I am truly disturbed...

The Redneck American at his ugly worst...

There is a great deal of videos on YouTube that are depicting Barrack Obama as Hitler.

A sample of this is below. It is pure unadulterated Hate Speech and those who believe in this rubbish should take a good hard look at yourselves and check yourself in to your friendly local mental health facility.

In fact I welcome anyone to come on here and try and "justify" this rubbish.

Where Are Our Civil Liberties?

Interesting new laws were passed by the NSW State Government in past couple of days... apparently it is now an offence to "annoy a pilgrim" here in Sydney for World Youth Day (week).

Offenders will be charged and financially penalised.

Anyone protesting the Papal visit must have their material "pre-approved" so as not to cause offence. And the distribution of non-christian material, condoms, gay rights or any other material likely to cause "offence or annoyance" can bring charges against the individual.

Can I ask why this was necessary and how is this constitutionally allowable? Are we not a free democratic society and have the right to our views? Why do the fucking happy clapping god botherers (annoyance intended) get to have their sensitivities protected by unconstitutional legislation?

Will enacting these laws cause more protests and have the intentions of the government to keep the World Youth Day events free of protest been well and truly kyboshed? (is that a Jewish phrase? Is that offensive??)

It's about time Governments stop catering to the vocal minority and started realising that 90% of the populace on any given issue just don't care and that as long as there is no violence (and we already have a capable police force to stop that) there is really not any point in trying to dictate the populations thought processes.

People will think what they think and will act on those thoughts as they see fit. As long as they don't hurt anybody else in enacting those acts, then by our societies standards they are entitled to those thoughts / beliefs / actions.

How about Morris Iemma worry about what he was elected for which is ensuring we have a decent health and education system.

Child Porn Busts In Australia

The local arrest of approx 90 Australians as part of a global crackdown on Child Pornography via the net is one that I am so happy about and if there was ever a case for judicial castration, then this is it.

Sexual exploitation of children to me is the worst and abhorrent crime that can be committed... it goes beyond my comprehension as to why any adult would get off on such vile material.

Then you have this from one of the arrested men... a police officer no less:

"I'm not sexually attracted to underage women," he said. "It was the challenge."

Firstly, children are not "underage women". They are children, you fuck. You are even objectifying these unfortunate kids as "underage women".

Secondly, don't fucking pass of surfing the net for Child Porn as a "challenge". If you want a challenge on the internet, find yourself a good computer game. Typing "Lolita" into Google is not a challenge.

Full article here.

Another Sicko Free

Again, another story of child abuse and the man found guilty is allowed to go free because he spent "2 and a half years of custody in remand, and he plead guilty". Link

What the fuck is going on with society today? His daughter is clearly psychologically scarred and yet he gets to go off and work as a truckie on the back roads of Queensland... yeah I am sure he'll do alot of good deeds there too!

Someone needs to step in and get tougher on judicial sentencing.

Internet Censorship

The Rudd Govt in their infinite wisdom decided to keep plugging away at the previous Govt's efforts to take pornography out of the internet in Australia.

Does anyone see this as some sort of Big Brother (and I mean in the sense of George Orwell's 1984, not Channel 10's Bum Dance Version) effort to control what the "Citizens" see and watch?

I am all for classification and making such material unavailable to minors, but since when do we need the government to step in and protect us from our downloadable tits and arse?

Once they "filter" content and then offer you to register to have unfiltered content, then for whatever reason, your internet viewing habits will be then recorded on some government database.

Once that happens, thats another piece of data on your "permanent record"... to me it sounds like its a big waste of money and the press have picked up on it a bit as well.

As a parent, I would sit with my kids when they're on the internet. As they get older a PC for them will be in the open area of the house. What is more worrisome is this whole issue of kids being online and chatting via myspace and MSN. It is an issue that has resulted in a pitiful 60 Minutes story and also the recent charges laid against a woman for encouraging the suicide of a neighbours girl via cyber bullying.

These are the more worrisome things and unfortunate side effects of kids and technology going wrong... not the fact that sex is on the internet freely for adults.

Popular Culture is not News

What is it… is it just me? 10,000 people have died in Burma apparently from a Cyclone nobody heard about and yet the most pressing things in todays press are: 1. Wayne Carey’s charge sheet, 2. Corey goes into the BB House and 3. Mischa Barton has cellulite and is pressing action against the Aussie paparazzi who took the photos of her topless.

I have seen the photos Mischa and what is it they say… a picture’s worth a 1000 words?

I know I am beating on this old drum again, but the internet has so much more beneficial use and people can access all the celeb-goss they want, but can we at least leave the NEWS websites for items that are NEWS WORTHY? It’s a chicken and egg thing… people will tell you that stories like Mischa Barton earn the most clicks and hence are the most “profitable” in the web-advertising area but I counter that with if you keep putting this stuff on the top of the site in bold, then of course its going to get the most clicks...

Case in point, this mornings front page of smh.com.au shows that the #1 story is Wayne Carey... rocketing in at 9:24am as "Breaking News". At 9:44am, the story of the deaths of 10,000 Burmese people comes in, but doesnt displace Wayne Carey nor the picture lead story that some guy sued for the right to take his wife's surname as his own.



See what I mean... and then look at the picture news below... Tom Cruise, Kylie Minogue, a washed up footballer, Tom Hanks and a general "Mag Watch"... all very very important stuff.

And I thought the Sydney Morning Herald, and its sister paper in Melbourne The Age were supposed to be the daily papers that prided themselves on journalism...

10 Months Jail for this!

27yr old deliberately grooms a 12yr old for sex and is sentenced to 36months jail of which 26 months is "suspended". (Story)

WTF is going on here?

His defence? He was depressed and was not capable to delineate right from wrong because he was lost in a fantasy.

HELLO! The man was fantasising about sex with a 12yr old and when he acted on those fantasies, that's his excuse!

And shame on the press for referring to the victim as a "teenager". Since when is 12 a teenager?

Disgusting on all counts.

Shapelle Corby: "I want to go home"

Shapelle Corby wants to go home.

Funny, but I thought that was the point of jail? Made you wish to have your freedoms back and potentially regret your actions... mmm.

I wish we would stop having these bleeding heart stories every 6 months in which they have a vague reference at the end of the article to "the ugly one". No disrespect to Renae Lawrence, but you know she doesnt quite cut the mustard to be deserving of a lead story in the Telecrap because she doesnt have those doe-like innocent eyes and a nice rack like Shapelle.

/sarcasm off.

Zimbabwe

Enough of the frivolities...

Zimbabwe. Where is the UN on this? Mugabe is elected out clearly, refuses to show himself publically, calls a recount on no basis, and in the intervening three weeks, 10 elected representatives of the opposition party (who should be in power) have been murdered and now the Mugabe Health Minister threatens to shoot opposition supporters.

If there was ever the case for third party intervention, its Zimbabwe. As a Commonwealth (or are they ex-Commonwealth) nation, the British should invade, oust the dictator and his cronies and instill the properly elected party as leaders of the country.

But why don't they? Americans seem to jump willingly into the Mid-East, and Australia gets involved in East Timor and the Solomons, and the Brits fought a whole war against Argentina over a rocky outcrop of sheep paddocks in the Falklands.

Why is Zimbabwe simply untouchable?? The guy is a despot and should be removed. Permanently.

What Utter Bullshit

Facebook / MySpace access is now a "key consideration" for employees looking to join an employer. (link)

Come on people, if you cant handle not being able to receive your SuperPokes or your latest invites to be a Ninja or a Zombie, then dont work at all. I have a Facebook profile, but my company blocks it and thats fine by me.

Sheesh! Talk about catering for the lowest common denominator!

Who cares!

A young girl posts on Facebook, like the gazillion of others, pictures of her and her friends at parties where there was alcohol involved. Lots of silly faces and young people acting foolish. Its a scenario played out in every bar and nightclub in the world every Saturday night and there is no harm done.

Unless of course the girl is an Australian swimmer and the governing body of Swimming in Australia wants them censored (read removed) from this persons personal website and then on top of that, the news report the photos as being "raunchy". Its absolutely ridculous and a complete waste of space.

Come on, please! Can we stop with this constant 'titilation' news making and let people be who they are without trying to lay down the heavy handed "role model" spiel?

Lying Thru His Gappy Teeth

Big news day!  Ray Martin “STORMS” out of Channel Nein!

Yee Gods!  Stop the Press!  Call the Government to an emergency sitting of Parliament!  Ray Martin has QUIT!

Of course I am being sarcastic.  Ray Martin has long lost his credibility as a journalist and is now considered the male version of a talking head that suits the commercial needs of attracting the older demographic.  Compared to current and previous news men such as Ian Ross and Brian Henderson, Martin is the “Richard Wilkins” of news media.  By this I mean he is everywhere, always talking but ultimately irrelevant.

But there was a time when Ray Martin was respected and I am struggling to think back to when he lost it.  I think when A Current Affair turned into a serial on stories about “back pain” and “angry neighbours” as opposed to in depth 60 Minutes style coverage his reputation took a hammering.  Also, I personally couldn’t stand it when he went to Indonesia after the Boxing Day Tsunami and spent 4 weeks or so standing in his Country Road gear with one foot up on some rubble shaking his head and “tsk tsking” through his gap toothed smile and doing inane stories about it, that really killed him off in my opinion.

So, again, the news media loses one of their own and act like we all give a toss.  Front page spreads… mmm… remember the Interest Rates guys?  Remember the Iraq War and the impending US elections??  You know, the things that really do matter….

ShittyRail

Its been a while, but here goes…


CityRail is the most fucktard service in which 100 or so years of work, design and planning can be washed away with the simplest and most expected issues.

Hey CityRail engineers… it does occasionally RAIN. Don’t listen to what the Greenies say, despite the drought and El Nino, it does rain from time to time. Therefore design a system that can cope with that.


And when you have a truck crossing railway tracks, there is a possibility for a bingle. Last night a truck was struck on the tracks. Thankfully no-one was hurt, but guess what ShittyRail did? They stopped trains at Penrith – some 50kms or 1+hr away. So in the pouring rain, people had to get out, get on crappy buses and be driven all stations all the way to Katoomba.

This morning, the trains were running 35mins late because of the same problem and the accompanying signal failures from “lightning strikes” and the rain. Incompetence. Lets hike fares some more hey!

/rant off

Health System Issues

Niki’s mum has taken a turn for the worse recently when on Friday she was in a large amount of pain. She was stuck in bed with severe nerve pain running through her back and legs. When I left to go to CanCon on Friday Niki was heading over to look after her and see what could be done.

Whilst I was whooping it up in Canberra though Niki had a really shit time of it as her Mum was a) bed ridden due to pain and b) was vomiting a lot because of the severity of the pain. I find that hard to imagine, that you can be physically ill, but she was. This culminated to a trip to the hospital on Saturday night. At the hospital, it was the typical mad house and when a doctor finally saw her, she was given Morphine (enough to last until Tuesday) and asked to come back at that time “when the Doctors would be back from the long weekend”. WTF?

So at 2am she returns home hocked to the eyeballs on Morphine which stops the pain but increases the nausea.

Then on Sunday night / Monday morning, the Morphine – which was supposed to last until Tuesday – runs out. Niki gets more over the counter from the local chemist despite the lack of a script and they’re forced to hire a wheel chair to get her around the house. She cant walk but obviously has to do things like go to the bathroom and shower etc.

So Tuesday arrives and they head back to the Hospital yesterday morning. The doctor gives her a different medicine to ease her pain and suspects a ruptured disc in her back. His advice – “go and have a CAT scan and an X-Ray and come back NEXT TUESDAY”. Again… WTF??

Niki and her Dad wheel her (in our own wheel chair) to the place to have the tests and guess what… BOTH the X-Ray and CAT scan machines are “Out of Order” and they cant do the tests.

This culminates in Niki taking her mum back home until some time in the future when they can have the tests and the Doctor can be fucked to actually do something pro-active.

All this time, Niki has been living at her mum & dads and the kids have been at friends or other relatives houses – they’ve been fine but they too have slept at their Nanny & Poppy’s house over the weekend. But given that this temporary arrangement cant go on, Niki’s mum has moved in with us until she can get fixed / seen to or something. So I am sleeping in Kate’s bed, Kate is on her sister Brookes floor and Niki is staying with her mum in our room. Last night she had a good rest but the medicine has effectively turned her into a sleeping zombie – which is good for her if the pain is still there behind the medicine.

But the question has to be asked: At what point does a hospital admit a women aged 75 years with a suspected ruptured disc? Why cant she be admitted and cared for by professional nurses rather than being shipped around and turned away or dealt with incompetently by a Health System that has clearly gone to the dogs? My parents in law have Private Health Insurance and have been members of their fund all their adult lives.

Clearly, something is going very wrong and I am sure our issue this past weekend – and presumably for the next week at least – is not an isolated case.

Dead Pool Curse...

Was listening to the radio the other night (well a podcast of the radio) and they were talking about the notion of “The Dead Pool”.

This is where a group of friends would list 20 celebrities of any type and the one who has the most people on their list to die in that calendar year wins the pool of cash.

The guy on the radio was already gloating how he was “up” as he had Ike Turner!

So, this morning… who had Heath Ledger???

What a turn up for the books is that. Yes, its all a bit sketchy at the moment, but you have to be certain it was drug related and the question needs to be answered was it suicide or accidental overdose? Its very sad, but again and again these people get caught with their fame and fortune and wind up dead from so much drugs because they have such a large disposable income.

The thing about Heath Ledger is that I am a bit surprised and shocked. He wasn’t a known drug user, he wasn’t a “bad boy” so to speak… he seemed like a fairly young clean cut guy who was able to hang out with some very attractive girls… in short, a young rich guy enjoy his fortune! But drugs? We all know about Aussies with troubles – Keith Urban’s alcohol rehab was news for weeks (and alcoholism is hardly uncommon) so I am starting to think that Heath Ledger may have committed suicide. If he was a druggie, we’d have known about it…

Which brings me to the other gripe I have regularly – the press’s fascination with Amy Winehouse. The day Ledger dies, she is all over the news videoed smoking crack cocaine at 5am before she went to her husbands court hearing. Give this skank a wide berth please! I still haven’t heard her sing… and yet she’s supposed to be famous, yet all she is is a deadshit loser with a death wish.

Wish she was on my Dead Pool…

Mondayitis

Have a bad case of Mondayitis today... had a good weekend, we were out and about but I wasnt terribly busy (Niki though was flat chat with dancing on Saturday) so I spent my Sat morning relaxing with a coffee at the local cafe before heading home on a rainy Saturday morning to paint some more and then went down to cricket with the fatalistic requirement that no matter the weather you have to turn up... which we did and which the captains and umps called it a day at 1:15pm and agreed to a one day game next week.

So it was off to the pub and a couple of beers and then out to dinner with friends...

Then Sunday was a big Xmas BBQ and I forgot the camera, but the day was excellent and we didnt end up leaving until after 6pm... Jumping Castles, a BBQ, a wading pool for the kids, a bit of one touch soccer of grown ups vs the kids and waaay too many beers... (Niki was driving!)

But my good mood came acropper last night. After getting home, I decided to give the lawn a quick mow. My lawnmower (which was Dads previously and was some 20+ years old) died yet again last week and instead of getting it repaired yet again, I went to Bunnings and bought a new one. Brought it home and it worked fine last week.

Looking to run the mower quickly over the backyard - 7pm on a Sunday night - I pulled the cord and felt something crack and the cable became stuck and would only pull back about 30cms. One farking mow and its done something to itself. All my good humour went out the window. Now I have to find the receipt and get it repaired via Bunnings (which I presume will take months) or I can take it to the local lawnmower place and pay for it myself.

Not sure what to do with that, but the grass is still growing!

Rates Up... Howard Out

Well, Mr Core Promise has broken it yet again...

 

I am not arguing about the interest rates themselves, I am not too bothered as I am in a fixed rate and will be for some time, but the point is that Howard keeps arguing about how good it is for the average Australian and really it isnt.  We live in a world of credit and pay through the nose for everything due to compounding taxes (state based stamp duty is taxed by the Federal GST).

 

Petrol this morning was a $1.36 at Glenbrook this morning and the price of groceries is obscene.  I had to buy some spare razor blades for my razor - something like $24 for 5 blades?!  WTF is that?!

 

Rudd wont be able to correct the rises... my point is he wasnt the one saying that a Liberal government would keep rates low and that they'd go up with a Labor government... unfortunately he has been exposed yet again for the crock of shit liar that he really is.

Repeat Post - Melbourne Cup Blows

This is what I said on this day last year.

 

My views have not changed.  However, to add to my bitter relationship to the Melb Cup, it appears that I wasnt added to some sort of email distribution list for North Sydney staff when I joined my new job 3 months ago and I was not aware today was a) Mufti Day b) that the Office Sweeps were drawn YESTERDAY and c) that there is a function on at 2pm that I had to RSVP to.

 

So my day is even shittier... 

More Crap News

I dont mean I have bad news, I mean that there is more "crap" in the news today...

 

Why does an Australian Idol evictee story occupy slots 1, 5 & 8 on the most read news articles in news.com.au today?  Why is it given a lead position on the website?  Why does it attract over 200 comments from people?

 

People, there is an election going on.  Read about the Health, Education and Foreign Affairs policies about the political parties.  Be informed of the Environment and the Economy.  Make an informed decision to cast your vote on November 24.

 

By all means enjoy Australian Idol if its your cup of tea, but what these stats tell me is that virtually all traffic coming into news.com.au is going into hyped up media dribble about a girl who got voted off a popularity contest.

 

As at 10:56am, here is the Top 10... it makes a damning indictment on the Australian People:

 

1. Tarasai burns her last Idol bridge - IDOL rubbish
   
2. 'Haunted' swing keeps rocking - this was in the news on Monday yet still occupies #2 position
   
3. Hunter takes 'Bigfoot photo' - another drunken Kentucky farmer takes a photo of his mates wife and thinks its Bigfoot
   
4. Top 10 mistakes bosses make - A poached story about some pseudo academic report on bad leadership
   
5. Now Tarisai lets fly on Natalie - IDOL rubbish #2
   
6. Hawkins blows off Gale feud rumours - More excuses to show Jennifer Hawkins in a bikini
   
7. JT surly, no word on gay rumours - Justin Timberlake gay?  Who knows, who cares....
   
8. Tarisai issues holy warning - IDOL rubbish #3...
   
9. Little girl survives plane crash - An actual news story... its human interest, but its actually news... well done.
   
10. US hunter takes 'Bigfoot photo' - More Kentucky Farmer, why?

So congratulations Australia... be ashamed, very ashamed.

 

Overzealot Councils

School holidays have been on while I was away in London and as is tradition in my local area, many kids meet at Glenbrook park to play.  The kids get together and the mum's have coffee and watch their kids play on the swings and run around the park... all very simple stuff and you would think totally normal...

 

But oh no... not the Blue Mountains Council... they have done something incredibly stupid... they have FENCED OFF THE PARK AND BARRED ACCESS TO ALL!

 

Why?  Well the sign proclaims in big letters - "Park Closed Due To Dangerous Trees".  Yes due to the risk that a branch may come down in the local park from the gum trees and the higher than normal number of kids in the park due to holidays, they decided to close the fucking park!  HELLO!  Its the Blue Mountains... do they know why the mountains are called BLUE?  Its because of the haze that the billions of eucalyptus TREES give off in the sun.  There are trees in the Blue Mountains!  Thousands of them!!  And yes, there are some at Glenbrook Park.  Yee Gods!! How amazing!!

 

So the council has shut the park until they can determine what to do... local Greenies (and they too number in their thousands, and in this case I am with them) are aghast that the council may rip out the majestic gum trees from the park.  So there is a bit of a stand off and the lovely park is closed off with 10' high cyclone fencing and "Warning" signs.

 

If this logic is to be followed, the council should be asking all of us to stay indoors under our beds in case something falls on our precious heads.... but even then you're at risk because the bed may collapse as well...

 

Ridiculous!  Can we not get some common sense back in the world!