The headline you always wanted to write

Copy editors wait for years for this kind of opportunity:

"Bride search success for Google co-founder"

Hilarious.

Clash of cultures

I normally find most NineMSN most painful because of those insidious little opinion polls which you are faced with after logging out from hotmail.
Eg:
Do you think the Australian government is killing Iraqis for their own good? Yes No
Yes 25397 Votes
No 412 Votes

But today it got even better.

I present: Luxor Mahjong for your delectation and cultural collage purposes.














Cleopatra would not have approved.
And then she would have enjoyed some sushi chased down with a bud light.

Actually existing socialism

K.Rudd has nothing on the worker-related photo opps that Wen Jiabao pulls... This is just bewdiful:













And after raiding their lunchboxes, he pitches in to help:















Kissing babies is for pussies.

Snip snip.

I have not until this day felt such a passionate urge to Bobbit someone as when i read this interview with the lovely Bill Heffernan. It's a roller coaster of nasty things and dirty thoughts.

Firstly, to suggest that Julia Gillard is not fit for leadership because of her "deliberately barren'' state is utterly offensive and unworthy even of the Liberal party. The idea that even after years of feminism someone could still assert that women can't really fit in or be effective unless they have children is almost unbelievable. If it's all about understanding family, then surely the fact that we play parts in our own families (as sister, aunt, daughter, mother etc) gives us the experience that would be neccesary to fulfil this criteria. Really though, even this kind of supposition is ridiculous, it's not like women need children to make them more empathic or more able to take the human angle into account, we've pretty much got the monopoly on that one fellas.

Bills explanation is as stomach turning as it is incompreensible: "One of the great understandings in a community is family, and the relationship between mum, dad and a bucket of nappies." Is it particularly the fecal matter of children that bonds communities or could we substitute other animals i wonder?

Reasons Julia might need sprogs to lead the ALP:
1. Practice "time-outs" for when parliament gets too rowdy
2. Possible introduction of "naughty seat" technique
3. Developement of go-to-your-room arms (the ones that wobble for a little after the arm has been stretched out)
4. To learn the importance of wet-wipes (would have stood Bill CLinton in good stead after all)
5. So they can go to private schools and fool around with kids of the Liberal party hacks

and so it goes.

Time Machine

The Business Council of Australia warned, "You cannot support productivity growth in the 21st century while turning back the clock to a 1990s or 1980s workplace relations system." (West Australian 18/4/07)

Instead we propose going back to the early industrial revolution era before minimum hour weeks and penalty wages...

Just like fashion, politics has it's own retro movements, the nostalgic nod back to Whitlam or Keating. The fond recollections of Menzies and Joh. Just like fashion it will also continue to keep reviving moments from it's past sometimes because they are classics (the LBD/enterprise bargaining), because they are reminiscent of a more wholesome era (twin sets & pearls/hardcore censorship laws) or because they appeal to the elites (Haute couture/tax breaks for bussiness). Everyone's got to heark back to some era, i'll take the 80s and 90s ideas of workers rights and Salt n' Pepa over the alternative proposal of economic policies from the 19th Century and social mores from the 1950s.

The miracle of the VPL

Weasel: About John Paul II's possible miracles to qualify for sainthood (from smh): "a number of inexplicable recoveries from cancer as well as "miraculous pregnancies" were among the potential miracles reviewed"

I believe there's another way of describing 'miraculous pregnancies'..

CVM: What about the miracle of the church causing more war, assisting the spread of HIV and only really being a bunch of nancies poncing about in dresses and wearing ridiculously large hats?

Now that is a miracle.

Weasel: "In world news today, John Paul II was canonised for the miracle of being taken seriously while wearing drag and a big hat and being considered a humanitarian whilst being responsible for the deaths of millions... the canonisation of Pope Benedict now looks assured, as > his ascendancy to papal office itself after being a member of hitler youth is widely considered a miracle"

"Miracles by the dozen" - I love it.

Reasons to keep that subscription..

As a symptom of a not misspent enough youth i find myself a proud and sometimes confused member of P.Ruddy's press release email list. Most of the time it's this or that judge being appointed here or there but every-so-often the full text from one of his doorstop interviews is uploaded. We all already know that he has all the personal charm and charisma of a McDonalds Chicken McNugget but reading his thoughts about why other people can't get married is particularly hearwarming.

First he identifies a problem with the ACT civil union legislation:

The first is that it involves a formal ceremony. If you're having partnership agreements and you're registering them you don't have to have a formal ceremony which is marriage-like with a celebrant. I note that they're not requiring marriage celebrants to do it but they can do it and it provides for registration of other celebrants.

No ceremony? Sheesh, as if anyone could do the pomp and ceremony like the gay community, remember Elton John dressed as Marie Antoinette and extrapolate.

Then he dodges a question by talking to gay relationships on all fours:

Ross Solly:
Do you believe that a same-sex couple can have the same level of love for one another as a couple in a heterosexual relationship?

Attorney-General:
Well our principal concern is to - and I'm not being judgmental about relationships - our principal concern is to where we can to remove discrimination and we're seeking to do that. We don't think putting those relationships on all fours with marriage is the appropriate direction to go.

Then he tells us how he deals with his own gay friends:

Look, I understand that people can have longstanding relationships and the relationships between them are very strong and I'm not judgmental about those matters, but I don't expect them to be entering into marriages.

I pity his speech writer. Those politics and that level of charisma kill words from 50 paces.