The campaign so far...

A few random thoughts on our federal election...

The Liberal Party strategy is to go hard on the attack ads for the first few weeks, to get their "doubts" set in people's minds. Then drop them for the race home, hoping that seed has been planted and they can simply echo Kev's positivist future cry, and try to avoid any "dirt unit/slanging match" criticism.

Kevin Rudd has made a complete balls-up of the ALP's climate change policy. I don;t know how much more me-too I can do. Or if there is anything left he can me-too on...

How about some investment in the future guys? And I don't mean a nation full of literate tradies either...

What was so wring with Medicare Gold anyway?

Restaurants to remember # 6

LA CABRERA
Cabrera 5099
Buenos Aires
C1414BGQ

Restaurants to remember # 5

LES BRASSINS
36 rue Keyenveld
1050 Ixelles
Bruxelles

keywords

"union bosses"
"child sexual abuse"
"clever"
"pornography"
"impact on the family"
"the safety of our customers"

You get my drift. Keep saying them over and over, and hopefully something will seep into the national psyche. I don't understand why Julia Gillard or Kevin Rudd, or any of their team have not responded to the wall-to-wall overuse of the term "union bosses" by identifying it as a keyword the Liberals are using. Just like they are with Johnny being a "clever" politician.

I have no doubt that the sleeping issues that lie in the backgound of the recent "emergency" response to an issue that has barely changed in 11 years—alcohol abuse, child sexual abuse, the availability of pornography—are the real reason this policy was concocted, to bring these issues into the subconscious of the "mums and dads", without explicitly addressing them as "problems" for the entirety of Australian society. Surely these have been popping up in Mark Textor's focus groups, and are seen to be important issues for the "Howard battlers" and conservative new families living on the urban fringes of our capital cities.

Much the same applies to why, for example, our private "public transport" companies are focuissing so much on consumer "safety", rather than on service provision, new lines, or getting more rolling stock, um, rolling.

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Pat, you old tart.

Lyrics I love (volume 4)

This could be the very minute / I'm aware I'm alive / All these places feel like home / With a name I'd never chosen / I can make my first steps / As a child of 25 / This is the straw, final straw in the / Roof of my mouth as I lie to you / Just because I'm sorry doesn't mean / I didn't enjoy it at the time / You're the only thing that I love / It scares me more every day / On my knees I think clearer / Goodness knows I saw it coming / Or at least I'll claim I did / But in truth I'm lost for words / What have I done it's too late for that / What have I become truth is nothing yet / A simple mistake starts the hardest time / I promise I'll do anything you ask...this time

Restaurants to remember # 4

MONSIEUR VUONG
Alte Schönhauser Straße 46
10119 Berlin

Restaurants to remember # 3

BAAN KANITHA
36/1 Soi 23, Sukhumvit Road
10110 Bangkok

Restaurants to remember # 2

MÄDCHENITALIENER
Alte Schönhauser Straße 12
10119 Berlin

Restaurants to remember # 1

LE RELAIS D'ENTRECÔTE
15, rue Marbeuf
75008 Paris

Lyrics I love (volume 3)

It all makes sense now I've calmed down / I should have seen it coming from miles down the road / But at the time we never think / That it might have been ourselves to blame at all

You shudder and beat your chest / But you'll never warm yourself up believe me / Where were you i'd made it through / But only god can judge me now, I hope he's in

Why do hearts break when we are on our own? / Just when you need to pump the life back in yourself / And why do earthquakes happen miles away? / When I only want the open ground to swallow me

Who told you I'd not come through / Before I could speak to you in my defence / Who made you the righteous one / When I'd only turned around for half an hour

Why do chalklines tell an empty tale / Surely its bad enough to end up on the floor / And you can scratch your chin / And think you understand / And how can you know whats going on inside my head / Maybe I'm better off alive than in my bed

Want, want, want

I WANT THIS T-SHIRT

Sepulchre

I have a favourite new website: findagrave.com

Now I have a checklist, all I need is the time and a convertible 1965 ford mustang.

The Festival of Light

One day. One city. One mobile phone. One eccentric fascination with lighting.

Now you see it, now you don't

Pick-up 52

So there I am, half cut and three-quarters stoned, standing on the corner near my house at about midnight on Sunday night. As we're standing there at the lights, waiting for a taxi, three likely lads, late teens/early 20s, come strolling across the road. I'm smoking, like I do after a couple of beers and a bottle of red. One of them stops and says "Hey mate, can I pinch a smoke?". "Sure mate" I say, and offer him one. "Thanks" and a wave. Like you do.

They're about 30 yards down the road when this young fellow comes running back, and somewhat sheepishly asks "Sorry mate, have you got a light?". "Yeah, but only these matches" I say, reaching into my pocket and handing over a new deck of redheads. "Thanks" he says, and goes to open the matchbox. All 47 matches fall out, all over the footpath. "Sorry mate, sorry" he says, and bends down, slowly picking up match after match after match, and putting them back into the box. It runs through my mate's and my minds to possibly help the guy. We looked at each other, at this young bloke bobbing around on the footpath chasing the rest of the fallen matches, and back at each other. Smile. Shrug. And go back to watching this poor cunt picking up all the matches, one by one.

Finally he gets the last one, lights his fag and scurries off after his mates. "I was in half a mind to help the poor bloke," my mate says. "Me too," I say, "but it was all too surreal".

Princes of Persia?

This, from David Seaton, pretty much sums it up:

The United States, it's Middle East policy driven by its domestic politics, (read the "Lobby") is trying to strangle Iran. In the neocon, "Grand Strategery", Iraq was basically a stepping stone on the way to regime change in Iran... "real men go to Teheran".

Of course this has all gone terribly wrong. Iran is the winner of the war in Iraq. The United States has been seen to fail in Iraq, and as Tony Karon quoted from the Coen brother's "Miller's Crossing" in Haaretz, "'You run this town because people think you run it.' Ergo, when people realize that you don't, then you no longer do."

Europe is not willing to sacrifice strategic energy supplies to make life easier for a lame duck American president whose short hairs appear to be in the possession of the Israeli Likud.

I came across this as a comment on the Guardian foreign desk:

The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.

But why have I had to live through it?