This Is Why We Can't Have Nice [Schools]
The NRA, after skulking off into what turned out to be wholly temporary obscurity, including shutting down their Facebook page (they have friends?), has returned with some truly awe-inspiring gun-nut belligerence.  Armed guards in schools is what we need to keep our kids safe, and less violence in video games and t.v. and movies (and in the home, maybe, do you think, like fewer guns lying around . . . o.k., no, not so much that part).

Never mind that there are plenty of schools already with armed guards, including at Columbine, even when that school massacre was perpetrated, more guns is always the answer.

Write to your representatives in Washington, in your State capitol, in your county government, in your municipality . . . write to everyone.  Tell them you want regulations and tell them they can't have your vote if they take one more dime from these asshats.

I'm writing to mine every day until I get an answer and a commitment.

Update
Arm the priests!

Hellhounds on the Trail
Really?  The name of the company that sold the rifle used in Connecticut was Cerberus? As in the three-headed dog that guards the hell of ancient Greece?

And we wonder about American gun culture.

It's damned.

I don't care what else they do, these people need to step up, and not just sell off.

A Port Arthur Moment
In 1996, a madman killed 35 people in Port Arthur, Tasmania.  The response included something unexpected from the Prime Minister at the time, John Howard: gun control.

How many mass shooting has the U.S. had now?  Had even just since Columbine?  Had just in the last year?

Mr. President, it's your Port Arthur moment.  The hell with the "fiscal cliff".  Make gun control happen.

Light Speeds

The plan to build a light rail link from Sydney’s eastern suburbs, starting at Randwick and travelling through Surry Hills, to the CBD, including closing off a stretch of George Street to traffic, is a good step forward, at least for the beach suburbs, up to a point, but isn’t going to do much beyond that.

The traffic sticking points aren’t limited to getting to and from work in peak hours along Anzac Parade or the airport. The real problems are coming in from the south, where you’re suddenly dumped into single-lane entries through Newtown, or from the West, where Parramatta Road becomes a bottleneck, or from the North, where the bridge traffic has to be funnelled into the streets of the CBD.

Light rail already exists in part of the inner west, but serves a limited community and is vastly underused in consequence. Extending that part of the system would make sense, but faced considerable community opposition because the planned extensions were so poor. (Residents in Ultimo and Pyrmont, for example, can walk faster anywhere they want to go in the CBD than waiting around for a tram was going to help with.)

So thank goodness the foresighted planners this time have also included another 33 kilometres of highway to dump cars into the city, and a truncation of bus service.

Three to five years before we take one step forward, two steps back, and three over to the side to wait until something better gets some funding.

Paying for It

This is a damn shame. Unions have been trouble from the start, although usually trouble for employers trying to exploit their employees, but also admittedly because of corruption, such as the infiltration of unions by organised crime and the kind of machine-politics exploitation exemplified in On the Waterfront. But the drive to eliminate collective bargaining from American workplaces isn’t about those problems. Legislatures enacting these bills talk about economics, and that’s true, but not the way they’d have you believe. Unions, public or private, aren’t taking employers (which, in the case of public service unions would be taxpayers, ultimately) for a ride. They’re trying to get a good deal for working people and the deal is often predicated on pensions. Pensions aren’t money now; they’re money later. Instead of having the money up front and saving it, employees rely on their employers to help pay for their retirement. The problem comes in, then, when those employers find themselves faced with the bill for the agreement. Then they want to renege. They’re welshers.

Knowing that you will have to cut a deal from time to time, and that the deal will mean less cash in hand now or later, incentivises employers to find a way to disarm workers. Republican legislatures are complicit in making sure that working for a living only lasts as long as employment itself does. They clearly believe that unless you are an employer yourself you’re not worth the cost of your labor, certainly not after you’ve stopped working. That’s why they want to gut Medicare and Social Security and unemployment benefits. They call these things “entitlements” and talk about “dependency”. And we let them get away with it.

There’s nothing wrong with regulating unions. Killing them doesn’t help the economy, however. It means only that the 1% have a better chance of growing their share of the economy at the expense of everyone else.

These are people who believe they shouldn’t have to pay for what they use. They think we should pay for it and are doing everything they can to make that happen.

$
The problem with the House Republicans isn't that they can't do math or aren't honest - or, anyway, not the main problem - it's that they have Boehner as leader, and he is on record as having specifically run for national office because he thought his own taxes were too high.  And this is characteristic of every single one of these asshats: they are selfish, they never learned to play well with others, and they admit it, every day, but the jerks that elected them and keep voting for them are equally selfish.  Except for the ones who can't do math and aren't honest.  Well, maybe them, too.  Go, Whigs!  It's coming true faster than you realize.

The Man of Bronze

A "new" Doc Savage novel? Well, according to the blurb on the back, it is, from a previously unfinished "Kenneth Robeson" (i.e., Lester Dent & his corporate stable of writers) manuscript.

I haven't gotten very far with it, but it's about twice as thick as any of the others I've ever read and otherwise just as identical.  I'll see if it's got the whole crew of sidekicks or focuses on just Monk & Ham, as they often tended to do.  Maybe Pat will show up, too.

A Short Walk in the Woods
Although the track from Perry's Lookout to the Blue Gum forest is less than three kilometers, it's pretty much three kilometers straight down and then, for the bushwalk on Saturday, straight back up after lunch.  I haven't done stairmaster like this since ever.  But the Blue Gum Forest? What a sight.

Not so much me, of course.  Glad of the hiking poles, though.

Credentials
I've joined the Australian citizenry more fully than even a passport will provide for:

I own a barbeque.

Lamb, potatoes, cauliflower, for a first effort. Next up: sausages.  We'll get to the rest as we go along getting used to.

Win/Fail
I don't think I'm going to get over the Obama win very soon, or the Republican loss.  Yes, we can, we said, and then we did; Yes, we will, we said, and then we did.  Repugnants only managed: oh, no, you mustn't! Heavens!

I have hope still for what may yet be accomplished, but the change we voted for is assured by the re-election of Barack Obama: ain't no stopping us, now!

Harry Reid: step up!

House Dems: step up!

President Obama: take a bow, and then step up!

So much time, so little time to do it in - until 2016, and then who will it be?  That's the only thing that's worried me since 2008: Biden?  Clinton?  Probably not.  So who's next?  C'mon, guys, Elizabeth Warren?  Hey, I like.

Fun
The "Run4Fun" is . . . yes, a fun run.  Held out at the Olympic Park each year, you finish inside the main stadium, which is . . . fun.  This year's result, well, it's better than I expected, so maybe I can build on it from here. My first City2Surf was only another 17 minutes for a race that's 4k longer, but I was younger and fitter (the latter not so much, the former is all relative these days), so my plan is really just to come in under 90 minutes next year.  This one is pretty much the end of the racing season, as from here on it gets a bit too warm even in the mornings to be running that hard.

Running the City


I understand why, but I also disagree with the decision to cancel the NYC marathon. O.k., the city is struggling to clean itself up, get the power back on everywhere, cope with the devastation of entire neighborhoods, and Central Park is a mess, but I still think they should have kept the race on.

Surge

It seems hard to believe that a late-season storm could be such a big deal, but Sandy looks to be a huge . I expect there will be significant damage, although my early impressions were that it’d be mostly affect coastal resort property and infrastructure (especially if you count beaches as “infrastructure”, as there will be a lot of sand lost). Then I saw the picture of that building crane’s boom bent over backward.

I suppose that the replica HMS Bounty pulled out to weather the storm, rather than try to stay in a harbor, so as not to be crashed ashore, but it doesn’t sound good for the lost crew members.

And other losses? Hard to believe it, but right now it’s going to actually harm Obama’s chances of getting back in. I do not look forward to hearing his failure to be re-elected was due to the storm, however. After all, he should be solid in most of the affected States in the first place.

Well, stay home, and I hope everyone’s stocked up on bread and milk. (Why those two? Especially if the power goes, what are you going to do? Make cheese sandwiches?)

Coming Out Swinging

The President did well in the third debate. Romney did o.k., which is important. He didn’t fall over when he was pushed, but Obama was fairly effective in rebutting claims and pushing on Mittens’ policies and campaigning. My favourite line has to be the “horses and bayonets”.

But zingers don’t win debates and debates aren’t themselves what win elections. Where Obama has not done well is two-fold: attacking R-money, as the President has done over the entire campaign, is not the same as having policies, and if he’s got them, they’re the weak point Willard consistently points to, that they are four more years.

The last four years have no doubt been hard on America, as they have been elsewhere (and I am thankful for Australia’s currently robust economy and hope for more of the same or better; not that I’m likely to get either, at least not for long). There has been nothing dramatic to change people’s perceptions, even with 5 million “new” jobs and an overall decrease in unemployment, a decrease that appears to have resulted in treading water economically.

Obama has done well: Don’t Ask is gone, universal health care is closer than it’s ever been, we’re (mostly) out of Iraq and on our way out of Afghanistan. Killing people, even Osama bin Laden, whether with ground troops or the increased use of drone strikes, is not something I think is worthy of credit. Bailing out the automobile industry is.

People go on and on about deficits. They look at Greece and Spain and say: not us, thanks. But they don’t see that the austerity measures such as those proposed by Romney-Ryan are a significant part of how those countries got there. They look at Britain and see bipartisan austerity without recognising the cost it’s had to the society. Romney says that government doesn’t create jobs and that it shouldn’t be in the business of investing in businesses as if that was the same as investing in research and development. But business is where research and development needs to be conducted right now, because that creates jobs. It’s also a way to increase businesses starting up in the U.S. and creating jobs. The U.S. government has, in the past, directly created jobs, and it can do so again, investing in infrastructure development and long-needed upgrades and repairs. Deficits don’t matter. They can be reversed and they can be written down. Austerity has long since been proven a poor way to restore a nation’s economy. And let’s not let people like Mr. 1% get away with comparing Obama’s path to that of Greece. Greece has got a serious problem with tax avoidance, something R-money knows well and knows from first-hand experience.

Obama gets two out of three debates, but in the next two weeks he can still lose the election, and it’s his to lose. Unfortunately it’s too late to point to websites, and it’s too late to put up policies. We have to want four more years more than they want the next eight.

Round 2
I missed Biden vs. Ryan, although I have enjoyed some of the commentary I caught up with.  Seems Joe did a good job roasting the Congressman.  But, now back in town, I caught up with Democrats Abroad Australia for a public viewing of the 2nd Presidential debate on CNN.  This time I'll give the win to Obama.

The President was on-message, and engaged Romney - and Romney's policies - well.  He didn't let Mittens get away with lies, which was good.  The moderator was also effective, to a point, in keeping both candidates to the format, stopping R-money when he tried to get the last word, although Obama was the more likely to back off.  Romney kept up his usual me-me-me schtick, interrupting, going off the asked question.

But Romney was still effective.  He's got a kind of charisma, so even if his 5-point plan (really?) is basically "trust me, I've been a Governor and have worked as a consultant" he comes across well.

Obama got in a few good zingers, but he also sounded petulant at times, not a good look for an incumbent President, especially in his appeals to the moderator to moderate more.  He's also given to starting sentences with "look", and that's a bad way to start any appeal.

There was an article last week in the NY'er about billionaire resentment against Obama, and as much as I think such attitudes are unbecoming at best among the super-rich, Obama wasn't winning any friends among them today.  I suppose it hardly matters at this point, with only a few weeks left in the campaign, but he still needs Wall Street money and Romney needs less.  I haven't read much about the ads or the effect the Super PACs are having, though.  I guess I could see the ads on YouTube, but I don't see much point in giving myself blood pressure problems.

But a win's a win, and I'll take it.  If Barry can keep it up for one more session, I think he'll roll on in come the first Tuesday in November.

Winners & Losers
I hate to say this, but I think Romney won the first debate.  He was good, very good, although mostly he was good at always getting the last word, and that counts for a lot.  But Obama was bad - not very bad, but bad enough.  He looked tired.  He didn't manage to rebut Romney even when Mittens was obviously lying.  The 5 trillion dollar tax cut that doesn't add to the deficit? Yes, it's basic arithmetic that tells us that's a lie, but Obama failed to make that point decisively, memorably.  He didn't rebut the obvious "death panels" references and he didn't manage to make a case in favor of Federal health care insurance vs. State-based, and that's a point that really needed to be made.

Worse, Obama looked tired and offered a lot of passive-aggressive bullshit.  The whole "if that's what you believe/want then he's your candidate" business just made him look like Gore.  I liked that he tried to claim "Obamacare", but he did a bad job of it, half-assed, really.

A lot of criticism of Obama has been that he's only as good as his teleprompter.  He looked it today.  He hemmed, he hawed, he "you know"'d too much.  Starting a sentence with "you know" or "look" is just bad form, it puts people off, makes them feel stupid.  Romney didn't do any of that, or didn't seem to.  He's a prep school debate pro, and he romped over Obama.  Putting up with a bully doesn't make you a paragon of virtue, it makes you a victim, especially in politics.

I want Obama to win.  I'd like to believe he will.  But he's going to have to step up his act in debates 2 & 3 if it's going to happen, all those solid blue States notwithstanding.

I'll probably miss Biden vs. Ryan, as much as I'd like to see it.  I'll be away on holiday, but if the opportunity arises, 90 minutes of ol' foot-in-his-mouth against the GOP's architect of nothing might actually be entertaining.  I hope.

Bridge Run
The Blackmores Sydney Running Festival was today.  I've done the Bridge Run twice, now, having geared down from no training, injury, and just general lack of motivation, and while I'm glad to have finished the 9k, I'm not exactly proud of my finish, but I'll take it.  Must. Train. More.  Maybe it's time to get up another half marathon.

We’d all heard the story of when a plane crashed into the Empire State Building long ago and nothing bad happened beyond that, so when I got called up to the roof to see the plane that had crashed into the World Trade Centre all of us there just thought it was an accident, even when the second plane came in, which from our vantage point in Soho we couldn’t see, other than the fireball that came through the north face, but with cell phones it wasn’t long before we knew what had just happened, although we wouldn’t know for a few more hours just how bad it was, the full extent of death and destruction.

M. was working in midtown, just blocks away from the Empire State, and panicked, not an unreasonable response, so I headed uptown to get her. The subways were all shut, at least from downtown and Brooklyn. Buses were jammed, but I got on without too much delay. Lots of people did. The pace was slow, so I got off somewhere just above Astor Place and started walking. Above me were F16 fighters, and although I hadn’t considered any danger beyond the event itself, I was reassured. (Imagine M.’s perspective: she didn’t recognise the shapes; they just looked like war.) That was when I overheard someone saying that the first tower had come down. The smoke plume was maybe larger than when I’d last looked, but the towers hadn’t been visible to me for a while. I still hadn’t gotten used to the immediacy provided by cell phones.

In midtown, I found M. on the street, waiting for me, and we got a bus home to the Upper East Side. We stopped in the local grocery. M. wanted water and bread and milk. They were already nearly sold out, and it was only about 11 o’clock, if I remember it right.

The television was the part that was hardest. Over and over we saw the explosions, saw the towers fall, over and over. We saw the clouds and the crowds and couldn’t grasp the magnitude, just how big this was.

I wanted to go out, donate blood, although it wouldn’t be long before we knew there wasn’t any need, but stayed home, stayed with M., stayed to close the windows against the smell of the smoke and concrete dust that permeated the air, even as far uptown as we were. Who knows what was in that smell that far away, but it’s still in me, I reckon; it always will be.

Sexist

We’ve had a spate of media nonsense where women have suffered the slings and arrows, the sticks and stones, and we shouldn’t have to put up with it.  Not because such sledging isn’t to be expected, but because it’s been sexist.  It’s one thing to disparage someone, to insult them, but to do so on the basis of their sex or their ethnicity, well, that’s not acceptable.

I won’t comment about elsewhere, because that’s not the point, but in Australia, where Germaine Greer, among others, was invented, we really ought to know better.  So why jackasses like Gerard Henderson can get published in the mainstream media is beyond understanding.

Shall we take it point by point?  Mr. Henderson says it’s fair for a politician to call a woman journalist a “cow”, when she was pointed and sharp with the pollie’s boss over not answering questions and basically not being prepared for the interview, because (a) “shock jocks” not involved in the interview are shocking, (b) calling a person a cow goes back to Banjo Patterson (although he didn’t), and (c) the insulted party returned the insult by referring to the other as a “dinosaur”.  Plus, there was an apology issued, not that Idiot Henderson mentions the actual content of the apology.

So, (a) No, what, really? Wait, isn’t that someone else on another topic?  Yes, it is.  No points.

(b) Wait, what, how long ago was that, and wasn’t that a different context? Yeah, no points here, either.

(c) Not the implied ageism, just a dig at an anachronistic idiot being anachronistically idiotic, as is the Idiot Henderson.  Gerard: you are a dinosaur.  Idiot.

(d) If you don’t apologise properly, it doesn’t count.  “I’m sorry you were offended” is not the same as “I’m sorry for offending you”, to keep things simple.

OK, knowing that he’s an idiot, Henderson goes on to say that it isn’t fair because no one ever criticises when a right-wing moron is called out for being so.  But the examples offered provide only false equivalences.   For a man to refer to another man as a “douchebag” isn’t the same as calling a woman a “cow”.  Yes, it does compare a man negatively to a woman, insofar as anything feminine in relation to a man is considered effeminate, and that is wrong, but the comparison is far more tenuous.

For Germaine Greer to have called out the Prime Minister for her appalling dress sense isn’t sexist, it’s just sensible.  The PM really doesn’t dress suitably to her body type, under the present aesthetic circumstances.  I reckon that’s pretty fair really, and I wish someone would be as honest with me if I start dressing in spandex.  I don’t deserve it, don’t look good in it, and have alternatives that would be suitable.  Fair enough.

The criticism John Howard received, as reported by Idiot Henderson, also doesn’t make the cut as an excuse.  He was vilified (and never vindicated), but not because he was a man.  He copped his fair share because he was an evil, selfish, creep.  Whether any of the criticism is in a book on offer from the ABC as a publisher is irrelevant to the fact that the ABC is government funded, too.  It’s a positive that government media outlet can publish such material.  Hooray for Freedom of Speech!  Except when it’s directed at men, or Liberals, right, Idiot Henderson?  Seems so.

“A sense of perspective” is what’s called for is it? Well, I think it would help if the idiot employed by the Sydney Morning Herald to make such pronouncements would employ some himself.  It’s about time for dinosaurs like this to make a better attempt at the perspective of the women they vilify, whether directly or by imputation, as Gerald Henderson does regularly. He gets paid for this?

Scripts, Lies, and the Need for Scripted Lies
I haven't seen much of the Republican National Convention, despite being home ill for a couple of days.  I'm lucky.  Australia doesn't take all that much interest in the nonsense, except to puzzle about it, scratch their heads, and ask: what, really? That's it?  And we listen to them about anything? 

But I have heard some things that even at this remove strike me as (a) lies, (b) scripted pablum for the crowds, and now (c) Clint Eastwood proving that actors working without a script can't even manage to lie well but GOP conventioneers and all their good ol' hometown buddies will eat it up with a spoon, probably because they are equally suffering the onslaught of imminent dementia and really should be in a nursing home before they end up on a bus to Topeka (or Ames, if they're already stating from Topeka) and we have to call up the National Guard to round them all up and return them to their loved ones.

Because the National Guard are mostly in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Which is because of PRESIDENT BUSH, Clint, not Obama, which if you could remember longer ago than last week you might know.

Oh, and Joe Biden, well, compared to "F... yourself" Cheney, whom I think you got confused with the current VP, he actually is a pretty smart guy, if a loose cannon.  At least he's not "big time" at cursing people for calling him on his lies and other egregious behavior.

Sorry, Clint, no more late nights for you.  Time they strapped you into your bed.

Seriously, are they all really that stupid, even the ones we thought were smart?  Or are we that stupid to believe that any of them are smart?

What a disaster.  Not that any Republicans will care.  They're voting for their guy anyway, because he'll cut their taxes.  Well, he'll cut the taxes of the 1% they work for, and that's almost as good.  Almost worked for Reagan, didn't it?  Except it didn't.

Drugs are Bad, mkay?
Lance Armstrong won those titles
, and I don't care what anyone says at this point.  He was tested and passed, so shut up.  It's wrong what they've done, and I can only say further: Live Strong, Lance.

Restorations
After one of trips abroad, I came home to discover that my stereo amp was getting no power.  I tried a few things, different power points, checking for a blown fuse, but . . . nothing.  So I checked the website for the shop where I'd bought it to see if they did servicing, which they did, or so the website said, and carried it in for a look-see.  They wouldn't touch it.  It's a Yamaha, the guy says, we don't work on Yamaha in-house.  Take it to South Side Electronics, that's where we send stuff.

Well, it was far, I was busy, so, no, I didn't, figuring maybe the next weekend would do.  On the way home, however, we happened to pass a street market, and here was an old Akai amp waiting to be sold.  $10, the guy says, but I don't know if it works or not.

It did.  Well, half of it.  It had ports for A-B speakers, and the right channel on each was working, so I went mono for a while.

South Side fixed me up for less than $150, which, given that it's a $600+ amp and a new one would be at least that, was a bargain.

What I will say for the guys that wouldn't do the repair is that the components they sold me work well together, which wasn't true when the Akai was plugged in.  The sound is back, and it's very good to have.  South Side will get a recommendation from me anytime they want.

Positioning
1:31:40 in this year's City2Surf.  That made me 33,533 overall, 21,853 among the men, and 1,739 in my age group.  Clearly there's an advantage to birthdays, but next year I swear I will not get injured. Something in my right calf went pop at about the 5k mark, something I thought I'd rested enough for two weeks prior, but not enough training and not enough recovery - and probably especially not enough return to conditioning thereafter - means the Run4Fun is more doubtful than not (although it is just a 10k), but there's probably time to prepare for next year's City2South, in Brisbane.  Since I've done the City2Sea in Melbourne, I really ought to do the Brisbane race, and the Canberra race, for that matter.  After all . . . - right? 

Tickets


There’s an Australian expression, used when someone seems to think he or she is special or privileged: they have “tickets on themselves.” Well, while we’re on the subject, for a ham-handed segue, Romney-Ryan is a great example of a pair with “tickets.” Like most Republican presidential candidates, Romney thinks he deserves to be (a) the GOP nominee and (b) the President. And Paul Ryan thinks he is the GOP ideas man.

Sadly, that latter statement appears to be true; he really is the ideas man, and maybe the only one, other than Grandpa “Get Off My Lawn” Ron Paul, everyone else being fixated on playing Doctor No to the Democrats’ progressivism.

Which means we have a clueless, flat-footed frat boy (Bush III, to all intents and purposes, but at least a “better” businessman) with a smart guy for his powerless Number Two. Ryan is there, effectively, to give his boss credentials he doesn’t deserve, and on the basis of his own lack of credentials. After all, Ryan’s credit for being the ideas man is that he’s effectively recycled the discredited ideas of a fascist and all-around crappy novelist: Ayn Rand. The man is a walking book report.

But what are Ryan’s ideas all about? How the Federal budget can be reduced so that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The first is accomplished by taxing the wealthy less. The former is done by eliminating entitlement programs for the poor and elderly. Both are the result of taxing the hell out of the poor and middle class. I’m not sure, but it’s possible his social engineering goal is actually to eliminate illegal immigration by creating a permanent American underclass, so that there aren’t any jobs undocumented workers can use to send money back home. That may seem to be in conflict with Romney’s reputation as an astute businessman, which relies on sending jobs permanently overseas, but if Ryan’s plan works, it probably wouldn’t be necessary to offshore employment anymore. At last, the GOP has found a way to create jobs!

This November, remember to rent The Fountainhead, just so you can have a little taste of what makes Paul Ryan suitable to be Vice President.

Pewter
Watching the London Olympics on Australian television has to be one of the finest examples of how bad sports television can be. If the Nine network can't do any better than this, how did they manage to get the contract for the broadcast in the first place? God only knows there must be some people who think field hockey, horse jumping, and rhythmic gymnastics are popular, but not in prime time, especially when you're playing, effectively, replays all day long, and even more so when you have analog and digital channels, so that you could play more than one event at a time - and, God help us all - more than just the same four advertisements.  But if there isn't an Australian in the event, it doesn't go to air, and if there is, and he or she doesn't do well, God help them in the interview, which will inevitably be abusive, derogatory, or skipped altogether in favor of using BBC coverage to gloss over it.  But, Bolt, Pistorious, and even the bronze, silver, and fifth-place finishing Australians, well, it has been special and worth watching (everything but the drag queen wannabes with their ribbons etc.). Sport - even outside the Hemingway definition (motor racing, bull fighting [which is immoral], and mountain climbing only; all else being recreation) - is remarkably compelling.

Just Say 'Roobie-Roobie-Doo'
Yeah, the villain in the new Batman movie? When he speaks clearly enough to be understood, he sounds like Sean Connery.  The rest of the time I think his voice was modeled on Scoobie Doo.

He's big, he's strong, he comes out of nowhere, beats up Batman bad, but mostly the movie is dull (including the dull, throbbing bass music).  Not even Anne Hathaway in a catsuit helps.

I'm with the New Yorker on this one.

Petulance


For my sins, primarily that of going away periodically for work or leisure, especially leisure, and having some stranger come in to take care of the cats, I seem to be called to atonement by having to take one to the vet. This time, after waiting hours for Felix to return, he finally appeared at the front door, plucking feebly at the cat flap, as if he didn’t know how to operate it normally, which, for him, is to dive through head-first. Upon opening the door, remonstrating with him, we saw that he had a pronounced limp.

Nothing appeared broken, from a cursory and basic examination, but he didn’t like the prodding, and he didn’t like it any more the following morning, so I bundled him into his carrier and off to Parramatta Road for a cab ride to the vet with the earliest opening hours.

The vet poked around and removed a scab, releasing a volume of nasty-looking fluid I haven’t seen outside of an Aliens movie. Seems that, although Felix thinks he’s tough, he’s not as tough as the other guy, and a cat-fight cat-bite turned septic, as it would.

So he’s home now, his front leg wrapped up to the shoulder, with a drain in place and antibiotics on board. I think the pain relief wore off not long after I got him home, but it could be he just doesn’t like the sock, which, while keeping him from draining all over the apartment, also keeps his paw from straightening normally, so he’s en pointe, as it were, but just with one foot.

Theo takes full advantage of Felix’s reduced mobility, as he’d otherwise be blocked or chased out of the various prime locations for being petted, but Felix does his best to solicit attention, looking like one of those paint-by-numbers exaggerated sad-eyed cats, if slightly less bedraggled.

That’s at least three lives down since I’ve had him, and as a rescue, probably four to five all up. Perhaps it’s time to transform him into an indoor-only cat. If I can stand the complaining.

I’ll get some Blue Mountains pictures, of which there are not many, up in the next few days, so that there’s something that isn’t about pus posted here.

Beastly


33 years ago, Ridley Scott made a fine science fiction horror movie, and for whatever reason, decided recently to go back there and sort of answer some questions left open back then. Prometheus is a good-looking and riveting movie, but it left me in the end laughing out loud. The first question that come to mind at the end is: does Mr. Scott have some kind of problem with sex? This is, of course, an open question from the first movie and its sequels, but in this entry, the monsters’ relationship to a grotesque view of sex is much more obvious. Various other questions may be addressed in this “training video”, such as, why touch the goo? When you see an alien, how close should you get? And should you order the calamari?

The movie was engaging, lots of thrills and suspense, but it didn’t add much value to the franchise or to the history of cinema. Maybe I should have gone 3D?

Unfortunately for me, with the new Batman movie due to open before long, I owe the GF at least one serious realistic movie and probably a date movie on top.

Anti-Social


I deactivated my Facebook account today. I haven’t deleted it yet, but I think I will before long. I just don’t find it interesting or useful. I’ve never learned anything from it, and anything I put up on it will just be there forever, possibly causing trouble for me in one way or another, so seeing an thorough end to it seems more worthwhile than finding out what games or silliness one person or another more or less remotely connected to my life, past more than present, mostly, may be up to.

Twitter, too, I think. It can be entertaining – more so than Facebook ever was – but unless you’re following some users who use it well, it’s only entertaining for about five minutes. And you really need to be following lots and lots of people, none of whom you’re ever likely to meet (or like in real life, probably). And most of them are likely not to use it well. Frankly, two dozen updates in a row are more boring than not, evidence that someone needs a blog. Or a friend. A physical one.

I’m also considering closing down my blog. It’s been fun, but if I want to collect hyperlinks to pages of things I find interesting there are more useful methods than this. I can’t remember the last time I looked back for something I’d blogged about. And if I want to communicate with friends and family, again, email works well, and my Googlepages site (or whatever they’re called now) can be used to post photographs or whatever else just as easily, and probably more so.

My own updates to these so-called social media sites or web 2.0 or whatever are less than worthwhile. I don’t even care about what I think that much, so I can’t expect anyone else to be interested. If you need to get in touch, you’ve got my phone number or my email address, so look for me there.

Mileage Cancer Council NSW has a one-mile race each year as a fund-raiser, the City Mile Dash, over by Darling Harbour. I didn’t manage to get much money together, although the rest of the team at work did a terrific job (we finished as the top third team), but as much as I’m happy to contribute, it was the race I was interested in, reliving glory days of the Fifth Avenue Mile, back in NYC. (At least this one has no association with that crazy birther dude.) I haven’t run a race like this in a long time and was badly undertrained even for the races I usually participate in, so a 7:29 finish was entirely satisfactory, especially for the oldest participant on our team. Next year . . . .

Partnerships The PM, Julia Gillard, opposes same-sex marriage, and disingenuously now says it’s o.k., because, look, she’s in a relationship without being married. Wrong. Australia recognises de facto relationships, i.e., common law marriage, albeit between a man and a woman only. To say that that gives everyone the same basis is just a lie. Opponents to same-sex marriage need to get over themselves. No one’s going to make anyone marry anyone else, and your church can impose whatever rules it wants on its congregation. Just get out of the way, so that committed relationships can be recognised with all the privileges and constraints as any other. It’s not about “more” rights; it’s about the same rights for everyone. Ms. Gillard’s opposition is based on scruples or squeamishness she cannot afford to express politically, obviously, and it’s time for her to grow up.

Want The boys would look swell supporting their candidate, if they were American cats.

Lights The Vivid Festival is on again, and this year’s line-up is more interesting to me than last year, so I’ve booked a couple of shows. Maybe I was being conservative, insofar as I was bringing a date, so the first selection was Temper Trap, a popular act out of Melbourne, I think, who made quite a success of their first release, Conditions, an enjoyable bit of pop music, and who’s second album, Trembling Hands has just come out ahead of the festival. (Haven’t heard the CD yet, which is interesting: remember when a band went out on tour to promote their latest release, and you had the record almost as soon as you had the tickets for the show, and that night you’d put the album on, psyching yourself up for the night? Yeah, didn’t happen.) I’m not sure what I thought of the new material. The sound in the Opera House presents some challenges, as so often with opera houses generally, and rock ‘n’ roll seems to overwhelm the acoustic design, especially if you’re stuck up in the back, as we were. I swear I bought better tickets, but oh, well. The sound issues wouldn’t have been a problem, weren’t a problem, but the lights . . . . Yes, Vivid is a “festival of music, lights, and ideas,” and it’s wonderful what they can do with lasers and such, but the strobes and the big stage back-lighting rigs were right in our eyes. It was hard to watch the stage most of the time. Not their fault, of course, and I’m sure it was spectacular downstairs, but I’m nearly as blind as I am deafened in consequence. A very good show, though, nevertheless. Great crowd energy, a tight band, really rocking out. Nothing bad to say about any of it, in the end. Tomorrow we’ll go see the LCD Soundsystem’s farewell tour concert movie, Shut Up and Play the Hits. I’m looking forward to it. But I do wonder if I shouldn’t have gone ahead and booked My Brightest Diamond; she was a highlight when Lou Reed & Laurie Anderson curated two years ago.

Insert Godzilla Here Anyone else think Japanese Island Aogashima looks like Monster Island? Good casting is good casting. (via Boing Boing, of course)

Central Coast Some photos from the Central Coast weekend. Lots of gazing into sunsets. Other things, too, of course, but maybe it's the time of year, or the smoke from the burn-offs across the lakes, but the colours really were so vivid. And the company. We also did a bit of hiking along the way back. One stretch of banksia was ominous. Seabirds of many varieties were in evidence, from the pelicans of The Entrance to the cormorants of, well, everywhere. Also in evidence, if slightly less so, was the variety of uses and users of the seacoast.

Awesome Just a head's-up: The Avengers is very entertaining. The new Hulk was good; I thought at first that it was too bad that Edward Norton didn't play puny Banner, but Mark Ruffalo did a fine job. The other players/characters were in fine, well-practiced form. But I think I'll skip 3-D from now on. It really didn't matter.

Cynics Marco Rubio as Vice President? Well, when we’re considering the possibility of Mitt Romney as Commander-in-Chief, why not? Sure, as a one-term Senator, he’s not no more qualified for the top job than Obama was, but in this case what we’re dealing with is a cynical ploy to retrieve votes lost by extreme right-wing pandering on immigration issues, if not outright bigotry, and it’s just the VEEP job, anyway. It’s not like past Presidential campaigns didn’t use the Vice Presidential selection to deliver key demographics in the past. It used to be that you’d pick a Southerner if you were Northern or a Northerner if you were a Southerner. Or if you were perceived as weak in a key area, you picked someone to provide the requisite strength. Biden, for example, was a similarly good choice for Obama as Johnson was for Kennedy, in that he was a Senate-business strong-arm (although that doesn’t appear to have worked out quite so well in the current term, so maybe it’s more Clinton-Gore). Instead of going with the top insider, though, Romney is going straight at the votes. Rubio may deliver more Hispanics than Mittens could otherwise expect, but if they do take office, can he work the Senate? Or is he just going to be another Tea Party foamer, but with a nicer office?

Excursions The longest period of travel I've ever had started with a final trip to Auckland for work. So some final photographs are in order. Next time I go to New Zealand, I hope for the south island, but if back north, at least the bay of islands or thereabouts. Auckland's nice, but I've seen enough of it for a while. Albatross populate the harbour extensively. They're quite loud, too, some mornings, but are something to see, soaring along. Not so much just standing there, though. I do like their tower very much. Their harbour is almost more open ocean than anything else, but watching the fog roll in and lift by early morning is lovely. On the final weekend, there was a special exhibition on of Japanese art, for which a demonstration of Japanese drumming was performed. The hotel we stayed in had a distinctly Overlook-ish aspect. I kept expecting to see creepy twins at the end every morning. After a brief stopover back home for Easter weekend, I flew to Paris to meet the girlfriend, who was traveling there for work, but had also built in some tourism, as you do. Paris is a very distinctive city, in large part due to Napoleon III, who tore down vast sections of it, rebuilding according to a particular style, and also with an aim to have large boulevards, not easily barricaded, so as to prevent having another, successful revolution. These buildings along the Rue de Rivoli, as seen from the Tuillieres Gardens, are a good example of the style. Not that Paris doesn't have its colourful aspects, such as a bit of graffiti here and there. Or their museum of modern art, the Pompidou Centre. Something newer in that regard is the pedestrian bridge, the Pont des Arts, which the citizens and others have determined should also serve as a monument to relationships. Couples attach a padlock where they can. No word on whether they keep the keys, just in case, or not. Besides gilding everything they can, a common motif in Paris are their stone lions. They're pretty good. This one's actually Greek, in the Louvre, but I liked the expression on his face. This one's in Versailles. He looks appalled at something, but there's no indication what it may be. This last one is on a fountain, but he's a good example of snarl. The view from the top of the Arc de Triomph is hard to beat. That other arch at the far end, the squared one, was built for the 200th anniversary of the Revolution, and is actually outside Paris itself, where the buildings are limited in height. Outside the city limits, they can go as high as they want. Didn't get to Montmatre; maybe next time. One thing we did get to was the Louvre, of course, along with thousands of others. My favourite painting was the Wedding Feast at Cana. We also took in Notre Dame. The gargoyles are a lot of fun. For a day trip, we took a minibus to Versailles and Claude Monet's gardens in Giverney. Versailles was the proof that there is just no getting away from crowds when touring Paris. But the grounds are extensive and extensively sculpted. Pruning must be a university degree course. The gardens at Monet's house were wonderful. The set-up made you easily see what the Impressionists were on about. Every bend and aspect showed you different things the light was doing, and you could imagine what the day would do to change each view as the light changed, day to day, season to season. It may have been one of the best parts of the trip. Once B.'s work week kicked in, I traveled up to York, where Mom & Dad had the intention of seeing the minster. It's a fair bit more time in York than I think is entirely called for, and the weather generally was bad for walking around ye olde England, although maybe giving a feel for the way the city would have often felt back when it was still new. I'm amazed that the city wall was retained for all these centuries, but someone had some serious foresight. One element of the trip that was particularly welcome is that Mom & Dad know someone there, someone who is engaged in studying and restoring the stained glass. So we got quite a lot of information about the process. And, of course, York's minster was spared much of the ravages of Cromwell's iconoclasts, so there's quite a lot of stained glass to look at and learn about. My favourite, however, was a small panel, playfully inserted along the bottom of some other work, involving saints and such, but depicting a monkey, and telling a little story, from right to left, of the monkey being ill, being attended by a monkey doctor, and then having a monkey funeral procession, when that didn't work out so well. It was good to see Paris again, after 24 years, and York, after 30, but it's nicer to be home. No more travel beyond the Blue Mountains or Central Coast, I think, for a good long while.