The Hotalypse

By Darryl Mason

I don't remember seeing lead stories on the evening news, or 'Horror Heatwave' newspaper front pages, when the temp hit the mid-40s in Western Sydney, as it seemed to do every summer, when I was a kid. It was summer, it was always fucking hot, and you got under the sprinkler if you couldn't handle the heat.

I don't even think those days of steaming humidity soaked summer were even called heatwaves by the older locals back then, who could always remember a summer's day "A lot bloody hotter than this I'll tell you". I don't think the Channel Seven or Channel Nine news even mentioned how hot it got out west. But it always seemed to be about ten degrees Celsius above whatever they claimed the temperature hit in the city centre.

We weren't told to stay out of the sun back then, and only weird kids had water bottles on their bike frames, but it was parentally recommended that you ride your pushie through the sprinkler a few times before you set took off on a day hot enough to make the tar road stick like toffee to your pushie's tyres.

So how different is Fucking Hot now, to back then, apart from our inability to function as a society without bottled water?

No doubt there's a fair bit of mediastyria about these days of intense heat. Records have been broken across NSW, Victoria, South Australia, we're told, the longest stretch of over 40 Celsius days ever seen, since 1939, since 1982, since whenever.

It seems so....bizarre. There are so many stories in today's papers warning us all TO STAY INSIDE. Not just kids, or the elderly. Everyone. DON'T GO OUT UNLESS YOU HAVE TO.

Have we ever been so publicly warned by premiers and health experts not leave the house? To check on elderly neighbours? To keep the kids inside? To watch for blazing trees on the horizon? But above all, to stay calm?

I'm sure there is a certain amount of exaggeration to these dire warnings, but it's clear authorities want as few people on the roads, on the trains, on the streets, as possible, in the cities and towns that will fry today and tomorrow. The less people outside in the heat, the less likely they are going to need help is the way I'm presuming they're thinking. Except for a Squishy run, I'll be sticking to that advice.

The city morgues of Melbourne and Adelaide are full, the refrigerated trucks are ready, and this weekend of 'Horror Heat' could kill another few dozen people, maybe even a few hundred if the firestorms that firefighters are now shitting themselves in expectation of come into reality sometime in the next 36 hours.

If these week and more long stretches of above 40 temperatures really are some kind of preview as to how most summers of the future will unfold - thanks to global warming, or normal (but freakish in the short term) long-term climate change cycles - then it's clear that the infrastructures of our cities and towns are not set up to take what Nature is unleashing on us.

That bitch.

Actually, the premiers of both Victoria and South Australia were heard over the past week or so stating exactly that : our public transport, our electricity grids, our city infrastructure were not built to cope with eight or twelve day long stretches of above 40 temps. I don't know how true those statements are, but its kinda unnerving to be told our cities cannot cope with what could well become a yearly reality.

If we can expect such long bursts of eyeball stinging heat to become a regular part of a Sydney, Melbourne or Adelaide summer, a few years on we'll be seeing people bailing on their easterly towns and cities for cooler climes, as some now flee the mild winters for the warmth of Darwin or Perth.


UPDATE : Weird days of a brutal summer. The lingering smoke from local bushfires drifts into the room, here at 3.26am, it's a good smell, familiar of childhood, when local bushland seemed to go up every year, but the smoke now, while light, is also heavy with the possibility of a truly terrible day ahead, if the fires spread, if the winds are worse than expected and firestorms erupt, if some insane, homicidal bastard decides to go for a bush walk with a box of matches.

It's easy enough to get sucked into the mediastyria and expect the worst, but it really does feel like some terrible things are going to happen to too many people in this country in the next two days. Here's hoping Nature surprises us again, by not following through on the threats of a deadly hot weekend.

Anyway, some hopefully helpful advice if you don't already know how to cope with the heat :

* Forget water restrictions. If you want to hose down the kids in the backyard, or fill up that abandoned wading pool, go for it. And if you can find that old lawn sprinkler in the garage, pull it out and plug it in and get under it. And don't forget the pets.

* Bailing on your un-airconditioned house for a cooler shopping mall or cinema is always an option, but consider how you and the passengers in your car will shape up if you get stuck in dead traffic, or if your car shits itself on the way there, or back. Don't expect the NRMA to be able to reach you, or that you'll be able to find water or shelter easily.

* One of the more dramatic (but realistic) warnings that have been sounded in the past couple of days about the Weekend When The Heat Wave (Supposedly) Ends reminds us that we are pretty much fending for ourselves. There aren't enough cops, fire crews, rescue crews or ambulances to cope with what could be some extremely serious heat-related chaos. Except for extreme emergencies, you and your family and your neighbours are on your own.

* A simple anti-heat solution from my own childhood - if you don't have air-con, or if the power shuts off - all you need is a fan and a spray bottle filled with water. It's amazing what a difference misting up the air in a room, or soaking down yourself, cooled only by a fan (a hand fan if neessary) can make. It's better than nothing.

* While it goes without saying you should drink plenty of water, if you're inside and sweating like Wayne Swann working a calculator, you might want to eat a couple of pieces of bread slathered with Vegemite, or eat something else salty. It'll make you feel better.

* If you're a balcony food grower like me, don't forget to move your veggies and herbs out of the full sun for the better part of the day.

* Wherever in your home the cat or dog has decided to shelter, get down there as well. Flat on your back on the floor is much cooler than standing, or even sitting.

That might be it for me this weekend. This laptop has a habit of shutting off when the temperature in here hits 35 or 36.

Goodluck.

Obama : "There Are White Folks, And Then There Are Ignorant Mother Fuckers Like You"

For once, I haven't made up a headline quote. Obama did say this and it's on tape. You can hear Obama cutting loose with the M15+ language here.

Unfortunately, this is not President Obama dealing it out from his podium. It's the author Obama doing a reading from his Dreams Of My Father autobiography, impersonating a high school friend who was full of sage-like advice and wisdom.

My favourite :

"You Ain't My Bitch, Nigga. Buy Your Own Damn Fries!"

This is pretty good, too :

"So what happens when we go out to a party with some sisters? I tell you what happens. Blam! They on us like there's no tomorrow. High school chicks, university chicks, it don't matter..."

How quickly will these Obama lines get mashed up? No doubt, thousands are already hard at work, transforming his recorded lines into a multitude of brilliant, crappy and bizarre ear candy. Can't wait to hear some of it.

The Boston Pheonix scored mightily with this.

They Don't Make A Bad Soup, But The Flesh Is Quite Gummy


These photos have hit just about everyone's e-mail box, and the abandoned baby koala, who climbed into a bucket of water to escape Victoria's extreme heat, is so goddamned cute you could almost cry.

Almost.

Until you see this screengrab from another pic :



Kill It! Kill It!


The rest of the photos by Tracey Young are here.

Rudd Is Still Messing With Their Minds

Most Australians don't care about the nation falling into deficit. Why would they? Why should they? Even $20 or $30 billion in the hole won't affect their lives negatively, it will work to their favour, as long as the money is used to repair and upgrade the schools their children attend and get some real infrastructure rebuilding and modernisation underway.

PM Rudd is actually on fire, just a little, during Question Time right now (2.08pm), as he hammers opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull for "being against fixing the primary schools". It's devastating. The Liberals have allowed themselves to be painted as being anti-public school renovation. Even if it's not true, this is likely the impression most will take away from the evening news reports.

Turnbull's opposition to what Rudd is now calling a $42 billion package to "rebuild the nation" is a masterstroke in self-destruction, as Bernard Keane at Crikey points out (excerpts) :

At about 10.30 this morning in the House of Representatives the Opposition walked into a baseball bat. It caught them flush across the head. BANG. Then they got up and invited the wielder to swing it again.

The wielder -- Kevin Rudd -- won't need to be asked twice.

Refusing to back the Government's stimulus package, which Malcolm Turnbull announced in the chamber this morning, is a truly colossal -- indeed, almost suicidal -- error by the Opposition.

The Coalition and much of the media haven’t worked out that politics has for the moment changed completely. A crisis mindset has taken hold and voters are in no mood for anyone getting in the way of it being addressed with urgency.

Rudd will be delighted with the Opposition's stupidity. But he won't be celebrating. Instead, he'll be flexing his muscles and practising his swing. That mild-mannered, bespectacled bloke will be swinging the baseball bat, hard and without pity. And he's going to hit the Liberals again, and again, and again, and again, and he's not going to stop until they're a bloodied mess.

Who put Turnbull up to coming out against the StimuPak #2? Was it Costello's boys?

By Q2 of Question Time, Turnbull looks shocked, totally rattled, perhaps with the reality dawning across his usually sharp mind that he just got fucked, royally fucked, by some in his own party, who are, presumably, trying to knock Turnbull aside for The Return Of "The World's Greatest Treasurer."

Malcolm Turnbull, in fact nobody in the Liberals, should forget that Rudd promised, in February 2007, that he was going to mess with then PM John Howard's mind, and in turn, the collective mind of the Liberal Party.

Why would they assume that Rudd, particularly with his massively publicised attack on "neo-liberals' and "extreme capitalism" in The Monthly magazine, is not still messing with their minds?

Of course he's still doing it. It worked so well on Howard, why wouldn't Rudd keep messing with the Liberal Mind every moment he gets the chance to do so?

Who will come out of this StimuPak #2 fight looking the best? The Greens, of course. Watch the Liberals poll numbers plunge even further in this wake of this catastrofuck and The Greens favourability numbers rise, perhaps even soar. It gets harder and harder for The Greens to be painted as extremists when both Labor and Liberals are fighting to put their ideas and policies into action.

UPDATE : I don't know how long this re-interest in national politics at The Orstrahyun will last. I can feel myself fading out as I watch a second interview with Turnbull in less than 48 hours, added to what felt like two hours of Costello defying God's laws about Vanity, on Lateline.

The Good Doctor (Nelson) would have been far more apopaleptic and thereby hysterically funny, if he was upfront. But those days are gone....sadly.

I Scrub And I Scrub And I Still Can't Get All The Blood Out



An inspired piece of portraiture from photographer Emma Phillips.

The portrait has been entered in the Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize. Here's hoping it wins, it's brilliant work.

Emma Phillips galleries are here.

Too Much Instant Information....

Lachlan Wolfers on the downside of Google-everything :

My licence to engage in mild exaggeration has been put in jeopardy. Recently, I was boasting of my sporting prowess in a triathlon, explaining how I had completed the swim leg as fast as Michael Phelps, then cycled at the speed of Lance Armstrong, and then finished it off with a run that would have made Rob de Castella proud. My (so-called) friend Google-searched my time and discovered I finished in a measly 227th place, and then proceeded to embarrass me in front of a large audience.

Ouch. And here's something that never occurred to me before, probably because it doesn't apply in my case as I'm 1) not single and 2) I'm one of the lucky few whose (rented) home does not appear on Google Street View :

Whereas previously I could explain to prospective girls that I lived in a gigantic house overlooking the beach and drove a sports car, now they can simply Google my address and discover I live in a bedsit at the back of my mother's house and drive a beaten-up old Holden.

Double ouch.

These are a little suburb-ist, and some have been recycled from old jokes I used to hear when, back in the 1980s, I told people in the city that I lived near Blacktown, but they're still funny...unless you live in Campbelltown I suppose :

Q. Two Campbelltown girls jump off a cliff. Who wins?
A. Society.

Q. What does a Campbelltown girl use as protection during sex?
A. A bus shelter.

Q. Why did the Campbelltown girl cross the road?
A. To start a fight with a complete stranger for no reason whatsoever.

Q. What do you call a Campbelltown girl in a white tracksuit?
A. The bride.

Q. What's the first question during a Campbelltown quiz night?
A. "What you looking at?"

Q. What's the difference between a Campbelltown boy and a Campbelltown girl?
A. A Campbelltown girl has a higher sperm count.


(all these jokes were taken from an e-mail doing the rounds of inboxes in the finance industry)

One Entree, Two Main Meals

The drought is breaking in North Queensland, but the flooding is extreme, with areas described as being like "a virtual sea".

One family was forced to travel more than 70km through crocodile infested waters with their two month old baby to get back home. And they did it in a tinnie :

Independent federal MP Bob Katter has told of the family's two-hour plight to get from Normanton to their home at Karumba in north Queensland.

"It was the only way they could get back," Mr Katter said.

"They went through 15km-wide raging floodwaters, with crocodiles, to get back."

Dengue Fever Epidemic Hits Cairns

Major Roads Around Townsville Cut By Floodwaters

Bruce Highway Cut Between Cairns And Townsville, Hundreds Of Trucks Can't Deliver Food Crops

Here's a few stories you might have missed that I put up on Your New Reality :

"Wait A Sec...Are You Telling Me That In The Future I Choose You To Be My Dad And Then Send You Back In Time To Fuck My Mother So I Will Be Born So One Day I Can Send You Back Here?"

"They Bomb Us Because They Don't Want Us To Be Well Educated"

I'm A Missile, I'm Here To Kill You, But I Can Wait

American Troops In WarZones Are Threatened By Flying Killer Robots....But Whose Flying Killer Robots?

'Drug Money Is The Only Liquid Capital Investment'

Your New Reality

Depopulating His Own Brain

Evil Pagan Commo Nazi Green Lefty Enviro guy uses the words :

"contraception and abortion"

So the Professional Idiot translates for his readers :

"baby cull"

And the ABC pays this extremist to spread around his lunacy and intolerance. What an absolute nutter. Fucking funny, though.

We obviously need new safety advice on packets of condoms :

Warning : These prophylactics may kill your unplanned, unconceived child.

We Do Not Seek To Control The Media....Except When We Do

Israel's ambassador to Australia, Yuval Rotem, January 16 :

"In the same way that the Israeli Government does not seek to control the media in Israel, it does not seek to control the media in Australia."

Yuval Rotem, January 30 :

"...can you turn that camera off please..."

Interesting. It appears the Israeli ambassador tells his small Jewish audience one thing - expect an attack on Iran in a month - when he thinks the media isn't listening, and then tells ABC News something else when it's clear his comments have been caught on camera.

Does the Rudd government back attacks by Israel on Iran? Or will it clam up and go into hiding, as it did when Israel slaughtered hundreds of women and children in Gaza?

No-one in the Australian media ever bothers to explain what Russia, now a close ally and mega-billion dollar business partner of Iran, will do in the event of Israel attacking Iran. Russia has already made it clear, to Israel's government, and Israel-allied governments around the world (including Australia) that an attack on Iran will be viewed as an attack on Russia. And then there's China...

"What's That, Skip? You Want To Go BodySurfing?"

This is for all the people who are stuck in hot houses and hot offices today and can't get to the beach to cool off.







BTW - these photos came to me through an e-mail (thanks Kerry!), so I have no idea who the photographer was. If you know, leave a comment so I can properly give credit for these very cool pics.

Too Much Trurth....

Anti-Americanist Andrew Bolt, aka The Professional Idiot, is indeed one delicate little flower. I decided to Have My Say, as his Herald Sun blog invites readers, on a post where he horns in on supposedly misleading reporting about one of the many schools Israel recently bombed in Gaza - in this case, an Australian-ally-launched bomb attack that killed almost as many innocent people as the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London.

But you can only Have Your Say if it doesn't upset his pro-civilian slaughter regular readers.


(click to enlarge)

"SNIP - YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD THREE OR FOUR TIMES BEFORE THAT YOU ARE BANNED. THIS IS THIS YEAR'S REMINDER"

He's lying. Full of shit, as usual. He's never told me that I'm officially banned from commenting on his blog. I've left comments on his blog, here and there, for the past couple of years.

He just didn't like what I had to say this time, which was to point out that defending state terrorist attacks on civilians is just as sick as defending Islamic terrorist attacks on civilians. And that to the people who are being bombed, all bombs feel like terrorist attacks.

Here's a non-banned comment of mine from The Professional Idiot's blog this past Tuesday. This didn't get banned because he agrees with what I said :


(click to enlarge)

By censoring my comment for pointing out that there's not a lot of light between extremist terrorism and state terrorism, the comments section for The Professional Idiot's "Don't Look There! (at all the dead children) Look over there at the Evil UN!" post is filled instead with the usual Megaphone crowd spouting a hundred more excuses why it's okay for an Australian ally in the 'War On Terror' to slaughter hundreds of women and children and bomb schools, hospitals and food warehouses. But that's probably exactly how The Professional Idiot wants it to be.

The Professional Idiot just can't handle The Trurth (sic)

Four Heads Are Better Than One?



It is what you think it is. Kind of.

The Love Train

You Want The Trurth (sic)? You Can't Handle The Trurth (sic)!

Thousands Of Working Families Live Without Electricity, Gas

One of the saddest things, amongst the many, many sad things, I saw during my very short employment with the then Department of Housing, was how many elderly people lived without electricity for extended periods because they couldn't afford to pay their meagre, overdue bills.

It was heartbreaking to sit down for a cup of cold tea with a disabled World War 2 veteran in a dark house, listening to him explain how he was cut off for owing less than $20 and now had to make do with cold water baths. But he knew it what it was all about, and why they were so heartless not to give a fuck about him, or the sacrifices he had made in his lifetime. It wasn't the $20 he owed that they were after, he croaked, it was the reconnection fee.

The eagerness to cut off people from their electricity supply, and other utilities, doesn't seem to have dampened much in the years since, as this story explains :

Homeowners are being disconnected from power, gas and water at twice the rate of four years ago.

And more than 60 per cent of people cut off from utilities are now in paid employment, according to the Public Interest Advocacy Centre.

Its study, to be released today, has found a new underclass of "working poor" forced to light homes with candles, take cold showers and send their children to stay with relatives.

....about 100 people were disconnected every day.

About 18,000 households are disconnected from electricity every year in NSW, and 23,000 from gas.

When Australians have to start paying their Global Carbon Tax, disconnections will rise, and even more people will have to make do without the very basics of a civilised society.

But if you reduce your carbon output by (forced) living without electricity, will that earn you a few Carbon Credits? Enough Carbon Credits, perhaps, so you can trade them to pay your Carbon Tax debt and get your electricity reconnected?

But if you get the electricity reconnected, then your carbon output rises again, so you don't get as many, or any, Carbon Credits, that you could use to pay off the next hit of Carbon Tax. So your electricity gets shut off again, but now you're once more earning Carbon Credits, so....I expect it will be exactly that kind of confusing.

Adelaide Always Delivers

Adelaidians are sweltering through some good old fashioned Australian summer heat. But the grid can't handle all those air-cons and plasma TVs, they're getting blackouts. Adelaidians are not happy, and are complaining loudly about their discomfort, buckled trainlines and cancelled trams, at Adelaide Now. They get to have a bitch about the heat, everyone's sorta happy, still sweaty. But some locals want the complaining about the heat to stop, that Adelaidians harden the fuck up, take the heat, sweat like real men, and real women, and stop whining like...well, like Adelaidians :

you smally people. all acting like only Adelaide has problems. Perth & Melbourne have their fair share of trainline shutdowns when it gets hot... Stop whingeing and find something else to complain about

Posted by: Small minds of Adelaide

The interstaters invade the Adelaidians online space and deliver outright, downright mockery of South Australians plight :

You people in Adelaide have it so easy, think of all us poor Manly Ferry commuters here in Sydney who have to wait in a que to be served at the Cafe on the Ferry taking us across the harbour!

Posted by: Ron of Sydney - Life is tough on the ferry

Naturally, they don't like these interlopers, not one bit :

Backwater Fishbowl - dont they have papers in Melbourne ?? is there not enough bogans there that can read I assume

Posted by: Vic = bogan city of cant read or write

Do we have to put up with the idiots from the other villages having a spray? We've got enough of our own without the yarping from those in much cooler climes interstate.

Posted by: Peter of Northern Adelaide

There is a bit of confusion about whether some commenters are blaming the Rann government for the rail-buckling, blackout causing, tram-cancelling effects of extreme heat, or for the heat itself. Ant of Adelaide lays out the facts for the confused :

Government cant control the weather no matter who is in power.

The free water for commuters debate hots up :

Why should commuters get a free bottle of water at the expense of non-commuters? If people want water but your own bottle and don't expect us taxpayers to pay for it.

Posted by: Tony of Adelaide

Free water? So i should take my empty bottles to trans adelaide and fill up???

Posted by: Yarz of Ingle Farm

Car Driver of Adelaide commutes home in full gloat mode :

To all the bike riding hippies slagging car drivers - enjoy riding in the heat. To all the Public transport riding hippies, enjoy walking home. To all the "older economical car drivers" enjoy sitting on the side of the road with your radiators boiling. Ill just drive past in my fully imported leather clad 4WD with the airconditioner on low (it gets too cold otherwise) and cruise home without having to get held up by the rail crossings or busses. Pity its hot walking from the office to the car, You Beauty!

Adelaidians are easily distracted by other non-heat related news :

Did any notice the photo of a patient suffering from a heat related illness being wheeled into one of our hospitals, and a nurse walking past with a 'fag' in her mouth........one person maybe fighting for her life.... and another one slowly killing herself.....It makes you think doesn;t it .. dusty

Posted by: Ken Rhodes of Magill.

Kevin Logfellow may or may not be doing some barrel work downstairs as he escapes the heat :

I am sleeping in the cellar and drinking my home brew to keep cool and lubricated. Please let me know when it is safe to come out.

Max of Redlands has weightier issues on his mind :

No matter how many times I read it I can not accept that "impact" is a verb.

I blame the incredible heat in Adelaide for this one :

The government said turn off to save money. ..and the transformer ended up on fire ..and the train tracks melted ..and birds started falling from the trees ..and koala's looked like drowned rats ..and the fish started to boil in the ocean ..and henny penny screamed, "The sky is falling!" I swear, it's ARMAGEDDON. Mike Rann..the third anti-christ perhaps???

John of Warradale casts an eye over the comments and reaches a sound conclusion :

I think the heat's buckled a few brains.

Crikey has an interesting piece on how we dealt with heatwaves in the past, and how newspapers in the 1930s reported city-melting temperatures. It's always fascinating to see how different the style of writing was back then, but an excerpt that Crikey dug up from The Courier Mail, during the height of a March, 1934 eyeball searer, also contains a report of what sounds like an impressive meteor strike :

Costello : Non-Christians Threaten Australia's Future

Peter Costello addresses Catch The Fire religious extremists on Australia Day, which provokes the crazed Nazi-Green-Commo-Pagan-Lefties at Crikey to praise John Howard. Yes, praise John Howard :

John Howard blocked Peter Costello from the Prime Ministership as long as he could, preferring even to take his party to defeat rather than let him run it. Based on this bizarre rant, it looks like Howard’s judgement was absolutely right.

The bizarre Costello rant in full :



Peter Costello, your almost prime minister :

"One of the things that has been absolutely central to the development of Australia and the foundation of our society is that Biblical heritage, the heritage that we have through the Scriptures, and through the Ten Commandments, respect for our Maker, respect for our fellow citizens, respect for property, respect for the laws that God has laid down. That’s been the foundation of our society. It’s been the basis of our peaceful tolerance of each other and of order. It has been the basis of creating opportunity for so many Australian’s. If we forget that tradition, if we walk away from those God given commandments, then we as a society will be threatened with the breakdown of that order, will be threatened with losing our heritage and loosing opportunity. So I want to say to you, those that are praying for Australia today, to pray that this nation will always remember its foundations, and always be true to them, and always live according to those laws.

"There are many people today that are telling us that religion is all a lot of superstition, that the laws that have been laid down, of respect for individuals, property and for our creator are all a load of nonsense, that don’t respect life. If we fall for that trap, if Australia falls for that trap then the very basis of our society and its order will be threatened. That’s why we need Christian people to pray for our country, we will never understand the way in which God moves. But we know that if his people pray, He will hear that they will be a light to the nation and the nation will be covered and protected by Godly people who are giving direction and standing for it in prayer."

That's probably a little too much God in politics for most Australians liking. But hey, once you've 'caught the fire' you gotta keep spreading that message, even if it destroys your political career.

Snake Must Not Eat Snake


Photo by Tony Barton

Isn't this one of signs of the Apocalypse or something?

Mr Barton says it took about 10 to 15 minutes for the black snake to fully consume the brown snake, which he says was about 135 centimetres long.

Then it went off for a snooze.

"It was fairly sluggish after such a huge meal," he said.

Not long after, the snake returned - this time to the back lawn.

"I was having a close look at it when it opened its mouth a little bit and I spotted this beady eye and the head of the brown snake in its mouth!

"....the brown snake came out a few inches, fastened onto the black's lower jaw and pulled itself completely out.

"It had all this mucus all over it. Then the two parted ways."

Maybe brown snakes are the morons of the Serpentes world : "Yo Brownie! I got a mouse for you, but you gotta come in here and get it."