Social commentator speaks out
My Daily Raves
Waste of money
Sep 15th
Julia! I don’t want my tax money to go to a stupid media inquiry. to muzzle criticism against YOU! Hundreds and millions of dollars!! Can anyone imagine how many starving kids in Africa that would feed or hospital beds here! We are fed up. Send our tax money to Africa or to the struggling health/ education system!
Please join me in my outrage
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Motorists’ Revenge
Aug 4th
A Lithuanian mayor uses a tank to crush an illegally-parked Mercedes in a campaign to clear bike lanes. And I love this video. Yesterday I sat in a lane that was trying to turn left for an hour and missed part of my University lecture.
The reason? A car was parked in the lane, illegally, which meant that all of us on a busy road had to sit in the right turning lane. Because we left turners were cramming the lane, the right turners got stuck with us, and we stuck with them as light after light went red. When i saw this bulldozer clip, I felt a sense of joy. The wonder of having a tank parked on the pavement which would roll out and over that car and many others as they selfishly hogged lanes in peak hour traffic. What a way to discourage driver selfishness!
5 Top Sci-Fi films
Jul 28th
Just found a cool new video site 5 Min, which lists the 5 greatest sci-fi films including Alien; and the ten greatest planets from sci-fi movies. As a sci-fi junkie and Trekkie I was so happy to find Arakas from Dune and Genesis from Star Trek and Pandora from Avatar . The winner of sci-fii classic films was Bladerunner.
Interested in your views: Best Sci Fi movie ever made; best planets; best species. I love the Vulcans and the people of Arakas the best.
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Stupid Laws
Jul 17th
The Law is an Ass. Two stories have horrified me this week. One about a Gold Coast man who found armed intruders in his house. After confronting one, a struggle ensued and the armed bandit was shot. The home owner, a young man of 29, is now in court facing manslaughter charges and a lifetime in jail for defending himself. Story two; a convicted pedeophile in Washington is allowed child pornography in jail because of a loophole in the law. Having pleaded guilty to producing child pornography and been sentenced to 25 years jail, he has now nominated himself as his own lawyer and as such is allowed to view over 100 videos of child porn under the guise of “reviewing the evidence”
Here’s a new addition I found today in News Corp. “A PRISONER who took offence when he found a government department had incorrectly listed him as having a domestic violence conviction has won a compensation payout (of NZ$3,500) for breach of privacy and hurt feelings. The man has convictions for attacking a police officer, unlawful possession of firearms, aggravated robbery, theft, burglary and trying to escape from custody…”
And we eagerly await the court’s assessment of this one
Woman sues government after light falls, injures her in hotel room while having sex on work trip
The world has gone mad. There is no such thing as justice or even logic in things that go on. Does anyone else feel as frustrated as I do reading the morning papers?
Have your say
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Car-mageddon
Jul 16th
Newspaper’s across the US are reporting mass anxiety in LA due to traffic. The City of Los Angeles, one of the most car-dependent cities around, is raging as residents prepared for a 53-hour closure this weekend of a crucial segment of one of the most heavily trafficked north-south highways as part of a construction project. Hailed as Car-mageddon, according to reports the closure of the 16km section of Interstate 405, in the US’s second-largest city, the home of famously congested freeways and road rage, is sett to thrpw the city into chaos.
It brings to mind my stint in Los Angeles a few months ago. There are no words that can describe what it’s like to be stuck in Los Angeles traffic. We’ve all been in traffic jams, we’ve all been held up by car accidents on major freeways. But its the daily grind, the permanent, omnipresent congestion that drives people to despair. Eventually you run out of self help podcasts and end up ringing up a partner child or friend for an argument to kill the boredem and vent some hostility! And we only had to do the 5 hour return trip each day over the period of a week. But a twenty minute car trip took us almost 3 hours one way, creeping, creeping along the very highway that is being closed down. It was the same on the way home. I had a hairdressers appointment and paid hundreds of dollars in Beverly Hills to look “amazing darrrrling!” but by the time I got home to where we were staying my hair was standing on end, and frizzy from the sweat of aggrevation.
So now things are going to get worse for the next few days? Worse? All I can say to Los Angeles people is that your city is beautiful, the Canyon is awe inspiring, Your beaches delicious. But my heart goes out to you for living so much of your lives in the slow lane. I can’t imagine how The Eagles even knew a “Life In the Fast Lane” existed!
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Time Out
Jul 5th
We all need time out. I’m off on a small holiday. Just a few days at a health retreat trying to shave a few inches of those thighs. Where do other people go for some R & R? I know friends who go away every other weekend – they drive to the country or stay with friends by the sea. Others who have money find places to fly to for the weekend and go away often.
Me I tend to go away on (very) extended breaks, often overseas, every year. But it often occurs to me that I’m almost dead before I get there. So I’ve decided to go on a refresher, good healthy food, lots of reading and a bit of exercise. But I am curious about other people. Do you make a habit of getting away on short holidays; and what sorts of ideas can you offer the workaholics who visit me here?
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Sales of Organic Meat Up After Live Export Scandal
Jul 3rd
Great result!
News.com.au reports: “SALES of organic meat are on the rise as shoppers shocked by the cruel treatment of Australian cattle overseas seek out more ethical options.
One organic meat shop in the Brisbane region has recorded a 10 per cent rise in sales in the weeks since graphic footage showing the cruel treatment of Australian cattle in Indonesian slaughterhouses aired on Four Corners.
Butchers say they have been bombarded by questions about the source of their meat and how the cattle were treated before being sent to the abattoir.”
Read More on today’s News.com.au site
Also read the views of some producers on Just Grounds site
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Film Sleeping Beauty
Jun 29th
Disappointed. i saw the film Sleeping Beauty last night. Controversial new Australian film by film novice, the novelist Julia Leigh that went all the way to Cannes. Great idea. Brave idea. A pretty Botticellian beauty is paid by a top escort agency to let lonely old men do things to her while she is drugged into a deep sleep. It got mixed reviews. People said it was largely because of the subject matter which is too confronting for many. It hints of paedophelia and necrophilia, and rape.
Being an eroticist I thought I’d love it but surprisingly I too was disappointed. I didn’t find it erotic. In the hands of a French or European director I suspect it would have been more revealing of the characters involved. In the end it is always the psychological development of the players that makes the eroticism actually “erotic”. I didn’t care about the characters therefore I never engaged as opposed to the tantalisingly provocative classics like Story of O; The Night Porter; Romance; or Last Tango- all compelling by the depth of the contradictions and complexities of the human interactions. Andrew L Urban in the SMH had much the same thoughts.
What’s your favourite film? What films or videos have disappointed you recently?
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Antibiotics when to dose up?
Jun 28th
Taking drugs is always a pressing question this time of year.
It’s now been over two weeks I’ve been trying to fight off a chest infection, and there’s still no relief in sight. The thing is it isn’t getting worse either just a persistent cough and croaky voice and feeling sluggish. The box of antibiotics is sitting on the kitchen bench beckoning. I believe the body knows how to heal itself and should be given the opportunity to use its own immunity rather than rely on artificial prompts which ultimately do us no good.
But the main reason I don’t like taking them for every ailment is the resistance factor. There does come a day in everyone’s life where we seriously need antibiotics and if the body has built up resistance due to overuse it’s not a good thing.
Sleeping in a chair next to my daughter’s hospital bed years a few ago while she battled pneumonia is an experience i will never forget.
Given the severity of her case which went undiagnosed till her lung collapsed, it was only antibiotics that saved her. And because I am a Mum who administers them so rarely, the drug worked quickly and powerfully.
So here I sit with the question, to dose up or not to dose up? I’m giving my body one more day to get me on the mend and then Zapp!
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Share your experiences as patients and parents
Censorship How Dare They!
Jun 24th
Writing to you about something very unsexy. The move by Telstra & Optus to ban internet
The move by Telstra and Optus to voluntarily censor hundreds of internet sites which it deems unfit for us to view under the emotive pedophile argument is outrageous. It’s a story that has largely gone under the radar, and I’m not sure why. It is the biggest threat to civil liberties and free speech in this country we’ve ever experienced and we should be outraged. Within 2 weeks we’ll all be boiled frogs. Some of the sites banned include an anti-euthanasia site and other political sites unsavory to the Government. The service providers are voluntarily following the Government’s hugely unpopular recommended list which means half the country will have their legitimate adult content censored alongside other political sites; all to allegedly stop pedophiles who largely don’t operate out in the open anyway.
Here is a snippet of what ran in yesterday’s The Australian: MOST Australian internet users will have their web access censored next month after the country’s two largest internet providers agreed to voluntarily block more than 500 websites from view. Read also this Courier Mail newspaper’s commentator.
Who the are these two companies to dictate what I watch in the privacy of my bedroom? Change Servers!
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this one is really important.
