Roland S. Howard died today, aged 50.

There's a fine selection of Howard videos and interviews on YouTube, if you're not familiar with his work, or you want to take a look back.




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From the front page of news.com.au today :



At the bottom of the front page of news.com.au, as on most other Australian news sites, readers are encouraged to video 'news events' and send the footage in :

News.com.au wants you to be involved in breaking the news. When news happens and you are there, let us know by sending us your pictures, video and news tips.

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"One Reason Conspirators Said They Bombed The Nightclub In Bali In 2002 Was That It Did Not Allow Locals In"









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Oxford Falls, near Sydney's Northern Beaches, December 27 :













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Jump It, Crash It, Burn It, Blow It Up

Grant Page, the legendary Australian stuntman, was sitting at home in early 1997, wondering what crazy thing someone would be willing to pay him to do next. The phone rang. It was Damon Albarn from Blur. The band was on tour in Europe, they had to come with a video for the new single M.O.R. and they'd recently come across the DVD of Grant Page's 1970s stunt doco Danger Freaks. They'd loved it and they now wanted to give Page more than $200,000 to put together a stunt-packed video clip. He had less than a month to conceive it, shoot it, edit it and deliver it to MTV.

From the Grant Page biography, Man On Fire : A Stunt Of A Life (Allen & Unwin, 2009) :

The scenario was simple. We were a group escaping with a whole load of money and kept facing all sorts of dangerous situations as we fled. It was, of course, just an excused for us to perform lots of stunts that were connected by a soundtrack and a loose narrative.

We had one of the biggest cranes on top of a big new building in the city - it was huge, hundreds of feet high - and all four of us, as the four members of the band, had to grab hold of it and swing off the building, right out over the city, then back down until we landed on the truck.

(shooting the Blur video) was very exciting, very daring and, ultimately, very dangerous. It was not without mushaps either, including the one where my son Gulliver abseiled down the Harbour Bridge, landed on me and broke his kneecap.

Because we were basically in charge of the shoot, I was able to do a few stunts that I'd always wanted to, of of which was a ground-to-plane transfer. Actually it turned out to be a water-to-plane transfer.

Here's the video :





The Man On Fire biography is a pretty good read. A lot of it reads like transcripts of interviews with Page, and it can be a bit all over the place, but he's got some incredible stories of Australian movie and TV history to tell from over 35 years of crashing cars, throwing himself off cliffs, setting himself on fire and riding motorcycles off waterfalls. All without breaking a bone, on set.

A best-of compilation of Page's work :





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It was a little bit crowded at the Queen Victoria Building earlier today.





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"Just For One Christmas, I'd Like To See The Meek Inherit The Earth"

To make up for the Santa-related violence of The Christmas Incident, here's a classic Twilight Zone from 1960, one of the great Christmas fables, and all the more remarkable a piece of TV because it was performed pretty well live to air.

Part One :



Part Two :



Part Three :



Yeah, it made me cry a little, too.

The Christmas Incident

By Darryl Mason

What are you doing here? Seriously. What the fuck? It's Christmas Day. You should be drunk and in front the TV. Or at least smiling at relatives as you quietly hum a familiar tune you don't even like, but like a lot right now.

Yeah, I forget that some of you have those phones that are the internet, but smaller, and you're probably in front of the TV right now, drunk as hell.

But surely there's got to be something more fulfilling to do with these precious Christmas Day minutes than to read this stuff?

No?

Okay, well all I got is this series of twoots collected from Twitter last night, about a shocking gun-related early Christmas morning incident.

Heard something on the roof. Sounds like hooves or something. I'm loading the shotgun. I'm going to have a look. Shoot first, questions later.

Oh God, I think I just did something terrible. In the dark, the bell the old fat white-bearded bloke was holding looked just like a pistol.

The old bloke fell off the roof when I shot him. He's flopping around on the lawn. He's wearing red, so I can't tell if he's bleeding.

There's a whole load of frigging reindeer on my roof. I'm reloading. One of them looks pissed. His nose is glowing bright red. Taking aim.

Took out two of the reindeer on my roof with one shell. Good eating. After butchering I can fit maybe five carcasses in the deep freeze.

If I'd known they were flying reindeer I wouldn't have shot 'em so fast. They'd be damn handy, better than a jetpack. Killed 4, rest flew away.

The old bloke I blew off my roof just croaked "R...uuudolph!" and that rednose deer crawled over to him. I thought it was dead. Tough deer.

If I am right, I can do em both with one cartridge. Seems to be a lot of crying, shrieking, screaming kids here now. Sirens coming closer.

Yeah, bit of a bad scene. Kids and parents are hysterical. They all seem to know who this white bearded dying bloke is. I can't finish him now. Dammit.

I've had to barricade myself inside my house. Screaming kids are trying to smash the windows. I left the deer carcasses on the lawn. Dammit.

Jeez, they got a cop on a speaker. They're saying this is a siege, and "You Shot Santo Claws, You Fuck!". I was defending my property.

That Santo Claws bloke wasn't as bad off as I thought. He just tried to kick in the front door. Cops told him to stop. He didn't. He got tasered

Police negotiator says he understands my plight, says I was in my right to blow that old fuck off my roof, but he still has to arrest me.

I said yes to a lawyer who offered representation after winching down from a TV news helicopter. Seven figure TV, book & movie deal on the cards. Coming out now.

Lawyer said I might have to do two months, then I'd be out and set. That Santo Claws fucker who landed reindeer on my roof is okay.

Apparently, I am "The Stupid Fuck Who Ruined Christmas!" according to the newspaper front pages around the world today.

I don't remember ever hearing about this Santo Claws bloke, and his very hard to believe story of delivering presents to kids, worldwide.

Lawyer says his name is actually 'Santa Claus' and is beloved by children across the world. Says I have to start saying "Merry Christmas." It's part of the plea deal. So ditto that. I still don't get it.

Mel Gibson's playing me in the movie. It's called I Shot Santa. Jack Thompson is playing the old fat bloke in red I blew off my roof. They got cool robot deer.

This Santa Claus fucker is suing the studio making our movie. He says the title, I Shot Santa, violates his trademark. I don't get paid until 1st day of production.

I may have to shoot him again.

Merry Christmas.





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A true bluesman.



Above image from RoseTattoo.com

We Stalk Mothers & Their Infants

The Daily Telegraph, now publishing stalker-creepy photo galleries of babies without their parents' permission.



You can find the link yourself, if it interests you so.

More of that "quality journalism" Rupert Murdoch insists people will pay to read online.

At least, that's what he's praying will happen.

Smurvatar



(h/t @Great Dismal)

I'd rather drive anthrax-dipped nails into my head with an electric hammer than ever again listen to anything from Chris DeBurgh. But DeBurgh does do a good line in self-praising raves against critics of his 'music' :

"How you must have cringed at every call of 'Chris, we love you'; how you must have felt isolated as the audience rose to their feet as one, singing, dancing and shouting out for more; how you must have growled to yourself as you left, surrounded by so many happy people, to make your curmudgeonly way to the safety of the street outside. You really should look up the word 'entertainment' again, you might be surprised to see that it is all about people having a GOOD TIME!!"

Oh So Fugly

ABC Rural Queensland has a fantastic story and photo collection of QLD's Ugliest Pets for 2009. Worth a read and a run through of all the photos, many good laughs and sympathetic 'awwwws' will result. The photo caption writer also had plenty of fun.

A few of my favourite entrants :









From the ABC News story :

Ugly animals aren't going away, in fact, in an evolutionary sense they are essential.

Just like humans, animals can change their opinions rather quickly on what turns them on, meaning traits considered undesirable can quickly come into favour.

Some of these traits seem downright bizarre to humans, even ugly, but Australian National University evolutionary biologist Professor Jenny Graves says that's natural.

"There are lots of animals which have what we call sexually selected traits, that don't look beautiful to us."

"For instance, the red bums of female baboons don't appeal to us very much, but they certainly appeal to a male baboon very much."

"We might not find a hump on the head of a fish beautiful, but that's the way that a female measures this particular kind of fish as a potential mate."

"I don't know that she's assessing beauty, she's just assessing is this animal going to give me more eggs and a better chance of passing my genes on to the offspring," Professor Graves says.

Many evolutionary biologists believe these 'desirable traits' come into popularity through accident.

It's a process known as co-evolution, where a fine specimen of male fish with a lump on his head happens to meet a female who thinks it's a desirable trait

The traits animals don't like often remain lower frequency in the population - but what's unpopular today might not be unpopular down the track.

"The environment is patchy enough that you've always got little niches where it's not good to have a big tail, or it's not good to have a red rump, or it's not good to have a bump on your head."

Go Here For The Full Story And Photo Collection



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When Saints Can Restore Limbs To Amputees, All Will Believe



Regardless of personal faith-based beliefs, it's always good to see a generous, compassionate, anti-authoritarian honoured. Even if it is a century after their death.

According to this story, something like 6 out of 10 Australians will need little convincing that even in post-life, Mary MacKillop could have been responsible for the minimum two miracles required for sainthood.

David Marr :

Polling over the past decade suggests faith in miracles is intensifying. This may be the work of the late Pope John Paul II, who created armies of fresh saints credited with medical miracles.

Australia's current enthusiasm stands in contrast to the ISSP finding in the late 1990s: that only 36 per cent of Australians and 59 per cent of Americans believed in miracles. Both figures have shot through the roof.

Mary MacKillop undertaking healings from beyond the grave isn't even that hard a sell with those Australians who deny or disbelieve the existence of God. Twenty five percent of atheists and agnostics believe in miracles.

Unfortunately, the poll didn't reveal how many of those 5.6 million or so Australians only believe in miracles when it comes to their favourite cricket and/or rugby league teams.

Back in July, prime minister Kevin Rudd met with Pope Benedict in Vatican City, and pushed the case for MacKillop sainthood. Rudd also found time to hear Pope Benedict's pitch for some ethical backboning of the apparently now gestating 'world government' :

At a meeting in the pontiff's private library, the two men discussed the Pope's recently released encyclical which calls for a new world structure based on equity and fairness, rather than self-interest and greed.

Greed. It's so 20th century.

Geoffrey Gurrumul, one of Australia's most gifted singers and songwriters, has had to go down market and share a stage with some old bearded hippy in Paris to get Europeans to pay attention to his most beautiful voice.

Such is the price, the sacrifices demanded, of remarkable talent and pending international fame.


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Anti-Censorship Censored

By Darryl Mason

Here's the front page text from the anti-RuddNet censorship protest site, www.stephenconroy.com.au, which was pulled offline on Friday afternoon :

stephenconroy.com.au - Minister For Fascism

"The interesting part of this is that it shows that the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has not even been forward thinking enough to register his own name domain." -- f_bassman@Whirlpool

AUSTRALIAS INTERNET IS ABOUT TO BE CENSORED BY A FASCIST ASS! READ ALL ABOUT SENATOR STEPHEN CONROY HERE!

DON'T THINK THE LABOR PARTY HAS THE RIGHT TO ARBITRATE WHAT YOU SEE ON THE INTERNET? TELL THEM!

EMAIL THE MINISTER HERE AND TELL HIM THAT AS A VOTING AUSTRALIAN CITIZEN YOU FIND THIS COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE!

Make sure you check out our LINKS page and support our comrades! We'll keep adding relevant stuff as we come across it.

DO WE HAVE YOUR ATTENTION NOW, MR CONROY? WE DON'T WANT THIS. WE'RE GOING TO FIGHT IT. THIS IS THE AUSTRALIAN PUBLIC TELLING YOU NO!!

Like commenters at Whirlpool, I find it downright incredible that nobody in the office of Stephen Conroy, Minister For RuddNet, was on top of the intertubeywebs enough to have thought, "You know, let's register the local domain name for Conroy, so no-one else gets in first and starts...I don't know...a high profile mock site under his name or something."

I don't think Conroy, well anyone in the Rudd government, really, is aware of just how much embarrassing chaos they will unleash upon themselves when RuddNet Censorship becomes a reality. I mean, more of a reality than having an anti-censorship site shut down.

There are thousands of freenet hackers and activists, tens of thousands more likely, all over the world who will see it as a personal mission and a satisfying challenge to do everything they can to destroy any attempt by the RuddNet to censor or vasty restrict the free sharing of information in a democracy like Australia.

They will first be called "extremists". Then "terrorists."

Asher Moses On StephenConroy.Com.Au

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Joseph : "That's The Last Time I Go Out Of Town On Business"



The Auckland Anglican archdeacon who erected the above very effective billboard, aimed at getting passersby discussing the true meaning of the Christmas Story is, admirably, refusing to back down or apologise, after a storm of negative media coverage, a paint bomb attack and calls and warnings from the utterly humourless Catholic Church :

Archdeacon Glynn Cardy said the church meant to challenge a fundamentalist interpretation of Christ's birth.

"What we're trying to do is to get people to think more about what Christmas is all about. Is it about a spiritual male God sending down sperm so a child would be born, or is it about the power of love in our midst as seen in Jesus?"

Cardy, and other members of his church, have had to even endure threats of violence for daring to get people to have a think and a laugh.

"They are driven to give threats and abuse - and [yet] they say 'we love Jesus and he loves us'. I'm sorry, but they don't get the irony of their behaviour."

The New Zealand Herald received this e-mail :

"May the wrath of Almighty God strike down this abomination and bring those responsible to their knees in fear of Him."

Come on. If anyone was going to find this billboard deliciously funny, it would be God.

- title of this blog post stolen from a Sam Kinison routine.

Dec. 19 update from ninemsn :

....Glynn Cardy, said the billboard was "attacked by a knife-wielding Christian fanatic".

Later in the evening another group of fanatics ripped it down.

"When knives are wielded in the name of God, I have two responses. One is to act to ensure the safety of the public and parishioners. We will, therefore, not be replacing the vandalised billboard with an identical one.

"My second response is one of deep sadness at those in the Christian church who don't want to offend any faith position, even the most literalistic view of a male god. By having unity as their priority they inadvertently feed fanaticism."

A win for the crazies. A loss for those who don't believe Christian myths are above parody, or healthy debate.

First The Tsunami, Then The Sharks

Australia's first 3D feature movie has been announced. It's Bait, to be directed by Russell Mulcahy. The plot....

...will centre on a group of people trapped in a flooded underground supermarket with a pack of hungry tiger sharks after a tsunami.

Some examples of Russsel Mulcahy's previous ventures into fantasy and horror :





No matter how good Bait turns out to be, there will be at least one smart-arse critic who will snipe : "It needed a pig."

The first time I saw a special effects studio was when I visited Australia's then master special effects make-up artist Bob McCarron in the mid-1980s. The Razorback boar was right there in his garage, it was massive, and he gave me a demo of what it could do. It was a stunning, disturbingly lifelike creation. It could heave its huge head around, snap its jaws and blow snot, steam and drool. It had a wider range of facial expressions than Carlo Rimbaldi's ET puppet, then regarded as the most advanced creature effects in cinema. But you barely see what it can do in the Razorback movie. Damn shame.

In the days before CGI, you had to build these monsters. They cost a bomb, took months, or years to build and were rarely used the way the creature creators, like McCarron, Rick Baker and Rimbaldi, intended them to be seen, and worked.

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From the Wonder Of Whiffling (And Other Extraordinary Words In The English Language) by Adam Jacot de Boinod, a few Australian entries in Best New Words Of The Decade :

barbecue stopper : an issue of major public importance, which will excite the interest of voters

flairing : the action of bartenders balancing, catching, flipping, spinning or throwing (bottles, glasses, napkins, straws) with finesse and style

dog-whistle politics : to present your message so that only your supporters hear it properly

flashpackers : intrepid, but comfortably-off travellers

That's it? That's all Australians have contributed to neologia in the first decade of the 21st century?

Commenters here rip the full list to shreds, and come up with many, many better and more widely used 'New Words.'

As far as new words from around the world go, it's downright criminal 'Fucktard' didn't make the list.

'Meh', as used by Lisa Simpson (meaning bored, unimpressed), however, did make the list.

So it's not all bad.

There's Gold In That There Climate Change ClickBait

By Darryl Mason

Dodi "The Royal Family Killed My Son" Al-Fayed is yanking the AGW deniers chain, bigstyle, and cleaning up on copies sold of his newspaper and a massive surge in website hits :



I'd like to read 100 Reasons Why Global Warming Is Natural. I'd like to see a comprehensive, well-argued, well referenced list. But this sure ain't it. It's chockers with pure opinion and outright absurdities.

Some of the Reasons Why Global Warming Is Natural published in the Daily Express :

- Peter Lilley MP said last month that “fewer people in Britain than in any other country believe in the importance of global warming. That is despite the fact that our Government and our political class—predominantly—are more committed to it than their counterparts in any other country in the world”.

- Politicians and activists push for renewable energy sources such as wind turbines under the rhetoric of climate change, but it is essentially about money – under the system of Renewable Obligations. Much of the money is paid for by consumers in electricity bills. It amounts to £1 billion a year.

- The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had campaigned for the removal of a learned journal’s editor, solely because he did not share their willingness to debase science for political purposes.

And something local :

Australia has stated it wants to slash greenhouse emissions by up to 25 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, but the pledges were so unpopular that the country’s Senate has voted against the carbon trading Bill, and the Opposition’s Party leader has now been ousted by a climate change sceptic.

So the removal of Malcolm Turnbull from the leadership of the Liberal Party proves Global Warming is natural?

There's a lot of this sort of stuff in the list. They might have been able to get away with 20 Reasons Why Global Warming Is Natural, but that wouldn't be quite so dramatic a front page.

It's tabloid clickbait. Comment bait.

As Andrew Bolt well knows. And which no doubt encouraged him to declare :

The Tide Has Turned

This in reference to the fact that a daily newspaper, in the UK, with a reasonably high circulation has 'dared' to publish such a front cover.

Many of Andrew Bolt's readers now want to know when the newspaper he writes for, The Herald Sun, or any Australian Murdoch newspaper for that matter, will publish a similar front page.

"Why is this article NOT on the front page of the Heraldsun, Shame on the Editor."

"Now we need one of our Australian papers to do the same, perhaps The Australian?"

"Now someone else has done the homework / broken the ice, will the Herald Sun run the equivalent front page ??"

"come on andrew put the pressure on the editors it’s obvious that the public want to read this "

When will the Herald Sun run a similar front page to the Daily Express claiming Global Warming Is Natural?

How about never?

I'd be this blog on it.

We all know where Rupert Murdoch, and his media empire, stands on the reality of global warming-induced climate change and the coming carbon tax and trade :




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