Category: General Musings

Bored…looking for a new career…think hospitality. Stell Artois has a cute little “Pour and serve a beer test” I found it while surfing the pub scene. My rescent discovery of The Public House led me to the Tap Room and an article titled Pour the perect pint and land yourself a job.

Go try and read The Tap Room while you’re there.

Quiet a significant day. Some people read today’s date as the sign of the devil as in “666”. Tim Blair has an interesting and often funny thread going on the subject. Worth a visit.

On a slightly more reverant note than Tim’s thread, Wikipedia has a good explanation of the origins of the Satan/666 association, starting with the original references in the Book of Revelations and going through to ‘Avoiding the Number’

Larvartus Prodeo has a piece on what it all means and asks Who is the Anti-Christ? Not surprisingly, LP links to a sight called bushisantichrist.com/ The site is fascinating with para headers like The Bush/Judas Connection; The Bush/Herod Connection and The Bush/Nero Connection. But for me the most conclussive and damning evidence that Bush is the Anti-Christ is his habit of raising his hand in a horned salute.

Damning, isn’t it? Of course LP will claim the article is tongue-in-cheek but I’m not so sure.

I swear to God I’ll miss Bush when he retires (undefeated). His very existance has provided me with so much uplifting information and subsequent hillarity as I surf the more extreme anti-Bush sites.

I think it amazing!

What will they do when he’s gone? After the party I guess they’ll all start looking for the ‘666’ tattoo on John Howards head. It’s got to be there. Right?

To old soldiers and military historians today marks the 62nd anniversary of the Normandy Invasion, the start of the end of Hitler’s insane power grab is better known as D-Day. It also marks the start of the end of media support for the military.

Oh, and more importantly, to me at least, this is my 1000th post. Before Blogger and the current Word Press format I was running a web site giving one or two readers the benefit of my advice, such as it is, but those posts have been lost so I’ll make do with the Word Press stats. The oldest post I can find is dated August 2002 so the web site is just a couple of months short of 4 years old.

If there ever was a good reason to hand control of the nations waterways to the federal government it is the this news from the ACT;

A report from the Canberra branch of Engineers Australia said environmental flows last year from two key reservoirs to maintain the Cotter and Queanbeyan rivers had “seriously reduced the total quantity of water held in reservoirs”.

“As a result, it has been necessary to impose severe restrictions on water used by ACT and region consumers,” the report said.

A 2004 ACT Government report found that the ACT was allocating more than half of its total water resources to environmental flows, providing an average of 272 gigalitres to the environment out of the average 494 gigalitres available. I smell a greenie somewhere.

A spokeswoman for Chief Minister Jon Stanhope said yesterday: “A lot has changed since then.” Since the report was written, the ACT has come out of the drought, the Government has reduced its environmental flows, making more water available to the community, and water has been sent from the Cotter River to the Googong River.

I bet we never hear who authorised more than 50% of Canberra’s water reserved being released as ‘environmental flow’ at a time when the community were under water restrictions.

Trade Me, the NZ answer to ebay, has the handbag on site for auction. Current bidding is at $6,100 $6,250.00 $6,500.00 $7050.00 Ah, the Kiwis and their rugby Via Reon (my Kiwi mate and volunteer researcher on all things Kiwi) UPDATE:  The bidding now stands at $21,500!

For some ‘real life’ stories you should do yourself a favour and go read some of Mine Host’s stories at The Public House A sample.

Davo was big and strong. Standing around 6’3″, he was lean, carried no fat, blonde and well built. His arms were strong and had range, sort of like horizontal telegraph poles. He had for some time worked “door” just up the street at the Slaughterhouse Room in the No-Holds-Barred Tavern. Now he was a kitchenhand at the Divers Arms. He was local, white, could fight, and also what is these days known as “gay”.

Mine Host has a great turn of phrase…..well worth the read. Damon Runyan springs to mind when I read his stories making it ideal reading for a Friday afternoon before knocking off and going down the pub.

Australian commander in East Timor Brigadier Michael Slater appeared this morning in a live cross from Dili to the Nine Network’s Today show, with helmeted and heavily armed Australian soldiers standing behind him. He was pressed by Today host Jessica Rowe about whether Dili really was as safe as the Australian military claimed, given the presence of armed soldiers at his shoulder.

Pausing briefly, Brig Slater replied: “Jessica I feel quite safe, yes, but not because I’ve got these armed soldiers behind me that were put there by your stage manager here to make it look good. “I don’t need these guys here.

Poor Jessica ran into more trouble when she persisted with her line of questioning, and referred to footage of looting and violence.

Brig Slater told her the pictures were a “couple of days old”.

All the above being the main reason I don’t watch morning TV.

For two weeks I had lunch with my mother in her retirement home at Albany, Western Australia. We ate in a communal dining room and every day I met more and more of the inmates. One of note was Jack Davies, raconteur, published poet, accomplished artist and Merchant Mariner in his youth. My mother introduced him and added “a girl in every port” Jack’s laconic reply was “I wouldn’t say just one” He’s 93 I went over to his unit and looked at his art. He is just finishing a bush scene and if ever a artist got the colours of the Karri forest right it was Jack, and it isn’t easy. He left home at 16 and signed up on a ship going to Bombay with the intention of signing off and seeing the world but the shipping company had other ideas and coerced him into staying on as engineering crew. After several trips around the world he was heading south from Bowen (Qld) with holds full of sugar and had decided to finally sign off at Melbourne when some where off the Sydney Heads World War Two was declared. He ended up being blown up by Nazi bombers when they were docked at Liverpool, UK where he lost his fingers on one hand and one eye; but a quick look at his Record of Service lists service with the Royal Australian Engineers after that. No war stories, just a long life of acomplishments and the chance to refelct on them after nine decades. The elderly haven’t given up, they just move slower. The woman, my mother included, have a teenage girl approach to the unwed men at the centre. “Hows your boyfriend?” one ask mother. “Nothing to so with you”, she retorts. My mother is 86 and she and Jack are comfortable in each others company as my Mother is also an published poet. She recently won a national poetry competition run by the Retirement Village Chain where she lives. A hundred bucks. I think she gave it to some charity. Don’t get me wrong, they are just friends but it is good to see that interest in the opposite gender doesn’t end at 70, or at 60 for that matter; an event in my life that seems to be approaching at warp speed.

Hogwash says my American Texas Millionaire mate Chuck. He says, In the US there have been more people killed in Teddy Kennedy’s car than by nuclear accidents.

Fair and mildly funny comment. The only real problem the world has had with nuclear power is Chernobyl but that was brought to you by the people who make Lada Nivas…need I say any more.

Nuclear Power has spawned a religious movement that will never accept it even in the face of stats that say it’s not the bogey man they wish it was. It can produce power and we need an alternative to coal…quickly. Wind farms and solar are not quite there yet and anyway, wind farms seems to have spawned another religion with a parrot being elevated up the evolutionary tree to just above humans. The human need for power being subordinated by the one-in- million chance of a parrot having a senior moment and flying into something he could normally see from three kilometres away.

It’s all rather bemusing really

The ALP are confused (it has ever been thus) about the issue. In the middle of discussing throwing out their 3 mines policy Beasley says they are against Australia going nuclear.

Or. We can mine it but not sell it or use it…put it in the bank maybe?

Maybe there would be less confusion if they told Anthony Albanese to shut the hell up for a week or two.

Personally I think storage of spent uranium is not a problem but then my backyard is too small to do it there. Other people are heavily into the NIMBY approach to any suggestion but that looses its value when your backyard is three times the size of Texas.

Australia has the political and geographic stability and tech-know how to handle the issue safely and make billions out of doing so. We could make billions out of value adding yellow cake thought to enriched uranium as well but let’s get smarter one step at a time.