Death To Bloggy Fun

By Darryl Mason

Well, the Australian blogstream is going to become a hell of a lot less fun, scandalous and interesting now that (apparently) News Limited's lawyers are threatening legal action against those who try and hold News Limited's more rank, intolerant and smear-spreading corporate bloggers (apparently) to account for the serious damage they inflict on Australian society (apparently).

Pure Poison, the blog set up on Crikey by Grodsters and Jeremy Sear, has caused all sorts of commotion and controversy in its handful of days of existence - an all round successful launch in other words - and while some of News Limited's corporate bloggers (apparently) have few problems with small audience independent bloggers whipping them for stirring up racism and intolerance, when it comes to a heavily trafficked, mainstream media site like Crikey, well, certain News Limited bloggers start getting all whine-y and litigious (apparently).

Certain corporate bloggers, protected by News Limited army of lawyers, love to dish it out to individuals who cannot afford or can't be bothered to defend themselves through legal action, but when it's them under scrutiny, with a media-and-politics-and-business heavy audience watching on, as with Pure Poison at Crikey, they sure can't take the heat.

Here's Crikey editor Jonathan Green apologising for allowing commenters at Crikey's Pure Poison to state some (apparently) all-too-obvious truths about The Professional Idiot (apparently), aka Andrew Bolt :

The first thing here is to apologise, sincerely, to Andrew Bolt. The second, to acknowledge the traps for the unwary in tapping too innocently into Web2 interconnectivity.

In recent days, comment strings on the new Crikey blog Pure Poison have been a little too lurid in their attacks on the controversial Herald Sun columnist. There are some things you can’t say in polite journalism. “Racist” is one of them. “Liar” is another.

But The Professional Idiot (apparently) sure likes to accuse so many others of being racists, or liars, or both, just about every day he takes another swim through his mind sewer.

The thing that Crikey has learned from its first real encounter in this past fortnight with the more floridly opinionated fringes of angrily politicised blog commentary is the importance not so much of immediate moderation of comments (that is now very much an given) but rather ensuring an overall tone in the conversation. To put it more simply we don’t want to be that kind of site. We’d rather build a reputation for reason and well-turned argument than for insult and glib denunciation.

Well, they certainly can't try and compete with certain News Limited bloggers when it comes to "insult and glib denunciation", they've pretty well conrnered the market on both (apparently).

The internet is a land of many underbellies. Apparently respectable newspaper sites court google traffic with layer on layer of celebrity-studded, skin-laden picture galleries, opinion bloggers draw short of the unmentionable under their own names and leave that dirty work to their legions of regular commenters … and given the right cues, that dirty work is done.

Oh, yes, it sure is. If you're a blogger who has ever had the unfortunate experience of being mentioned and linked to by certain blogger(s) now under the protective dome of News Limited, then you'd know what it's like to be bombarded with comments threatening violence, rape and "profesional ruins (sic)". I never felt threatened by any of those dimwits because where I grew up you learned quickly to spot bigmouth softcocks for what they were, and for the non-threat to you that they actually were.

More from Crikey's Jonathan Green :

The point is not to be outraged at someone’s argument, or their untenable, maybe mischievous, maybe pointedly distorted point of view. The argument is not with the writer, but with the view expressed...

What the hell does that mean? Is not the view expressed by a News Limited blogger that of the writer/blogger themselves? Or is this a sly confirmation/allegation from Green that what some News Limited bloggers do is not actually opinion-writing, or opinion-blogging, but simply hit-based-revenue-raising infotainment relying on fermented outrage and disgust for more comments and page views and thereby more revenue?

Eh, whatever. Blog Wars are notoriously boring for non-bloggers to read, or even hear about, most of the time.

And from what appears to (apparently) be a flurry of serious legal threats now hurricaning through the Australian blogstream (apparently), you probably won't hear much more about this current Pure Poison Vs Certain News Limited Suddenly Sensitive Corporate Bloggers' Blog War. At all.

Apparently.

The Flight Of The Conchords' Jermaine and Bret offer US President Barack Obama some solid, sound financial advice :

Any thoughts on the president’s new stimulus package? What do you recommend forthe U.S. economy?

Jemaine: Budgeting.

Bret: Yeah, the government should do a budget.

I believe we already have a budget.

Jemaine: It doesn’t seem like it.

Bret: They need to put aside a certain amount each week for rent and then some money for food and then some money for partying, having a good time.

Jemaine: Put aside some for invasions!





.

Wreckage

The most haunting images from the Victorian Fires of February 7 are easily those of burned out, crashed cars spread along the road leading into and through Kinglake. Perhaps as many as 20 people died in a series of horrific car accidents that day, including at least six children, and one infant. Families perished as their cars slammed into each other at high speed, fleeing heat and fire so intense it melted tyres and alloy wheels as they tried to escape. Cars ploughed into trees and plunged into ditches as drivers became lost in the smoke of the massive blaze that few in Kinglake, that afternoon, even knew was coming for them.

We've heard the stories of hundreds of survivors of the February 7 fires, but we know almost nothing about the final moments in the lives of the people who died in these cars. The fear, and terror, they experienced is unimaginable.











All photos from this extensive gallery of Victorian Fires images



ABC reporter Michael Vincent on the crashed cars of Kinglake :

"I came in with a CSA officer and it was just here there was still smoke drifting across the road..."
"Lots of debris, trees, corrugated iron roofing, power lines dangling across and then the many, many, burned out car wrecks - close to, I'd say, 20 on the main road alone.
"[There are] obvious accidents, head-on collisions, and five cars concertinaed with a motorbike had gone into a ditch.
"It's quite scary to imagine what these people went through. And some of them apparently did survive.
"There were some cars being taken away last night by the police and I imagine there were bodies in those cars. I couldn't physically see any, but the police were taking them away.
"A lot of people did panic and jumped in their cars at the last minute. It came on that fast. They had 15 minutes between when they saw it over in the far distance, 25 kilometres away, before it hit.
"So a lot of people, last minute, not realising that it was the last minute by the time they were on the road."

A terrible, incredible story of survival amongst all the death :

A Kinglake survivor saved a family of five but had to leave another man to die.

Karl Amatnieks, 56, and his wife Jane were fleeing when they saw the family trapped in a car.
They stopped as the inferno bore down and pulled the family into their car.
But Mr Amatnieks says he is no hero.
"I could not leave five people lying there waiting to die -- it's that simple," he said.
The couple were racing along Kinglake-Whittlesea Rd when they saw the family in danger.
"As we got to the bottom of the hill, we came across this couple with three kids who were stranded. They were stuck on the side of the road after slamming into the back of another car. It was horrific."
He said heavy smoke and ember sparks made driving almost impossible.
"As we got them in the car and took off, another car came down the hill and slammed into (the first crash)."
He said he felt helpless as he drove away, leaving the crash driver to die.
Moments later the inferno engulfed the pile-up.

The story of Benjamin Banks is very different again. A car crash, he believes, saved his life :

Everything that could go wrong did go wrong when Benjamin Banks tried to escape the Kinglake inferno.
It was a head-on car crash, his third crash within minutes, that ironically saved his life.
He also survived a "fire tornado" that peeled the paint from his car, and another incident when the house he eventually took shelter in also caught fire.
After a "big night" on Friday that ended about 6am on Saturday, Mr Banks was woken about 2pm by his cousin Dean, 18, as smoke enveloped his Kinglake West home.
....Mr Banks' second car failed to start and he had to change the battery.
"I knew I had to save my cousin. I wanted to save him before me. I didn't realise how intense it was and didn't realise how thick the fire had gotten."
Mr Banks' car then hit a tree lying on the road. He ploughed through it before hitting a second.
"Then this big whirlybird tornado of flame hit us. I remember looking up at it and it was as high as the trees."
The car almost tipped over and Mr Banks watched the paint peel off the bonnet and the car window melt, dripping molten glass on to his hand.
"I tried to drive again but there were no tyres left. I could feel steel on steel and could hear the steel rims grinding on the road and I was stuck on this tree."
Suddenly, headlights appeared and collided head on with Mr Banks.
"But I think that was my saving grace because if it had not hit me we would have burned to death in the car."

.

Murdoch Media Spreads More Eco-Alarmism : The Great Human Cull Is Coming, You're All Doomed! Doomed I Say!

Rupert Murdoch's worldwide media empire continues to be the most powerful, most influential distributor of climate change related hysteria, following Murdoch's June, 2007 announcement that "climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats".

Today we learn, at News.com.au, that up to 90% of the world's population will be wiped out by extreme climate change by 2100 :

Alligators bask off the English coast, the Sahara desert stretches into Europe and 10 per cent of humans are left.

Science fiction?

No, this is the doomsday prediction if global temperatures make a predicted rise of 4C in the next 100 years. Some fear it could happen by 2050.

Vast numbers would have to migrate away from the equator and towards the poles.

National borders would have to be knocked down and humans would become mostly vegetarian with most animals being eaten to extinction.

Fish numbers would drop dramatically as acid levels rose in oceans.

People would live in high-rise cities to preserve fertile lands for food, and scientists suggest energy could be supplied by a giant solar belt running across North Africa, the Middle East and the southern US.

The number of humans could drop to a billion or fewer.

So will The Herald Sun's Andrew "Global Warming Has Stopped" Bolt and The Daily Telegraph's Tim "Global Warming Is Utterly Bogus" Blair finally admit the truth? That the media company that pays them to mock climate change alarmists is in fact Climate Doom Central?

Or will they do their usual trick of just linking to similar reports in The Age or Sydney Morning Herald when they attack these latest "You're All Doomed!" claims, completely ignoring the fact their boss and media company are spreading more eco-fear-mongery than Al Gore could ever dream of?

UPDATE : Andrew Bolt, examplifying exactly why I've been calling him The Professional Idiot for two years, jumps on this latest example of "eco-porn" :

Hands up anyone who seriously believes this scenario - given serious treatment by a newspaper - is remotely likely within 100, let alone 50, years...

A newspaper? Well, no, News.com.au is not a newspaper, it's an internet news portal, and it's part of the parent company of the newspaper this shameless liar works for.

Of course he knows this, he links to the news.com.au story, but he knows most of his readers will never click to read the full story and thus will not learn that the corporation that pays The Professional Idiot is responsible for helping to spread the exact same kind of "eco-porn" he continually claims he is denouncing.

Shit Guilt

It's bad enough they're constantly on our backs about enjoying quoll fillets, coal bonfires, baby koala tennis and blue whale burgers, but now Greenpeace have simply gone too damn far.





.

When A Nuking Is Preferable...

CarlosLabs have an interesting Google Maps toy. Enter the name of your closest city, choose from a variety of kilotons for a nuking, hit the nuke it button, and find out whether you'd die from vaporisation, flaming flesh or radiation cancer.

Here's what survives around Sydney after a 340kiloton nuking :



This is damage impact zone if a (Dinosaur age ending) asteroid smashed into Australia, with Sydney as ground zero :

"You Will Let Me Know When Those Carrots Stop Screaming, Won't You Clarice?"


A plate of mixed murder victims from my garden.

By Darryl Mason

The Good Weekend's Food & Wine Issue last Saturday (not online) dipped into 'Fruitarianism', which I always thought was a joke food-consumption preference, going one better than veganism, that is you eat only lots of fruit, and steer away from vegetables that have been torn cruelly from the ground, against their will.

But Fruitarianism, according to the Good Weekend, is real enough, even though I was convinced it was invented by Monty Python for a TV skit they probably never actually did. Key quote from the story :

"Fruitarianism is not just about health. There's the ethical thing as well. You're not killing anything. You're not uprooting plants and killing them."

I slaughtered the fuck out of fat handfuls of beans, spinach, baby carrots and two kinds of basil in my little garden this afternoon. Of course, I had to block my ears with wadded tissues to blunt the shrieks of pain and desperate dislocation filling the air as I did so. And oh, the terrible cries of those baby carrots...so pitiful.

But taking a stance in refusing to uproot tasty, crispy edible plants because you're "killing them" raises some interesting questions.

When exactly does a carrot die? The moment it is pulled from the ground?

Well, that can't be so, because I've replanted the same carrots two or three times when the freaky ones had outgrown their former beds and I'd wanted to see just how big they would get. Did they die when I pulled them from the warm bossom of Mother Earth and then resurrect Jesus-like when I replanted them somewhere more comfortable?

Is a carrot still alive when I carry it inside to the kitchen?

Is that carrot still alive when I go at it with the vegetable peeler? If the ethics of Fruitarianism is correct, then I'm literally skinning those carrots alive. And then once I've stripped them of their skin, I cut them to pieces and throw them in a sizzling wok for a stir-fry.

How goddamned brutal is that?

I never realised before just what a complete fucking monster I am. And how hungry writing all that has made me. Death to potatoes, death to spring onions and brocolli. I will make them beg for their lives, and still kill them.

Mercilessly.

Do hunter-eaters of deer and moose get these same kinds of cheap thrills?

Will taking pleasure in the suffering of innocent vegetables one day form part of the pyschological profile of a potential serial killer?

And how exactly do you give a handful of organic baby carrots a humane death?

So many questions. So many murdered plants to eat.

Maybe He Could Mime The Words Instead?

Pundits and oppo-pols are having lots of fun imagining what songs are going to fill up the 20 minute set that Midnight Oil will play at the Bushfire Relief gig in March. Any Midnight Oil fan will know that there are dozens of songs, and some of their most famous, that the current Environment Minister won't want to be seen singing now he's a professional politician, and no longer apparently believes that nuclear energy, logging and the 'US' are evil incarnate.

Of course, The Chaser anticipated exactly this kind of quandry for Peter Garrett back in mid-2007.



But Midnight Oil will only be playing a 20 minute set, and the following Oils classic will cause Garrett no political headaches, plus it will fill a good chunk of the running time :



Even though Garrett's jerking-electric shock dance moves are seared into the national consciousness, it's still going to be a little strange to see a senior minister in the federal government rocking out onstage like that. It's a good cause, though, and it's pretty obvious Peter Garrett is hugely missing the addictive buzz of performing for an audience, in front of such a truly great band as the Oils.

My pick for the list, jokes about doing only instrumentals aside, will be some of the blasting, mostly politics-free songs off 1979's raucous Head Injuries album (Bus To Bondi for example), and the soaring anthem 'One Country', the lyrics of which follows :

Who'd like to change the world, who wants to shoot the curl
Who gets to work for bread, who wants to get ahead
Who hands out equal rights, who starts and ends that fight
And not not rant and rave, or end up a slave
Who can make hard won gains, fall like the summer rain
Now every man must be, what his life can be

So dont call, me, the tune, I will walk away

Who wants to please everyone, who says it all can be done
Still sit up on that fence, no-one Ive heard of yet
Dont call me baby, dont talk in maybes
Dont talk like has-beens, sing it like it should be
Who laughs at the nagging doubt, lying on a neon shroud
Just gotta touch someone, I want to be

Who wants to sit around, turn it up turn it down
Only a man can be, what his life can be
One vision, one people, one landmass, we are defenceless, we have a lifeline
One ocean, one policy, seabed lies, one passion, one movement, one instant
One difference, one lifetime, one understanding
Transgression, redemption, one island, our placemat, one firmament
One element, one moment, one fusion, yes and one time




.

Murdoch's Warning To The World

The Drudge Report claims a scoop, or a handy leak designed to reassure Rupert Murdoch's media companies' stockholders that he is about to go on one hell of a sacking spree to rein in costs....and by the way, you're all doomed, Doomed!

Media baron Rupert Murdoch issued an urgent internal communication late Monday, warning his staff: "We are in the midst of a phase of history in which nations will be redefined and their futures fundamentally altered."

Murdoch doesn't actually say this is a bad thing, overall.

"Many people will be under extreme pressure and many companies mortally wounded...."

Murdoch's got his eye on some media properties that can be brought up and downsized, then folded into New Corp, cutting thousands more jobs.

"Our competitors will be sorely tempted to take the easy beat, to reduce quality in the search for immediate dividends."

But Murdoch has no intention of letting The Greater Depression reduce the...ahhh, quality of his media products, like Fox News, or Sydney's The Daily Telegraph or the New York Post, shimmering icons of news-o-tainment.

"Let me be very clear about our company: where others might step back from their commitment to their viewers, their users, readers and customers, we will renew ours.

"The direction of the business now and over the next few years will define the character of our company for decades."

He's going to fire a shitload of journalists, and make user-generated content play a bigger role in his media products, so he doesn't have to pay so many people so much money for all that content.

Hunting 3 Metre Bull Sharks In Sydney Harbour

Wild video here of fishermen snaring a three metre long bull shark in Sydney Harbour, with the Bridge and the Opera House as a backdrop.





.

Smoke from Victoria's fires now hazing up Sydney skies after a thousand kilometres riding southerly winds.

Predictary

Pure Poison scores its first scoop : Kevin Rudd will call a federal election, sometime between now and 2011.

How do they do it?

Just Another 'Possum Goes Wild In A Leagues Club' Video

Obviously the possum in the below video is a scout, checking out another target for future possum occupation. Nature's War On Humans continues.



Fantastic, very cute, very funny. I wonder if the possum had been watching those doors open and close for a while from a nearby tree, working out a way to get inside? The possum's adventure inside West's Leagues Club lasted an hour.

Baby, That Was Years Ago....

Is this the first recorded reference to Cold Chisel in Australian Parliament?

Australia's PM2, Julia Gillard, got stuck into the UnOpposition's Christopher Pyne today :

"Presumably he prefers Abba to Cold Chisel, because that is the kind of thing we see on display.''

Okay, now I feel old. Some of Australia's leaders, and most senior politicians, grew up smoking cannabis and listening to the same music I did.

I won't be happy until The Angels and The Radiators also get referenced.

The Chiz in rare 1978 live TV action, performing Australia's real national anthem back when speed was still, for Jimmy Barnes, 'The Breakfast Of Champions' :



I have no idea why it cuts off after a minute and a half, but here's a video of the anthem in full.

"Assassinate" Bob Brown Talk Shows Up Again On Bolt's Blog, After Moderation

By Darryl Mason

The Professional Idiot, aka Andrew Bolt, grows uneasy at the latest results of his Stop The Pagan Nazi Commo Greens Before They Kill Us All! campaign :

I have just deleted from this thread a comment from a reader saying he wished he’d “assassinated’’ Bob Brown to save lives. It is a disgusting comment that would be repudiated by every regular reader of this blog.

Really? Repudiated by every regular reader of your blog? Are you sure about that?

His commenter's talk of killing Bob Brown "to save lives" is the expected fallout from the helplessness Andrew Bolt instills in his regular readers with his endless hysteria on the threat to their very lives he so often tells them they face from 'Green Nazi' policies, and ideology.

He's been ramping his readers up for months in anticipation of Green Terrorists posing the same kind of threats to their very lives and lifestyles he once promised were posed by the crazed Islamists living down the road, in country Victoria.

This dim fucker now tries to pretend that threats to Greens leader Bob Brown's life, published in his own blog's comments (that is, after moderation), have nothing whatsoever to do with anything he's ever written.

And it's not the first time assassinating Bob Brown has been been directly, or indirectly, discussed on Bolt's blog.

Threats of violence, and throat-slitting, directed at Bob Brown appeared on Bolt's blog, shortly after the February 7 bushfires, after Bolt goaded his readers with this headline, and intro :

Preaching Over The Dead :

"At least 36 Victorians die in bushfires, and Bob Brown sees on opportunity to preach politics..."

Bolt expected, and got, more than a hundred comments attacking Bob Brown for something he did not actually do. Many of the comments that followed hummed with a desire for violence against the Greens leader :

"You mongrel Brown...Come on you snivelling creep. Stop hiding behind your media whores."

"...the opportunist way Climate Change proponents are latching on to the event. Whats the term for opportunistic bastard? Its Bob Brown, taking this approach before the bodies are even counted.

"Insane, crazy, maddness. Its the Greenies, save a bloody lizard at the expense of human lives."

"What a truly appalling man he is. And more appalling is that so many hang off every sickening word."

"(He's) not a man. Men are human.

"Public crucifixion would be suitable for zealots such as Brown and Wong."

"Bob Brown is a sick and twisted fool."

"Frankly, if I’d been there at the time I’m not sure I could have refrained myself from decking the slimy moron."

"Brown is a swine of the first order, how anyone votes for this bastard and his party is beyond my comprehension."

"Brown, you are scum."

"Brown you are a poor excuse for a human being..."

"Bob Brown...what a despicable Turd!Makes his sick, twisted political capital out of charred bodies & ruined lives."

“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”

When blog commenting in Australia becomes illegal without moderation, or some form of digital ID being used, you can thank Andrew Bolt for giving those who wish to censor us exactly the kind of ammunition they needed to ramp up their campaign.


.

The Curse Of Crap Headlines

Rugby league legend Dale Shearer is not in a good way this morning. He's in a critical condition, after crashing his car into a pole while reportedly fleeing from police, driving home from a party. There's speculation he may have been drinking before the accident, but that hasn't been confirmed. Not altogether an unusual incident or accident in Australia, but obviously newsworthy because Shearer is so famous.

But what the fuck is up with this?


That's from the front page of News.com.au, the portal news site for all of Rupert Murdoch's Australian online newspapers.

"Now it appears Dale Shearer....is the victim of a ghastly curse."

Does it? Maybe if you're sniffing Ajax.

Did some old witch point a bone at Shearer and declare, "You will drive dangerously fast and out of control when you see the police"?

The article the News.com.au front page links to says nothing about a 'curse', and is a straightforward piece of reporting about the tragic outcome of what appears to be Shearer fleeing from police and losing control of his car.

The Daily Telegraph headline and story the News.com.au 'Deadly Curse' headline box links to doesn't say anything at all about a Ghastly Curse. The word 'curse' isn't even used. Though it does mention Shearer lost his wife recently to cancer.

So curses are causing cancer and car accidents, according to News.com.au.

How monumentally fucking stupid and trashy can a mainstream news site get?

Not even the most ethically barren blogger would try and pull off something like that.

UPDATE : Err, now it appears, the Australian novelist recently jailed in Thailand for daring to print a harsh word or two about that country's royal family is somehow involved in Shearer's crash. And this headline box now appears on The Daily Telegraph site as well :



And I thought I made some embarrassing mistakes on this blog.

This Is Australia, We Burn

By Darryl Mason

It must be incredibly unnerving to be living in thick bushland within 100kms of the three major firefronts in Victoria this morning, as mid-to-high 30s heat and strong winds are expected to intensify the fires already burning, and new outbreaks are expected.

Hundreds of families have reportedly already decided to leave their homes in bushland outside of Melbourne, but fire authorities are trying to cut through the anticipatory fear-mongering of the morning news shows on TV as I write this to remind people that February 7 was a day of record-breaking extreme heat, and today is not expected to come close. Plus, at least 400,000 hectares of the state has already been burned out.

Conditions are grim, fire authorities are saying this morning, there will be plenty of heat and wind, but they are not expecting similar extremes of temperature and wind as February 7.

Fire authorities are still telling Victorians that if they have prepared their properties, if they are confident of protecting their homes, it is not necessary to leave. They are still pushing the 'Stay' choice of 'Stay or Go.' For those who don't think their homes or families are safe, then the time to leave is well before midday.

They've made it clear that evacuations are not underway, and they're working hard to stop the more excitable morning TV and radio hosts from whipping up useless, and dangerous, fear.

It would seem that emergency services in Victoria are as concerned about the possibility of widespread panic breaking out - causing untold chaos on roads and appalling accidents if tens of thousands of people smell the smoke and run for their cars - as they are about fires wiping out more communities. Kilometres of traffic building up in areas where fires may sweep through is something they are now trying to avoid.

The threat of more fires, more ember attacks, and more decimated towns and villages, is still jarring, terrifying, and now all too real. For those who have forgotten what carnage bushfires can unleash in this country, we need no more reminding. The images of destruction, death and misery are seared into the nation's mind now.

And it's hard to shake out of your head those images of fireys battling ten, fifteen, twenty metre high walls of fire, and funnels of flame. So many Australians are simply at the mercy of the bush around them burning. That fireys manage to control as much bushland and keep in check as many fires as they do is downright remarkable, but bushland dried by more than a decade of drought is so widespread, and so dry, they'd need tens of thousands more fireys and dozens of helicopters to even come close to guaranteeing that Victorians will be mostly safe from fires for the rest of this summer, and the summers to come.

Not being safe from fires, however, is an old Australian reality that most of us have only recently learned about again. As has often been said in the past, and in the past two weeks in particular, "This is Australia, we burn", and the land will continue to burn when the heat is intense, when the bush is paper dry and the winds are blowing hard.

If you live in the bush, when the heat boils up into the mid-to-high 30s, and strong winds pick up, you can no longer look at that billow of the smoke in the distance and shrug and say to yourself, 'Well, those fires are 40 or 50 ks away. We'll be right."

There's probably at least a few dozen people who lost their lives in Marysville and Kinglake who thought the exact same thing, never imagining that fire could sweep in faster than they could get the kids into the car and drive to escape it.

But as the Victorian premier, John Brumby, has repeatedly pointed out since February 7, even if mandatory evacuations were announced, as some believe they should have been two weeks ago, and if you were to evacuate everyone potentially threatened by fire on days like this, where exactly do you evacuate 500,000, or more, people to? Where do they go?

In the outskirts of Sydney, up into the Blue Mountains, there are some 1.5 million people living in what could be described as "bushland settings." If conditions in the future were ever to mimic Victoria's on February 7, where would all those people go? And who would do all the evacuating?

In Australia, it's all but impossible to evacuate 500,000 to 1.5 million people from an area under threat. China evacuates millions, some years more than 20 million, from flood zones every time the super-rains come and rivers rise dangerously so. But it takes days to do it safely, and it's a fantasy to think that we have anywhere near the resources to stage such mass evacuations. In Victoria or New South Wales, unlike China, most of those evacuated would have nowhere to go, and state governments would have nowhere to even tent all those people while a bushfire threat passes.

If climate change has in reality given us an horrific preview this year of what's to come, perhaps the impossible problems of massive evacuation in Australia will be overcome, eventually. Maybe.

This is Australia. We Burn.

But tinder dry bush doesn't always just burst into flames either, even when the heat is so intense it sears the nose to breathe the air. Poorly maintained electricity lines can spark bushfires (as may well the case with the fires that swept into Kinglake two weeks ago), so can discarded cigarettes, and arsonists strike around the country every year, when fire-ready conditions are most perfect.

Is there somebody, right now, down in Victoria, thinking about going out and lighting more fires today? It absolute shatters fireys every time one of their own is busted for lighting fires in the bush, and it seems to happen nearly every year now. But how do you stop these people? In the future will potential arsonists be spotted, and dealt with, pre-emptively, as we now deal with supposed terrorists? Get them before they get the chance to do something destructive and deadly?

The most moving part of the 'National Day of Mourning' yesterday was to see the fire fighting men and women, who lost their homes and friends trying to protect the houses of complete strangers. They will be back out there today, and all this week, and again this time next year. They face dangers we can't comprehend, and it's a sign of just how professional many of them are that so few are injured or killed as they battle those flames.

The fire threat, unlike most other natural disasters, comes on so many fronts, sometimes all at the same time - arson, spot fires caused by loose embers from burn-offs, lighting strikes - and all are impossible to fully contain or control. It's worse than a war, fire is without mercy.

This is Australia. We Burn.

It's a reality few of us will forget anytime soon.

UPDATE : Stories hitting the online headlines right now, at 8.40am, are claiming the new Victorian fires threat is greater than mentioned earlier, but authorities are still trying to avoid a situation developing where roads become choked with traffic, blocking emergency response vehicles, and potentially trapping people in the path of fires :

"Of most concern is the giant East Kilmore-Murrindindi fire," Department of Sustainability and Environment spokesman Lee Miezis said.

"We're talking about temperatures to the mid-30s with a northwesterly wind and a late chance with southwesterly winds

CFA state duty officer Neil Bumpstead said residents would be most at risk after the wind change forecast for late this afternoon.

Mr Bumpstead warned that if fire did reach the Warburton Valley, people who had left should be prepared to stay away for several days.

"We cannot stress enough that with limited road access in the Warburton Valley, traffic may become congested," he said.

"Being on the roads is dangerous during a fire threat."

Bargain Basement Bush



Elton John charges more for floor seats, and Elton doesn't give you a meal :

Celebrity agent Max Markson plans to bring former US president George Bush to Australia on a $1000-a-head speaking tour next year.

"I was on a cruise in the Caribbean the day after President [Barack] Obama was sworn in and I received an email asking if I could arrange for president Bush to come out," Mr Markson said.

The day after Obama was sworn in, Bush was ready to start hoiking his blood-caked wares to punters in Australia.

Bush is desperately trying to raise about $US500 million for his presidential library. Not a lot of those who promised him years back, "Yeah, sure, Mr President, I'll throw in $50 million for your book place, sure, now how many missiles do you want to buy?" haven't come up with the money he needs. And he'll be lucky to get even a few hundred grand for his memoirs.

At least he'll find enough punters in Australia to cash him up enough to fit out his library.

A smaller library.

Maybe a mobile library....

They won't be shutting down the streets of Sydney and running kilometres of steel fencing through the heart of the city and the Botanical Gardens this time when Bush visits.

Laugh? I Almost Disemboweled Myself

By Darryl Mason

The Murdoch media "across the board" cutbacks to staff are biting deep into News Limited blogger-luxuries like moderators.

The Herald Sun's Andrew Bolt :

Have your say here.

Apologies in advance, but there may be a delay in moderating today. My eldest son in playing with his band in the country, and I’m not sure if anyone is around today to fill in for me.

Wait a sec...moderate your own blog's comments?

Work on your own blog, on the weekend?

Outrageous!

All those pro-Costello Liberal Party staffers and "PR consultants" trying to fuck with Malcolm Turnbull's leadership via Bolt's chaos-ridden comment boards, trying to wreak further havoc on the party that John Howard all but destroyed, will have to fruitlessly shout into all that online silence and hear no reassuring yowing in return. For a few hours, anyway.

Surely the advertising revenues on a mainstream media blog like Bolt's, heavily cross-promoted through Murdoch media online news sites that attract hundreds of thousands of readers a day, would earn enough to pay somebody else at least something to do the moderating, part-time?

Here's a recent prime space ad from Bolt's "One Million Hits A Month" blog :



That would be "global warming" that Andrew Bolt repeatedly claims "stopped in 1998", the same global warming that he thinks is "the most superstitious pagan faith of all" and is being promoted by "the carbon cult". In the case of the above advertiser on his blog, "the carbon cult" is own employer.

The mentality here, of earning a wage from a company that promotes what you claim is dangerous and will cost lives, is summed up like this : "Hi. These true believers are the new Nazis and it's my job to warn you how terribly dangerous they are. Oh, by the way, I work for them!"

News Limited bloggers don't earn anything from "Hey! We're Really Green, Too!" ads from News Limited. That's not good news for Bolt, or for News Limited.

Why in the world aren't advertisers rushing to flog their wares on a mainstream media blog that is so undeniably popular, at least in Australia? Bolt's a regular taxpayer-soaking guest of the ABC, and is an enthusiastic dancing bear on A Current Affair. As far as bloggers go in Australia, there's few more famous. And no-one wants to advertise there?

Well, no-one except for his own employer, who mocks him with its own massive ads above his posts, pumping News Limited's New Corporate Green campaign to fight global warming that Bolt himself so often proclaims doesn't actually exist.

Does a near total lack of non-News Limited advertisers have something to do with Bolt's feign warning to his regular readers today that much more time will now be spent judiciously culling the more extreme and disturbing comments?

Well, yeah. Of course.

Rupert Murdoch has made it very clear to his shareholders, if not his own staff, that the more highly paid employees, like Howard-era conservative-minded opinionists, are now expected to perform - that is earn decent ad revenue - in the online world. There's no free rides for 'star columnists' anymore. And if News Limited is forced to fill ad space on Bolt's blog with its own ads, then his ad revenue earning performance is less than spectacular. No doubt Rupert himself has already noticed this.

It's like ranting near daily that Scientology is a dangerous cult, and then having Scientologists advertising on your blog. Daily. Actually, it's much worse. Scientology ads would at least pay for the ad space.

Anyway, who needs to hire in moderators? The secret to staying on top of your blog's comments is to not attract so many verbose, intolerant, insult-spewing commenters who need constant monitoring.

Not like here. Right?







Hello?

Is anybody out there?




No? Good. I can go to bed then, and sleep late.

Rupert Murdoch Admits He Tells His Newspapers What To Print

Murdoch Journalist Denies Murdoch Media Conspiracy

Andrew Bolt Announces Boycott Over Corporate "Global Warming Hypcocrisy (sic)"

Howard : You Stupid People, Why Can't You See How Mega I Was?

By Darryl Mason

How strong, how formidable a legacy can it really be when John Howard has to repeatedly remind us of how strong and formidable that legacy is supposed to be?

"The legacy of the former Liberal government is one that we should all want to own," says the 2007' Federal Election's Biggest Loser, who, in the words of Dame Elizabeth Murdoch, destroyed the Liberal Party on his way to retirement.

"Australia was a stronger, prouder and more prosperous nation in November 2007 than it had been in March 1996. Yet attempts have been made to discount the contributions of competitive capitalism and more open markets to the remarkable economic growth, in many nations, during these past 30 years."

And how many of those who "prospered" through increased access to cheap and voluminous personal credit remain prosperous today? Enough to sustain that fantasy...sorry, legacy?

John Howard spells out "Who We Liberals Are" for those who have forgotten, and how easily they forget :

"We are a party of the individual rather than of the collective. We see the maximum good for the nation being achieved when each individual is encouraged to do his or her best.

"We are a party that should always see the family as the most important unit in our society, not only as a source of love and emotional security, but also, quite pragmatically, as mankind's most efficient social welfare system. Liberals should always retain their strong belief in the fundamental force of the market. That does not mean that the market always functions smoothly or that it is not open to abuse."

And something from Mr Howard about a new great, or even greater, depression now looms thanks to some of the most outrageous gambles and acts of mega-billion dollar fraud ever committed in the history of the world, perhaps?

No.

"The notion that markets need extensive reregulation is based on a false reading of what has happened to the world economy."

World economy? Do they still even call it that? What's left of it?

It's bad enough that Rudd & Friends dare to claim credit for what was achieved during the Liberal Years Of Peace And Prosperity And Magic Wonderfulness For All, but Howard is so desperate to scrabble for scraps of credibility and respect these days that he is positioning himself as having continued in the tradition of 1980s economic reformers, and former prime ministers, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating.

Heeeeerrrrrre's Johnny :

"In 1980 our nation needed five great reforms. We needed to deregulate our financial system, fundamentally change our taxation system, make our labour markets freer, reduce excessively high tariffs and rid the government of ownership of commercial enterprises that would be better run privately. By 2007 these five great reforms had been achieved."

Folding himself into the legacy of the Hawke and Keating Years must have come as something of a surprise for the Liberal desperates gathered to hear Howard speak yesterday.

Well, gathered to hear Malcolm Turnbull speak, suffering through Howard, stifling snores and groans as they collectively wondered when this loser was going to get the fuck off the stage so Turnbull could wake up himself and get on with leading the Liberal Party into whatever hell awaits them next.

END OF PART ONE

Above, The Herald Sun takes a photoshop shot at imagining what actress Cate Blanchett would look like if she were to take on the role of Pauline Hanson in a planned movie of her life :

Melbourne filmmakers Leanne Tonkes and Steve Kearney believe Australia's most radiant leading lady would be perfect to play the One Nation founder in their Pauline Hanson biopic.

AFI award-winning screenwriter and playwright Stephen Sewell is on board. So is director Anna Broinowksi, best known for her account of the Norma Khouri literary hoax, Forbidden Lie$.

The producers have talked to Blanchett. "She's very busy," Kearney admits. "It really depends if we deliver a script she likes."

"It's based on Hanson's life, starting from a fish and chip shop and ending on Dancing With the Stars."

They should include the very real conspiracy that unfolded between the Labor Party and The Liberals to destroy Hanson beginning in 1996, after John Howard lifted some of her most popular policies and made them his own. Neither the Labor or Liberal parties wanted to see a third party threatening their shared monopoly of federal politics, and for a while there, One Nation with Hanson at the helm looked to have a decent shot at shattering that monopoly. Sabotuer extraordinaire Tony Abbott went so far as to arrange pro-bono lawyers for those who really wanted to grind Pauline Hanson into the ground with lawsuit after lawsuit, a standard tactic for shutting up those with too much to say, and too many people listening.

"Slimy? Mudhole? My Home This Is"



This three year old pic of a familiar looking mud puddle is doing the e-mail rounds again. Tasmania might be a bit big, but Queensland looks pretty accurate right now.

Snopes hasn't decided whether or not this is photoshopped, but believes the image's appearance at the Army newspaper online lends it a level of credibility :

ADF personnel deployed to Sudan were given a unique reminder of their island home with a picture on a track. Rain left this mud map in potholes, bearing a striking resemblance to Australia.

A Dream Given, Then Stolen Away

After years of pathetic whining about when oh when will the Evil Pagan Lefty-Infested ABC finally give a whining Howard-era conservative his own show, Andrew Bolt receives the call he's been waiting so long for :

Just received call from ABC, asking me to produce/host my own show for $20m. Squealed "Yes!".

But life is cruel. So very, very cruel.

They giggled, and then hung up.

Andrew Bolt is taking his obsession with Peter Costello beyond mere infatuation :

"Now I've started photoshopping myself into Costello's wedding photos. How good do I like in white? Very.

"Peter says I would look good with a moustache. Spent 30 mins in front of mirror with various fake moustaches. Looked quite good."

"Peter Costello dropped by for lunch. On the way out he touched me on the small of my back. It was electric."

"I keep finding myself scrawling Mr. Andrew Costello all over my notes. What is wrong with me?"

This is all taking place at Twitter. But why won't Andrew Bolt share his sweet emotions with his blog readers at the Herald Sun? What is he afraid of? People will mock him for confessing his man love for Peter Costello, but I think it's quite touching.

UPDATE : I'm shocked, stunned, shocked and stunned, that I've fallen for a fake Twitter. The Andrew Bolt I've quoted above, mewing like a schoolgirl in love, is apparently not the real Andrew Bolt, AKA The Professional Idiot.

Gary Kemble, the big spoilsport, at ABC Online, reveals all :

Twitter has taken off in Australia in recent weeks, aided by mainstream media focus and the Victorian bushfires, drawing in a whole new audience for enterprising tweeps who snapped up the names of some well-known Aussies.

Following in the footsteps of fake Henry Rollins, fake William Shatner and fake Megan Fox comes fake Andrew Bolt, obsessing over former treasurer Peter Costello.

Sydney Morning Herald columnist Miranda Devine also cops some heat, with her Twitter alter ego detailing a "blazing row" with ABC journo Leigh Sales at an upmarket Sydney eatery.

"Claimed my use of 'holocaust' in today's piece was inapropriate. Offered her my dictionary," the fake Miranda Devine writes.

It's not yet clear if the fake tweeps will be allowed to continue as they are.

Guidelines covering the use of Twitter state: "You may not impersonate others through the Twitter service in a manner that does or is intended to mislead, confuse, or deceive others."

Bummer.

It was fun while it lasted.

We've Already Moved On

By Darryl Mason

Did the media 9/11 the Victoria Fires to death?

Have we had about as much as we can take of survivor stories and hearing about the tragic loss suffered by so many fellow Australians?

If you read one more opinion piece about "back burning" and "fuel loads" will you mutter "Fuck those hillbillies, they wanted to live in the bush, I'm sick of hearing about this shit" like a middle-aged man did at my local 7/11 as he flicked through a Daily Telegraph while queuing, drawing nods and shrugs, but no outrage, from others also waiting in line?

Will you be watching the live cross to Sunday's memorial service, or 'The Day Of National Mourning' as it's also known, or does that pile of unwatched DVDs seem more than a little tempting?

There are still plenty of interesting, and shocking, stories flowing from the aftermath of the Victoria Fires, but outside of news about a fireman who fell victim to a 'widow maker' and another about Google Earth's problems with government bureacracy when it tried to map the fires live, all stories related to the Victoria Fires just aren't rating any more, at all, on the Top Stories lists of our major mainstream online news sites.

It's back to business as usual for millions of Australians who get their news online, with celebrity shit, crocodiles, diet, tech and sex stories proving to be as popular as they always were, and will no doubt continue to be.












And from ABC News Online :

How Does A Chicken Consent To Sex?

According to "a leading Queensland biologist", innocent chickens are being "raped" by bush turkeys, who are growing in number and are taking advantage of the locals :

"Bluntly, that's a form of rape," he said.

"Especially black chickens....(bush turkeys) seem to think 'oh well, these look close enough' and they'll mate with them."

It's a brutal world out there.

It's Easier Than You Think



But what is 'Sydney' talking about over there? Rocks, Evil Pagan Lefty Commo Nazi Greenies, Hamas children's TV hosts, flavoured milk, Al Gore Is Fat, American radio host Rush Limbaugh and some cricket commentator who uses the word "must" a lot.

Now that Murdoch media bloggers will soon have to rely on blog revenue to fill the money gap left by the boss's "across the board" staff and wage cuts, Blair will need all the promotion he can get, even if it qualifies as false advertising.

UPDATE : The Great Al Gore Global Warming Conspiracy Collective is at war against The Deniers and has hacked into Blair's blog (obviously I can't ignore it) and is gremlinising comments, to accidentally amusing effect :

When I moved house recently I lost my treasured paper clip. The one special paperclip, that clipped together many of my favourite peices of paper. I was devastated.

bondo of Melbourne (reply)
18 Feb 09 (06:20pm)

Simultaneous Lover replied to bondo
Wed 18 Feb 09 (10:46pm)

Yes, I have been a cheater. Sorry to admit it, but before I found the right girl to settle down with, I dated 3 simultaneously. It’s expensive and time consuming.

Surreal. Apparently, comments posted in reply to comments on other News Limited blogs are popping up randomly wherever they feel like at Blair's. So a riveting discussion about pens, paperclips and the Holocaust at Blair's is suddenly interrupted by comments meant to appear on some other blog entirely where the conversation is centred around the TV show WifeSwap.

It's excellently random and chaotic, and should be kept. Much more entertaining.

Tragedy Porn, Did It Do It For You?

By Darryl Mason

The Professional Idiot thinks he has found a potential comment volcano in the ugly truths that Ross Gittins writes about here. The Professional Idiot takes a couple of reasonable arguments that Gittens raises - for example, that the media coverage of the Victorian bushfires has been hyperbolic and Spielbergian in its gratuitously obvious manipulation of our emotions - and claims that those wanting to help out the victims must be "sick". Gittins says no such thing. It's a concoction of The Professional Idiot's poisoned mind.

The Professional Idiot wants his readers to go all out in hammering Gittens - "Please don’t restrain your criticism of Gittins," he goads, "Any pity you may feel for him is just a sign of your depravity" - but it completely backfires, with about 80% of commenters agreeing that Gittins is pretty much exactly right when he says that the media focus on the Victorian bushfires (to the exclusion of other tragedies and daily tales of loss and hardship) bordered on pornographic, and that while Australians are lining up to help out the survivors this time, they are mostly missing in action when, say, The Red Cross, appeals for blood donors at any other time during the average year.

Here's the two snippets The Professional Idiot provides to provoke his readers :

The outpouring of public concern over the terrible Victorian bushfires, the rush to give blood, the huge amount of donations, the efforts of governments to do all they can to help, the way business has swung behind the appeal for assistance - it makes you proud to be an Aussie.

Is that how you feel? I don’t. I find it all strangely disturbing and distasteful.

And it's served to strengthen my suspicion that the community's reaction to natural disasters is exploitative, voyeuristic, unfair, self-gratifying and even pathological.

Selective quoting at its best. And strange, too, seeing as The Professional Idiot usually fills his blog with hundreds and hundreds of words written by others. Not this time. Gittins nails so many extremely valid points about the media and public reaction to the undeniably horrific human tragedy of the Victorian Fires 2009 (Part One) that The Professional Idiot must be seething with jealousy. Gittins already controversial piece makes most of TPI's recent efforts at trying to Capture The Emotion of the tragedy seem so much trivial fluff. It must be doubly grating for The Professional Idiot that so many of his readers so overwhelmingly agree with Gittins.

Here's some of the hassh reality from Gittins that The Professional Idiot chose to ignore because he is exactly the kind of Tabloid Media that Ross Gittins so relentlessly hammers and holds in contempt (excerpts) :

...media coverage of this (disaster has) gone way over the top. And it's served to strengthen my suspicion that the community's reaction to natural disasters is exploitative, voyeuristic, unfair, self-gratifying and even pathological.

Natural disasters are a time when emotions and appearances reign supreme and rational thought goes overboard. Let a victim corner a politician on talkback radio and he'll agree to almost anything. The media devote such huge resources of space and airtime to covering natural disasters for an obvious reason: they believe it will increase their circulations and ratings.

But don't blame it all on the media. They do what they do because they know it's what their audience wants.

I've never liked having my emotions revved up by the media, but it's clear most people do. They want the media to give their feelings of sympathy, sorrow and grief a good workout.

The unspeakable truth is that most people enjoy a good natural disaster. We're fascinated by the misfortune of others. It's a form of entertainment, just as people find weepies and horror movies entertaining. As part of this, audiences want as much personal, intimate detail about the victims' trauma as possible, and the media deliver.

I suspect we use natural disasters to add interest and excitement to our humdrum lives. Modern city life leaves us with weaker connections to our extended families and neighbours, so whereas once we could let our emotions loose on the misadventures of people we knew, now we need the mass media to provide our emotional exercise.

Our preoccupation lasts a week or two before the media senses our waning interest and turns away, waiting for the next natural disaster to get excited about.

Our emotion-driven caring is highly selective. People with problems get wonderful treatment provided their problems make good TV footage and for the 15 minutes they're in the media spotlight. People with chronic (old-hat), unphotogenic problems get ignored.

Media Watch examined the Tragedy Porn of the Australian media last night, and how some journalists stomped their way through crime scenes, homes to which owners had been denied access. The transcript is here.

You only have to look at the Top Stories listings at our online mainstream media to see that our interest in the victims of the Victorian Fires is already waning.

Then again, how much emotion can anybody be expected to commit to such a tragedy? Life goes on, everybody's got their own problems to deal with, and the media goes back to hunting, and waiting, for the next moment of National Caring that reminds us, indeed, how much we really do care. Or want to care.

Or want to feel like we are caring.

It's hard to imagine that anything could happen that will let loose again such an outpouring of National Caring, but it will.

What's next? A massive train wreck? An earthquake sinking half of Sydney's CBD? A tsunami wiping out dozens of villages along our endless coastline? A cyclone carrying away most of Cairns?

And what will the reaction be the next time a firestorm wipes out an Australian town or three? Will we be more sympathetic, or less? Will there be a guilty reaction from feeling, 'Been there, done that'?

Will another holocaust seem more horrific or less, if the bodycount is only 50 instead of more than 200?

Police Do Not Have The Right To Immediately Search Your Mobile Phone, Blackberry Or Video Camera

This story is a few weeks old, but it's worth repeating, again and again:

A man detained and threatened with arrest under the Terrorism Act for filming police on his mobile phone says police abused their powers.

Nick Holmes a Court, CEO of web-based media companies BuzzNumbers and ShiftedPixels, was walking to his home near Kings Cross in Sydney about 10pm on December 19.

He said police forcibly took his BlackBerry phone and threatened him with arrest both under the Australian Anti-Terrorism Act and for allegedly disobeying a police directive.

Mr Holmes a Court said he had started filming what looked like a search after he noticed a group of police walking down his street.

"I went to one guy and asked what was going on but he told me to move along, and if I didn't they'd be able to arrest me," he said.

"So I moved down the street a few hundred metres to where my apartment was, pulled out my phone and started filming."

Mr Holmes a Court said he had stopped filming before two of the police officers approached, demanding he surrender his BlackBerry mobile phone and telling him he had committed a crime if he had recorded them.

"It was in my hand, and they were saying, 'Give me your phone, give me your phone,' but I just kept repeating, 'I do not consent to a search of my phone'," Mr Holmes a Court said.

"It was pulled out of my hand - it wasn't me handing it over to her - and now I've got this girl looking through my phone and all my content - my contacts, photos, text messages and emails."

Mr Holmes a Court said he repeatedly complained to the police while they tampered with his phone, but was told to "shut up".

Queensland Council for Civil Liberties president Michael Cope said police did not have the authority to confiscate cameras or stop people from taking pictures of them performing their duties.

"It's not appropriate for the police to be stopping people taking pictures of them," Mr Pope said.

"They've got no power to do that, none whatsoever, and they've got no power to confiscate cameras.

"Why should they be fighting being scrutinised?"

Maybe they just wanted to see what the quality of the footage was like, maybe they thought they could use it in one of the many reality TV shows police now control, and profit from :

The insatiable demand for reality-TV is proving to be a boom for NSW Police with the force signing an increasing number of exclusive deals with "true crime" style shows.

The force has signed contracts with at least four highly-rated shows, granting film crews exclusive access behind the crime scene tape in "user-pays" arrangements.

In return for signing confidentiality agreements and allowing NSW Police to vet their final products, reality-TV crews are ushered in by police film supervisors to crime scenes while other media are being kept back.

Earlier this year, the NSW Police Force encrypted their police scanners, which means the media is not informed of many major crimes, such as murders, until a media release is issued the following day.

Unless the media happens to have an exclusive 'reality TV' deal with the police, then their on the scene program makers can report back to the news desk what sort of shit has just gone down.

Take Your Spew And Wee Elsewhere

Inner-city Melbourne has become one big public toilet, and vomitorium, according to local councils. They want maggoted youth to stop pissing and puking in the street. How to get the message across? 'Shock' ads, of course.

Be warned, the first ad is particularly chunky :

Crack A Joke, Break The Misery

I was wondering when we were going to see the return of the black-as Australian sense of humour amongst all the seriousness and tragedy of the Victorian fires. It sounds like it's back :

"The Catholic Church has burnt down, the United Church has burnt down, and I see the Buddhist temple is still standing," one survivor said.

"It sort of makes you realise who might have the real God. I think I'll change religion."

One woman says that when she took a TV crew to her house, they began walking over the rubble and she called out to them, "No, through here please," and proceeded to pick up what was left of the front door handle.

Great story.