An open thread where, at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
[Except federal election stuff which should go here.]
75 Responses to “Saturday Salon”
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Frist. And, you’re already dead.
Kim and Frist o’ th’ North Star:
Probably Second.
41st anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan …. gee, doesn’t time fly.
Seconded
Forth!
gah!
30th anniversary of Elvis passing away. Have to confess to getting a bit teary in the car hearing that Lisa-Marie has done duet with a film clip of him of “Don’t Cry Daddy”.
And in honour of this occasion, here is a musical tribute inspired by the political desicion to conscript Elvis Style – Normie Rowe
This has been my earworm all week.
(shit these youtube teenage commenters are charming innit)
But … Church and Winehouse??
My incongruometer just broke.
And here is the clip
Nice work Frank.
Celebrity death match question – Elvis Presley or Normie Rowe?
Bugger the link didn’t work
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3__s39V3mYE
(TRivia, this was written by JOhnny Young – yes he of YTT Imfamy, and produced by Molly Meldrum.
Not quite, but the story goes that Normiw was the only person conscripted with his date of Birth – similar to the way the US Army Conscripted Elvis, but there was no war for Elvis to fight in.
and with this
there’s a lot for conspiracy theorists and alternative history theorists to mull(et) over.
Just watched the Presleys. Fark. Who’s Daddy’s girl then?
I saw Normie Rowe playing Jean Valjean in Les Miserables here a year or two ago and he was really good. Not as good as the day he punched out Ron Casey (?) on national TV, but.
Speaking of Amy Winehouse.
The 23-year-old, whose drinking habits have been well documented in British newspapers, has pulled out of this weekend’s V Festival, one of Britain’s biggest, spokeswoman Tracey Miller said.
Winehouse, named best British female solo artist at the Brit Awards in February, will also miss France’s Rock en Seine festival, where she was scheduled to perform on Thursday.
“Amy Winehouse is putting all her touring commitments for this month on hold until further notice in order to address her health issues,” Miller said in a statement.
“Amy will now not be performing at this weekend’s V Festival in Chelmsford and Staffordshire. Her family has requested that the media respect Amy’s privacy at this time.”
Afyer that Beat IT Clip, I’m not surprised
Is anyone else as pissed off as me about Skype’s issues in recent days?
Everyone:
The ripples spread wider ….. Did the ancient concept of Trespass get flushed down the toilet with the passage of the “Intervention” bills by the senate yesterday?
Was wondering why my Skye was going up and down like a prositute during the Kalgoorlie Racing Round
I thought it was either the program or Bigpiddle, but now know it’s beyond that.
Freelance journalists getting screwed, as per usual
http://www.alliance.org.au/fairfaxpetition.html
Was anyone apart from the tabloids?
Who is Amy Winehouse?
Good name though…
PC – just looked for a clip of that bit of biffo, on youtube….not there. (just to confirm my memory of geraldine doogue being the other unlikely guest!?)
i only ever watched midday a couple of times, and i managed to witness that, and also when chopper rang up & reminded alan jones about the dunny incident in london….haven’t seen the footage of that again, unlike the ron casey/normie rowe fight…
i paid the tv gods with my youf – for those two midday moments.
thx frank…..poor lisa marie, she might have had more talent if ann-margaret was her mother, rather than priscilla…..she’s pretty good, but not that good.
From elsewhere on the intertubes: I’m liking this tagline to a comment id:
http://comments.deviantart.com/4/3014593/518924596
And how groovy are the artist’s comments on this pic?
Z o m b i e G i r l by ~tsukumogami on deviantART
Two comments in closing:
1. Jung was well known for inappropriate relationships under the cover of a professional doctor/patient situation. Just ask Sabina Spielrein.
2. I have bad phantom leg pain tonight.
Sleep well!
xx
Graham Bell said:
Yep, Howard made Brough a pair of boots for stompin’. He’s wearin’ them in real quick.
And to think King John has the gall to accuse Beattie of using “jackboot” methods.
I see that footloose hellspawned dominatrix Kimberalla the Privateer CEO has ruthlessly shut down the criminalogy thread just as I was getting geared up to post this there:
-
Dunno about the rest of you, but I’m having a bit of a hard time reconciling the eternally tantalised and tortured tango of Eros and Thantos along the obsidian razor blade of lust, danger, passion and le morte just with the reality of fluoro-lit seminar rooms, overdue assignments and flimsy plastic chairs filled by dippy suburban teens and twenties with mummy and daddy complexes getting played by older blokes in badly cut leather or well cut tweed jackets with a good line in party chat. From my own dalliance in higher education I saw no Svengalis that could offer any really suave, sexy and serious enlightment and far too many Trilbys that would have remained life deaf even with a soul transplant.
So while I agree with Jinmaro and Rob’s overall point about true Eros being charged with a transgressive energy, I doubt you’re gonna find that in the ever so predictable, humdrum and sordid world of sleazy academics cracking onto their students.
-
Back off topic.
You call that an earworm Helen?
Well then, stand back woman while I unlease The Green Slime.
Really? I get that too sometimes in the all missing fingertips on my left hand. Especially after a ragged day.
Whiskey seems to help. Lots of whiskey, mainly applied internally.
Here’s an amusing little link I discovered,
… but it seems the WorldWithinWWW that is Facebook only reveals its secrets to logged in facebookers, so for you who are FBrs, click’n'chuckle.
FBEULA: those FBrs who do indulge, don’t tell the unwashed, LP scout’s honour …. after all, it is a sight gag, even though it’s only text, and just knowing the content is beside the point, so keep shtum, OK?.
And will anyone LP FBr be brave enough to go boldly where no FBr has gone before? We’ll see, but not this little black duck, I’ve prolly said too much already.
Oh yeh….’mornin’ all, and without further ado…
http://www.facebook.com/friends.php?id=667807500
Hint: a url of that form, surprise surprise, displays a user’s list of friends, so who could it be that there’s a goodish chance their list of friends might amuse the LP weekend slumming crowd? It made me laugh anyway.
I’ll get out of your way now.
Oh I don’t know, I once spent a whole year taking one-to-one tutorials (appropriately, ‘Myth in Literature and Society’) with a former Coffin Cheater in a sort of broom cupboard in Geelong Prison. I dunno about Eros and Thanatos so much, but he once wrote a cracker of an essay for me about the nature of Bacchic frenzy.
dang, url obscured, it’s
http://www.facebook.com/friends.php?id=667807500
If you guess His_Name, from above hint, then his public profile is, well, public, at
http://www.facebook.com/p/His_Name/667807500
dang, how do you subvert this interface to display url verbosely?
And for those who were saddened by the appearance of the King in his daughter’s clip, here he is in earlier days. Check this out and ask yourself how different things might have been if only someone had thought to lob one well-placed hand grenade in Colonel Tom Parker’s direction at the crucial moment.
Nabs, I condemn that clip, but Boychild will thank you when he gets back from his sleepover and I play it to him.
Do I detect some resemblance to All Along the Watchtower? (Oh fuck, my incongruometer just broke again and I’d only just fixed it.)
There’s so much confusion,
I can’t get no relief
Aliens invade, drink my wine..
Now I’m off to disappear in a purple haze of domesticity.
She wasn’t to know that you were hatching a brilliant comment, Nabs, But I thought she did well in her own inimitable style.
The thread had been off-topic almost from the beginning IMHO. It started being about a play that seemed to be about the killing of Joe Cinque by Anu Singh and the issues arising therefrom especially in the light of Helen Garner’s treatment of it.
It morphed from there to being about The First Stone and Garner generally, and from there on to the (mainly sexual) nature of teacher-student relations in academic institutions, and thence perhaps to the nature of Eros. Even as such I thought the thread was pretty close to being played out.
I too had been planning a comment, on the original topic, but it was already clear that it would be a waste of time putting as the 250th comment on a derailed thread.
Now if someone wants to do a guest post on the nature of Eros, we could certainly have a look at it.
As a computer technology challenged person I thought I had made a great step forward in getting a gravatar to work. But I find it comes and goes. I don’t know whether it it’s visible to you. All I can see is a big “?”
Yesterday it was fine all day. Last night I turn my computer off and this morning it’s gone.
I’ve asked my LP colleagues and they haven’t helped. I suspect my antivirus program.
Frankly unless someone has a bright suggestion, for which I’d be grateful, I’ve got other ways I’d rather spend my time.
Hey everyone,
Out here in here in poor land I’m nursing a slight hangover. Damn that cheap wine. It is so cheap, I just have to drink it! Given that I’ve got nothing to say, stay well kids.
Latest Centrebet odds on the election
Labor $1.52
Coalition $2.55
implying a Labor probability of winning of 63%.
And Labor is at $1.50 to win Braddon, and is $1.90 to win all 5 Tasmanian seats, so the Mersey Hospital bribe affair appears to be not succeeding for Howard.
Spiros – please note that election speculation has its own thread now:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/08/15/election-speculation/
Pretty good, Nabakov. Obsidian razor blade is a great touch. The thread was worth it just for that.
That errant gravatar has just shown up. Honestly I didn’t do a thing! Does anyone else have this experience, or has Bill Gates’ mob specially selected me for persecution?
Brian,
Nah – its not Bill Gates. All computers are named Fred – Flamin (yes you can substitute that one) Ridiculous Electronic Device.
Anybody who covers MJ’s Beat It is too young to remember this video Kids these days.
Also you have one day left to subscribe to 3RRR’s Radiothon ‘007. Best radio station in the universe
And as she also said earlier, Than-A-tos, chaps.
Does obsidian give a closer shave, though?
PavCat – it was little Won Casey who punched out the fat fool Normie who had been pontificating, as per usual, on his heroic service in abusing gooks. He’s never had any shame, nor question, about his role in that obscene adventure. Nor did The Case but he’s..the Case, thick as…
I didnt’ realise Nabakov was a guitarist.
Re Weird Al, His band members go to great lengths asking the original musicians what gear they use so they can accurately reproduce it on the parody version.
Mick I was tempted to send Skype some money just so I could demand a refund
I guess my memory of it is completely arse-up then, eh. But he was (see above) conscripted, and he went, and since I wasn’t and didn’t, I’m not about to condemn anyone who was and did. I’ve got plenty of shame of my own to be going on with.
Tim [12:07pm]:
What you said made a lot more sense than some recent statements of economic or employment policy.
Kim and Nabokov:
Does anyhing in particlar trigger episodes of marked phantom pain?
Not sure about the service issues with Skype, but I have been having some difficulty integrating it with the home phone system. I have just installed a VoIP adapter which places calls from an analogue handset via the Internet. Very cheap rates are available to mobiles. Much cheaper than the main Telcos and Skype, and you don’t need the computer to be on (just the broadband & router).
On another topic, I have just checked the full text of the Northern Territory National Emergency
Response Bill 2007. It doesn’t contain the word “child” or “children” despite Brough’s speech being peppered with remarks about his great concern for them. Incredible really. As was his admission on radio that he didn’t even read his bill as “that is not his job”.
Testing link to image:
Ken, I wonder if there will be refunds coming? I use Skype for long distance calls, which I make all the time, I’d like to see some “making nice with their customers” action from Skype in the next few days otherwise I’ll probably stop giving them my money.
Kevin Donnelly and Christopher Pearson are annoyed that Julie Bishop doesn’t seem to share their enthusiasm for culture wars. Don’t think there is much to gain by Bishop getting stuck into these issues, you could fill a phonebox with the amount of people that obsess over such issues, and it would be a net-vote loser if the eductation minister started with the Chairman Mao rhetoric again.
“Ms Bishop was no ‘cultural warrior’ and lacked the conviction to reform the dominant education culture, characterised by a lack of academic rigour, political correctness and a focus on outcomes at the expense of standards. “As a result, the ALP has taken some of the territory from the conservative agenda,” Mr Donnelly said.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22265495-601,00.html
The Howard dirt unit is certainly working over time, was it Glenn Milne who broke this “Rudd at strip club” story?
Futt Bucker, yes, it was the hypocrite Milne, see posts I made on this thread.
BTW, KIm & Mark prefer such comments to go there
Kim! Where you bin?
Just have a look at the delightful Never Mind the Buzzcocks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIeZWbQGrqY
If Shane Warne renounces his citizenship to become a German, would he fail the character test if he wanted to re-enter Australia at some later date?
Mick I was being flippant because I only use the free service.
Out of interest, why don’t you use Yahoo! or AIM one of the other IM services for o/s calls? Admittedly I’ve only used them for calls to US and UK but they’ve done everything I could conceivably want and they don’t cost a cent.
Greensborough Growler:
L-O-L!
The German government used to put up 100DeutschMarks each for resettling displaced ethnic Germans, especially from the USSR. If that’s still on, he’s not doing it for the money, is he?
Good to hear, Tim at 12.07. How’s your three day growth coming along, though?
It was weird what happened to me Mick, I made a Skype call to a European landline on my laptop, to tell my daughter to switch her computer on so I could make a free computer to computer call. As soon as I hung up on that call the whole system seemed to crash. Checked on my house computer with another account, the “green tick” also refused to come up. Searched online and found an article re problems with an algorithm.
All seems to be working fine now–I guess our expectations of Skype are overly high, when it crashes the disappointment is palpable!
And they seem to have got the updates (for Macs at least) under control so you don’t have to manually wipe the older version. What is annoying is the quality of computer to computer calls within Oz–lousy sometimes, compared with crystal clear to Europe. Even China seems to work ok. Singapore can be indifferent though, I’ve found.
Down with telephone companies, three cheers for VOIP!
Screw the 3G, we demand WiMax and the “last mile” of copper wires have a final last use to string up Teleconniving executives to their telephone poles.
Cringeley of PBS’s “I Cringely” had a good article on WiMax here in Nov 2004, Walmart for example leveraging their 3000 odd stores to make a new wireless network across 90% of the US:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2004/pulpit_20041125_000462.html
Telephony, computers and wireless broadband seem to be converging, but piggybacking broadband onto 3G sucks IMO–look at the rip-off prices compared to Sydney’s iBurst (and the other one whose name I’ve forgotten) WiMax supplier, per Gig.
Ken, mostly because I installed Skype first and aI’ve got a lot of colleagues that use it. I use Gmail a lot for IMing, but for OS calls I mostly use Skype.
Apparently they will let us know what happened to the Skype networ some time early next week. As a geek I’m looking forward to hearing what actually killed their system.
I can not WAIT for the LP feminazis to spin their way into “ethical” and “appropriate” contortions over Kevin Rudd being thrown out of a New York strip club! What a hoot! Rudd has just risen phenomenally in my estimation!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/08/19/2008889.htm
Nabakov
And I doubt that YOU are in any position to make this judgement. It’s horses for courses. Leave people alone to explore, take risks, love, get hurt, laugh, and cry. Time for the “appropriateness” police to be sent packing from the universities.
You’re on the wrong thread, JG.
Big night out at the strip club last night addled your brain?
Stephen Hill on 19 August 2007 at 1:24 am
Larva-Prodders seem to be impaled on the horns of an psephological dilemma when it comes to closing with the enemy in the Culture Wars. Cant make up their minds whether allegations of a conservative groundswell in the electorate are just a myth concoted by those on the “wrong side of History” or whether the Right-wing politicians who play to the prejudiced conservative groundswell are unworthy of political company.
On the one hand culture warring is a net-vote loser, engaging barely “enough people to fill a phone box”. Yet on the other hand culture war politicians who stoop to dog-whistling, race-card playing and wedge-politicking are unfairly chiselling battler votes off the Left’s column.
My head is starting to hurt trying to follow the abrupt twists and bizarre turns in their psephologic. I suggest they pick one spin on the Culture Wars and stick to it.
Reality is Jack, culture wars in regards to curriculum development and education departments is just semantics, its what is referred to as beltway issue.
There just aren’t any “battlers” attempting to breach the ramparts of the education department, its only Marxists, lapses Marxists and a few fundies (annoyed about Darwinian theories, sex education et al) that seem to believe schools are indoctrinating students. And there is little you can do for people that have such a mechanistic outlook in life, should academic rigour be sacrificed for those that would prefer education mirror their personal purview. In reality there is no outcry, its just noise and sloganeering attempting to disguise for the lack of elbow-grease on the policy front.
Don’t know what that has to do with racism. I just thought Donnelly and Pearson, considering the low standard of their work, should be the last complaining about the standards of the education minister.
Stephen Hill on 19 August 2007 at 3:36 pm
“The reality is” that good students are more likely to make good teachers. Just as good followers make good leaders. (France excepted.)
Put a bunch of North East Asian swots, Azkhenazi nerds, Bangalore maths whizzes or can-do Yankees in your class and pretty soon the glittering prizes will start to shower onto the alma maters lap.
No doubt ideological sound and fury in the education industry signifies nothing much more than glorified business as usual.
I was flabberghasted by the Teachers Union’s ideological stances during the eighties, which were well to the Left of Loony Left. I remember asking Dr Knopfelmacher – a real culture warrior of the Holocaust-surviving, Normandy-fighting, revolution-witnessing type – about the strange obsessions of the teaching industry. He brushed my qualms aside with a wave of his hand and a rasp of his inimitable Mettle-European accent: “just a bunch of no-hoper officials putting up a smokescreen for their bludging members!”
Or to quote a more contemporary commenter in the same vein:
I see mini_J, that like Jack, you only seem to be able to read what you want to see, rather than what people actually wrote.
You’ll note that nowhere did I pass any judgement on the morality and/or ethics of student/teacher sexual relationships, only rather to propose that the dusty groves of acedeme didn’t strike me as very fertile ground for the kind of dangerous, sexy, life-enhancing and death-challenging praxis and pursuit of eros that I joined with Jinamro and Rob in endorsing.
I’d also venture to suggest that anyone who carries on like a monomanical crank online is not really likely to be in the best position to personally discuss the infinitely subtle world of human relationships.
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/su07/love-deresiewicz.html
Don’t know if this link will work, but latest isse of The American Scholar has a cute article Love on Campus addressing this.
Unfortunately, brain sex was never something I experienced with any teachers. But that’s ok, that is what writers are for.
Apparently a major betting scam of mammoth proportions has been unearth in NSW.
Nabakov on 19 August 2007 at 7:45 pm
Whereas a self-obsessed wanker and tireless self-promoter like “Nabakov” is the go-to guy when you want to “personally discuss the infinitely subtle world of human relationships”. Freud, Nabakov & Kerouac stand aside!
“Nabakov”, you are beyond parody.
See that’s more American military-business language than critical academic language… Although it’s even infested critical academic language.
Well golly gee, yer quite the little grumptruck today aren’t you Jackie boy?
My remark you refer to was actually aimed at mini-J but if you want to see if the shoe fits, then hey be my guest.
Now “tireless self-promoter” was funny. See, you do have a sense of irony if not humour if only you’d realise it, me old FIG JAM merchant.
Ahh, so true. You, however, are not.
Kerouac? That’s one busted trinity, Jack.
Nabakov on 22 August 2007 at 10:27 pm
Right. Running a conservative line through a gauntlet of disgruntled, middleaged Lefties stuck on the fringes of academia and government.
Way to promote self.