The Minister For Rock

By Darryl Mason

Peter Garrett did not have a good year. He spent far too much time looking weak and fear-grinning his way through interviews and rare press conferences, snapping haughtily at journalists when they reminded him that what he was doing is the just about the complete opposite of the belief system he lived and breathed and seethed when he was frontman for Midnight Oil. You know, when he was popular.

In 2008, Garrett seemed to only appear long enough to back down on yet another issue that once won him such a rabid and sometimes messiah-like rock political following amongst usually disinterested suburban youth, or to loom up in Question Time and shamelessly change his mind on something he said only a few months, weeks, or days, before.

Few in the media had much good to say about him, or whatever departments he is supposed to be in charge of. Does anybody really know Peter Garrett's full portfolio, or what the fuck he is supposed to be doing, without going a goog?

Garrett got frequently hammered in the media, on climate change and solar panels, and they were mere entrees. In short, the reviews were fucking abysmal. Maybe one star out of five.

But Garrett sees himself as a seasoned public performer, used to copping attack and flack. He's had full bottles of beer thrown at him onstage by people who loved him, back when Midnight Oil were regularly shredded by the music press, in their early days. He can take it. The media doesn't like something he's done? Right, whatever. Seriously, who really gives a shit what the media has to say? To Fight Club philosophise, Peter Garrett lets what does not truly matter, slide.

But a source tells The Orstrahyun that one chunk of anti-Garrett news really hit him, and hurt him.

This news, from October :

Rock band AC/DC has been named the most trusted Australian music brand, while former Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett is "a sell-out".

As AC/DC released its first album in eight years yesterday, a report by brand expert Simon Hammond found that the hard rockers still had the trust of the nation.

But the report found Mr Garrett, who for years sang about Aboriginal rights, land ownership and the environment before joining the Labor Party and entering Federal Parliament, was damaged goods.

"Peter Garrett himself is damaging the memory of Midnight Oil," Mr Hammond said.

"A lot of people think he has sold out. When you go from where he was, as an independent voice in a political environment outside of the inner sanctum, to all of a sudden join it, you have to sell out. He's had to shut up and do things the right way.

"I am sure he has got his reasons but, from a point of view of popular culture, people see him as a sell-out."

"People grew up with Midnight Oil and believed in their beliefs," he said.

"Those beliefs were very clearly articulated. Now he talks like a politician, so he is definitely a damaged brand now."

The source claims that this report troubled Garrett deeply. It's bad enough the public clearly despises him in ever greater numbers, but AC/DC more trusted than Midnight Oil? How the fuck did that happen?

Garrett knows he will never become prime minister, if that was ever his intention, but he is concerned about his life after politics. Who'll buy his book(s)? How might he one day be obituarised?

Garrett will not let himself be remembered as a "damaged brand", a "sell out" who is polluting "the memory of Midnight Oil".

For fuck's sake, AC/DC are 'more trusted' than his old band?

AC/DC made album after (usually excellent) album compromised almost entirely of songs about fucking. Midnight Oil changed the nation, and maybe a little bit of the world, too, through song. So that's gotta hurt. Real bad.

But it's far worse than just that. What Peter Garrett is doing, or not doing, is making millions of Australians question the legacy, the integrity, of Midnight Oil.

Look around you, there are still Midnight Oil t-shirts to be seen, but how many are there with Garrett's huge, great stretched dome leering out at you? None.

Peter Garrett is successfully garroting his musical legacy, let alone his political legacy. And he knows it.

There was once the option for Garrett to think, 'Well, if the political thing doesn't work out, I will always be remembered as the lead singer for Midnight Oil'. What will that be worth once he's finished 'poisoning its memory'?

The question is how he will go about shaking off such a "damaged" public image?

Think : Music.

One possibility may be music education available to all, or most, children which will be focused on rock, including rap and R & B, but mostly rock. Peter Garrett is apparently very aware of how popular video games that are now teaching hundreds of thousands of Australian kids how to play toy guitars and drums along to music actually are. And he can capitalise on it, and recast himself, as the politician who was responsible for getting the actual instruments of rock into the hands of all the kids that want them.

What if Garrett becomes the Australian politician who spearheads a public schools drive to teach a generation of kids how to rock for real? How to play a real guitar instead just a video game one? How to hammer away on an actual eight piece drumkit, real rims and skins and pedals, real noise, instead of noodling away on bleepy plastic pads? You want to get the aggression out of kids in school? Give them access to a drum kit.

The film industry is developing a ripe old stink, after the debacle of 'Australia'. Are you happy that ex-Australian Rupert Murdoch got back tens of millions of dollars of his investment in that movie before it even hit the cinemas, and died a non-blockbuster death?

Anyway, the real entrepreneurs have always known there is money to be made in Australian rock. It's far more fun, and the track record is superb. We've turned out many of the greatest bands in world rock history. More people will see live music in Australia this summer than will watch Australian movies, in the cinema or at home on DVD. There is, for Garrett, hope and redemption in the music, now, as there has been before.

In 2009, Peter Garrett will become the Minister for Rock...

...or he will continue to fart around and make hundreds of thousands of middle-aged people wonder why in all fuck they ever believed what he had to say, what they truly came to believe in too, back in the days when he was blasting pure energy and righteousness from the stage of a thundering Midnight Oil gig.

"We'll Use Your Teenage Moments Of Racist Stupidity Against You, Later"

The intention to stop racism may be solid, but it's still downright creepy that someone is saving some 14 year old's idiotic party photos where he's giving Hitler salutes, on social networking sites, and is intending to make sure a usually brief moment of teenage stupidity will haunt them,
forever :

Mat Henderson-Hau (of anti-racism group Fight dem back!) has decided to use the proliferation of racist groups on Facebook and MySpace to his advantage, mining the sites for valuable information on the far-right such as photographs and the connections between individuals and groups across national borders.

He said Fight dem back! stored this data until it became useful.

"For example, Johnny X may have pics on his Facebook or MySpace of him doing a Heil Hitler salute in his boots and braces," Henderson-Hau said.

"Johnny X might one day wind up pitching for a government contract for his plumbing business. That is when those pictures would be sent to the relevant authorities."

Every comment you make to a blog discussion, every photo you post on Facebook, every video clip you upload to YouTube, every e-mail, every text message, every purchase you make online, every search entry, every website you visit, is being recorded, logged, stored somewhere, by government, private and individual surveillance agencies and data miners. And you have no idea how someone may use it against you, years or even decades from now.

You can't turn 28 and find an old box of teenage photos that embarrass the shit out of you, of a you long gone in the past, where confused youthful rage and hate usually dies, and then burn them, make them disappear.

If you post them online, they will never cease to exist.

Lessons For Kev : Comedy Is Tragedy, Plus Time...Try A Few Years Worth

Dr Death hits the Afghanistan war zone and serves up the blackest of humour for Australian
troops :

“I’m going to go home and spend Christmas with my wife and three kids and you’re not,” he said.

This soldier certainly isn't going home to spend Christmas with his family.

The Professional Idiot seems a little bit surprised that soldiers serving in Afghanistan - where roads and lanes and open fields can explode under your vehicle and tear away your legs, your face, your sanity - are looking "glum." Imagine being in an horrendous warzone, completely outnumbered, and not looking anything but glum? Not like the days when John Howard visited and everyone partied, laughing and frolicking and dancing jigs of joy.

A huge, free piece of public art unfolds on a drab corner in Drummoyne, at the foot of the Bridge.



Renowned Australian graffiti artist Sytak leads the four man crew chewing through dozens of cans of spray paint to complete the mural. The artists themselves pay for the artwork, it is free to view.

Earlier in the day, a police car pulled to a stop and they were asked what the hell they thought they were doing. The owner of the garage, who owns the wall facing Victoria Road where the mural is unfolding, had given his permission for them to do their public art. When the police seemed doubtful, the owner jumped over the fence to tell the cops it was all cool.

Tomorrow afternoon and into the early evening, thousands of drivers will queue up at the lights there on Victoria Road. And now there will be something to look at while they wait those endless minutes for the lights to change. Some will hate it, and the artists copped a few serves from passers-by while they worked, but more stopped to see what they were up to, to ask what the words meant and what the mural overall is supposed to mean and also to thank them for brightening the area up a bit.





More detailing will be done next weekend.

We'll take another look when it's finished.

The Eye On The Pole Catches All

If you can't drive fast through city traffic, then what the hell is the point of being a cop?

Nearly four police officers a day were booked for breaking traffic laws including speeding while at work last year without any evidence they were responding to an emergency.

That's 1433 speeding fines issued to cops, by cops. Well, not real cops. The camera ones. Nobody escapes :

Of the fines issued to police most - 1325 - were issued by fixed speed cameras, including school zone cameras.

Most of those cops are probably feeling just as annoyed as the more half a million drivers in NSW, alone, who payed a few hundred extra dollars, each, for driving faster than constantly changing speed limits were supposed to inform them to drive :

The cameras doubled their fines revenue last financial year as they picked up a total of 677,839 drivers across NSW in the same period.

The lash of this story is you should be outraged at cops who speed, not that more than half a million people were fined because cameras that replace police determined they were speeding.

Speed camera lenses do not like Post-It notes.

A December Moon.

Now This, This Is Pain

For my American readers, imagine running full speed straight at your friend, who is also running full speed at you, both of you are holding pillows up in front of yourselves. You will smash into each other with extraordinary force, you will knocked half senseless, you will probably be left so winded you'll feel like puking and shitting your pants at the same time.

Now do it again, without the pillows.

This is how you play football in Australia.

You Better Get Used To It

The Professional Idiot sinks deeper by the day into wild-eyed, foamy hysteria as the true reality darkly dawns that the once formidable strength of the Australian conservative movement of the Howard era is now slipping and sliding away into a spectacular, humiliating festival of confusion, anarchy and Labor/Green lickspittling. With plenty of help from The Professional Idiot, of course. One of his readers, Wilt, nails the truth of what has happened, and is happening, brilliantly :

...nothing so galling for the True Believers of the Howard Descendancy, when their supposed support base actually wakes up to reality.

Poor, poor Australian Conservatism, has your pet industry-parrot started to squawk a different tune? What a shambles you are, emasculated, hung, drawn and quartered by Howard’s shameful selfishness, and increasingly left behind by a rapidly-changing society; vainly hoping for Australia to ‘wake up to itself’ when you are the ones sound asleep; waiting patiently for Peter Costello to work out whether he can be bothered to save the country, if only someone would come and beg him to do so because he won’t lower himself to do the dirty work in Opposition.

You hopeless, howling shower of wet whiners; you pointless complainers, voiceless declaimers, and spineless denigraters: your time is over. Your country has changed, and not to your liking. You must get used to it.

One of the key problems for the Liberals was, and is, that so many of its senior politicians, advisors and 'youth wing' treated everything that The Professional Idiot had to say about climate change, David Hicks, The Iraq War, the War On Terror, terrorism in general, asylum seekers, WorkChoices, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, the Cronulla Riots, emissions trading, the Stolen Generations, Aboriginal reconciliation, and a host of other vitally important issues that concerned a vast scope of Australians (not just those Evil Pagan Lefties) as nothing less than Holy Gospel. This was clearly evidenced in The Howard Years documentary series recently screened on the ABC. Every issue the Liberals got wrong in the lead up to the 2007 election, every key issue they misjudged and misread the general Australian public on and over, were echoes of The Professional Idiot's beliefs and whiny, paranoid, fear-soaked opinions.

Now The Professional Idiot's trying to finish off The Liberals for good with the kind of eviscerations that he used to unleash on Mark Latham and The Greens, all the while pumping his mate Peter Costello as the only man who can save the party and lead them to victory in the next election. Funny, funny stuff. Correction : Absolutely fucking hilarious stuff.

In the past few years since The Liberals have, quietly, championed The Professional Idiot as their Yoda, the conservative movement in Australia has crashed and burned, spectacularly.

Coincidence?

The more conspiracy-minded amongst you may wonder what The Professional Idiot's real agenda is, and some in The Liberal Party most definitely already are.

After all, The Professional Idiot once worked for Labor.

If The Liberals continue to crash to burn and burn so, it won't be Costello and the Liberals on the opposition benches come 2012. It will be Bob Brown and The Greens.

'Funniest Home Videos' Distributes Child Abuse Imagery

According to this story it does :

Police say it is a crime for anyone to even watch a viral video of a man swinging a baby around the room.

Will they pursue and arrest Coca-Cola or American Express executives for putting an ad on such a clip on YouTube or another video sharing website? Fuck no.

(Police) comment comes after uproar over 60-year-old Chris Illingworth, a father of four from Maroochydore, was charged with posting the video on Liveleak after he stumbled across it on YouTube.

The video, which shows a man swinging a baby over his head by his arms, was broadcast on US television and has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people on the internet.

But, despite that, Mr Illingworth's home was raided after he posted the clip on Liveleak and he was charged with using the internet to access and publish child-abuse material.

In a statement, Queensland police said the term "child abuse material" even extended to clips where the child "appears" to be a victim of cruelty.

Queensland Police from the anti-pedophile squad, Task Force Argos, raided Illingworth's home on Sunday November 30 and subjected him to a thorough forensic examination of his home and office computers and a gruelling interview over several hours, complete with finger printing and mug shots.

Asked to respond to claims by Illingworth that he was targeted unnecessarily and unfairly labelled a child abuser, QLD Police said it was a crime "to participate in the exploitation and abuse of children by seeking to view, possess, make or distribute child abuse or child exploitation material".

It provided a definition of "child abuse material", which was any material that shows a person under the age of 18 who "is, or appears to be, a victim of torture, cruelty or physical abuse".

Any week you can tune into Funniest Home Videos, one of the most popular shows on Australian TV, adored by most children, and see videos where parents have purposely fed their children, say, chilli, to get a funny, screwed up face reaction, or let their two year ride his scooter down a steep drive knowing he will crash at the bottom. By the definition of Queensland Police, letting kids fall from swings or flip off lounge chairs, even if they enjoy it, and capturing the laughs on video, is child abuse. And perhaps it is. But it's all a very gray area, and police are now going after old people like Illingworth who didn't even film the incident of alleged child abuse, he merely passed on what he no doubt thought was a funny clip to another website.

Insanity. Have they run out of real pedophiles or perverts to go after?

Illingworth said it was unfair that he was being labelled a child abuser over a video he didn't make, when Steve Irwin was let off for dangling his baby near the open jaws of a crocodile.

Very good point.

"This thing started because they were looking for a pedophile, it didn't work, so [police decided] 'lets just take him for something else, make it look like we're doing our job'," Illingworth said.

Is it illegal now for a parent to 'aeroplane' their kid in a public park? I loved being swung around like that when I was a little kid. Awesome fun. Is it illegal to do that to your own child? Or is it just illegal to video it? What if a mum videos dad tossing their laughing, gurgling daughter higher and higher into the air as a Christmas video gift for grandma? Is grandma a criminal if she posts that clip to a website so her friends in another state or another country can share in the joy of her grand-daughter laughing her little head off?

Crazy, crazy shit.

The death of all fun.

Too High, Too Happy For Violence

An interesting paradigm for our times. Do journalists not see the link here, or are they not allowed to draw such obvious conclusions?

Cocaine and ecstasy use are on the rise across the state but domestic violence rates in Sydney have dropped for the first time in seven years, crime figures from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research reveal.

Crime rates have fallen in almost all major areas, including a 26 per cent drop in robberies with a firearm and a 19.2 per cent drop in robberies with other weapons. Common assaults have remained stable.

But arrests for recreational drug use have surged, with a 55.4 per cent increase in ecstasy use and a 37.5 per cent jump in cocaine use in the two years to September, the report shows.

There are a lot more middle aged couples in Sydney who drop Es now on Saturday night, or Sunday afternoon, or smoke joints, instead of getting stuck into the piss. For a big night out in the clubs, or at a party, dropping an E can be a lot cheaper than drinking heavily. Most people don't drink hard if they're on Es and having a good time, and they are far less prone to beating the shit out of each other.

Instead of booze-fueled seething, jealousy and arguments, middle-aged couples on Es mostly dance and laugh and fuck instead. Well, those that aren't getting arrested.

Porn, Rape, Sex, Incest, UFOs, Sorry

Can you tell much, if anything, about Australians by the news stories they read online?

The Top 100 Most Popular Stories For 2008 from news.com.au, and its network of city daily online newspaper sites, features an abundance of stories about porn and rape and tech and sex and freak animals and incest and UFOs.

The ultimate online newspaper headline, then, would go something like this :

Incest Aliens Video BigFoot UFO Rape On iPhone

Rudd's 'Sorry' to the Stolen Generations made it in at Number 27, while the death of Heath Ledger hit number one.

Violent Pleasures

What exactly is the Daily Telegraph's Piers Akerman trying to say here?

How can the social cost of alcohol-fuelled violence or the dismal effects of wasteful wagering be measured against the temporary pleasures of engaging in such pastimes?

So now you know, engaging in alcohol-fuelled violence, as a pastime, provides only fleeting enjoyment.

Saving Lives Or Wasting Your Money?

Police and drug dogs were out in force at the HomeBake Festival. They made plenty of arrests, mostly drug-related. Eight people were done up for supplying drugs (that is, possessing a quantity of drugs deemed beyond personal use), and 76 were charged for possession.

The entire police operation on the day cost beyond $100,000 and yielded this not so impressive haul :

...police detected 78 grams of cannabis (less than three ounces), 256 ecstasy tablets and 18 grams of white powder (consisting of cocaine and speed) at the event.

I'll be generous in calculating the total street sale value of that one day haul - $30,000 max.

Obviously there were a hell of a lot more people on 'prohibited' drugs at HomeBake than those arrested. Those caught carrying drugs into HomeBake were dealers, or idiots.

As regular drug-using festival goers already know, you do your shit before you walk through the gates and come face to face with drug dogs. And, as regular drug-using festival goers already know, there are any number of ways to consume cannabis and Es and speed well before you reach the cop-crowded gates of a music festival, and still be high as all fuck for most of the day, and well into the evening. You can cook your cannabis into cookies, you can make toffee and dip your Es in the cooling toffee a couple of times (coating the E in shells of sugar delays the final dissolving of the pill), and you can sprinkle your speed into a cigarette rolling paper, 'bombing' as it used to be called, and then wrap the small wad in a few more layers of cigarette papers (the papers take a while to dissolve in your stomach, but this is a good way to give yourself ulcers if you do it too often).

Most cops will tell you the main reason there is so much LESS VIOLENCE at music festivals these days is because more people do Es and pot than get stuck into the booze. Music festivals in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s were regular bloodbaths, mostly because the alcohol flowed so freely.

However, policing music festivals is a great day out for most cops, surrounded by happy kids and great music, soaking up the sun. It's a fuck of a lot better than responding to domestic violence calls in St Clair or Rose Bay. But many cops hate the fact they have to bust kids for carrying cannabis, and that some of these kids they bust will wind up with criminal records.

However, the Top Cops are warning there will be no easing up of heavy policing of music festivals :

Police said the results served as a warning to those planning to take or supply drugs at forthcoming events this summer.

"Police will be present at all similar upcoming events, and those people found supplying and possessing prohibited drugs, along with any anti-social behaviour, will be arrested and charged," they said in a statement.

Naturally, this level of hardcore drug-policing at music festivals will also apply to Opera In The Park as well...right?

"Why Does It Have To Be Morning?"

Doc Neeson, in videos like the one below for Face The Day (the paranoid speed freak's lament), used to scare the absolute shit of me when I was a kid. But he turned out to be such a nice guy, so very well read, and polite, unless you screwed up his onstage lighting.

Fantastic song, excellent video. By looking at it, you'd barely be able to guess it's almost thirty years old.



The Angels, at their prime, are still the best live band this country has ever produced. Evidence :


I've found a couple of interesting articles and interviews on The Angels I wrote back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which I'll post up on Junkhead in the next week or so, but they'll also be linked here.

Beer Banned In Bourke

It may be necessary, but it just sounds so downright UnOrstrahyun :

A violent NSW country town that is drowning in broken glass will have the state's most draconian liquor laws when takeaway sales of bottled beer are banned.

Liquor and Gaming director Albert Gardner said it was the first time a town-wide ban on retail beer sales had been imposed in NSW.

In Bourke, police say most of the alcohol-related violence occurs in the homes of locals, not in the pubs or in the street. It's almost impossible for the cops to stop people guzzling litres of cheap piss in the privacy of their own homes, but it's easy to imagine a day coming when the card you have to show to legally buy booze also reveals the number and ages of the children you have in your care.

Alcohol related crime and violence costs taxpayers billions a year, and that's before the health costs associated with hardcore alcohol abuse are factored in. Millions of Australians getting hammered and harming themselves, or members of their families, or total strangers, is an incredible drain on public resources, and state and federal governments are already showing their tolerance of these rising costs is fading fast.

How long before widespread limits on alcohol sales become a part of everyday life for all Australians?

"Just these, thanks."

"Sir? Why are you buying four cases of beer and ten litres of cask wine?"

"What? It's grand final weekend."

"I know that, sir, but it says here you have two children under the age of five years old. I'm only allowed to sell you six cans of beer, and two bottles of wine. By law."

"Are you fucking shitting me? What in all fuck..."

"Now you're being abusive, sir. Therefore, I can only sell you low alcohol beer and wine. By law."

"That's fu...that's wrong."

"I'm sorry, sir, but that's just the way it is."

"All right. I'll just have four doses of Happyland Ecstasy instead, thanks."

"Grinners or Laughers?"

"Better make it Grinners. My mates might get violent if I laugh my head off when their shitty team is losing."

Be Very Careful Who You Poke In The Eye

Being an idiot on the piss in front of your mates can be extremely dangerous :

A soldier bit a police officer on the face at a pub after being accidentally poked in the eye ...

Security camera footage played in court appeared to show the 31-year-old policeman apologising to Koutsoubos as he held his swollen eye. "All I said was 'oh f---, sorry bro, I didn't mean to bump into you'," Constable Hogan said.

"As I attempted to walk past, he grabbed my head and bit me on my left cheek. I remember him grabbing that side of my head and pulling it down. I couldn't understand why he did it."

Automatic self-defense, or attack, responses from special forces training appear to have been activated by the eye poke.

Following an application from the Federal Government, the judge hearing the case imposed a number of protective orders under the Commonwealth Crimes Act to suppress information about Koutsoubos's role in the defence forces.

This involved the suppression of information about military training, tactics, procedures and the capabilities of the Australian Defence Force's Special Operations Command and the 4th Battalion Royal Australian Regiment, also known as the Commandos.

I had a friend who'd done fairly similar training in Canada, and if you happened to bump his chair when he was snoring-sleeping he'd leap upright and have you in a choke hold, eyes blazing, faster than you could say "Oh, fuck..."

"I'm Weird In The Head....Sometimes"

I haven't spent as much time as I'd hoped on digging through my old archives of the rock journalism I wrote back in the first half of the 1990s for newspapers like the West Australian and the Herald Sun, and magazines like Rolling Stone and Hot Metal, but I'm getting there, bit by bit. Where possible, I've gone back to the original first or second drafts I wrote, which were usually cut way back in length by the time they were published, and were far more loose.

Here's an excerpt of an interview I did with Jeff Buckley, back in August, 1995. The full interview can be read over at Junkhead :

Is it like you have all these other people, these many other sides to yourself, is that what it's like?

"People have many people inside them, many selves I feel, and I feel that they shift from one to the other sometimes in times or stress or total importance. I'm not talking about psychopaths, I'm talking about normal people.

"You notice the difference in your girlfriend if she becomes the mother, and she slips into the mother telling the child what they can or can't do - drawing boundaries around the child. It's a normal thing.

"And every side of you has a language and a feel and rhythm and a melody and a colour, and it's hard to get to it, you just have to be open and unafraid. The more uptight and conservative that I am, the more conservative the music I'm making will be."

Is that a totally different self of you up onstage, from the one who walks through a garden, thinking about the world?

"Oh yeah, (onstage) that's me with the floodgates open. A different me....I don't fear that person......that's more me, empty......like a faucet with water gushing through it. But I know who that person is.

"People are different when music is in them, they change physically. A child feels different when it is singing. The energy in the room is different, you stop and listen, or you laugh, whatever. "When any artist is channeling through other people, they transform into this......I don't know, some people might call it the divine.....it has a special nature that is yours, even though you don't see it very often."

Have you got your head around (facing death) yet?

"These two friends of mine were robbed. These thieves broke in and tied them up and pointed guns in their faces.......my friends were talking about the numbness that came with the acceptance that they were going to die......and the calmness, almost a ridiculous calm."

He think about this for a while, a sigh, a silence of maybe 20 seconds.

"Like missing a bus, 'oh well, I'll just wait for another one'."

He laughs to himself. He seems appalled and fascinated by what happened to his friends. To face death, to know you are going to die.

"It must be the fear that hits you and it stops the mind from panicking, you just freeze and think 'okay, here I am'. I think that's the sensation that hits the rabbit before the truck plummets into it, they freeze.....I've frozen many times.....there's no life without death......it's very simple...."

Read The Full Jeff Buckley Interview Here

God : "Stupid Humans, Brains The Size Of Grapefruits And They Think They Know What I've Got Planned For Them"

How many other Australian politicians believe, truly believe, in this crap?

Labor MP James Bidgood thinks the Christian God is a vengeful God and has wiped out the stock portfolios of retirees, slashed the value of homes and crushed world financial markets because...well, that's what God does, isn't it? He fucks with us. God does whatever the fuck he wants and we struggle to comprehend how he can be such a complete bastard, and why he deserves our love, respect and reverence.

"I believe there is God's justice in action in what is going on here," says James Bidgood.

Okay, I think he's going to Say It.

"We haven't seen the end of it."

It's coming, I can feel it.

"The ultimate conclusion is like I say, we look at Bible prophecy, we are going towards a one world bank and a one world monetary system."

It's coming, he's really going to say it...

And if you believe the word of God and you read Revelations..."

The final book of the deeply superstitious King James 16th century re-write of the biblical canon is actually called Revelation, not Revelations. Anyway, Bidgood is definitely going to say it, any second now.

"...you will see clearly what is being spelt out."

I don't think I can stand the tension. Here it comes...

"We are in....the End Times."

Bingo!

The End Times, to true evangelical believers of John The Hallucinatory, are not necessarily a bad thing. You see, we have to have the One World Bank and One World Monetary System in the lead up to the Final Battle between Good and Evil, and all the apocalyptic firestorms, blood moons, star falls, mantle-splitting earthquakes, exploding mountains and mass death that goes along with it, before JC can finally return and then...well, it's not pretty.

So how does the religious-based necessity - that is the realitising of ancient prophecies to concrete apocalyptic religious faith - of a One World Bank and a One World Monetary System influence the decisions MP Bidgood makes in Parliament?

We are only in the End Times if the loons who believe in this Necessary Massacre Of Humanity are in positions of power to make it a reality.

Does Prime Minister Kevin Rudd believe in the End Times as well?

Murdoch 'The Fake Conservative' Pals Around With Hollywood Liberals, And Likes It

Rupert Murdoch does what he is told by the women in his life. He always has. Now Australia's most famous ex-Australian Conservative obeys his wife and becomes a damned Hollywood Lefty Loving Lefty :

The author of a new book about media mogul Rupert Murdoch, which asserts that the owner of Fox News "absolutely despises" top-rated host Bill O'Reilly, believes that Murdoch's negative feelings about Fox go far beyond a personal distaste for O'Reilly's bullying.

Michael Wolff, author of The Man Who Owns the News, told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Tuesday, "I would mention ... Bill O'Reilly [to Murdoch] and he would get this look which was like revulsion." Wolff added that "I started to see this around all of Murdoch's people. ... No one says, 'O'Reilly, we hate him' ... but everybody goes into a contortion."

According to Wolff, however, the real issue is that Murdoch has "come to like the liberals more than the conservatives -- and many of them have come to like him, too. ... His life is now largely spent around people for whom Fox News is a vulgarity and a joke."

"If he became utterly convinced," asked Olberman, "not only would a liberal network make you five times the money that Fox News makes you, but one will exist and it will put Fox News out of business, would he go down the street tomorrow, shut off Fox News, and put on a liberal version of it just for the money?"

"In a New York minute," Wolff replied.

"He saw a market niche," Wolff explained. "It was easy to get into, it was easy to service these people, it was cheaper to service these people, and he went for it. ... He saw a money-making formula."

"...he's with a woman 38 years his junior, quite young, quite liberal, quite open, and certainly engaged with all of the Hollywood people."

Wolff is wrong. A lefty Fox News would be nowhere near as entertaining, or flat-out hilarious.

Yes, even more New Zealand photos.

This will end soon, I promise.















All photos by Darryl Mason

Beat My Tilt

Julia Gillard lays down the supreme challenge for all future head tilters :


(screengrab from an online front page photo in The Australian)

While Googling 'head tilting' I came across this 2004 post by the Daily Telegraph's associate editor Tim Blair, back in his independent blogging days. It's easy to forget what a nasty, insipid little shit he was back then, gloating about the Iraq War, before he knocked off the caustic edges and adopted his 'Nasty, But Nice' persona for the mainstream media gig.

The Last Days Of The Booze-Soaked Politician

How overdue is this? Very :

A push was last night under way to breathtest NSW politicians after Nationals MP Andrew Fraser's late-night altercation with a female colleague.

Health Minister John Della Bosca and Liberal leader Barry O'Farrell backed the unprecedented call to supply breath testing kits for MPs to ensure they do not turn up drunk.

"Honestly, if you are going to have breathalysers for people driving cranes you should have breathalysers for people writing laws," (Greens MP Dr John) Kaye said.

Why stop at testing for booze? If we have to fucking tolerate having drug dogs sniffing us at music festivals, the local pub and walking to the supermarket, then our state and federal politicians can put up with being drug-tested in their workplace.

Home Free, As Long As He Stays Home

'Freedom'? :

"This is the beauty of Australia or the common law countries. They do not as yet criminalise thoughts," he said.

"In European law your thoughts can be criminalised. We haven't got that in common law countries yet."

Not as yet. But maybe soon. Our government already holds a black list of blocked (or to be blocked) websites, supposedly around 10,000 sites in total, and not all of them are related to child porn or ultra-violence.

Joe Vs Julie

Joe Hockey smells the blood in the water, and begins to make his move for the deputy leadership of the Liberal Party. Hitting the banks for being scumbags now is an important Us-Vs-Them scene setter, which Hockey will be able to cash in on monumentally next year when the 'economic downturn' really becomes the Economic Downfall.

Westpac was the biggest bank in the country, Opposition finance spokesman Joe Hockey said on Wednesday.

"You would think they would pass on the interest rate cut in full, but they didn't. They gouged it," he told Fairfax Radio Network.

"Westpac gouged it, ANZ gouged it. They are gouging small business, they are gouging farmers, and they are gouging credit cards."

Hockey's aim in this attack is solid, and precise. A few more serious months of this, and the new generation Liberals can claim, in 2010, that the Rudd Government and the Bastard Banks are holding hands and skipping along rainbows together while The Rest Of Us (that will be Australia's, by then, majority poor and the "We Feel Your Pain" Liberals) are queuing for food stamps and free buses to get to work.

Hockey and Malcolm Turnbull are exactly the kind of front-line tag-team combination the Liberals need to really start hammering the Labor Party next year. Turnbull can keep it classy, while Hockey can go for the throat. Unlike Peter Costello, Alexander "Absolute Commitment" Downer and (shudder) Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey can occasionally appear to be genuine, and sincere, and has a streak of the same instant anger that many Australians quietly liked about Mark Latham.

Speaking up for the New Poor against the Bastard Banks, and pointing out how cozy "Lapdog Labor and the Bastard Banks"are, will be one of Hockey's primary missions through 2009 and 2010. If he doesn't fuck it up, the Rudd government could soon be getting major migraines whenever Hockey's name is mentioned.

Australian politics might get very interesting again, very quickly.

Revelatory Moment Of Irony Not Noticed

Interesting choice of soundtrack :

Protestors swarmed on the Gold Coast City Council headquarters in Queensland to vent their anger over a planned Muslim school yesterday as rock anthems blared from loudspeakers.

Almost 200 residents turned out for the demonstration, draped in Australian flags and shouting pro-Aussie slogans while Australian rock classics such as Land Down Under and Great Southern Land boomed across the parkland.

Let's take a look at some of the lyrics from Icehouse's Great Southern Land :

so you look into the land and it will tell you a story
story 'bout a journey ended long ago
if you listen to the motion of the wind in the mountains
maybe you can hear them talking like I do
". . they're gonna betray, they're gonna forget you,
are you gonna let them take you over this way?"

Great Southern Land, Great Southern Land
you walk alone like a primitive man
and they make it work with sticks and bones
see their hungry eyes, its a hungry home
I hear the sound of the stranger's voices
I see their hungry eyes, their hungry eyes
Great Southern Land, Great Southern Land
they burned you black, black against the ground

I'll just take a wild guess here, but whoever loaded up the music was probably captivated by this single line "...are you gonna let them take you over this way?" not realising, presumably, that the lines were about Aboriginals reacting to the invasion of their lands by the English.

The full lyrics are here

"The Economy Is Bad, But I Would Not Ask An Elf To Do For Me What I Am Not Prepared To Do For Myself"

The getaway vehicle should be easy to spot, on radar :

Brandishing a large knife and carrying an empty green shopping bag, two men wearing Santa disguises threatened the female attendant at the Cutheringa Bowls Club about 8:20pm.

They demanded she clear out the till and put the cash in the bag.

She did as she was told before running out a back entrance.

Yes, it's more New Zealand :












All photos by Darryl Mason

The Ak Attack

Piers Akerman of the Daily Telegraph says British born Muslims were involved in the Mumbai terror attacks, despite official denials by the governments of Britain and India, and so Australians who think Australian citizens should not be held without charge in the jails of our allies are EVIL. Or something. It doesn't matter. His readers get the message, they understand, and issue yet more Murdoch-media hosted calls for massacres of Australians citizens :

...lawyers, civil rights groups, civil libertarians and refugee advocates... they should all be shot as traitors.

More New Zealand :

How Does He Do It?

Many readers of The Professional Idiot have wondered and asked this very same question of TPI's valuable, comment and hit generating nemesis, 'Barry Bones' :



How indeed? 'Barry Bones' is the dim, Evil Pagan Lefty all red-blooded conservatives love, and sometimes live, to hate. Some of TPI's true believers will be driven to reply in CAPS, so very angry has 'Barry Bones' made them. When 'Bones' is gone, he/she is very much missed by the locals. A few dozen TPI commenters with time to kill can only agree with each other for so long, and wrack up only so many comments, before they need the fresh meat spill of a cliche-spangled Evil Pagan Lefty word-farting his mind. When 'Barry' is kind enough to make an appearance, dozens of comments mocking and correcting and abusing him/her follow. Traffic at TPI's must surely surge (perhaps 10 or 20%) when 'Barry Bones' has delivered another reliable, coffee-spraying, fist-clenching, spurl of expected yet still shocking Lefty ignorance and vapidity.

It must be hard for TPI not to look forward to 'Barry Bones' deciding to sprinkle some of his/her traffic generating brain snot into the comments. Times are tough, even at Murdoch's empire of digital white noise, and those paid the most have to deliver the audience numbers. So TPI can breathe a little snorf of relief that 'Barry Bones' has dropped by to help out.



Barry gets in the first comment :



'Barry Bones' gets in the first comment early, real early, this time. How does he/she do it? Maybe 'Barry Bones' should have been snipped for time travelling instead.

"We Can Give Their Parents A Carbon Credit Bonus, But Only If They Volunteer"

It seems a bit of a harsh solution to overcrowding issues at child care centres, but these are dark days we're living in. From the Sydney Morning Herald :

"This Car Ad Needs More Shots Of Fat Bearded Blokes Wolfing Down Sloppy Pies And Chiko Rolls"

It's a weird feeling coming across such an iconic mid-70s ad, particularly one you remember so well, loaded as it is with hairy blokes, Holdens, tits, Holdens, kangaroos, Holdens and a damn catchy theme song, which taught you, apparently, all you needed to know about what it meant to be an Australian, back then.



That song....a memory bomb detonates. Suddenly remember the full names and faces of friends from back then, barely remembered in three decades, that used to sing that song walking home from school, every afternoon, before getting chased by the Ford-loving sixth graders, every afternoon. Kids used to brawl over whether Fords or Holdens were the better cars, at least they did where I grew up. I once saw a seven year old mate take three big hits in the guts by a trio of Ford freaks, "Say Ford is better and we'll let you go," he refused to speak such blasphemy, he took his punches like a man. And they talk about brand-loyalty as if it's something new.

Has there been any car ad since that dared to use images of hairy blokes scoffing down their lunches while they walked along the street to brand their product?

There's a lot of sheep in New Zealand, we know this, but there are also a lot of ducks, particularly at caravan parks and camp sites. Lots of ducks.

Auckland, New Zealand.

I spent ten days in New Zealand, most of it travelling through the Northland, but the first few days were in Auckland. These images are from the blindingly green, 140 year old graveyard in Grafton Gully, right in the heart of the city. A spectacle place to stumble upon, a steep walk into a lush world of bird life, graves and history.

You step down from a busy city street, and the deeper you walk into the gully, the more wild and overgrown the foliage storms of trees, palms, vines and fern fronds become. And the deeper you go, the older the graves turn out to be, many all but totally consumed by the growth, forgotten, cracked and shattered headstones from the 1880s and 1890s, thigh thick roots splitting tombs, wrought iron twisted and warped.

The graves that mark the lives that helped build a city, slumping and tumbling down into a light-dabbled mini-wilderness.

A truly amazing place to lose an hour or three.

So, sorry for the lack of updates, but I'm on assignment at the moment, for a few days more. And to the fuckers who think this is the opportune time to 'raid' my house, be warned, my housesitters are extremely violent and easily spooked.

Christ it's horrible being away from your own computer. Right now, a middle aged German couple at the next computer are actually staring straight at my screen as I type this, while they wait for whatever 'places to be freely nude' site loads on their puter. Can they read English? I don't know. Let's find out. FUCK OFF YOU GERMAN BASTARDS!...

No, they can't read English, they're still smiling at me, nodding, yes, yes, yes, thank God they didn't win World War II and take over the world, eh? Hell, imagine what the United States would be like if a bunch of Nazis and their sympathisers and generations-on business associates seized the White House in 2001?

Clearly, I've already said enough.

Back to normal sparodic and/or five-times-a-day postings soon.

Rock onwards.

The Unfiltered No Option Filtered Internet No Access Blacklist Unoption

By Darryl Mason

Ominous, impractical and very listy :

The Government plans to have two streams of filtered (internet) content.

The mandatory portion will adhere to a blacklist of thousands of illegal web pages managed by ACMA and an optional clean feed of URLs that would automatically censor content, mostly adult material.

You can "plan" all you like, it's not going to happen. Unless the United States, Europe and the UK also come on board with almost identical and compatible net filtering systems and that would be far too Global Government-like and New World Order-ish to ever become a reality.

Probably.

Until it's hacked and released, we won't get to see the full "Blacklist" of sites that your government deems you should never be able to see, but it will include political, alternative news and so-called 'hate' sites. You won't hear much or anything about those news and political sites, but you will surely hear about a few of the other websites that will make The Blacklist, and they will be shocking and disgusting and tabloidia like The Daily Telegraph will leap all over the horrific Snuff and live suicide and Watch Me Torture This Kitten websites held as Examples Of Shame and will help pump the need for The Blacklist to be expanded even more and 'Do You Know Of A SickSite That Should Be On The Blacklist? Vote Now!'

The Rupe, however, will make sure that the Daily Telegraph and the rest of his online media, and even his more gruesome columnists, will never make it onto even the suggestion list for the Blacklist.

And none of The Rupe's newspapers or columnists should be on The Blacklist, but then neither should a pile of already very popular international and alternative news websites and blogs that tell Australians about a world of news and opinion that rarely if ever even makes the letters pages of The Australian or The Herald Sun or the Sydney Morning Herald.

The Blacklist will be a majestically powerful way for established mainstream media to block and crush the rising online competition, or at least limit its accessibility, which of course is its lifeblood. Not that ex-Australian media giants like The Rupe would ever stoop to such anti-competition tactics like that.

You get the feeling that the Rudd Government doesn't really know as much as it thinks it does about what Australians want from the internet, and what they want to read and hear and watch.

Shutting down access to The Pirate Bay, for starters, will incite raw fury in the hundreds of thousands of Australians who use it every day. They Will Not Be Pleased, and they will be motivated to find ways around the Government Internet Gateway Censors, of which there are many.

Anything that slows down net speeds, as all total filtering systems must do, will make every online gamer in the country (and there are many tens of thousands of them as well) shout "Fuck Rudd!"

The scope and scale of Australians who will be annoyed, inconvenienced and disrupted by Total Net Filtering will be massive, and the political fallout will be hard to estimate, and plan for.

You'll know just how much freedom of speech and free media the Rudd government believes in when the filters go live, for all major ISPs, towards the middle and end of 2009. Curiously, about the same time that very similar Total Net Filtering systems are expected, or hoped, to be up and running in the United States, the UK and across Europe.

Hell of a coincidence...

UPDATE : Sorry, I should have mentioned this at the start of the story, but this is all about stopping child porn. Of course.

Bullets For The Bombs

This is why "Imam Samudra and brothers Amrozi and Mukhlas" were tied to pieces of wood and shot through the heart yesterday. This is what they did to 202 people, from more than a dozen countries around the world, including 88, mostly young, Australians. This is what bombs and missiles and artillery do to human beings all over this war of and against terror.









Photos are from here

Revenge for the revenge for the revenge has been vowed, by an isolated, feverish few, while the majority remain appalled that this years-long nightmare of death and misery and sadness ever happened, ever began, ever smeared the name of Bali with the blood of foreign tourists.

The hatred and intolerance that drives men to do such things no doubt still burns strong in the hearts of some, but you have to believe, at least you want to believe, that this fever will fade, must fade, that it will not spread, does not grow, that any religious or political belief that promises a better life promises the same for all humanity.

They wanted to die for what they did. Now they are dead. They died in far less agony and fear than many of their victims.

There is consolation in knowing they cannot taunt the families of their victims anymore simply by being alive.

Claire Hatton, who lost her husband in the 2002 attacks :

"I saw a quote by Mahatma Gandhi and it said: 'The trouble with an eye for an eye is that it makes us all blind'. That's what I think."

Maria Kotronakis lost two cousins and also two sisters in the attacks :

"We're very happy ... we've waited a very long time for this and this is our justice.

"Finally the moment has come ... we are over the moon."

John Mavroudis, who lost his son David :

(he) said he "couldn't care less" about the bombers.

"I don't give a damn about them really ... we just try and get on with our lives."

A panoramic night image of the incredibly serene memorial to the victims in Kuta, Bali

Live Tourists Wanted To Pay To Swim With Crocodiles For Bemusement Of Northern Territorians



Life in the Territory :

"In the Northern Territory, the saltwater crocodile is an icon and is part of our life. They are always in the news, either in someone's swimming pool or killing someone's favorite horse..."

Man and the Crocodile can co-exist peacefully together, particularly in Darwin when it's usually too bloody hot for man or crocodile to be bothered trying to kill each other. Besides, crocodiles must comprehend by now that chomping down on humans brings much violent attention and stomach opening.

Crocodiles watch, carefully, and remember details of the movements of animals and humans in their stretch of the river for years. They know we bring flesh bags far meatier and tastier than we into their world. I'm not sure how many horses are taken by crocodiles in the NT each year, but it sure sounds like enough for it be of a 'Oh bugger, not again' frequency.


You can now go swimming with five metre long saltwater crocodiles. It's The Territory's most thrillingest new tourist attraction.

Yes, enjoy that, live bait....sorry, I mean tourists.

Getting within ten feet of the monster below is as close as I ever want to get to a crocodile again. The electrifyingly vicious snap of those jaws unleashes a primal, ancient terror that pumps hot adrenalin into your veins and turns your stomach into a trembling clenched fist.

Even on a boat, embedded on a muddy bank into which you will sink to your knees if you step off, it's with a brittle resistance that you must fight the panic-mode flight of Go! Run For Your Fucking Life! when the crocodile suddenly, and with great agility, lifts that massive head and turns those ice-cold reptilian eyes on you.

Come on, run! I dare you...

The Ocean Was Dark And Evil That Day, My Friends


Photo by Andrew Buckley

The surfer of this 40 foot wave, on a reef some fifteen kilometres off the coast of Western Australia, explains what it feels like, to do that :

“It was not like any other wave I’ve seen, it was a real evil wave, the hardest wave I’ve ever had to surf.

“It all happened so quickly though I didn’t even realise what was happening, I just knew it was a big, powerful chuck of ocean, it was just amazing.”

“It breaks so far out, right in the middle of the ocean, the deepest water you can get. It’s really cold and choppy and rough, and the water is really black out there, it’s very creepy and eerie to be out there.”

More Photos & Story Here