


Photos by Darryl Mason
Newsreader : Is it time to panic?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.
Some Expert : No.
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."
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....
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.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 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.
"Right, shop is closed. Everybody get out."
"But it's only three."
"Yes, but it's my shop."
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.He's probably more upset about losing the bourbon than the car.
...the battery powering the car was sitting in the front passenger footwell, beside a full ashtray and a slab of bourbon cans.
John Safran : Have you ever, like, turned down money or a job based on ideological grounds?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Professional Idiot : Ahhhhh, no.
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.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.
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.
Then again, you don't want of these fuckers crawling over your face when you're passed out in the backyard :
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 :
If Sheridan writes about the UN report, he will use the words "one-sided" and "biased" prominently.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.
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 :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...
"[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) :
'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."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."
Surely, they're not using the term 'dress rehearsal' as Webster's defines it?Pandemic or a dress rehearsal?
Whether swine flu is the pandemic the world has been dreading should be known within the next few days.
"a practice exercise for something to come".