One watch down, how many more to go? I'm pleased to see that the Senate have killed off Petrol watch…it proves that there is still some sanity in parliament after all. Not that it lasted for long, apparently the Senate Standing Committee on Economics want us to launch a space program.
As for the soccer, can you explain to me why Adelaide United even bothered? I've watched half of both games and I can't see why they bothered. They're not good enough to defeat Gamba Osaka, they're not even close to being good enough. Stick to the A-League for now would be my advice, perhaps give the Asian Champions League another go in a few years when they're a bit more experienced.
And I could tell you a fishing joke, but I think they've all reeled you in so far, so I'll avoid it.
Or what? 20th Century Fox will cancel the movie and ban Luhrmann from ever having anything to do with any movie ever again? Well, it would be nice, but I don’t suppose that particular dream will come true. I reserve the right to hope though.
That said, the sooner that he finishes it, releases it, and it goes away, the better.
If I am ever forced to sit through his “interpretation” of Romeo and Juliet again, then The Powers That Be should prepare a padded room for me, because they won’t get any sense out of me at my trial.
There’s nothing particularly special about it…after all it is the same as just about every other receipt which I have received from there, which makes me wonder why I have never noticed the bottom line before:
Ah yes, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon has invaded the point of sale systems at Caltex Woolworths Weston and ensuring that everyone receives his famous complimentary farewell.
One day last week I was having breakfast at a cafe in Woden and had the rather amusing (and unavoidable without earplugs) pleasure of eavesdropping on the people at the table behind me. Whilst I say “people”, it’s probably fairer to say “one of the people” as the conversation was very one-sided, to the point of having one woman talking, and the other one intermittently grunting sympathetically.
I picked up on the conversation when this particular woman was complaining about the 2IC in her workplace who is apparently a very diligent worker and does half of the complainers work because she doesn’t really manage to get around to it, but wants to take the rostered days off to which she is entitled. I couldn’t quite work out the logic behind this complaint, except that, perhaps, if the 2IC had the day off, the complainer might actually have to do some work. Oh the horror of the notion.
The next complaint was downright bizarre. It took a very very long time for her to rant about this one, but the basic summary is that her daughter failed a driving assessment because, to be blunt, her driving skills don’t exist. Apparently the fact that the government wouldn’t let her have a licence was an absolute outrage…and to make matters worse, she has to book in for another assessment (without gaining some skills, apparently) at a time which, *gasp*, the government have an available timeslot, not at a time dictated by the complainer.
Just to give her yet another reason to complain, she arranged all of the rosters at her work on the assumption that the government would read her mind and have a spare slot for her daughter on the day when her workplace’s schedule prefers. Not surprisingly, when she rang the government to book an appointment at her preferred time, they “typically” couldn’t accommodate her, which forced her to accept a time two days later and rearrange those rosters…which prompted complaints from her staff who had been promised particular shifts or days off. If only those staff would understand…
She also found something else to complain about, not that I remember what it was.
This morning I had breakfast in the same place and unfortunately ran in to the same complainer…and she was still complaining. Her staff still want time off (“despicable”), and apparently she went to exchange some Australian Dollars for US Dollars yesterday, but the exchange place wouldn’t give her as many US dollars as she wanted (“something to do with some exchange rate or some other nonsense”).
I was hoping that people like this were fictional…unfortunately my faint hope has been eroded. Oh well.
The next day: Kevin Rudd translates those “The Internets can be of harmful to healths” stickers from Mandarin to English…unfortunately needing to use the Google Translator because he doesn’t actually speak Mandarin.
Sometime next week: Internet access is outlawed simultaneously in Australia and China due to the “potential harmful effects of greenhouse gases emitted by routers and data centres”.
The next day: Cigarettes and alcohol are banned as well, the double standard was just too big too ignore.
It’s not entirely inconceivable is it? And surely both bans would work just as well as each other. We know that prohibition is always a wonderful success. I wonder what happened to the Internet being a crucial part of our economy? Wasn’t that one of Kevin Rudd’s pre-election mantras?
If there is one thing which I can give Fairfax a lot of credit for in the time since they bought 2UE et al, it’s being very efficient when it comes to advising of format and presenter changes to networked programming.
The Christmas/New Year schedule has been confirmed:
Jim Ball will be taking all of December and a third of January off. John Kerr will be taking his place. No word yet on who will be taking over the weekend version of New Day Australia as yet, although Clinton Maynard would probably be a fair guess, unless he is also taking time off. Perhaps a return to air for Glenn Wheeler who has been lurking around the off-air wings of 2UE of late?
Somebody who I think really should be given a permanent shift, Steve Liebmann, will be filling in for Steve Price on the morning show from the 15th of December until the 9th of January inclusive.
The Buzzard, Murray Olds, will be filling in for Tim Webster on the afternoon show during the same period.
Sadly I’m going to have to skip the night show during this period though. There is no way known that I can stomach A Current Affair’s Ben Fordham. It’s bad enough hearing him during Steve Price’s show.
No word on the weekend schedule as yet, although it would be good to hear Bill Woods and Deborah Knight paired up again. And one does have to wonder how long Mike Munro will stay in retirement…I’d love to hear him on talk radio.
New Zealand’s election went the way I wanted it to. Two elections in the space of four years…it’s a dismal effort on my behalf, but at least parts of the world still agree with my political views.
So, I can move to Western Australia or New Zealand…or try to reform the voters of the ACT. There could be some satisfaction in watching the ACT voters realise that a Labor-Green government was as big a mistake as the New South Wales voters returning Iemma/Rees Labor to power, although it would be less painful to watch from a distance…being subjected to the policies and plans of a Labor-Green government could be very painful indeed.
That said, moving town would be painful unless 2CC can get around to getting a webstream online. Life without the Mike Jeffreys Breakfast Program…now that would be painful.
And with that, I’m aborting the experiment. I don’t think I can possibly drink another coffee…the mere thought of it repulses me. I suppose the fact that I was already feeling pretty lousy before I started this didn’t help, I now feel a lot worse, and I can’t wait until the end of my shift so that I can climb in to bed and sleep for hours and hours and hours. As much as I probably shouldn’t write this publicly, it’s been that quiet at work tonight that I did take the opportunity to nap for about an hour. The floor is very uncomfortable.
I think I’ve been coming down with something for about the last week. I’ve been persistently tired to the point of almost sleeping more than I’ve been awake, I’ve had a headache that hasn’t gone away for the last three days, I’ve had almost no appetite and in general I just haven’t been feeling well. As I’ve been working on the relatively quiet night shift I’ve been dragging myself in to work each night, but I’m starting to think that I’m going to struggle to even do that.
Oh, and for anyone who’s thinking of trying to beat my coffee-drinking effort…don’t, seriously. It’s a really really bad idea. Just as there is a responsible service of alcohol system, there really should be a responsible service of coffee system.
This is going to be interesting. I’m at work until 8am and I’ve been wanting to collapse in to bed since about 9:30. It’s funny how the caffeine isn’t making me want to stay awake, it may be keeping me awake but it doesn’t feel like it. The caffeine is making me a bit jumpy and jittery, and possibly a bit uncoordinated though.
I doubt that I’m going to get anywhere near the target of 50 coffees, and that’s probably a good thing. I’m starting to wonder if I’m going to even reach the projected total of 39.
When I awoke at about 11:30 this morning and realised that my body clock is about ten hours out from where it should be, and I also noticed that my mood and headache aren’t improving, I came to a conclusion…I need a distraction that will either fix my body clock, or completely destroy it.
Hence, Samuel’s Coffee Challenge. It started at 1pm, and I intend of drinking as much coffee as possible over the course of 24 hours. Unfortunately I can’t take the next 24 hours off from my normal daily duties in order to sit down and drink cup after cup after cup of coffee, but I’ll fit as much coffee and possible in to my routine anyway.
A big thanks to Alison who yesterday pointed out to me that The Canberra Times credited me for a photo of the Brindabellas a few weeks ago. Being the regular Canberra Times reader that I’m not, I was not aware of this. I have no problem with them doing this (and why would I?), in fact I’m rather happy about it, although their choice of article in which to use the photo (apparently it was something about global warming) leaves a bit to be desired.
Anyway, I was just wondering if anybody out there happens to have a copy of the paper in question and would be either willing to part with it (for a fee if necessary) or send me a copy of the page?
If not, I might just have to make a trip to the National Library of Australia and look through their newspaper archives…something which I’ve done a few times now, once with particular success in 2005 when I was looking for a very particular page of the “service directory” from The Northside Chronicle in either 1996 or 1997. I should write about that at some stage…
Well, actually I can’t really prove that from inside until the sun makes its scheduled appearance shortly, but based on the lack of news reports claiming that the sun has frozen in a specific spot in the sky, I think it’s safe to say that our little planet called Earth is still rotating.
The US Presidential Election is over (apart from a few little bits of counting that are only of any use in the history books…it’s effectively a two horse race, once one candidate is over the line, the rest is purely academic). Barack Obama has been elected by both popular vote and electoral college votes, which in my mind is a very good outcome for democracy. Sure, it’s not the outcome I wanted, and I hold many reservations about the merits of the policies of the President-Elect, much like I did with Kevin Rudd when he became the Prime Minister-Elect, however I respect that the majority of voters in the US have voted for Barack Obama and the things which he represents.
I’m not happy with the result, but I have now accepted it, and I hope that in the spirit of the great tradition of democracy, that everyone else accepts it as well. As disappointed as I may be with the result, the Earth will keep spinning, and we will just have to “accept the cards that we are dealt”. Who knows…if Obama’s policies are as misguided as I believe them to be, then maybe the US public will vote differently in the mid-term elections in two years, or at the next Presidential election in four years…or maybe I will just have a different view to that held by the majority of US voters once again.
Either way, right now it is time to get on with the job of government, and as long as the Earth doesn’t stop rotating (by government policy or otherwise), and we continue to have the right to scrutinise and comment, that job should be continued by the people who have been granted the privilege to do so through the wonderful tradition of democracy.
I congratulate Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats on their victory, and I wish them the best of luck for a prosperous and useful administration.
Well it’s over, Obama has more than enough to win, the only question now is by how much.
Electoral College Votes:
Fox News: Obama 220 – 138 McCain (Looks like the website has stopped working again)
ABC News: Obama 284 – 185 McCain
CBS News: Obama 283 – 145 McCain
CNN News: Obama 287 – 139 McCain
Popular vote: Obama 51% – 48% McCain (Obama leads by approximately 2.5 million votes)
House of Congress seats:
Democrats: 227
Republicans: 149
Change: Democrats +7
I’m not going to bite my tongue…I think that the US has made a very big mistake today, although I will congratulate them on continuing my run of getting every election that I’ve bothered to predict since 2004 wrong, both domestically and internationally, with the exception of the recent WA election.
Who wants to find a nice quiet out of the way planet for me which doesn’t have all of these awful election results from the last four years on it?
In all seriousness though, congratulations to Barack Obama, Joe Biden and the Democrats team, and best of luck for the next four years.
