(Above: Sophie Mirabella's the one in the middle, more anon).Given the state of the world markets, it's about time the pond stepped up to the plate, poured oil on troubled waters, covered the tank water with kerosene to kill off the troublesome mosquito larvae ...
We're all gonna die. That's right, sooner or later, we're all gonna die, we're all doomed, rust never sleeps, entropy always wins, and at some point the plasma screen will become landfill, or recycled junk ...
There that should settle things down a bit, induce a sense of perspective ...
What's that, the dollar is down and the world economy doomed? Oh no. But at least the weekend looms.
The weekend? You mean time with loved ones, grass and chores? Well my mother always mowed the lawns, so get on with it ...
There's no pleasing some folks, and there's certainly no pleasing the commentariat, doomsayers, naysayers and gloom mongers the lot of them.
Why there's the outrageous Anthony Sharwood announcing The cold hard proof Australia is getting warmer.
Yes, the gin-soaked The Punch is determined to prove it's not kissing kin to the denialists embedded in their close cousin The Australian, and who better to lead the way and troll the readership than a dedicated skier like Sharwood?
In short, and to paraphrase the movie The Castle, “it’s the vibe”.
Yep, never mind the science, feel the boom box in the boot, the speakers under the seat, and the vibe. Remember:
One last time, I admit that this is hardly science. And again, that’s the point.
Yes, indeed, when discussing matters of science, never think about the science. That's entirely the point. Lead with anecdotes about ski-ing, and the level of snow in the great drop of '81, and lordy, lordy, we've never seen the likes of that drop since, and ...
This debate has for so long been run by people behind computers, and in laboratories, and by suits in rooms full of journalists, it’s high time we had it another way.
The world is warming. Surely there are those of you out there who deal with this reality every day. You see it. You feel it. You know there have always been droughts and floods and temperature extremes, but you know this feels different.
Oh yes, lordy lordy, I can feel dem climate change vibes in dem tired old bones o'mine, right to my core, like a dog sensing a thunderstorm, and a cat skedaddling away from an earthquake. Yes, yes, it must be true. Why only yesterday the tea leaves formed strange shapes ...
Or maybe it doesn’t. Either way, we’re keen to hear from you.
Or maybe it doesn't?
Oh right, it's just another even-handed Murdoch rag notion whereby printing the controversy - which worked so terribly well with creationism - is the scientific way forward.
It is, or it isn't, it might or might not, it does or it doesn't, feel the vibe, or think you've been whacked on the funny bone by a mallet, and all that early stuff about a graph showing the peak annual snow depth at Snowy Hydro's official snow measuring stations is just for show because The Punch is trolling for anecdotes and hits?
Send your stories, with your contact details, to getfucked@thepunch.com.au*. Put MY VOICE ON CLIMATE CHANGE as the email subject heading.
I swear to the absent lord, each time I visit The Punch, I can feel more brain cells drifting away into the gin, more deadly than kero on the mozzies ... (* address thoughtfully altered to avoid assisting spammers).
What next? My voice on the theory of evolution, my voice on Newton's three laws, and my voice on Einstein's theory of relativity?
Yes, yes, we too can have a view on Particles found to break speed of light, challenging laws of physics. Let me go out into the back yard, and crank up the barbeque and the neutrino machine, and I dare say within sixty nanoseconds, we'll have a round of hearty anecdotes that will show Einstein couldn't do up his shoelaces without help ...
Meanwhile, speaking of oral traditions, we were shocked to see scientists try yet again to discredit the written evidence to hand in the bible, by suggesting the first Australians arrived in Asia some seventy thousand years ago, before the ancestors of present-day Europeans and Asians ... (Aborigines: The First Out of Africa, the First in Asia and Australia).
Hang on, the sturm and drang will just get the snags off the barbie, and we'll warm up the DNA machine and the genome sequencer, and settle around the camp fire for a hearty set of anecdotes about taking the great south route (oral traditions involving indigenous people claiming they've lived in and about these parts some 50,000 years or so specifically not welcome, especially as we know the world began a mere 6,000 years ago, when the god wiped out the dinosaurs by getting Noah to turf them off the ark).
Yes, there's nothing like the whiff of burned chops, napalm and personal anecdotes to get a scientific gab fest going ...
Alternatively, I guess if you put dunderheads in charge of a keyboard, you're certain to get a lot of dunder.
Speaking of dunder, which is closely aligned to chunder, this morning brings the spectacle of Graham Richardson getting all caring and sharing in PM delivers more failure. The tag for the piece? Labor is now out-rednecking the Coalition on refugees.
That's right, as well as the bizarre sight of Tony Abbott and the coalition celebrating the notion that they give a flying fuck about asylum seekers and their health, as opposed to turning back the boats, let them sink and see if we care, we now have the likes of Graham Richardson pretending that they're on the left of the Labor party, doing a Malcolm Fraser so to speak ...
Still the pond was most impressed by the suggestion that every asylum seeker be given a Swiss bank account. That should make life easier for the wretches and get them aligned with the Richo lifestyle ...
Meanwhile, for a long time, Sophie Mirabella was a regular featured highlight on the pond as a result of her contributions to The Punch.
Her last effort for that punch-drunk blog, full of the usual snidery and malice, was only a few days ago, under the header The oddity of Beattie's ruddy "Dear Kev" letter. In the usual Mirabella way, there was talk of squabbling distracting from the national interest, Peter Beattie as hostage negotiator, Kevin 747, and so on and so forth, all inspired by Beattie's Kevin, it's time to put your pain in the past and build the future with Julia, which was a re-hash of his June piece pleading for god to give Julia a go, Leadership doubt is killing Labor's election chances.
Scribbled Mirabella:
It’s a fascinating read. As cringe-worthy as an episode of “At Home with Julia”, though infinitely funnier. The paragraph where Beattie swoons “Kevin, you are very clever when it comes to manipulating the media….you are an awesome media operator. I am an amateur compared to you.” is drop-dead hilarious.
Indeed. Cringe-worthy.
So it's now only fair dibs to note that the cringe-worthy anecdotes have taken a different turn today.
If you read Crikey yesterday (and if you could get behind the paywall), you knew it was coming, thanks to Sophie Mirabella set for Supreme Court stoush.
And today it landed in the Fairfax rags, with a featured splash in the rotating hall of fame at the head of the digital edition, under the header Mirabella in hot seat over QC lover's dying days, and given the same treatment in The Australian, with Sophie Mirabella faces Colin Howard family's wrath over will.
Mirabella for the moment seems to have ducked the tabloid treatment from the likes of the Daily Terror and the HUN - it's football season after all, and the Terror had to make room for Minister linked to gay sex in public allegations ...
Well if you want the news behind the news, you'll be pleased to read Hospitable: NSW minister George Souris not accused of "public sex act", which will be a tremendous relief to all those who knew the Souris boys way back when they attended the University of New England so many years ago ... (yes, the all-seeing, all-knowing pond was there).
But hang on you say, this is all sordid common gossip and personal anecdotes, and surely politics should be conducted on the more ethereal level of policy, above any petty questions of personality and private behaviour.
Well tell that to poor old David Campbell (Minister caught at gay club David Campbell resigns), and the media's ongoing obsession with the notion that performing a homosexual act is a matter of public interest ...
For that matter, tell it to Sophie Mirabella, who when she sees a head, must surely think drop dead hilarious baseball bat ...
Still, the news about Mirabella is particularly juicy and saucy and couldn't have happened to a nicer person, and as we now know that science can be conducted by personal anecdote, why not politics?
Let the boofhead head kickers get their heads kicked, as a rough kind of justice ... and let he or she who is within the glass castle think twice about flinging the river-skipping stone.
Or some such Ancient Mariner thing.
Meanwhile, take comfort and solace. We're all doomed, and we're all gunna die ...
(Below: adding to the pond's collection of Mirabella memorabilia).
Please allow an alternative or two to "just another even-handed Murdoch rag notion". (I'm doing this only because DP despises Letters And Numbers.)
ReplyDeleteHow about 'lotion', instead? Rubbed in slowly, with methodical strokes ...
No? I agree. Let's try 'motion'. A rag motion brings back memories. It's near tea-time, we've been playing marbles in the school-yard at Dandy West. There's a faint "Coo-eee!" Heads look up. A tea-towel flaps out of the kitchen window of our house. With a quick apology, I scoop up my tors and hurry home. It may be only rissoles and pumpkin followed by bread-and-butter pudding, but, By Crikey, you wouldn't want to be late for tea.
We move in strange circles Dot. I first learned the following poem when Richard Torbay was managing the University Of New England Students Union. Isn't it ironic that the only Speaker of the famous NSW Bear Pit produced by the University of New England was the dishwasher in the refectory?
ReplyDeleteAnd apparently the legendary Andrew Quirk, who spotted the genius of Torbay, is now in waiting to take over from the Fergusonista at the NSW CFMEU (construction division). What a colourful progeny your Alma Mater produces.
It appears that this poem is where Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition got their strategy from, probably courtesy of that Mick that went to Robb College, Barnaby Joyce:
"We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
In accents most forlorn,
Outside the church, ere Mass began,
One frosty Sunday morn.
The congregation stood about,
Coat-collars to the ears,
And talked of stock, and crops, and drought,
As it had done for years.
"It's looking crook," said Daniel Croke;
"Bedad, it's cruke, me lad,
For never since the banks went broke
Has seasons been so bad."
"It's dry, all right," said young O'Neil,
With which astute remark
He squatted down upon his heel
And chewed a piece of bark.
And so around the chorus ran
"It's keepin' dry, no doubt."
"We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
"Before the year is out."
The rest of this wonderful piece of sectarian propaganda can be found here
Oh dear Lachy, not an escapee from Rural Science and Ag Eco? Do you too regularly get begging letters asking for cash from alumni to help fund overseas adventures nee financial disasters?
ReplyDeleteAh well, as we used to sing before supper in refectory, ex sapienta modus (set to the tune of the green fields of New England).
All this and one of my favourite poems and Richard Torbay, it's too much to bear. ...
http://www.une.edu.au/coainfo.php
Sadly, no, Dot, I was one of those poofter drama students, cleverly disguised as a heterosexual pool player, living off campus in the red light district around Ohio Street in that Athens of the North. I think I went to a lecture once or twice, but mainly got drunk a lot and sampled some of the mushrooms from the eighth green at Royal Armidale, as well has having lots and lots of really good sex. After two years of that I was ready for Melbourne, where I fulfilled my dream of becoming a dole bludging musician. It was a struggle, I admit, but it was worth it in the end to discover my true vocation as a casualised retail employee and indulge my mirthful consideration of the ever unfurling theatre that is public life in Australia.
ReplyDeleteWell at least you came away with a way with words and a hearty sense of irony.
ReplyDeleteArmidale will do that for people, if they just give the town, and the drugs and the red wine, and the fucking to relieve the tedium a decent chance ...