Former PM Paul Keating (ousted by Howard in 1996) was never particularly humble about his own achievements, but he manages to sum up a lot of my feelings about Howard’s Australia:

In The Sun-Herald on November 18, John Howard nominated the putting asunder of political correctness and the celebration of our Anglo-Celtic past as the pinnacle of his social, indeed national, achievement. He was nominating as a virtue political incorrectness of a kind that gave some the right to speak and behave towards others in terms disparaging of their colour, religion, class or social standing. In a country of immigrants, such a view emanating from the Prime Minister is social poison.

(link)

This awful little man has pissed his glorious political legacy away by hanging on just a bit too long, so now he’s going out with a whimper.

I hope.

I refuse to believe my fellow Australians could be so stupid as to reelect the arsehole again; even if you liked him, he’s declared he would retire mid-term anyway so you’d be voting for who-knows-what— yes Costello of course, but who knows what his agenda is?

I am soooo looking forward to a Coalition defeat tonight, and I have no intention of being classy about it. This shithead has placed Australia in lock step with the Bush administration and established "wedge" politics as the norm. He’s alienated people and even whole cultures (including the indigenous one) for no benefit other than grubby political gain. Anyone who disagreed with him, even if they turned out in the streets to protest in the hundreds of thousands, were dismissed as "Chardonnay Socialists" or "Elitists" or any number of bullshit terms invented by conservatives to deflect criticism of their politics of economic growth and support of US policy at any cost.

He’s a toad, an uninspiring ungenerous unsympathetic unamusing toad. And it’s time for him to go.

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Gloat-fest 2007

Saturday, November 24, 2007 (watching via stream ) Counting has begun in earnest and first results are trickling in.

6:50 PM - Hahaha Nick Minchin you smug smarmy bastard, we have waited a long time to rub your nose in it! Early early counting is looking good, enouraging swings away from the Libs. Put the boot in, Julia!

7:02 PM - Oh god I can’t handle the tension… what if the swing to Labor isn’t enough to win government…

10:15 PM - Woooooooohooooooooooo! He’s conceded defeat (although the formal concession speech has yet to be made). It also looks like Maxine McKew may take his seat of Benelong! Hahahahaahaha… Nick thinks that tonight should be a night where Australia thanks Howard for being such a great leader. Who they just voted out. I don’t agree that this is a reasonable thing to expect of the Australian populace. I suspect they will be thinking about all the shitty social policy we might be able to put behind us. Also we won’t have a foreign minister who disses someone for speaking Mandarin while bragging about speaking French. Cou-*tosser!*-gh!

10:27 PM - WTF is the story with postal votes… Why do they lean so conservative?

10:36 PM - The concession speech was going great while he was being humble (first time I can remember) but now he’s talking about what a fantastic job he’s done making Australia the envy of the world. There is noooooo acknowledgement of what may have caused Australians to (finally) lose faith in his government. Oh yeah, and he accepts full responsibility for everything, ever. May he take that evil rhetorical device with him as he leaves office (never say sorry, always take "responsibility").

10:56 PM - Tony Jones is a terrible interviewer. Maxine McKew is so much better, but she is too busy trying to take Howard’s seat :)

11:07 PM - Kevin’s acceptance speech. Ummm… Short sentences, unite, future, history, nation. Wow, hope he doesn’t suck as bad as his speech. "I say to the nation: I will never take their trust for granted". I think it should be "your" trust, but can let it go… "people of our great land?" Jesus did you not prepare a victory speech? Oh God this is painful… he’s like a frikkin robot "do not fear me. I want to make our great country even greater in the future. It is time to be more great. The future is too important not to embrace the importance of the future." Even his wife is giving him that "wrap it up already" look— and the party faithful is getting bored, and the clapping is tailing off.

11:17 PM - The ALP is officially to be renamed the Great Australian Labor Party, or GALP.

11:19 PM - The new PM just said a nice thing about trade unions— It’s a communist conspiracy after all!

11:21 PM - yadda yadda yadda… I’m off to bed. I’ve seen all I wanted to see, and for now I am satisfied. Kevin’s speech is just killing the buzz right now.

The 19-year-old Shi’ite woman from the town of Qatif in the Eastern Province and an unrelated male companion were abducted and raped by seven men in 2006.

Ruling according to Saudi Arabia’s strict reading of Islamic law, a court had originally sentenced the woman to 90 lashes and the rapists to jail terms of between 10 months and five years.

It blamed the woman for being alone with an unrelated man.

(link)

Ok, so that’s the last time I post an animated GIF at the top of an entry— Far too distracting! Already I want to bump it down the page, hence this post.

Also, I’m no good at being controversial, because I feel the need to explain myself constantly and get along with everybody— It’s my nature. Christian hubris really does annoy the bejesus out of me of course, but I can’t honestly say I want to draw a bunch of evangelicals here for a slanging match…

… Except that sometimes I do want exactly that, because I read the crap that some people get up to what with their fight against "Darwinism" and it makes me want to scream.

Just about everything the average human has to be "thankful" for comes from agricultural, industrial, technological, and medical advances made over the last several thousand years. And none of these advances could have happened without applying a scientific approach to some degree, which is to say that every advance was based on knowledge gathered from previous experience.

Religion however, comes from a book, or on high or however you want to look at it. It’s dogma, handed down by authority and not open to question. It only ever changes when there is no other choice, eg because social change starts making its policies on witches and demons look rather suspect, along with stoning of wives etc etc. To believe in messiahs, gods and prophets is as superstitious as believing in faeries, goblins, dragons and vampires. Religion has got in the way of many advances that would have improved the lives of billions (yes billions) had they not been obstructed by idiotic church dogma. That a percentage of the population claims to draw some sort of nebulous solace from the belief that there is a giant sky fairy watching over their every move hardly seems reason enough to cling onto it.

Of course the Bible can be cherry picked for "good messages" but those same messages can be found within every community in the world, including non-religious ones. Don’t hurt people. Don’t steal. Be considerate. It’s not that hard. All primates exhibit a capacity for morality, because almost all mammals are born with an innate need to belong to a group and are therefore hard-wired to get along, and us primates also have brain enough to create complex systems to support and extend such groups, and even develop a philosophy of morality, called Ethics. If we want to thank anyone for codifying such ideas we should probably be thanking Aristotle. Not Moses. Not Jesus. Those guys were hacks.

The thing we higher mammals are not hard wired to do, probably because there wasn’t much need for it until relatively recently, is to get along with people who are unfamiliar to us— but unfortunately it seems religion is not much help in this department. The Jews killed Jesus, and both they and Muslims reject the notion that he was the son of God, so it’s really hard to see any big reconciliation happening there. But then, there’s always "common ground"… and the common ground among the big three Abrahamic religions is that they all try to teach people to get on well and be tolerant of others. Horray for that! Except, there’s nothing inherently religious about that. That’s just humanity being mistaken for religious common ground.

We can’t allow religions to continue laying claim to our humanity! It’s ours to keep, not by some divine gift, but by a wonderful quirk of nature.

Who do I think am I preaching at here? I honestly have no idea, but I’d love to think that maybe someone reading this might take a moment to seriously question a belief system which predates the Dark Ages.

__________

BTW the image above was originally posted here, but I just tried pumping it through this online vectorizing tool and am very impressed by the results (SVG)

Look! Here’s Jesus, the Lord and Saviour of about 20% of the planet spinning around! He may even be YOUR Lord and Saviour and here I am showing zero respect for the man, by mercilessly spinning him around! Ha ha look at Him go!

Ok so… if you’re thinking that my lack of respect for Him means there is automatically a seat in Hell with my name on it, then I’m afraid you’re falling well short of the moral and intellectual standards I’ve come to expect from my readers. Further, if you’re already preparing a comment complaining that I wouldn’t do this with an image of the Muslim prophet Mohammed then you shouldn’t bother, because you’re right; I wouldn’t for the following reasons:

Further to point 3 I would add that not threatening to kill me is hardly a selling point for Christianity— and to be honest I think it’s only clever PR of the last few centuries that has given this great religion the idea that threatening bodily harm is not the best way to win people over to your point of view. Wherever there is someone publicly making fun of Christianity, you will find an apologist whining about how other religions would never be so tolerant, and conveniently ignoring history prior to the last century or so.

It reminds me of how when an American citizen says something against their government, they are often rebuked for abusing that right to free speech which they wouldn’t even have if not for the good ol’ US of A! At this point the complainer is obliged to pipe down and respectfully desist the exercise of said right, out of some sort of, uh, gratitude? To paraphrase: WE GIVE YOU FREE SPEECH SO SHUT THE FUCK UP!

That a government allows free speech (notwithstanding evidence to the contrary) does not mean people should be eternally grateful for it, any more than I should be eternally grateful to someone for not kicking me in the balls. The government never owned freedom of speech in the first place, so it is not theirs to grant.

Similarly tolerance, respect and understanding are not owned by Christians, nor even widely practised by them many would argue— although for the sake of this argument let’s assume that every single church, minister and believer is in fact bursting with love, understanding and forgiveness for thy fellow man. Even then, the most claim a Christian should have to these virtues is that they practice them. They are neither the source nor the guardians of such goodness, and by claiming to be so they are effectively undermining non-christians, attempting to lay claim to the moral foundations of humanity itself. That’s called hubris!

People who are better than Jesus

• Socrates
• Angelina Jolie
• Me
• Most people I know

Who in this list would have insisted that everybody in the world must worship them, as well as their omnipotent father and his invisible pal the Holy Ghost— against whom I willingly blaspheme although I admit I’m still unsure what this part of the trinity is supposed to be exactly… is it just a polite way of describing the sperm of God? [Which reminds me: it turns out that Y chromosome is passed down from father to son virtually unchanged, meaning that the DNA of Jesus would contain the Y chromosome of God. If it were possible to test such a thing I would lay down money against Jesus’ Y chromosome looking particularly different to that of the men in Mary’s vicinity at the time of His conception, and I wouldn’t be the only one. Even though many Christians acknowledge the virgin birth is an absurd fiction it will doubtless remain canon]

Who in this list wouldn’t have used their amazing magic powers to do more than just a few tricks and the odd healing? Why not totally eradicate a few diseases from the face of the earth if there are such powers to be had? Why not bestow powers on others, to form a league of super heroes who could walk the earth fighting evil and righting wrongs?

Who in this list wouldn’t have willingly spent a few days in horrible agony for the greater good if they knew they would go on to spend eternity as Lord of the Universe?

Who in this list would wish to see their detractors burn in a lake of fire for all eternity? Think about someone who has really pissed you off recently, someone who has hurt you, or perhaps disrespected you in every way. Do you want to see them punished? Sure you do. Do you want to see them endure unbearable torment until the end of time? Um, I suspect not. How about being snuffed out of existence? Also probably not— but I can’t say for sure, and that’s why I didn’t put everyone on my list :)

Think about it… what exactly is so transcendantly wonderful about Jesus? People are brought up with the idea that he was automatically the most perfect man that ever lived, but no one seems to bother evaluating his character through his deeds. Personally I don’t think he existed, but even if he did, was he ever anything more than a talented, charismatic cult leader?

I think I would have liked Jesus a whole lot more if he had just come out and said "Guys, I am soooooo sorry but my father the creator of the universe is a total prick, and so vain that if you don’t worship him, like seriously, he will deny you everlasting life, and furthermore, depending on how seriously you take his drunken threats, if you don’t unquestioningly obey his every whim he will make sure that you burn in a lake of fire instead. Please, I’ll talk to him and do what I can, but for now you’d better do as he says! I know it’s not much of a choice, but at least he isn’t robotically controlling you all and forcing you to dance the hokey pokey, so be uh real grateful for that ok?"

In the wake of my previous entry, where I revealed my snarkiness about shallow pointless content, it’s got me thinking about what I write here, and what other people choose to write about in their blogs/journals/columns/whatever. I find myself asking, Is it sometimes good to annoy people, perhaps even just for the sake of it?

My standard response to this kind of question has always been "of course not!" since I have always loathed the way utter pricks rationalize their behaviour by saying "that’s just how I roll… deal with it!" and imply that life would be so much more boring without them around to shake things up a bit. But then I realized there are other people in the world who also frequently offend others, and yet I feel that life would be much less interesting without them— It isn’t all just black and white.

I’ve been blogging a long time now (more than five years) and it seems like I’ve managed to avoid two things:

Could these two things be related? Should I be more politically outspoken, or perhaps start a fight with some prominent blogger to drive my traffic up?* Do I even want more traffic here? Currently I have about 120 fresh visitors per day, and when all the RSS stuff is taken into account as well I can probably expect any given entry to by read by 200-300 people, many of whom will be regulars. That seems very respectable to me, but one thing I can’t help noting is that these numbers have been very static over the last year. I am not reaching many new people, and I find myself wondering if perhaps I want to.

It sounds vain I know, but when I think about it honestly I think the answer to that question (do I want to reach more people) is YES. Because as a human being I want people to care what I think, to listen to me, and perhaps sometimes be influenced by me. The only people in this world who don’t care what people think of them are sociopaths, and I’m glad not to be one of those.

Regardless of whether it is good (or very possibly bad) for traffic, when I look back at what I’ve written here in years to come I’d like to know what I was really thinking, not just what I was comfortable chatting about. To date I have tended to avoid causing offense wherever possible, but sometimes this means I self-censor perhaps a tad more than I would if this was, say, an anonymous journal.

I am an actor and this is my stage; I am a painter and this is my canvas… you get the idea. I don’t want to be bored by my own blog. And ultimately it is my blog, not something I am forcing people to read. Emailing someone to tell them that their favorite band sucks is an incredibly obnoxious thing to do, but to blog publicly about the particular shortcomings of the same execrable band is entirely reasonable.

So… it’s no more Mr Bland Guy. I am going to indulge in a little less self-editing than usual, and thus possibly irritate or offend people occasionally— and I’m not going to beat myself up about it.

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* Any volunteers?

Actually this post is about how much I despise the plethora of X ways to Y type posts which feature so damn high on the del.icio.us popular list– the ones I particularly dislike being those about monetizing one’s blog… Blech. They displace original and creative content with the sort of mindless regurgitated filler I’ve come to expect from “old” media.

I guess that means I’m also a little cross because it seems that the best way to reach a lot of people is to oversimplify life into a bunch of stupid lists.

• cleaning
• taxes
• seeing someone special
• spending time with friends
• exercising
• grooming
• projects:
  • Drivey
  • website overhaul
  • Eternity puzzle
  • novel
  • some great idea to make me rich
• learning:
  • an instrument
  • a second language
  • to dance
  • to sing
• buying:
  • clothes
  • glasses
  • car
  • bicycle
  • unicycle

So what am I doing?

• compulsively checking:
  • email
  • blogs
  • Facebook scrabble page
  • exchange rate
• bitching about it

Both of these idiots have obviously been exposed to common sense arguments for evolution (and just noting that evolution is not about the origin of life; it simply explains the origin of species) and yet both choose to go on spouting utter bullshit like complexity equals design and “if evolution is true then why have I never seen a crocoduck?”

Oh yeah, and Bill O’Reilly mentions at one point that he beat Richard Dawkins in a “debate”. For one thing I find this rather hard to believe, but even if it were true it’s about time that people understood that a debate is not about discovering the truth; it is merely about the presentation of an argument. It’s quite possible for a total moron to win a debate if he is charismatic and saying something the audience agrees with (and if his opponent is unable to dumb down a complex issue enough for said audience).

Here is O’Reilly clearly wiping the floor with Dawkins, not sure if this is the debate he claims to have won.

BTW I can’t believe Google/YouTube still use such awful stills for the player to show before you watch the clips… it’s partly because these stills look so damn blurry and crappy that I don’t embed videos here very often. If I had a billion trillion dollars I think I’d spend a little on fixing up my presentation.

Even doing my own screen-capture while the clip is playing produces a better result:

This is just one panel from a great comic drawn by Tom Humberstone for a 24 hour comic challenge (ie the whole thing was drawn within 24 hours). Click on the image to read the full story, everything you never wanted to know about crohns disease, a great illustration of what it’s like living with one of these chronic conditions.

Fortunately I am free of symptoms since my UC flare-up earlier this year, but I can definitely emsympathize with the situations depicted. It’s interesting that Tom felt the need to include a later panel noting that many people suffer much more— I tend to do the same, and sometimes I wonder if this tendency is specific to having an "embarrassing" condition. When people talk about living with other illnesses do they feel the need to acknowledge that things could be worse? I mean, things can always be worse, that should be a given.

Also discovered the following, from the creator of My Crazy Dad!

I love my new iPod touch… I’d post a picture of it here but that would be stupid since there are much sexier ones at the Apple web site. Some things to note:

November is National Novel Writing Month, and I’m thinking that this year I might have a shot at it, even though I don’t actually reside within the Nation in question. And so to kick off I will write a completely unrelated post about my new toy… Just as a warm up.