Archive for August 1st, 2008

When the people on-microphone can’t hear the main conversation

From tonight’s AFL coverage on Channel Seven. Bruce McAvaney was talking about Collingwood.

Bruce McAvaney: A month ago we were wondering if they would get in to the top four, now we’re wondering if they can cling on to a spot in the top eight.

Umpire (on field): Nooooo

One wonders if they commentators are hooked in to the same mix as the audience and are therefore able to hear the umpires. I only wonder because the commentators didn’t seem to notice the umpire’s comment, and I would have almost expected Dennis Cometti to inform Bruce that “you have your answer”.

Samuel

August 1st, 2008 at 11:25pm

Michael Thompson heads to Pyrmont

It’s 6PM, so there ends today’s 2CC drive show, and with it the tenure of Australia’s best provincial newcomer off-air for 2007, producer Michael Thompson.

Michael is leaving Canberra’s garden suburb of the north* (Mitchell) for the tropical island of Pyrmont (I was told that he was on a tropical island the last time he was in Pyrmont) where he will join the team responsible for Ray Hadley’s morning show on 2GB. At this stage it is unclear whether or not he will be taking any green mesh with him to Pyrmont.

The news came as a shock to me as I only found out today. I knew that my week or so of isolating myself from the world recently worked well, I just didn’t know that it worked that well.

Best of luck Michael, you definitely deserve the new job and I hope it all goes well for you. I don’t think that it’s within my power to turn Pyrmont in to a tropical island, but I could probably convince a professor to release a report in to global warming complete with a picture of Pyrmont floating in the ocean due to rising sea levels and an increase in temperatures by about ten degrees…not sure about the palm trees though, you might have to improvise by moving 2GB’s indoor plants to the building’s roof.

*Apologies to Mike Jeffreys for stealing his description of Mitchell…it’s the only decent description out there.

Due to my break from the blog, I’m a week behind on the Musician(s) Of The Week award and my plan was to run two Musician(s) Of The Week posts this weekend…I will still do that, but I may have to overrule the random number generator and pick one of the songs from the 101-song-list purposefully tomorrow. I know that Michael has been eagerly waiting for me to run this song for some time so I might as well do it before he forgets what Canberra’s average temperature is for May.

Samuel

1 comment August 1st, 2008 at 06:00pm

Friday Funnies: Geography BBC Style and What The Teacher Says And Means

I’ve got two Friday Funnies for you this week. Firstly, take a look at the following screenshot of a BBC News story…notice anything?

Where's Adelaide?

I wonder what how the cricketers will handle the 40°c+ temperatures all day and night at Adelaide Oval during summer?

The BBC have since removed the image, but the folks over at Andrew Bolt’s blog certainly had some fun with it:

  • and I thought it was global warming that is causing all this cold weather. Teach me to go away for a few days and have home move on me. Do you think they are trying to tell me something?
    Tator of Adelaide
    Thu 31 Jul 08 (08:36am)
  • See, I KNEW I had a good excuse for being late for work this morning

    (bloodly [sic] global cooling, it’s f#####g cold here in the tropics)
    MudCrab of Adelaide
    Thu 31 Jul 08 (10:34am)

  • Banjo replied to berfel
    Thu 31 Jul 08 (06:44am)

    On the way back from Thailand last year, the big projection screen on the plane had an updating map showing our destination and path. It was a stop over in Sydney, which was oddly placed in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

    Thankfully the plane [k]new better.

I’ve been going through some of my old emails and I’ve found a few Friday Funnies entries which were sent to me but never got on to the website. This one is from Charity of Sydney, although I have to say that I’m quite worried about Charity…nobody seems to have heard from her in about nine months and her family aren’t replying.

What the teacher says and (what the teacher means)

1. Your son has a remarkable ability in gathering needed information from his classmates.
(He was caught cheating on a test).

2. Karen is an endless fund of energy and viability.
(The hyperactive monster can’t stay seated for five minutes).

3. Fantastic imagination! Unmatched in his capacity for blending fact with fiction.
(He’s definitely one of the biggest liars I have ever met).

4. Margie exhibits a casual, relaxed attitude to school, indicating that high expectations don’t intimidate her.
(The lazy thing hasn’t done one assignment all term).

5. Her athletic ability is marvellous. Superior hand-eye coordination.
(The little creep stung me with a rubber band from 15 feet away).

6. Nick thrives on interaction with his peers.
(Your son needs to stop socialising and start working).

7. Your daughter’s greatest asset is her demonstrative public discussions.
(Classroom lawyer! Why is it that every time I explain an assignment she creates a class argument?).

8. John enjoys the thrill of engaging challenges with his peers.
(He’s a bully).

9. An adventurous nature lover who rarely misses opportunities to explore new territory.
(Your daughter was caught skipping school at the fishing pond).

10. I am amazed at her tenacity in retaining her youthful personality.
(She’s so immature that we’ve run out of diapers).

11. Unlike some students who hide their emotion, Charles is very expressive and open.
(He must have written the Whiner’s Guide).

12. I firmly believe that her intellectual and emotional progress would be enhanced through a year’s repetition of her learning environment.
(Regretfully, we believe that she is not ready for high school and must repeat the 6th grade).

13. Her exuberant verbosity is awesome!
(A mouth that never stops yacking).

If you have a joke or a funny video that you’d like to see here on a Friday, send an email to samuel@samuelgordonstewart.com and it might just appear in the coming weeks.

Samuel

August 1st, 2008 at 12:11pm

Why wouldn’t you run a candidate?

I honestly don’t understand the thinking of the powers-that-be in the Labor Party on this one.

By-elections for the federal seats of Mayo and Lyne will be held on September 6.

The polls come as a result of the resignations from parliament of former foreign minister ALEXANDER DOWNER .. and former Nationals leader MARK VAILE.

House of Representatives speaker HARRY JENKINS says he’ll issue writs for the by-elections on Monday .. rolls will close on August 8 .. and nominations close on August 14.

The government will not run a candidate in Mayo .. and is not expected to run one in Lyne.

At last year’s federal election, Labor recorded a rather large swing towards them in Mayo as the AEC results show.

Alexander Downer won the ballot for the Liberal Party with 45,893 votes (51.08%) which was a pretty reasonable distance ahead of the ALP’s Mary Brewerton who received 27,957 votes (31.12%). Admittedly it is quite a gap, however Ms. Brewerton had a swing towards her of 14.63% whilst Mr. Downer had a swing against him of 2.56%. With the swing clearly showing that a large number of people lost confidence in Liberal Party, if you were the Labor Party, wouldn’t you at least try to play the “Alexander Downer ditched you, but we’re here for the long haul” card?

The seat of Lyne is a similar story according to the AEC.

Mark Vaile won for the National Party with 41,319 votes (52.26%), ahead of the Labor Party’s James Langley who managed to receive 25,358 votes (32.07%). The swing wasn’t as exciting as the one in Mayo; Mr. Vaile lost 4.44% and Mr. Langley gained 5.52%, but there is still plenty of votes to gain with the “we respect your decision to vote for us” campaign.

I’m not saying that it would be a definite win for Labor in either of these seats, but surely it’s worth a shot? Or was their 2007 election victory over the coalition and the independents by 83 seats to 65 to 2, giving them a majority of the House of Representatives, enough to make them believe that as long as they have a majority, those who didn’t vote for them last time are of no importance?

At the very least, wouldn’t you want to take advantage of good opinion polls while they’re here and give yourself a shot at having the advantage of incumbency at the next general election?

Oh well, if they want to waste a good opportunity, who am I to try and stop them?

Samuel

August 1st, 2008 at 08:49am

Samuel’s Blog Weekly Poll: The effect of aeroplane issues

Another feature returning to Samuel’s Blog from a lengthy absence is the weekly poll.

This morning one of the top news stories is an unfortunate story about a plane crash in Minnesota claiming at least eight lives. The news comes while stories of Qantas’ recent problems are still fresh in the minds of most Australians and still doing the rounds in the media. As somebody who has only flown a couple times, it got me thinking:

The recent spate of aeroplane issues has:

Total Votes: 21
Started: August 1, 2008

Personally, it makes me less inclined to fly, although it’s entirely possible that is simply because I’m not a huge fan of flying anyway. I’d be interested to see how this poll turns out…and if you’d like to provide a more detailed response, please feel free to leave a comment below.

A list of previous poll results can be seen here.

Samuel

August 1st, 2008 at 06:19am

Dreams to end obesity, rearrange breakfast radio, and make Civic more democratic

I’m definitely a long way behind on sleep at the moment, but the small amounts of sleep that I have managed to get have been littered with peculiar dreams. It’s about time that I catch up on writing about some of them.

Firstly, I had a dream in which Kevin Rudd came up with a plan to curb obesity, it was a novel piece of legislation dubbed “The Two Thirds Policy for Burgers” where people buying burgers would be allowed to have two of the following three items only:
Bread Roll
Meat
Cheese

Effectively anybody buying a burger would have to decide which one of those items that they would be willing to go without. I told Jim Ball about this dream last week and was greeted by a stunned silence followed by a chuckle, and a directive to “go and get some sleep”.

The next dream involved ABC Classic FM’s breakfast show. Realising the error of their ways, the ABC rehired Clive Robertson for the gig, but for some reason decided that, just like many other FM radio stations, they needed to have three breakfast hosts…so joining Clive on the breakfast show was John Laws and John Howard. Unfortunately to cover the cost of having three hosts, the ABC Board decided that they weren’t allowed to play any music, therefore saving themselves the cost of royalties…this led to Clive, John and John launching a barbershop trio (because, according to Clive, the ABC wouldn’t fork out for the appropriate number of staff to form a quartet) and singing for the majority of the breakfast show.

Meanwhile in dream number three, convinced that Civic was not a democratic place after conducting an outside broadcast from a spot just outside Bailey’s Corner, Steve Price decided to make it more democratic by walking around handing everyone megaphones…the theory being that by giving everyone a megaphone, it would make it easier for them to be heard.

ACT Chief Turnip Jon Stanhope, unhappy about having the noise of half of Canberra ranting on megaphones in Civic blaring through his office’s window at the Legislative Assembly, passed a law in the week before the ACT election banning megaphones, a move which saw him accused of censorship and subsequently thrown out of government in a landslide result against his party. For some reason, the electoral commission then decided that a suitable punishment would be to make Jon Stanhope clean yellow megaphones…not that I can work out why.

So tell me, if you had dreams like this when you go to sleep, would you try to avoid sleeping in the hope that the Director Of Dreams would go on holidays?

Samuel

August 1st, 2008 at 04:18am


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