Stephen Cummings should have given up the music business after that album, he's sucked dingos balls ever since. anyway: As you may possibly be aware through the occasional hint and oblique reference, I live in what could reasonably be described as a 'remote area'. Quite a lot of visitors from cities feel isolated and uncomfortable out here. Fair enough, I feel out of place in cities; although I do enjoy them. Until very recently we've been quite restricted in what we could listen to on the old steam-powered wireless. There was the local ABC of course. This may make me an unreconstructed Marxist in the eyes of those practising RWDB orthodoxy, but I like the ABC. I'm not without my reservations - I get sick of the PC line sometimes and a lot of the presenters don't appeal, but I like being able listen to the cricket and football, the Country Hour is handy and I even like the old lady who gives gardening advice on Saturday mornings. We also had 2 WEB, AKA radio B&S* Think not for profit co-operative radio based in Bourke. Need I say more? Sorry about that. I can't make that link thing disappear from this post without making it disappear form all posts, so I'm going to be summarising things for a while. On with the show: Nowadays we have another station to listen to - Rebel FM. As the name implies Rebel FM is your standard Barnesy/Farnsy/whacky Brekky crew/icy cold cans of Coke style of radio stationnn, yeahhh! No Black Thunders, though. Considering their reception area extends from the Cooktown/Weipa area down to here, they'd need Operation Rolling Thunder to get sufficient coverage. Non Queenslanders may support this. One thing that it has shown me is that there has been a massive increase in the amount of North American middle class boy bands who think that by being whingy whiny white boys they are being 'punk'. I'm looking at you in particular A Simple Plan. Fuck off and die. You deserve to be glassed. *Note for foreign visitors: A rural institution, B&S balls are held annually in many country towns. Originating in the nineteenth century, B&S - or Batchelor and Spinster - balls were conceived as a way for young people to overcome the isolation of living in the bush and find a mate. These days they are two day booze fests were young people go to drink rum, listen to bad music, do 'circle work' in utes, throw food dye at one another and attempt to pick up. Also colloquially known as Beer and Spirits (politely), Booze and Sluts (by hopeful yet hopeless male participants) and Bogans and Skanks (By everybody else).
I was going to call this post Ch-ch-ch-changes, after the David Bowie song. Then I thought that maybe Bowie is over-rated, so I was going to call this post 'David Bowie sucks' with an explanation about the 'Changes' connection. Then I thought that 'David Bowie sucks could be construed (accurately) two ways - so I called it, well, you know what I called it. Anyway, the point of this post is that I am a man and as a man it is incumbent upon me to mess with repair and maintain things, even if they don't really need any messing with repairs or maintenance. As a part of this unholy injunction I've been messing with this little time waster. You may have noticed that I now have a 'recent comments' bit in the sidebar, for example. I searched and I searched and I searched for the code for that. I could have saved myself the time and gone through the Blogger Dashboard. Still, it's pretty nifty, huh? I particularly like the way that the first bit of the comment floats around when you run the cursor over the appropriate spot. (What do they call that floaty roundy thing, anyway?) Fucknose why it does that, but it's pretty nifty. I had a girlfriend who used to say that - every time. Probably why we're an ex-couple. Still, I can be like the big kids now and have summarised posts. Of course, that means the posts have to be long enough to warrant summarising, so this will probably be the only time that I do it. Oh well. There's also a couple of links added to the bottom of the sidebar which are supposed to increase my traffic, make my teeth whiter and give me more intense orgasms. I'm a bit dubious about some of their claims, I don't see how they're going to whiten my teeth, but we'll see. It's a bit academic, really. I don't give a Rat's patootie how many people read this, as long as somebody does, I'd hate to just stand here and scream into the dark. Finally, you may have noticed that I've sold out. Yes, sad to say, but I've gone over to the Dark Side. I've been in touch with Google and decided to take their thirty pieces of silver. Actually I doubt whether I'll get that much out of them. This, too, is an academic exercise. They don't actually tell you how they work out how much to pay you. Well, they give you the general idea of how they do it, they just don't give you the numbers. I'll give you the numbers, though. Every now and then, probably when somebody asks, I'll put the figures up here so that you can all writhe in envious anger/ laugh and point at my futile effort to become a new age media magnate. There's a few more things I want to do while I've got my masculine practicality mojo working. The sidebar is getting to be longer than a Russian novel. so I'd like to have drop-down menus for the blogroll and SGP standings, just to shorten it up a bit. Should make the load time for the page shorter, too(?) I haven't been able to work that one out yet, but I'm indomitable. The sidebar seems to be too wide to me, so I'm going to have a go at skinnying it up a bit. I think I could do that, but maybe it's trickier than it looks. I love that the Template page has a 'preview' button. I'd also like to create a bit more of a personalized feel to the whole page, change the banner, put a background image in etc., but I have no clue about that. I'll work it out eventually.
Rat recently tried to draw an analogy by comparing different types of software by likening it to the difference between green and yellow machinery. Silly boy, we've got new machines and they're red. How is that analogy going to help me? Here's a pitcher of one. It's a Case MX285. As the name implies. there's two hunnerd 'n' eighty five wild stallions under that bonnet, just waiting for me to give them the signal. And of course, red ones go faster. I don't like it as much as the old mean greenie. The controls are not as well thought out. On the plus side though, it does have a shitload of grunt, the CD player (no mp3s. Boo.) sounds good and it's larger inside than my first flat. Best of all though, it has twin cupholders!!!11!! One of them is even designed specifically for my coffee cup! Spooky, huh? It's, like, it's like they knew I'd be driving it. Trippy, man. Still, at nearly a quarter of a million dollars a throw, you'd think that it would come with it's own coffee maker. Things sure have improved a lot over the years, though. I grew up about an hour and a half south-east of Melbourne in what was a spud and dairy district (these days it's more carrots, onions and beef, I don't believe anybody is still milking in the district). I can still remember in primary school the father of a now deceased friend of mine bought a Ford 5000 tractor. We thought that it was the duck's guts. I mean, it was sooo big. We've got one here. I'm not so impressed by it, though.
I had to work for a few hours on Saturday morning, but I managed to fit a bit of a ride in anyway. About 1500k's through the Granite Belt and the Brisbane River Valley. Only one speeding ticket, which was good and bad. Good because the copper marked it down a couple of k's and saved me $100 and a point, bad because I had been in between the same two cars for about ten k's, but he didn't book them. In other news, I had some visitors over the weekend: These little guys, who will taste good in a few months, and this guy, who will also taste good in a few months, but I probably won't get any of him.
Could there be any more embarrassing position to be in than that of the failed suicide bomber? Imagine; you've spent months sourcing your supplies, you've been brainwashed instructed on the necessity of your actions by your Imam cell leader, all your fuckwit mates co-conspirators are glued to the news channels waiting for the story to break and you've put a band-aid on your conscience made your peace with Allah At the right moment you stand up, shouting "Die, infidel scum!" - CLICK! "Err... Allah Akbar!"CLICK Mumbling now, "Stupid Hassan, I told him to get the solar fuses from Dick Smith's but no-o, he had to get them from Tandy's because they were cheaper" CLICK! CLICK! Running now, "Hassan, like you are gorn! You are so fucking gorn!" CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! Meanwhile, up in Heaven, in the virgins' dorm Leila and Majiyah and the gang are somewhat distressed, "Hurry up! It's acetone peroxide, for Allah's sake, how difficult can it be! Habib over on the Gaza Strip is booked in for Tuesday morning and his guys are good! They can make ANYTHING explode! If he gets here first all the good ones will be gone!" "And he doesn't even clean his teeth!" wails Maryam.
You may notice my blogroll in the sidebar. It has the useful and almost redundant title of 'Blogs'. Self-explanatory really. What more do you need to know? Some people like to put cutesy titles on their blogrolls; like 'Stuff I like to read', but... Meh. That's the web page equivalent of a girl wearing a 'Weapons of Mass Distraction' T-shirt - mildly amusing the first time you see it, but after that... Other people like to break their blogrolls up into categories. With particularly large blogrolls this can be useful, Troppo Armadillo, four eggs ample, has their blogroll divided up by political leaning, among other things. Handy if you want to see what RWDB's are thinking, or you want to run around in left field for a while. Some particularly smug people however, who shall remain nameless (mainly 'cause I can't remember any of them), have divided their blogrolls up qualitatively, using various headings which, when deciphered all mean the same things: Really Good Blogs, Rather Good Blogs, Quite Good Blogs and Blogs Which Are Fairly Crap Really But They Linked To Me So I'll Link To Them. Being as how I'm the smuggest of smug bastards, I've decided to join their ranks. So after much number crunching, test marketing and general tweaking I've come up with a brand new format for the blogroll. This is such an earth-shattering event that I've decided my baby should make his debut in the main body of the text, rather than hide his light under an archives list. So, without further ado, laze and gem - MY BRAND NEW BLOGROLL!!!!
Really Ace Blogs All You Need Really Crap Blogs Every other one*
That's it. I don't know why I hadn't thought of it earlier. Simple, elegant, comprehensive and effective. Similar in fact to Einstein** reducing the universe to three letters, a number and a mathematical symbol. Sometimes I'm so good that I scare myself. *Except yours. **Einstein isn't in the spell-checker, but Einsteinium is.
I got a new toy. Or, more precisely, the boss got a new toy and lets me play with it. Or, even more precisely, the boss is trialling a new toy and the toyshop hopes he will buy it, in the meantime, I still get to play with it. Here it is. It reminds me of Sarah Michelle Gellar - some people think that it's really cute, others just think that it's funny looking. You can do all sorts of fun shit with it; lift heavy things, dig holes etc. The jib is telescopic, but I managed to delete that picture. You can even do weird shit with steering. You can have conventional, front wheel only steering, just like your pussy urban vehicles, or you can have four wheel steering, with the rear wheels counter steering, as in the photo, or... you can make it crab-walk. Apparently you can use this machine for, ummm, useful stuff, too, but I've only been on it for two days, so that will have to wait. It does have some serious shortcomings, though: the operator's cab cockpit is roughly as roomy as a single seat kayak. More importantly, though - there is NO STEREO. So I broke it today. At least, I dropped a hay bale on it and broke one of the worklights off it. Ahh well.
The white trash in my blood will not keep me from becoming a doctor or a lawyer, but it will keep me from a good haircut and any sort of fashion sense.
I used to read a lot of crappy fiction, westerns, old detective stories and science fiction from the thirties and forties. Never read war stories, dunno why. There was something about the way that the authors tried to fit War and Peace into the space needed for the instruction pamphlet in a headache tablet box that appealed to me. The sci-fi stories were the crappiest and - therefore - the best. Any time the author got himself stuck in a corner he (I don't remember any female writers) could just invent some shit and get out again. I mean, the action is taking place on Reamyewout 9, it could happen there, right? Have you been there? I didn't think so, so just shut up. Even the laws of physics were irrelevant. I remember one story about mining a planet which orbited two different suns at two different speeds and would sometimes overtake itself. In fact, there were quite a few stories about planets with two suns. Mostly, I suspect, so that the artist who did the cover could put something interesting in the background of the picture of the big-titted damsel in distress. Who didn't always make an appearance in the actual story. Of course, anybody familiar with the way that planets are formed by the gradual accretion of matter in orbit around a star will be aware that this couldn't happen. Trouble is, nobody told 'em at Cal-Tech. Weird, huh?
Labor's shadow foreign minister Kevin "Watch your back, Kim" Rudd, is apparently alarmed that John Howard wouldn't rule out the possibility of suicide bombings in Australia:
Labor's foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd is alarmed by Prime Minister John Howard's comments that the possibility of suicide bombing attacks in Australia like those seen last week in London cannot be ruled out.
Mr Howard says he does not believe the Government's decision to redeploy soldiers to Afghanistan will make Australia more of a target but says he cannot count out the possibility of an attack here.
"We shouldn't complacently imagine that there aren't potentially suicide bombers in this country," Mr Howard said.
Mr Rudd says if Mr Howard has intelligence about potential threats he should make it public.
"If you have have no intelligence that there are suicide bombers in Australia, then make that plain to the Australian people as well," he said.
Here's a tip for you Kevvie boy; Shut. Up. Just shut the fuck up. When are more politicians going to realise that being in opposition does not mean that you have to try and put shit on the government of the day no matter what they say. Only an idiot would rule out suicide bombers - it isn't very difficult to do. On the subject of suicide bombers and suchlike, I've been hearing a fair bit lately about 'radical Muslim clerics' inciting the gullible hordes to rise up and vanquish the infidel. I haven't heard much from radical clerics, mind you, but enough people have to convince me that it may be happening. What I don't understand is why they haven't been arrested for treason. I mean, anybody is allowed to make an arrest for treason, check this out:
SECURITY LEGISLATION AMENDMENT (TERRORISM) ACT 2002 No. 65, 2002 Schedule 1—Amendments relating to treason and terrorism
Criminal Code Act 1995
1 The Schedule (after Chapter 4 of the Criminal Code) Insert:
Chapter 5—The security of the Commonwealth Note: If either the Criminal Code Amendment (Espionage and Related Offences) Act 2002 or the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism Act 2002 receives the Royal Assent on or before the day on which this Act receives the Royal Assent, this item does not commence at all. See subsection 2(3) of this Act.
2 The Schedule (Chapter 5 of the Criminal Code)
Insert in the appropriate numerical position:
Part 5.1—Treason Division 80—Treason 80.1 Treason (1) A person commits an offence, called treason, if the person:
(a) causes the death of the Sovereign, the heir apparent of the Sovereign, the consort of the Sovereign, the Governor-General or the Prime Minister; or (b) causes harm to the Sovereign, the Governor-General or the Prime Minister resulting in the death of the Sovereign, the Governor-General or the Prime Minister; or (c) causes harm to the Sovereign, the Governor-General or the Prime Minister, or imprisons or restrains the Sovereign, the Governor-General or the Prime Minister; or (d) levies war, or does any act preparatory to levying war, against the Commonwealth; or (e) engages in conduct that assists by any means whatever, with intent to assist, an enemy: (i) at war with the Commonwealth, whether or not the existence of a state of war has been declared; and (ii) specified by Proclamation made for the purpose of this paragraph to be an enemy at war with the Commonwealth; or (f) engages in conduct that assists by any means whatever, with intent to assist: (i) another country; or (ii) an organisation; that is engaged in armed hostilities against the Australian Defence Force; or (g) instigates a person who is not an Australian citizen to make an armed invasion of the Commonwealth or a Territory of the Commonwealth; or (h) forms an intention to do any act referred to in a preceding paragraph and manifests that intention by an overt act. Penalty: Imprisonment for life.
(1A) Paragraphs (1)(e) and (f) do not apply to engagement in conduct by way of, or for the purposes of, the provision of aid of a humanitarian nature.
Note: A defendant bears an evidential burden in relation to the matter in subsection (1A). See subsection 13.3(3).
(1B) Paragraph (1)(h) does not apply to formation of an intention to engage in conduct that:
(a) is referred to in paragraph (1)(e) or (f); and (b) is by way of, or for the purposes of, the provision of aid of a humanitarian nature. Note: A defendant bears an evidential burden in relation to the matter in subsection (1B). See subsection 13.3(3).
(2) A person commits an offence if the person:
(a) receives or assists another person who, to his or her knowledge, has committed treason with the intention of allowing him or her to escape punishment or apprehension; or (b) knowing that another person intends to commit treason, does not inform a constable of it within a reasonable time or use other reasonable endeavours to prevent the commission of the offence. Penalty: Imprisonment for life.
(3) Proceedings for an offence against this section must not be commenced without the Attorney-General's written consent.
(4) Despite subsection (3):
(a) a person may be arrested for an offence against this section; or (b) a warrant for the arrest of a person for such an offence may be issued and executed; and the person may be charged, and may be remanded in custody or on bail, but:
(c) no further proceedings may be taken until that consent has been obtained; and (d) the person must be discharged if proceedings are not continued within a reasonable time. (5) On the trial of a person charged with treason on the ground that he or she formed an intention to do an act referred to in paragraph (1)(a), (b), (c), (d), (e), (f) or (g) and manifested that intention by an overt act, evidence of the overt act is not to be admitted unless the overt act is alleged in the indictment.
(6) Section 24F of the Crimes Act 1914 applies to this section in the same way it would if this section were a provision of Part II of that Act.
(7) Section 15.4 (extended geographical jurisdiction—category D) applies to an offence against this section.
(8) In this section:
constable means a member or special member of the Australian Federal Police or a member of the police force or police service of a State or Territory. organisation means:
(a) a body corporate; or (b) an unincorporated body; whether or not the body is based outside Australia, consists of persons who are not Australian citizens, or is part of a larger organisation.
Pay particular attention to 80.1 f(ii), 80.2 b, and 80.8 b. BTW, the citizen's arrest thing comes under common law - according to Tan and Tan:
At common law, a private person’s power of arrest without warrant are extremely limited. A private person may arrest a person who has committed treason or felony or whom he reasonably suspects of having committed treason or felony.
I would have thought treason was a felony, but heh, I'm only a farmboy. Anyhoo, how hard would it be to pretend to be a towel headed camel fucking IslamofascistTM, wander into a mosque with a 70mm panamax widescreen movie camera stuffed up your robe, get the goods on the Imam and put the smackdown on his candy ass?
According to an ABS study with a very convenient release date (who said the public service was being politicised?) people on individual contracts and/or enterprise bargaining agreements earn more than those on awards:
The Australian Bureau of Statistics' latest social trends study found workers on collective agreements and individual contracts have higher hourly rates of pay.
Based on the earnings of adult, full-time non-managerial workers in 2004, those who have their pay set by collective agreements earned an average $24.10 every hour.
Those on individual contracts also earned $23.30 an hour while those on award pay rates received $16.70 an hour.
The ninemsn* article does mention the ACTU's fears about the proposed IR changes:
Unions argue that workers will be worse off under the changes with overtime, weekend and public holiday penalty pay, allowances, redundancy pay and other conditions which boost pay packets at risk of being scrapped by employers.
Of course, it doesn't say why the unions argue this; the scrapping of the 'no disadvantage' rule. I don't know if the changes are going to be a good thing or not, but I find it ominous that just last week John Howard refused to repeat his "ironclad guarantee that you can't earn less under our system, but you can earn more"**, made to the Young Liberals in the 1996 election campaign. *I've never read anything by RWDB's complaining about ninemsn's bias **May be a slight misquote, memories are never perfect.
I've been thinking a bit more about this London bombing thing and I think Astrogoy made a pretty good point - bombs are bombs and they all kill people. I'm not going to check the stats, but I'd be surprised if more people weren't killed by suicide bombers, snipers etc. in Iraq every week than were killed in London. I'm getting fairly tired of the 'Blitz Spirit', too. (And before you get all sanctimonious on me, my mother grew up in London during WWII. She was standing at the rear door of her house when a V2 rocket hit outside the front door. She hit the garden fence on the full and still said that the belting she got from Pop for not getting into the bomb shelter in time hurt more.) And yes, I do know that 20% of all dwellings in England were damaged by bombs. I also know that a greater tonnage of bombs was dropped on Dresden in one night than was dropped on Britain over the duration of the entire war, also the ratio of High Explosive to Incendiary bombs was pretty much reversed so that instead of just lighting marker fires the incendiaries were supposed to consume all the oxygen in the atmosphere; suffocating anybody who didn't cop a direct hit. In a town with absolutely no strategic significance (the only railway line wasn't even targeted). This kind of carpet bombing was carried out all over Germany (albeit not firebombing). Check out the footage of the Allies entering Berlin and compare it to London, then tell me that the pom civilians had more to be stoic about than the German populace. The losers do it tough too, guys. Meanwhile in Baghdad, Kabul etc., people are dieing every day. A lot of right wing bloggers piss and moan about the bias of the media when it comes to Iraq and to a lesser extent Afghanistan. A lot of these bloggers posted lengthy and sometimes quite emotional articles about London. The Currency Lad even used Dickens's Tale of Two Cities in what would have to come close to being the most cloying overblown post I've read this year. All of this kind of puts the lie to the rhetoric about freeing the oppressed people of Iraq/Afghanistan/next bunch of uppity camel fuckers. Don't the dead of Baghdad have loved ones? Or is it that they just don't matter? Quite a lot of these RWDB types speak about a 'War on Islam' which is fine, as far as it goes; I'm all for honesty. But at least be honest about why you want a War on Islam. It isn't because Islam is evil or that its adherents are, by and large, any worse than non-adherents. It's because they treat you as you treat them - as inferiors. You want to know what the answer to all this bullshit is? Then you should go read something else, you won't find it here.
I bought a box of Coco Pops the other day (shut up). When I got home I started shoving stuff into random cupboards carefully storing my purchases. As I was doing this I noticed the 'specially marked' box of Coco Pops promoting a Jedi Mindgame. Let me say right now that I have never seen any of the Star Wars franchise movies. I don't mind sci-fi, but I am less likely to see anything when it is hyped up too much. However, I am aware of the genre it inhabits, so I was expecting this Jedi Mindgame thingy to be some sort of high tech Gameboy gizmo you had to collect tokens (from specially marked boxes) to get a discount on. Nuh uhh. It's just that old 'match the pairs' memory game, using Star Wars characters as the pairs. Lame. Especially as you don't get all the pairs on one box, but have to collect them from... Specially Marked Boxes. But. The Jedi Mind Game did give me a piece of information. There is a character in Star Wars called General Grievous. Did Tayler Kane's character get promoted? I didn't know that the Fire Brigade had Generals. Script sample; General Grievous: Grievous likes Grievous's mask. Grievous's mask is way cooler than Darth Vader's.
Well their party didn't last very long, did it? I simply do not understand the mentality of people who could do this sort of thing. What do they think they are going to acheive by doing this? What did those commuters have to do with the cunts who bombed them? Does it make them feel real brave to do something like that? Or do they just want the world to hate them some more, to justify their position as 'outsiders' or 'victims'? Cunts. Meanwhile, Wikipedia is much more informative than any news source.
NASA scientists have been getting fairly excited recently because they were going to throw a Maytag at a comet. Yesterday they did it and it all went pear shaped. Instead of just blowing a mob of tiny, harmless fragments into space, leaving a football stadium sized crater, the comet, Tempel 1, exploded into lethal chunks, all of which are headed directly for earth. At first scientists feared that the Deep Impact mission was a bust and began preparing press releases blaming the other blokes for the imminent end of civilisation as we know it. Some of the pointier of the pointy heads stayed at their desks, however, and using the most advanced technology known to science fiction, were able to precisely map the trajectories and damage zones of the fragments. Amazingly, the pointiest heads were amazed. Each chunk was aimed at a specific target and was large enough to destroy that target but leave minimal collateral damage. Although these targets are all over the globe, the total amount of loss of life will be statistically insignificant. In Australia, for instance, chunks will hit the Big Brother house at Dreamworld, the 2 UE studios in Sydney (at between 9a.m. and noon), Eddie MacGuire's house and the mythical locations of Summer Bay and Erinsborough. Overseas chunk recipients include the New York headquarters of Def Jam Records and the Volvo factory in Sweden. From being on the verge of disaster, NASA have now declared the Deep Impact mission the most important in the history of overblown superlatives, because of the fact that it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that God exists and that he is a just God.
I saw little bits of that Live 8 thingy. I saw it because it was pretty hard to get away from, little bits because most of what I saw was crap. indicative of how self indulgent the whole thing was, you could SMS or log on to their web site and they would put your name on the banner that scrolled across the bottom of the screen. For the whole fucking show. I can see how GWB would be watching from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and see Herbert McFuckstick's name scroll across the feet of Destiny's Child and get straight on the hotline to Condy, telling her to stop bludgeoning people into line democracy and to get over to (what's that place called again, Rumsfeld?) Africa and tell them we've paid their Mastercard off. I don't know if I've gotten old in the last twelve months or if it's been a gradual development that has slipped beneath my radar, but most musical acts these days suck arse live. I don't mean that the songs are bad (I'll save that one for another day), I mean that these bozo's just can't perform them. And the sound engineers are receiving money under false pretenses. It sounded like the music was being played on somebodies stereo three doors down. Shitful. The Who can still cut it - in short bursts. I've seen video of recent Who shows and Daltrey runs out of steam. Townshend is still brilliant, though. I miss John Entwhistle. Two real surprises for me were Robbie Williams and Keith Urban. I'd never buy either of their recordings, but I'd go to their shows. Urban 'cause he can play guitar a lot better than most people who get paid to do just that and William because he can really put a song across. He's one of those people who are better on a stage than they are in a studio. Far and away the best of what I saw was Pink Floyd, even if Roger Waters is a prat. There music may well be self indulgent and loved or loathed too much, but by The Lord Harry those old codgers can still play - and sing - it. Dave Gilmour sounds as good as he did twenty five years ago, even if he did describe the experience as "like sleeping with your ex-wife".
It seems the Emperor has found another reason to invade Iran.Meanwhile, incidents like this are by no means uncommon. The U.S. military isn't saying the chopper was shot down, but then, they didn't say that they were in Cambodia or Laos, either. With this and Iraq, you would think that they had their hands full already, but Junior seems to be itching to rumble again. This woman was somewhat larger than life. Most of the news stories portray her as exotic. I think she was a hypocritical bitch who happened to be good looking. I'm glad I don't live in Seppolia. Of course, if the bastion of free trade, the U.S. adopted a dirty pinko, lefty subsidised healthcare scheme like the PBS (NOT the one that has Jim Lehrer on it), then Canada wouldn't feel the need to ban bulk exports. I'm not sure what all the fuss is about Maria. It seems to be a case of fame making girls prettier. She is by no means plain, but I wonder how much attention she would get as a redhead? I like Venus, though. She comes across as confident without being arrogant and always gives respect to her opponents. You wouldn't think she and Serena were sisters. I hope Lley-Lley spanks Roger. I'm probably the only person in the world who actually likes Lleyton. I've got nothing against Roger, but gee, he's a boring bugger, isn't he? Update: The spell-checker passed Lley-Lley but balked at Lleyton. Go figure.
I thought it looked fairly damp on the way home. I rode through this area on Tuesday. I wish that they'd get some decent rain around Chinchilla across to Roma. Then the river would run, we'd be able to pump it and then grow cotton again next year. It's been raining here for about three or four weeks. Just enough to keep the ground wet, no run-off. Knee deep in mud every time you have to do anything in a paddock. We've been draining the cattle yards with pumps and the excavator, but you still get a thick, all over coating of mud and cowshit every time we have to load out or receive cattle. They've been buying from further away lately, too; so the cattle have been flighty from being handled so much. Rooster tails everywhere. Mmm mmm, cowshit.
