Beer Banned In Bourke

It may be necessary, but it just sounds so downright UnOrstrahyun :

A violent NSW country town that is drowning in broken glass will have the state's most draconian liquor laws when takeaway sales of bottled beer are banned.

Liquor and Gaming director Albert Gardner said it was the first time a town-wide ban on retail beer sales had been imposed in NSW.

In Bourke, police say most of the alcohol-related violence occurs in the homes of locals, not in the pubs or in the street. It's almost impossible for the cops to stop people guzzling litres of cheap piss in the privacy of their own homes, but it's easy to imagine a day coming when the card you have to show to legally buy booze also reveals the number and ages of the children you have in your care.

Alcohol related crime and violence costs taxpayers billions a year, and that's before the health costs associated with hardcore alcohol abuse are factored in. Millions of Australians getting hammered and harming themselves, or members of their families, or total strangers, is an incredible drain on public resources, and state and federal governments are already showing their tolerance of these rising costs is fading fast.

How long before widespread limits on alcohol sales become a part of everyday life for all Australians?

"Just these, thanks."

"Sir? Why are you buying four cases of beer and ten litres of cask wine?"

"What? It's grand final weekend."

"I know that, sir, but it says here you have two children under the age of five years old. I'm only allowed to sell you six cans of beer, and two bottles of wine. By law."

"Are you fucking shitting me? What in all fuck..."

"Now you're being abusive, sir. Therefore, I can only sell you low alcohol beer and wine. By law."

"That's fu...that's wrong."

"I'm sorry, sir, but that's just the way it is."

"All right. I'll just have four doses of Happyland Ecstasy instead, thanks."

"Grinners or Laughers?"

"Better make it Grinners. My mates might get violent if I laugh my head off when their shitty team is losing."

Be Very Careful Who You Poke In The Eye

Being an idiot on the piss in front of your mates can be extremely dangerous :

A soldier bit a police officer on the face at a pub after being accidentally poked in the eye ...

Security camera footage played in court appeared to show the 31-year-old policeman apologising to Koutsoubos as he held his swollen eye. "All I said was 'oh f---, sorry bro, I didn't mean to bump into you'," Constable Hogan said.

"As I attempted to walk past, he grabbed my head and bit me on my left cheek. I remember him grabbing that side of my head and pulling it down. I couldn't understand why he did it."

Automatic self-defense, or attack, responses from special forces training appear to have been activated by the eye poke.

Following an application from the Federal Government, the judge hearing the case imposed a number of protective orders under the Commonwealth Crimes Act to suppress information about Koutsoubos's role in the defence forces.

This involved the suppression of information about military training, tactics, procedures and the capabilities of the Australian Defence Force's Special Operations Command and the 4th Battalion Royal Australian Regiment, also known as the Commandos.

I had a friend who'd done fairly similar training in Canada, and if you happened to bump his chair when he was snoring-sleeping he'd leap upright and have you in a choke hold, eyes blazing, faster than you could say "Oh, fuck..."

"I'm Weird In The Head....Sometimes"

I haven't spent as much time as I'd hoped on digging through my old archives of the rock journalism I wrote back in the first half of the 1990s for newspapers like the West Australian and the Herald Sun, and magazines like Rolling Stone and Hot Metal, but I'm getting there, bit by bit. Where possible, I've gone back to the original first or second drafts I wrote, which were usually cut way back in length by the time they were published, and were far more loose.

Here's an excerpt of an interview I did with Jeff Buckley, back in August, 1995. The full interview can be read over at Junkhead :

Is it like you have all these other people, these many other sides to yourself, is that what it's like?

"People have many people inside them, many selves I feel, and I feel that they shift from one to the other sometimes in times or stress or total importance. I'm not talking about psychopaths, I'm talking about normal people.

"You notice the difference in your girlfriend if she becomes the mother, and she slips into the mother telling the child what they can or can't do - drawing boundaries around the child. It's a normal thing.

"And every side of you has a language and a feel and rhythm and a melody and a colour, and it's hard to get to it, you just have to be open and unafraid. The more uptight and conservative that I am, the more conservative the music I'm making will be."

Is that a totally different self of you up onstage, from the one who walks through a garden, thinking about the world?

"Oh yeah, (onstage) that's me with the floodgates open. A different me....I don't fear that person......that's more me, empty......like a faucet with water gushing through it. But I know who that person is.

"People are different when music is in them, they change physically. A child feels different when it is singing. The energy in the room is different, you stop and listen, or you laugh, whatever. "When any artist is channeling through other people, they transform into this......I don't know, some people might call it the divine.....it has a special nature that is yours, even though you don't see it very often."

Have you got your head around (facing death) yet?

"These two friends of mine were robbed. These thieves broke in and tied them up and pointed guns in their faces.......my friends were talking about the numbness that came with the acceptance that they were going to die......and the calmness, almost a ridiculous calm."

He think about this for a while, a sigh, a silence of maybe 20 seconds.

"Like missing a bus, 'oh well, I'll just wait for another one'."

He laughs to himself. He seems appalled and fascinated by what happened to his friends. To face death, to know you are going to die.

"It must be the fear that hits you and it stops the mind from panicking, you just freeze and think 'okay, here I am'. I think that's the sensation that hits the rabbit before the truck plummets into it, they freeze.....I've frozen many times.....there's no life without death......it's very simple...."

Read The Full Jeff Buckley Interview Here

God : "Stupid Humans, Brains The Size Of Grapefruits And They Think They Know What I've Got Planned For Them"

How many other Australian politicians believe, truly believe, in this crap?

Labor MP James Bidgood thinks the Christian God is a vengeful God and has wiped out the stock portfolios of retirees, slashed the value of homes and crushed world financial markets because...well, that's what God does, isn't it? He fucks with us. God does whatever the fuck he wants and we struggle to comprehend how he can be such a complete bastard, and why he deserves our love, respect and reverence.

"I believe there is God's justice in action in what is going on here," says James Bidgood.

Okay, I think he's going to Say It.

"We haven't seen the end of it."

It's coming, I can feel it.

"The ultimate conclusion is like I say, we look at Bible prophecy, we are going towards a one world bank and a one world monetary system."

It's coming, he's really going to say it...

And if you believe the word of God and you read Revelations..."

The final book of the deeply superstitious King James 16th century re-write of the biblical canon is actually called Revelation, not Revelations. Anyway, Bidgood is definitely going to say it, any second now.

"...you will see clearly what is being spelt out."

I don't think I can stand the tension. Here it comes...

"We are in....the End Times."

Bingo!

The End Times, to true evangelical believers of John The Hallucinatory, are not necessarily a bad thing. You see, we have to have the One World Bank and One World Monetary System in the lead up to the Final Battle between Good and Evil, and all the apocalyptic firestorms, blood moons, star falls, mantle-splitting earthquakes, exploding mountains and mass death that goes along with it, before JC can finally return and then...well, it's not pretty.

So how does the religious-based necessity - that is the realitising of ancient prophecies to concrete apocalyptic religious faith - of a One World Bank and a One World Monetary System influence the decisions MP Bidgood makes in Parliament?

We are only in the End Times if the loons who believe in this Necessary Massacre Of Humanity are in positions of power to make it a reality.

Does Prime Minister Kevin Rudd believe in the End Times as well?

Murdoch 'The Fake Conservative' Pals Around With Hollywood Liberals, And Likes It

Rupert Murdoch does what he is told by the women in his life. He always has. Now Australia's most famous ex-Australian Conservative obeys his wife and becomes a damned Hollywood Lefty Loving Lefty :

The author of a new book about media mogul Rupert Murdoch, which asserts that the owner of Fox News "absolutely despises" top-rated host Bill O'Reilly, believes that Murdoch's negative feelings about Fox go far beyond a personal distaste for O'Reilly's bullying.

Michael Wolff, author of The Man Who Owns the News, told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Tuesday, "I would mention ... Bill O'Reilly [to Murdoch] and he would get this look which was like revulsion." Wolff added that "I started to see this around all of Murdoch's people. ... No one says, 'O'Reilly, we hate him' ... but everybody goes into a contortion."

According to Wolff, however, the real issue is that Murdoch has "come to like the liberals more than the conservatives -- and many of them have come to like him, too. ... His life is now largely spent around people for whom Fox News is a vulgarity and a joke."

"If he became utterly convinced," asked Olberman, "not only would a liberal network make you five times the money that Fox News makes you, but one will exist and it will put Fox News out of business, would he go down the street tomorrow, shut off Fox News, and put on a liberal version of it just for the money?"

"In a New York minute," Wolff replied.

"He saw a market niche," Wolff explained. "It was easy to get into, it was easy to service these people, it was cheaper to service these people, and he went for it. ... He saw a money-making formula."

"...he's with a woman 38 years his junior, quite young, quite liberal, quite open, and certainly engaged with all of the Hollywood people."

Wolff is wrong. A lefty Fox News would be nowhere near as entertaining, or flat-out hilarious.

Yes, even more New Zealand photos.

This will end soon, I promise.















All photos by Darryl Mason

Beat My Tilt

Julia Gillard lays down the supreme challenge for all future head tilters :


(screengrab from an online front page photo in The Australian)

While Googling 'head tilting' I came across this 2004 post by the Daily Telegraph's associate editor Tim Blair, back in his independent blogging days. It's easy to forget what a nasty, insipid little shit he was back then, gloating about the Iraq War, before he knocked off the caustic edges and adopted his 'Nasty, But Nice' persona for the mainstream media gig.

The Last Days Of The Booze-Soaked Politician

How overdue is this? Very :

A push was last night under way to breathtest NSW politicians after Nationals MP Andrew Fraser's late-night altercation with a female colleague.

Health Minister John Della Bosca and Liberal leader Barry O'Farrell backed the unprecedented call to supply breath testing kits for MPs to ensure they do not turn up drunk.

"Honestly, if you are going to have breathalysers for people driving cranes you should have breathalysers for people writing laws," (Greens MP Dr John) Kaye said.

Why stop at testing for booze? If we have to fucking tolerate having drug dogs sniffing us at music festivals, the local pub and walking to the supermarket, then our state and federal politicians can put up with being drug-tested in their workplace.

Home Free, As Long As He Stays Home

'Freedom'? :

"This is the beauty of Australia or the common law countries. They do not as yet criminalise thoughts," he said.

"In European law your thoughts can be criminalised. We haven't got that in common law countries yet."

Not as yet. But maybe soon. Our government already holds a black list of blocked (or to be blocked) websites, supposedly around 10,000 sites in total, and not all of them are related to child porn or ultra-violence.

Joe Vs Julie

Joe Hockey smells the blood in the water, and begins to make his move for the deputy leadership of the Liberal Party. Hitting the banks for being scumbags now is an important Us-Vs-Them scene setter, which Hockey will be able to cash in on monumentally next year when the 'economic downturn' really becomes the Economic Downfall.

Westpac was the biggest bank in the country, Opposition finance spokesman Joe Hockey said on Wednesday.

"You would think they would pass on the interest rate cut in full, but they didn't. They gouged it," he told Fairfax Radio Network.

"Westpac gouged it, ANZ gouged it. They are gouging small business, they are gouging farmers, and they are gouging credit cards."

Hockey's aim in this attack is solid, and precise. A few more serious months of this, and the new generation Liberals can claim, in 2010, that the Rudd Government and the Bastard Banks are holding hands and skipping along rainbows together while The Rest Of Us (that will be Australia's, by then, majority poor and the "We Feel Your Pain" Liberals) are queuing for food stamps and free buses to get to work.

Hockey and Malcolm Turnbull are exactly the kind of front-line tag-team combination the Liberals need to really start hammering the Labor Party next year. Turnbull can keep it classy, while Hockey can go for the throat. Unlike Peter Costello, Alexander "Absolute Commitment" Downer and (shudder) Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey can occasionally appear to be genuine, and sincere, and has a streak of the same instant anger that many Australians quietly liked about Mark Latham.

Speaking up for the New Poor against the Bastard Banks, and pointing out how cozy "Lapdog Labor and the Bastard Banks"are, will be one of Hockey's primary missions through 2009 and 2010. If he doesn't fuck it up, the Rudd government could soon be getting major migraines whenever Hockey's name is mentioned.

Australian politics might get very interesting again, very quickly.

Revelatory Moment Of Irony Not Noticed

Interesting choice of soundtrack :

Protestors swarmed on the Gold Coast City Council headquarters in Queensland to vent their anger over a planned Muslim school yesterday as rock anthems blared from loudspeakers.

Almost 200 residents turned out for the demonstration, draped in Australian flags and shouting pro-Aussie slogans while Australian rock classics such as Land Down Under and Great Southern Land boomed across the parkland.

Let's take a look at some of the lyrics from Icehouse's Great Southern Land :

so you look into the land and it will tell you a story
story 'bout a journey ended long ago
if you listen to the motion of the wind in the mountains
maybe you can hear them talking like I do
". . they're gonna betray, they're gonna forget you,
are you gonna let them take you over this way?"

Great Southern Land, Great Southern Land
you walk alone like a primitive man
and they make it work with sticks and bones
see their hungry eyes, its a hungry home
I hear the sound of the stranger's voices
I see their hungry eyes, their hungry eyes
Great Southern Land, Great Southern Land
they burned you black, black against the ground

I'll just take a wild guess here, but whoever loaded up the music was probably captivated by this single line "...are you gonna let them take you over this way?" not realising, presumably, that the lines were about Aboriginals reacting to the invasion of their lands by the English.

The full lyrics are here

"The Economy Is Bad, But I Would Not Ask An Elf To Do For Me What I Am Not Prepared To Do For Myself"

The getaway vehicle should be easy to spot, on radar :

Brandishing a large knife and carrying an empty green shopping bag, two men wearing Santa disguises threatened the female attendant at the Cutheringa Bowls Club about 8:20pm.

They demanded she clear out the till and put the cash in the bag.

She did as she was told before running out a back entrance.

Yes, it's more New Zealand :












All photos by Darryl Mason

The Ak Attack

Piers Akerman of the Daily Telegraph says British born Muslims were involved in the Mumbai terror attacks, despite official denials by the governments of Britain and India, and so Australians who think Australian citizens should not be held without charge in the jails of our allies are EVIL. Or something. It doesn't matter. His readers get the message, they understand, and issue yet more Murdoch-media hosted calls for massacres of Australians citizens :

...lawyers, civil rights groups, civil libertarians and refugee advocates... they should all be shot as traitors.

More New Zealand :

How Does He Do It?

Many readers of The Professional Idiot have wondered and asked this very same question of TPI's valuable, comment and hit generating nemesis, 'Barry Bones' :



How indeed? 'Barry Bones' is the dim, Evil Pagan Lefty all red-blooded conservatives love, and sometimes live, to hate. Some of TPI's true believers will be driven to reply in CAPS, so very angry has 'Barry Bones' made them. When 'Bones' is gone, he/she is very much missed by the locals. A few dozen TPI commenters with time to kill can only agree with each other for so long, and wrack up only so many comments, before they need the fresh meat spill of a cliche-spangled Evil Pagan Lefty word-farting his mind. When 'Barry' is kind enough to make an appearance, dozens of comments mocking and correcting and abusing him/her follow. Traffic at TPI's must surely surge (perhaps 10 or 20%) when 'Barry Bones' has delivered another reliable, coffee-spraying, fist-clenching, spurl of expected yet still shocking Lefty ignorance and vapidity.

It must be hard for TPI not to look forward to 'Barry Bones' deciding to sprinkle some of his/her traffic generating brain snot into the comments. Times are tough, even at Murdoch's empire of digital white noise, and those paid the most have to deliver the audience numbers. So TPI can breathe a little snorf of relief that 'Barry Bones' has dropped by to help out.



Barry gets in the first comment :



'Barry Bones' gets in the first comment early, real early, this time. How does he/she do it? Maybe 'Barry Bones' should have been snipped for time travelling instead.

"We Can Give Their Parents A Carbon Credit Bonus, But Only If They Volunteer"

It seems a bit of a harsh solution to overcrowding issues at child care centres, but these are dark days we're living in. From the Sydney Morning Herald :

"This Car Ad Needs More Shots Of Fat Bearded Blokes Wolfing Down Sloppy Pies And Chiko Rolls"

It's a weird feeling coming across such an iconic mid-70s ad, particularly one you remember so well, loaded as it is with hairy blokes, Holdens, tits, Holdens, kangaroos, Holdens and a damn catchy theme song, which taught you, apparently, all you needed to know about what it meant to be an Australian, back then.



That song....a memory bomb detonates. Suddenly remember the full names and faces of friends from back then, barely remembered in three decades, that used to sing that song walking home from school, every afternoon, before getting chased by the Ford-loving sixth graders, every afternoon. Kids used to brawl over whether Fords or Holdens were the better cars, at least they did where I grew up. I once saw a seven year old mate take three big hits in the guts by a trio of Ford freaks, "Say Ford is better and we'll let you go," he refused to speak such blasphemy, he took his punches like a man. And they talk about brand-loyalty as if it's something new.

Has there been any car ad since that dared to use images of hairy blokes scoffing down their lunches while they walked along the street to brand their product?

There's a lot of sheep in New Zealand, we know this, but there are also a lot of ducks, particularly at caravan parks and camp sites. Lots of ducks.

Auckland, New Zealand.