Well, we haven’t condemned since last month, so it must be long past time again to condemn. Here’s a 38th open condemnation thread. What’s getting up your goat? Which evil political, cultural, social, musical, religious, and other phenomena need condemnation? (Or loud denunciation?)
You can condemn anything you like except tango [h/t Mark for the YouTube].
I condemn:
Telstra.
QUT.
News Limited newspaper section editors who respond to freelance queries by passing on the story idea to a staff journalist.
Customer service lines that are staffed by robots.
Many other things, but if I listed them I’d still be typing six hours later…
I condemn the aging process.
P.C.@ 2 Hear! Hear!
I condemn the pus flowing from my broken tooth into my mouth. Pus so bad it made my dentist gag when he took out the seal of paper holding it back. I condemn the previous dentist who sent me home with the instructions to take paracetamol!
damn Uighurs!
“It is right to rebel!” ???
poppycock
I condemn PM Rudd’s visit to the Pope to put in a good word for some dead woman who supposedly performed “MIRACLES” bah!!!
Telstra.
Ditto. 4 weeks to get ADSL connected is abysmal.
Don’t say that desipis, I’m about to move. I just know I’m going to have to enter a cage-fight with optus before I can escape to the nirvana that is naked dsl.
I condemn moving house, by the way.
I condemn Eric Abetz.
Jeeez that’s hideous, Paul.
“So, freed of the need to worry unduly about the future, generation Y pursued its own short-term goals, and while largely disengaged from government and politics, nonetheless grew to see the role of government as being to fix any and all problems that may arise.”
I’ll be a Powershift http://www.powershift.org.au/ tomorrow to engage government and ‘gen y’ to fix the problems caused by Abetz’s generation
Grumphy, where I went wrong was moving into a unit. Apparently back in the day Telstra never bothered to properly record which line went to which unit, so they have to go look at the lines rather than just look at the database. Took a bit of wrangling with the phone company because they were going to try and charge me $300 instead of the usual $65 because it was a ‘complex’ installation.
Too be honest I was suprised that I didn’t really miss it all that much. On that note I condemn the addictive nature of the internet.
I condemn moving house II.
I also condemn my week of sleepless nights. If my weekend energy is sapped I’ll be p*ssed off! Especially whilst I’m packing boxes…
I condemn little white fluffy dogs that can’t stop barking and live next door.
I particularly condemn the owners who keep it tied up for most of the day.
Why have an in-bred, dopey mut if you don’t intend to interact with it at all, except to yell at it when the neighbours get annoyed.
I condemn any generation that kowtows to the authority of politicians.
I condemn all politicians like Abetz who want to throw people out on the street to die and starve. Note to Eric Abetz – if you like the American system so much why don’t you go and live there! @#%&*
I condemn ABC TV Breakfast on ABC 2 – boringly repetetive, too much sport, hosted by a pair of RWDBs.
I condemn cold Armidale winters and the massive electricity bill they’ll bring next August.
I condemn SBS for turning into a bloody boring sports channel.
I condemn Kevin Rudd for giving the pope six bottles of Aussie wine instead of a copy of Colleen McCullough’s Thorn Birds.
I condemn having to run around going to the doctor, having blood tests and all the other boring thgings you have to do when you’ve got cancer. It’ll be a waste of an afternoon. (*Though it probably will prolong my life.)
I condemn the Fair Pay Commission for not giving a pay rise to low paid workers.
I condemn the Rudd Government for not stating publicly how angry they are with the FPC.
I condemn John Howard’s daggy umbrella.
That’ll do.
I condemn any person who thinks $1800 is a reasonable price to pay for a puppy. I further condemn myself for making rash promises to children and family regarding puppy acquisition.
I condemn biting off more than you can chew (and refuse to chew harder).
Fair suck on the dinkum, fair plumber’s crack.
I condemn faux cosmopolitan latte sippers for laughing at PM Rudd’s brave attempts to revivify gold old fashioned Aussie lingo.
I condemn the video ad popups that start automatically when browsing various sites. Now, I don’t mind the other forms of advertising, that’s fair enough.. but the videos annoy me no end. The Foxtel site takes this to another level.
I condemn Triple J’s ridiculously male-dominated hottest 100. Down to 31 and only one woman singer!
Katz @ 18: Kevin Rudd about the gift of a soccer ball from Sepp Blatter “That’s going straight to the pool room!”
I kid you not.
I also condemn those chewing more than they have bitten off, which is much more common, no more useful, and even less attractive.
Heh, Andos.
It’d be interesting to speculate what other trophies may grace Kevin’s pool room.
The blindfold and bulky gloves he wore the night he visited the New York strip club, perhaps?
Fair go Andos
Kevin probably thinks he’s got a swimming-pool room somewhere. Or should have. Or maybe it’s the typing-pool room. Or the pool of foreign corrspondents……
I refuse to condemn the medicos who are helping Paul B prolong his life, for the selfish reason that I enjoy reading his posts. Cheers, Paul.
I also condemn the tragic misunderstandings that can destroy friendships between men and women.
I, well I won’t condemn him, but I rebuke Paul Burns @15 for giving me a hilarious yet disturbing mental image of the Pope wearing ridiculously pretentious papal slippers and a dressing gown reading the Thorn Birds in bed.
I condemn the weather – this is the colder and wettest winter I can remember here in Newcastle, forever, alright – for at least 9 years. Why can’t it rain elsewhere in the country where rain is actually needed?
I also second Zarquon @20.
I also condemn myself for being here on this thread instead of working on my thesis which is now officially taking forever.
Good news from the doc. PSA levels extraordinarily low on last test. Another one in August. Thank goodness no needles today.
I condemn all the needles, (one of them virtually as thick as a large nail), that I regularly have to have, and the bruised arms I get from blood tests so I have to wear long sleeve shirts in summer to stop the coppers stopping me and checking my arms for track marks. But i just love the doctors who are keeping me alive and well. (Apparently I’m a bit of an oddity. Over ten years with prostate cancer and still functioning relatively normally. Touch wood.)
Paul B #14, I have found Armidale winters quite picturesque when I’ve been passing through or stopping over, but I suspect that I too would come to condemn them if I encountered them on a quotidian basis.
Paul Norton,
Armidale winters aren’t half as bad as they used to be when I first moved up here in the late 1970s. Global warming.
I also condemn Armidale summers. They used to be good but now they’re hellish with the heat.
Or maybe its just my age.
I condemn Mercatornet for publishing shit like this:
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/gender_equity_at_close_quarters/
this:
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the_darwin_myth/
and this:
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/whats_the_difference
I condemn Reuters for quoting Greg Sheridan and Steve Fielding as if anything they said had any relationship to reality whatsoever
I condemn in frustrated vein-popping rage all the TV hacks in this country who let politicians get away with semantical murder. (Tony Jones, being the solitary exception, when he is in the mood.)
I condemn the Nissan X-Trail ads starring Boris the Crocodile. He should eat the actor, not throw logs at him.
I condemn detailed programmatic specificity. I would condemn it harder (further? more?) if I knew wtf it is.
I condemn cliches that make no sense.
Racehorses tend to be skittish and highly strung animals, and many who care for them know that buying a goat and associating it with said animal calms it down, in order that the racehorse might be able to perform when required. Those who would make the racehorse perform less than its best get the goat – thus the expression, when one sees an agitated person: “Who’s got your goat?”
Oh no, not bestiality as well!
A truth that has outlived its usefulness might have become a cliche, but a cliche that gathers extra words like mouldy vegetables at the back of the fridge is something else.
“The intellectual capacity of the international and interdisciplinary research team, together with new collaborations, will be combined to create a critical mass, such that the Centre can expand the research depth and breadth throughout … Australia. The scientific discoveries emanating from the Centre will be developed into new diagnostic tools and methods for managing the cause(s) and the impacts of…”
I roundly condemn the grant funding environment that compels researchers to pimp their discoveries before their research has even commenced.
Terrangee @24,
Are you condemning sex?
I condemn expensive dental work, people who don’t steer when going straight at roundabouts, traffic lights that replace common sense with globe-unfriendly waiting when you can bloody see there’s nothing coming! and the perils of permanent procrastination.
Three Condemns:
- Sports writers who use a plural verb for a singular subject, e.g: “England are going in to bat.”
- Pseudosmarties who deliberately write “teh” instead of correctly spelling the definite article.
- Pompous pseudosmarties who start their critiques of other people’s writings with “I was amused to read…”
Harrumph!
I condemn the Celtic nations. Bastards. They’re the reason I’m hung over worse n’ a dead dog a dryin’ on a fence.
I condemn those who don’t know the difference between “lose” and “loose”. Oh, and less and fewer, just while I’m at it!
I condemn sales ‘assistants’ in specialist stores that confess they don’t know anything about the product you are considering purchasing, and then just stand there being awkward and unhelpful, picking up the product and reading verbatim off the packaging. argh. and then they look so shocked and wounded should you dare to raise an eyebrow and ask if there is anyone else around that could actually assist.
I condemn the NGV for not having more night time openings.
I condemn myself for checking work emails when I’m meant to be on a break.
I condemn the wind.
GG @ 36.
I’d never condemn sex. But I do also condemn the use of the word “gender” instead of the noun “sex”.
I second allan’s condemnations @ 40 -and in turn condemn people who do not understand the past participle of the word “lead”. My son’s English teacher wrote in his half-year report: “This has lead to him demonstrating an increased understanding of the analysis and construction of English texts.”
“I condemn the wind.”
Snap! I was just out the back shaking my fists at the sky doing exactly that. Recently transplanted radish and cress seedlings all wind-burnt and unlikely to survive. Weeks wasted.
Boo-urns.
“I condemn the wind”
Perhaps you should cut back a bit on the chickpeas, furious (and FDB). I have a similar problem myself, having recently decided to go semi-vego.
I condemn fricking terriers who bomb trials!
Adrien (40).
I hope at least it was a good drop.
Jovial Monk, you do know that in Okayama they have a specially trained squad of happy little Yorkshire Terriers equipped with little shovels and rubbish bags to go around and collect the litter that is dropped by passing pedestrians?
“a specially trained squad of happy little Yorkshire Terriers”
I’m calling bullshit on that terangeree.
Despite the massive Japanese advances in robotic and genetically engineered home workers, I sincerely doubt they’ve created yorkies with opposable digits. At least ones that would stand still long enough to pose for the sign you’ve linked to.
“I hope at least it was a good drop.”
Tullamore!!??! Well OK, pretty decent for a Paddy blended. But not quite the real thing mon petit choufleur.
If you want a single malt whisky that’ll really unravel your socks, then try the Macallan 30 year old sherry oak. A mate picked up a duty free bottle which three of us sank a few evenings ago. An absobloodylute masterpiece of western civilisation at play with barley.
And not too shabby for a Speyside either.
“A mate picked up a duty free bottle…”
At Dubai airport – having been retrenched from his job there but then discovering in the departure lounge that they hadn’t got around to cancelling his corporate credit card.
He said on arrival in Tullamarine, he was so laden with duty free loot that they directed him not to customs but to the airport shopping plaza delivery bays.
I’m sipping right now on another fine single malt which he left around the place.
David Irving [no relation]..btw – I once went to a BBQ and after the fact found out the person I’d been chatting to was the daughter of the other David Irving, but that’s another story.
From my days of being fully-vego…I can recommend you make your way to the Indian grocer near the central market [you're in adelaide, right?] and buy yourself some: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asafoetida otherwise known as ‘hing’ it helps with some of the unpleasant side effects of a leguminous diet.
I condemn all the crazy drivers on the Melbourne to Adelaide road that were acting kamikaze in a particularly violent downpour…not fun at 100km/hr. Special condemnation is reserved for mr blue ford territory who thought tailgating at such a time was fine ‘n’ dandy. IDIOT!
I condemn the ABC for giving Steven Fielding air time to forum troll ABC listeners.
Asafoetida is all very well in its place, furious, although I usually prefer onions and garlic from a taste pov. (Also, I don’t mind if my passions are aroused. At my age, they need all the help they can get … ) Apparently ginger also works wonders. (For gas, not passions.)
I condemn the cold that has been going around Sydney. When kids get it, they run a good fever for a few days, complain of stomach pains, (which is why so many kids have been seen in Emergency departments over the last few weeks; same symptoms as swine flu) and then don’t have much energy for the rest of the week. When adults get it, you think you have the makings of food poisoning, plus all the usual trappings of a cold. And I suspect I might have given it to my Dad as an 89th birthday present
I condemn the fact that there’s swine flu in Sydney. Am going down there in early August, hopefully for about a week, and I’m shit-scared I’ll catch it. Wouldn’t go down well with my COPD.
David Irving, I wasn’t suggesting you go all Hare Khrishna :p, I never used it as a flavour enhancer either, but I do think it helps with ‘emissions’. I love ginger, it’s probably my favourite aroma, [aside from a double espresso].
I condemn this from yesterday’s Independent Daily:
“The glass ceiling
The gap in earnings between women and men in South Australia is greater than the national average, according to a report released today. And it is most noticeable in areas such as mining, finance and public utilities. Working Women in South Australia: Progress, Prospects and Challenges found the gap in earnings between full-time men and women in the Australian labour market was 16 per cent, or about $10,000 a year.”
Ian MacDonald, the Minister for Wine, has a Wine Advisory Council. And therefore holds dinners worth 24,000 million billion lira or so. For the country, or something. Well I completely condemn the lack of my own wine advisory council. Like, how did I forget to get one? Further I condemn the premature death of the funniest and most beloved currency on earth, the lira and hold fond memories of paying 123,000,000 million trillion lira for a loaf of bread, when last in Machismo Central . But mostly I condemn that when I get home, and request the $25,000,000 million billion lira dinner, I get stir fry. I condemn it. It. Condemn.
I condemn Griffith University and the incompetent building contractors it hires who have, for the second time in a year, broken the water main which supplies the building in which my office is located.
Having just had the displeasure of listening to Fielding again on The World Today, I repeat my previous condemnation. Journalism fail.
I condemn the energy companies of Victoria for the heavy and often deceitful door to door harassment techniques they support against residents.
speaking of energy. I condemn the fact that when my sister got her 1kw PV system installed she was immediately denied the ability to purchase ‘green energy’. She checked with every energy company and all of them deny anyone who is has a PV system connected to the grid to buy Green Energy.
Before getting her PV system, like me, she purchased green energy [100%], so we have a situation where now having invested in amorphous panels, which were more expensive than the cyrstalline, she is using more non-renewable power than she was before she made that investment.
So buyer beware to anyone thinking of getting solar panels. It’s not something she thought to ask when she was going through the paperwork, and I can’t say I blame her for that, I certainly never would have thought a power company could deny you the ability to buy green power.
Furious Balancing @63: We have a 1.3 kW solar system (6 panels), and it has been working wonderfully. Best little experiment we have done in years, and MUCH cheaper than the kitchen reno!!!
We get paid for energy we put back into the grid, and it pumps out the most power in summer when we are using the most electricity for air conditioning.
Our summer power bill dropped by three-quarters, i.e to about 25% of its previous levels.
I condemn annoying words and phrases, esp neologisms.
And I have another pedantic, grumpy ally in book form.
A sample: “Raft of measures ‘The Government announced a raft of measures to tackle child poverty’. Also ‘a whole raft of measures‘. Meant to suggest breadth but implies hasty assembly , using driftwood.”
I condemn recondite terminology, inhermeneuticable phrases and sesquipedalian words.
Ambigulous, the link you provided reminds me how much I enjoyed Don Watson’s books on abuse of language.
Good on you David (I, nr) and you too Paul N, insofar as I can read your post
I condemn those who employ ridiculously obscure terminology such as ‘neologism’ on what ostensibly remains a thread of jocularity and mordant humour enlivened by altogether gracious expression and unencumbered by meandering and ponderous verbiage, including myself.
Elise, I’m glad to hear you’re solar setup is working out well. I guess my sister main motivation was to reduce her power bills in the long term, but mainly to reduce the emissions from her household. She is VERY disappointed that after the expense of putting on solar panels her household will be less carbon neutral than she was before. She held onto her RECS [at no small cost] because she didn’t see the point of reducing emissions just so the energy company could use them. She was as serious as one individual can be in their own house about achieving a genuine reduction in emissions. It just seems very mean-spirited and anti-consumer-choice not to allow someone who has a grid connect system to purchase their surplus energy as ‘green energy’.
Furious balancing, we sold our REC’s. Three reasons:
(a) it dropped the cost of buying the solar system (which helped our short-term budget),
(b) there is legislative risk that the damn government would do something reeel stoopid like scrapping the MRET system (which I believe underlies the REC’s market) so we got while the gettin’ was good,
(c) we have no problem with sharing the credit for renewable energy – if someone else can meet their targets by subsidising our solar system, then I’m happy to oblige!
It sounds like your sister has a recalcitrant energy company. If the Rudd government, and Penny Wong in particular had some internal consistency with their symbolic posturings, then they would legislate to ensure renewable energy was encouraged at every opportunity.
Why not encourage your sister to plant some big gum trees (or rather saplings that will grow into big ones)? I don’t entirely trust other entities to use all the money to the purpose they claim, including green energy. I’d sooner plant gum trees myself, water them, nurture them, and know for sure that the money was used to a green purpose.
We even planted 2 gum trees on the verge at the end of our street, about 3 years ago. We bought them from a nursery, taking advice on a suitable species for a verge planting. The neighbours probably thought we were nuts, hand carting buckets of water to the little saplings in the summer, especially since it wasn’t inside our yard or even on our verge (which already has 2 medium size gums). The council now waters them with their water truck, and they have grown into very beautiful young trees.
We both work in environmental jobs. She works at a local provenance nursery, if I told her to plant some trees, she’d probably throttle me! :p Native grasses are pretty good at carbon capture..just thought I’d mention it, if you run out of room for gums.
She called all of the power companies here and they all had the same policy, I think it must a problem with the state legislation, who knows, I’m just glad I didn’t go ahead with it, because it would have really bugged me. I’m just trying to work on better efficiencies at home and I buy green power.
Furious @72, native grasses like Lippia you mean?
The neighbours gave us some, which our puppy dug up three or four times. We thought we’d lost it. Now it is taking over the garden, and I suspect has crept under the fence in taking over the lawn of our other neighbours. Oops.
Unbelievably tenacious stuff, that Lippia, and quite pretty. Doesn’t need much water, and doesn’t need mowing either.
The only Lippia I know is a very aggressive [non-native] weed! It’s not a grass.
Furious @74, what is the definition of weed? A plant one doesn’t like, or something more scientific?
From the book “Waterwise Gardening”, 3rd Edn, by Kevin Walsh, bought in Angus & Robertson bookstore: Lippia – Phyla nodiflora (syn. Lippia nodiflora), origin Australia.
From the CSIRO website: “The two species in Australia, Phyla nodiflora, and the weedy, Phyla canescens (lippia). Both are believed to be introduced but the origin of P. nodiflora requires clarification.”
“Some botanists believe that it could be native to Australia which has implications for lippia management.”
I had checked in my trusty Waterwise Gardening book before accepting the offer from the neighbours. It seemed to fit our theme of waterwise native garden.
The CSIRO website supports your viewpoint, although it is a bit ambivalent about origins.
I guess the best definition of a weed is a plant one doesn’t want. Ecologically, I suppose a weeds would be defined as a plant growing outside of it’s natural range. If you’re happy with the Lippia then for you personally, it’s not a weed. My main point really is that it’s not a grass, and it’s not native.
“Dreams of lawn order lead to plague of killer weed”
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/28/1043534055343.html
I condemn lippia but not the above headline…”lawn order”, indeed.
Yeah, it does raise the issue of whether the trend to waterwise gardening runs the risk of creating drought tolerant super-weeds that have some unintended environmental impacts.
This year the return to decent winter rainfall has reminded me of the weeds I’d become a bit complacent about. Truth be told the drought has been very good for the native grasslands we’ve been restoring….weeds like patersons curse, thistle, cats-ear etc have not done well in the drought and the grasses have really thrived in their absence. I don’t really want to think about the task ahead should the weeds be equally well adapted to long periods of drought.
joe2
very good! Next headline to include “giving lippia” perhaps?
Elise and furious balancing: I’m hoping that during the next two years the Rudd Govt will sort out all these inconsistencies (why should ANYONE become ineligible to buy “green power”?), if only to make consistent the bookkeeping for watching the nation’s carbon emissions, and to encourage as many households and business as possible to LOWER their carbon emissions.
todays condemnation relates to this:
http://www.independentweekly.com.au/news/local/news/general/rain-little-help-as-lakes-dammed/1570928.aspx?storypage=0
I condemn the South Australian Labor Party…that’ll do for now, I’m sure Peter Garrett needs some condemnation too. All of us, really, for not shouting louder, earlier. How depressing.
I do condemn the socialists.
i really do not condemn the tango at all…