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Showing posts from January, 2005

Facing Robin Sellick

Today I popped along to the Newcastle Region Art Gallery, where there is an exhibition on, "Facing Robin Sellick". It's an exhibition on photographic portraits of Australian and International celebrities, all taken by  Australian photographer Robin Sellick . Now, I normally enjoy photographic portraiture, but I must say, I was absolutley delighted by this. The photos, were so unusual, so creative, each one could absorb your attention for fully ten minutes. And there was such a variety of subjects...from the Bananas in Pajamas to Tex Perkins, John Laws, Portia de Rossi, John Howard, You Am I, Judith Lucy...and many more. From the international contingent there included Tiny Tim, KD Lang, Thom Yorke, Michael Parkinson, Brian Molko (and Clive James kinda straddling the local/overseas gap). There was even a very witty and innovative self-portrait of the photographer, dressed in bondage gear! Anyway, the exhibition runs until January 30 and it's FREE, so I highly recommend

The End of Latham

SIX slogans under consideration for Kim Beazley's tilt at the ALP leadership: 1. Old sensation. 2. It's Time – No, really. 3. At least I'm not Mark Latham. 4. At least I'm not Paul Keating. 5. Kim Beazley – Third Time Lucky. 6. My eyebrows are better than John Howard's. There's only one thing to talk about now...the Labor leadership crisis. Now, as many of you will know, I was tremendously excited about six months ago, when Labor looked quite invincible in the polls. Us Lefties felt that for the first time in nearly nine years, we were going to have a Labor government. Now, a disclaimer. I KNOW Labor is very far from perfect. Yes they take funds from "big business". Yes they still oppose gay marriage and support mandatory detention for asylum seekers. But, well, they're not the Liberals. Yes, many people are sick of Labor's indecisiveness and have switched to the Greens (pre-GST they also went for the Democrats, but I think we can agree, the De

What Would Seinfeld Do? What Would I Do?

A few weeks ago, I was sitting at a bus stop when I heard a woman yell at, then proceed to slap and kick, her dog. Now normally, I would have stood up and had loud words with her regarding her treatment of animals, but here's the thing: The dog was a guide dog. The woman was blind. So, what do you do in a situation like that? Now, I didn't give alot of thought to it at the time, but last night, as I was reading a bunch of Seinfeld scripts, I thought, "What would the Seinfeld four make of this?" Then I thought, screw them. The show's been off the air for nearly seven years - why couldn't I find something really funny in the sceanrio? So, I'm going to. First I'll write a short story, about what would happen if a bleeding heart liberal/s saw this situation - maybe as a several-layered epistle. Then when that's nutted out, I'll do a script for a 10-15 minute sketch (no I'm not just wasting time. I can't do a script cold, I have to have a

Doing A Little Reading

As I've said, one of my major goals for 2005 is to become more politically active and I've started this by trying to become better informed. I've always read quite alot on the subject, but here's a quick reading list of what I've been purusing lately... Not Happy John! by Margo Kingston Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W Bush by John W Dean Goodbye Babylon by Bob Ellis Why the War Was Wrong by Raymond Gaita (Ed.) An Australian not US book Also been reading the SMH Webdiary, a very lively forum for political debate. More views and action plans, time permitting, to come!

Things That Disillusion Me About Humanity

Things that disillusion me about humanity, #1: Some creepoid hacked into the Necro forum, removed all the posts and furthermore, sent everyone of the members a dirty email. Jared (who's on holidays in Japan) worked for hours to restore what we could, but there's no posts left since before he reset the forum a few days ago. And why did they do this? Because they took offence at some remarks on how many members are gay or bi, and they did it now because they knew Jared, as web admin, would be away. Things that disillusion me about humanity, #2: Xander was sitting on the front windowsill, which is about 50cm away from the footpath, watching the world go by as he does. Three kids in their early teens walked by, and saw him. One of them saw Xander and started making growling and screaming noises at him. Xander bolted. The others were in hysterics: "Cool, you scared the shit out of that cat!" Then, would you believe it, they came back to do it again. Of course, Xander wasn&