Readership - 2.5 million (April 2014)
www.twitter.com/darrylmason
Sunday, July 19, 2009
It's Just A Plane In The Sky, It's Not A 9/11 Foreshadowing
I had no idea a novel I exhaled in less than a week back in 1996 was now worth so much on Amazon :
I've only been thinking about the novel recently because a friend pointed out something interesting about the cover I haven't thought about in many years.
Yes, that is a bongman smoking himself, but there's the view out the window :
The cover artwork was done by a brilliant Sydney designer named Jeremy. I can't say I ever liked the image of an airliner about to crash into two towers, but I think Jeremy was trying to foreshadow the disaster that befalls the characters in the book, which involves the unexplained collapse of a building.
But I was so blown away by what Jeremy created for the cover I couldn't ask him to change it.
It's, mostly, still good advice today, even if it comes from the pages of the London Times, in October, 1918, as the Spanish Flu pandemic unfolded across the world :
200,000 Brits were killed by H1N1 influenza in the nine months after that editorial was published.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
The Chaser On Location
Circular Quay, July 16
(click any of the above for a larger image)
Photos By Darryl Mason
Some Smirking Nine Year Old : "Your Paper Plane Looks Shitty"
By Darryl Mason
The Defence Force, now recruiting in Martin Place, with mega-chunky sound system pumping The Angels and Chisel and promising video games, or 'defence simulations', after "a short chat".
A 30-something businessman (not in this photo) strode up to one of the soldiers and said something like, "I just lost my fucking job. How soon can I go to a warzone?" The soldier said, "I don't think that's the right question to start with, sir."
There were paper plane competitions for the kids, with prizes, to test their basic engineering skills.
The distance achieved by my somewhat radical paper unmanned Predator design was beaten by a smug little three year old with an extremely basic Concord-like configuration. Well, anybody can make those. I thought we were supposed to be pushing our limits. That kid probably had help, too.
One of these cigarettes gives immediate relief in the worst attack of Asthma, Cough, Bronchitis, Hay Fever and Shortness of Breath. Persons who suffer at night with coughing, phlegm and short breath, find them invaluable as they instantly check the spasms, promote sleep and allow the patient to pass a good night. Are perfectly harmless, and may be smoked by ladies, children, and most delicate patients. In Boxes of 35.
That's quite a sales pitch. They were popular, for those who could afford them.
So what was the active ingredient? While 'Joy' cigars and cigarettes often contained cannabis, the prime ingredient for those advertised here was Datura stramonium and its accomplice, Datura tatula.
Datura can be a powerful hallucinogenic, but fatal in overdose, which is why you don't hear much about it these days. The stories, probably myths, of 1980s parties where the drug was cooked up and everybody in the room overdosed, became baked into Australian drug culture. "Don't touch that shit!" was a common refrain when the drug was mentioned.
But after looking at those claims of what could be 'cured' with datura, I wonder if these Cigarese De Joy, which were legally available for sale in Australia during the 1880s and 1890s, would help us cope with modern day influenza or COVID19 infections?
The cigars may not have lived up to all their claims, and could've been dangerous, but they obviously worked to some degree, being in production for more than 20 years and popular. There was something in there that gave some kind of relief to those who read the claims and then used the product.
Blog Breaks News Through Conspiratorial Speculation
Outside of repeated warnings about the monkey revolt where all the monkey and apes and baboons escape from all the zoos and join up with dissident military robots and then all the monkeys and apes and robots start a war against humanity (the earliest stages of this war, where monkey meets robot, have already begun), it's not often I get the actual headline news right a few weeks ahead of the rest of the media. But It seemed pretty obvious from the day after Michael Jackson's instantly suspicious death that a homicide investigation would eventually begin :
In case you haven't seen it yet, here's the Jerry Seinfeld ad for Newcastle's Greater Building Society :
How did a small financial institution in Newie manage to get Jerry Seinfeld to star in their ad?
They simply called and asked his manager and Seinfeld liked the concept. The reaction in some of the international media to Seinfeld doing this ad, which obviously didn't earn him a pile of money, is mostly one of 'downright mystified', which is probably exactly why Seinfeld did the ad in the first place.
Sometimes you just have to ask and the seemingly impossible can come true.
I really like that they got Seinfeld to set up his own gear, before the street performance. It must have reminded him of his early days in stand-up comedy, another reason why he probably decided to do it.
Mumbrella has a great slab of other very creative, downright clever, recent Australian ads for bursts of 60 second enjoyment.
...the star whose agent reputedly knocks back 50 commercial overtures a week, hinted it was more about "feel" than fiscal reward.
"We don't think about money too much these days," he said. "I like to do things because they feel right."
Yesterday, he suggested Australia's affection for the show might have predisposed him to the cheeky approach from a financial institution he never knew existed.
"I was down there in '98 right after the show went off the air and the response from the people I met on the street, in the restaurants, everywhere was so special I felt kinda close to them."
The ad wasn't filmed in Newcastle. It was shot in Cedarhurst, New York. Had me fooled.
I wonder how many people in Newcastle didn't notice it wasn't local?
If a Daily Telegraph blogger allowed the followingviolence soaked comment to remain on his personal blog site for a couple of years, all of it posted under your name, even when that blogger knows you didn't write it, and even when asked nicely that blogger refuses to remove it or post an apology, what would you do?
Would you try to take legal action to get compensation for any "immeasurable hurt" that might be caused by this filth remaining online under your name?
Killing Howard is laudable. Killing his cabinet got to be OK too. Killing members of the Liberal party - that has to be a plus, surely. And what about the Nationals? We’ll kill them too. They helped keep Howard in power. And Family First, slit their throats. And what about other Christians, they are conservative and probably voted Liberal. Best kill all them along with small businessmen. There is a real hotbed of Liberal sentiment among these fascist businessmen. Don’t forget the Jews, the money grubbing bastards. They have to be next. Then there are those class traitors, the workers who voted Liberal. Kill them all. Purge the public service of suspected Liberal sympathisers too. That teacher over there. He’s wearing a tie so he must be a conservative. String him up. Hey, that guy’s got an American accent. Slaughter him and his baby too. It’s in their genes, you know. It’s a lot of people to be massacred but it will reduce greehouse gases in the long run. Darryl Mason
Rupert Murdoch interrupts one of his own journalists, seconds into an interview, because the journalist dared to ask "The Chairman" a question with actual substance, unlike the rest of the pap that fills the other four or more minutes of Here's What Our Boss Thinks About Obama & Stuff. You only need to watch the first 45 seconds :
Fox Hack : The story that's really buzzing all around the country and certainly here in New York, is that the News of the World, a News Corporation newspaper in Britain used --
Rupert Murdoch : I'm not talking about that issue at all today. I'm sorry.
Fox Hack : No worries, Mr. Chairman. That's fine with me.
Rupert Murdoch: I'm sorry.
Fox Hack : OK. That's all right, sir.
Didn't the Fox Business journo get the 'To All Editors' memo warning this subject is off limits? That's right, Rupert doesn't have to send memos, because most Murdoch journalists already know which stories and questions will upset the boss.
The one exception to the 'This Story Doesn't Exist' rule for Murdoch journalists is to run brief stories that allow Murdoch or a News Int. rep to deny everything, while ignoring the larger story of how corrupt this style has become and its implications for the future of tabloid journalism.
Despite the expected, and wafer-thin, denials from Murdoch executives, the UK Guardian stands by its original story that Murdoch journalists were involved in dodgy intelligence gathering operations, which included surveillance, the hacking of private phone messages and allegedly buying stolen private financial documents of the celebrities Murdoch tabloids were/are obsessed with, and paying off those who found out what Murdoch journalists were doing to them and sued.
What have we heard about all this from the corporate media entity that controls more than 70% of Australia's newspapers? Fuck all.
And even though the bad behaviour of journalists, corporate media skullduggery and all things Guardian newspaper, are content staples of Australian Murdoch bloggers, Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt, both have found nothing to say at all about it.
They don't need to get a memo, they know they shouldn't write anything that might upset the boss, particularly now he's planning staff cuts across his media empire of at least 30%.
What does it cost Rupert Murdoch to buy such comprehensive silence from two of Australia's most well-read bloggers?
Whatever Murdoch's paying these gatekeepers, it's clearly worth it.
.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
A Natural Master Of Radio And Comic Timing Shows An Amateur How It's Done
Father Bob : If you only see one Catholic Church service in your lifetime, see Father Bob's
The Professional Idiot holds court on John Safran & Father Bob's JJJ show, while Safran and Father Bob struggle to keep it entertaining, or even just a little bit fun.
The Professional Idiot first tries to steer the conversation away from who paid for his recent trip to Israel, where he declared his mate Peter Costello "The Messiah", The Idiot then waffles non-critically about Israel and then expresses surprise that the Palestinian politicians he met were well educated, one was even a pediatrician. Imagine that.
Then this :
The Idiot : "I’ve always tended to be on the side of people who are democratic, who respect, to as much as is consistent with their safety, human rights, and freedom of speech. And by that measure there’s only one party that would make me feel comfortable..…"
Father Bob times his moment of interjection perfectly.
Father Bob : "The Palestinians."
Silence for a few seconds, radio dead air, then you can actually hear The Idiot's jaw clench hard.
The Idiot : "..............you seriously think that or are you just being a fool?"
Father Bob : "No, I’m having a go back."
The Idiot is overwhelmed by such petulance and the standard whining and hilariously prissy outrage kicks in :
The Idiot : "Well, if you say something like that, there’s obviously no room for us to engage because what you’ve said is clearly nonsense....It’s clearly nonsense! Because it is nonsense! So what’s the point in arguing?"
Father Bob : "A conversation? No, this is not the time or the place..."
So much for The Professional Idiot's alleged love of a rousing debate.
If this isn't a piece of surreal, Gary Larson inspired outdoor installation art, it damn well should be. Spotted at the University of Sydney by Kate LeMay :
Photo by Kate LeMay
It Really Does Get In
By Darryl Mason
As I've said here before, the Rudd government has to be very careful when it comes to censoring what Australians can read, see and buy online. No Australian election has yet seen Internet Censorship become a Major Election Issue, and if Rudd & Friends keep pushing this Censor The Net stupidity, they are going to find most Australians online are against them. And when it comes to a federal election, that could be extremely bad news.
GetUp! is planning to run the below ad as part of its fight against online censorship.
The message is clear enough, but a parody ad won't really hit home about what Online Censorship really means, and how a constantly expanding blacklist open to undue influence and corporate vendettas will change our online lives. Yes, many "hate sites" will make the list, but soon enough torrent and peer-to-peer file sharing sites will also get blocked. Well, the blacklist will attempt to block such sites, but there are many ways around even mandatory web filters, which you'll learn a bit more about here when the time is right. Obviously, you can already such info online.
Paul Stanley : "That would work wonderfully, we could bounce laser beams off your head."
Eric Carr : "Have you ever considered a career as a satellite?"
Norman Gunston : "Come on, guys, these people here respect me. Don't make fun of me in front of them."
Brilliant.
One more Norman. How cute. TV channels used to promote the fact they were in colour. Imagine trying to have to convince people to switch to colour TV? I remember some old locals when I was a kid in the mid-1970s saying they preferred black and white and colour TV was a fad, so they would not be "making the switch."
How catchy is that jingle? I don't think I've seen this ad since 1976, but immediately I knew all the words. How deeply those ads you see repeatedly as a kid embed themselves in your memory.
I'm Only Swearing At You Because My Dealer Went On Holiday
Swearing can lessen the feeling of physical pain, scientists have discovered.
Volunteers withstood pain for longer when they swore than when they used anodyne words, in a study at Keele University in the English Midlands.
Richard Stephens, who led the study, believes it may explain why most languages contain swear words.
He said: "The volunteers who swore had an elevated heart rate, so it could be increasing their aggression levels.
"Increased aggression has been shown to reduce sensitivity to pain, so it could be that swearing helps this process."
The idea that we developed swear words, hundreds or thousands of generations ago, to cope with the effects of pain is fascinating. Perhaps our very first words spluttered from our lips because hooting and roaring and grunting simply did not encapsulate our true feelings about how it felt to be kicked square in the cags by a mammoth. Then again, perhaps those very first swear words came from women during childbirth, a far more common occurence of extreme pain than getting stomped by hairy tusked elephants.
This commenter at RWDB Beck uses the above story to finally crack open the explanation for why Evil Pagan Lefties are, apparently, so full of bitter, swears-laden vitriol and abuse for the delicate pro-war, pro-occupation nice polite people that used to control Australia back in the days when newsreaders could say "John Howard" and "visionary" in the same sentence, without laughing :
An answer to why we see the abuse we conservatives get from lefties.
It would seem that they are using us to get a narcotic effect from their own bodies.
That's right. Lefties let fly against conservatives only because it gets them high.
Hey, it's cheaper than scoring on the streets. And it's legal.
For now.
Games Within Games
A commenter on this ABC News story about PM Rudd's presumed inaction when it comes to pressuring China to handover Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu, who they accuse of espionage, spying, takes a plausible theory on what might have happened out for a run :
It's an interesting game that people are playing
Hu buys a state secret from someone - the secret? that's easy: the Chinese position on where commodity prices are going (ie Up)
Hu passes that secret information to his RIO bosses and consequently RIO does not need to negotiate on lower prices
Then China anounces prices for the next year hooray.
But because of Hu's actions China has been damaged financially.
But consider that there are games within games. Maybe Hu was allowed to buy the state secrets from someone allowed to sell them (either overtly or covertly).
Now we have China sitting in a pretty position - it has secured a hedge against dropping prices. With no financial outlay for doing so.
If prices drop then RIO (who acted on insider information by not acting in the absence of that info) could be sued by the Chinese and Australia would have to step in and back RIO. And of course if anyone ends up out of pocket it will be the Australian tax payer.
It's a brilliant game.
While Stern Hu may be, and hopefully is, innocent, and will be allowed to return to Australia, corporate and industrial spying and espionage runs rampant across the global business world.
Of course it does.
If Rio Tinto has never knowingly engaged in such activities, however many levels removed from the executives so plausible deniability can be maintained, they've been putting themselves at a distinct corporate disadvantage, because most, if not all, of their minor and major international competitors engage in such activitites, to some extent, as simply a way of doing business. An acceptable, if not expected, way of doing business.
One 'Janet' Unit Of Time Measurement = About Four Years
By Darryl Mason
Time moves at a curiously different speed on Planet Janet :
Almost the moment David Hicks was being measured up for his orange Gitmo jump suit, Get Up was up and running a very vocal campaign, castigating the evil Yanks for incarcerating one of our own and demanding that his rights be protected.
Almost the moment....Right.
David Hicks was captured in Afghanistan and sold to the US military and transported to Guantanamo Bay in December, 2001.
How much does News Limited CEO John Hartigan expect us to pay read her trundling Talking Points For Desperate Howard-Era Liberals online next year?
Janet's so desperate for anything of substance she even resorts to quoting The Greens' Bob Brown, however reluctantly, with approval. W0w.
Tony Abbott is seriously being discussed as the next leader of the Liberal Party and Janet Albrechtsen thinks Bob Brown is right. These are politically hallucinogenic days.
The short version of this week's transmission from Planet Janet is that Evil Pagan Lefties should be out protesting against the Chinese regime, like they do a lot already about Tibet and human rights, but they should have shut the fuck up when it came to the Bush regime, and though she usually thinks protests are useless at effective change they should now all shout "You Bastards!" at the Chinese regime and protest and write letters, because....and this may shock you....the Chinese Communist regime plucks people, including foreign nationals, off the streets and detains them and interrogates them and doesn't give them access to lawyers and fucks around with the detainee's home government diplomats when they try to get access to the prisoners.
By imprisoning Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu for a week, so far, without charge, the Chinese communist regime is acting like, I don't know....a bunch of bloody communists or something.
Or like Americans.
Obviously, we all expect better behaviour from communist regimes. Regardless of how much coal they buy from us.
I'm not quite sure Janet Albrechtsen is aware that she has successfully compared the violation of the human rights of Stern Hu by the Chinese Communist Regime to the violation of the human rights of David Hicks by the United States under the Bush Warparty Regime. But good on her for finally recognising the truth. All these years later.
Just don't expect to see Janet Albrechtsen at the barricades outside the Chinese embassy.
As she so often told us during the Bush War For (Our) God Years, as so many opinionists and editors of the Murdoch Old Media railed so effervescently back then, protests don't work. Protests are pointless, usually misguided, often offensive and utterly meaningless.
Unless the protests are against the actions of a communist regime who doesn't recognise the democratic right to protest, of course, then they can really make a difference.
