This week’s award goes to Broken Bells, and the feature song for the week is the rather intriguing (bordering on spooky) October.
Interestingly, last week my iTunes told me that I hadn’t played the song since October…while I think it was just a bit befuddled, it was a situation which I immediately rectified as this song is far too good to leave it unplayed for such a length of time.
So you showed me ’round your town
To hell again and back
I love the certain way
You made all the friends that you depend on
I know it might seem odd
Kid, you’re not the only one
I remember myself as a lonely child
So I was
And you’ve got me wrong
You’ve got me…
Wrong just seems so right
’til the spark of morning light
And all those searching eyes
Do they scald your tender mind?
Remember what they say
There’s no shortcut to a dream
It’s all blood and sweat
And life is what you manage in between
But what you don`t know
Is you’re too young and eager to love
Seething,
I see you’re about to get into the ditch that you opened up
(aah…)
Wrong just seems so right
’til the spark of morning light
And all those searching eyes
Do they scald your tender mind?
So the stars alight
And leave you behind
You want it so, and I…
I come by light of an autumn moon
Sister you know enough
But for now just let it go
Don’t run, don’t rush
Just flow
Through the give and take you had to learn
How to cross the coals and not get burned
But you’re really just a little girl
Playing in the park ’til the sun goes down
Sometime you want to rise
One did it’s our desire
No doubt you think
You braided your own hair so you’re all grown up
Should you want to cross the line
Which way do you want to fly?
Pretend that love can help you find your way
But you’ve got me wrong
Yeah you’ve got me wrong
People tell me from time to time that I don’t publish enough photos of Nattie. They’re probably right, so you can have some of them this evening.
One is of Nattie on her new bed, which is a combination of her old bed (a sheepskin in a pillowcase, minus the half a swivel chair it used to be in) and a new section which is pillows covered in plastic.
The others are of Nattie in one of her favourite sunny spots, a spot which attracts plenty of sun in the morning and early afternoon.
Although I’ve been asleep pretty much all day which is probably a combination of the side effects of the accident on the weekend and the medication which I’m on as well.
I’ll be back with you after midnight. I’m just not feeling up to writing much more than this at this very moment in time.
Due to a scheduled server migration by our service provider, we’ll be in maintenance mode for the next little while. During this time, no new posts, comments or user registrations will be possible so as to avoid losing any data in the migration process.
I will probably be at work when the migration is completed and this would make it impossible for me to put things back to normal, so things might not be back to normal until tomorrow afternoon when I intend to post the results of my last two weeks of football tips and also this week’s musician of the week who is a great gentleman of the music industry who sadly passed away last week.
There has been an explosion in the number of people landing on this blog today after searching for “John Kerr”. Normally I see a few people a day at most. So far there have been 212 arrivals today.
I can’t see any obvious reason for the sudden increase in interest, although it is nice to know that John is a popular man. Would anybody care to enlighten me as to what’s happening with the John Kerrs of the world?
Good evening. When a new year greeting starts like that, you know that it’s late. Let me start by wishing you a happy new year. I hope that 2011 is good to you.
I’m not usually one for New Year’s Resolutions, however this year is different as I do have a couple resolutions for the year. Firstly though, on the subject of new year greetings, I was quite amused by the greeting offered up by Spring Valley Hospital Medical Centre, Las Vegas, Nevada. This cute little jingle encapsulates a wish which I also have for you.
We wish you a happy heartbeat
We wish you a low cholesterol
We wish you a good blood pressure
And a happy new year
[..]
We wish you strong blood vessels
We wish you a happy heartbeat
And choose Spring Valley Hospital
For a happy new year
Unfortunately I do have to add a sad note to this audio. The ad came from a Thursday recording of Fox News 1280 AM and 102.3 FM KDOX in Las Vegas which is where Casey Hendrickson and Heather Kydd resurfaced back in August. Unfortunately KDOX have decided to change format and have become an oldies music station, meaning that Casey and Heather once again find themselves out of work. Not a great start to the new year, but there are other prospects for this talented pair, and I wish them every success in the future. I’m sure that they won’t be out of work for long.
Anyway, on to resolutions, and this year I have a couple. Firstly, I intend on finding some sort of useful therapy. Long-term readers would be well aware of my battles with depression and, more recently, anxiety. There are a few things which I either haven’t been able to get over, or haven’t been able to manage properly, and these are causing ongoing issues for me, especially in the form of anxiety. I have decided that I should seek out some sort of therapy to help me deal with these issues, and get back on top of my game.
My other resolution is to bring this blog back to its former glory…in other words I’m resolving to blog more. This probably goes hand in hand with the other resolution though, as the primary reason for my lack of blogging in my lack of enthusiasm, which is tied to everything else.
It just occurred to me that I opened this post with “good evening” and it is now morning. I suppose that’s what happens when one gets excited and sidetracked by a series of thunderstorms.
Last year I noted that Sydney community radio station 2NSB had collapsed due to financial problems. I’m pleased to be able to report that a dedicated group of people have managed to save the station, and are in the process of making it a viable station once again.
John Southgate, one of the people responsible for this rebuilding has written in with the following update:
Sydney North Shore’s FM99.3 has been operating successfully since February 2010 with a new board of directors and in August 2010 is ready to recruit a permanent station manager. Details of the position can be found on the station web site at FM993.com.au or through SEEK at seek.com.au.
Thanks John, that’s great news. Best of luck with finding a suitable manager.
I’ve received a number off odd emails over the last week, the oddest of all was, oddly enough, sent to the old Editorial Echoes email address. Among this bunch of odd emails, there was one with a sensible question which probably deserves a wider audience for its answer.
The question was about why the current poll, which I said would be reset on a weekly basis until the election, has not been reset yet. It’s a good question…the simple answer is that between ten straight days of 5am-ish starts, recovering from the flu and a myriad of other projects, it simply fell by the way side. I remember it on Wednesday, by which time it would have been pointless to reset it…so the poll can run until Friday night now.
As for the interviews with local candidates…I haven’t sent out any requests yet, and I won’t be sending any. The reasons above are the main reason for this, although I should note that one of the lovely symptoms of that wonderful flu was that I lost most of my hearing for a week or so. I wasn’t able to get around to conducting interviews over the last couple of weeks, and I won’t have time this week.
To the person who was upset by this in said email, I’m sorry…I’d love to vote again as well, but alas it’s not going to happen.
Speaking of elections, on election night my attention will be split between the election and the Sydney Swans V Western Bulldogs AFL game. I do intend on blogging about the election through the night, however it won’t be as thorough and as regularly updated as it was for the last federal election…until full time in the AFL anyway!
I start work rather early in the morning on election day, and again the day after that, so with the election day blog posts which will need to be written on the Friday night, plus the election coverage, I dare say that I’m going to have an election weekend in which I get very very little sleep. I can only hope that the result will make it worthwhile.
Starting from 6:30pm I’ll be running live commentary on the Leaders Debate between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott. Please refresh the page to see the updates as they appear, probably every minute or so.
6:30: Welcome to the live coverage. I’ll be watching the Debate on Seven, with Nine on a separate monitor so that I can keep an eye on both the “worm” and the “polliegraph”. Those will get a mention, but they won’t be my main focus as the speeches and pronouncements of the two leaders are more important than what the Seven and Nine studio audiences think.
6:35: A neat and concise opening statement from Julia Gillard. Pretty much what I expected…too many plans to spend money without enough details on her plan to reduce the deficit though for my mind.
6:39: Tony Abbott reannounced pretty much all of his policies to date. While he was talking about his policies, both the Nine Worm and the Seven Polliegraph were quite positive…just as much as for Julia. They both took a dive when he started attacking Labor and Julia Gillard…more so among women than among men.
6:41: Already people are asleep in my lounge room.
6:42: Julia Gillard claims to have sensible ideas on immigration and climate change. Strangely she is still talking about East Timor though…
6:43: Tony Abbott receives a positive reaction to his immigration policies which don’t utilise East Timor. A more lukewarm response to his climate change policy.
6:48: The basis of Julia’s statement about her courage is that she seems to think it’s a good idea to push ideas through even if they’re unpopular. Apparently the people will thank her later. Some public servants cried tears of joys after one of her plans was implemented.
6:50: I disagree with the government funding parental leave, but the reaction to Tony Abbott’s paid parental leave scheme seems to be quite positive.
6:52: Tony Abbott seems to accept that immigration needs to be reduced to remain sustainable, and seems to have a sensible sounding plan for it. It was interesting to see him accept that past levels were probably too high.
6:55: Julia Gillard claims that they’ve already reduced the immigration numbers and closed a number of “rorts” introduced under the Howard government. She completely dodges Tony Abbott’s question of why she didn’t announce the details of her migration figures until now…strangely the off-topic waffle won over both the Seven and Nine audiences.
6:56: Julia just lied about East Timor being open to a dialogue about taking our asylum seekers. Just because one person there is open to it, doesn’t mean that the country (whose parliament voted against it) is open to it.
6:57: Julia will “take the time to get it done” on the asylum seeker policies. So how many more people have to die at sea while she dithers?
6:58: Tony says that there will never be an immigration processing centre in East Timor and that Nauru is the best option. He’s right, and the audiences seem to like it.
6:59: ABC’s Chris Uhlmann asks a stupid question of Tony Abbott about it being true that most of the people who went to Nauru eventually came to Australia anyway. Your point Chris? The legitimate ones were allowed through and the dodgy ones were sent back…what’s your problem with this Chris?
7:01: Julia doesn’t like Nauru because of its deadlocked government. She completely ignores the fact, which Tony mentions, that both sides of politics over there want to take our asylum seekers.
7:03: Julia believes that her stimulus plans saved the economy from a “deep recession”. As much as I disagree with her…how do we measure this without access to a parallel universe? Julia doesn’t want to answer the question of whether she will pour more money in to the economy if we have a double-dip recession.
7:06: Tony believes that the policies of the Howard government had more to do with the health of the economy than the Rudd/Gillard/Swan stimulus, which he rightly calls “rushed”. He also, rightly based on the deficit, claims that the economy is harder for the government to help out if it needs further help now, thanks to the Rudd/Gillard/Swan stimulus.
7:07: Tony wants to bring government debt and deficit under control, to help reduce pressure on the rest of the economy. He also rules out strange plans such as GroceryWatch to try and artificially reduce grocery prices.
7:08: Julia correctly points out that Tony’s proposed increase of the corporate tax rate would increase the cost of living, not reduce it….but then she mentions a bunch of her socialist plans which would have the same effect. She almost nailed Tony, but then completely missed her chance.
7:11: Interesting reaction to Julia talking about climate change on the Seven Polliegraph. Men hate it, women are slightly in favour of it. The Nine Worm is fairly neutral.
7:12: Worm and Polliegraph like Tony saying that the “citizen’s assembly” on climate change, proposed by Julia Gillard, is a bad idea and a waste of time when we already have a parliament to decide these things.
7:14: Tony dodges a question about his proposed corporate tax increase and instead rambles about how he will deliver “stability”…and then drifts on to WorkChoices being dead.
7:17: Julia still believes that Tony is lying about WorkChoices being dead. Seven’s Female audience seems to agree. Male audience not so sure about it.
7:18: Julia likes her workplace reforms and the audiences seems to be more-or-less in favour of it.
7:19: Tony re-iterates that he will work within the workplace legislation set down by the Labor government. Audience not quite as friendly to this as they were to Julia.
7:21: The topic of Julia’s ascension to the top comes up. The audience doesn’t like this. The way she took over is still a sore point among most people by the looks of it. Women seem to be a bit happier about it if Seven’s Polliegraph is to be believed. I didn’t like it…but I accept that it is within the gift of the majority party to change Prime Minister if it wants to do so.
7:22: Tony mentions that the government has gone from bad to worse since Julia took over. Strangely, this attack is highly favourable among the audiences, unlike the one near the start of the debate.
7:23: Massive surge in support for Tony’s support of the military and following their advice on what we should do in places like Afghanistan.
7:25: Similarly strong support for Julia’s similar policy. What neither leader mentioned is that the Coalition want to urgently upgrade some military equipment to help save some lives. If I were Tony, I would have said that straight away and make Julia commit to it too.
7:28: Julia pledges to cut the corporate tax rate, and continue to spend money (“invest” to use her word) on infrastructure such as the $43 billion dollar National Broadband Network. She still wants to bring the budget in to surplus by 2013, but still no details on where this money will come from to do this. Audiences seem to like it though.
7:31: Tony again pledges to cut the deficit, cut spending etc. Tony then delves in to the speech which he gave on the day that Julia called the election. Audiences: Males favourable, females unfavourable, overall neutral to srat with, but they were fairly favourable by the end of it.
7:32: Julia won the audiences for my mind…but Tony came out ahead for me, but only just. There were far too many missed chances and points by both leaders, but Tony came out with more credibility for me.
From what I saw, Men were more inclined to support Tony, and women were more inclined to support Julia. Where’s the ABS statistic on the ratio of men and women in the country?? That could be the stat which will decide this election.
7:34: 53% to 47% overall in favour of Julia according to Seven. Males favoured Tony and Females favoured Julia.
7:36: Nine claim that women were more in favour of both parties, and men were more sceptical of both.
7:38: I couldn’t tell the difference between the pink and blue lines on Nine on the black and white monitor, but women were definitely different on Nine to what I saw on Seven. They were happier with Tony, much happier, than Seven’s women were.
7:43: Nine are running through the highlights at the moment. I’ve got it on the large colour screen, so I’m waiting on the overall result from their audience.
7:45: Nine’s audience gives the victory to Julia by a margin of 63% – 37%.
7:47: Julia also wins Nine’s audience demographics. Female: 66% – 34%. Male: 61% – 39%
Summary: Despite the Nine and Seven audiences, I still give this one to Tony, but only slightly. In my view he had more substance and a better plan for the country, but this is clearly going to be a tough election for him. There’s a long way to go in this campaign for both sides, and whilst I think Tony would make a better Prime Minister, I fear that Julia has the upper hand with the voters at the moment.
I’m constantly amazed by this. I go away for a while and people keep visiting the blog. The numbers drop off a bit, but there is still a steady stream of visitors. I suppose it’s nice to know that somebody other than me finds this blog interesting.
I’ve been away for far too long for me to try and catch up on everything that I’ve missed. Mostly of late I have been working, sleeping, and using the remaining time to try and avoid having to do much of anything. Nights at work like the last couple do give me a greater incentive to want some downtime, but the guilt of neglecting this blog never goes away, nor does the insatiable urge to fill the blog with content. In one of my fleeting thoughts the other day, I equated it to the The Eagles’ “Hotel California” from which “You can checkout any time you like but you can never leave”.
This was all reinforced for me this weekend when I bumped in to an old friend at a service station (maybe “bumped” is the wrong word here…I’m always nervous about using it and other “collision” words in sentences involving motor vehicles) and the first question they asked was about this blog…followed by a comment about how they enjoy reading it.
I also found out overnight that I work with a person who used to listen to my calls to Clive Robertson when he was doing the overnight shift on 2UE, 2CC and the rest of the network in 2007 and 2008. This world just seems to be comprised of circles…lots and lots of circles.
Anyway, no promises, no guarantees, but I’m still here and will still write things. It’s nice to know that you’re still out there watching the repeats of my old posts while you wait patiently for new ones.
Yes I’ve been absent…I’ll explain later when I’m not so tired. I just have a couple things which I want to publish quickly before I have a nap, and then I’ll be able to spend a bit more time later explaining both my absence and that announcement that I was supposed to make a few weeks ago.
Do you know what I think the most annoying aspect of being human is? No? Well I’ll tell you…the need to sleep.
I came to a few realisations last night which have been a long time coming, and I’m rather glad about it because it means that my goals and direction in at least the short to medium term, are now much clearer and more realistic. Alas I can’t explain it here right now because certain formal processes need to be initiated first but I intend on making an announcement on Monday or Tuesday.
Alas between that and my need to sleep, I didn’t actually get any of my three planned tasks (including the promised blog post) done last night…and for the record I’m now existing on about 15 hours of sleep since 8am Tuesday.
I’m working all day today, so I’ll see how I go tonight…assuming that I don’t just crash out after work, that is.
I thought I mentioned this a couple weeks ago, but it looks like I only posted the link on Facebook.
Lord Christopher Monckton is in Canberra today and will be appearing at the National Press Club between 3pm and 5pm, courtesy of the New South Wales Farmers Federation, presenting a lecture entitled “Why a Royal Commission must urgently review climate change science”.
Update: Sorry, it’s sold out. End update
The cost is $20 per head and afternoon tea and light refreshments will be available. I honestly don’t know if there are any spots left, however if there are any left, I expect that they will go quickly. The people to call in order to book are the New South Wales Farmers Federation on 1300 794 000. I’ll give them a call myself after 9am to check if there are any spots left, and update this post accordingly.
I’ll be there, and I’m still trying to arrange a short interview with Lord Monckton. Somewhere along the line there was a communication breakdown regarding this, so I’m making a last ditch effort to arrange this today. Hopefully I can get this off the ground because I would love to interview Lord Monckton; I have some questions to which I would very much like to hear his answers and, above all else, would like to make short audio interviews a more regular feature of this blog…having Lord Monckton as the first would be an honour and a privilege. Update: Not locked in, but a window of opportunity has been provided. Many thanks to the organisers for their prompt reply this morning. End update
Anyhoo, more details about today’s lecture can be found here, and if you’re attending then I look forward to seeing you. Feel free to come up for a chat.
I couldn’t sleep last night (which is half the reason I was able to spend so much time tracking the Las Vegas shooting story’s coverage) and wrote a few blog articles in scheduled form. Unfortunately WordPress (the software which runs this blog) seems to have changed the way scheduled posts work in its latest update and is now capable of missing schedules.
That Rush Limbaugh update was supposed to appear around 7am. It didn’t, but somehow the later story about tracking the Vegas shooting did appear on-schedule. More annoyingly, WordPress then refused to publish the Limbaugh story which meant I had to go and play with the database to make it appear.
If I wasn’t so used to random bugs appearing in new versions of WordPress, my paranoid nature would be convinced that the WordPress developers were trying to censor us right-wingers!
Update: Ugh, there goes another one missing its schedule. I’m really unimpressed now. End Update
Further Update: WordPress have released an update (version 2.9.1) in the last hour or so which allegedly fixes this bug and a few others. I’ve updated…now we wait and see. End Update
Physically I’m here, but I think my brain is elsewhere as I am still very tired. Thank you to Maritz who held the fort for a little bit longer than was arranged, Maritz will be back on Monday with her weekly column if all goes to plan.
That is the first time that I have been completely off the radar for quite some time as I did not take my laptop with me to Melbourne, and I am continuing to live without a mobile phone. I even forgot to take a watch with me, so my sense of time was non-existent. More on that later, as that topic will take a while to to write.
I’m just going to pluck the quickest blog post off my list of things to write, and publish that for you. I’ll be back later today with more items of interest.
