Right, Now I Get It

So I go off the grid for more than two days - no phone, no internet connnection, no blogging - and I come back to find that visitors to this blog rose by about 10% on average, and page views were up nearly 20%. So I don't post anything new for two days, but visitors to The Orstrahyun increase.

So the less I post, the more people will visit?

I can kind of get behind that logic. Kind of.

Abandoned Single Mother Struggles To Stop Wild Kids Trashing The House

A weird, but quite good, speech was prepared for Richard Nixon in case the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon failed, back in July 1969. Had the astronauts become Moon Marooned, Nixon would have been the first, and probably only, American president to openly discuss the trippy concept that 'Mother Earth' can go into mourning at the deaths of humans who dared to leave her atmosphere.

Which raises the question :

If Earth is the Mother, where the hell is the dad?

And is he paying child support?

Everybody's Trying to Cash In On Global Warming, Even My Boss

By Darryl Mason

Under the headline, No Backers For Rudd's Reckless Plan, The Professional Idiot promotes the claim that climate change minister, Penny Wong, has no backing at all for the emissions trading system :

Here’s the real growing consensus among the public - that global warming theory is wildly exaggerated.

The Professional Idiot has somehow managed to forget that there is one very obvious backer of the Rudd government's emissions trading scheme, and its inevitable bigger family of global taxes, and credits, based on carbon usage, and that would be his own Earth Hour loving boss, Rupert Murdoch.

Rupert "Climage Change Poses Clear, Catastrophic Threats" Murdoch has put almost his entire worldwide news empire (including The Professional Idiot's Herald Sun) on a hardcore carbon diet, in the hope that when the carbon trading becomes reality, he'll be able to cash in. Just like the Rothchilds.

Hilariously, that big banner ad promoting the fact that News Limited, and the Herald Sun, are true believers in global warming, and reducing carbon emissions, appears yet again across the top of The Professional Idiot's story about how the Rudd government has little support for its emmissions trading plan.



(click to enlarge)

And in a bizarre admission for a journalist, hitting his sixth decade, The Professional Idiot reveals he has never seen the movie Network, hands down one of the most important films on the business of journalism ever made.

Quoting this fantastic speech by playwright Paddy Chayefsky, from a climactic scene in Network, was very popular with allegedly crazed, president hating, America despising Lefties during the Bush II regime. Now, of course, the "I'm Mad As Hell And I'm Not Going To Take It Anymore!" mantra is rapidly being adopted by conservatives for the Age of Obama, only eleven weeks into the new presidency. Same words, same message, same reality, different presidents :

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be!

We all know things are bad -- worse than bad -- they're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone."

Well, I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

All I know is that first, you've got to get mad. You've gotta say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!" So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!"

The Daily Telegraph's Tim Blair also suddenly notices something that has been going on in the United States for years, that he somehow managed to not notice at all during his beloved Bush II
reign :

"The police state continues to grow..."

The big banner Corporate Green ads from the boss, proclaiming that global warming is so real News Limited is frantically trying to reduce its carbon emissions, keeps showing up on Blair's blog, too, mostly when he's running stories proclaiming that global warming is a farce, a con, a delusion, bogus and that carbon trading will spell doom for all.

And still nothing from Blair on how disgusted he is that global warming propaganda is being jammed into News Corporation TV shows aimed at children.

When Tim Flannery and Bob Brown scare children with global warming hysteria, it's something evil, but when Tim Blair's boss does it, hey, it's just business.

"Who's The President Of Austria Again?"

Now this, this is a snub. In South Park, John Howard is still prime minister of Australia :



What a waste. South Park could have so much fun with Kevin Rudd :

"John Howard and Vladimir Putin are depicted as still being the leaders of Australia and Russia, respectively, although Howard was defeated in his re-election bid and Putin stepped down as president of Russia, becoming prime minister, before the episode aired," the entry says.

The episode has not yet been broadcast in Australia.

It doesn't matter whether the episode has been 'broadcast' in Australia or not, tens of thousands of Australians have already downloaded the torrent of this episode from The Pirate Bay or other file sharing sites. If SBS isn't prepared to air these new episodes on the same day as American viewers get them, they've only got themselves to blame for decreased ratings.

The Promotion Only Dead Tree Edition

This is one of the best, recent, examples of the changing times, and fates, of newspapers in Australia. A newspaper is being printed solely to act as promotion for an online news site :

In a move which the company is describing as a “one-off promotion”, it will distribute a free 24-page tabloid under the brisbanetimes.com.au and WAtoday.com.au mastheads. Each have 15,000 print runs and are being distributed at key points in Brisbane and Perth.

His First Word Was "Change"

With the introduction of MP3 Players For Pregnant Women, an important question needs to be asked :

When is it too soon to start in pumping Obama speeches, around the clock, through those belly-attached speakers?

And what happens if the mother prefers the music of Slayer and Napalm Death to Brahms and Beethoven?

More Here

Dozens Of Police Harass Old Hippies, Young Stoners For Minimal Result

By Darryl Mason

At least 25 police and four sniffer dogs were used to seize "a small amount" of cannabis from punters hanging around the Enmore Theatre for a Sydney gig last week by Cheech & Chong.

That's more than $70,000 of police resources to seize what was probably less than a half ounce of cannabis, by searching some 50 people and delaying the start of the show :

A New South Wales Police spokeswoman confirmed the drug operation was conducted in an area that included a nearby railway station and licensed premises near the theatre.

...six people were caught in possession of small amounts of cannabis.

The six were issued with caution notices. They were not fined nor charged.

Police like searching stoners. They rarely put up a fight, the intense paranoidia in those they pat down is good for giggles with other cops later, and stoners all but never pull knives or guns or start screaming and spitting in their faces.

Two dozen cops, four drug dogs? Thank Christ, crime has dropped in Sydney to the point where police have nothing better to do than to go searching for small amounts of cannabis amongst Cheech & Chong fans in Newtown and Enmore bars. The most surprising result would be if they found nothing at all.

Anyway, what Cheech & Chong fan would go out in public carrying large amounts of cannabis, or any other drug for that matter? If they learned anything from C & C albums and movies, it's do your drugs before you go out.

A grumbly, but also excellent, four word review of the Cheech & Chong show from The Australian :

Their material is appalling....

That's why the audience made so much noise, and laughed so loud. Cheech & Chong should add that line on their tour poster.

More from The Australian :

Sure, I remember when a poster of a larger-than-life spliff was revolutionary and fun. But now a new young audience hoots and sings along, and takes pictures of each other in front of the tour logo, and queues at the end to buy the merchandise. What is going on here?

They think Cheech & Chong are funny? They understand it's a joke? They know the difference between bitterly dreamed-out, rapidly aging ex-hippie boomers and two very successful stoners who sold millions of albums and crafted some of the most successful comedy movies in history?

Should these young Cheech & Chong fans be out binge-drinking instead of sitting in a theatre watching two brilliant satirists?

The people issued with caution notices for carrying small amounts of cannabis should keep them as mementos. They might be worth something one day, on eBay at least, when cannabis prohibitions joins all the rest of the stupid, wasteful, tragic and ultimately rejected ideas of the 20th century.

Oh Really, You Think You've Tried Everything?

It makes me damn proud to know that Australians are out there in the world coming up with such incredibly wild shit like this :

I had heard of a tour offered by Bigfoot Hostel, which Darryn Webb, a tour guide from Australia, founded in 2005, when he was developing the sport on Cerro Negro.

He’d grown up sandboarding in Queensland, and once he visited the volcano (in Nicaragua) he realized its boarding potential. Here was a dunelike slope, only bigger and blacker, and with the added thrill of a potential eruption.

After a lot of trial and error with sledding vessels — he tried boogie boards, mattresses and even a minibar fridge — he settled on plywood reinforced with metal and augmented with Formica under the seat.

He rode a mini-bar fridge down the side of a live volcano and then came up with a successful tourism business.

Now that's Orstrahyun.

Still Not Available

By Darryl Mason

The Professional Idiot has a bit of a whiny squirt here about bookshop owners, who clearly think he's an arsehole, refusing to stock a copy of his 2006 book that his publishers apparently refuse to reprint. A reader writes to tell him of his long, arduous search for The Professional Idiot's collection of old columns, through second hand book shops in Melbourne, Cooper Pedy, Adelaide, Brisbane, coming face to face with shockingly sarcastic second hand bookshop owners (are there any other kind?) who think The Professional Idiot is. quote, "a rabid right wing demon!!". Yeah, that sounds realistic. It was only when this reader returned home to France that it occurred to him to try and buy The Professional Idiot's old book online.

The Professional Idiot doesn't appear to know that if his book publisher refuses to print more copies, he can, himself, order a reprint of his old book, say a thousand copies, for only a chunk of what it would cost to take a family holiday in Italy, and he can sell his own book through his "one million hits a month" blog direct to his brethren, without having to worry about rotten old sarcastic second hand bookshop owners supplying "ideological" instant book reviews, through guffaws of laughter, to the occasional customer interested enough to ask for a copy.

Or, seeing how the book is a collection of old columns from the Herald Sun anyway, The Professional Idiot could simply just republish the intro and contents of his book on his blog, on a separate dedicated page, for free, for all readers, so they don't have to face the crushing horror of sarcastic second hand bookshop owners anymore.

The Professional Idiot takes a moment to lay out the foundation stones for a possible Anti-Conservative Big Lefty BookShop Conspiracy blog post franchise :

I’ve published this not to fluff my own feathers, but to further illustrate the stultifying group-think of the “intelligentsia”, and the institutional hurdles facing anyone who might challenge its favored myths and prejudices. Smug complacency rules too often, I’m afraid.

People running second-hand bookshops are part of the "intelligentsia"? Really?

I helped run a second-hand bookshop once, so maybe I should start claiming that "I have now retired from the intelligentsia".

And I want that t-shirt : Smug Complacency Rules.

It sure does.

In the below video, The Professional Idiot would, by his reckoning, be represented by the mud farmers, while the Institutional Group Think Anti-Conservative Second Hand BookShop Intelligentsia is King Arthur. Help, Help, I'm Being Repressed! :



UPDATE : A respected polling analyst has had enough of The Professional Idiot's mutilating of statistical data and announces that The Professional Idiot should be sodomised with a calculator.

"Yeah, You Should Try Nationalising Some Oil Companies, It's Fun"

Of course you know all about the Terrorist Fist Jab.

But did you notice the Socialist Thumb Squeeze between Obama and Hugo Chavez?

Definitely one of the funniest scenes in an Australian movie, just about ever. David Wenham in Gettin' Square :

Irish comedian and surly bookshop owner, Dylan Moran, on Australia and tall poppy syndrome :

"This...is a real thing isn't it, still? That's a really big part of the culture, that if anybody seems to be getting above themselves, you cut them down to size really quick. It's very similar in Ireland. The old saying there was that it was the only place in the world where somebody would spend 20 minutes crossing a crowded room to come over and tell you you were a cunt."

Art by Ron Cobb.

Stories You Might Have Missed

Some recent stories of mine from Your New Reality, for those who don't go reading over there :

No More Paul Hogans Or Kevin "Bloody" Wilsons? Australian Judge Rules Against The Freedom To Insult And Offend

Infant-Led Overthrow Of United States Looms : Obama Bows To Saudi Royalty.....And Children!

The Last Time 3D Cinema Can Save The Movie Industry

Obama Promises Prosperity By Smashing The Insane Greed Of The 20th Century's Financial Elite

SNAKE!

Even the most absurd, but curiously entertaining, of movie plots have a weird tendency to eventually come true :

Qantas had to take a plane out of service when baby snakes went missing from a package being carried in the cargo hold earlier this week.

Twelve baby pythons were in the cargo of a flight from Alice Springs to Melbourne on Tuesday, but on arrival only eight were left.

Fun python fact :

"Our people called in a reptile expert and there was a suggestion that some of the baby pythons had eaten the other pythons because apparently it is not uncommon for baby pythons to eat each other," he said.

That goes right up there with the story an NT local told me about how crocodiles in the East Alligator River will lay extra eggs when food supplies are low, so they have fresh crocodile to eat later.

Comment Mining, Another Rich Seam Found

The Professional Idiot readies his brethren to fight back against the coming Evil Pagan Green Nazi Lefty Commo Chairman RuddObama Socialist censorship regime. Or something :



Yes. You may get banned or censored for trying to point out some ugly truths about what he is attempting, but mostly failing, to do to Australian society.

UPDATE : The Professional Idiot wants his readers to believe that lefty politically correct censorship will censor him, or them. But here's someone who has actually been effectively censored and told by a court that the notion of freedom of speech does not cover his beliefs, as bizarre and repulsive as they may be to most, and he now faces jail for refusing to be silenced :

"The courts have held, but his conduct shows he does not accept that the freedom of speech citizens of this country enjoy does not include the freedom to publish material calculated to offend, insult or humiliate or intimidate people because of their race, colour or national or ethnic origin. It is conduct that amounts to criminal contempt."

Federal Judge Rules Against The Freedom To Insult And Offend

More Syndication, Less Investigation

The Australian newspaper announces that boss Rupert Murdoch is preparing to cull hundreds of journalists across his media empire.

Well, they didn't announce that, but they did announce this, which is pretty much the same thing :

News Corporation has created a new unit to share content and resources across the vast media empire.

"Our focus moving forward is twofold: to enable our digital businesses to flourish as individual entities and to bolster the digital strategies of our core media properties by treating them as central to, and not separate from, the enterprise," Murdoch said.

"The creation of a new unit designed to share valuable news content and harness the power of News Corporation's vast editorial resources is vital to our success as a global media entity."

This is not a news story. This is a Murdoch mission control press release. Less journalists will be generating more content which will be shared more widely across Murdoch media entities worldwide. More Australian Murdoch journalists will be marched away from their desks by security guards in the next few months. But you probably won't read about that in The Australian.

Now He's Made It



Academy Awards? Pfft. AFI Awards? Yawn.

All actors know they've never really made it, never really cracked the mass consciousness, until they've been turned into a toy. Not a boy toy, a real toy, something that kids can get their hands on, throw around and recreate scenes from the toy-worthy movie they temporarily worship, until they get bored and burn it to a molten pool on the back path with half a can of petrol.

Sam Worthington has now joined that rarest club of Australian actors.



In Terminator Salvation, Worthington plays a robot who doesn't know he's a robot until he looks down and sees his own metal guts hanging out. That kind of news would make no-one happy, least of all an emotional robot who was convinced he was human. He joins the anti-robot resistance. He fights giant robot arms.



And not just a toy, Worthington has also been dealt the very American honour of becoming a Halloween mask.


It's a massive year for Worthington, he's also got James Cameron's Avatar coming up in December. Worthington in 3-D, with Sigourney Weaver.

If you haven't already seen them, Worthington starred in two pretty damned good Australian crime movies, back in 2002 and 2003 - Getting Square and Dirty Deeds. Both are well worth checking out.

(Source for the images here)

Sophie The Wonder Dog Goes International



The absolutely joyful story of Australia's Castaway Dog is going international, with write-ups in media across the US, China, England, everywhere.

The Daily Mail in the UK gives Sophie's survivor story a big run and the readers are ecstatic. Over and over again the commenters say "What a happy story!" "What a wonderful story!" "A story with a happy ending for a change."

It Sure Is :

When Jan Griffith's beloved dog, Sophie Tucker fell overboard from her family's yacht she feared her pet had drowned.

But Sophie Tucker, a grey and black cattle dog, wasn't going to give up that easily.

The determined pet swam six miles through ferocious shark-infested seas to an island, where she survived for more than four months by hunting wild goats for food.

'I thought I'd never see her again, but she's proved to be a dog who can really look after herself,' said Miss Griffith.

A handful of people living on the island reported seeing a dog running around, but assumed it was a feral animal.

When the bodies of several young goats were found, locals contacted wildlife rangers and word of a dog on the island reached the ears of Miss Griffith and her family.

'We wondered whether it could be Sophie Tucker but thought 'No way'.

'They waited at the marina as the rangers' boat came in - and there in the cage was a grey and black dog.

'We called her name and she went crazy - whimpering and banging on the cage, so they let her out and she ran over to us and almost knocked us over with excitement,' Miss Griffiths said.

'She's settled in well back at home now. I think she's appreciating the air conditioning.'

Island locals are amazed that Sophie managed to survive the big swim through waters infested with sharks. Here's something I didn't know :

'The smell of a wet dog is irresistible to a shark,' said a fisherman.

Sophie's story has the making of a great Australian children's movie. Let's hope someone here moves quick to get this fantastic tale onto cinema screens before an executive at Disney changes the dog's name to Ralphie and shifts the action to an Hawaiian island.

Blatant Anti-Tinkerism

St Alban's, in the McDonald Valley, was still a two to three day, spine-jarring, bone-rattling Cobb & Co coach journey from Sydney when the Settlers Arms Inn, near the banks of the McDonald River, was heaving with travelers in the mid-1800s. But not just anybody could stay at such prestigious digs, as this reproduction of an original sign in the bar from that era makes clear :



Four pence a night for Bed
Six pence with Supper
No more than five to sleep in one bed
No Boots to be worn in bed
Organ Grinders to sleep in the Wash house
No dogs allowed upstairs
No Beer allowed in the Kitchen
No Razor Grinders or Tinkers taken in

Only five to a bed?

Outside of a local's explanation, "Tinkers would steal anything not bolted down," I don't have any valuable information to hand as to why Organ Grinders were thought only slightly more worthy of the most basic of accommodations than Tinkers or Razor Grinders, who were utterly banished.

The dark, atmospheric Settlers Arms today :



The sandstone blocks used to build the inn were hacked out, and usually transported, by convict slave labour. Breaking tools in the shaping of the sandstone could bring savage floggings, or death. Horses were more valuable than men, Aborigines were less valued than dogs. The McDonald Valley is one of the most beautiful and untouristed areas of New South Wales, with an extraordinary history soaked in extreme violence, incredible pioneering spirit, hardship, emancipation and back breaking work.

The St Alban's graveyard, like the inn, is small, but rich with history. The graves of the original white settlers dating back to the 1820s still stand, others older and forgotten decay into the ever creeping foliage.





Some local history, from the late 1700s into the early 1800s :

During this time the relations between the indigenous aboriginal population in the area was reasonably harmonious, the area being populated by the Dharug and Barkinung people who called the river Deerubbin.

The natives treated the newcomers as welcome guests, teaching bush skills and assisting in the planting of crops, they did not realize that the whites intended to stay and claim ownership of the land. Property ownership was completely alien to the Aboriginal; one cared for the land, but did not own it any more than one could own the sky overhead or the air one breathed.

The convicts and their keepers were the dregs of English society and were a hard and ruthless bunch and unfortunately conflicts soon developed as the Aborigines were denied access to many of their traditional areas, with Yam beds destroyed as wheat and corn were planted on the river flats and the banks denied to them for fishing, their traditional foods.

There are recorded cases of Aborigines providing labor on farms in exchange for a share of the crop and then massacred rather than given their share. They, in turn retaliated by setting fire to the crops just as harvesting was due. Regulations were introduced prohibiting Aborigines entry to established farm areas again denying them their food supply.

More Here

Photos by Darryl Mason