An open thread where, at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
[Except federal election stuff which should go here.]
Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
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Ah Ha First I think if not maybe 2nd
I love the new ad for Blonde beer. I was so busy laughing it was a while before I knew what the ad was about.
I forgot this ad for White King. Ghastly looking germ singing, “I’m gonna vom, I’m gonna vom, I’m gonna vom, I’m gonna spew all over Mom”.
Any ad using humour will have me watching any time.
Kim and All:
It’s 4:30am in Godzowncountry and The Great Saturday Salon is only up to FOUR. Is everyone else sleeping, partying hard, studying, committing burglaries, travelling, reading books, having their souls saved by television evangelists or what?
Jah Teh:
Speaking of ads: a faint glimmer of realization might be starting to wake up the dozy dills running SBS these days.
Dropping truckloads of ads right in the middle of all their shows has chased away some of their audience with discretionary money to spend.
Not a terribly bright idea if you are trying to sell advertising time to firms who want to see their advertising dollars translated into cashed-up customers coming through the door.
Graham, some of us need our sleep in preparation due to a higher calling that occupies Saturday afternoons.
If you want to know why The Australian is called the Government Gazette, read the speech by Galarrwuy Yunupingu, and then read the article about it by Ashley Wilson …..
Graham,
Sleeping from 8.30 pm. Was not in the mood for Friday night Crime or Lateline. Really too lazy to go to Video-Ezy yesterday to get DVD’s. Besides, had local Koori kids from next door using computer most of yesterday afternoon. And what’s more, they always pay me for the cost of the connection. I am in wonderment at what they can do with this crappy old computer. Far beyond me.
Hey Kim, any hot tips for a first timer in San Francisco?
Beautiful summer day in Melbington. About to crank up the Barbie at Keating Towers!
Shouldn’t there be 100 posts on here by now? Attack of the Bloggy Snatchers? I hope people are not exercising that’s all. For the sake of adding to a fairly empty salon, have been down at The Infant Jesus Catholic School, satirising the shit out of it.
Are you going to San Francisco, Lefty E?
All the action’s on the ‘Condemn’ thread, Worst of Perth. Especially Mercurius’ elegantly phrased invective.
Speaking of ‘weekend leisure’, at the moment I’m sitting at the kitchen table with the laptop open, drinking beer, while my partner is in the kitchen cooking gargantuan quantities of food and systematically delivering it to members of the extended family (and to me) at appropriate intervals. If I was any more leisured, I would be dead.
About time SBS woke up Graham. The first couple of weeks were really confusing as no-one seemed to know how to insert the ad breaks without making them part of the show. The horror of the ABC going the same way is always with me after what Channel 10 did to Torchwood.
What Channel 10 did to Torchwood. It was unforgiveable. And so far as I can work out only the episodes that have been screened are on DVD. So you can’t even see it that way.
“Are you going to San Francisco, Lefty E?”
“Hey Kim, any hot tips for a first timer in San Francisco?”
HOT TIP NUMBER ONE:
If you’re going to San Fran-cisco,
Be sure to wear some — no, wait, stop, I just can’t do it.
I won’t, I tells ya.
I am Kim, for work, next week…. so’s Mick, for that matter and maybe FDB – but later on in the year in their cases.
Have to be in Berkeley for 3 days, otherwise in SF itself. All tips welcome!
Shaun:
Hope it was a good Sat. arvo.
Paul Burns:
About those Koori kids and your old computer: Set me wondering if they get “low” marks at school…. therefore, wondering if some problems of kids and schools might be lack of relevance leading to lack of emgagement. Listened to Radio National’s Life Matters during the week; interesting interview with Gypsy/Romany lady who contrasted education with learning ….
Jah Teh:
SBS unmanagement must be doing wonders for book sales and for off-shore purchases of DVDs, especially ‘foreign’ films [No ads just as you get to the exciting bits! Yippee!]
Bush has reintroduced the Draft!
Well, no not that draft. Rather he is conscripting State Department employees for duty in the new US mega-embassy in beautiful downtown Green Zone.
Seems that State Dept flacks have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the Beacon of Light.
Not a good look.
For anyone active on Burma:
burma.blip.tv
Yep Kim, I’m off to San Fran at the start of December. I have a conference in LA in mid-to-late December and thought I’d take the chance to visit some of my collaborators in Berkely. I’ll also be in Seattle for a bit as well.
It was Graham. Nice to get first innings points just after tea and have the luxury of being able to declare our first dig many runs ahead. A grand day.
It’s Time to go – Gretel.
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,22659067-5005368,00.html
In 1996, Pauline Hanson was disendorsed as a Liberal Party candidate for advocating the abolition of special assistance for aboriginals:
(Queensland Times, 6 Jan 1996, quoted at The Australian Public Intellectual Network http://www.api-network.com/main/index.php?apply=scholars&webpage=default&flexedit=&flex_password=&menu_label=&menuID=homely&menubox=&scholar=200)
This Liberal candidate’s statements are significantly worse. The Liberal Party needs to axe him immediately.
woulfe,
I felt sick reading Curtis’s comments. But if the Libs disendorsed him he’d only end up running as a candidate for FF at the next election, or for the Xtan Democrats. As it stands, disgusting and outdated as his comments are, he won’t be elected so the cretin will fall off the political radar. Maybe it was a clumsy attempt to wedge Gillard as well. Don’t misunderstand me. Both as a member of Socialist Alliance and as an individual I think Gay Rights should be a major political issue, but I don’t think its going to be.
Maybe he could be had up for vilification by a gay activist.
Graham,
The kids are very bright and go to a special Aboriginal school in Armidale run by the Koori community. The Armidale mob have really got their act together in terms of education, health and circle sentencing. Though there has been a bit of a crime problem.
This might be a duplicate post as the line dropped out and I accidentally pressed the home instead of the refresh icon.
Woulfe,
Maybe some gay activist should prosecute Curtis for vilification.
Graham,
The Armidale Kooris have a specialist Aboriginal school. The mob here really have it together in terms opf health, education and circle sentencing.
(ONLY SEMI-COHERENT)
Everything I like is nice,
That’s why I try everything twice.
Yodel-ay-hee, yodel-ay-hee-hoo.
(GETTING EVEN LESS COHERENT)
Yoooh…lay-hee… yoh…..lhee…
Yolay-hee, lay-heeee.
(BLEATING HARMONICA SOLO)
Trust me, it’s a gravitational black hole, stay far, far away. Keep especially extra clear of tracks 1,2,3… well, the whole damn thing, really.
“Why live for dyin’?
If you wuz doin’ right,
Why are you cryin’?”
Somewhere a stylist is stroking a Gretel Killen voodoo doll and laughing maniacally.
j-p-z and all:
Neighbour has concocted a tasty bottle of moonshine [in Australia, it's legal as a backyard hobby only and very very limited; try to sell a single drop of it and squadrons of gunship choppers loaded with grim customs-&-excise officers will fall upon you]. Genuine 21
yearhours old, aged in the stainless, clear as crystal [uncut and natural as Mother Nature intended, of course] and as smooth as ….Anyway, we all enjoyed sampling his handcraft.
Graham Bell: well, enjoy responsibly, and please don’t go blind on us! And if perchance you do anyway, then please write something amazing for us like The Iliad or “Baby What’d I Say.”
(and of course I was being ironic at 12:53. You caught me smilin’…
“There’s a Riot” is a masterpiece of the first order, blood-freezing tho’ it may be. It’s part of a small repertory company of musical works that’ve been following me around and showing up unexpectedly and repeatedly for much of my adult life, for good or ill (as I suppose is true of lots of folks with various things — might even make for a good post!); and I swore I wasn’t going to ever get sucked into Sly’s vortex again, but the other day… oh well. Had half-planned to write a mini-essay on the phenomenon, but then I ditched the idea because it was just too sort of self-indulgent. So you’re lucky. But there’s some evil licks and couplets on that mofo though, that much is fer sure.)
It’s an interesting point, Paul. Hanson’s disendorsement was the spark that brought One Nation to life. Ultimately, their existence prompted the Liberals to move further to the right, in order to occupy their ground. By 2001 when the Tampa sailed over the horizon, this country had no need for a One Nation party, because Howard had made their policies his own.
Would the same thing happen if an anti-gay candidate was disendorsed? I don’t think so. First, homophobia is much more a fringe sentiment than racism. 71% of Australians think that same-sex couples should have equal rights (Galaxy poll, June 2007), and two years ago, 35% of Australians thought that homosexuality is immoral (The Australia Institute, 2005).
Contrast this with the very high levels of agreement with Hanson in 1996 (can’t find any polling on this, but I recall that there were high rates of agreement with statements like ‘indigenous Australians have more rights than non-indigenous Australians’). She tapped into a rich underlying vein of xenophobia. I don’t believe there’s an equivalent underlying vein of homophobia in Australia.
Typically those who don’t have gay friends are peripherally aware of gay relatives, colleagues or former classmates, and there aren’t many Australians who wish inequality and discrimination on even distant acquaintances. What we do have is a huge apathy concerning the rights of same-sex attracted people. Ordinary Australians won’t march across the Harbour Bridge in support equal rights for queer folk. However the flip side is that if Curtis were to be disendorsed, there wouldn’t be hordes rushing to his defence.
Gay rights is a vote-changing issue for a very small number of Australians.
I think statements like Curtis’ need to be engaged, even at the risk of giving him more exposure. Unfortunately, since there’s been no comment that I’ve seen today, I don’t hold out much hope that he will be disciplined, let alone disendorsed.
Woooo! Jetlag plus vino! Add unknown cityscape and stir.
I believe this may be my favourite state of mind.
When are you off, Lefty E?
Just don’t call the town “SanFran” would be my advice!
Other than that, it might be more fun to discover for yourself rather than me do a Kim’s Lonely Planet thing!
Kim:
So howsabout “Frisco”?
Aarrrggghhhh!!!!
I think in the presence of my angelic toddling nephews my many uitlander faux pas will be graciously indulged. Infinitive-splitting included I hope.
j-p-z:
No we’re not. To parapharse/satirize Mr Bush’s Trans-Pacific prime munister “We will decide [which mini-essays] will come into this country!”
Woulfe:
Being straight myself, just wondering why, in 2007, decades after community attitudes towards gays started becoming more tolerant, is this still an election issue? Alright, there were anomolies and injustices crying out for long-overdue legislative and regulatory amendment; all of these should have been fixed up ages ago. What the hell is wrong with the parliamentarians? Are we paying them too much money for too little work?
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article3106888.ece
The link is to a story in The Independent newspaper about the visit to the UK of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Nasty family , dangerous sponsors of all sorts of mayhem and cringeworthy behaviour by UK politicians who should know better.
Ha!
Here now Kim – and yeah, been looking around. Nice architecture, good bars, hills, trams, Alacatraz, haunts of beat poets past – whats not to like?? (aside from the God-awful coffee in this country, of course!)
Well, enjoy, Lefty E! But if by any chance you take a trip to Big Sur, just don’t ask, “So, um, where’s Big Sur?” And get up into the wine country if you can manage it, or the area around Carmel.
As for the coffee, there are a million local micro-exceptions, trouble is you have to find ‘em (and the espresso is nearly always better than the brewed stuff, commercially, that is). But there is one macro-exception: Peet’s.
btw, recently I’ve noticed that it’s become more difficult to post retarded jokes under an idiotic fake moniker. They seem to always go straight into moderation. Does this reflect a change in overall comments policy, or is it just a trick of the software?
We have the moderator set to catch comments by new people, and it interprets that by looking at names not emails or IPs. I think it’s a legacy of the last time we had a flying monkey invasion, and since that hasn’t happened for a while, I’ll turn it off.
Second j_p_z on Peets.
Great, Melbourne-style, coffee.
There’s one on Polk, near Broadway.
Ok, setting the controls for Polk and Broadway, JPZ and Katz. 6 years in Melbourne, and I just cant drink plunger anymore.
Big Sur, huh? Maybe no time, companero. I rode a bike over golden gate though, impersonating a fit human, to Sausolito. Frismo really is a great town.
Incidentally, Vesuvio is a great bar, Mick, when youre here. I didnt see any beach in North beach tho.