Mad Max movie, nothing about Miller's already announced plans for the movie, nothing about the old Mad Max 4 script, 'Fury Road', that has been kicking around for years and will likely supply at least the basic plot of the new movie :

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.

How hard is to fluff out an "Exclusive" with some actual information from a Google search, seeing as the Daily Telegraph couldn't get an interview with George Miller, or find out any hard detail from anyone connected with the project?

The MTV story quoted above, with Miller's quotes, is the third story listed when you Google 'Mad Max 4.'

Rupert Murdoch thinks that people will soon pay him to access this kind of non-event "Exclusive" content online.

Good Luck with that.

Here's an old trailer for the original Mad Max, the American trailer with, akk! American voices dubbed over all those excellent, characteristic, funny Australian ones. How wrong is this?

Getting Nostalgic For A Post-Apocalyptic Aftermath

"this beat up controversy"


.

Finally From Howard's Pouty Lips, The Truth....

By Darryl Mason

John Howard reveals the cause of all that tension between himself and Peter Costello.

"Peter did not offer himself," Mr Howard said.

Unlike most of the Liberal Party, and Liberal Party supporters, Howard likes Malcolm Turnbull, a lot :

"Malcolm is very capable and I think he demonstrated last night..."

I'm not running the rest of that quote, you can read it here, it's too early in the morning for that kind of stuff.

Howard also likes Bob Hawke :

"The most talented person I faced..."

Again, too early, the rest of that quote is here, but you may need a strong coffee first.

Howard better not go too far with all this praise, someone might get jealous :






John Howard, the prime minister who lost his seat to a former host from ABC's 7.30 Report and Lateline (that still reads like an alternate reality joke from The Chaser, a very very funny one) is close to finishing his book. A rumour of a working title :

John Howard : How I Made Australia Grate

There will be many photos of John Howard with his favourite men.


John Howard Happy That Al Qaeda's Prayers Have Been Answered

The Australian Welfare Bludger As Ex-Prime Minister

When John Howard Advised Al Qaeda To Pray For An Obama Presidency

December 2006 : Rudd Plays With Howard's Mind By Refusing To Get Angry, Julia Gillard Slays Howard With "His Best Days Are Behind Him"

March 2007 : Hating Howard - The New National Sport Everybody Wants To Play

Rupert Murdoch Pays Me To Never Mention He Belongs To A Pagan Cult Who Want To Destroy The World And Wipe Out Humanity

By Darryl Mason

This ad from the corporate green HQ of Rupert Murdoch's The Herald Sun....



...sits right above this headline from Herald's Sun associate editor, The Professional Idiot - 'Star Hypocrites Of The Warming Faith' :



The story includes this declaration :

Truly, global warming is the first major religion to be led entirely by shameless sinners, attended by assorted hypocrites and carpetbaggers.

Al Gore gets a mention, Richard Branson gets a mention, Oprah Winfrey gets a mention in the League Of Extraordinary Global Warming Hypocrites, but somehow, yet again, to my utter shock, The Professional Idiot forgets to include his boss Rupert Murdoch, the world's biggest, most influential promoter of global warming hysteria and Corporate Greenism, in his list of hypocrites and carpetbaggers.

Does Rupert Murdoch row a boat to Australia when he visits?

Doesn't the same multi-billionaire who uses The Simpsons to scare children about drowning cities use a corporate jet to travel the world?

Every time The Professional Idiot goes comment mining on global warming or carbon trading, the massive ad appears from the boss reminding him of just what a spectacle fucking hypocrite he is. And every time it appears it reminds readers how pathetically afraid The Professional Idiot is to criticise or even mention his boss's chief role in the worldwide promotion of global warming hysteria, while he religiously ignores his own newspaper's efforts in ramping up The Fear and following Rupert Murdoch's masssive plan to cash-in on the coming carbon trading market and carbon tax.



Then again, when you've already admitted there is no ideology so evil or inhuman that you would not take a job or a pile of cash from its believers, screaming Stop The Global Warming Hysteria! while working for a newspaper that regularly fills its pages with exactly that kind of hysteria, does make some kind of sense.

At least enough to not choke on your own hypocrisy every payday.

Maybe we should remember the Alan Jones excuse : It's not news, it's not even journalism, it's Entertainment.

It sure is entertaining.

Crikey's Guy Rundle goes behind the scenes of Budget 2009 :

It's been a long time.

"We Had Some Dedicated Rooters There Who Wanted To Test Out Their Ability To Toss A Root"

ABC journalist and author Leigh Sales, on Twitter, suspects the following local news story from regional Australia can't be for real, that it has to be fake.




City journos, always so suspicious and skeptical of non-city cultural events and local customs they've never heard of before.

"Wait a minute, you want me to stand in a bucket of pig shit for two minutes? Do all visitors to your pig farm have to do this?" "Yes, bloody oaf they do."

Perhaps Sales was suspicious of fakery simply because the throwers are called "rooters", and the local news team managed to squeeze the word "root" so many times into a brief story. For international readers, "root" was, and remains in some parts of Australia, a popular Australian slang term for "fuck". As in, "You wanna root?" and "Ahhhh, get rooted you drongo."

Mallee Root Throwing is real (enough), and is often used by locals in Australian towns where mallee roots are numerous to test the strength of visitors, particularly visitors from the "City".

World Championships, after the state finals of course, are held each year on Australia Day where the utes gather by the hundreds.

Joyce Unveils .1% Dissent Against Liberals

They tried to make Barney believe in global warming, but he said, "No, no, no."

Senator Joyce said the Nationals did not always vote with their Liberal partners.

"About 99.9 per cent of the time, or more, we vote for the Liberal Party and I can't understand why people get their noses so out of joint when that's not the case,'' he said.

Even in a marriage, couples don't agree all the time, he said.

"I don't ... and no one says that's the end of this relationship, they just say that's the way relationships go.''

Yes, but the aggrieved partner may also seethe quietly while plotting wicked revenge.

Carbon trading, and the carbon tax, might be delayed for a year or two, but it's not going to fall into the "Forget About It" pit anytime soon. Most Labor and Liberal politicians want it, some of Australia's biggest businesses are demanding it, and Rupert Murdoch stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars from it, even if he lets a few of his columnists, for entertainment purposes, rage against it.

Barnaby Joyce could ride an anti-carbon tax movement to even greater election success, unless pensioners and the poor actually get paid cash by the Rudd government because they emit less carbon in their lifestyles than the rich, which is probably exactly what is going to happen to smooth over its introduction.

Captain Cook statue, Hyde Park, Sydney









Photos by Darryl Mason

Aporkalypse, Please

By Darryl Mason

The first confirmed case of an Australian with swine flu, actually in Australia - but she had it in the US and claims she was no longer sick or showing symptoms when she boarded a plane to come home - is announced to massive media freakout on a slow news day.

So how did the Saturday 5pm news on Channel 10 in Sydney deal with one confirmed case of Australian Has Swine Flu! as the first story of the bulletin, without being too dramatic? Cut to newsreader questioning Some Expert :

Newsreader : Is it time to panic?

Some Expert : No.

It's like the declarations from government health departments and the World Health Organisation warning us, "Don't Panic!" as though there will come a time of "Fuck Yes, Panic Now!" announcements.

Newsreader : Health Minister, there are now 2000 confirmed cases of ManBirdPig Flu in Australia, with dozens of deaths. Is it time now for the Australian public to panic?

Health Minister : "Yes. Yes I do think the time has come for everyone to panic."

Newsreader : Are you panicking right now?"

Health Minister : "Yes. I am panicking. This is me in a state of panic."

Newsreader : "Sorry, minister, I couldn't hear you clearly over what sounds like breaking waves and a game of beach volleyball in the background there."

Health Minister (off) : "....close the fucking door, Wayne!"

Newsreader : "Minister?"

Health Minister : "Sorry, it was...the TV...in my hotel room...in Canberra."

Newsreader : "Just how should the Australian people panic, minister? Should they go all out bat fucking shit crazy, and start killing their neighbours and salting their corpses for future meals when quality food will be scarce? Or should we remain in homes for a third month and watch TV and shiver just a little at this news and make little defeated wincing, sighing and choking-sob noises instead?"

Health Minister : "I'd advise against the gathering and preserving of other working families for later consumption, at this time. It is in the interest of all Australians to remain calm even as we move through this state of obvious and prolonged panic."

Newsreader : "So you're saying the Australian people should stay calm but feel free to panic?"

Health Minister : "Yes, as long as your frantic panic is confined to your home, and you don't break anything and you don't start grabbing your family members by the shoulders and shaking them as you scream 'God hates us! He really does!' over and over again until you fall exhausted and dehydrated to the floor."

Newsreader : "So we can panic, but we need to remain calm in our panic?"

Health Minister : "Yes, that's exactly correct."

Newsreader : "Thank you."

Health Minister : "Thank you."

Newsreader : "In other news, the NRL is reeling after more group sex allegations surfaced, but this time no females were involved..."

Health Minister (off) : "...that's what I told that clue-bat worthy idiot. I just can't believe how fucking doomed they all are back there."

Newsreader : "..........I'm sorry, it appears the health minister's microphone is still on and we are trying to get the..."

Health Minister (off) : "....well you tell Kev he should have thought about packing his own frigging hair dryer before we evacuated. And another thing, Wayne, if I'm going to be staying here for six months, I want a bungalow right on the beach, goddammit. I'm not spending half a year in Vanuatu living in some damp shack a half kay back from the frigging beach."

Newsreader : "In breaking news, the federal government and opposition have announced the relocation of Parliament to a well-defended, heavily stockpiled island in Vanuatu, for the immediate future."

I think there are probably dozens, if not hundreds, of people in Australia who have picked up the swine flu virus in the past five weeks or so, and because they are used to dealing with flu symptoms most years without feeling the need or urgency to see a doctor, they don't know they picked it up, suffered briefly and with no mammothic discomfort, and are now feeling much better.

It's a flu, one that will probably prove more fatal to those it infects than seasonal Influenza A viruses usually do, but it does not deliver vastly different symptoms than those 'usual' flu. You'll only know you've got or had ManBirdPig Flu once you've been tested by a doctor.

If the New Flu made your nose change into a snout, or made you puke out the inside of your own leg, then yes, it would be obvious you'd picked up H1N1 and dozens of people a week would be announced to have become infected.

Even if H1N1 turns into a pandemic and kills 2% of everyone it infects, these deaths are not going to happen all in one week or month or probably not even in the same year.

Twenty or thirty thousand Australians dying from HumanBirdPig Flu over 18 months will be big news, and the changes to the most basic functioning of society from widespread absenteeism will be monumental and unavoidable, but the deaths, if they come, will come in waves, across those many months.

With constant nightly news attention focused around the spread of a virus that is killing hundreds a week, even the news of an ongoing pandemic will get old for most, or will want to be mostly avoided by those who have already lost friends and family to the virus.

A pandemic killing tens of thousands of Australians in a year will be one of the biggest stories of the century, but it will be one of the hardest for the media to cover, respectfully, and without hysteria, and also maintain interest in.

The science is difficult, the lies and deceptions from governments about what is actually going on will be monumental and the visuals of people lining up outside hospitals, or bodies being carried from homes, the mass funerals, the quarantined being interviewed from behind their living room windows, and barren city streets and squares, will quickly become boring to most viewers.

A pandemic is not a fast moving story, at least not fast enough for the speed of today's news, it will crawl along, a tragedy that unfolds slowly filled mostly with intimate dramas behind the front doors of quarantined homes. And there will be months when nothing happens at all, when road accidents and heart disease deaths beat out pandemic influenza for 'Most Deaths This Month.'

I'm sure the evening news will give us maps of Australia with death tallies for each state and territory, too, if a pandemic becomes reality, and you'll know just how serious the pandemic actually is by whether the reporter 'on the scene' will be wearing a face mask or a full biosuit, breathing like Darth Vader.


Aporkalypse Now?

Aporkalypse When?

Just, Wow

A twelve foot barrel captured in high definition super slo-mo :



(found on Digg)

I See Dead Pets....And Easy Profit

The Daily Telegraph runs one of those stupid stories about something stupid nobody's heard of before, which they can follow up on a few months from now when the publicity they gave this stupid idea has found its faithful amongst those who think it perfectly reasonable to pay $100 to hear made-up messages from their dead cat :



You don't need to pay $100 to know what the secret message your dead cat is trying to send you from beyond the grave. I'll give it to you for free. The message is this :

Feed Me.

I'm tempted to set up a Dead But Psychic Pets hotline. Not that I hear dead animals talking to me or anything....

Correction : We Are Not Under Siege From Monster Spiders

The Brisbane Times has moved fast to reassure Australians that British tabloid media reports are wrong - a Queensland town is not currently being invaded and overrun by giant, "barking" spiders :

The story was picked up by several other UK news outlets, including The Telegraph and the Irish Independent, with Sky News running it under the headline: 'Super-sized tarantulas are spinning a web of terror in a town in Australia.'

But Mr Geiszler laughed off the coverage this morning, telling brisbanetimes.com.au it had been "blown out of all proportion and massively sensationalised."

"There have been no more than 10 sightings of these spiders here," Mr Geiszler said.

"There is definitely not an invasion or a plague or anything like that."

The Brisbane Times didn't notice that it was in fact the Townsville Bulletin that began this story with a sensational report of "five "monster spiders" spotted in Bowen.

We Will Laugh At Their Coffins

Australia's most boring columnist, Gerard Henderson, thinks that The Chaser is "media".

After The Chaser boys completed some pre-new show publicity over The Vatican, Gerard Henderson unfurls a troubling little fantasy he has about what would happen, and how the ABC would respond, if The Chaser "Boys" tried to pull that kind of shit somewhere Islamic :

“The Chaser shoot was approved by ABC TV. Not all the Chaser boys got their throats cut in the resultant mob violence. Fortunately, one of The Boys was pretending to urinate in a Tehran toilet fixture display store at the time and escaped injury. He has our full support. We are certainly sad that two of The Boys did not make it safely home. But the return of The Boys’ coffins will provide an opportunity at gallows humour to match the 2007 skit by The Boy Licciardello aimed at the disabled in wheel-chairs.”

I hope Gerard wasn't touching himself inappropriately while conjuring up that fascinating little fantasy.

"Are They Leather Bound Pounds?"

Dylan Moran at the ABC Shop, Queen Victoria Building, May 3 :












Photos By Darryl Mason


He didn't want to be there. He was happy to meet his fans, but he wanted to spend more time with his family instead, it's been a busy, sold-out-show filled visit to Australia.

So Dylan Moran was sitting in a bookstore, wearing black, ruffled and scruffled, and he was grouchy.

Unfortunately no-one had a megaphone so he could clear the shop.

"Right, shop is closed. Everybody get out."

"But it's only three."

"Yes, but it's my shop."

Excellent Interview With Dylan Moran Here

Stupid Sure, But Pragmatic

As freaky as this sounds now, such a spectacle was not a completely unusual sight in the streets of outer suburban Sydney in the 1970s :

Travelling without the standard fittings, including a bonnet, lights and a conventional car battery, the Werribee man managed to draw further attention to himself by running a red light in peak hour in full view of police.

...the battery powering the car was sitting in the front passenger footwell, beside a full ashtray and a slab of bourbon cans.

He's probably more upset about losing the bourbon than the car.

A Million Typing Cats Locked In A Room Could Eventually Compose The Collected Works Of The Professional Idiot

By Darryl Mason

One of the most relevant questions ever asked by a commenter at The Professional Idiot's :



No-one bothered to reply-comment in the next nine hours to deny such a reality exists, or try to shake Arovet out of his/her apparent belief that The Professional Idiot's blog is perhaps teaming with comments from Liberal Party staffers using false names.

How anybody could ever come to believe such a thing is hard to comprehend.

The Professional Idiot may be an idiot, but he is still professional, and he would never allow his blog comments to be filled up, falsely inflated you might say, by people employed by the Liberal Party, or financial backers of the Liberal Party, to post dozens of comments a week there in a desperate attempt to try and influence public opinion, and ramp up pressure to get rid of Malcolm Turnbull.

The Professional Idiot would surely know if this kind of fakery from Liberal Party staffers and/or PR agencies was happening and would put a stop to it.

He'd have no choice but to take action.

What would Rupert think?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Professional Idiot was interviewed by John Safran on Speaking In Tongues in 2006.

John Safran : Have you ever, like, turned down money or a job based on ideological grounds?

The Professional Idiot : Ahhhhh, no.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull appeared on the Red N' Geen Kerry Report last night, and said some of the exact things ("socialists running this country") that regular commenters at The Professional Idiot have been demanding he say about the Rudd government, for months. You'd think they'd be all cheering, but no.

Bizarrely, The Professional Idiot only quoted the questions of Kerry O'Lefty (probably Pagan, too) O'Brien in this piece on Malolm Turnbull's appearance, and not one single thing the Liberal Party leader had to say. Nothing.

The Professional Idiot has campaigned through his newspaper, blog, morning TV and radio appearances for three Liberal Party leaders in a row (Howard, Nelson and now Turnbull) to end their leaderships.

I ranted on the curious way The Professional Idiot, an avowed conservative, has so successfully seeded chaos and division in the Liberal Party, for years, in this comment at Grods :

Nothing I’ve seen him write or any ’stand’ he’s taken in the past three years has swayed me of the belief that The Professional Idiot’s mission is to destroy the Liberal Party. Or at least, destroy it enough so it can be recast along his ideological lines. With his close friend Peter Costello as leader, obviously.

Every time they do what they are told to do by him, through his columns and blog and TV appearances, and when they start robo-quoting his lines to the media, the Liberal Party falls further into a heap.

The Liberal Party is his plaything, has been since he started campaigning through the Herald Sun for Howard to quit as leader a few months before the election.

The mission isn’t just to seed division amongst the Liberals, but to spread chaos and destruction.

Turnbull is trying hard to bring the Liberals into the 21st century, and The Professional Idiot just hammers away at him, day after day.

Don’t you think it’s interesting that The Professional Idiot, through his broad reach across Australian media, gets in more snarky stings and hammering blows against the Liberal Party (all through the leaderships of Howard, Nelson and Turnbull) than anyone from the Labor Party ever does?

Name just one Peak Lefty multi-media columnist, from The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, fucking anywhere, that so effectively eats away at the unity and confidence of the Liberal Party like The Professional Idiot does, day after day. Just one.

The Professional Idiot has heaped more praise and admiration on American conservatives like Sarah Palin than any conservative politician in Australia.

Rudd doesn’t give a shit if The Professional Idiot calls him SpinSpinSpin or hopeless or out of his depth or even a liar. It doesn’t make any difference. He rarely says anything about Rudd that most people don’t already think about politicians in general.

Rudd and his media team know that The Professional Idiot is doing far more damage to the Liberal Party than he is to Labor, and they love him for it.

Of course, almost none of the regular commenters at his blog appear to have any inkling, insight or knowledge of any of the above.

Which proves that comment about Liberal Party staffers, or PR flacks hired by Liberal Party backers, filling up the comments at The Professional Idiot's must indeed be false.

If it was true, if, say, 10-20% of the comments at The Professional Idiot's blog were coming from Liberal staffers, or PR flacks, they wouldn't let him get away with his constant attacks on the Liberal Party, would they?

And they certainly wouldn't be campaigning in the comments, a few times a week at least, for The Professional Idiot to get his own TV show on the ABC.

Right?

Okay, Time To Send In The Monster Spiders

Australians have grown bored by the repeativity of cyclone attacks, shark attacks, crocodile attacks, leg-gnawing possum attacks, kangaroo attacks, camels trashing our towns and turning on our taps, possums invading our Leagues clubs, and aggro-wallabies invading our nursing homes.

We like variety in how Nature tries to wipe us out. We appreciate the unusual.

Good news, then, from the Townsville Bulletin. Nature's War On Humans ramps up a notch with this dramatic new front line opening up in Queensland :

SPIDER INVASION IN BOWEN

IN a scene that could almost be out of a B-grade monster movie, giant spiders have invaded Bowen.

For about six weeks, residents have reported seeing huge bird-eating spiders crawling around their backyards and gardens.

That's not too over the top an intro for a story detailing how a few big, occasionally bird-eating spiders have shown up in a few Bowen backyards, is it?

While at this stage there had only been about five sightings of the giant spiders, Mr Geiszler said it was unusual to see that many in such a short period.

"They are very shy. They normally never venture out too far but obviously these ones have been flushed out for some reason.

"It's more than enough to scare a few people. It's not plague proportions or anything.

Or invasion proportions.

Freaky fact.

The spiders whistle or make a hissing sound when aggravated, which can be heard about 2m away.

So if you're in or around Bowen in the next few weeks, poking around in a garden and you hear a bizarre hissing sound, run, run and flail your arms around your head and back to make sure one of these "monsters" isn't hitching a ride. There probably won't be a "monster" spider trying to eat your ear lobes, but you will look fantastically funny to anyone who sees you running down the street.

"The spiders have been getting fed and now they're out walking about looking for females to mate with."

The monster spiders have had a good feed and now out cruising for chicks.

The bite from a bird-eating spider is not known to be fatal to humans, however it can cause up to six hours of vomiting.

Yeah, like a spider bite's the only thing that can happen to you in Townsville that could lead to six hours of vomiting.

Great Story

Then again, you don't want of these fuckers crawling over your face when you're passed out in the backyard :

Righteous Spider Photo by Greg Brylund

Greg Sheridan : If A Palestinian Says It, It Must Be A Lie

The Australian's "most influential" foreign affairs commentator Greg Sheridan on February 5, 2009 :

I do not believe a single story of Israeli war crimes or atrocities in Gaza. There is no evidence of any such story beyond Palestinian eye-witness accounts....

The United Nations isssued a report yesterday on Israel's clear and painfully obvious war crimes in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, which killed more than 1400 Palestinians, including hundreds of women and children :

United Nations investigators found that Israeli missiles killed 30 to 40 Palestinians in the immediate vicinity of the Jabalia school in Gaza Strip, where hundreds of others had taken refuge during the Israel-Hamas conflict, according to a report released Tuesday.

The attack against the Jabalia boy school, also known as the al-Fakoura school, which was run by the UN refugee agency in the Middle East (UNWRA), was among the six attacks against UN compounds cited in the report by a three-member investigative board.

'The board found that the undisputed cause of the injuries and the deaths to persons in the immediate vicinity of the school was the firing of 122 mm mortar rounds by the IDF, which landed in the area outside the school and at the compound of a family home nearby,' the report said.

If Sheridan writes about the UN report, he will use the words "one-sided" and "biased" prominently.

He doesn't need to get a memo, he knows what his job is.

Greg Sheridan's Bizarre Anti-Free Speech, Anti-Free Assembly Propaganda

If This Was America, We'd Already Have A Ned Kelly Amusement Park




By Darryl Mason

Bon Scott's grave in the Freemantle cemetery gets thousands of visitors a year.

How many visitors do you think the grave, and a monument, of Ned Kelly would bring to country Victoria each year? Ten thousand? Fifty thousand? What might the value of a dedicated memorial and museum to Ned Kelly be worth each year to Victorian tourism? $10 million? $30 million?

The idea of exhuming the bones of Ned Kelly, holding a very public funeral and entombing his remains beneath a monument that would draw tens of thousands of tourists no doubt repels some in Australia. Those who don't want to remember the chaos of the decades of bushrangers and police harrassment and brutality that led to Federation.

But most Australians, I suspect, would think it a fine and brilliant idea, and would enjoy the media fuss and furious debate about his criminality and probably a televised pseudo-retrial of Kelly as well.

Before the corporatisation of sports, and the reckless slaughter of World War I, the bushranging era, through the mid-to-late 1800s served up to a young nation a series of heroic, but flawed, outlaws who then defined the spirit of what it meant to be an Australian : protect your family and take absolutely no shit, from anybody.

Pentridge Prison Chaplain : Give Ned Kelly Back To His Family :

The remains of Ned Kelly and other prisoners found at the Pentridge Prison site should be returned to their families, a chaplain says.

The outlaw's remains should be returned to his family and he should be given a decent burial, former Pentridge Prison chaplain Father Peter Norden said.

Fr Norden said Kelly should be granted a final resting place with his deceased relatives...

Bushranger movies, and movies about Ned Kelly in particular, were extremely popular in Australia in the early 1900s. Some of the first full-length feature films produced anywhere in the world were about Australian bushrangers fighting back against police brutality in a fascist police state. These films, of course, had to be banned :

• 1907 Victorian Chief Secretary bans screenings of The Story of the Kelly Gang
  in Benalla and Wangaratta.

• 1911 exhibition of The Story of the Kelly Gang film banned in Adelaide.

• 1912 New South Wales police department banned the production of bushranger films.

And here's that excellent shot of Ned Kelly's armour again :

The Hungry Jacks Bacon Deluxe as it dreams to be :



The above hamburger, from a store in Pitt Street, as it really is :



All that grease and mayonnaise really helps the dense mass of meat and cheese slide down your throat.

Absolutely delicious.

We're Definitely Going To Blame This One On A Computer

What is it with the Murdoch media pointing guns at an American president?



Automated but assassination-obsessed coders?

Can a piece of software be charged with threatening the president?

Start With The Koalas

An appropriate logo has now been located for the anti-nature resistance, Humans Against The Rest (HATeR) :



More on the unlikely source of the above image in a photo essay, later.

The Anzac War Memorial, Hyde Park Sydney, May 4









Directly below them, a Japanese youth wielding a long sword lept off the stairs of the memorial again and again, for a photo shoot for some Asian martial arts movie, until an elderly passer-by explained why doing this around any Australian war memorial was a really, really bad idea.





But in front of the statues of the memorial, the Pool of Remembrance shimmered in the afternoon light, and a dog (centre) was preparing for some essential ball chasing action.









Photos By Darryl Mason

You Won't Want To Be Throwing That Shrimp On Your Barbie

A new Australian supernatural splatterfest, Primal, heads for Cannnes. Below is a supremely gruesome trailer, fast and full of "what in all fuck was that?" glimpses of the action. Kids go looking for Aboriginal rock art in the bush, get lost, carnage, ancient evil and what appears to be some prawn-related mayhem follows..

Primal will probably be only one of the few Australian movies that finds international buyers at Cannes this year.



More on Primal here

That's Good. Can I Borrow Your Pen?

The brilliant Hollowmen wins a due award for Most Outstanding Comedy at the Logies.

Apparently Kevin Rudd is confused about the category in which the Hollowmen won. Rudd thought Hollowmen was a tense, riveting drama series, filled with real-world office life challenges and triumphs.

The ABC News website takes the opportunity to laddle upon itself some hearty praise, via the speeches of two Logie winners.

From the Hollowmen acceptance speech :

"[The producers would like to] thank the ABC for their undying support of comedy, and also in particular a few people - one Mark Scott, Courtney Gibson and there would be Kim Dalton..." Watts said.

ABC reporter Stephen McDonell who won for Most Oustanding News Coverage (the Sichuan earthquake aftermath) :

"Thank you very much for this. What do I say? Sometimes you're in the right place, and the right but good thing I suppose with the ABC - unlike I suppose anyone else - is that we've got correspondents all over the world and it's what you get from local knowledg..."

"So if you want to see the world through Australian eyes, I suppose the ABC's still the place to do it."

'See The World Through Australian Eyes'....The Hollowmen would be all over that phrase. It'd be trialed as a campaign slogan, or station ID.

In the time it took to locate the camera, a huge, clearly defined Z over Sydney drifted into this :



To the south, a few minutes later :



photos by Darryl Mason

Is This Real World, Or Just An Exercise?

The Sydney Morning Herald :

Pandemic or a dress rehearsal?

Whether swine flu is the pandemic the world has been dreading should be known within the next few days.

Surely, they're not using the term 'dress rehearsal' as Webster's defines it?

"a practice exercise for something to come".

August, 2007 : Bird Flu-Infected Chickens Fed To Pigs In Bali

Is This Where HumanBirdPig Flu Began?

By Darryl Mason

The World Health Organisation rejected a hopeless campaign by The Orstrahyun to have the new swine flu virus officially titled Pork Throat. Instead, the WHO has gone with Influenza A H1N1 as its official reference term for the new influenza virus, which contains the genes of human, bird and pig flu strains.

This retitling has led to an immediate downturn of interest amongst the public in the pandemic potential of the virus, which may have been part of the intention of giving this bizarre influenza such an academic, book lurnin' name.

But, to shift into serious news mode, how did strains of pig, human and bird flu first meet up, and start swapping genes in order to mutate into Influenza A H1N1?

There are theories, but nothing solid. Yet.

A possible source, or at least a scenario where such an unlikely blending of influenza viruses could have taken place, can be found in this report on two human deaths from the H5N1 (bird flu) virus back in September, 2007 :

Suyono said there had been sick chickens around the woman's house and many had died suddenly in recent weeks.

"The villagers didn't burn the carcasses. Instead they buried them or fed them to pigs," Suyono added.

Contact with sick fowl is the most common way for humans to contract the H5N1 virus.

Human to human transmission of the bird flu virus was believed to be occuring in Bali, by August 2007, though it did not prove to be highly transmissible, and further infections were usually contained within Balinese families living amongst bird-flu infected poultry, or those caring for bird-flu infected relatives.

You'll probably see this story in next week's Sunday Telegraph as well.

The Orstrahyun Reports, The Health Department Acts

The Ostrahyun, Sunday April 26 :

...the Australian government stockpiles of Tamiflu are believed to have reached their expiration dates late last year.

The Sunday Telegraph, May 3 :

Responding to questions from The Sunday Telegraph, a spokesman for Health Minister Nicola Roxon revealed 1.6 million packs (of Tamiflu) were removed from the Commonwealth's stockpile this month because they had passed their use-by date.

The difference here is that the Sunday Telegraph gets calls or e-mails back from the Health Department when contacted for comment about expired anti-virals stockpiles.

Thanks to Viro for that one week earlier news tip.


The Last Time We Were On The Brink Of A Pandemic, Flu Killed 150 In Sydney In Less Than Three Weeks

Yes, I'm Ready To Panic....But There's So Many Potential Panic Pandemics To Choose From

The Geek :

Driving around listening to even the most sombre news radio stations felt like playing a small role in the opening chapters of The Stand...

The radio coverage of WHO's Margaret Chan warning, "All countries should immediately now activate their pandemic preparedness plans," had a truly B-Grade thriller feel. It seemed to demand an immediate slam cut to montage-worthy shots of black helicopters landing in shopping malls and disgorging squads of troops in NBC suits to insist at bayonet point on proper hand-washing technique and hanky usage.

A throwaway comment by The Geek about waiting a week before deciding whether or not to panic over "piggy flu", or as it's otherwise known....

H1N1/Pork Throat/Bacon Lung/Porky's Revenge II/Probably China's Fault Virus/Swine Flu/the Hamdemic/The Aporkalypse/Non-Semitically-Offensive-Related Descriptor Fever/North American Flu

...inspired the creation of this site :

Is It Time To Panic?

Text messages to the world culled from Twitter will help you decide if it truly is time to panic, or whether you should wait a bit. Thousands of short, sharp, snaps of wit, insight, crap, LOLability, weirdness and WTFery can be your handy guide to not panicking too soon, or too late.

And if you're sick of (not sick from) swine flu, there's a pandicomica of potential panic-worthiness at IITTP to choose from:

Zombie Apocalypse

Asteroid

Robot Uprising

Pirates

Ninjas

Killer Bees

Killer Bees That Shoot Swine Flu Out Of Their Tiny Mouths

Oprah

Something for everyone.

(click to enlarge) - photo credit

Lyrics from Poor Ned, by Redgum :

Eighteen hundred and seventy eight
Was the year I remember so well
They put my father in an early grave
Slung my mother in gaol
Now I don't know what's right or wrong
But they hung Christ on nails
Six kids at home and two still on the breast
They wouldn't even give her bail

"It's A Dog Marooned On An Island Story. George Clooney Can Play The Dog"



I wrote back here what an obviously excellent tale for the movies the story of Sophie The Wonder Dog is. Dog falls off boat, dog swims through shark infested waters, dog spends weeks on a tropical island fending for itself, dogs learns to hunt and eat goats, owners never believe Sophie is dead, dog is rescued, reunited with owners, everyone weeps and leaves the cinema feeling great.

Simple.

A great Australian movie about a great Australian dog.

But now Hollywood is getting involved.

This first PR pitch, however, isn't promising :

"...it's Castaway meets Survivor except it's a dog. Americans love uplifting stories about animals."

So does the rest of the world. So don't turn Sophie's Story into loud, moist American schlock.

And if Sophie isn't a Blue Heeler in the movie, with an Australian accent (if she must talk at all) there will be cinema boycotts.

When Washing Your Hands Is Caving In To A Rudd Fear Campaign

By Darryl Mason

The Professional Idiot yesterday thought this is good advice to lessen the chance of becoming infected with the new ManBirdPig flu virus, or Influenza A H1N1 :

1: Don’t go to Mexico. Step 2: Wash your hands.

He thinks this is good advice, and it is, but it's NOT when Prime Minister Rudd thinks so :

...there is no fear so ill-founded that Kevin “Do Something” Rudd isn’t on hand to offer totally unnecessary advice designed to make you worry more, not less:

Wash your hands, PM says

Wash Your Hands = Totally Unnecessary Advice.

This whip-lashing about face by The Professional Idiot on simple hygiene took less than 12 hours. A brain scan may be needed.

Do you think The Professional Idiot told his family to stop washing their hands to prove that he's right and PM Rudd is a crazed fearmongerist?

Any doctor will tell you washing your hands regularly, a few times a day, will lessen your chances of becoming infected with ANY flu virus, and people should be reminded of that simple fact at the start of every flu season, not just when the World Health Organisation raises its pandemic alert to threat level 5 out of 6.

This incomprehensible fuckwit is leading his more gullible readers down a very, very dangerous path of anti-Rudd irrationality.

UPDATE : A prediction from The Professional Idiot, for the ages :

Australians are more likely to be eaten by mice than to die of swine flu.

That sound you hear is thousands of pandemic-briefed health professionals laughing, in horror.

To Stockpile Or Not To Stockpile

By Darryl Mason

A "run on the shops" to stock up on enough food and water to last your household for two weeks of voluntary home isolation is exactly what's needed to pump those $900 bonuses straight back into the economy :

The Federal Government's pandemic plan, a 132-page manual issued to medics, media and the public, insists that once the world reaches phase five, Australians should stock their pantries with food and bottled water to last 14 days, check on elderly neighbours and put emergency numbers by the phone.

But yesterday a spokesman for the Department of Health and Ageing called for calm, saying the Government did not want to spark panic buying - ignoring its own plan, already issued to hospitals across the nation.

"I agree that is it confusing," the spokesman said, admitting he had not read the pandemic plan despite being employed to answer questions about it from national media. "The manual may say people should be preparing but we don't want a run at the shops," he said.

It doesn't matter what the government wants. The people will do whatever they think they have to do to ensure their loved ones are going to get through whatever is coming next.

Woolworth's getting emptied in a weekend of fevered stockpile shopping is the least of their problems if an influenza pandemic is on the verge of being declared (if it hasn't already inside the government).

The pandemic response plans made back in 2005 and 2006 were deadly serious, very detailed. Most didn't read them. It's not too late to get some of the highlights of how prepared you are expected to be for something most didn't even know was coming this time last Friday morning :

Residents are advised to stock their pantries with drinks, including three litres of water for each person each day, dried and long-life food such as canned meals, toilet paper, batteries, candles, matches, manual can openers and water sterilising tablets. Analgesics, masks, gloves, a thermometer, disinfectant and prescription medications should also be stockpiled and people should have enough supplies to stay in their homes for 14 days.

Householders should also have plenty of tissues, alcohol-based hand-wash dispensers in kitchens and bathrooms, and soap and disposable towels near all sinks, the manual says.

14 days.

And three litres a water a day is the minimum you need per day, it doesn't include water for washing clothes, or bathing.

If you had to take the family off to a central coast holiday house for two weeks, and the house had nothing but the kitchen basics, what would you take with you if you thought you wouldn't be able to get to the shops? And the place might run out of running water? And electricity?

Here's a story from 2006 detailing just how extensively Australian businesses were preparing back then for an influenza pandemic. The public fear then was of a bird flu pandemic, but Australian and American government response plans were always for the "inevitable" influenza pandemic, not a pandemic of just one type of influenza :

Mounting fears of an avian flu outbreak amongst humans has caused Australian businesses to stockpile anti-viral drugs and face masks and make definitive plans for how they will continue to operate when almost half of their workers may be off work, either ill or looking after someone who is.

Pandemic risk committees already exist within major companies such as Bluescope Steel and Telstra while the Commonwealth Bank has appointed a pandemic planning project manager.

Expanded computer networks to enable staff to work from home in the event of an outbreak have been included in the preparations against bird flu.

Through its relationship with medical support agency International SOS, BHP Billiton, has stockpiles of anti-viral drugs in regional offices considered at high risk.

The Bank of Queensland has proposed to implement basic hygiene education for staff. According to immunologists this measure would help to reduce the spread of disease if a pandemic develops.

Businesses have been advised to plan for up to half their staff being absent due to illness, or caring for sick family members or children because of school being closed.

As immunologist Ron Penny said," There's no strong recommendation that people who have a seriously infectious disease should stay at home. I think we need to educate people".

Federal Government advisers have warn that economically, Queensland would be the hardest hit of any Australian state with even a modest level pandemic causing a loss of about $11 billion, off the Gross State Product (GSP) in the first year alone.

According to Telstra's network services managing director Michael Lawrey preparations for the likelihood of a pandemic were slightly higher in intensity than planning for other business risks such as fires, cyclones and floods.

Don't worry, Australia's biggest businesses are well prepared if the World Health Organisation raises its pandemic threat level to 6 (its highest) over the weekend, or if the Rudd government officially announces we may all have to think about taking a 10 day long 'home-cation" sometime soon.

But how prepared are you?

Just in case.


.