Maxine McKew for Bennelong

Photo: Paul Harris

Mikey reports: Maxine McKew is going to challenge John Howard in Bennelong. Good for her.

I am going to throw a huge party if she wins. Peter Costello will probably throw an even bigger one...

Seeing John Howard lose his seat would be as sweet as seeing Labor win, if not slightly sweeter just for seeing the man humiliated.

Go Maxine!

Kempsey in the news

Kempsey National Party voter... or perhaps One Nation

For being a hole. Here's a solution to teen pregnancy- bloody well offer free implanon to every teenage girl in Kempsey over the age of 14. Sure, that'll miss the ones who get pregnant at 13 and undoubtedly get religious types riled, but girls are getting pregnant anyway. It's not like giving them implanon will encourage them to have more sex that they're already having. Of course that doesn't stop the idiots like the 15 year old girl in my year in year 10 (I think- it might have been year 9) who decided she wanted a baby... without telling her teenage boyfriend until after he got her pregnant. Still, any measure that can allow a 16 year old to avoid giving birth to the spawn of a 30 year old man freshly released from jail is a good one. Having sex with a guy like that is a mistake; getting pregnant to him is a mistake that lasts forever.

What the article says about there being a 'tradition' of not employing aboriginal people is true- I've only ever seen one young aboriginal person with a job, and that was behind the counter of a small, locally-owned supermarket. On the other hand, I can't say how many aboriginal young people actually apply for jobs. Given the stories I've heard about aboriginal people being constantly monitored by staff when they visit a store to shop, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them figure it isn't worth their while to bother. I've heard such behaviour defended on the grounds that such shopkeepers must have a large problem with shoplifting by aboriginal people, but that's simply a hollow, if widely used, defence for racial profiling. It's fucked up.

On the other hand, Kempsey has massive problems with juvenile crime- when my brother worked at a store in Kempsey he would tell us about groups of little aboriginal kids who would come in and cause trouble. Groups of kids ranging from fresh out of nappies to primary-school age, totally unsupervised by adults. You have to wonder what chance such kids have... a lot of break and enter crimes are committed by juveniles.

It can't be helped by the ephemeral funding provided by governments. Governments take Kempsey for granted because it's in safe National Party territory for both state and federal elections. When I was about to vote for the first time I read the stats for the seat in the local paper, the Macleay Argus: the seat Kempsey was in had been held by the Nats with a massive, seemingly unassailable margin, since its inception decades ago. If people want things to change they need to learn to vote differently, and I'm not talking about the massive vote that Kempsey people gave to One Nation in the 2001 federal election.

Kempsey isn't a 'pretty town'- sure, it has its good points, but currently the best part of Kempsey is the road out.


From the SMH: Kempsey is the largest population centre in the top band for disadvantage.

'Diary' entry

A paucity of posts over the last few days due to a few incidents surrounding the start of uni...

First I found out that the credit transfer form I filled out at the end of semester 'probably' hasn't been received, seeing as the course credit isn't showing up on my academic record yet- this I found out by chance when enquiring about something else altogether, and it's just as well I was notified seeing as I'll be graduating this year, something I can't do without credit for the courses I've completed! Mind you, the person I was told to email in order to track down the wayward credit transfer form hasn't replied, and I emailed him on Friday, so if the people in charge of organising these things are that slack perhaps my form hasn't actually been lost, it's just that they're very very slow.



Meanwhile, I was told that a course I wanted to enrol in required me to come up with a topic (for a 5000 word mini-thesis/literature review/presentation) and find someone on the academic staff to supervise me before I could enrol! It sounded a lot more intimidating than it probably is in reality, but of course I had to have a panic: 'why would anyone want to supervise me?', 'what if my topic is crap?'... and so on. It seems that I might actually get to have my favourite lecturer as my supervisor- not because I'm special, but because I'm apparently one of only two people taking the course. Suits me just fine. All the most interesting courses I've done have involved this particular lecturer in one way or another, so I'll be stoked if she's willing to supervise me!



All the other courses I'm doing are compulsory, and largely irrelevant to my main interest, nutrition. I found out from one of my friends who is still in the early stages of the Food Science and Nutrition programme that the uni has come up with the bright idea of allowing students to choose a 'stream', meaning they get to specialise more in either food science or nutrition. That would have been nice 2 years ago, but as I'm graduating this year I have to persevere with sucky courses like microbiology and 'food safety and quality management'. Yay-fucken-ay. The lecturers for FSQM are pretty good, but the subject material looks like it will send me to sleep. HACCP plans? Snore... The food preservation subject I'm doing is of interest solely because I love learning more about the food I eat, but totally irrelevant to my desired career path. At least I have a friend doing all the same subjects. It's always much less painful when you have someone doing the same boring stuff...

Gam has another clinic this semester. The bright sparks who do the placement allocation have sent him to Mt Gravatt- an hour's bus ride away from Toowong, including interchanges. Thank heavens this is only one day a week, but he'll have to be at clinic in the morning, probably 8am, and make it back in time for his afternoon classes. One girl in his class was sent to Forest Lakes College, about an hour from her place, while another student was placed at a college that is literally around the corner from the first girl's house. Needless to say, the first girl is quite pissed off, as is Gam. A real monkeys-at-a-typewriter way of running things, the speech path people have.

Our new bluetongue is doing very well, I get out and see him/her every couple of days. It's either a very smart lizard or it's had experience with humans before, as it never tries to run away or hiss when I approach it. Instead, when it sees my hand holding a lump of food it rears up and opens its mouth to accept the food! Today the as-yet-unnamed lizard enjoyed pork scraps, a piece of banana and a large grasshopper. It's also seems quite happy to make a meal of our slugs. We'll have to think of a name. I like this lizard.

Gam and I are trying to get enough people together for the UQ Sport social 7-a-side competition on the weekend... that should be fun if we can get around 10 people to join up (we need subs because none of us are fit enough to run for 40 minutes!)... the price has increased markedly since the introduction of VSU (although if you believe that dickhead George Brandis our money was actually going to 'terrorists' such as the PLO, not to supporting sport). If we can get 10 people to join up it will cost about $60 per person; last time we had a side together it cost $27pp- and I think that was with fewer than 10 players. Fuck you, George Brandis.





Gam and I went for a walk about a week ago and took some photos of the new Green Bridge (now known as the Eleanor Schonell Bridge) from the uni to Dutton Park. Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman was opposed to this bridge when he came to office, and spent tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars on a second public consultation, trying to whip up opposition to the bridge, or at least have it changed from a pedestrian, cyclist and bus-only bridge to one that allowed cars. He failed, thank goodness, and no doubt shows up at every opportunity and tries to get his grinning-monkey visage plastered on everything associated with the bridge. Every time Gam and I walk on the bridge there are people walking across it just for the heck of it- just because it's so scenic and pretty. People walk their dogs, their toddlers... we even saw a group of old people doing some sight-seeing at the bridge last time we were there. I am positive that people wouldn't be so enthusiastic about walking across the bridge if they were being forced to breathe the fumes of thousands of vehicles while they did so; as it is, most of the non-students who walk the bridge are doing so for exercise and pleasure. If Campbell Newman had his way, he'd have spent the money on a tunnel. Wanker. I also snapped a picture (above) of a truck stacked with turf that parked underneath the pedestrian footpath onto the bridge.






I guess that's not all that's been going on, but I'll try and keep up at least one post a day. Still, have to try and maintain a kick-arse GPA so there'll be no doubts about whether I can do honours next year... doing honours means no more food science crap! Which means I have to keep my procrastination habit under control...

For everything else there's Holocard...

"Alive, We Are A Nuisance; Dead, We Are An Asset"

Annual expenditure by Israel on illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories?
- About $500,000,000.

Annual cost to Israel of keeping 10,000 soldiers in the West Bank to protect those illegal settlements?

- About $900,000,000.

Average compensation for each Israeli family repatriated from the illegal settlements in the Gaza Strip?

- $350,000 to $475,000.

One hundred thousand Holocaust survivors living in poverty in Israel; dumpster diving for food?

- Priceless...

Cheese post

Gam and I walked to Indooroopilly today to look for some running shoes for Gam (a fruitless exercise- he's a size 14, so he can rarely get the shoes he wants in the size he needs) and perhaps a terrarium for Quaddro. We didn't buy a terrarium because we figured we can make one for less than the ~$40 they were selling for and besides, it's not like Quaddro is a permanent visitor to our home.

Instead, I got to treat myself to a crusty loaf of caraway rye bread from the Bread of France stall, and some cheese from Jones the Grocer. I haven't bought any fancy cheese in ages... at some point when Gam was doing his placement I picked up a couple of brie or camembert that were $1.50 on clearance at Coles (those cheeses are at their best right on the 'use by' date anyway), but that's it since Christmas.

I settled on a cheese I'd never heard of- Fourme D'Ambert. I'd been tossing up between a blue and something creamy, like a camembert, but Jones the Grocer didn't have anything that looked particularly exciting in its range of camembert and brie. Gam also insisted I pick up a tiny chunk of something called 'Cambozola' which I'd eyed off mainly because it was from Germany and looked like a compromise between a camembert and a blue. The only drawback of the Cambozola was the cost... the tiny chunk must have been around 80g, because it cost roughly $6, and the price/kg was $85! Yikes. Probably the most expensive cheese I've ever bought...

Cambozola

Still, the Cambozola turned out to be my favourite of the two- it has a nice strong flavour (I think the specimen in the shop was a good age), and according to Wikipedia it pretty much is a cross between a blue (gorgonzola) and camembert.

The Fourme D'Ambert was bloody good too, mind, as well as being cheaper (but still not really in my budget). Despite all that blue it actually had a milder flavour than the Cambozola. It had an interesting texture- not sticky or crumbly, like some blue cheeses, but slightly slippery... not in the sense that it's slimy, but it breaks into segments easily without falling apart or sticking to my fingers. And yeah, I'm a heathen and I like to eat with my fingers! One of the small pleasures of buying my own food is that there's no-one to rouse on me when I'm in the mood to break chunks off my bread rather than slice it! I did slice the cheese with a knife though- it's simply the more practical thing to do.

Fourme D'Ambert

Blair's troop withdrawal concession to poodle status

A couple of days ago,Tony Blair announced a major withdrawal of British troops from Iraq under pressure from the British military and the British Labour party, who don't want to be lumped with the responsibility for his folly at the next election. Apparently British military command thought that the withdrawal should be even larger. As we know, though, good sense and the best interests of one's country take a back seat to the desires of America in the minds of those who compete to become best beloved of George Bush.

After bleating for the past two weeks about how Australia is 'needed' in Iraq to train the Iraqis to "stand on their own two feet", and sending 70 more Australians to the war in honour of Dick Cheney's visit, John Howard has been forced to defend his position as he simultaneously backs the British withdrawal of their troops. In Howard's mind he is probably applauding their action as it makes him appear the more steadfast Bush-lover. The blatant nature of his hypocrisy is astounding.

AFTER warning that any withdrawal of coalition troops from Iraq would create catastrophe, embolden terrorists and increase the bloodshed, the Howard Government has described a significant pullout of British forces as "good sense".

Playboy jokes of the month

My missing October issue arrived last week. I was due the March issue in the mail, so the fact didn't even twig until this week when I recognised a picture that had appeared on the letters page in the November issue! There was a sicker attached to the cover with something in Spanish that appeared to equate to 'not deliverable'- the magazine had been to Santo Domingo, Dominica. I noted that the label was printed with the delivery address as:

Sarah
XXXXXX St
St Lucia 4067
St lucia
Australia

It seems some bright spark must have thought the magazine needed to be delivered to St Lucia, the island nation, rather than Australia. None of the other address labels have been printed like that, but it puts paid to my theory that someone was nicking the magazine... at least the October issue- the January issue is still missing (although they sent me a replacement).

On to the jokes- from the October and March issues:

Q: What do you call an evangelical church leader who uses speed?
A: A crystal methodist.

An elderly couple was attending a church service. About halfway through the sermon, the old lady leaned over and said "I just let out a silent fart. What do you think I should do?"
Her husband replied, "Put a new battery in your hearing aid."

After spending the night at a hotel with a prostitute, a politician took $300 out of his wallet and placed it on the dressing table.
"Thanks," she said, "but I charge only $20."
"Twenty bucks for the entire night?" the amazed politician replied. "You can't make a living on that."
"Oh, don't worry, the girl replied. "I do a little blackmail on the side."


A redneck came to the big city to visit some friends. They went to an Applebee's restaurant for dinner and one of the listings caught his eye: lobster tail and beer, $40.
"Damn," he said. "My three favourite things! And for such a reasonable price"


A man stepped onto a bus with both of his front pockets full of golf balls and sat down next to a beautiful blonde. The puzzled blonde kept looking at him and his bulging pockets.
Finally, after noticing her many glances, he said, "It's golf balls."
"Oh," she said, "Does it hurt as much as tennis elbow?"


At the breakfast table a woman grumbled to her husband, "Our new neighbour told me her husband has sex with her every day. Why can't you do that?"
Without missing a beat, he answered, "Honey, I hardly know the woman."

A strict teacher was lecturing his students on the importance of being wide awake. "I've found the most effective way to start a day," he said, "is to take a cold shower. Then I feel rosy all over."
A bored voice from the back of the class interjected, "Tell us more about Rosie."

An angry wife met her husband at the door. He smelled of booze and perfume.
"I assume," she snarled, "that there's a very good reason for your waltzing in here at six o'clock in the morning with liquor on your breath and lipstick on your collar?"
"There is," he replied. "I'd like breakfast."

"It's certainly going to be a beautiful day," the boss told his secretary.
"I don't think so," replied the secretary. "The weather forecast is for horrible rain."
"I'd put money on it that today will be bright and sunny," said the boss. "I'll even lay you 12 to 1."
"I'd rather not," she remarked. "That's my lunch hour."

After viciously chewing out one of his cadets, the drill sergeant said, "I guess when I die you'll come and dance on my grave."
"Not me, Sarge," the cadet replied. "No sir. I promised myself that when I got out of the army I'd never stand in another line."

"And what is the reason you are seeking a divorce?" a family court judge asked a man standing before him.
"Because," the man said, "I live in a two-story house."
"What's the big deal about a two-story house?" the judge asked.
"Well," the man answered, "one story is 'I have a headache', and the other story is 'It's that time of the month.'"

The Dark Lord arrives...

Moff Jerjerrod: Lord Vader, this is an unexpected pleasure. We are honored by your presence...
Darth Vader: You may dispense with the pleasantries, Commander. I'm here to put you back on schedule.
Moff Jerjerrod: I assure you, Lord Vader. My men are working as fast as they can.
Darth Vader: Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them.

What to watch/what to avoid

Gam and I hired some DVDs from Blockbuster the other day:

Snakes on a plane: worth watching if you're in the mood for something totally trashy. It's not like they ever pretended it was a work of art, and I liked its shameless trashiness.

Clerks II: worth watching, full stop. I wouldn't recommend it to my parents ("you don't go ass to mouth!") but I would recommend it to my friends.

Chaos: not worth watching. A piece of crap, really, right from the word go. Doesn't even have a wiki. Even if you can get over the moments of deja vu that arise from the fact they've pinched ideas from countless other movies, the acting is shite. Don't waste your time!

Weekend Australian columnist paid by Downer

Christopher Pearson, a writer for The Weekend Australian and former speechwriter for John Howard, has been paid $11,364 to write speeches for Alexander Downer, a fact which, according to the SMH, is not disclosed in his byline.

Hardly surprising, but still scummy.

Bluetongue

Another animal visitor arrived today: a friend of Gam's came to get some notes for uni and when Gam went downstairs he noticed a bluetongue lizard in the foyer, so he called me to come and have a look. It's the exact same spot that we found a baby bluetongue just over a year ago. That one, who we eventually christened 'Fatso' due to him becoming all fat and jowly from our cockroach plague at the time, eventually made it very clear to me that s/he wanted to leave our back garden (I forgot to blog about it, but it involved Fatso climbing a tree).

Yesterday Gam boiled up a piece of pork with some herbs for stock and use in chilli, so I dragged that out of the fridge and hacked off a few fatty chunks of pork that the lizard seemed to highly enjoy. After that and having it pose for a couple of photographs I let it go in the small back garden- it can eat grasshoppers and cockroaches and fruit and vegetable scraps, and I can give it boiled egg from time to time. Hopefully it won't do a Fatso on me and decide that it wants to leave home, but if it does I can always put it out the back. Who knows, it might even be Fatso, missing the good life... if I had to guess, I'd say it was older than 1 year, though. No name for it as yet.

Quaddro

The other day I saw a skinny little huntsman on the wall outside our unit. It had only 4 legs- probably thanks to gecko attacks, and its abdomen looked all shrivelled and prune-like so I took pity on it and brought it inside. We still have quite a few grasshoppers eating various plants of ours, so I popped a small one in a container with Quaddro (it seemed a natural name for a 4-legged spider). A few minutes later he (I've arbitrarily assigned him a sex... he might just as easily be a girl, it's not like I can tell!) had captured the baby grasshopper... I felt a bit guilty because grasshoppers are so small and cute when they're little, but it had participated in decimating our hibiscus plant and Quaddro looked very, very hungry. That's how I justified it to myself anyway. A couple of hours later Quaddro had puffed up like a little balloon. When I put another grasshopper in he was greedy and caught it that night but obviously couldn't finish the whole thing, as the body didn't wind a tiny, dessicated brown ball in the way the first grasshopper did. Quaddro's legs even swelled a little and became more translucent. This site suggests that immature spiders are able to regrow their legs, which is good news for Quaddro... maybe when he grows up I can put him in the garden.






The same day I also noticed a web in one of our flower pots that resembled that of a redback spider. Given that I had a reason to be nervous, I put on some gloves and hauled out the pot to check. The spider that popped out actually looked rather sickly. I've seen quite a few of them around but I haven't been able to identify them. Nonetheless, I'm not very tolerant of spiders that look like they might be even distantly related to redbacks, especially with those nasty webs, so after I took the photos I squished it. Didn't look like it had long to live anyway.

How many real estate agents does it take to put up a 'for sale' sign?

5 favourite quotes tag

Robert Freeman: "I hate to see a child go unbeaten"

Gam and I have been tagged by Mikey. The theme is 'five favourite quotes'. Off the top of my head I can't really think of five favourites or even five that we use commonly, but I'll see what I can come up with...

1. "Depraved and animalistic"- Larissa. This is from a couple of years ago when we invited some of our friends to dinner and they brought another friend (and housemate at the time) of theirs. She is a christian, and that quote was her response to our friend Victor's whispered explanation of what 'pearl necklace' meant, after the term came up in a conversation. I don't know if Victor or anyone else remembers it, but the phrase has really entered the vernacular in this household.

2. "The fuck y'all lookin' at?" - Ed Wuncler III. This one is from The Boondocks animated series. 'W' is a parody of George W Bush. This one gets used a lot when yet another retarded Bush policy is announced on the news with no criticism or analysis.

3. "I hate to see a child go unbeaten" - Robert Jebediah 'Granddad' Freeman. Also from The Boondocks, namely the episode 'Guess Hoe's Coming to Dinner'. Usually said when we've witnessed a particularly bratty child misbehaving in public. And no, we don't particularly care if the child's parent overhears.

4. [Excerpt from a Family Guy episode]

"You know, Margaret, we could have sexual intercourse right now"
"Yes, yes we could"
"But let's not"
- from the 'high class British porn' in the Family Guy episode 'North by North Quahog'

5. [Excerpt of a scene from Blazing Saddles]

Lili Von Shtupp: Is it true how zey say zat you people are... gifted?
[Lights go out, sound of zipper opening]
Lili Von Shtupp: Oh. It's twue. It's twue. It's twue, it's twue!

Hehehe.

Sure, there's nothing profound here but profound is a bit overrated anyway.

I'll tag Anthony. Anthony gets stuck with most of my tags. Sorry Anthony!

Beware of the Leopard

When the news of the Peter Beattie-Multiplex "Let's build on top of the river" scheme for the north bank broke last week I kept hearing news reports quoting Peter Beattie as saying the development plan would be open for public consultation for the next month.

For the life of me I could not find any news on where I could participate in this 'consultation'. Not on the Brisbane City Council website, not on Peter Beattie's website... nothing.

Finally, one week after the news broke I managed to find a website with details of where I could give the feedback I had supposedly been invited to contribute- rather than being a state government or city council site it was a page on the ABC Brisbane website.

This morning I happened to read a passage in The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy that sounded grindingly familiar...

Mr. Prosser said, "You were quite entitled to make any suggestions or protests at the appropriate time, you know."
"Appropriate time?" hooted Arthur. "Appropriate time? The first I knew about it was when a workman arrived at my home yesterday. I asked him if he'd come to clean the windows and he said no, he'd come to demolish the house. He didn't tell me straight away of course. Oh no. First he wiped a couple of windows and charged me a fiver. Then he told me."
"But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months."
"Oh yes, well, as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything."
"But the plans were on display..."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a flashlight."
"Ah, well, the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice, didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display on the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.'"

Hmm. So, for anyone who wants to have their say on the proposed godawful north bank development project before the March 14 deadline, the 'community feedback' page is here. Note the loaded questions on the online questionnaire.

This picture is about as believable as the claim that the north bank development is being carried out with the public interest in mind...

No 'values contract' for Exclusive Brethren

They refuse to integrate.

They refuse to accept Australian values.

They refuse to obey Australian laws.

... And yet John Howard has never said a word against them, never tried to stir up fear and hatred in the community against them, never claimed that as Australian citizens they are required to conform to 'our' values...

Why?


'Seal of approval' via Watermelon Rant.

'Scrotum'

Apparently all 9-12 year old American boys are unaware of this name for a particular part of their anatomy.

I can't even remember a time when I didn't know the word 'scrotum'... I presume I would have learned it when I was around 20 months old and my baby brother was born. What the hell else would you call it? It's an anatomical term.

Now some in the US are getting outraged at the presence of the word 'scrotum' in a children's book that won the Newberry Medal. It refers to an incident in which a dog is bitten on the scrotum by a rattlesnake.

This bout of stupidity must surely be enough to qualify for a position in the great hall of the World's Lamest Controversies...


As for what label to use for this post- I'd love to make a label for 'sheer stupidity', but I'm afraid that the category might overtake all others... any suggestions?

Gam, Caloundra, 2002

A picture I took in 2002 of Gam on the balcony of our friend's mother's unit at Caloundra. Gam isn't very cooperative when it comes to having his photo taken, although he obliges to make me happy (and vice-versa when he's the one holding the camera, I suppose). He doesn't mind this one though, 'because his face isn't in it'. Hmph.

2001 Kempsey flood

Macleay River: view from the railway bridge when not in flood

I brought back a bunch of my old photos from Kempsey when Gam and I stayed there over christmas. Today I scanned the photos I took at the beginning and end of the flooding of Kempsey by the Macleay river in early 2001. Stupidly, I passed up the opportunity to go out in a canoe or surf ski with my Dad and his friend to take more photos at the height of the flood. My Dad took a bunch of great photos of people boating around the main streets of Kempsey- I think he may even have one of my brother and some friends going through the KFC drive-through in a canoe.

The photos are in roughly chronological order:

The first four photos were taken on the day the Macleay burst its banks. I remember the water was incredibly strong- by the time it came up to my knees I came close several times to being knocked over.

Photos 5-9 were taken around the intersection of Sea St and March St, if I recall correctly. What I remember most is that when I entered the water, thousands of desperate spiders started running across the surface of the water toward me from all directions, climbing up my body and trying to shelter on my clothes. I'm not particularly afraid of spiders in general, but it wasn't exactly a pleasant experience.

Photos 10-14 were taken after the water subsided and the clean up began. I went into town to help some friends of Mum and Dad's clean up their craft store. I can't remember what kind of footwear I had on, or if I took it off to wade into the water to take more photos, but I do recall worrying about what I might tread on. Kempsey is the sort of place where you should avoid going barefoot in town. I don't know any of the people in any of the photos except for the final photo- that one is of my brother Richard and his friend Pip; I asked them to pose for me. The other shots are all candid.

I can't remember what kind of camera I used, and I'm too lazy to go pull it out of the wardrobe to check. Suffice it to say it was a good old fashioned camera with real film. Ooooh. The photos aren't of the greatest quality because not only am I a rank amateur I developed and printed them myself. Still, they paint a picture, and it was an exciting experience.

Paula Abdul 'never been drunk'

I don't watch any of the Idol shows. Still, I found Paula Abdul's outrage at speculation that her behaviour on some of the episodes of American Idol means she may either be drunk or high pretty damn funny:

"Just look at my 20-year career. Tell me someone who is into partying or doing drugs that could have done that?"

Two words:

Keith Richards.

Actually, heck, why stop at Keith Richards? It's more a question of who in the music industry doesn't overdo the drugs and alcohol. I found her denial that she has ever been drunk even more implausible.

She's almost certainly on something. Either that or her plastic surgeon accidentally removed a little bit of her brain during her latest face lift.

Howard's holiday costs taxpayers more

When John Howard decided to commandeer the taxpayer-funded private jet to take a holiday with his wife Janette in Broome last month, Australian taxpayers were forced to cough up for an extra security detail to be flown to Broome to keep their beloved PM safe from harm.

From The Australian:

TAXPAYERS footed the bill for extra security guards to be flown to Broome so they could protect John and Janette Howard during their summer holiday.
The Prime Minister and his wife took a detour to Broome last month after visiting The Philippines for the East Asia summit.

In evidence to Senate estimates yesterday, senior public servants were not able to detail the cost of sending the security guards to Broome.

The Prime Minister's VIP aircraft stopped in Broome to drop the first couple off before travelling on to Canberra.

Mr Howard has pledged to refund the cost of the business flight equivalent for his and his wife's travel, but the actual cost of the private aircraft's detour to taxpayers is significantly higher.