waitingman: (Default)
Quite a week, this one... Not so much for me, but the world has been busy, in mostly unpleasant ways

Certainly not a good week to be a Bass player - we lost 2 great ones John Giblin who, like David Lindley who passed earlier this year, was one of those musicians you've never heard of, but have certainly heard... on music by Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, Kate Bush, Simple Minds, Brand X, Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney (you'd have to be a good bass player to be on a McCartney album!!), Al Green, Annie Lennox, Joan Armatrading... et infinitus cetera... We also lost Andy Rourke most famously of The Smiths, whose style was entirely his own...

It was also a normal week for Elon Musk, who can always be relied on to spout some batshit-crazy, out-of-touch, billion-dollar-baby, right-wing bullshit almost on demand... & even if you don't demand it. This week, he's still banging on about working from home & how it mostly hurts his feelings, as it certainly hasn't been proved to hurt productivity. These are obviously the words of a man with too much money invested in soon-to-be-obsolete office buildings

Meanwhile, here in Australia, we've been indulging in some not-so-casual racism because a well-respected journalist, writer & Aboriginal person had the nerve to talk openly about the atrocities inflicted on his people in the name of British Kings & Queens over the last 200 years or so... & he had the nerve to do so during a telecast of the coronation of Charles III. So of course, social media has lit up like... well. like burning crosses actually, leading to Stan Grant's decision to walk away from his job & career indefinitely, due to both the abuse directed at him & his family, but also the lack of support from his employer - the Australian Broadcasting Commission, who, you'd think, really should know better... What will it take to eradicate this kind of outdated, parochial hatred from not just Australia, but the rest of the world. Every time we breathe a sigh of relief that some old white racist son of a bitch has died, it seems their poison has infected dozens, if not hundreds of impressionable young people to carry on... & carry out this unending legacy of fear-based abuse & violence

To finish the week on a lighter note - unless any of your ancestry were on the Titanic, a picture has been doing the rounds on the 'net of a modern-day cruise ship & the Titanic, showing the truly mind-boggling size difference 100 years or so has made to nautical luxury... As someone commented - "the modern ship would simply haul the iceberg on board to supply the cocktail bar"

Some John Giblin bass-playing, on a song you may know...



& Andy Rourke, making the Smiths sound amazing... that's him on the left



Next!!!
waitingman: (Idiot!)
For my Australian reader...

The one-off Public Holiday of Mourning for Elizabeth II will also be a day of double demerit points for road & traffic offences... like the other Public Holiday periods that are Long Weekends, or longer. I must say I find myself astounded to be in agreement with Ben Fordham of radio station 2GB, but this really does stink of cynical cash-grabbing, rather than a road safety measure

And on a lighter note... an anti-vaccination protester (surely a redundant species by now?!?) thinks street lights are some sort of Government weapon - because they were pointing straight down at where the protesters were

So much to mock here... the fact that they're still banging on about loss of personal freedom, when they can do everything a vaccinated person can do now (except hopefully survive a bout of Covid19), the fact that good old, reliably fucking stupid ex-member of Parliament & all-round ignorant git Craig Kelly thinks that the words "awake, free and unvaxxed" are pronouns, the fact that getting vaccinated for Covid has ALWAYS BEEN VOLUNTARY, NOT MANDATORY, the presence of a YouTube 'celebrity' who calls himself the Aussie Cossack, freshly released from gaol after breaching a court order & publicly naming a paedophile at an anti-vaxx rally (Question... Why? You know what, it doesn't matter logic is not at home to these people), fiercely pro-Putin & lauded by the aforementioned fucking idiot Craig Kelly & obviously a bit deficient in the old mental arithmetic...

"First day back from jail, straight to the front lines, marching with thousands of like-minded patriots against this government bureaucracy,” he said in a video shared early Saturday.

“Today we are sending a very clear message. A message of defiance.”


Firstly - thousands?? I think not. Second - patriots?? Hardly. Thirdly - defiance of what? Of whom??

Most likely of reality, as far as I can tell...
waitingman: (World Cow)
Not about me - just around the world...

This story about a child abandoned at a day-care centre after his father discovered he wasn't the father, twanged the heartstrings a bit. I don't have children, I've never wanted children, I don't enjoy spending much time with small children especially, but I'd like to think that I'd never do that to a kid... As far as the child is concerned, that idiot is his father & to abandon him after 5 years is inhuman

On a different tack, Australia has had 2 wet & humid Summers in 2020-21 & 2021-22, thanks to the 2 southern hemisphere weather influencers La Niña & the Indian Ocean Dipole who are looking likely to team up for a 3rd straight year of rain, more rain, some flooding, more rain, a bit more flooding & then some more rain... & floods. Not the first time it's happened, but a definite increase in severity from the last time, about 70 years ago. But please, yes, do go on & tell me climate change isn't real...
waitingman: (Australia)
You get 'Flurona'!!!!!!!!!

Now 2022 is up & running!!

In other news today:

Monster crab attacks Australian golfers

Christmas Island is an Australian territory, so we'll claim the monster crab as yet another of our fauna that helps toughen up our citizens & puts the fear of god into visitors!!
waitingman: (Idiot!)
To paraphrase Spike Milligan... I just thought you might like to know what a proper idiot looks like

Exhibit A:

A 'man' 'celebrates' Kyle Rittenhouse's Not Guilty verdict...

Exhibit B:

A 'man' 'protests' against Australian vaccine mandates, apparently believing that our Government's interest in keeping its citizens alive & healthy, is equivalent to King Edward the First's dealings in & with Scotland in the 13th Century. Also apparently believing that today's law-enforcement agencies use bows & arrows...

And, of course, any time Exhibit C turns up...:

'Rogue' MP & full-time Covid Misinformationist Craig Kelly 'speaks' at one of the above rallies... Apparently, refusing to be vaccinated is the way to "Protect our kids. That's our first priority"

Some days, I'm so proud to be a member of the human race...
waitingman: (Australia)
This makes me a bit angry...

The wife of an Indigenous Australian Football player has deleted her Instagram post about the rescue of a little girl kidnapped in Western Australia, where she was obviously relieved the girl had been found, but wondered if there would have been so much media & public attention if the little girl was Aboriginal... the inference being that - of course there wouldn't

Jesinta Franklin deleted the post after racist abuse & the usual hand-wringing outrage from the Great Unwashed, accusing her of not caring about children. The irony is, of course, right there in full neon-lit display - she was calling for the same attention to be given to the Aboriginal child victims of kidnap & assault... The ABC reported that in December 2019, indigenous people accounted for 17.5 per cent of all unsolved missing persons cases in Western Australia, despite making up just three per cent of the local population.

I mean... great, we found the missing kid & arrested the (alleged!!) kidnapper, but Jesinta is 500% correct that we wouldn't be seeing the kind of blanket coverage we've had over the last 18 days, if it was "just" a Black kid from the Kimberley...
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