It sounds like I disagree with you about the death penalty. I support the death penalty in cases where the offender has been convicted of extremely serious offences (such as multiple murders, serial rapists, repeat paedophiles etc) and a period of at least five years has passed since the conviction. It is my view that such people are not able to be rehabilitated, and there is no point in keeping them alive, or spending taxpayer funds on keeping them alive when such funds could be better utilised maintaining the law abiding community's services.
I also have no problem with Australians being given the death sentence in foreign countries if they have been found guilty of a serious offence by a fair judicial system. I do not see it as our place to tell foreign countries how to run their legal systems, especially when we would be less than receptive of their advice on running our legal system.
I had given up on predicting when the prime minister will call the election, but in the last few days I have come to the conclusion that I believe I know when the election will be called, so I will predict it.
The Governor-General will be back in Canberra on Friday, and I believe that if John Howard were to leave the announcement until Friday or later, he would suffer another round of “why haven’t you called the election yet?” taunts, and so I believe he will try to catch everyone by surprise on Thursday by announcing the date, and then he will ask the Governor-General to dissolve the relevant section of parliament on Friday.
This would make the election date either November 17th, November 24, December 1, December 8 or December 15, and I believe John Howard will choose November 24.
As it stands, if John Howard does announce the election on Thursday, 2CC’s Mike Welsh owes me a Kit Kat, and if John Howard announces the election on Friday I owe Mike a Kit Kat. I’m not entirely sure if we will owe each other a Kit Kat if Mr. Howard doesn’t call the election on either day.
It’s 4:20am, I’m busy finishing up some loose ends of a bunch of website migrations at work, and have the radio with Clive Robertson on in the background. I’m having an enjoyable morning in my own company, and then I spot a black shape on the ceiling a few metres away from me…I’m not alone, it’s a spider of unknown origin, about 15 centimetres across.
There is something mildly disturbing about finding out that you are not alone in a room that you believe you have been alone in for the last few hours, and the thing sharing the room with you has six more legs than you do.
At this point in time I started talking to the spider, it was already moving towards the other side of the room, so the chat was fairly civil and mainly consisted of me mentioning that I had no intention of harming it, as long as it had no intention of harming me. I then, in lieu of the spider’s real name, nicknamed it “Boris”, found a copy of “Boris The Spider” by The Who, muted Clive and played the song for the spider…an interesting song, but on reflection, the lyrics probably make it one of the less friendly songs to play to a spider, especially one that was being as nice as Boris was.
Anyway, I got back to work and kept an eye on the spider…and then lost track of the spider for about twenty minutes, before I spotted it standing near a light near the exit. I had been planning on going across the road to get some milk to go with some breakfast cereal for a while, but first I wanted to work out what sort of spider Boris was, so I walked over slowly and as I approached, Boris suddenly coiled back in to (possibly) a defensive position…I backed away and left it alone.
5am came and I was ready for breakfast, so after a bit more conversation with the spider, I slowly crept around the area it was occupying on the ceiling, walked out the door and crossed the road. As I walked across the road it occurred to me that since I had stopped referring to the spider as “Boris”, it was being much more friendly, wasn’t jumping when I came near, and was staying on its side of the room. Perhaps, as it was being friendly when not being called Boris, it was actually a female spider and did not want to be referred to by a male name. I decided against calling it Borisette as I didn’t think it would particularly appreciate that.
As I walked back to the office I could see that the spider hadn’t left its position near the light, and as the morning went on and I enjoyed my breakfast and continued working, it barely moved from the location. It was almost a stand-off situation, and I eventually came to the conclusion that the better song (than Boris The Spider) for the situation was Aha’s “Take On Me”, especially the lines:
You shying away
I’ll be coming for you anyway
[..]
Take me on
I’ll be gone
in a day or two
Around 6:30 I lost track of the spider again, and then I worked out where it was a little while later when I spotted the edges of two legs on the far end of the light it had been occupying earlier in the morning. After this it moved in to the sunlight, and then I lost track of it again around 7:15 and haven’t seen it since.
I am reminded, ever so slightly, of the morning where I came to the conclusion that, if gravity were reversed, ceilings would make terrible floors. I suppose it really depends on the size of the thing using the ceiling as a floor. For a spider it doesn’t really matter as it is used to climbing over these strange objects we place on the ceiling, but for us the objects would be trip hazards.
I think (2UE overnight producer) Abe is right…I think about these things too much.
As you have probably noticed, normal service on Samuel’s Blog has taken a back seat to electoral matters over the last week or so. This isn’t permanent and I look forward to normal service resuming shortly, however in the meantime, the people from GrodsCorp were in Canberra two weekends ago and requested an interview with me. Here is the result.
Usually I avoid embedding YouTube videos on this blog, however as this video has been posted on YouTube by somebody other than me, I will embed it. I am currently undecided as to how I will deal with my own campaign videos.
This week the award goes to Olivia Newton-John and completes the series of two songs used by 2CC’s production department when they put together a rather amusing promo for the Mike Welsh promo during the week where I was actively pondering whether or not to run for parliament.
The feature song, if you haven’t already guessed, is “Sam”.
I heard that you’re on your own now
So am I
I’m living alone now
I was wrong
So were you
What will you do?
Are you glad to be free?
Are you feeling lost just like me?
Longing for company
Oh Sam, Sam, you know where I am
Come around and talk awhile
I need your smile
You need a shoulder
Oh Sam, Sam, you know where I am
And the door is open wide
Come on inside
Longing to see you
Oh Sam, Sam, you know where I am
I find the days hard to face now
Empty rooms
There’s much too much space now
And the nights go so slow
I’m sure you know
Wish I knew what to do
It would be so nice seeing you
And it might help you too
Oh Sam, Sam, you know where I am
Come around and talk awhile
I need your smile
You need a shoulder
Oh Sam, Sam, you know where I am
And the door is open wide
Come on inside
Longing to see you
Oh Sam, Sam, you know where I am
Oh Sam, you know where I am
Oh Sam, ooh Sam
You know, you know
You know where I am
I'm looking forward to the start of daylight saving as I am regularly either waking up or going back to sleep around 5am, and the sunlight is driving me nuts at that hour. Another hour of darkness in the morning will be very welcome when it arrives.
By the way, welcome back to Canberra's weekends, it's great to have you back.
It's a good point you make about the political polls usually not taking individual seats in to account. This is a particular nuisance for me as I am running as an independent candidate in the upcoming federal election, and I am not represented in these polls! The fact that my seat is considered a safe Labor seat makes it even harder as it is only marginal seats that ever seem to get any attention from these polls.
Also I think the Democrats are on to something with their suggestion today that we should have fixed four year terms for federal parliament. I agree with their sentiments about fixed terms because this stupid guessing game we are forced to endure every election about the election date is very annoying. That being said, I would much rather have three year terms than four year terms as I think four years is just a bit too long between elections.
And I will also be putting a few dollars on Bruce The Goose at Port Macquarie tomorrow. I reckon Stan and Bruce will be having a flutter on it up in heaven as well.
Stored for archival purposes
Independent candidate for Fraser, Samuel Gordon-Stewart, says the approval of the Gunns’ Pulp Mill in Tasmania is proof the federal Liberal and Labor parties do not believe humans are responsible for climate change.
“Many environment groups have stated that the Gunns’ Pulp Mill will increase the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by an inordinate amount. New South Wales Greens senator Kerry Nettle stated on radio last night that the increase would be a whopping two per cent.” Mr. Gordon-Stewart said.
“The fact that both the federal Labor and federal Liberal parties have welcomed a pulp mill that will increase greenhouse emissions by this much is proof that they don’t believe humans are responsible for climate change.”
“This is a view I fully endorse, and I strongly encourage the federal Labor and federal Liberal parties to admit to it.”
“I also welcome the pulp mill. The federal chief scientist has set down some very sensible rules for the operation of the pulp mill, and I believe the mill is a good thing for Tasmania, and the nation as a whole.”
Stored for archival purposes
Independent candidate for Fraser, Samuel Gordon-Stewart, has welcomed the news that 666 ABC Canberra has launched a webstream.
“Canberra is blessed with two locally focussed talk radio stations, and I am very pleased to see that one of them has put Canberra on the Internet in this way.” Mr. Gordon-Stewart said.
“People are turning to the Internet for information more regularly these days. Talk radio is one of the few places where people can easily express and debate their views, and it is good to see that talk radio in Canberra is now available to the world.”
“This will not only allow people from outside Canberra to get a better insight in to issues which affect Canberra, but also provide Canberrans with the ability to more easily stay in touch with their community when out of town, and enable Canberrans located in an analog radio blackspot to hear a station they would otherwise miss out on.”
“I can only hope that the few stations which currently do not have a webstream, implement one soon.”
Mr Gordon-Stewart also highlighted the fact that the ever-growing amount of content online makes it imperative that a national broadband network be set up as a matter of priority.
“It is disturbing that a metropolitan area such as Canberra could have any areas which do not have high-speed Internet access. One of my key policies is the immediate rollout of broadband services to all areas of the nation that currently do not have access, and the subsequent rollout of a majority government owned national high-speed fibre to the home broadband network.”
“It is important that everyone has the ability to access the many sources of information available on the Internet in conjunction with the more traditional sources of information, as a well-informed society benefits everyone.”
I’ve been thinking about this for about two months now, maybe longer.
Samuel’s Persiflage is taking an indefinite break. Originally I was going to end it completely, but I have decided that I don’t want to completely end it. The reason is simple, I don’t have time, and haven’t had time for most of this year.
I had produced an “episode 16”, but Audacity is producing a wave file which contains things I deleted from the project hours ago, and silence in place of things that should be there. I’ve battled with it for too long now, I can’t be bothered, episode 16 might be released in the not-to-distant future if I find the time to work out why Audacity is playing up, but right now it’s not important.
Samuel’s Persiflage will return at some stage in the future when I actually have time to make it work.
Have you been pulling the studio apart tonight? I saw you moving microphones about! I'm sure you're behaving yourself, I don't think your producers would let you be too naughty…
Anyway, following on from Charity's email about messy rooms, I have papers scattered all over the place, but, much like Charity, I know exactly where things are when I need them. Other people tell me I should tidy up and have a logical filing system…but I've tried that, it doesn't work! So if they want the papers sorted out, they have to sign on as my permanent secretary.
I'm also a bit worried about these callers…the moon isn't even full and they're still coming out of the woodwork.
Have a great night, Samuel Gordon-Stewart Canberra
It's good to hear that your voice has returned. Did it enjoy its holidays? Next time it decides to have a holiday you should ask it if you can go too.
You were just talking about waiting on hold…well you're that popular Stuart that I have to settle for emailing you most nights. Whenever I ring, the queue is too long for me to have time to wait on hold!
I will persevere one of these nights, I'll ring at 4pm and wait on hold, maybe that's the trick to getting through. Either that or you could fill in for Clive one night, I never had any problems getting through to you on that shift.
On Thursday and Friday I replied to a handful of emails from people wondering when the next episode of Samuel’s Persiflage would be released. It was supposed to be a short episode, and I was going to release it today, unfortunately that hasn’t been possible.
I have set myself a new target, I will put it together tonight, and it will be slightly longer than I had originally planned. It should be online tomorrow morning.
Good afternoon Glenn and, now that the football season is over, welcome back to Canberra,
I actually slept through all of the NRL grand final, and the team I was backing lost. I had the radio on so I woke up briefly during half time and heard bits of the Frank Hyde tribute. I didn't hear enough of it to pass judgement, but I heard a very good tribute on the radio during the afternoon.
I, much like you, am working this afternoon, and if it's not too busy at work I'll have you on in the background.
By the way, any word on Stuart Bocking? Has his voice recovered over the weekend?