Xiaoxiao and Feifei, February 2009

Whenever I try and get a photo of these two together lately it always seems to turn out awful! It has to work on the first shot or I get nothing because Feifei hates having his photo taken, and Xiaoxiao always jumps up to try and inspect the camera... *sigh*. In this instance, Gam was sitting on the couch playing Halo 3, with Xiaoxiao and Feifei snuggled up against him... he complained because his arse was going to be in the photo so I've airbrushed it out, making a bad photo even worse... still, I go all fuzzy inside when I see Feifei and Xiaoxiao snuggled up together! I don't mind Gam's arse either, incidentally...

Xiaoxiao is getting to be a bit of a worry with her vacuum-cleaner-like habits when it comes to food. Feifei has always been a slow eater, and he has actually lost some weight lately because Xiaoxiao has been shoving him off his bowl and polishing his food off for him. Sure he needed to lose a bit of weight, but it's no good transferring the weight problem from one pet to another!

Xiaoxiao also gave me a scare the other day by attempting to guzzle a bowl of avocado mixed with a bit of shanklish that I had been eating with flat bread. I figured that the chilli in the shanklish, and the avocado would deter her from eating it when I got up for a minute to get a glass of water... I came back to find Xiaoxiao greedily eating the shanklish/avocado mixture... Avocado is poisonous (in large quantities) to cats! We've really had to unlearn a lot of habits with Xiaoxiao around... She's really quite dreadful in a lot of respects, with regard to her behaviour, especially when compared to Feifei, who is pretty much the perfect cat (apart from shedding enough of his woolly hair to knit jumpers with- no fault of his own!) but she is just so loveable... she actually enjoys being hugged- squeezed even- and is always demanding cuddles. Just adorable :)

Queensland election '09: policies, wannabes...

Saw the attack ads on TV from the Labor and LNP camps. They don't get any better with repeated viewing. Summary:

LNP: "Anna Bligh has been in too long. She sucks."

Labor: "Lawrence Springborg doesn't take the financial crisis seriously, he said 'de-necessary' once and once talked about sacking public servants" (undoubtedly prior to the financial crisis, I'm guessing).

Still no junk mail from Labor. None!

Meanwhile, I found a piece of junk mail from Ronan Lee that I had left sitting around- a prime example of what I expect candidates to do when they're asking for my vote. Not tell me about the issues dear to your heart (I'm talking to you, Scott Emerson, seeing as I haven't heard so much as a peep from Sarah Warner and Indooroopilly seems to be a two-horse race): give me a list of what you plan on doing. Tell me how your party's policies will affect your electorate, where relevant. Give me some promises that I can hold you to next election. Not wishy-washy stuff like "[I will] seek greater balance in urban planning and protecting our valued green space in St Lucia."! I mean, after three years all you have to have done is a bit of 'seeking'? And what does 'greater balance' even mean? What exactly do you aim to achieve?

I'm fairly ambivalent about Ronan Lee as a candidate, as can probably be determined by my previous posts, but his mailout is a great example of what I'm looking for in terms of advertising:

2009 Queensland state election: Indooroopilly up for grabs?

We've been receiving the odd bit of political junk mail here over the past few weeks, but not a single piece from Labor. The LNP snapped up the big billboard on Brisbane/Benson/Coronation/Wish-they'd-make-up-their-mind-and-just-give-it-one-name Street weeks and weeks ago, while Ronan Lee has been making his presence felt for a while, just not necessarily as Green a presence as he could have been. He's dropping the word 'green' at least three times in every sentence he utters now, but has yet to say a word on Queensland's backward social policies, including the fact that abortion is still illegal here, that gay couples have no right to civil unions or adoption (in the last fortnight or so Anna Bligh finally got around to changing the law so that unmarried couples could adopt- previously they were not allowed to do so), that our surrogacy laws are 20 years or so behind the rest of the country etc. etc. etc... Lee hasn't had much to say about health or education either, which is a shame, because the Greens' strong stance on improving the public health and education systems is one of the reasons I vote for the party in the first place. At least he has now stuck little 'Greens' stickers to the bottom of those dodgy signs...

It's not just that it's hard for the Greens to get a soundbyte out there- I only have to look at the almost non-existent coverage of the Greens' 2007 federal campaign launch to know that- but even on his own electoral advertising material Ronan Lee does himself no favours (even ignoring the missing comma, grrr):

Delivering better local public transport and tackling traffic congestion are high on his list of priorities.

Well, that's a really good start...

Ronan is a regular public transport user and passionate advocate for more train and bus services, better commuter parking and extending the NightLink bus service schedule to include Thursday nights.

Um, that's good too, I guess. I'm in favour of politicians and government bureaucrats in charge of transport being forced to use the public transport infrastructure they oversee and claim to care about... I'm also a regular public transport user and passionate advocate for more train and bus services (as is anyone who has to use the bloody things)... the way this is sounding I'm starting to think that maybe I could be the Greens' candidate... I could be Ronan Lee!

Working hard for his local community Ronan has delivered record funds for local schools, sports clubs and seniors groups...

Whoa, hold it right there- did anyone actually proof read this thing? Bloody hell...

Ronan is also a keen cyclist, bushwalker and enjoys canoeing.

That's it? I enjoy canoeing and bushwalking- even cycling when I don't have to ride on a 'bike path' with cars parked in it. That doesn't in any way make me qualified to help govern Queensland. Ronan Lee is coming off as an incredibly one-dimensional candidate.

Now, god knows about the Labor candidate, as we haven't seen hide nor hair of her. It's my belief that Anna Bligh has actually written off the seat of Indooroopilly; Ronan Lee holds it with a 2.5% margin, apparently, and I'm guessing that margin is the one between him and the LNP candidate. The LNP smells blood.

Scott Emerson, the LNP candidate, is someone we seem to see just about every day lately, and not just on the billboards or electioneering. A couple of days ago he was returning a DVD at the Gailey Five-Ways video rental place at the same time we were there, and we saw him at Gailey Five-Ways again this afternoon. He drives a 4WD with some wanky sticker attached to the bumper going on about how it's carbon neutral (presumably because he paid some dodgy company to plant some trees for him). We're pretty sure we know where he lives, too- and if we're right he is one loaded sonofabitch. Definitely more Liberal than National. Nevertheless, this is what Scott Emerson had to say about the policies that the LNP is taking into the next election:

• Fight for more upgrades around Walter Taylor Bridge to help traffic flow.
• Work for more regular and safer rail services on the Ipswich line to encourage greater use of public transport- better for traffic flow and better for the environment.
• Seek greater balance in urban planning and protecting our valued green space in St Lucia.

You've got to love that personal touch- he really cares about St Lucia... obviously the LNP has forked out for some election advertising that not only refers to the electorate Emerson is standing in but they've gone with suburb-specific mailouts to make it seem like the guy is really in touch with local issues. What's with pretending to be Green? I wonder if they did this only for St Lucia, meaning, perhaps, that they think the 'riche' residents of this suburb are the ones who are going to hand them the 2.5% swing they need, or if they did it for Indooroopilly, Taringa, Chelmer and Graceville too? Hmmm...

But where are the policies? The state government runs our hospital system and the public education system, among other things, and oversees a massive budget. Not a word about any of those things. Traffic traffic traffic, sure, but half of that is the Brisbane City Council's problem- and that's run by the Liberal Party and their chimp-in-chief Campbell Newman. Development in our area is a problem too- a massive new shopping centre and residential high-rise is being built along Moggill Road in Taringa, right near the train station. Traffic along Moggill Road is already in near-constant gridlock, even on weekends, and the council has made no provisions for traffic management (it's already in need of serious improvement even before the stupid shopping centre has been built!). It's all within cycling distance of our house, but it would be suicide to ride along there, so .

All of this, to the best of my knowledge, is council's responsibility, not the responsibility of the Queensland government. As is the steady depletion of green space in the suburbs in the Indooroopilly electorate thanks to council approval of projects belonging to developers and McMansion-building rich people. Scott Emerson has insinuated that if elected he will be able to exert some kind of control over these things. What utter rubbish.

• Campaign for a park and ride facility for Indooroopilly station [...]

I'm pretty sure that one has been directly stolen from Ronan Lee, actually.

• Campaign to relieve traffic congestion by reducing rat-running by people from outlying suburbs looking for shortcuts on our local streets.

WTF? First and most obvious question: HOW? Oh wait, he said 'campaign'- that just means jumping up and down and yelling without actually doing anything; a method isn't necessary when he has no intention of actually acting on anything. Second- how do you determine who has a right to be on 'our local streets' and who doesn't? Is Emerson seriously claiming that if some vital traffic artery is blocked up because of an accident he would happily force people to sit there for hours until traffic was flowing rather than accept that people still need to get home and will find another, quicker route?

Courier Mail poll of the day

Browsing the Courier Mail website at work yesterday I noticed the day's poll:



And yes, some 140 couriermail.news.com.au readers had actually voted on it. The majority answered 'no' to the question 'What do you think of Queensland's economy?'.



Maybe they were just curious about the results like I was. Unlike on the Fairfax websites, you have to vote to view the results, so I put in a vote of my own (I can't remember whether I thought 'yes' or 'no' of Queensland's economy, sadly). However, if it were just down to people selecting one of the two options at random, you would expect a more even split in the vote, so it's probably like I first suspected: that there is a significant number of illiterate rednecks patrolling the Courier Mail website...

VTAY Fixes Brisbane's Transport

1) Building roads won't work. The ubiquitous single person car trip is the least efficient use of transport infrastructure. If you build more roads and they reduce congestion, it increases the catchment area of the road and people will make trips they used to avoid, because there's less congestion, which will increase congestion. If we're going to fix things we have to accept that driving to work must become the last resort.

2) Public transport must be QUICK CLEAN EFFICIENT and COMFORTABLE. It doesn't have to be that cheap. People will pay for a 30 minute commute instead of a 90 minute death march to and from work if they get to sit down and read the paper like a human being instead of huddled in a fetal position in a pool of junkie vomit.

3) Stop building EVERY FUCKING THING in the CBD. Not everyone lives 5km from the CBD, those that do definitely don't want every else to come there and no one else wants to go there. If you live 20km from the cty, why the hell should you have to drive to the city to cross a bridge to get to a place you can see just across the river. Why are only two bridges outside the CBD?

The Gold Coast is only 80km away from the CBD. It should take half an hour to get there. Tops. it doesn't because Queensland hasn't realised that express doesn't mean stopping at every other station. The point of an express train, dear transport minister, is to EXPRESSLY go to a few places which are then linked by slower trains. What that means is that an express train to the Gold Coast will stop at Mt Gravatt, Logan and Beenleigh (then more stops at the GC like Southport and Robina). The rest of the time it'll be somewhere between these stops, going like a cat with its tail on fire. People who wanted to get to other places near by would take something called a CONNECTING train which would CONNECT them to their final destinations. They would go slower, but they'd run more often because they would be going shorter distances.

How much would all this cost? Well in the case of the French TGV system (300km/hr trains) the most expensive sections of track work out to $15,000,000 per km. A lot of money? Maybe, that means the 100km from the CBD to the GC would cost $1,500,000,000 (1.5 billion). That works out to a tenth of the QLD govt. proposed infrastructure expenditure and would put the two most populous parts of queensland about 20 minutes apart, linked by a rail system cheaper to operate and maintain than an equivalent length of 8 lane highway. Build another 2 lines north to Caloundra and west to Toowomba and all of a sudden it's a viable option to live all the way out there, work in any of the other locations and never see a car. All for around 1/4 of the proposed spend on pointless roads and tunnels and with the added benefit of jobs building/maintaining the trains and other infrastructure.

There are real solutions out there, it's just that politicians don't have imaginations and voters are the kind of people who'll hear 1.5 billion and think you're mad but happily spend 16 billion to shave 15 minutes off their commute for about a week till everyone else figures out the going is good.

Instead of buying babies, Salma breastfeeds

I would just like to say how awesome it is for Salma Hayek to have single-handedly booted western attitudes towards breastfeeding forward by a century or so by cross-nursing a little baby in Sierra Leone. It's really unfortunate that in this day and age, even in Australia, people are willing to express negative attitudes towards breastfeeding and actively discourage mothers from doing so. I was really, really pleased to see overwhelmingly positive comments even on sites like the Courier Mail that are usually a conservative clusterfuck of a hatefest. Hopefully the example of Salma Hayek will go a long way to ensuring a permanent change in the way society views this perfectly natural practice that is still the only way to ensure that babies are optimally nourished- and that includes cross-nursing, wet-nursing or the provision of donor breast milk when the mother is unable to breastfeed.

Now you have no money and She's Just Not That Into You

A few months ago I read a novel that had been left behind by some German girls who were residents in our complex last year left to return home. 'Chasing Harry Winston', it was called- I forget who the author was, but it was by the same woman who wrote 'The Devil Wears Prada'. I haven't read the latter, nor seen the movie, but the cover informed me that this was the case.

The novel was about a bunch of really irritating, vapid, shallow women living in New York. Poetic license, you'd think, not really reflective of any real live New York women. No?

This piece in the New York Times a couple of weeks back made me rethink that assumption. Women who date guys in finance: a more vapid, pathetic, gold-digging bunch you would be hard-pressed to find. They put the book's characters to shame.

Dawn Spinner Davis, 26, a beauty writer, said the downward-trending graphs began to make sense when the man she married on Nov. 1, a 28-year-old private wealth manager, stopped playing golf, once his passion. “One of his best friends told me that my job is now to keep him calm and keep him from dying at the age of 35,” Ms. Davis said. “It’s not what I signed up for.”

Wow, she sounds like she really gives a shit about her husband's mental health, huh?

They shared their sad stories the other night at an informal gathering of Dating a Banker Anonymous, a support group founded in November to help women cope with the inevitable relationship fallout from, say, the collapse of Lehman Brothers or the Dow’s shedding 777 points in a single day, as it did on Sept. 29.

In addition to meeting once or twice weekly for brunch or drinks at a bar or restaurant, the group has a blog, billed as “free from the scrutiny of feminists,” that invites women to join “if your monthly Bergdorf’s allowance has been halved and bottle service has all but disappeared from your life.”

Who expects to get a shopping 'allowance' from their husband or boyfriend? Is this guy your daddy, doling out pocket money, or your life partner in a relationship of equals?

Answer:

Once it was seen as a blessing in certain circles to have a wealthy, powerful partner who would leave you alone with the credit card while he was busy brokering deals. Now, many Wall Street wives, girlfriends and, increasingly, exes, are living the curse of cutbacks in nanny hours and reservations at Masa or Megu. And that credit card? Canceled.

Wow. So that's why some women aspire to be nothing more than a pathetic, poorer version of Carrie Bradshaw, like a beauty writer, until someone rich who ticks all the boxes that allow them to keep up with a particular social circle, comes along to sweep them off their feet. They aspire to be trophy wives, i.e. nothing more than a certain class of prostitute.

Some women in the group said the men in their lives had gone from being aloof and unattainable to unattractively needy and clinging.

So your partner goes through an incredibly tough time at work, people being fired left, right and centre- it may be him next- and you complain when he needs emotional support. Oh, I forgot- that's not what you signed up for...

Another, though, seemed chagrined, after her boyfriend told her to “grow up” and stop “complaining about vacations and dinner” since he had to “fire 20 people by the end of the week.”

Shallow, inconsiderate, greedy, lacking in empathy and perspective.

Then again, what does this say about the guys who choose to date these bimbos? Talk about a wake-up call for some of them...

A few rotten apples...

So, the Australian Dental Association doesn't like the universal dental care plan proposed by the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission? Why might that be, I wonder?

Maybe the answer lies here. Maybe some dentists are just greedy bastards who don't want the prices they charge in excess of whatever the government is prepared to refund them as part of the scheme, a la the situation with doctors, to be demonstrably excessive in comparison to their less extortionist-minded colleagues.

Found: Shanklish (nearly) in Brisbane

My Holy Grail!

Gam did all the hard yards and somehow tracked down a little deli in Woodridge, about a block or so from the train station.

Not only did they stock two types of shanklish, one homemade and one in a packet, the woman who made the homemade stuff happened to be in the store at the time! She actually took the time to describe to us how she made it, which was lovely of her. I bought 6 balls of the homemade stuff and one of the commercial (although the woman's husband, who was also in the store at the time, tried to dissuade me from buying the commercial one, insisting that his wife's was much better!). It was quite a trek from St Lucia just for shanklish, but I've been busting to find some of this stuff ever since 'our' local deli closed down a few years ago, to no avail.



So far I've only tried the homemade shanklish, and (of course) it's very tasty. Not yet at the really stinky stage, still fairly fresh. I'm not sure how long I'd have to age it before it got that great stinky flavour, but regardless of how long that is I'm fairly sure I won't be able to hold back on it long enough to let it happen... it's so tasty :)

I can't remember the name of the store, but the address of the place is 4 North Road, Trinder Park, and it's just around the corner from the Woodridge train station.

Mashed with olive oil and ready to eat!

Pre-cycled books & magazines = free reading!

Apparently this was my idea! I'd forgotten, perhaps because Gam is the one who did all the hard work, printing out a sign and lugging a bunch of old magazines and novels down to the bin room to get it started. Our resident managers replaced the initial cardboard box with a milk crate, which was very nice of them.

Anyway, our pre-cycling idea had a slow start, but people started dumping magazines and the occasional novel, and taking (and later replacing) ones we'd left, and now I think it qualifies as a roaring success. We have a great turnover of books and random residents regularly dumping new ones, which is just great. Sure, a lot of the books and magazines I'm reading I wouldn't pay for, but I'm always running out of things to read in the morning while I drink my coffee, and as long as it's entertaining or interesting that's fine by me. Besides, it's free! Also, the odd Vogue or Harper's Bazaar magazine dumped in the box has come in handy when I've needed to hide my Playboys for the occasional visit of a crazy-religious-grandma or crazy-religious-boyfriend-of-cousin.

Currently I'm reading 'French Women Don't Get Fat', by Mireille Giuliano, which is just as irritating and stupid as it sounds. Apparently all French women drop weight by eating nothing but 'magical leek soup' for a whole weekend... I guess in an ideal universe the book would have been written by a sociologist or a nutritional anthropologist instead of some corporate-moron Americanised French woman. The stupid title would be forgiveable if the book actually had some substance but like every other diet book ever written for insecure women, it doesn't.

The other day, Gam and I actually had to weed out and recycle some of the stuff in the crate because it was overflowing. Here are some pictures of some of the pre-cycled books:

Holocaust deniers welcome in Benedict's house.

I just love how Pope Panzerfaust is fiiiiine with welcoming a holocaust-denying bishop back into the Catholic flock, meanwhile a Brisbane Catholic priest has been sacked for focusing on issues of social justice not hating on the gays as much as official Catholic policy says he should- and all in spite of Fr Peter Kennedy having the full support of his remarkably unbigoted congregation.

Man, I don't think I need to say anything more. The Catholic church's stance on these issues says it all.

On the Victorian bushfire disaster

I didn't post on the bushfire disaster in Victoria because something about the coverage made me uncomfortable. Aside from listening to ABC Newsradio, I avoided all the news coverage, particularly the stories on the newspaper websites. I generally don't watch TV nowadays, so that wasn't a problem. At first I thought maybe I was avoiding reading about it because I'm the sort of person who winds up in tears after reading something sad like that- and with roughly 200 people dead and small towns decimated, that's a lot of sad stories.

Towards the end, though, more and more headlines and stories were appearing that seemed so contrived, so hackneyed, that I realised that the reason I was avoiding reading about the bushfires is because media organisations were making hay out of the damn issue. Hacks angling for journalism awards, with their clichéd, emotive prose. I felt sick, not just for the loss, but because there are people who see inappropriate opportunities for self-benefit in other peoples' loss.

I'm glad that there are two people in the media, namely Ross Gittins and Marieke Hardy, who are prepared to call out their colleagues on this issue. We, as a nation, should exhibit the kind of empathy and charity we've shown towards the victims of the Victoria bushfires to all people in need, all the time. Not just when there's some sordid media circus exhorting us to do so, while revelling in the spotlight themselves.

Monty's Chocolates

Yesterday on my way home from work I stopped at Toowong to pick up a couple of grocery items, and I was determined to buy myself a treat. The last few times I've stopped in the chocolate aisle at Coles have left me particularly uninspired, and that was the case yesterday too. I couldn't even bring myself to pick up some ice cream- I was really disappointed by the Maggie Beer ice cream I tried, but that's another story... I have a few good ice creams to plug as well.

Anyway, while picking up some bread and sliced meat at Fruity Capers Deli I browsed their small selection of tasty sweet things and spied something new- milk chocolate-coated cocoa beans. I've tried panela-coated cocoa nibs before and found them most enjoyable, so I figured I'd found a treat that would hit the spot. Indeed it did. They were absolutely delicious. Expensive, but much more satisfying than regular chocolate. I read the package and noticed a sticker saying "Imported by Monty's Chocolates, 155a Latrobe Terrace, Paddington"... this afternoon, Gam drove us there.

The traffic in the area is awful, but Monty's Chocolates was well worth a visit. To be honest I'm really glad they're not within walking distance of our place or I'd send us broke. It's not one of those chocolate shops that ostentatiously overflow with chocolate. Rather, they have a limited but fairly comprehensive selection of really good quality stuff.

The lady at the store with the guy who owns it was fairly knowledgeable on the products she was selling, and they gave us a small piece of 100% cocoa chocolate to taste. That, to me, was a revelation. I personally enjoy the Lindt 70% cocoa bars, but find the 85% too bitter for my liking. I expected the 100% to be positively inedible. Instead it was buttery, smooth and full-flavoured without being bitter or grainy. Just goes to show how much the quality of the chocolate depends on the beans used.

I knew Gam wouldn't like it so much, but I got a bar of the 100% for me, plus a bar of some special 45% cocoa milk chocolate made with a variety that, according to the lady in the store, constitutes only 3% of the world's cocoa production. I knew Gam would like that one- as it turns out, I'm sure everyone would... at ~$14 a bar it'd want to be bloody good. We also bought a tiny sampler with chocolate made in Ghana (yay!), Tanzania, São Tomé and Príncipe, Madagascar, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. The Ghanaian one was the best. The flavour was just like Kingsbite, the Ghanaian-made chocolate, but more melt-in-the-mouth (Kingsbite has a kind of biscuity texture, which I love, because it is made to withstand the heat in Ghana, where European chocolate wouldn't survive). The Tanzanian chocolate had a really interesting earl grey tea flavour, while I wouldn't recommend the Indonesian one at all- it was sour and grainy.

I reckon Monty's is the place to go for anyone in need of a chocolate fix or anyone interested in broadening their experience when it comes to chocolate... That would be everyone, right?

New TV

We got a new TV, finally. We've kind of needed one for years, what with the black bar slowly encroaching from the top of the screen, and the weird colour blobs appearing over the picture on our old cathode-ray TEAC.

Oh my god is it a world a way from the TEAC. I put Fallout 3 in our Xbox 360 to see how it would look... There are colours and details that I never realised existed. I thought the game was just particularly grey and colourless, and that I had to squint to see where I was going because of the 'funny light' in the game. Goodness me. Fallout 3 is the reason I've been so slack on the blogging lately, actually. I bought it for Gam for Christmas, and he's finished it, but I'm getting much better value out of it than he is... I'm playing the shit out of that game. I've spent a disgraceful number of hours picking up every tin can I come across... Gam gets all the gamer points because I'm playing on his profile, though.

Anyway, the detail and colour is so amazing we've even been doing stupid stuff like watching ads, or looking at the Xbox menu screen... I'm sure the novelty will wear off eventually, but damn... it's hard to believe just how bad our old TV was even without the funny colour blotches etc., without us even realising.

Murugathasan Varnakulasingham

His life had taken him from the northern tip of Sri Lanka to a pebble-dashed semi in north-west London and finally to a cold square in Geneva. But it is for his death that the 26-year-old Tamil, Murugathasan Varnakulasingham, is likely to be remembered.

A little after eight o'clock last Thursday night, the computing graduate and part-time Sainsbury's shelf-stacker doused himself in petrol in Geneva and set light to his body outside the United Nations complex in the Place des Nations. Police officers rushed to try to save Murugathasan, who stood "burning like a torch", but he was too badly injured. A few metres away, they found a letter typed in Tamil and English explaining why he had chosen to die: "We Tamils, displaced and all over the world, loudly raised our problems and asked for help before [the] international community in your own language for three decades. But nothing happened ... So I decided to sacrifice my life ... The flames over my body will be a torch to guide you through the liberation path."

From the Guardian.

I remember reading about a prominent rabbi who committed suicide after trying fruitlessly to draw attention to the plight of the Jews in Europe. It is the last and biggest gesture someone can make. No-one listened to him, either, and decades later we still say 'never again'. We say it while the Palestinian people are slaughtered in their thousands, starved and deprived of the necessities of life. We say it while the Sri Lankan government engages openly in yet more brutality, its final solution, against a section of the population in that country who have been historically discriminated against and victimised. The Tamil Tigers are designated a terrorist group by western governments. The Sri Lankan government openly commits murder of journalists and others in the country who support the Tamils' cause, its actions never coming under scrutiny by the international community.

If humanity can't learn from the Holocaust, what scale of cruelty, murder and disaster will it take to make us learn to value human life?

Pet round-up

We bought Xiaoxiao her first collar last weekend, and she took to it really well. Didn't mind a bit. Unlike Feifei who, when he first got a collar, used to go outside for the day and come back sporting evidence of having tried to remove it. We got Feifei a matching one because his bell fell off a little while back, and his current, 5-year-old collar wasn't looking so hot.

Keith Richards is sporting a bald patch. I think it might be due to the recent rain making his side of the garden a big damper than usual, maybe irritating him or encouraging mites, so I gave him a bath, massaged a little macadamia oil into his bald spot and let him out into the non-Keith-Richards side of the garden, which gets a bit more sun. He's already decimated the rockmelon vines that were growing there, but I only let them grow so I could feed them to him, so it doesn't matter.

'Possposs' the brushtail possum has been visiting almost every night, probably eating Keith Richards' fruit scraps I guess. We used to have a ringtail possum visit us regularly to eat sweet potato leaves, but 'Possposs' seems to be here for the fruit. He announced his first visit to our balcony by climbing up the screen door at some ungodly hour, making Gam and I both jump up awake and wonder who the hell was trying to break into our bedroom!

We've had regular visits from a green tree frog! I'm reasonably sure that it's not this one, but given the rather scruffy condition that one was in I suppose I wouldn't recognise it if it had spruced itself up a bit. It has been sitting on either of the back walls, or on our compost bin to hunt, showing up every couple of days. It must climb up the back wall, as we've seen it hunting in the main gardens of the complex, too. I love frogs, so it really makes my day when I see 'our' frog stopping by our tiny balcony garden.

Finally, I stopped off to give Keith Richards some food a week or so ago and spotted the body and tail of what I thought must be the biggest gecko I'd ever seen, moving slowly out of KR's area and into the plants bordering it... It then occurred to me that geckos never move that slowly, so I took a better look at it. Its rear feet were dragging like those of a bluetongue lizard, and had pale tan markings that kind of resembled that of a bluetongue but, having been acquainted with the bluetongue's bad-tempered cousin, I thought it might even be a pink-tongued lizard. Either way it wasn't a gecko, meaning some baby lizard has somehow got itself up the wall and into our garden. That's a new one.

Barambah Organics- Best milk ever!

I've been meaning to give Barambah Organics a rave all of their own for ages now. We've been buying their milk from Mrs Flannery's ever since we first tried it a year or two ago- it beats all the other organic milks on the market. Their yoghurt is bloody awesome, just watch out for their Greek yoghurt if you're after a plain yoghurt, as I once was, because it's sweetened with honey. Their cream is a cut above the rest as well.

What's most notable about Barambah Organics products though is that when the milk goes 'off' it just smells like yoghurt- perfectly edible! When regular milk goes off it smells bitter and disgusting, downright nasty. 'Sour' Barambah Organics milk smells so good that I reckon I could make great homemade yoghurt with the regular milk. In fact, I intend to, some day.

Just a couple of weeks ago I bought some cream, meaning to make a cake and have the cream with the cake. As it turned out I didn't get around to making the cake until yesterday, by which time the cream was sour, with the same sort of sharp taste you get with natural yoghurt, but much milder. It kicked arse. It was actually better with the cake (orange and almond cake) than it would have been if it was fresh and sweet. It still tasted fresh, just with an acidic kick. I've never experienced anything like it with other brands of cream or milk, which are always 'hold your nose' jobs by the time they turn. I just can't believe their milk was only worth a silver medal at the Sydney Fine Foods show in 2007- I won't believe there's a better milk until I've tried it myself.

I'm not a huge fan of their cheddar, which is a very young cheddar, sweet, soft and mild, or their 'swiss' style, which has an almost cheddar-y taste. Both have a great taste and go well on sandwiches, but as examples of their genre they have some way to go. I haven't tried their award-winning ash brie, nor their labna.

Bean Scene in Hawken Village, our favourite cafe, started using Barambah Organics milk some time ago, which was a great move. Hopefully more cafes will start making the switch from crappy, homogenised supermarket milk to tasty, creamy, unhomogenised organic milk.

The only thing left for Barambah Organics to do is start making ice cream... I think I'll beat them to it, though. One of my ambitions this year is to buy an ice cream maker and make batches of ice cream out of Barambah Organics milk and cream... Gam reckons I'll be too fat to leave the house if I do that, but I don't caaaaare.

And we wonder why...

... Australian free-to-air TV channels show nothing but crap rip-offs of dreadful, low-rent 'reality' shows from overseas:

The Nine Network has scored a hit with the Australian version of British TV show Ladette To Lady, with more than 1.3 million Australians tuning into show's premiere.

The show easily smashed its competition, the US series Dexter on Network Ten and Brothers and Sisters on the Seven Network on Monday night.

Faaaarrrrrk. Dexter. This recycled piece of contrived British crap beat Dexter. Sure, Australian TV stations don't hold a modicum of respect for their viewers, regularly yanking shows half-way through a season, randomly changing the time-slot without informing viewers, holding back good shows 6 months to a year after they've screened in the US etc.etc., and then bitch and whine when we go online and download the damn things.

But when Aussie Ladette to Lady beats Dexter it's hard not to think that the lack of respect is, overall, well-deserved.

C is for Chancellor, F is for Fail

I got three emails today ("Dear colleague/Dear student/Dear alumnus/whatever") letting me know who the new UQ Chancellor is...

I am pleased to announce that the Senate has elected Mr John Story as UQ’s new Chancellor.

John is a highly-experienced corporate lawyer and leader, a UQ alumnus, a Senator since May 2006 and formerly an Adjunct Professor.

His paternal grandfather, John Douglas (‘JD’) Story, was our first full-time Vice-Chancellor in days when the position was honorary.

[...]

Hmmm... 'JD' Story, he of the JD Story Building, perhaps that's why the name John Story is so familiar?

Wait, there's more!

He has deep and broad corporate experience, being Chairman of Suncorp-Metway, Tabcorp Holdings and the Australian Institute of Company Directors, a Director of CSR, and a member of the Queensland Public Service Commission.

Ahhh, that's why the name is so familiar!

The SMH on Story:

So Suncorp CEO John Mulcahy is gone. His chairman, John Story, should not be far behind him.

With a slashed dividend and $900 million capital raising, Suncorp is finally starting to admit the reality it's been denying since its annual results presentation back in August.

What the board and management achieved over the past six months is the alienation of a significant proportion of their shareholders and the loss of the company's credibility in the market. Now that the company's real performance is being admitted, it's a safe bet a great many more shareholders will want those responsible to take responsibility for the mess.

Suncorp began to stink in the market when its declared annual results were just a little too good to be true. It stank a little more when John Mulcahy confirmed an amazingly rosy outlook on September 18. It was really on the nose when, at the last minute, the Federal Government's bank guarantee saved it from being taken over in October.

By the AGM a fortnight later, many shareholders wore pegs on the nose because of the smell and voiced their opinion with a hefty one-third "against'' vote on the obnoxious remuneration report. (As recently as December, chairman Story publicly claimed the negative vote was only so high because the share price was down - he apparently has no idea of how out of touch he and his board have become.)

Well, maybe that piece is just the result of some nasty vendetta that some vicious little Fairfax hack has against Story. Maybe The Australian will give the new UQ Chancellor's 'experience' as Chairman of Suncorp Metway a fair shake?

FOR a bit more than a week last October Suncorp seemed ready to bite the bullet and sell its banking and wealth management business.

Then along came the federal Government with its bank guarantees and Suncorp chairman John Story decided the need to make a deal had conveniently evaporated.

The chairman, it turns out, was probably wrong. Today the only people happy about that decision would surely be the likes of ANZ Bank, Commonwealth and NAB, which were rumoured to be at the front of the queue to acquire Metway.

[...]

Little wonder, then, that Suncorp presaged its capital management announcement with news that chief executive John Mulcahy and Story had agreed on a leadership transition. The trouble is, Mulcahy is going, not Story.

Given the setbacks Story has overseen since Suncorp's Promina acquisition in 2007, it would seem more appropriate that he goes now and the privilege of selecting Mulcahy's replacement should fall instead to a new chairman.

Ouch!

Looks like UQ is giving an old mate a last chance to polish up his tarnished resume before he fades into retirement, more than anything. Maybe touting Story's 'experience' as Suncorp-Metway Chairman might have worked if he was being sold to, I don't know, a bunch of illiterates who've been living in a dark, remote cave for the last 6 months or so. Thankfully, I believe the role of Chancellor is largely ceremonial (despite the man probably getting to collect a fat cheque for occupying the position).

When English is your second language...

Yesterday Gam and I went to our first tutoring programme of the year with the organisation we volunteer for. I spent the entire 2 hours with the one girl, trying to help her understand what was required of her for an assignment her new teacher had set for her year 12 ESL (English as a second language) class.

I haven't worked with this girl before, but she is an extraordinarily hard worker, showing up every single weekend for the tutoring programme, spending much of the time working on her own, doing assignments without requiring much help.

The assignment set for her ESL class, however, had her absolutely distraught. None of the students understood it, she told me. They were supposed to be learning English, she said, and the assignment was just too hard. Her ESL teacher last year had 14 years' experience teaching ESL, while her new teacher had none. Her old ESL teacher would teach material and then set assignments on that material. The new one had set the assignment but not really taught them anything. Not only that, he had been sick and away for much of the year so far. When he was approached by one student who had started the assignment and written 200 words that she wanted him to check, he shouted "No no no!" and drew a big cross over what she had written. My student had asked another teacher about the assignment and the teacher expressed surprise at the difficulty of what the ESL class was being expected to do, but attempted to provide help nonetheless.

Naturally, because I had to attempt to explain what the assignment appeared to require of the student I was tutoring, I had to read it. Here's the outline of the assignment.

===============================================
UNIT ONE: Language for Academic Learning. My English My Identity [sic]

Task: An oral report including an appropriately set out powerpoint presentation.

Length: 7 minutes

Task description: Present a formal interim (progress) report on your research on the ways the media presents the social issue which you have selected.

You will need to:

1. Select and refine a topic, arriving at a specific issue or question for investigation.
2. Define the terms and concepts inherent in the research question/thesis.
3. Research background material (linguistic and socio-cultural factors and the results of academic research) relevant to your topic.
4. Decide on methodology to be used.
5. Explain the importance of the research topic or the reason for your choice.
6. Select at least three (3) main sub-issues/questions/areas to be investigated.
7. Outline expectations of possible findings or problems that might arise.
8. Summarise one article/lecture as an example of research progress and briefly assess its value.
9. Prepare powerpoint slides to enhance the presentation.
10. Prepare notes and/or script and practise the presentation.
11. Formal academic English suitable to the spoken mode must be used.

=========================================

Now, is it just me, or is this a tad ambitious for an ESL class? It looks like a university assignment. My student had selected illict drugs as her topic and an mX article on Michael Phelps being photographed smoking a bong as her article. I suggested that this might not be what the teacher was looking for, given that the task description specifically referred to 'research progress'. I spent 2 hours helping this girl and I'm really not sure how useful I was.

To illustrate that this task was not an anomaly, my student pulled out her next assignment from this ESL teacher. It was just as bad as the first. The task description specifically asked for formal academic English and references using the APA method. Now, I think it would be great if proper referencing and research methods were taught in high school English. Nearly all of what I did in HSC English in NSW was an utter waste of time, while things like that would have been enormously useful to me when I started university. But I asked my student if she knew what 'APA referencing' was, or if her teacher had been teaching the class how to do it. She had no idea, none at all. The teacher had demanded 'APA referencing' and 'formal academic English' of an ESL class who had no idea what either of those things meant.

I suggested that she talk with her classmates and arrange to go and see the principal to talk about the assignments being set for the class. I don't know what else to suggest, seeing as the teacher was obviously blind to the fact that none of his students understood the task he had set them. I've helped quite a few year 12 students with their understanding of the tasks that have been set for them, for a number of different subjects, and I've never encountered an assignment as difficult as the one that was set for that ESL class. It barely even made sense to me. I'm sure a similar assignment could have been set in a way that made sense to them, but it doesn't even look like this guy was trying.

At the very least I was able to reassure my student that if she could get through this assignment she would breeze through the first year of uni...

Gah!

So Michael Phelps likes to get high. Big fucking deal, that would make him exactly like all the alcohol drinking, ciggie smoking, prescription abusing people in the world. The only reason it's a big deal is that the fact that you can become the most successful olympian who ever lived AND hit the pipe on a regular basis blows a big hole in the 'don't try drugs because you will die' argument.

Illegal drugs aren't really that dangerous. Hollywood is filled with people who abuse cocaine and heroin every day and the occasional death involving drugs is more likely to involve prescription drug abuse, like Heath Ledger. In this list of notable drug deaths, the people NOT highlighted are probable unintentional drug deaths. This obviously doesn't include people who made medical conditions worse. Note the presence of alcohol and the TOTAL FUCKING ABSENCE of mary jane. Bad drugs, cut with god knows what, is what kills people. If you're a hollywood star you can afford top quality drugs which makes dying from them that much harder, just like how deaths from poorly distilled alcohol dropped when the prohibition ended in the US.

If anything all the tut tutters should STFU and be happy that Phelps picked an illegal drug that's safe as houses as opposed to the cocaine and heroin preferred by pretty much everyone who's supposed to be a 'role model' for kids. If Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan can still appear on magazines aimed at kids Phelps can still be a swimmer.

I Don't Get It

1) Rupert Murdoch owns Newscorp
2) Newscorp has lost billions of dollars thanks to the global financial crisis. Advertising revenue is way down thanks to reduced consumer spending.
3) Kevin Rudd's stimulus package is supported by every economist (even those left-wing radicals at the IMF) to go some way towards propping up consumer spending.
4) Newscorp employs Milne, Made-o-Ham et al to write screeds opposing the very bailouts that would help Newscorp and Rupert.
5) ????????
6) Profit!

In A Crowded Theatre

The Age

It's strange that our terror laws, enacted to protect life and limb against violent fanatics bent on the destruction of life and limb, are used on doctors who give sim cards to their cousins. Mentally disturbed fire-bugs who kill at least 84 people will instead have to be caught and prosecuted under normal laws, if they are ever caught at all. The final toll will almost certainly be higher than the Bali bombings. Fire bugs are elusive prey and it's difficult to collect evidence against them, exactly the reasons we're told we need special laws to catch terrorists. What a strange set of priorities we have as a society.

UPDATE
Apparently the arsonists could be charged with murder, but only if it's proved they showed reckless criminal intent. WTF?

Queensland early election speculation continues

When it was reported a few weeks after I made this post that Anna Bligh had said very firmly that we're not having an early election (and credulously concluded by the media that we therefore aren't having one), it was pretty clear that Anna Bligh was lying. A real shock, a politician lying, but there you go.

You see, not only have we seen Ronan Lee/'Green' and LNP supporters with umbrellas and flyers all over the place, including the LNP candidate (Scott somethingorother... ahh, Scott Emerson- I looked it up) canvassing in person outside the Coles in Hawken Village, we also spied City Labor MP Grace Grace canvassing in Spring Hill.

The LNP have gotten in large with the big billboard near the service station on Brisbane /Benson St/Coronation Drive- the same one that federal Liberal MP Michael Johnson bought up prior to the November 2007 election. It used to be the case that Labor would get in first with their advertising for Ronan Lee, but obviously that won't happen this time since he defected to the Greens.

The Courier Mail is tipping a March 28 election date. It should be interesting, but whatever the outcome I highly doubt it'll be one I'm happy with.

Got Mine, Get Yours

MALCOLM TURNBULL has taken a large campaign donation from an American billionaire closely linked to the predatory lending practices that triggered the subprime lending crisis in the United States and global recession.

An investigation by The Sun-Herald revealed that Peter Briger, chairman and director of controversial "vulture company" Fortress Investment Group, contributed $US50,000 ($76,000) to the Liberal campaign fund for the Opposition Leader's Sydney seat of Wentworth last year.

The Age / SMH

Seeing as how Malcolm already got his stimulus package, maybe he could let us get ours too. And I'm sure Mr Briger, an American, was expecting NOTHING in return for his donation.

Also, is anyone else enjoying Malcolm's wedging? I know I am. It's very cathartic seeing mass public rage directed at the Liberal party, even if it is motivated by greed, 18 months too late and directed at the wrong person. There's just such a frisson of vigilante justice about it that makes one want to burn someone in effigy.

The Liberal Party Guide To Crisis

Click for Larger Image

Oscar Oscar and the overpriced haircut

There's been a minor fuss in the Courier Mail over the last few days over the price of haircuts. Hardly consequential, but local Channel 7 newsreader Jillian Whiting penned a piece detailing how she was charged $425 for a haircut at an unnamed Indooroopilly salon. Even though she failed to name and shame, I had my suspicions. The next day they were confirmed, with the news that Oscar Oscar was the site of the Great Salon Rip-Off.

Why did I suspect Oscar Oscar? Because that is the salon where I received my worst ever haircut and-even more unforgiveable- terrible service. At the time, in 2003, I was fairly outraged to have been charged $75 for what I considered a travesty. Looking back, I suppose I was lucky I was allowed to leave with the shirt on my back.

Here's my Oscar Oscar nightmare story:

Gam and I went to Oscar Oscar, I was greeted by a friendly lady who was a qualified hairdresser and I asked for a trim, preserving the layers I had. Settled into a chair and reassured that the hairdresser seemed incredibly competent, I was a litte unnerved when she clicked her fingers and summoned a chubby young guy who was in the process of sweeping the floor. "He's one of our trainees", she said, before briefly explaining to him what she wanted him to do to my hair and scooting off for a meet-and-greet with another customer.

By the time he'd finished the haircut it was something of a disaster. Not to the extent that I'd somehow wound up with a mullet, but the layers were far too exaggerated and obvious. The young guy asked whether I'd like my hair blow-dried and I said ok; having dried my hair he then proceeded to use some hairspray. And then more hairspray, and more and more and more hairspray. My hair, naturally wavy, actually looked pretty stringy at this point, kind of like it had glue in it. At that point the lady who'd originally shown me to the chair and discussed my impending haircut walked past my chair, picked up the now very light can of hairspray, shook it and said "Gee, you've used an awful lot of hairspray, this can was full before you got started!", and then walked off. In my head at that point I was kind of screaming "Well?! He just emptied a full can of hairspray onto my head and has obviously given me a terrible haircut. Do something!". Instead, the young guy attempted to primp my now stiff, inflexible hair one last time before escorting me to the counter to pay. I think Oscar Oscar is the only place I've ever had a haircut where not a single person bothered to ask if I was happy with the result. Instead I was perfunctorily asked to hand over $75. The minute Gam and I stepped out the door we both agreed that I should never, ever go there again, and as soon as the awful cut started to grow out we would try another salon.

Which we did. A city salon, which as since either closed or moved, and charged roughly $170 a time for a full head of foils as I progressively went blonde, including a cappuccino, a real hairdresser and a great blow-dry. I eventually made a conscious decision to stop colouring my hair and having expensive haircuts because after a certain number of weeks or months there is nothing to show for all that money and while it's a lovely experience, if I have money to throw around I would rather give it to charity and hopefully see some good come of it.

It should be noted that I'm no diva, and hairdressers have to deal with a lot of divas who are probably nigh-impossible to satisfy. I don't go into a hairdresser demanding to be given a haircut that will make me look like some celebrity I don't resemble in the slightest. If anything, I'm probably too laid back for most hairdressers' tastes. I generally take the attitude that if they mess it up it will grow back. I continue to go to the uni hairdresser even though one girl there once gave me a crooked fringe, and not just because the price is great but because the service is always lovely, if generally no frills. The problem with Oscar Oscar is that it promised something it didn't deliver- and obviously didn't give a shit. Just like Oscar Oscar owner Oscar Cullinan is unrepentant about having charged Jillian Whiting an exhorbitant $425 for a haircut.

Xiaoxiao: Stale beer = piss

I'm fairly sure I've mentioned before that Xiaoxiao is rather fond of beer- as long as it has been made a little bit flat, because she doesn't like the bubbles- as a side note, she also appears keen on gin & tonic as long as the bubbles are taken out.

Anyway, we had a barbeque on the Australia Day long weekend. The day after the barbeque, Gam was about to take out the recycling when he noticed beer dripping from the box and onto the floor- obviously one of the bottles had some beer left in it. Because Xiaoxiao happened to be hanging around we figured we'd point it out to her, thinking maybe she would like stale beer.

Gam showed Xiaoxiao the spilled beer, which she dutifully sniffed. She sniffed it so carefully we actually thought she was about to give it a taste. Instead, she stopped sniffing the beer and began pawing the ground as if she'd just been to the toilet and was trying to cover up the stale beer!

So there you go- it's not just an expression... stale beer is piss.

Thailand toxic on human rights

The recent flow of news concerning Thailand has left me thinking that the government of that place is little better than Burma, the baddie of the Asia-Pacific region.

Not only have they managed to outdo our former PM, John Howard, in the brutal mistreatment of refugees (towing over 1000 Burmese Rohingya refugees out to sea without food or water in rickety boats lacking engines, leaving most of them to die), they've also locked up at least one Australian on trumped up 'les majeste' charges of insulting the monarchy- a convenient reason to lock up anyone who says anything that rankles members of Thailand's elite.

I've always pictured Thailand as a sunny place of beaches and idyllic islands, lovely people, buddhist religion, a rather exciting red light district and generally a nice place for Australians to go on holiday. Not so much at present. The treatment of Australian author Harry Nicolaides should be reason enough for Australians to boycott Thailand as a tourist destination or even a stop-over. Their treatment of Burmese Rohingya refugees, however, is something that needs to be given serious attention by the International Criminal Court.

Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway

Just picked up the latest installment of this cover based tactical shooter from Gametraders Indooroopilly. Good game. It purports to tell the story of American infantrymen from the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment during operation Market garden. Let's hope we get to see a Pole or Brit at some stage, they actually took more casualties than the Americans did in this operation. You basically have yourself and a squad that you can order around to suppress the evil, cardboard cut-out Nazis while you sneak around them and shoot them in the back. So far I've been impressed with the weapon modelling, the sounds are awesome, none of that annoyingly fake loud boominess. The MG42 is very well modelled, though I feel you shouldn't be able to run around firing it from the hip. Of course WWII is too loud for Sarah. God forbid that I make any noise retrospectively defending her freedom from evil Nazis.

If you like slightly more realistic (realistic compared to Quake) first person shooters like the Rainbow Six series, and WWII then this game is for you, especially if you have an awesome sound system. It's nice not being able to dodge bullets or take a shotgun blast in the face and keep going. Also, you can shoot the sheep.

Liberal Party Makes Bid for Darwin Award

Apparently the Liberals are going to stand in the way of every Australian man, woman, child and koala getting $1000 come April. Apparently students and even those of us unblessed by the 50 IQ points and encylopaedic knowledge that comes with having a child will be getting some scratch. They're also getting in the way of billions of dollars in school funding and other stuff, but let's not pretend anyone's interested in that, least of all Malcolm, whose kids all attended Silvertail High.

I'm just struggling to see how the Liberal party can spin one of Australia's richest men saying that Shane the Tradie (I'm trying a Palinesque everyman, work with me) can't have $1000 because times are tight. Who exactly is he selling this to? The people who desperately want the money? The business community that desperately wants them to spend it? Hare Krishnas? Jesuit Monks? How are they going to sell it?

"I'm Malcolm Turnbull, no one knows more than I do about the horrors of having more money. I'm here to tell you why you don't really want thousands of dollars."

I'm not sure they've thought this through. He seems to be making the kind of finely nuanced explanation that totally appeals to people when you're trying to convince them that they really don't want that pile of money. It goes:

1. The stimulus package is a bad, irresponsible idea.
2. The stimulus package should be half the size it is now. Then it will be half as bad and irresponsible and we can support it.
3. The previous stimulus package didn't work because it only did most of what it was meant to.
4. The govt. should bring the permanent tax cuts (the ones we can't afford now) forward and by 2010 you will be $1700 better off if your family earns $80,000. This way we will be in deficit for the same amount through a drop in tax revenue, but will see none of the effects of one off cash payments. [delete this]I will then win the next election, cake for everyone! (except Peter Costello)[delete this]

Also I saw Family First senator Steve Fielding telling the media that if they pass this budget, we might not have any money left. Apparently an Australian senator thinks that there is a big jar of coins behind Kevin Rudd's chair and if we spend it all, there won't be any left. I know you don't have to be smart to be a senator, but don't you need to at least have some vague idea of how the economy you're going to be senating works?

Xenomorph on the other hand looked like a rabbit in the headlights and is no doubt working frantically to get himself out of the way of the voters while maximising media exposure. Maybe a joint statement/proposal with the Greens?