ED Day Update

I've posted some thoughts on finishing the ED Day : Dead Sydney online novel over at the ED Day blog.

Go Here For That

The short version is that I'm rewriting Dead Sydney to include more of the plot elements that turned up when I was writing the last chapters and to more fully detail post-pandemic Sydney a bit more.

I've also decided to do an online book of short stories of how characters who turn up in Dead Sydney managed to survive the first waves of the bird flu pandemic that kills millions across the city. This book of short stories would then act as a prequel to Dead Sydney.

I've also started work on the first few chapters of the sequel to Dead Sydney, which follows the narrator, Paul, on his journey into the Blue Mountains after escaping the 'invisible' wall that surrounds the city centre, trapping pandemic survivors inside a few city blocks. I think it's going to be great fun writing about city office workers and Blue Mountains locals joining together to fight, and survive.

Like Dead Sydney, the prequel and sequel will be free to read online.

I hope to have copies of the Dead Sydney for sale through this blog in a month or so. I'm toying with the idea of printing Dead Sydney with four or more different covers, for a bit of variety, and because not everyone will want to read a book in public that has a cover showing Sydney landmarks strewn with bodies. Some, however, won't mind.

I'll update here when the first short stories go online. The first chapters of the sequel are a few weeks away.

When Being Mauled By A Shark, Always Go The Eye Gouge



This extraordinary photo by James Bickerdike shows two swimmers splashing the water to try and scare away a 4-metre long white pointer shark near Albany, West Australia. You can see the shark's huge fin cutting through the water just above the water splash.

The shark had just attacked a man, who fought it off by finding its gills and then feeling along until he found an eye socket. He then plunged in a finger. Lucky he did :

When it . . . banged straight into me, I knew it was a shark. I was more concerned about getting out of its mouth because it was dragging me backwards under water.

Sharks are supposedly quite the cowards, and are not used to their prey fighting back. Particularly not prey that goes the eye gouge.

Go Here For The Full Story And More Photos

How To Blow $60 Million

From King Of Online Porn to lord of mum's vacuum cleaner in only a few short years :

Five years ago Greg Lasrado drove a $500,000 black Lamborghini Diablo, rubbed shoulders with high-powered people such as US president Bill Clinton, lived between multimillion-dollar penthouses and bought racehorses for fun. Today his sole asset is a rusty ute, he lives in his parents' spare bedroom and spends most weekends helping his mum with the housework.

During the 1990s, Lasrado went from being a university student drop-out to Australia's No.1 internet porn tycoon, accumulating a $60million fortune along the way. But an extravagant lifestyle and poor business management sent him on a downward spiral to a broken marriage, heroin addiction and, finally, bankruptcy.

Today Lasrado, 38, reveals for the first time his dramatic rise and fall as an international porn baron.

"Up until five years ago, I was living every man's dream," he told The Sun-Herald in a Brisbane restaurant last week. "I'd wake up on a day like today, have lunch, buy a car, then head to the airport and be in another country by the close of play.

"I was convinced it would last forever. Now, I've lost the lot. If you were to turn me upside down, 10 cents would not fall out of my pocket."

If you're going to fall, fall big and fast.

Not Right

Andrew Bolt's green hysteria is becoming deeply disturbing, and deeply offensive to those who view Hitler as something far more evil than merely a symbol to be used in political attacks.

Weird, bizarre political attacks, using modern day Nazi propaganda like this :



Has Bolt never heard of the American government's World War 2 homeland campaign called 'Hemp For Victory'? Americans were told they had to grow hemp to defeat the Nazis.

Bolt also now claims : "I'm not of the right..."

Confused? Obviously you're not quite as confused as Andrew Bolt.

Rudd Vs The Media

Christian Kerr, formerly of Crikey, is doing some fine politics vs media analysis at The Australian, and nails PM Rudd for his purposeful denial of access by journalists and television crews :

Television crews had gathered outside the venue to get footage of the PM entering and so journalists could ask a question or two. John Howard was usually up to it. If he wanted to talk, he'd stop. It gave all the media a line from the PM on the issues of the day and vital background shots for the newsrooms to use.

But Rudd didn't appear. Instead, he came in the back door. What's more, he came through an area where media are not permitted to film or ask questions. That didn't stop some media trying, and failing.

Adam Collins, one of the PM's junior media minders, told them to move on and not to ask questions. Security appeared, followed by a senior member of the PM's media team, Fiona Sugden.

She brokered a compromise. The media could stay and film, but not ask questions. It was just another skirmish in the war between Rudd's press office and the media, a war that has seen one of the Canberra gallery's most senior journalists forced to act as an errand boy.

It's a bad look for democracy.

Howard's Rage

Opposition leader Brendan Nelson has tried being a shiny, happy person, as he toured Australia "listening", but with serial-killer levels of public approval, Nelson's remaking of the Liberal Party leadership clearly hasn't worked.

Former Liberal leader, and ex-prime minister, John Howard, suggests a new strategy :

John Howard last night urged Liberal Party faithful to maintain the rage, saying they should work hard to get out of Opposition and promising a federal Liberal government "will come again".

"Rage against opposition," he said. "Work as hard as you can to get out of opposition as soon as you can.

"Opposition is a dismal position in politics. I had my share of opposition, I had 13 years of it, and I hated every year of it, I hated every week of it."

So much hate, for so many years.

John Howard seems to have delayed his promise to fade away quietly, and not become like other ex-MPs, always giving speeches and making public comments and critiques. Maybe next year.

Bob Ellis Challenges Tim Blair To Public Debate

Tim Blair has been having great fun with Labor barnacle Bob Ellis in the past few weeks, on whether or not he deserves to be voted for in the ABC's 'Favourite Australian' poll, and a recent column published at ABC Online where Ellis gruesomely mused on how the world might be a different, and better, place if Hillary Clinton had spent more time orally pleasuring her husband in the mid-1990s.

Ellis responded to a Blair column bagging him in the Daily Telegraph with a letter, that Blair has now published as an opion piece :

Tim Blair said the Iraq War would bring oil prices down, and he still has his job.

He said there would be no humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq and now, with three million Iraqis living elsewhere, and a million of them, probably, dead, he still has his job.

He called George W. Bush a modern-day Winston Churchill, and he still has his job.

I think it's great he still has his job. He shows how wrong the Right are about most things, and how they never learn, and never admit a mistake.

Ellis' easy ire was sparked by this Blair colum and Ellis has now laid down a challenge to Blair that will be humiliating for him to refuse, even though it's clear that Ellis is hoping for a little attention, and money :

If he wants me sacked, impoverished and silenced, he should say why in detail.

Perhaps on a public podium, before a paying audience - one he shares with me.

Any time, anywhere.

Tim Blair's response?

UPDATE : It turns out Bob and Tim have been challenging each other to public debates for almost six years. Blair in 2002 :

...(Ellis) interrupted me with this challenge: we must have a public debate! I'm up for it, Bob. Name your time and place, and my appearance fee.

They're both hoping for attention and money. Six years, and they're still only making goo-goo eyes at each other.

Loser Conservatives Can't Stop Whining

Think tanker Gerard Henderson lashes the "Australian conservative movement", whatever that is, for not being intellectual or influential enough in a humiliatingly whiny rant that is neither intellectual or influential and reads like a letter to the editor of The Australian.

A rejected letter :

...it would be unwise to regard leadership as the only problem facing the Liberals. This issue disguises a deeper cultural problem that turns on the intellectual weakness of the politically conservative tradition in Australia, compared with that which prevails in similar democracies such as Britain and the US.

...towards the end of his administration it was difficult to find even three members of the Canberra Press Gallery who supported Howard on any one of such issues as Iraq, national security, Work Choices or climate change.

Aren't they supposed to be journalists, and therefore neutral? How can you complain about the media being filled with biased Evil Lefties and then bitch about how few in the press gallery "supported" Howard? Henderson shows he isn't concerned about political bias in Australian journalism, just that there's not enough Liberal campaigners disguised as journos (probably the crap wages for most) applauding Brendan Nelson from the press gallery. Fantastic.

During Howard's time there was considerable hype among the left about what were termed the culture wars. If such a cultural battle was ever engaged, Howard did not win it. His appointments to the ABC board did not change the national broadcaster's prevailing leftist culture.

Political cycles invariably turn, and the Liberal Party will almost certainly regain office somewhere, sometime.

That might make for a catchy Brendan Nelson brand slogan, "Somewhere, Sometime".

Meanwhile, the social democrats and the left still dominate the intellectual debate in Australia. This reality contributes to Nelson's evident difficulties and discontents, and especially to the fact that the Howard/Costello legacy is now being trashed.

What absolute twaddle. Nelson goes on a listening tour, it gets plenty of media coverage, he has nothing much to say, he listens a lot and then has few insightful comments on what he heard, and nobody generally gives a shit. Sure, blame the Evil Lefties for that, too. It would be terrible if Liberals actually had to take responsibility for their failing, falling ability to impact on the national conversation.

It's very simple, if your ideas are getting an airing and they're not finding much of an audience, there's a good chance the ideas are not interesting or popular, or worse, they're just plain disturbing and acutely divisive. Like much of Andrew Bolt's production line word vomit.

Part of the problem of shouting 'Evil Lefty!' every time someone disagrees about the reality of the Iraq War or why hanging onto oil and coal as our main energy sources isn't going to be a good idea for the rest of this century, is that conservatives who believe these things are isolated because they don't see themselves as members of 'The Left', that outdated relic of obsession for a bunch of columnists who went to uni together in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Hendersons and the Bolts of the "conservative movement" need to spend less time whining about why they're not supposedly being heard, and more time trying to draw in those who truly believe conservative values are important, and can change the country for the better, without all the hysteria and bitterness.

Why would you want to be associated with the bitter, sulky likes of Andrew Bolt and Gerard Henderson, even if you did think they're mostly right, and not just Right?

If this great unrepresented mass of secret Liberal supporters is really out there, the Hendersons and Bolts have to make the beliefs and values they push far more attractive, and create enthusiasm for these ideas, and ideals, instead of pissing on about Evil Lefties hogging ABC air time and trying to turn every university student into the next Bob Brown or Al Gore.

It's fiction, and it's boring.

The people want to hear ideas they like, and believe in, they want to get excited by the new and challenging, but right now they're not hearing any of this from anyone much in the Liberal Party, or the mysterious "Australian conservative movement."

All they're still hearing from the Hendersons and Bolts is how awesome John Howard was, and how there's not enough appreciation for whatever it was he did during all those years in power.

Yeah, that gets people excited.

Drug Expert : Sell Cannabis At Australia Post Offices

Predicts Spliffs Will Replace Cigarettes

Hundreds of thousands of Australians will light up joints, or punch cones, this or next weekend. All of them will be breaking the law. A country originally settled for the purposes of growing industrial cannabis (hemp) two centuries ago, continues to criminalise adults who think that cannabis is a better way to unwind on Friday night than binge-drinking, and that it provides better mild pain relief than gut-burning pharmaceuticals.

But Alex Wodak, the director of alcohol and drug services at St Vincent's Hospital posits that 'cannabis use will replace cigarette consumption' in the next ten years, and it's time now for the government to get in first and make sure that criminal profiteering and police, corporate and political corruption doesn't run rampant in this new marketplace :

Cannabis would be sold legally in post offices in packets that warn against its effects under a proposal outlined by the head of a Sydney drug and alcohol clinic.

...Wodak said Australia needed to learn from the tobacco industry and the US Prohibition era in coming to terms with his belief that cannabis use would replace cigarette consumption over the next decade.

"The general principal is that it's not sustainable that we continue to give criminals and corrupt police a monopoly to sell a drug that is soon going to be consumed by more people than tobacco," he said.

"I don't want to see that [industry] fall into the hands of tobacco companies or rapacious businessmen."

Dr Wodak believed his idea could reduce cannabis consumption, based on comparisons between consumption in Amsterdam and San Francisco. He said regulated availability would also reduce people's exposure to other illicit drugs when buying the product. His model would make cannabis advertising illegal, ban political donations from the cannabis industry, and demand proof of age on purchase.

He chose Australia Post for distribution as it could be regulated and had branches across the country. "What I'm talking about is not pro-cannabis … it's about reducing cannabis harm."

A spokesman for the Minister for Health, Nicola Roxon, said the proposal would not be considered.

Instead the federal government will back criminal records and jail sentences for Australians repeatedly caught smoking, eating or growing a weed.

Priorities

From Sydney's The Daily Telegraph :



Only 4000 dead in Burma?

Clearly, a naked newsreader must take priority then in the really big World news stories.

UPDATE : The death toll across Burma is estimated to be hitting 10,000. More than 100,000 are homeless.

A city of 6.5 million people finds itself without energy, without water, with a military unwilling to help them clear the streets of trees and debris.

Coming To Your Living Room, Police-Enforced Alcohol-Free Zones

Many Australians agreed with alcohol bans in violence and sex-crime plagued Northern Territory Aboriginal communities. Sure, the meme went, such catch-all bans mean responsible drinkers in those communities have to go without, but if it saves a community from more alcohol related violence and sex crimes then, well, obviously it's necessary, isn't it?

But what happens when alcohol bans are proposed for communities that not Aboriginal?

That is, what if police decide that a certain part of a suburb, or street or apartment block should be made a no-go zone for booze, due to violence and disorder, but the no-go zone is filled with white, middle-class Australians instead of Aboriginals?

What then?

Drinking a glass of wine in your own home could be illegal under extreme new liquor laws that rubber-stamp the use of no-go alcohol zones in NSW.

Under the plan, drinking hotspots across the state can be labelled as "restricted alcohol areas" for up to three years under new laws that are just 10 weeks away.

A document recently published by the State Government reveals the detail of the alcohol bans outlining that areas of "chronic alcohol abuse" can be slapped with a range of restrictions.

"Restrictions will not be limited to indigenous communities," the paper reads.

Under the new laws, any area of the state can be declared a restricted alcohol zone and it applies to the sale of alcohol as well as possession and consumption in any premises - licensed or not.

...it was still undecided as to what penalties might be imposed if someone was caught with alcohol in a banned zone.

Eviction? Enforced alcohol counselling?

Perhaps instead these no-alcohol zone insurgents will be screened for booze before they can enter their neighourhood or apartment building, or forced to endure in-home surveillance cameras.

It is undeniable that the media hysteria surrounding binge drinking and teenage alcohol abuse in recent weeks, with plenty of story meat processed by police media units, has been part of the softening up process for the implementation of alcohol-free zones that include the interiors of peoples' homes.

You can take away an Australian's right to smoke in public, to not care about seat belts, to burn off the rubbish in the back yard instead of sifting it for recyclables, to ride a train without a ticket once or twice in a year of paid for travel and to shout abuse at referees and opposition sporting teams, but if you try and take away the right to get hammered at home and pass out face down in a pizza box while missing the last five minutes of the Friday night game on the wall screen, then you're rolling down a road filled with neon billboards bearing the warning "Trouble Brewing."

Australians Fear Terrorism Less Now They're Not Being Bombarded With Ads Telling Them To Fear Terrorism

The former Howard government's generous publicity campaign for Al Qaeda and terrorism fell off our TV screens and out of the newspaper ads some weeks before John Howard became the former prime minister of Australia.

The Howard government spent years and tens of millions of dollars trying to position terrorism as the National Fear. It kind of worked for a while, particularly with the in-the-neighbourhood attacks in Bali helping to make the threat seem more real to the people of Broome and Wollongong, but Terror Fear never really took hold, not like it has in countries where state and non-state terrorism is a local, brutal reality.

The survey quoted below claims that Australians are now more worried about meeting their financial obligations - mortgage, credit cards, fuel, food - than they are about the esoteric threat posed by terrorists deciding to attack a concrete bridge they may occasionally drive over :

Australians are more worried about their hip-pocket than being involved in a terrorist attack, according to a new survey.

One in three people are very concerned about meeting essential payments such as mortgages, while fears about national, personal and internet security have all fallen since December.

December, 2007, was about two months after the ads telling you that you must be awesomely suspicious of bags of garden fertiliser, rolls of wire left in carparks, bearded men with cameras and an intense interest in architecture and not really curious holes in fences stopped airing across the country.

The findings graphically illustrate the impact on average families of rapidly rising grocery and petrol prices, and high housing costs.

Fears about meeting financial obligations rose by three percentage points to 33 per cent of people being very or extremely concerned.

"There's no doubt more people are fearful of protecting the family's hip pocket than of being bombed by the Taliban..."

Those promoting Al Qaeda through exaggerating its potential threat must now find a way to blame Islamic bomb fetishists for $1.50 litre petrol, soul crushing drops in the value of millions of Australian homes, interest rate rises that shred hope and break up families, and food prices that leave much more space in the fridge and not so full plates.

All of those financial head and heart kicks are terrorism, too. If what worries you makes you fight with those you love, makes you sleep less, and less deeply, and makes you feel paranoid and fearful, uncomfortable and hopeless, then you are being terrorised. But this is legal, financial terrorism.

You won't, however, see ads telling you that three credit cards with limits all far beyond what average wage earners are every likely to be able to pay off - while bleeding cash on the mortgage, fuel and food bills - will do more damage to the lives, health and minds of Australians than tribal warriors in lands where electricity and water does not flow will ever inflict.

Bin Laden could only have dreamed of unleashing the kind of terror that savage debt now carves across the country.

ED Day Ends

The last chapter of my online novel about life in Sydney after a virus pandemic kills millions is now online. I'll update soon about what I'm going to do with the novel now it's finished (short of a few changes), and why I chose to publish it free online.

Here's an excerpt from the last chapter of ED Day : Dead Sydney :

"This depopulation thing was always going to happen eventually, Paul,” Bossbloke said. “You know that, don't you? The world was already running out of food, water, energy, everything. We had to find 18 million football fields worth of land every year just to keep up with all the hungry mouths being born, while established farmland across the world was turning to fucking desert, or covering over with ice. This had to happen. They would have eaten the whole world.”

“The planet couldn’t sustain so many useless eaters,” I said, I knew what he wanted to hear.

Bossbloke grinned and clapped his hands, once. Crack, like a rifle shot. “Exactly!"

"If selective depopulation didn't happen, billions would have starved to death," I said.

Bossbloke nodded. "Exactly. What was the choice? Depopulation by virus, which means quick deaths, or depopulation by starving people to death? There is no choice. In the end, it really was an act of mercy."

Go Here To Read The Final Chapter In Full

Go Here To Read ED Day : Dead Sydney From The Beginning

Hemp Grower Calls Judge "Morbidly Obese", Jury "Sheep"

A convicted alternative food, fuel and fibre farmer had his say in court, and outside the court as well :

Andrew Katelaris is being prosecuted for likening a jury to "a group of 12 sheep" after they found him guilty in March 2006 of cultivating nearly 50,000 prohibited plants. As the jury left the court room, Katelaris also said: "Regrettably, the next generation will suffer for your ignorance."

Katelaris is also being prosecuted for comments made outside the court after the conviction, telling the media: "Australia came to prominence with the sheep industry. Unfortunately a group of 12 sheep just lost a major new industry for NSW."

In court yesterday he described the judge as "morbidly obese", saying "his ego was bruised by the fact he could not stay awake" during the trial.

One More Beer, Then You Can Kill Me

It's impossible to know if this is exactly what happened, or if the killer has watched too many episodes of The Sopranos. It reads like a deleted scene from Underbelly :

After he begged unsuccessfully for his life on a remote hill in Gippsland's Strzelecki Ranges, Stephen John Witham made two final requests.

Once he stopped crying and screaming and realised he was going to be murdered, Witham first asked his executioner, Michael Patrick Flaherty, for a beer.

Flaherty obliged and the pair sat and drank a stubby atop a steep incline in a dense pine plantation on August 12, 2006.

"I had a chat with him for a while," Flaherty told Victorian homicide detectives.

Resigned to his fate, Witham, 42, already injured from being beaten with a baseball bat, then asked that he not be shot in the face.

...Flaherty said Witham rolled over submissively.

"He realised that, you know, this is it, sort of thing," Flaherty told police.

He held the barrel of the shotgun to the back of Witham's head and pulled the trigger.

Playing Rugby League Now "Like Being In The Army"

This sort of overbearing control inflicted on the private lives of rugby league players, and plenty of other professional sportspeople, has gone beyond absurd and is now ruining careers and severely steaming the fan base, without which the sport wouldn't even exist.

Souths player Ben Rogers has been dumped from the first grade team for failing a breath
test :

"What, are we in the army?" Rogers asked. "If I'd gotten into trouble, got kicked out of a pub or started a fight, then I'd put my hand up and say I was in the wrong.

"That would be fair enough. But I wasn't drunk. I'm not real impressed and Souths know I'm not happy."

Souths fans also vented their frustration on the club's website and in calls to The Daily Telegraph - many believing the axings were extreme.

Rogers, Eddie Paea, Jaiman Lowe and Fetuli Talanoa have all been dropped for Saturday night's match against North Queensland after failing breath tests last Saturday.

"I find it hard to say I'm disappointed without getting angry," he said.

"Why can't we have a beer? That's what I'm upset about."

This may sound a little bit reckless in the age of corporate footy, but wouldn't players be prone to less injuries if they were a bit pissed when they played?

Anyone who's taken a fall down a flight of stairs after a dozen VBs will know what I'm talking about.

32% Of Australians "Sick Of Hearing About The Environment"

1 In 3 Believe Media Exaggerates Threat Of Global Warming

This story from the Adelaide Advertiser focuses on poll results that apparently show Generation Xers are "stressed, tired and insecure about their looks", but pushed the more interesting news to the bottom :

In another key finding, the Eye on Australia national survey of 689 adults also dispels the popular myth Australians are growing more environmentally aware over time.

The survey shows 32 per cent of adults are "sick of hearing about the environment" and 32 per cent believe the media exaggerates the effects of global warming.

Surprisingly, Generation Y is least concerned about the environment, with 17 per cent unconcerned about their carbon footprint compared with the national average of 12 per cent.

And this news, also from the poll, is excellent :

Overall, the survey shows 65 per cent of Australians are extremely or very satisfied with life, and 70 per cent believe we are living in prosperous times.

Of course, because good news is more often not news, the survey results would have to be re-intepreted this way to make for more tabloidish headlines :

4 Out Of 10 Australians "Not Satisfied With Life"

Only 3 In 10 Australians Believe We Are Living In Prosperous Times

The Universe Has Stopped Listening

'The Secret' can easily lay claim to being the most successful independent book and DVD release in Australia's history.

Whatever you make of 'The Secret' and it claims that you only need to imagine what you want vividly enough and the Universe will deliver it to you, the DVD-that-became-a-website-that- became-a-book has generated hundreds of millions of dollars and more importantly proven that independent book and DVD distributors can do remarkable business outside the major retail chains.

The philosophical mess that is 'The Secret' claims that positive thoughts bring positive change to your life, while negative thoughts attract everything from bad dreams to cancer.

'The Secret', however, doesn't explain what kind of thoughts and emotions attract multi-million dollar lawsuits and extended bouts in courtrooms in Australia and the United States, as the principles behind the book, website and video, fight over 'The Secret's' Harry Potter-esque earnings.

From the New York Times :

Originally scheduled to have its premiere on Australian television, “The Secret” turned into a Web and publishing phenomenon. At one point the “Secret” Web site was selling as many as five movies a minute (either as downloads or DVDs), according to legal papers.

The book version has spent 66 weeks on The New York Times’s Advice best seller list, mostly near the top. Oprah Winfrey devoted two shows to it.

With an alleged $300 million fortune resulting from the phenomenal success of 'The Secret' to fight over, lawsuits are now flying between the DVD's director, the website's designer and Rhonda Byrne, the Australian woman who claims full ownership of 'The Secret' and all its secrets. And most of its earnings.

The suit alleges that Mr. Heriot worked on the screenplay, conducted most of the interviews for the film and supervised its editing and postproduction. The book, much of it a transcription of the movie, is based on documents Mr. Heriot created, the suit alleges.

Mr. Heriot wanted to make it clear that the problem wasn’t his lack of faith in the ancient mysteries. “To all who have been inspired by ‘The Secret,’ ” he said in a prepared statement sent by e-mail through his law firm, “please know that I am not suing the universal principles of ‘The Secret.’ Rather, I am suing the corporate principals behind ‘The Secret,’..."

You'd imagine the Universe would have some hefty legal representation and would not take kindly to being sued. If he truly believes his own guff, Heriot is right to exercise caution in trying to stir up trouble with the Universe.

The legal wrangling over the project began in July 2007, when TS Production applied for the United States copyright to the “Secret” movie and spinoffs. The next month Mr. Heriot applied for copyright to “The Secret,” claiming authorship of the movie and the screenplay.

Soon after that, TS Production filed suit in the Australian courts. Both Mr. Heriot and Ms. Byrne are Australian, and they began working on projects together around 2000.

In the Australian courts, TS Production has asked to be declared owner of all copyrights to the book and movie “The Secret.”

Mr. Heriot, the court papers argue, “directed the film under the terms of his employment under a contract of service” with Ms. Byrne’s company and is not entitled to any copyrights.

In its various forms, “The Secret” makes life look simple. “Ask, believe, receive,” the movie instructs. Legal fights are not always so straightforward. Ms. Byrne herself is scheduled to be deposed May 6 in Los Angeles in a separate case involving Dan Hollings, who helped develop the ”Secret” Web site.

The battle over proceeds seems a far cry from the munificent spirit Ms. Byrne espoused as her movie was first entering the self-help pantheon. In an interview conducted for The Times on the beach in Santa Monica in February 2007, she recalled how she had mortgaged everything she owned to finance the movie because she wanted to give the knowledge it contained to the world. Success was never about profit, she said, but about the journey of discovering what she was intended to do with her life.

“One of the big things in discovering the secret,” she said, “was discovering me.”

Finding her way through these lawsuits will also provide Ms. Byrne with plenty more opportunities to discover herself, particularly when lawyers start shredding her honesty and credibility.

The big question obviously is if 'The Secret' works, why then didn't Ms. Byrne engage her own master-rank "ask, believe, receive" influence over the Universe to get rid of the legal action?

You don't have to know 'The Secret' to know the answer to that question.

Tony Abbott : The Secret Of Great Comedy

In January, Tony Abbott opened his heart to explain how difficult life was now the Howard government had lost power and how he had to make do on only $127,000 or so per year, plus the world's most generous superannuation benefits, a free car and petrol and office expenses in the five figures.

"What's it called? Mortgage stress? The advent of the Rudd Government has caused serious mortgage stress for a section of the Australian community, ie former Howard government ministers."

"You don't just lose power...you certainly lose income as well, and if you are reliant on your parliamentary salary for your daily living, obviously it makes a big difference."

Millions of Australian families living it large on less than $50,000 a year expressed profound sadness at Tony Abbott's dire financial predicament. Imagine trying to survive on triple what the average Australian family earns, they emphasised, what with all the stress of trying to calculate how many millions his parliamentary super and pension will add up to, plus having to tolerate the imposition and hassle of a free car and free petrol.

Tony Abbott also complained that business executives earned much, much more than politicians do, and, you know, don't you think that's kind of wrong, too?

Despite being so poor he now has to handpaint colourful ties onto his shirts, Abbott has managed to resist all the offers of multi-million dollar executive appointments from the private sector that have tied up his secretaries since the election loss to continue his vow of poverty and remain in Parliament serving the people.

But for how much longer?

Abbott has apparently been working on a new career as a comedian, and his complaints earlier this year about the dry, stale crumbs that fill his parliamentary paypacket were not complaints at all. He was, it appears, just test-running some hilarious new material :

Mr Abbott tried to laugh off his complaints about the $90,000 pay cut he took when the Howard government was tossed out of office last year.

....he said he had been joking.

"I was asked a question, and I gave a jovial answer to the effect that one of the groups suffering mortgage stress thanks to the Rudd government were former Howard government ministers," Mr Abbott said, laughing.

"It was a light-hearted answer."

"And one of the reasons why politics is a genuine vocation, not always recognised by the public in those terms, but why it is in fact a genuine vocation - a noble calling - is because no one would do it for the money."

Funny stuff.

Here's some more examples of Tony Abbott's hysterical stand-up comedy routines from the 2007 federal election. If only we'd known he was cracking jokes and japing us, we all could have laughed so much harder :

Tony Abbott Threatens Voters With "Dire Consequences" If They Don't Vote For The Coalition

Tony Abbott Questions Whether A Dying Man "Is Pure Of Heart" Shortly Before His Death, Only Decides To Apologise After Seeing Headlines In Morning Papers

Tony Abbott Mystified, Horrified By Public Desire For Honest, Credible, Hard-Working Politicians To Serve The Public

Tony Abbott Says Women Who Don't Have Children Lack "Broader Lifetime Experience" And Won't Get Enough Votes To Win And Be Appointed, Say, Deputy Prime Minister

Tony Abbott Promises Liberals Will Be "Fair Dinkum" With Australian Voters

Tony Abbott Talks Up His "Reasonably Good People Skills"

Too much rain gets the mind thinking about West Australian beaches.