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It comforts me to think that "The Australian People" (TAP) will swallow any crap about the economy as long as it is peddled by a Liberal politician. Witness the Australian Prime Minister explaining why he is not to blame for rising interest rates : " "What happened was that people shifted to buy other fruit because there were no bananas available and not only did bananas go up but all the other fruit went up as well," Mr Howard told ABC radio yesterday." Holy crap/you are a genius etc. Always willing to put himself on the front line to protect his constituents, John Howard flew to Queensland yesterday IN A MILITARY HELICOPTER to inspect the banana growing region in northern Queensland. Presumably his security detail was expecting trouble following reports that The Boy With The Screwdriver had recently been sighted in the area. THIS IS WHY WE NEED AN AIRFORCE PEOPLE! un Fortunately, the Prime Minister arrived in the region safely and was able to greet the...

I love weather (note clever weathery sidebar things) and I also love me some decent photography, and one of the greatest online photoblogs I've had the pleasure to find belongs to Canadian Sam Javanrouh of Daily Dose of Imagery . For these reasons, this is truly wonderful. UPDATE The hits keep on coming over at Daily Dose of Imagery. This shot is unbelievable, particularly when you consider Sam's throw-away caption "shot from our kitchen last night during the storm in toronto". The man is an actual genius.

So I've been told by several people that I must change the name I have previously used to refer to my ladyfriend, because apparently "Sweety" is unacceptable . I think that's probably fair enough, so I turn my hand to crafting a new moniker. Several options immediately leap to mind. Geelong Football Club fanatic John Harms charmingly refers to his betrothed as "the handicapper", Peter from Glutbusters utlises "the redhead" though its relevance in this case is, well, non-existent, the delightful Danny Katz has his "beloved", while other friends have cornered "darlin" and similar charmingly rural terms of endearment. "The ball and chain" seems uncharitable, "the little woman" just completely wrongtown. I've considered the term "lady item", but the whole item thing may cause difficulties. Considering that my enormous audience already knows who I am (note I've given up spelling my name ...

My sister 's music has been described as all sorts of things by all sorts of people and the general consensus is that she slots somewhere in the folk/blues/roots sort of area. Well I ask you this. When was the last time you saw a folk/blues/roots singer/songwriter do THIS to their guitar!? Yes. That's blood. Pure. Rock.

Apparently, even Steve Bracks thinks the Greens are "loopy" . I would like someone to point me in the direction of this "loopiness". Why do mainstream politicians and pundits feel so offended by the Greens that they degenerate into primary-school name calling whenever they refer to them? And why do supposedly reputable news services allow them to get away with it? When I read that article this morning I thought that maybe there has actually been a shift in Green policy in the last couple of years. Maybe things have actually gone a little whacky in Green-land. So I looked up the websites of the Greens and the two major parties. Things I noticed when I did so: 1./ The Greens website is the only one with an obvious link to policies on the home page 2./ Looking at the Liberal Party website , you could be forgiven for thinking that the country is run by John Howard and John Howard alone (seriously, check it out) 3./ Kim Beazley does not fill my heart with pride/hop...

Interesting article in today's Age about Southgate banning photography . While I find it very difficult to believe that the management of large public buildings can really be that concerned about potential terrorists taking snapshots of their blow-up worthy premises, it seems that we're just catching up with the rest of the world . For those of you too lazy to read that link, it's the blog of Tony Hawk, a San Francisco blogger who has had a number of run-ins with local security people while taking photos of buildings on the streets of San Fran. There are a number of things that I don't like about this but one of the most troubling is this: Southgate management has erected "no camera" signs around the Yarra River retail and dining centre after security guards tried to force tourists to delete photos taken of "obscure" parts of buildings. The police were called when they refused . The report does not go into detail about what happened when the police ...

I don't know about you, but this makes my skin crawl off my body. Does Peter Costello honestly think that just by asking us we'll leap immediately into rigorous child producing!? I mean seriously. Still, it makes me feel better to know it's for the good of the country economy - after all, that's what being Australian is ALL about. And while we're talking about Australians, Andrew Bolt is a tool .

My Sweety is an Editor. She is responsible for finding this link . Go there and read forth. If you are not familiar with McSweeney's Internet Tendency, then I insist you remedy the fact immediately.

I work at a place. It's really busy at the moment. Just when I finally decide to get all adventuresome and start me a blog, I go and get all flat out with the working and the toiling and the gnashing of teeth. So my brilliant posts designed to reduce John Howard to tears, solve the debacle in Israel/Palestine/Lebanon/Java etc., inspire rapier witted exchanges in the comments and other useful items have fallen by the paper-strewn wayside that is my life at present *sniff*. Still. You wait Henry Higgins . It'll be GREAT when it gets going.

OK, so not being your basic young and hip dude (though I am neither very old, nor un-hip), I've been puzzled by the term 'emo' ever since this post by a parental type. Watching the video of a stoned-out-of-his-mind Californian dude and his even more stoned sister, I had no idea what they were talking about. No. Idea. I was further intrigued by the somewhat cryptic dedication to a friend of mine. Why was this post "somehow for Pete"? Was there some sort of in-joke I was missing? Did Pete know what emo meant when I had no idea?? Was I rapidly falling behind the "lingo" of the youth of today!? Was I uncool!!!??? To my considerable relief, when I checked with the dedicatee, he had no idea what it was all about either. Apparently emo means emotional hardcore and is represented by your basic black-rakishly-cut-hair-in-eyes, life-is-soooo-miserable type personages. Kind of like grunge meets goth. Kind of like this . Still. With a slow morning in fro...

I've been a blog stalker for years. Always content to watch, never the balls to join in. Occasional commenter, but mostly a silent stalky presence lurking on the interwebs. Discovering the blogosphere has reminded me just how much I enjoy good writing. Just the pure texty goodness that so many unknown people produce in relative anonymity. I've followed the brilliant, saucy and occasionally shocking Ms Fits for years, delighted in the word-smithery of Jellyfish and admired the conviction, intelligence and persistence of Anonymous Lefty . Beautiful design and photography by Virginia from Alert But Not Alarmed , or the genius behind Canada's Daily Dose of Imagery . Dooce's acerbic wit, Powazek's ephemera, IOYC's bizarre world of punctuation and capital letters. I love them all...in an entirely creepy innocent way. Though I love the land of blogs, I've resisted joining it for this long for a number of reasons. But having been worn down by friends ...