Category: News and Events

#Twibbon rhymes with Gibbon

News Limited jumps on the bandwagon

Well, News Limited have certainly gone all out to help flood victims! They’ve created a page on their news sites where you can go to add a blue ribbon to your twitter feed to show your “support, strength and comfort” for Flood Victims. You can even go to certain stores and get your own blue ribbon to wear in real life! Fantastic!

Excuse me, but how does this actually achieve anything short of making people feel like they’re doing something without actually doing anything at all?

If News Limited actually gave a damn about flood victims they’d put the instructions for decorating your twitter feed behind a donation wall. And rather than give the ribbons away for free, they’d sell them. But no, they’d rather pander a feel good solution that makes them look like heroes without having to do any work.

If you want to help flood victims then donate money, goods or time. Changing the background on your twitter feed achieves nothing but making you look like a massive tool.

Pyramid Cake of Sadness

The stupidity of the masses knows no bounds…

I don’t know what’s sadder…

1: People have only just realised that the signs of the zodiac are 2,000 odd years out of date.

2: People are freaking out that their zodiac sign has ‘changed’ (apparently a lot of them are worried that their personality is going to alter).

3: People actually believe astrology has any connection to reality at all – as opposed to being a load of complete horseshit.

(In the interest of full disclosure I should state that I’m a Pisces. The traits of Pisceans include being born in February/March. No, wait, that’s the only trait of Pisceans…)

Straits of Canada

See the small person I don’t like wearing jewellery and makeup.

Reading my feeds this morning I stumbled over the news that a regulatory body in Canada has banned Dire Strait’s Money for Nothing from the airwaves for reasons of being offensive.

My initial reaction was “WHAAA?”, however on reading the article this was revised to “Oh, yeah – that bit”. The problem is of course the third verse – not one of Mark Knopfler’s best moments – where the song repeatedly uses a rather nasty pejorative. Someone complained – quite justifiably in my opinion – and away we go.

There seems to be a lot of outrage floating around over the decision, but personally it doesn’t bother me that much. I’m as big a Dire Straits fan as the next guy (assuming the next guy is also tragically out of step with modern music) but the verse really is in rather poor taste. More importantly there’ve been versions of the song without the offending verse available ever since it was released – as long as these versions are still allowed on the radio, what does it matter? You don’t listen to Money for Nothing for the words, you listen for the durn-d-d-d-duuuurn! durn-durn-durn – durrrrrrn-durn! d-durn-durn-durn! d-d! (and for Mr Sting wailing about MTV).

The people who complain about this sort of thing are typically the ones who want to keep on using the offensive terms in question. They hide behind a facade of second-person artistic integrity, but fundamentally they want to keep the word ‘faggot’ in the song because they want to keep calling gay people – or simply anyone they don’t like – faggots. The idea that their apparently God given right to hate and belittle others is under threat is what upsets them – not that a song from 30 bloody years ago will now have to be played in slightly modified form.

Sheeze. You might as well complain about not being allowed to sing that verse from Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport.

Gossip

The seamy underbelly of the local web design scene…

Not naming any names here, but an apparently disgruntled employee (or possibly ex-employee – certainly an ex-employee once they figure out who it is) of a major local web design company has mailed copies of their entire client list to every other web design company in the city.

As we used to say in primary school – ooooo-ma!

Sackcloth and Ashes

Sic Semper Arrogance

England has retained the Ashes. Good. The Australian cricket team are a bunch of arrogant bogans who need to lose more often so they can learn to deal with it in a mature fashion, rather than whinging, complaining and generally being extremely sore losers.

While we’re on the subject, can we hurry up and axe Shane Warne’s atrocious talk show already? Thanks.

Running Low on Snake Oil

A victory for science!

Looks like sanity has finally asserted itself regarding that whole “Power Band” thing. I mean c’mon – a “hologram” encoded with a “frequency” that enhances your body’s “energy field”? Anyone with the slightest bit of scientific knowledge knew that the product was complete crap, but basic scientific knowledge seems to be in short supply these days. Thankfully the ACCC has stepped in and not just slapped them down, but ordered them to refund all the credulous idiots who purchased the damn things. Victory!

(I was actually fairly disappointed the other week when I noticed one of the cute girls down at the sandwich bar wearing a power band. Maybe she’ll wise up now.)

Christmas looks to be stupidly hot. Latest forecast is 38 degrees and there’s talk of unusual levels of humidity. Might as well be in Singapore damnit!

Hearts and Parks, Bows and Crows

Vale

Two great losses this week with the passing of author Ruth Park and musical-oddity extraordinaire Captain Beefheart.

Playing Beatie Bow was on the year nine syllabus when I was at school, so I read and studied the crap out of it. A lot of books suffer when you’re forced to do that to them, but Beatie Bow stood up. I haven’t read it for the better part of twenty years but I still recall vast swathes of it – it’s one of those books that gets into your head and changes it a bit so you’re never quite the same person after reading it.

More recently I obtained a copy of Ruth Park’s Sydney which provides a brilliantly written (if it wasn’t so pretentious I’d even say “sparkling”) history of the city via a series of walking tours. It’s clear that she had an incomparable love and knowledge of Sydney, and the book is going to be the first thing going into my case when I pack for my (Sydney departing) cruise in early 2012.

Captain Beefheart – well, what can you say about Captain Beefheart? A musical genius and provocateur without compare (unless it’s to his buddy Frank Zappa). I’ll let him speak for himself with the 1982 video clip of Ice Cream for Crow – a film so weird that a terrified MTV refused to play it, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York rushed to add it to their permenent collection.

Vale Ruth Park and Don Van Vliet. We’ll miss you both.

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