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?

"Here's to you, Lynnie!"

And so she goes. A four-hour marriage to Paul Robinson and she's off. To the Maldives. Without so much as a yellow cab out of Pinoak Court.

Lyn Scully burst into my life in a leopard print bodysuit sometime in 1999, replacing the tired, old Fat Phil Martin with her bogan husband and troupe of daughters. And an improbable A-grade footballing son in the UK. For while there my heart yearned for the down-to-earth realism of Ailsa Piper's Ruth Wilkinson, but, as these things are, Lynnie was. And her leopard print became nothing more than the wallpaper of my life.

But then, alongside a powerhouse of Australian acting talent which included Val Jellay, Bud Tingwell and Joan Sidney, Lynnie got HER storyline, probably the best-executed storyline Erinsborough has seen in my long history of Neighbours watching. For so long Lynnie had been a doormat to her dull, gruff, bogan husband, but finally she had her chance to shine. Slowly, it was revealed that the woman she had considered her aunt for all her 40-odd years as indeed her mother, and the appropriate crisis of personality followed, the tears, the shouting, the desperation.

All soap characters, regardless of stripe, become endeared to viewers by by the traumas they survive. It is only in these moments of extreme duress and emotional firewalking that we really get an actor's or actress' range, they have to plumb the depths of their character with all the raw nerves exposed. And Janet Andrewartha showed 'em how it is done, accompanied by the stirling performances of Bud as her adopted father Henry, and Joan as the tearaway biological mother Valda.

And so we got an insight into Lynnie, and she emerged from her ordeal a stronger, more independent woman. But, as the Neighbours writers are wont to do, the transformation didn't last long. A few knock-down, drag-outs Ramsay Street stylee with Nat Bass' Izzy, and it was all over, red rover. Back to boring old doormat Lyn. The gumption, the self-righteousness, the indignation—the possibility of a Mrs Mangel for the 21st century—all out the window in favour her trademark nervous titter. And what a waste it was.

Neither did I get the Load Ship that I was after, either.

Which all goes to prove two things:

• that the current crop of Neighbours writers can't write a strong matriarch—Anne Charleston left for that reason: Madge, too, had lost the fire in her belly.
• and that I am a very, very tragic individual.

The Honeymoon is over

Just a week into his leadership of the federal ALP and Kevin Rudd has been served up a typical manoeuvre from Our Man of Tinsel. And what a beautiful wedge it is:



Consider a recent proposal made by a certain opposition leader that immigrants to Australia undergo a Citizenship Test—you know, bone up on our national language and its idiom, and understand a few things about our history—Captain Cook 's arrival, say, or convict settlement, squatocracy, or the White Australia Policy spring to mind as pivotal periods of our nation's great past. And then there's our culture—the triple-fronted cream brick veneer, the hero worship of outlaws and sportsmen, the Hawaiian pizza, Ern Malley and the denigration of anything vaguely intellectual (other than cricket statistics of course, which should probably have their own university canon should Our Dear Leader have his way). Naturally, these are all important parts of all the daily life of all Australians, and each and every one of us should be able to identify them on a multiple-choice quiz. Hell, maybe we should hold this Citizenship Test in a smoky pub where the winner gets to take home a passport rather than a slab of VB? Second Place would of course win a meat tray, culled from all the animals represented on our coins.

But I digress. This idea was originally proposed by former Opposition Leader Kim Beazley who was trying to outflank the Government on "Border Protection". And I quote The Economist:

Mr Beazley himself, however, has consistently fared badly in the polls, because he has been unable to explain how, or indeed if, Labor differs from the conservatives.

And so, with Bomber gone and many of his rightist policies under a question mark, what better time to raise the stakes thinks Johnnie. A silly idea which will unite his own cherished hansonites and cause a schism between the indignant Left and bickering Right of the ALP. And thereby they begin to tear themselves apart again.

This is the first true test of Mr Rudd's mettle.

There is a god!

HALLELUJAH!

As evidenced by the following, from Mr Murdoch's minions:

But last night, the new Opposition Leader pledged to stare down colleagues pushing favourites for the shadow ministry, saying he and newly elected Deputy Leader Julia Gillard would "significantly shape" the front bench.

"I will be leading this show and when it comes to the outcomes I want, I will get them," he said on ABC TV's 7.30 Report. "I don't particularly care if anyone has opposing views - that's what's going to happen."

And while I'm at it, what was so spectacularly bad about MedicareGold?

A man and a moniker

A lesson in etymology:

"If Dunlop tires, he gets weary."

Straight from the horse's mouth...

Oh, and VOTE GREEN

A poser

So there's this country, right, which has bounteous amounts of petrochemical energy resources—Texas tea, black gold, crude oil. Heaps of the stuff. But they want to go down the nuclear path. You know, build some reactors, lessen the load of their carbon emissions and all that. But everyone thinks they might want to invade another country if they get the technology.

There's this other country, right, which has bounteous amounts of petrochemical energy resource—brown coal and natural gas. Heaps of the stuff. But they want to go down the nuclear path. You know, build some reactors, lessen the load of their carbon emissions and all that. But this country did invade another country just recently. What if they get the technology?

Lyrics I love (volume 2)

If we're having so much fun, how come I'm crying every Monday /Is it just to cancel out the laughter from Thursday through til Sunday /I spend the next two days in my bed and I wonder what it's all about /And as soon as I start to feel okay, and I know it's time to go back out

I've had the same look on my face for the past two lonely years /24 months of bargain pills, and cheeky lines and stolen beers /In all the pictures that I took, my eyes are so black and wide / And you don't have to look too hard to see that there's not much life inside

A new home to hang my heart is what I thought I'd never find /But fate, as always, intervened, and now I've got a girl in mind /And I'm meeting her next week when we get back to Glasgow /That's if we even make it, and we don't get buried in the Dutch snow

And if my instincts are right / I will fall in love and then / We'll have a laugh from time to time / But you'll never see me there again /When I get home in the morning / Trisha's hosting a debate/ She says, "If you don't like the fish you're catching /Then you've got to change the bait"

Window Dressing

As seen on Victoria Street recently...

A Tale of Woe

Just to make you feel better...

October's death toll so far

Coalition
US 96
UK 1
Other 2

Iraqis
Security forces 144
Civilians 1,119

Source: The Guardian

And while I'm at it, it seems my freiends at The Economist have taken up the same chalice as I have below. Obviously, their argument is much more persuasive and succinct than mine. [God love their Style Guide. A book to live one's life by]

The things you hear...

"Yeah, hi, is that Mary? ... My name's David XXXXXXXX. I'm chasing a fingerprint and criminal record test... Sometime in August... 19th XXX 1970... Yeah, I recently bought a brothel, and I need the test submitted to the Office of Fair Trading so I can begin trading."

A Coherent Strategy

I am not really sure what Messrs Beazley and Rudd have in mind when they talk about a withdrawal from Iraq. Strangely enough, I am not really sure what Messrs Bush, Blair and Howard mean when they say they will "stay the course", or "change tactics but not strategy" (mindless, ridiculously nuanced guff, designed to convince American voters that their president hasn't turned the Fertile Crescent, the Cradle of Civilization, into a smoking, money-sucking blood-spattered bomb-site). So far, there are about 650,000 Iraqi civilians who will never know what any of these men mean—about 100 people are killed per day at the moment—and we're approaching 3,000 American GIs over the duration of this ill-judged colonisation (a significant number—approximately the same amount of people killed in the Felling of the Towers 5 years ago).

So basically, no-one in Australia has been able to articulate a strategy for resucitating this basket-case of a nation that we have played our part in creating. Without wanting to dwell on the descriptor "basket-case", the previous leader of the Australian Labor Party announced a "troops home by Christmas" policy. My question for him was, and remains: "If we unceremoniously remove our troops," (hang on, it would occur ceremoniously) "what intentions do we have towards these people whose land we have invaded and trashed?" Is the answer "Leave it ot the Iraqis to sort out, it's their country"? Is it "Let the Americans sort out their own mess, thereby creating their Middle Eastern Trojan Horse"? Mr Latham seemed to think the Australian electorate was so stupid as to accept that a four-word policy had some sort of logical rationale behind it that might help the poor people we have invaded to restore reliable electricity and potable water. Mr Howard certainly thinks all the Australian public wants is platitudes rather than substance, though his soundbites are shorter—"stay the course", "cut and run"—and Mr Beazley, well, poor old Kim.

Bottom line: neither of the current "left" reponse—troops out now—nor the "right" response—stay until the job is done—take into account that what was once a structured, relatively wealthy, secular nation ruled by a despot, can no longer stand on its own because of what has been done in our name; what is the US trying to achieve there? do we agree with these aims? do we blindly stay or is turning our backs the right way to go? Is there any way we can, as a nation, exert pressure on these modern-day conquistadores? I can name only one prominent "coalition" leader, of the Liberal Democrats in the UK, who has thought beyond platitudes:

Sir Menzies Campbell: New strategy must come through UN

The Independent, published: 24 October 2006

Any new strategy for Iraq requires an understanding of the mistakes that have led to the current crisis.

De-Baathification was excessive and unjust, and the disbandment of Iraqi security forces created a power vacuum. There have been prolonged delays in the transfer of political power, restoration of governance, and the training of Iraqi security forces; a failure to rebuild police forces; a paucity of civilian officials with sufficient expertise; and inadequate measures to re-establish services, with poor financial oversight.

At the same time, there has been a disproportionate use of military force, a failure to apply accepted counter-insurgency techniques or alternative means to minimise violence, and a system of abusive, indefinite detention of Iraqis.

It is now essential that through the United Nations, the Iraqi government and its allies develop a new strategy. What might it contain?

First, a regional contact group could strengthen and promote the constructive engagement of Iraq's neighbours, assist dialogue with insurgent groups and improve border controls. Iran and Syria can no longer be ignored.

Second, enhanced measures are required to train Iraqi security forces. Third, a comprehensive, UN-led disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration strategy is necessary to deprive illegal armed groups of their grip on power.

Fourth, there must be an end to systematic detentions by Iraqi and US forces. These are in breach of international law and have perpetuated the insurgency. Fifth, expanding United Nations and World Bank involvement in the reconstruction process would enhance delivery, transparency and accountability.

Sixth, Iraq needs a programme for the withdrawal of coalition troops, to counter the perception of occupation and illegitimacy. Iraqis view coalition forces not as liberators, but as occupiers.

How to tell you really are ageing:

I left a note under someone's windscreen wipers today:

"Do you buy two parking meter tickets when you take up two spaces? Please park properly in the future."

GRUMPY OLD MAN

Forgive me father, for I have sinned

Another installment from the Chilean seashore. This time a camp for underprivileged boys...

Scenes from a Chilean Beach Resort

The beach:

The principal entertainment:

The icecream:

The cuisine:

The other entertainment:

All you need to take from last night's interview with PJK

TONY JONES to PAUL KEATING: One final question - why do you think it was that no one in Federal Labor today seems able to articulate as clearly as you just did these kind of political messages?

ABC, Lateline, September 13, 2006

What the Australian press lacks

SPINE