Service interuption

BBDC will be off the air for a little while over christmas /NYE, unless I get seriously bored, and can get an internet connection up the coast.

Happy festivus

We're number 1, we're number 1!

Well, OK we only tied 3rd with NZ - how ordinary is that. Come on young australians, get your arse up from in front of the playstation and get back out into the playground and start bullying
With a concerted effort from a few of you who aren't pulling your weight (you know who I'm talking about) we can get snatch gold away from the Philippines, or at least just get that extra 5% we need to outstrip Taiwan. I mean, look at the competition for crying out loud. You can do better than that.

Think about the bullies that once made our country great, and use the benefit of their experience. Here's some tips to help you find things to pick on in other kids to lift our run rate.

If another boy isn't into sport, can't name at least 8 members of his states' Pura Cup team, or sing the them song for the 3 clubs that finished on top of the ladder in each code, he's a poofta.

If the kid comes from overseas, or their parents do, there is a fair chance they are a wog, wop, chink, slope, or towelhead. Remind them of this.

Listening to music is OK, especially the music that all of your mates listen too, but actually playing a musical instrument is not on. Why would you waste all that time practicing indoors when you could be doing cool stuff, like hanging out?

Fat kiddies are an easy and safe target, because they can't run away, or chase after you.

Poor kids parents obviously don't care about them, otherwise they would buy them cool stuff, right? Point this out loudly and often.

Good work team, now let's get out there and hassle anyone different.

too hungover to post anything sensible today

Feel free to talk amongst yourselves. Topics of discussion might include:

• Why are christmas parties in the sun such a bad idea?

• Why is Carlton Cold such a shit beer?

• Why are enough americans so appallingly dumb that a quality program like Fox's "Who's Your Daddy" gets greenlighted?

In Who's Your Daddy?, which will air in the States as a Fox 90-minute special on January 3, the woman eventually will find out which man is her biological father. But first she must interview and observe the eight men and guess which one is her birth father. If she's correct, she wins $132,000, but if she picks one of the counterfeit dads, that man gets the money.

Pure class from the people who brought you The Littlest Groom

• Whether posing for a plumbers crack line photo at a blue-collar christmas party really is such a great career move, or not?

Do not adjust your computer

there IS a problem with reality

First of all, those whaaacky poms at Madame Tussaudes are trying to not only pass Dirk's favourite spice girl, Victoria Beckham, off as a virgin, they're trying to convince us that somehow, in a bizzare alternate universe, George W Shrub could loosely be considered a wise man

Meanwhile, in China, they await with bated botoxed breath the announcement of Miss Plastic Surgery 2004. I'm not sure whether the sash and tiara goes to the carbon-based barbi, or to the plastic surgeon working hard to advance mankind through medicine.

The one on the left is 62 - I hope that doesn't make you choke on something. It sure freaked me out.

Back here in Australia, the name of progressive arts takes a giant step backwards as the senior curator of photography at the National Gallery of Victoria, declares Max Dupain's iconic work "Sunbather" to be evidence of his support for eugenics and a White Australia policy.


A white australian

Written by the senior curator of photography at the National Gallery of Victoria, Isobel Crombie, Body Culture: Max Dupain, Photography and Australian Culture, 1919-1939 argues that much of Dupain's work during those interwar years was informed by the then prevailing pseudo-science of eugenics, the philosophy of vitalism and the "body culture" movement. Crombie convincingly argues that Dupain's quintessential Australia was definitely "a white Australia" exclusively, a "regenerated, revitalised Australia" that would arrive as a consequence of an improved, healthy body through breeding, fine-tuned by the Australian landscape.

I'm not sure if it occured to Ms Crombie that Australia in the 1930's wasn't quite as multi-cultural as it is today, hence the use of a caucasian in the photo. As to the charge that the photographer used fit, healthy young models, well, DER! You would think that a gallery curator may hve noticed that trend in the art world over the last, say 2000 years. But maybe I'm talking out my arse, since I failed year 7 art.

But todays final absurdity must surely be the suggestion that the US wants to install Alexander "fishnets" Downing as the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The guy couldn't run the Liberal Party, and probably couldn't find his arse if it was on fire. Do you really wanting him looking after the world's nuclear watchdog.

Hopefully we will be able to return you to regular programming tomorrow. If pain persists, see your doctor

Tool time

I may have mentioned my slight christmas phobia before. Perhaps one of the few things worse for santaphobics than the office christmas party is the themed office christmas party. It's right up there with compulsory family fun days, and sharp implements to the retina in terms of hilarity. And yes, next week, we're having one. The "secret location" that everyone in the organisation has known about for over a month has been officially announced, and the theme revealed - "Blue Collar".

Now I don't want to seem overly PC here, but isn't that just a little bit on the nose for a very white-collar industry's company christmas party? Are we so disconnected from reality that we have to play fancy dress to remember what others in society do for a crust? Or has the PA who organised it just bought a new pair of blundstones she wants to show off?


Is this collar tooblue?

What lies beneath

The real messages behind today's social issues - brought to you by advertisers.

There seems to be some confusion as to what australian society is all about. Fortunately, it's an easy concept to grasp - massive hypocrisy. Perhaps we're all just so jaded that we don't notice, or don't care. Here's just a small sample of current issues, taken from my morning bus ride, and how our friends in adland think of them

Issue: Women are not sex objects, merely for the satisfaction of men

Response by : Lovable underwear
Location: Massive billboard next to the Anzac bridge





Come Dave, Come John? Come on.
It's bad enough that some genius at the RTA decided that closing a lane on the bridge during peak hour traffic would be a good idea. Now I have an an extra 10 minutes to look at crap like this while Sydney drivers try and work out how to merge, which is apparently more difficult than working out Pi to 800 decimal points in your head. And in a deadly pincer action, just when the roads are fucked, they put up the ferry prices! Imagine if the Cityrail was that coordinated - the train problems would be over in no time.


Issue: Sydney doesn't have enough electricity, the plants are about to melt down, causing widespread blackouts. All while pumping up greenhouse gasses.

Response by: AGL
Location: Bus poster





This pic isn't quite as clear as the poster on the bus, but hopefully you can make out in the background, the pair of McMansions. They're a bit hard to spot behind the glowing fairy breasts (huh??) but they're there, replete with black-tiled roofs, no eaves, all the lights on, air-conditioning going, and you can't see it, but probably the dryer going as well. Way to conserve electricity.


Issue: The kiddies are all turning into lard buckets.

Response by: Disney, Pixar, Cadbury Schweppes & Pepsi
Location: Bus poster

New children's movie proudly brought to you by chocolate bars and soft drink, the basis of a healthy kiddie diet pyramid (which is topped by Casey Donovan's 2 packs of winnie blues a day. At sixteen). Disney and Pixar will claim that this is a "family" movie, but I call bullshit. The female lead looks alarmingly like a prominent non-child friendly personality - you be the judge:





There's no way anyone over the age of say, 10, is not going to be traumatised by that similarity. Imagine having to spend 2 hours in a cinema with an animated posh leaping out at you from the screen. Frightening

And you thought we'd moved on as a society...

I'm sure that most people are by now aware of the court case concerning a former student of TARA, an expensive all-girls Anglican school in Parramatta. The student in question claimed that she was gang-raped in Italy during a school excursion* in 2001, and that the school treated her in a less than christianly manner. Initially accusing her of making the story up to avoid punishment for breaking curfew, they then made her pay for a dose of the morning-after pill, and the taxi to the airport, from where she was sent immediately home. She was accused of leading the attackers on, and forced to sign a statement to the school saying that the incident was consensual. This was also the story that her parents were told.

The girl decided, with the support of her parents, to take the school to the district court, in a civil action, for dereliction of its' duty of care, and claiming that she now suffered from anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. Obviously having been through the most harrowing incident, the decision to take the matter to court was not made lightly. So how did counsel for the school, who's vision is "Education grounded in Christ's Teaching", try to discredit the plaintiffs' case?

By suggesting that because she was photographed, by a private investigator hired by or at least authorised by the school, that she couldn't have any problems

Cross-examining the teenager, Ian Harrison, QC, showed her a series of photographs, including one that he said showed her apparently "relaxed" while "in a public place". Questioning her claim that the rape had left her with low self-esteem, he said that "to sit on a bar stool ... with a skirt as short as that takes a lot of confidence".
"You weren't embarrassed by the attention it might attract?"

She replied: "It's not about confidence. It's about wanting to look like everyone else when I go out. On the outside I try and look like nothing has changed ... no one knows what happened."

He then produced a video of the girl drinking alone in the Lansdowne Hotel. Which proved what, exactly? And then went on to try and attack her for having had the audacity to carry a condom with her on the trip to Italy.

Mr Harrison asked her to explain why she had a condom in her wallet during the trip to Italy. She said it had been in her wallet before the trip. He asked her if she took it to Italy because she thought she might have sex. "Yes, but it wasn't likely," she said.
"If I had of chosen to have consensual sex then I would have had it to protect myself." (from SMH.com.au)

This made me just unbelievably mad when I read this - surely as a society we are beyond the stage of trying to portray women as "asking for it". Women (and men) have the right to wear what they want, act how they want, and not to get hassled or assaulted for it. In a civilized society we allow people the freedom to wear what they choose. No still means no. Rape is still a crime.

So was Ian Harrison, QC (does QC stand for Quivering C?) acting on the direction of his client, or just freestyling? Were these his own personal opinions, or is he merely a good lawyer / actor / attack dog? This line of questioning is so far out of line in today's society, that I can only think of one possible explanation:

*puts Ian Harrison, QC, in the witness box*

Mr Harrison, I put it to you that you work in the legal profession?

Yes, I do undertake the practice of....

Mr Harrison, just a yes or no will suffice, thank you very much

Yes.

Mr Harrison, I put it to you that many members of your profession have a predilection to getting on the turps

Yes, but I

Just yes will be fine. Now I put it to you that at the time of your atrocious questioning of the previous witness, you were actually so drunk that you had no idea what you were saying. You were mouthing off mindlessly.


Come on Ian, fess up. The Law Society is happy to take Jeff back after he gets treatment. You might be able to be rehabilitated successfully as well. But remember, the first step is admitting you have a problem.

The good news is the school settled once it was named. Funny how they seem to care a lot more for their reputation than the welfare of their students.

* how come our school excursions were to places like Lane Cove instead of Italy?? The price of a public education I guess.

Tech problems now seem to be solved

Not sure what was up with Blogger, but for some reason I couldn't get in to post yesterday or monday. Was anyone else having problems? So here's a bunch of new posts.

It's beginning to look a LOT like christmas

I'm not a massive fan of christmas. Saying I had a pathological hatred of it would probably be more realistic. To me it's always been less about the birth of the little baby jesus, and more about family, fights (well, the two go together really) finding crap presents, and fucking crowds of people, all stressed out, hot and unhappy. How the hell are you supposed to achieve peace on earth and goodwill to all men when the fuckers are elbowing you in the head trying to get to the gift wrapping counter?

Anyhoo, Mrs stilt-to-be has decided that the best way for me to get over my santaphobia is full immersion shock therapy. I came home on Monday night to discover our house now sporting:

12 new red candles
11 credit card receipts
10 meters of fairy lights
9 dozen xmas tree ornaments, draped around tortured willow ( I now understand what is torturing it)
8 festive placemats
7 glass angles / trees / stars / thingies
6 xmas cushions on the lounge
5 table runners
4 reindeer antlers on the dogs
3 door ornaments, and 3 new CD's of carols
2 xmas doormats and 2 xmas tea-towels,
a stocking, a white Rudolph statue, and although I'm a little too scared to look, I'm sure that somewhere is a bloody partridge in a pair tree.

I'll let you know how the therapy is going - I'll soon be either out decking the halls, or back to decking carol singers.

A few last thoughts on young drivers

Great feedback on the hoon issue - it's obviously something that has been on peoples minds for a while. The curfew limit seems unworkable, and the issue of limiting passenger numbers may cause problems either way. The issue of high-powered cars seems more straight forward though.

Weezeil pointed out quite rightly in the comments that just placing model restrictions on cars won't necessarily slow down younger drivers, as it's relatively simple with some cash and time to soup up even a humble Hyundai into a street machine. So perhaps one of the things that should e under consideration is a ban on modifications - any modifications - to cars driven by P-platers. I say any modifications because even those not directly related to performance, such as half a tonne of fibreglass body kit, do have an impact on the mentality of the driver.

Fantastic to see Nic White throwing his opinion in - as someone who is likely to be directly affected by any proposed changes, he has some valid points. I think the bottom line is no one wants to see unnecessary deaths in cars, but until we change our relationship with the car as an whole society, it's likely these tragedies will continue. Like they used to say on Hill Street Blues - be careful out there

Cannon Fodder

as the actress said to the bishop...

what's more scary than meeting the parents? yep, meeting the minister. Sunday saw Mrs stilt-to-be and I drive down to the Southern Highlands to go to church, and then have lunch with the minister who is going to marry us early next year. Now, apart from weddings and christenings, it'd be fair to say that it's a while since I've been to church. Luckily, it was largely as I remembered it - lots of old people, a handful of earnest looking parents and bored children, and one slightly startled and badly hung-over stilt. The old blokes look resplendent in their suit jackets and sports coats - I felt a bit sorry for them since it was pushing 30C outside, and was no cooler inside despite the valiant attempts of a couple of small fans to evenly distributed the hot air around the building. The church itself is quite stunning - an old sandstone number with stained glass windows and exposed wooden beams, the perfect setting for a wedding. Well, it would be if we weren't getting married on the Central Coast, in a 70's red brick block-shaped number. But that's another story.

I managed to stay awake during the sermon, and only kipped lightly through the prayers, thanks to the time-honoured traditions of pew design - make the bastards as uncomfortable as possible to keep them alert. I tried to store a few pointers in my memory bank for later, but a lot of my internal RAM seemed to be taken up with processing Scotch 12.0 from the previous night. Mrs STB seemed to get some sort of message from it all, and was only slightly surprised when I didn't.

After the service, we had a little time to kill before lunch so wandered around town looking for somewhere with air conditioning to grab a coffee and try to spark up. There was something that had been weighing on my mind since I peered in the rectory window earlier and saw the formal dining setting laid out for us - what do I do if the Rev asks me point blank if I believe in God? I figured it's not really kosher to lie to priests, but then maybe the idea of them marrying an atheist wouldn't be the ideal lunch conversation topic. Mrs STB suggested I could get around the moral dilemma with some slightly fuzzy logic -

MSTB: Look, you sort of believe that everyone is their own god, and that you are your own god, right.
ME: Yep
MSTB: Then, you believe in yourself, so therefore, you believe in God, right? So you wouldn't really be lying.
ME: Well, I don't know if I would have put it quite like that, but lets run with it.
MSTB: By the way, how come you didn't object to getting married in a church, if you don't believe in god?
ME: It's cheaper and less hassle than getting council permission to set the marquee up on the beach
MSTB: oh (looks at me like I'm more of a freak than normal)

The Rev is actually the father of a couple of Mrs STBs best friends (and yes, they are from the same family!), so she has known him all her life. Fortunately, this association seemed to be a good enough recommendation, and I got through the interview with only the mandatory questions as dictated by our government (been married before? Changed your name? Is this really you?), another excellent reason for maintaining the separation of church and state. I discovered that Sundays are a great day for this sort of thing - the Rev has already conducted two services and delivered two sermons, not to mention listened to the whinges of the parishioners, before lunchtime, and only has a few hours before ramping up for the evening service, so the whole interview process was thankfully brief. All the necessary approvals have been obtained. The bishop of Newcastle diocese has approved a Canon from Goulburn diocese to marry us, and both were gracious enough to let my sis, a Uniting minister, do the sermon. Long story, much paperwork, but now finally sorted.

So it looks like we can now go ahead and get married after all.