The Waiting Man

A terrible accident the other day took the life of the pilot of a fire-fighting helicopter in Tasmania. No one can dispute it's a tragedy & all thoughts are with the pilot's family & friends...

But it was also an opportunity for one of my most hated journalistic trends to have another run:-

A man in Tasmania's north-east says he heard a bang before seeing a firefighting helicopter "go down" in a crash which claimed the life of an experienced pilot

The 41-year-old pilot was the only person on board the helicopter when it crashed into a paddock while fighting a bushfire north of Lebrina. Several other helicopters assisting in the firefighting efforts have been grounded since the crash.

Local man Michael McKenna said he was working in his shed when the incident happened.

"I heard this big bang, something wasn't right," he said. "I got to the corner of the house and I saw the helicopter go down."

Mr McKenna said it took a few minutes before the helicopter was engulfed in flames.

"Unfortunately, no-one could really help him. He had no chance," he said.

Why the fuck do we need to have Michael McKenna in the story at all?!?!? He's not a firefighter, he's not a pilot, he's not an aerospace engineer who specialises in helicopter design... he's a bloke who was doing who-cares-what in a shed, heard a bang & saw someone die in a helicopter crash. His in-depth analysis, apparently vital to the story? "... something wasn't right..." Well, geez, thanks Mick for your expertise there, can we snap a photo of you, since they won't let us photograph the crash site close up? Good on ya!!

I... & I'd like to think I'm not alone... don't need some gormless bystander's vague re-telling of the facts we already know. Especially since a lot of the people they get for reports like this, weren't even there when whatever it was happened - they were in their house next door/down the street/2 streets away... Or those ones where a terrible crime has been committed & they ask the neighbour what the perpetrator or victim(s) were like as neighbours. Who the fuck cares!?!? As if the rubbernecking busybody is going to say "Yeah I saw Dave walking into the house with a gun/axe/chainsaw... something wasn't right"

'Vox Pops' - as I believe these pointless 'interviews' are called, inevitably led to the incident in Australia known as the Chk-Chk Boom Girl - a woman who, when asked what she'd seen of a streetfight, made up a story complete with stereotypes & bad accents. When it was rapidly proved to be complete bullshit, she tried to use her 'fame' as a springboard to a music career... I'm pleased to report it failed... & her 15 seconds of fame now only lives on YouTube. But in the best pop-will-eat-itself tradition, even this non-story was milked over a week or so as a 'story', long after the actual fight was forgotten

This is the modern world??

Here in Australia, we have a popular ice cream called the Golden Gaytime - vanilla & honeycomb-flavoured ice cream on a stick, covered in sugary crumbs. It was first sold in 1959 when 'gay' just meant happy...

Fast-forward to 2021 & there is a small, but vocal push to have the treat renamed, due to the name's connection to the LGBTQI+ community. Interestingly, most Australians spoken to & surveyed about this, were in favour of keeping the name... including an organisation representing the Australian Gay community

So I'm not sure if only 1100 or so signatures on a petition is a significant number, or if this is just being beaten up into a bigger news story than it really is, just to get the old outrage flowing from both sides. Given the way media works, I suspect the latter...

Even the manufacturer caught on to the connotations by the 1980s - The company appears to embrace the camp name by retaining the tagline from the 1980s, "It's hard to have a Gaytime on your own". The in-home boxes feature the words "4 delicious chances to have a gay time". I should mention that, despite the name, I can't think of any negative connotation from it being used against the LGBTQI+ community. Back when I was at school, there was never any kind of shame about having a Gaytime. The fact that it's a delicious ice cream seems to transcend any desire to make fun of people eating it... In fact, I could go one right now!!

Knowing my diverse readership, it's over to you. Should the name be changed? Sure, it originally meant just being happy, but now?

And therefore, should the words to the Flintstones theme song be changed as well? After all, when you meet the Flintstones, "you'll have a gay old time..."

Being in lockdown, for some people, means it's time to bring out the worst...

... the worst films ever made...

From the article:

Five shockers to stream

Gods of Egypt (Netflix)
Ancient Egyptian mythology meets Las Vegas meets Transformers.
Howard the Duck (Amazon Prime Video)
Based on the Marvel comic and produced by George Lucas, what could go wrong? Everything.
Grown Ups 2 (Netflix)
Throw a dart and you'll hit something wild with Adam Sandler in it, but this one doubles down on his comedic stylings.
Blank Check (Disney+)
For maximum effect, keep saying to yourself 'this is a kids' film' while watching.
Hackers (Stan)
A 1990s view of the internet, cyberpunk clothes, Angelina Jolie and rollerblades, so many rollerblades.

Plan 9 From Outer Space... Meet the Spartans... Matrix 2, arguably, but definitely Matrix 3... Any others?

Borrowed from SpikesGirl, via the front page of LJ...

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Reblog this and bold the titles you’ve read

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible -
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare... I've read a lot of them, including many sonnets, but probably not ALL of them...
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy... Has anyone ever read this... I mean all of this??!!
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown... Will anyone admit to reading this?!
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert... AND 3 of the sequels!!
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce... I've tried... really, I've tried...
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl... AND The Great Glass Elevator...
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

45 of them... so I've picked up some of the slack for the rest of you... not that I think any of my readers would score less than 20 of these...

I decided a little while ago to start ignoring a lot of headlines & 'news' stories on the various websites I peruse for daily information

It started when, during ratings period, all the 'reality' shows were on & the tabloid media (& sometimes even the serious ones) were full of what some fabulous nobody had said or done to another fabulous nobody, usually accompanied by a thumbnail photo of one of them in a bikini. This was the first 'click-bait' I refused to go for & I've gradually weaned myself off a lot more of that sort of thing, to the point where I now look at the headline &, if it seems to tell me everything I need to know, then there's no point actually clicking on the article itself. I've found, quite often, that the headline is the only piece of real information in the article anyway - the rest is finding 5 different ways to paraphrase the same information, quote some 'source' that sounds halfway credible, find some associated, but largely unrelated 'facts' & try to stir up some outrage so the concerned netizens can vent their spleens in the Comments section. Throw in some pointless video footage you don't need to see, embed a shitload of advertising & job done - your editor will be happy for today

I submit Exhibit A. I'm pretty sure it won't matter what day you read this, the headlines there will prove my point...

By refusing to indulge this dross, I've found a few benefits... Not only has my time spent on the web been dramatically reduced, allowing me to get on with other stuff (been playing more guitar lately), I also feel better informed about the world in general, knowing the simple facts, rather than absorbing the spin

It also has to be said that I do feel a little moral superiority, demonstrably not giving an airborne act of intercourse about Bachelors, Bachelorettes, amateur Chefs, Talent shows, 'Real' Housewives... & anyone else looking to get their objectionable behaviour onto the TV, into the public consciousness & have a lucrative, but (fortunately) short-term multi-media career which burns brightly, fuelled by its own hubris, but ultimately burns up or out, while the Great Unwashed are busy looking at the next one...

After-school tutoring? University or College?? Mystic men on mountaintops??? The School of Hard Knocks????

No... apparently, wisdom, or at least its nascent manifestation, comes down to 6 questions you ask yourself

I scored 15. Et toi?

... that I look forward to every year

The Best Jokes From The 2017 Edinburgh Comedy Festival


1. "I'm not a fan of the new pound coin, but then again, I hate all change." – Ken Cheng

2. "Trump's nothing like Hitler. There's no way he could write a book." – Frankie Boyle

3. "I've given up asking rhetorical questions. What's the point?" – Alexei Sayle

4. "I'm looking for the girl-next-door type. I'm just gonna keep moving house till I find her." – Lew Fitz

5. "I like to imagine the guy who invented the umbrella was going to call it the 'brella'. But he hesitated." – Andy Field

6. "Combine Harvesters. And you'll have a really big restaurant." – Mark Simmons

7. "I'm rubbish with names. It's not my fault, it's a condition. There's a name for it…" – Jimeoin

8. "I have two boys, five and six. We're no good at naming things in our house." – Ed Byrne

9. "I wasn't particularly close to my dad before he died... which was lucky, because he trod on a land mine." – Olaf Falafel

10. "Whenever someone says, 'I don't believe in coincidences.' I say, 'Oh my God, me neither!'" – Alasdair Beckett-King

11. "A friend tricked me into going to Wimbledon by telling me it was a men's singles event." – Angela Barnes

12. "As a vegan, I think people who sell meat are disgusting; but apparently people who sell fruit and veg are grocer." – Adele Cliff

13. "For me dying is a lot like going camping. I don't want to do it." – Phil Wang

14. "I wonder how many chameleons snuck onto the Ark." – Adam Hess

15. "I went to a Pretenders gig. It was a tribute act." – Tim Vine

Justin Bieber to take 2 year break from music

Take as long as you like... please!!

Fun with statistics... who says numbers are boring?

If you thought nobody gave a f%@k during 2016, you'd be wrong... Apparently a great number of people gave a f%@k, with one event in particular causing a LOT of f%@ks to be given

In fact, given the amount of f%@ks that were given on social media last year, I don't see why I have to disguise mine... & if you're offended, well - fuck off

So there's one fuck given for 2017... oops, now there are two. Shit, I mean bugger, I mean god damn it, I mean...

Goodbye, Mr Cohen

I'm not enjoying 2016 at all...

In a bid to continue my regular Journalling... let's talk politics

No... wait. Come back!!

Here in Australia, after the recent Federal election, we have seen the return of a pig-ignorant, right-leaning racist to the Senate Chamber - a woman named Pauline Hanson, who began her political 'career' in the mid 90s as a member of the Liberal Party before they, in a rare show of wisdom, kicked her out & she ran for office as 'Pauline Hanson's One Nation'. Back then, she ranted about how Asians were coming here & stealing our jobs & clogging up our Welfare. How they could be both employed & claiming benefits at the same time was, apparently, not something that occurred to her, or her legion of like (tiny)-minded supporters. To cut a long story short, she was convicted of political fraud (for misusing electoral funding, not for wasting taxpayers time & money), served time & has spent the last few elections trying to get back to Parliament. Somehow this year, she did. Now it's the Muslims who are coming here, taking our jobs & getting handouts... same story, same gaping hole in the logic, same like (tiny)-minded supporters. Exactly the kind of idiot we were supposed to be getting rid of with the double dissolution of Parliament for the last election. Don't get me started on how the incumbent Liberal party managed to completely stuff that up, with the result that not only is Pauline back, but ex -'Shock Jock' Derryn Hinch is in there too - still banging on about paedophiles & naming names, this time under Parliamentary Privilege so at least he can't be sent to gaol for it... again

This is the trouble with the USA election campaign running for a year or more. With Donald Trump getting so much press & attention, despite having no experience; no policies & no idea in general, a bunch of similarly clueless one-issue yahoos managed to get themselves enough votes from the great unwashed & into the Senate here in a fraction of the time. The best thing you can say is that at least they can't be Prime Minister - unlike Trump hurling himself at the top job, heedless of the damage he's done already, let alone what he will do once he's there

And the other thing that bothers me about all this is how the modern media are keeping it all alive, well & at the forefront of the news cycle, by continually posting articles, stories & opinion pieces about these clowns. Back in the day, my Mother used to say "Ignore them & they'll go away" when I'd complain about being teased or bullied. Hard as it was, it pretty much worked - a few dramatic confrontations aside. But it's nigh on impossible to ignore these people, given the blanket coverage they are afforded by a media hungry for clicks & revenue. So I just don't any more. I won't read any article that mentions them, no matter how beguilingly stupid the click-bait headline is. I already know they're idiots... I don't need that opinion consistently reinforced & thereby perpetuating their popularity by giving that article more hits. So if you don't know who Pauline Hanson or Derryn Hinch are, you can Google or Wiki them yourself, I'm not providing a link to anything to do with them. I'll assume you already know about Donald Trump... there's not that much to know really

And finally... have a picture of a cute baby Zebra

The youngest Bewlay Brother has died, at 69

What an amazing creative life... there are no other words

To put it in perspective, click here to see what David was doing at your age...

Please... I'm begging you PLEASE

If you're ever in my company, kindly avoid the following expressions, as a punch in the mouth often offends...*

"Cray-cray" What on Earth?? It's not even an abbreviation. Just say 'crazy' before you drive me completely & utterly there

"Tay-Tay" when referring to Taylor Swift. For crying out loud, she's not a 5 year-old (unlike some of her fans), so please can we address the woman by her proper name??!!

However, for some reason, I have no problem with her being referred to as 'T-Swizzle'... though given my next gripe, I possibly should, for cultural reasons...

"Dropped" - as in "Tay-Tay's new video dropped at the Billboard Awards last night & it was cray-cray" I don't even know where to start, but let's try 'debuted', 'screened', 'played', 'was released/shown/broadcast'. 'Dropped' in this context, comes from hip-hop & it's just embarrassing when music journalists use it to appear relevant & street-credible



* - But I'm sure any right-minded Magistrate would let me off with a warning...

And so, we return to normal 'round here - I turn up when someone I admire has died

Goodbye Terry & thank you for all the wonderful stories, jokes, puns & one-liners

My personal favourite was when he came to Sydney &, not so much gave as 'hosted' a reading of his work at the Concert Hall in the Opera House. His Reader, impressed by the architecture of the place, turned to Terry & said "I know you disapprove of the word, but this place is awesome"

Terry replied "I've told you before - if it doesn't involve God & hosts of angels descending from the Heavens, then it's just 'good'"

I already liked & greatly admired him & his work, but from that moment on, I loved him...