Wednesday, October 31, 2007
WATERING TERMINATED
Sydney may have seen its first fatal case of water rage.
UPDATE. Looks like the murder was indeed eco-related:
A 66-year-old man had been watering his front lawn, on Formosa Street in Sylvania, when another man, 36, who was walking past the house, challenged him about water restrictions.
The two argued and police said at one point the 66-year-old turned the hose on the other man, wetting him.
The 36-year-old attacked the older man, punching him, pushing him to the ground and then kicking him.
The attacker is a bright fellow:
A Sydney Water spokesman said if the time stated in the police report was correct, the deceased man was not violating Sydney’s water restrictions.
UPDATE II. The UK Telegraph: “Australia suffers first ‘water rage’ death.”
UPDATE III. Further details on the victim and his alleged killer:
Ken Proctor and his mates should have been at Sylvania Bowls Club last night sinking a schooner or two. He might have talked proudly of his new grand-daughter, born only a month ago.
But the 66-year-old’s chair was empty last night following his death, apparently after the most trivial dispute imaginable - over the watering of his lawn.
He was hosing his large front lawn just after 5pm on Wednesday when Todd Munter, walking past Mr Proctor’s brick two-storey house on Formosa Street, Sylvania, allegedly accused him of violating water restrictions.
REALISATION ANTICIPATED
Emailer “Kylie Logan” looks forward to Kevin Rudd’s victory:
Man its going to be a sleepless night for you that night. The sudden realisation of just how irrelevant your politics are to the rest of the Australian populous is going to burn for a very, very, very long time.
Hey, just so long as all that heat helps boost global warming.
STANDARD VACATION
It’s twelve days and counting since we last heard from Iowahawk:
Off to Mexico for a spell, chasing a story for Garage Magazine. I must remain tight-lipped, but can tell you my assignment involves Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, Pancho Villa, nuclear radiation, lost treasure, Mexican carnival sideshows, Tom Wolfe, alien autopsies, satanists, tequila, John Wesley Hardin, chupacabras, Aztec blood sacrifice, Mexican outlaw biker gangs, my dad, Pershing missiles, porn shops, peyote, Billy the Kid, eating brains, and a cursed hot rod.
I am not making any of this up.
Pray for me.
EAR WE GO AGAIN
“I’m the waxman,” sang the Beatles, almost, possibly thinking of their favourite Australian politician. Kevin’s ear-based fame continues to grow:
Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd says he wishes his behaviour was more ideal, after an internet video showed him apparently picking and eating his own ear wax in parliament.
The video, circulated in recent weeks, dates back to Mr Rudd’s early years as an MP.
It was recently played on American national television on The Tonight Show hosted by Jay Leno.
Mr Rudd wasn’t sure what to think when asked about it today.
“That’s great,” he told reporters in Grafton, in northern NSW.
“I’m really pleased about that - how did I go on Jay Leno?”
Good question. Let’s all take a look. Now, back to Kevin:
“All of us in public and private life would wish our behaviour to be more ideal.”
Mr Rudd has previously told local media he was scratching his chin.
Poor chap can’t keep his story straight. (Thanks again to reader Bill L., who launched this diverting issue.) Meanwhile, the ABC’s Cristen Tilley emails:
Re your blog post on the coverage of Kevin Rudd’s earwax diet, I just wanted to let you know that I wrote about the story in the ABC’s election blog on October 25.
I know it’s not the same as Jim Middleton covering it, but we’ve all got to start somewhere.
(Via Lex and Matthew L.)
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
PROTOCOL DIVIDES, UNITES
Andrew Bolt on Labor’s Kyoto Konfusion: click, click, click, click, click, click. See also Malcolm Farr, who notes a Kyoto Konvergence:
The Labor and Liberal policies on Kyoto are essentially the same.
UPDATE. This isn’t the first time Peter Garrett’s been caught up in rapid campaign flippery.
UPDATE II. Stephen Pollard in the Times:
Howard called a six-week campaign (polling is on November 24) because, with Labour so far ahead, he had to hope that the opposition would unravel under pressure. It looks as though that is now happening.
The pressure is on Peter particularly:
Kevin Rudd has refused to guarantee Peter Garrett would serve as environment minister in a Labor government after the former rock star made an embarrassing gaffe about the Kyoto Protocol.
JUST ANOTHER MAINSTREAM LEFTIST OPINION
The Age’s Catherine Deveny:
One Nation is still around. Which is great news for all the white supremacists who just don’t find the Coalition racist enough for them.
The woman is insane.
Monday, October 29, 2007
TAKE THAT, PAKENHAM!
The ABC’s Media Watch boldly exposes - well, re-exposes; Snopes beat them to it by more than a year - an apparent pro-military myth circulated by the Pakenham-Berwick Gazette, a Sunshine Coast blogger, and a politician’s website.
Yet when invited to expose an anti-military myth that ran everywhere from the Guardian to the Sydney Morning Herald, from the New York Times to the ABC, this was Media Watch’s response:
Why don’t you do the work to investigate this turkey yourself, and publish the results in your column?
Still, they’ve taught the Pakenham-Berwick Gazette a lesson.
LANGUAGE SKILLS HELPFUL
Hey, Kevin! Kevin! Quit gloating over the polls for a few seconds and help us translate this, will you?
(Via Hanyu, who notes a Chinese fascination with Kevin Rudd’s probing politics.)
ALMOST AS BAD AS PRESBYTERIANS
It ain’t so easy being a ex-Muslim in ever-tolerant multi-culti Europe:
Ehsan Jami is an intelligent, softly-spoken 22 year-old council member for the Dutch Labour Party. He believes there should be no compromise, ever, on the rights of women and gay people and novelists and cartoonists. He became sick of hearing self-appointed Islamist organisations claiming to speak for him when they called for the banning of books and the “right” to abuse women. So he set up the Dutch Council of Ex-Muslims. Their manifesto called for secularism – and the end to the polite toleration of Islamist intolerance. As he put it: “We want people to be free to choose who they want to be and what they want to believe in.”
Sounds reasonable enough. How did Ehsan’s ex-religionists react?
Ehsan was immediately threatened with death.
CONSPIRACY ETERNAL
Mark Steyn on all those guys driving around with “9/11 Was An Inside Job” bumper stickers:
That aligns reality with every conspiracy movie from the past three decades: It’s always the government who did it - sometimes it’s some supersecret agency working deep within the bureaucracy from behind an unassuming nameplate on a Washington street; and sometimes it’s the president himself - but when poor Joe Schmoe on the lam from the Feds eventually unravels it, the cunning conspiracy is always the work of a ruthlessly efficient all-powerful state. So Iraq is Vietnam. And 9/11 is the Kennedy assassination, with ever higher percentages of the American people gathering on the melted steely knoll.
There’s a kind of decadence about all this: If 9/11 was really an inside job, you wouldn’t be driving around with a bumper sticker bragging that you were on to it.
If only it were limited to stickers ...
LOVELOCK LOVES BIG BLOCKS
Professor James Lovelock - Gaia’s boyfriend - asks that we keep our V8s rumbling:
If there were a 100 per cent cut in fossil fuel combustion it might get hotter not cooler. We live in a fool’s climate. We are damned if we continue to burn fuel and damned if we stop too suddenly.
So now Gale Banks (not inclined to stop burning fuel any time soon) is an environmental trendsetter. The shame!
ZAPRUDER DOES PAINTBALL
Since this site is now classified as officially violent, I guess there’s no reason not to link to the paintball headshot of 2007.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
FILM REVIEWED
Minette Marrin reviews Michael Moore’s latest, now released in the UK:
Sicko is a dishonest film.
There’s more, but she’s essentially nailed it.
UPDATE. Moore didn’t pick a good month to launch a film praising the British health service.
UPDATE II. Readers discover some flaws in Marrin’s review.
TAKE THE CHRIS SHEIL CHALLENGE
Match wits with the hysterical historian! Can you achieve the colossal feat of committing three errors (try for more!) in eight words or less?
ALL THE CHEWS THAT'S FIT TO PRINT
It’s been covered by the Washington Post, the London Times, Reuters, India’s Times Now TV, South Africa’s Independent Online, across News Ltd, by the UK Telegraph, by AFP, Canada’s Calgary Herald, the Times of India, the Hong Kong Standard, the Guardian, the Straits Times, and the Australian ...
... yet, as reader Bonmot points out, Kevin Rudd’s embarrassing diet is not mentioned by the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, or the ABC (besides one comment from the Daily Telegraph’s Malcolm Farr).
Possibly these guys consider Ruddmunching too trivial a matter to deal with. After all, the SMH prefers covering serious issues, like Presidential noodle consumption:
At the barbecue for the troops, under Ms. Crabb’s watchful eye, [George W. Bush] helpfully counted his own noodles (there were eight) in a scene she wrote about in her front-page column this way: “Eight!” he concluded. “Eight noodles! There’s your story! Nice helping you out!”
Besides the front page, that noodle item also ran on the SMH’s poster (“Dubya, his noodles and me”, or something similar). So trivia is unlikely to be a reason for wax-related rejection; what other excuse might the SMH offer?
Anyhoo, since Kevin won’t read about it in local broadsheets, here’s a Waxgate story for him in Chinese.
UPDATE. The SMH catches up.