Bilious, Bilious and Vile

// Filed under: Politics on Thursday September 20th 2007, 8:39 pm

Have you ever noticed that nearly half the Mortal Kombat characters were created simply by changing the colour of the costume of an existing character? No? Well, there you go.

Man, blogging! Who does that these days? It’s so passe. Anyway.

A little while back now, the Chaser team mixed a little fake motorcade together with some terribly, terribly fake security passes and a third pair of testicles, stuck a little Canadian flag on top and drove the whole crazy cake through the supposedly impenetrable $160 million security surrounding the 2007 Sydney APEC Summit. Understandably, this upset a few people - not to mention the boys themselves, who never expected to get past the gates.

After all, they were wearing Insecurity Passes with the word “JOKE” written on them in giant letters, and they were up against the biggest lockdown the nation’s most populous city had ever experienced. A lockdown that apparently equates a motorcade of black SUV’s with importance, but that’s neither here nor there. No, my friends, the real outrage facing the nation today, the real scandal here is not that $160 million dollars of taxpayer-funded extraordinary, draconian security measures failed to stop a team of 11 comedians - one of whom was dressed as Osama bin Laden - the real scandal is that these filthy, disgusting, and above all leftist fucks are laughing at terrorism, spitting on the grave of everyone who’s ever lost their life in a terrorist attack, and they’re doing it on my goddamn taxpayer money.

Or so Gerard Henderson tells me.

Gerard’s article is a real scroll-wheel turner, and basically only because it’s the most delightfully biased piece of opinionated trash I’ve heard since the last time I recorded myself trying to quantify the exact level of shit present in a single Ctrl+Alt+Del comic. Gerard’s main point is this little gem: It is not okay to make fun of terrorism because people have died from terrorism - a wonderful line right up there with other clinically small-minded arguments like “Burning the flag should be outlawed because good people fought and died for that flag”.

But not only is Gerard taking the time to come down from Moral Heights Luxury Apartment Blocks to tell us what is and isn’t an appropriate subject for humour, he’s also prepared a wonderful dissertation for us on how doing so was an abhorrent waste of taxpayer’s money. Thanks Gerard! He is obviously the most qualified to know - as the Executive Director of the Sydney Institute and former Chief-of-Staff to John Howard, he knows only too well the peculiar tang of wasted taxpayer money hanging heavy in the acrid Sydney air.

Oh, Gerard! Your enlightening opinion pieces speak to me in the illuminating manner of a shaft of light from a musty tomb; the lid on the sarcophagus cracking to reveal the screeching generational values of a thousand years past. I can actually see the paper on which ink was wasted printing your article aging before my very eyes, crumbling into dust almost as fast as support for the Liberal party plummets in the opinion polls (See what I did there?).

“THIS IS NOT FUNNY, TERRORISM IS SERIOUS!” you wail, spewing your Chardonnay out onto your copy of The Financial Review as you prepare to host one of your high-powered lunches for the Prime Minister in your exclusive Sydney estates, with their high walls and their electronic security. How convenient that all those Algerians were able to die to remind you that terrorism is a real threat, and that we can never be too secure. And how convenient that you, a man who doubtless earned more writing that single piece of morally fossilised diatribe than I’ve earned in the past two months of working full time, has taken the time out to tell me how the average man should feel.

I tip my budget can of soft drink at you sir, from my worn hand-me-down chair in the splendour of this semi-rural unfashionable suburb - I can now vote for the Liberal government with complete peace of mind, knowing that this team of arrogant comedians has got the tongue-lashing they deserve. Having the temerity to tell others what is and is not funny, having the insufferable hubris to treat authority with anything but grave respect, these are the hallmarks of the subversive and the radical, my friends. We need to watch out for this sort of free thinking and crush it remorselessly under our boot-heels, lest the terrorists win and we become one of those horrible backward little Eastern countries I can’t pronounce. With their highly religious governments, their crushing of free speech, their outrageously brutal anti-sedition laws, and their security measures which allow people to be held for obscenely long periods without trial for the most minor of offences.

That would be bad.

// 6 Comments

The Mathematics of Denial

// Filed under: Politics on Saturday February 10th 2007, 7:47 am

“Now, Peter argues, Peter says all the Kyoto work has reduced the growth of emissions by 5 per cent by the countries involved. I gave some reasons as to why that growth is masked by collapses in economic activity in Europe. But just think of this. Peter is proposing that by 2050 and the Labor Party’s policy is, in fact, 60 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – and that is a very, very big reduction; now, if we do that by ourselves it will make no difference to global warming, unless the rest of the world plays a part. Because this is a global problem. We can deal with water ourselves, within our own country. But global warming has to have a global solution. It’s obvious, isn’t it? A tonne of carbon put into the atmosphere in Sydney has as much impact on the atmosphere as one put into the atmosphere in Shanghai. So everybody’s got to be in it together.”

What you just read was a man saying this: That because global warming is a global problem, anything Australia does on its own is useless. What you just read was a man saying: Australia shouldn’t bother doing anything at all about global warming, because nobody else is doing anything.

Who is this man, ladies and gentlemen? Well, let’s set it up with a few clues. He’s obviously heavily in denial, and clinically retarded. Yes, you guessed right. He’s Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s Federal Environment Minister, live on the 7.30 Report Thursday night, having his face verbally caved in by Peter Garrett.

Let me walk you through some simple mathematics, Malcolm. I know you’re a regular reader.

Let us assume the amount of emissions currently globally is, for abstract purposes, 100. Let us then assume that Australia’s part of that emission is 10. Now, let us assume Australia cuts its emissions as planned, by 60 percent. We are now contributing a total of 4, 6 less than before. So let’s do the maths.

100 - 6 = 94

So we can see that the total amount of emissions in the world has been (very slightly) reduced. Now, let’s do the global warming mathematics, Malcolm Turnbull style.

100 - 0 = 100

As you can see, the results are simply astounding. Under Malcolm’s radical plan of doing absolutely fucking nothing for fear that it might damage the Howard government’s precious economy, the amount of reduction in emissions has changed by absolutely zero. But hey, at least the economy is still good, right?

“…we have to remember that there is an economic cost. However you do it, whether you do it through taxes, whether you do it through subsidies which are funded by taxes, whether you do it through carbon trading, when you put a price on carbon, you impose a cost on the economy, and the higher that cost, the more impact that has… If you impose a massive cost on the Australian economy you will do enormous damage to jobs. And that’s why all this week interviewers have been saying to Peter, “What is it going to cost?” Three times on another channel he was asked and he would not say and, finally, the interviewer in frustration said, “Does this mean that consumers will have to pay more?” Peter said, “I don’t know what ‘pay more’ means.” Really, is that the sort of recklessness we can expect?”

Because I’m feeling so fucking generous, here’s another freebie for you Malcolm: It doesn’t fucking matter, what the cost to the economy and to jobs are, because any children any of us plan on having won’t have a planet to fucking live on by the time you’re done.

Roll on the election year.

// 9 Comments

The Insane Feces Of The Indonesian Bat

// Filed under: Politics on Friday February 02nd 2007, 3:15 pm

In what is only the latest in a series of batshit-crazy political one-up-manship with Australia, the Indonesian Government has claimed intellectual property rights to the Indonesian strain of H5N1 avian influenza. Yes, you read that right - the Indonesian Government is asserting that it owns the rights to this strain, and moreover, since Australian pharmaceutical company CSL recently developed a vaccine for avian influenza based on this strain, the Indonesian Government is entitled to a share of the profits.

Despite the fact that this strain of which the vaccine was based was delivered by the World Health Organisation, and despite the fact that there is no legal precedent for IP ownership over a naturally-created virus, and despite the fact that the vaccine was produced under contract with the Australian government so any profits will be minimal in the extreme… Indonesia believes that it can own this virus.

Completely. Batshit. Insane.

Here’s a thought - if Indonesia owns this virus, and believes it is entitled to a share of the profits from a vaccine against it, are they then entitled to be sued for damages when their virus destroys poultry, livestock and livelihoods? Who comes up with this? Seriously, do they all get together in the Indonesian cabinet every month and have a brainstorming session to see who can come on air and say the most retarded thing they can think of to try and one-up the Australian Government?

At least they’re coming up with new and interesting ideas, I guess. Instead of the Australian Government which, as far as I can tell, just throws darts at a board to choose what to centralise under Federal control next.

// 1 Comment

As You Do

// Filed under: Politics, Life on Monday January 29th 2007, 1:31 pm

Dear Diary,

Today I met a young Asian woman who strongly supported Pauline Hanson and her policies.

As ever,
Tim

// 2 Comments

Save Me Some Daylight, I’ll Be Back For Christmas

// Filed under: Politics, Life on Saturday December 02nd 2006, 11:31 pm

I am totally staying up until 2 am so I can flick my clock an hour forward and make it 3 am.

For this is Perth, Western Australia, and finally we are joining the rest of the free-thinking, terrorist-hating, pimple-popping western world in taking advantage of the longer daylight hours offered in summer. It only took us about forty goddamn years of pointless debate before John “Superannuation Scandal” D’Orazio rammed his legislation through the house like a spiked phallus through so many delicate orifices, and here we are with a three year daylight savings trial, with a referendum to be held sometime in 2010.

Four minutes.

Of course this left the government with about ten days in which to organise the schedule of the whole thing and start telling people exactly what the fuck to do, but hey, better late than never I guess. I’m interested to see how the referendum’s going to go down. Personally I don’t really care either way, but I can definitely see a lot more positives for daylight savings than negatives, so I’m happy to let it all go through. And because I’m interested to see how it’ll turn out, I realise that the only way to get people in WA to quit arguing about anything and just do it is to shove it on them before they can debate about it, so really this is best approach. At least this way we’ll get a three year test drive and see how we like it.

Three minutes.

I’m kind of saddened that I probably won’t be here in WA when the time comes to vote in the referendum in 2010. Game jobs here in the West are few and far between, and over in the glorious Employment East, where games companies are a dime a dozen and my skills are actually applicable, daylight savings has been in effect for ages. But still, I’m glad to see WA actually trying something on before they dismiss it out of hand.

Two minutes.

Speaking of the East, I’ll be heading over there in five days. Not for a job, you understand. Unless you count being in madly in love a job.

One minute.

Give me ideas for a present worth $10 for a family get-together this Christmas. It’s got to be completely abstract and of no feasible use to anybody whatsoever. I’m thinking $10 worth of solid cork.

….And we’re on.

Happy daylight savings, everyone! See you in three years…

// 2 Comments

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