Election Post Mortem

Well I got the result I wanted.

Watched the coverage from go to whoa and have to say Rudd's speech made me cringe more than once. Ponce boy Downer liked to have a pop at Rudd as being nothing more than a cliche machine during the campaign. Well Kev sure crambed them all in to his speech. I think if they'd have had a new vote 30 secs after it ended he'd have been back out :)

But I think Rudd will be very motivated to implement his "vision" and ultimately we will be a lot better off as a result of the election.

I think Howard looked like a man who was relieved and had been secretly hoping to get the arse.

Maxine McKew hasn't half got a set of choppers. Full credit to her for winning (hopefully) but more importantly for having the guts to take on a challenge like that. Most celebs want it handed to them on a platter. Can anyone say Cheryl Kernot.

Barnaby Joyce is a dick.

Peter Beattie is a pompous pratt and I feel cheated that he got out on his own terms rather than be shown the door like Howard. Worse still he has inflicted Anna Bligh on us - in case you're wondering why I bagged the coalition at the federal level and labor at the state level, I'm not party aligned, I'm performance aligned. Power breeds contempt or complacency or arrogance or whatever you want to call it.

Hair Crime

How on earth did rat's tails get back into vogue and more importantly how are people stupid enough to get sucked into it?

Obviously people that are not young enough to remember them from the 80's.

Just shocking crime against fashion and right up there with cigarette's as a stupid beacon...."look at me, I'm a fuck-tard".

Election - My Quick Take

The government won the last election so easily (most pundits calling it a two term win) that they got complacent and arrogant.

Strike 1 - With money pouring in via a resources driven booming world economy, they decided not to use it for the good of the Australian people and the planet they live on..i.e. actually governing the country. Instead they decided to store that big ol surplus away for a rainy day when there would be a credible opposition. That way they could use their big ol mountain of cash to buy our votes.

Strike 2 - Howard also took the opportunity to use that massive majority we gave him to pluck work choices from his arse and ram it down our throats (possibly a bad mixture of metaphors :). My beefs with work choices are a) there was not one word about it in the previous campaign and b) it just went waaay too far..sure sort out unfair dismissal laws but don't remove *all* checks & balances and leave workers rights relying on employers being honourable. On what planet did Howard think it would be ok to offer a worker 75% of his pay, take it or leave it.

Strike 3 - a bunch of stuff accumulated for me to strike out the government. Delaying the calling of the election for so long so that they could flood us with taxpayer funded government ad's. I mean they hosed a mountain of money at that ad campaign and it really pissed me off. Add to that Howard not being man enough to step aside and let the people vote for a leader prepared to see out the whole term. Add in all the scaremongering about unions and economic management etc.

But for me the crux of it comes down to this. If we didn't have a credible opposition would the government be doing anything about health, education, climate change, broadband, putting some checks & balances into work choices?

Would they fuck.

It's Official - I Have NADD

Never have I read an article that hit home as much as this one.

It's conclusive, I have Nerd Attention Deficit Disorder (NADD).

Evidenced by the amount of crap open at any one time on my pc.

Evidenced by the fact that I always have 3 to 4 tv shows on the go...soon as there's an ad in one I'm catching up with the next one. By the end of the 1/2 hour I can give you complete plot synopii for all of them.

Evidenced by the fact that I am a master at nodding and murmuring the right noises to make out I am listening to a conversation when in fact I only heard the first dozen words.

NADD. Explains it all really.

My Football Club

I bought into the My Football Club trust who are in the process of paying £700,000 for a 51% controlling interest in Ebbsfleet United a football team in the conference league in England (effectively the 5th division if the Premier League is the 1st). The concept is that the members (who have each paid an annual fee of £35 and there may be 50,000+ of them) will be making decisions including weekly team selections, which players to buy and sell etc. The manager will submit a report and recommendations and there will be some sort of highlights package and then the trust members will vote and their consensus decision will be final and the manager must play that squad/formation.


I'm sure there will be mixed emotions from the 1000 Ebbsleet fans who attend most games. Not sure how I would feel in their position. On the one hand their club is being hijacked in a real life version of championship manager. But on the other there is the real possibility that some serious cash will be sunk into the club and they could potentially be promoted to the football league itself.


I'm also thinking that we'll see something similar to the effect that occurs when a new manager takes over a club and all the players who were playing badly enough to get the previous manager sacked, suddenly start playing out of their skins to impress the new gaffer. But I'm predicting that it might happen every week with the players wanting to be voted in by the myfc trust members for the next game. No-one wants to be bagged by a forum of 50,000 people.


It will be very interesting to see how it all transpires.

What I'm Watching

The shows I'm seeking out to watch when they air each week...

Weeds
Las Vegas
Two and a Half Men
My Name is Earl
House
Top Gear
Heroes (though it's losing me fast)

Windows Explorer Virus

A long long time ago I read about a bunch of shortcuts using the windows symbol key. Only one has stayed with me, [windows symbol] + [e] to open windows explorer.

Ever since I have been plagued with a zillion explorer windows open in my task bar. Not because of some malware but because a zillion times a day when I need to find a file I just instinctively go [ws]+[e]. That azureas download just finished? [ws]+[e]. Where did I save that pdf mag? [ws]+[e]. Bam, bam, bam, there's 3 more.

It's a friggin virus I swear.

Pecker Wrecker?

Since getting a notebook a little while ago I have been using it on my lap a lot and it got me to thinking, am I frying my old fella with radiation. A little googling hasn't found an obvious answer.

I did find something from 2002 talking about Levis introducing jeans with an anti radiation lead lined pocket for your mobile phone..lol and this comment which made me piss myself laughing (fortunately not while my laptop was actually on my lap) :-

"I'd definitely buy pants that protected me from nuclear war. It'd be an easy sell too."

"You like nuclear war?"

"Uh, no, not much."

"Well, I got pants what prevent that. Pants against nuclear war, see?"

"Gimme."

Do I Have Attention Deficit Disorder?

Went to the 1st days play of the Gabba test match against the Sri Lankans today.

I'm not sure if this phenomenen is confined to just me but I always find myself looking back on a day at the cricket wondering how many balls I actually *watched*.

I was there for about 4 hours of actual play and can probably only recall a couple of overs worth of deliveries. Literally.

Normally I can blame that on drinking like a fish, but today I drove...

Next time I'm gonna get hold of some ritalin and knock some back before heading to the game.

Efficient Punting?

All I can say is that if you managed to pick Efficient, the winner of yesterday's Melbourne Cup based on form or some sort of logic, then you are either on a way higher mental plain than me or more likely you have no clue.

Hang up your punting boots right now because there is only pain and misfortune down the line if you plan to use similar logic in the future.