The best laid plans of mice and men
Gang oft agleigh.
Or something. Anyhoo, I got away for a day, keeping to the backroads and visiting the scenic delights of Bugilbone and Pilliga before doing possibly irreparable damage to my liver at the Cuttabri Wine Shanty, which is the most substantial shanty I've seen in a while. The current building has been there since 1903, replacing an old Cobb & Co way-station which had burnt down. The current Proprietor, Bronwyn, is somewhat of a babe, too, which may or may not have contributed to my willingness to lay my liver on the line.
I've got some pictures somewhere, when I can find my camera, including some of the ute for Hooch, but in the meantime, fuck it.
So what time did my Dad decide to call on the morning after? 5:30 am of course, the time all reasonable people make phone calls. He was at St. George (NOT the one in Sinny) and wanted to know how to get to my place. Directions given, I put the ute into warp drive to get home first, via Wee Waa, Burren Junction, almost Walgett and the Ridge, where I stopped to purchase a christmas present for Dad, a limited edition John Murray print called, appropriately enough, "Waiting For Dad."
I beat Dad home in time to make the place look like somebody lives here, luckily. He stayed five days, which was pretty cool, I like having Dad around. There's not much to say about those five days, nothing exciting happened. We watched videos of the entire '04 Speedway Grand Prix season, as Dad hasn't got pay TV and hadn't seen it yet. And talked a lot, mainly.
On a completely different subject, I'll give a few short spurts in the direction of the Tsunami.
You will note that I didn't say 'Tsunami Disaster'. Not because it isn't a disaster, but because the phrase has become a slogan; like 9-11, or even worse 'Ground Zero' when referring to the WTC site. To the best of my knowledge (which is admittedly minimal), 'Ground Zero' refers to the terrestrial point directly below the epicentre of an atmospheric nuclear explosion. As far as I am aware, parking an aeroplane in an insurance office is not the same thing as a nuclear explosion. Stop being melodramatic, it is superfluous.
Sorry for the disruption, normal service will resume as soon as possible; in fact I think I see it coming now.
Short Spurts:
a) Why won't India accept humanitarian aid? (Not a rhetorical question.)
b) Why won't Thailand accept economic assistance? (See a)
c) For the very first time since his tilt at being opposition leader in the whatevers, I've had reason to believe Alexander Downer may, in fact, be a decent human being.
d) Ditto John Howard, although I'm not 100% convinced about this aide package for Indonesia. I mean, the package itself is a good thing, but are the countries which didn't do so well proportionately going to be a bit shirty? Also, on a more cynical note, it's $1,000,000,000 well invested; it creates (hopefully) a sense of friendship and indebtedness in the Indo government, it lessens the amount of leverage J.I. recruiters may have when seeking disaffected recruits but most importantly of all, it is a small price to pay for taking away the only piece of the political landscape the ALP still had a claim on: the Moral High Ground.
e) I heard a bloke on the wireless a couple of days after the Tsunami. He'd just reurned from Thailand and pissed and moaned about how difficult life was; all the hotel staff had deserted and he couldn't get anything to eat or any help, boo hoo hooo....
Newsflash, dickhead: All the hotel staff who 'deserted' were probably dead, or their families werer dead, friends dead, homes gone, neighbourhoods gone, etc, etc.
No wonder they call us Ugly Australians.
f) On the other hand, two different women made me proud to be an aussie. The first, whose name I missed, was in Indonesia when the shit happened, realising that there was nothing there she could do to help and that if she stayed, she was contributing to the problem, she came home. Before she left the airport she contacted the Red Cross (as I trust you all have, credit cards ready) and is now working as a volunteer in the call centre. (As an aside for the blokes, she is also somewhat of a babe. Think what would happen if Natalie Imbruglia ate properlyfor a month). The other women, whose name is Calder or Cauldwell or something like that, is a medical student who was holidays in Sri Lanka. She helped to set up and operate a temporary morgue.
Equality is bullshit. Some people are definitely better than others.
Or something. Anyhoo, I got away for a day, keeping to the backroads and visiting the scenic delights of Bugilbone and Pilliga before doing possibly irreparable damage to my liver at the Cuttabri Wine Shanty, which is the most substantial shanty I've seen in a while. The current building has been there since 1903, replacing an old Cobb & Co way-station which had burnt down. The current Proprietor, Bronwyn, is somewhat of a babe, too, which may or may not have contributed to my willingness to lay my liver on the line.
I've got some pictures somewhere, when I can find my camera, including some of the ute for Hooch, but in the meantime, fuck it.
So what time did my Dad decide to call on the morning after? 5:30 am of course, the time all reasonable people make phone calls. He was at St. George (NOT the one in Sinny) and wanted to know how to get to my place. Directions given, I put the ute into warp drive to get home first, via Wee Waa, Burren Junction, almost Walgett and the Ridge, where I stopped to purchase a christmas present for Dad, a limited edition John Murray print called, appropriately enough, "Waiting For Dad."
I beat Dad home in time to make the place look like somebody lives here, luckily. He stayed five days, which was pretty cool, I like having Dad around. There's not much to say about those five days, nothing exciting happened. We watched videos of the entire '04 Speedway Grand Prix season, as Dad hasn't got pay TV and hadn't seen it yet. And talked a lot, mainly.
On a completely different subject, I'll give a few short spurts in the direction of the Tsunami.
You will note that I didn't say 'Tsunami Disaster'. Not because it isn't a disaster, but because the phrase has become a slogan; like 9-11, or even worse 'Ground Zero' when referring to the WTC site. To the best of my knowledge (which is admittedly minimal), 'Ground Zero' refers to the terrestrial point directly below the epicentre of an atmospheric nuclear explosion. As far as I am aware, parking an aeroplane in an insurance office is not the same thing as a nuclear explosion. Stop being melodramatic, it is superfluous.
Sorry for the disruption, normal service will resume as soon as possible; in fact I think I see it coming now.
Short Spurts:
a) Why won't India accept humanitarian aid? (Not a rhetorical question.)
b) Why won't Thailand accept economic assistance? (See a)
c) For the very first time since his tilt at being opposition leader in the whatevers, I've had reason to believe Alexander Downer may, in fact, be a decent human being.
d) Ditto John Howard, although I'm not 100% convinced about this aide package for Indonesia. I mean, the package itself is a good thing, but are the countries which didn't do so well proportionately going to be a bit shirty? Also, on a more cynical note, it's $1,000,000,000 well invested; it creates (hopefully) a sense of friendship and indebtedness in the Indo government, it lessens the amount of leverage J.I. recruiters may have when seeking disaffected recruits but most importantly of all, it is a small price to pay for taking away the only piece of the political landscape the ALP still had a claim on: the Moral High Ground.
e) I heard a bloke on the wireless a couple of days after the Tsunami. He'd just reurned from Thailand and pissed and moaned about how difficult life was; all the hotel staff had deserted and he couldn't get anything to eat or any help, boo hoo hooo....
Newsflash, dickhead: All the hotel staff who 'deserted' were probably dead, or their families werer dead, friends dead, homes gone, neighbourhoods gone, etc, etc.
No wonder they call us Ugly Australians.
f) On the other hand, two different women made me proud to be an aussie. The first, whose name I missed, was in Indonesia when the shit happened, realising that there was nothing there she could do to help and that if she stayed, she was contributing to the problem, she came home. Before she left the airport she contacted the Red Cross (as I trust you all have, credit cards ready) and is now working as a volunteer in the call centre. (As an aside for the blokes, she is also somewhat of a babe. Think what would happen if Natalie Imbruglia ate properlyfor a month). The other women, whose name is Calder or Cauldwell or something like that, is a medical student who was holidays in Sri Lanka. She helped to set up and operate a temporary morgue.
Equality is bullshit. Some people are definitely better than others.
posted by Dirk at 5:04 pm
9 Comments:
Adie,
don't know about going down the toilet, but it's definitely in the bathroom with a pressing feeling. I sometimes wonder what the point of having a budget surplus is; what's the point besides electoral point scoring? On a broader scale, I wonder that about a lot of fiscally oriented things, why do you need the money, what are you going to do with it? I would rather see us in the red, with universal healthcare, like we used to have, than turning a profit and queues at the casualty room because nobody bulk-bills anymore. And fuck the Libertarians and economic rationalists (an oxymoron, if I've ever heard one) who fly into paroxysms of rage if anybody should ever receive anything which was paid for by the general population.
not holding my breath on utopia, nor a decent health scheme either. every year they take a few more bits back, screw it up a bit more, and generally imitate the yanks by making it more useless.
it's all rather depressing really...
which means i generally agree with everything you just said. one of the problems with drinking and posting, i make even less sense than normal, which is not a good thing, and normally i don't make much sense anyway.
A girl told me the other day that she did not donate to the relief appeal “Because John Howard has given 1 billion of the taxpayers money and because I am a taxpayer I have donated”
I personally gave $100.00 which on my weekly wage of $412.50 is nearly 25% of my wage, imagine how better off it would-be if EVERYONE donated 25% of their weekly pay Packer, Lowey, Leiberman and all of those but of course they do it through their companies so they can get tax breaks. Sigh, just call me a cynic.
Your text is certainly a diferent beastie depending on whether you use Firefox or IE.
By the way. I an DEFITITELY better than others.
Adie,
if you want Utopia, it's north-east of Alice Springs. I don't recommend it.
Rat, the Liberal ideology would do away aith universal healthcare, to them it is a socialist evil. They realise that it would be unpopular to scrap it, so they're going to do what every Liberal government has always done when they can't get their own way, they are going to sabotage the system by stealth, then say that the system isn't working, so let's get rid of it. Witness the Kennett years in Victoria and the Republic fiasco Johnny set up.
Stumpy,
that's a major effort on your part, well done. How do you survive on that sort of income, though?
I hope you ostracised that girl, I don't usually make judgement calls on people with regard to their morals, but that's pretty ordinary.
Tony,
I just had a look at IE, Firefox, Avant Browser and Netscape: identical fonts. You're having a lend of me.
By the way; you are DEFINITELY better than others, 'cept maybe that spelling thing.
How do I survive? Just barely. I am fortunate that many years ago back in the mists of time during my salad days at the age of 19 when I was working in my trade I bought a house, now having bought the house I was in debt which unlike most of the Country is a situation that I don’t like being in so I then worked 2 extra jobs and put all the money gained from them into the house repayments. Every time I got a letter from the bank advising me that I could lower my repayments I kept them at the original level so in 4 years had paid it off. “The money I save won’t buy my youth again”
Day to day finances are tight, I subscribe to the envelope system In the gun safe are many envelopes each labelled EG House Insurance, Car Rego, Gas, Water, Power, Rates etc each week into each of those envelopes I place a sum of money that experience has shown me will amount to enough to pay for the item when it falls due. The recent rises in petrol prices caused me some concern as I was not able to fill the tank of my car but by turning off the engine and rolling down the hills managed to make do.
I collect scrap and do the odd job on the weekends for Charlie Ash
I exist but I don’t live I haven’t been on Holiday since 1996 {when I was working in my trade} I take them but stay at home because I cannot afford to go anywhere. {I lie I went to the Art Gallery the other day, but you know what I mean}
The job has its own rewards, but the pay well. I want to get back into my trade but am finding it difficult, apparently there is a skills shortage but not in my trade it would appear.
As to that girl well that’s girls for you they have always been like that, when they are that age they seem to think that a great tragedy is breaking a fingernail. Shades of Mary Kate and Ashley
Weird. It's defit ... defint ... REALLY all over the shop on my home computoy.
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