Emperor dines with Queer

My initial thoughts- that the emperor must have been breaking ground against some kind of Japanese social taboo- were proved wrong when I clicked on the link.

That's the spirit!

"We treat our customers the same way we treat our workers!"

What better way to celebrate our 1000th post than by giving Qantass the finger?

It's quite appropriate, really, given that I started this blog as a rant outlet and I still have residual rage from the shitty way they treated us on my first trip overseas in July 2003. I swore at the time I would badmouth them to everyone I knew. Now I can badmouth them to everyone I don't know!

I'm quite proud to say that VTAY has 2 entries on the first page of google search results for 'Qantass'. If only I could have 2 entries on the first page of google search results for 'Qantas' my mission would be complete! Unfortunately the logo of which I'm so proud does not appear in the google image results for 'Qantass'. Shame!

Apparently I haven't related the entire story of our Qantass experience on this blog yet- that will have to be a holiday project, given how long a rant it's likely to be. [UPDATE: Gam found the post for me- go here to read of our godawful Qantass experience]

Meanwhile, enjoy the news that's been obvious to Qantas customers for so long- they're officially the world's worst airline! I must say, we've never flown Singapore Airlines (it was Malaysia Airlines last time), but from the number of recommendations we've received for Singapore Airlines by people who fly regularly, I'd say their number 1 ranking is spot on. Reading the 'Is Qantas really that bad?' reader forum on the SMH was pretty funny. One guy's experience pretty much mirrored ours, except he was forced to buy $1600 business class tickets, and when he complained they sent him a $100 restaurant voucher.

Obscenity in the Opinion section

It's not true- he's actually a porn director!

Wow- Adele Horin eat your heart out! When it comes to anti-porn extremism, Sheila Jeffreys takes the cake.

Did you know that porn is responsible for Abu Grahib? I feel I should somehow be able to write 'porn' with little horns and a tail, that's how evil it apparently is.

I can't believe that Jeffries has a job as Associate Professor of anything; of course, when her byline in the SMH said she was an associate professor in the "School of Politics, Criminology and Sociology" I just knew she wasn't in a field as credible as politics, criminology or even sociology*- it had to be gender studies. I was right! Amazing how you can get paid to just make shit up, and paint a picture of an entire industry using extreme examples of individual incidents.

I know my particular field of interest (nutrition/community health nutrition) involves a mixture of both quantitative and qualitative methods, and both can be valuable, but when someone uses qualitative methods to seek out only data that confirms their preconceptions, while ignoring the rest, they're not doing research. They have as much credibility as creationists when it comes to a fact based argument, which is why I'm not going to bother pulling Jeffries' article apart piece by piece as I did with Horin's. Adele Horin's article was misguided; Sheila Jeffries strikes me as being a rabid, anti-sex extremist.

There might not be a huge volume of bile in that article, but boy it's potent. The insinuations by Jeffries of an industry based on rape and statutory rape (as if there aren't enough 18 year old girls who are willing to do porn) are practically worthy of a defamation action. Phew. I just can't get over the fact that she is paid to write crap like that when there are religious nutbags who'll do it for free. Somehow the fact that she's employed as an academic gives her more credibility that a religious extremist with the same views, despite the fact that her arguments are grounded in exactly the same kind of fantasy.

*Sorry Patrick, I can't resist a dig at sociology :)

Pic from here.

Discrimination

It's always wrong

Pub owner defends 'gays only' entry
May 28, 2007 - 12:40PM

A Melbourne pub owner who won the right to refuse entry to heterosexuals says the move was necessary to provide gay men a safe and comfortable venue.

The management of Collingwood's Peel Hotel in inner Melbourne won the right to refuse entry to heterosexuals in a landmark ruling at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal last week.
Pub owner-manager Tom McFeely said the move was necessary to provide gay men a non-threatening atmosphere to freely express their sexuality.

"If I can limit the number of heterosexuals entering the Peel, then that helps me keep the safe balance effectively," Mr McFeely told Southern Cross Broadcasting.
Mr McFeely said that while the pub welcomed everyone, its gay clientele had expressed discomfort over the number of heterosexuals and lesbians coming to the venue over the past year.

"We've had instances in the past where, for example, a buck's night has come up to the Peel or a hen's night - our whole atmosphere changes immensely," he said.

"Atmosphere" is worth creating a legal precedent that legitimises countless years of discrimination against the very people who go to the bar in the first place. What's going to stop another pub owner from barring black people from his premises because they "change the atmosphere"? What's to stop a restaurant owner from stopping a gay man from entering the premises with his hetero friend? Suppose a council doesn't want gay people to move into a certain neighbourhood? How stupidly short sighted. People who are regularly discriminated against should know better than to turn around and do it to another group of people. Congratulations, patrons of the Peel Hotel. You've delivered your enemies an excellent weapon to use on you.

Common sense and pornography can co-exist!

Today's SMH also contains a much more sensible piece on porn from someone called Kath Albury. Compare with Adele Horin's groundless hysteria over the weekend, and it's a breath of fresh air to see some common sense injected into the mainstream discussion of pornography.

Some excerpts:

These are valid questions, but they seem to me to be based in a moral framework that seeks to define pornography as either "all good" or "all bad".

My research suggests that, like other forms of popular media, pornography is made up of genres. Some are cheap and nasty in every sense of the term, others conform to high standards of ethics and aesthetics. Some pornography workplaces are unsafe and exploitative, others safeguard performers' physical and emotional health and safety. Some pornography sets are not workplaces at all, but the domestic bedrooms and lounge rooms of amateur exhibitionists.

[...]

Brutal images of "extreme" coerced or nonconsensual sex may exist online, but the majority of images feature consensual interactions. Pornography consumers get what they are willing to pay for, and it seems few want to see abuse, rape or bestiality.

My suggestion to men who are worried about pornography is that they consider whether the images they choose are produced under ethical conditions. Does the web page or video suggest that sexually active women are stupid or naive? Does it imply that it's OK to trick or manipulate women into acts they don't want to perform, because, after all, they're "just dumb sluts"? Does the plot-line or image suggest a disregard for the performer's health and safety? Does it place performers at clear risk of sexually transmissible infections? Are condoms used?

[...]

There is plenty of amateur and commercial pornography produced by men and women who genuinely enjoy sex, and seek audiences who enjoy it, too.

Staring into the political abyss

"I have this warm sensation in my pants..."

The Sydney Morning Herald headline this morning:

How annihilation looks for Howard

No wonder I'm hearing on ABC Newsradio that the government is still tearing away at Therese Rein's business dealings. It's the only potential chink in Rudd's armour they've found, and they're desperate to find something that will weaken him at the polls.

Too bad for them it's not Therese Rein Australia is looking to elect to the Prime Ministership at the next election, and there's still the sexist implication that Kevin Rudd is somehow responsible for his wife's companies. Howard and his ministers are so frantic to find the magic pill to cure their electoral woes that they don't realise just how bad they're making themselves look by attacking her.

Let it continue. After all, if Howard loses his seat at the next election, I get to have a party!

Rudd's wife succumbs to Liberal attacks

The only difference between the two appendages is the amount of Xanax Laura Bush is doped up on.

Kevin Rudd's wife has succumbed to the Howard government's attacks and decided to sell off the Australian arm of her business regardless of whether Rudd wins this year's federal election.

Meanwhile, the SMH reports that Kevin Rudd "made a point of apologising once again for saying his wife was not the appendage of a middle-aged man, a remark that prompted criticism from stay-at-home mums."

Bullshit it prompted criticism from 'stay-at-home-mums'. Typical media beat-up. It prompted criticism from rich Liberal party politicians whose kids have grown up and left home and wives remain exactly what Rudd called them: appendages to a middle-aged man. Stay-at-home mums do have a job to do, and it's quite clear they aren't who Rudd was referring to in his remarks.

The only reason people started squealing is because the description was so appropriate that it was an embarrassment. Actually, in John Howard's case, Janette is the appendage to a pompous little old man rather than a middle-aged-one. Still, true enough.

UPDATE: A couple of other decent posts on the issue- this one sums it up very nicely with a great title, and this one for calling assistant treasurer Peter Dutton 'a total fuckstick'.

Will Howard's grubby tactics finally backfire?

John and Janette's 'little reno'.
Nice to live like that courtesy of the taxpayer!

I usually avoid the opinion columns, but Mike Carlton's piece in this weekend's SMH is a corker. Alan Ramsey also has a nice anecdote on something John Howard had to say prior to the 1996 election:

On September 5, 1995, six months before voters made him Prime Minister, John Howard issued a statement as leader of the opposition. It said, in part: "In a desperate attempt to find an election life raft, the prime minister [Paul Keating] is beginning an unprecedented propaganda blitz using taxpayers' money. This soiled government is to spend a massive $14 million of taxpayers' money over the next two months as part of its pre-election panic. If the full communications barrage runs its course it could reach $50 million …

"This grubby tactic will backfire.

"Taxpayers will see through it. They don't want their money wasted on glossy advertising designed to make the prime minister feel good. Keating is about to boost government promotion to a massive new high. It's time a brake was put on this fraud. There is clearly a difference between necessary government information and blatant government electoral propaganda. Now the government is going to use taxpayers' money on a disgraceful scam.

And what did Howard promise to "fix" this "shameful and disgraceful" state of affairs? In government, he pledged, "we will ask the auditor-general to draw up new guidelines" on "what is an appropriate use of money" on government advertising.

"We" did no such thing.

Instead, after sweeping into power on March 2, 1996, "we" spent $1 billion of taxpayers' money spruiking the Government in the Coalition's first eight years back in office. I'm not kidding. The exact figure: $1.014 billion, between July 1, 1996, and June 30, 2004.

The annual totals: $55 million in 1996-97, $89 million in 1997-98, $92 million in 1998-1999, $240 million in 1999-2000, $170 million in 2000-01, $122 million in 2001-02, $103 million in 2002-03, and $143 million 2003-04. An average of almost $127 million a year for eight years. Shameless humbugs indeed.

Oh, the hypocrisy! The sheer scale, the enormity of it all. And Australia has let him get away with it for over a decade. How stupid are we?

If the Labor Party hasn't dug up footage of that little spiel of Howard's, and aren't busy getting it turned into an ad campaign for the next election then they'll be making the same damn mistake as last time around. Call the bastard on his record. Remind voters every single bloody day, every single hour, every single ad break in their favourite TV program of what they've elected. Remind them for heaven's sake not to make the same mistake again!

Not so progressive

Today is the 40th anniversary of the day when Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were first recognised as citizens in their own country. Only 40 years. And John Howard still won't utter the word 'sorry'.

About time we got ourselves a new Prime Minister, I reckon.

Asian chicks with umbrellas

This really cracks me up. It's not a unique case, but this is the first time I've got a picture of this kind of occurrence. I can understand carrying an umbrella during the sunniest hours of a stinking hot day. What I can't understand is why anyone would see fit to shield themselves from the rays of the sun at 7.30am on a morning one week away from the start of winter. Hee-bloody-larious.

Happy Birthday Star Wars!!!

Troops



What really happened after the Deathstar blew up

Porn is no one religion

"The hospital of a shameless doctor and an abnormal nurse"

In today's Sydney Morning Herald there is an item on the growing numbers of women choosing to visit adult sites such as adult dating and porn sites. Right underneath it, on the home page is a screeching polemical by Adele Horin on how porn is 'poisoning couples and destroying families'.

As much as I would like to avoid discussing the most 'personal' areas of our sex life (partly because of the icky prospect of our families stumbling across this blog one day and reading it), I'm going to have to refer to it in some capacity in order to point out just what bunk Ms Horin has spewed up this week. I'll keep it as tidy as possible, but for anyone who's not interested in knowing our porn habits, please don't read any further...

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

Just a mouse-click away are images that exceed the bounds of fantasy or imagination.

Only for those who lack imagination, Adele! As for the bounds of fantasy, in my experience, fantasies are something for which there is a boundless range. Whose fantasy is Adele referring to? Mine? Gam's? Yours? No matter how totally bizarre something you think of may be, it's pretty safe to bet that there's already a porn site or forum catering to the people who get off on it. As I found out when I went searching for a picture of a hairy armpit to use on one of my posts- most of the images that appeared in my browser were from hairy armpit erotica sites!

The godfather of US sex addiction research, Patrick Carnes, the author of In the Shadows of the Net: Breaking Free of Compulsive Online Sexual Behaviour, claims 3 to 6 per cent of people are sex addicts

'Dr' Patrick Carnes, PhD, according to his website "graduated in 1966 from St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He received his Master’s degree in 1969 from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and a Ph.D. in counselor education and organizational development from the University of Minnesota in 1980."



Thought so. Another one of these self-styled 'experts' from the United States, whose chosen field has nothing to do with the degree they received their doctorate in, yet they use the 'Dr' title to lend them an aura of credibility. In other words, they make shit up and people like Adele Horin lean on their every word. That figure of 3-6% does not arise from any kind of valid body of scientific literature. 'Dr' Carnes simply pulled it out of his arse, and Adele Horin was happy to publish it because it came from 'the godfather' of the anti-porn crusader movement sex addiction 'research'. Horin publishes a token acknowledgement on the next page that such figures are completely unscientific, but lack of a sound scientific basis didn't prevent her from spreading them in the first place.

What seems undeniable is that a subset of people spends so much time porn gazing online that they are damaging their relationships.

Why is it damaging to the relationships? I have no doubt that it's possible for someone to look at so much porn that they neglect to carry out other activities. On the other hand, it's equally likely that there's a subset of women who find the idea of masturbation disturbing and take their partner's masturbation activities to mean that there is something lacking in their sex life. Instead of finding out how the woman's views on sex and masturbation affect how they perceive their partner's porn habits, all we hear from Horin are horror stories...

Men became [...] "lazy lovers". In the end they could not be bothered with real-life sex. In other cases, sex lives became porn-like, male-focused, extreme and lacking in intimacy.

This is based on the reports from female partners who believed that porn had negatively affected their sex lives. If this is a problem, it's alarming. It's alarming in the same way it would be if men started emulating the boys from South Park or Family Guy. Most men are perfectly able to tell the difference between fantasy, fiction and reality, just as most women are. What's harder for the public to discern is the bounds of the fantasy that exist within Horin's article when she quotes self-styled 'experts' in the same breath as university researchers.

Women's self-esteem nose-dived. They felt they could not compete with the nymphs on screen. They did not measure up to the bodies or sexual performance of the women their men were watching. Connie, a 50-year-old graphics designer, whose former partner looked at pornography constantly, says: "After a while I started to feel worthless." Karen 44, whose eight-year marriage broke up over her husband's porn obsession, agonised over "why he preferred that to me".

What's happening here is an overgeneralisation about the sort of women you find in porn. Porn is a broad church. What don't these women measure up to? BBW's? Hippy chicks? Big booty? Big boobs? Small boobs? Leather-wearing? Hairy/Shaved? White/Black/Japanese/Indian/Latina chicks? One weird type of Japanese hentai where thumbelina-sized women (and probably men too) are molested by giant genitalia? Arms not hairy enough? What kind of 'sexual performance' is Horin referring to? The problem here is not the pornography, it's that the women start to convince themselves that they are worth less than a 2D woman on a computer screen. We don't hear the perspective from the men- whether Karen's partner really did prefer 'that' to having sex with her, or what Connie's husband thought about her feelings of worthlessness. What we have here is a failure to communicate!

The perspective that Horin is pushing here is that porn is a viable replacement for a real woman. That, given the chance, men will take porn in preference to the real thing. Is that true? While I can't quote any scientific literature to counter Horin's views, my guess is that if men who use porn were actually asked such questions, they'd probably laugh in astonishment. It would be a very abnormal man indeed who preferred using porn to having sex with a woman, and to my mind, women are better off with men like that taken out of the dating pool, because they're bound to have other strange issues as well!

A well-conducted British survey based on a representative sample of partners of regular porn users shows these feelings are widespread. Most partners are largely neutral about their men's regular pornography use, the survey, published in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy in 2003, shows.

But a significant minority - about one-third of the women - found it highly distressing. About 32 per cent said their partner's porn use had adversely affected their sex life, 39 per cent said it had negatively affected their relationship, 34 per cent had lessened self-esteem, 41 per cent felt less attractive and desirable since having discovered their partner's use, and 42 per cent said it made them feel insecure. More than one-quarter viewed it as a kind of affair.

The assumption here is that it's the 'fault' of the male partner for viewing pornography and causing distress to the female partner. What's not addressed is that maybe some of the women have underlying issues with sex and masturbation that lead to their lessened self-esteem and feelings of being less attractive and desirable. The fact that more than 25% of women viewed their partner's viewing of pornography as 'a kind of affair' is what sets the alarm bells ringing; would these women also view their partner's masturbation in the same way?



Would their partner jerking off in the absence of visual stimulation elicit the same reaction? Why would they have that reaction? If a survey showed that 25% of women felt less attractive and desirable because their partner masturbated from time to time, would we see articles from Horin on how masturbation, a perfectly normal and healthy behaviour, was 'poisoning' relationships? Or would we say that the women's views perhaps reflected something fundamentally wrong with the way our society judges sexual behaviour?



The point that Horin completely misses in her article is that porn is simply a masturbation aid, not something that men use as a replacement for a sexual relationship. Men who do not want a real sexual relationship are a genuine minority. If they weren't we wouldn't see the proliferation of adult 'dating' (great euphemism that) sites such as Adult Matchmaker, because men would all be getting their fix from porn. Clearly they're not.

Horin shares a few extreme examples, presumably real, to hammer the horror home:

Gracie, a human resources manager, insists she is no prude. She is a willing sexual explorer. But even she was surprised at what her 33-year-old boyfriend, a builder, stored under his "favourites" file. "There must have been 20 porn sites there. I was pretty shocked - not that they were there, only that there were so many," she says.

My thought? "Only 20?!". Of course, if Gracie's boyfriend was paying $30 a month for all those sites, then it might be a problem- a financial one! $30 seems to be the going rate for many- some are cheaper... Gam and I subscribed to Wifey's World for a month once, and I think it was about $30. I imagine if a guy couldn't control his spending on porn then it might become a problem. The real problem in Gracie's case seemed to be that her boyfriend confused fantasy with reality:

The sex became impersonal and aggressive: "It became more 'porn' style - pulling my hair, no kissing, slapping around a bit, all stuff I was initially OK with. And always he wanted to come in my face," Gracie says. "There was no real intimacy, no thought about what I might like."

I've seen a lot of porn. Not all porn involves the guy cumming on a woman's face! Not all porn involves hair pulling. Most of the porn I've seen involves some kissing, but in my opinion it only works when there appears to be genuine chemistry between the 'actors'. I've also seen a lot of amateur porn, in which none of those things occur: the girls are average, the guys are average, the sex is average, there's just the 'naughtiness' of two very normal people doing it on camera. In fact, it's often better, as the two people want to sleep with each other and aren't being paid to do so. Horin is buying into the myth than all porn involves plastic-surgerified actresses like Jesse Jane and Gina Lynn being contorted into uncomfortable positions all for the gratification of some well hung (but usually not very attractive) guy. I find myself scarcely able to believe that Gracie's boyfriend wanted the same thing every time, because if sex was the same every time it would be boring. Variety really is the spice of life.




Porn is a broad church, Adele, and you'd know that if you'd actually watched some instead of just railing against it.

Ordinary women's desire or desperation to "make it more like porn" has helped fire the popularity of Brazilian waxes [...] Unlike the natural-looking porn stars of the 1970s such as Linda Lovelace of Deep Throat fame, the nymphs populating internet porn today have their pubic hairs ripped out after an application of hot wax. The desired look is "clean" and pre-pubescent. "Women today are emulating porn stars who have no pubic hair," says Etcoff, "and I think men like it."

I'm not sure what Horin is getting at here, particularly with the use of the word 'clean'. The implication that pubic hair is somehow dirty is a pet dislike of mine. Brazilians are just a fashion, pushed as much by women's magazines and shows like Sex and the City, and not something that all guys buy into. Women in 80s porn have hair in places that I scarcely knew it grew, and I'm sure men back then weren't thinking "If only there was no hair down there, this porn would be so good". More like they were thinking "Naked chick! Having sex! Alriiight!".

Figures provided by Nielsen/NetRatings NetView show 2.7 million Australians visited an "adult" website in March (this figure counts repeat visitors to adult websites only once); 4.3 million visited in the first three months of this year. More than 35 per cent of all internet users in the quarter ending March visited an adult website at least once

I take that to mean that around a quarter of the population visits adult websites. I'm one of them. Gam's one of them. We look at a lot of stuff together. We've had a great sex life right from the word 'go' in our relationship, and we still have a great sex life now. Some of the porn we look at is simply out of sheer fascination rather than erotic desire (there's some weird shit out there). When we're apart we might look at porn alone. In fact, because Gam is much more patient at wading through crappy porn than I am, I rely on him to save clips that he thinks I might like!



And while we enjoy some of the same porn, we have different tastes too, as you might expect- Gam likes women and I like men. He gets off more on watching women enjoy themselves, and I get off more on watching guys enjoy themselves (that's why gay porn is often better than straight porn!). I also like to read erotic literature, as my imagination can often do a better job than a porn director can. And no, my imagination does not dream up soft, romantic fantasies- it's a horrible stereotype of women's sexuality. Women don't all want the same thing any more than men do.

Do I feel less attractive when Gam takes a look at the big-bootied Latina women of Mexican Lust? Do I feel like I need a bigger arse to 'compete'? Hell no! Gam likes me exactly the way I am! It's only when a woman's partner pushes her to change her appearance so that she better fulfils his sexual fantasies that there is a problem in the relationship (if there ever was a 'dump him' scenario it would be that). If a woman decides by herself that she needs to change in order to please her partner, I would argue that it's probably a psychological problem on the part of the woman, not a problem that can be addressed by her partner ceasing to view porn, and that both partners might be better off discussing their views and perhaps visiting a counsellor.

Women are also under pressure to emulate the porn stars' apparent penchant for anal sex, according to four consecutive Swedish studies, the latest published in 2005 in the International Journal of STD and AIDS. Young men who are regular porn consumers are more likely to have had anal sex with a girl, and most of the men liked it. Most young women did not like anal sex, with fewer than half saying they would do it again, the studies found.

[...]

Nadine, a 30-year-old accountant, who observed her boyfriend, a 33-year-old lawyer, graduate to harder and harder porn sites over years, says: "He loves anal and I hate it. He knows that I do but he still insists on it. I dread it and honestly, I close my eyes and pray that he hurries up and gets it over with it."

Wow. Another 'dump him' scenario. What kind of relationship is that? Here, Horin is using an example of a woman experiencing something that I would argue at best borders on rape to prove that porn results in women having anal sex against their will. The problem here is not anal sex in porn, it's a) the fact that any woman might feel she has to give in to any kind of sexual activity she does not want to engage in and b) the fact that there are men out there who feel they have the right to engage in sexual activities with an unwilling partner. That's an attitude that's been around for a lot longer than porn has existed, and it's one that's absolutely and fundamentally wrong.

Basically, Horin's article is one that attempts to lump responsibility for some time-honoured sexual and relationship woes experienced by ordinary men and women onto 'porn'. Her article lacks any recognition of the fact that 'porn' is a term that covers an incredibly broad range of content that caters to an even broader range of people, women included. If masturbation while viewing porn is cited as a factor in relationship troubles, it's not necessarily porn that's at the heart of the problem.

I still can't accept what a wanker I am...

When we saw this on the Chaser a couple of weeks ago we just cracked up- I mean, someone had to say it! Bono is the world's biggest tool.

The great Muckaty Station rort

"Screwing the underprivileged is part of the Australian way of life"

Just heard on ABC Newsradio that the Howard government is giving the traditional owners of Muckaty Station in the NT a one-off $12 million payment for a nuclear waste for indefinite dumping of nuclear waste on their land.

A traditional owner of Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory says she is happy to have a nuclear waste dump on her land.

Amy Lauder is one of 70 Ngapa traditional owners who have agreed to nominate the station, 120 kilometres north of Tennant Creek, as a site for Australia's nuclear waste.

The decision means scientific testing can now take place on a 1.5 square kilometre section of land.

If it is approved by the Federal Government, traditional owners will receive a one-off package of $12 million.

I'm wondering if Amy Lauder has any idea how much money the government spent on its last advertising campaign. Considering $12 million is worth not quite 3 weeks' worth of Howard's self-promoting advertisements, I think the traditional owners should have held out for more. $12 million a year would be more like a reasonable figure. I reckon the government is rubbing its hands in glee and scoffing about how well they've suckered them.

Multi-offending paedophile gets passport

Is this fucked up or what? Jack Thomas, a perfectly normal guy who has not been convicted of a crime, is subject to a control order, and this subhuman piece of dirt is free to travel the world and sexually abuse children. How is it that he isn't in jail? Who presents the bigger danger to the community, people like Jack Thomas and David Hicks, or a convicted paedophile with 40 convictions?

Guess which sort the media gets most frothy-mouthed over?

The Howard Government has dropped plans to appeal against a court ruling to hand back the confiscated passport of a notorious pedophile whom federal police suspect of abusing children in Asia last year and who they believe will reoffend as soon as he leaves Australia.

Convicted pedophile and one-time prison escapee Paul Thompson, 57, successfully challenged a decision by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer to ban him from leaving Australia after he breached reporting convictions last year and secretly travelled to Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.

Australian Federal Police told the Administrative Appeals Tribunal they suspected Thompson - who has more than 40 sex-related convictions spanning three decades, mostly involving young boys - would reoffend in Asia if granted a passport.

Federal police last week interviewed teachers from the school in Thailand. Agents are also understood to be in Bali where Thompson coached youths at a cricket club between 1999 and 2004 after escaping from a West Australian jail in 1991.

After his escape, he was convicted and imprisoned in 1996 for molesting a boy in Darwin but then released, despite being wanted over his escape in Western Australia, where he was serving time for preying on boys, aged between seven and 10, in Perth's public parks.

Common sense a hit with women

Kevin Rudd's defence of his wife in the latest attack from the Howard government over the now-resolved issue of underpayment of workers by a company purchased by one of her businesses is apparently 'a hit with women', according to The Australian.

To my mind, this is just reflective of how many of the government's policies have demonstrated how out of touch they are with the fact that many families have two working parents. I'd really like to see some statistics on how many of the male Liberal front-benchers have working spouses, because I suspect the number is very low.

Meanwhile Rudd's wife Therese Rein has had the gall to work hard and become a successful businesswoman (Mikey has a good post on the 'controversy'), while John Howard, taking umbrage at Kevin Rudd's assertion that women have the right to be more than "appendages to middle-aged men", has said that women should not be criticised for their choice, whether it's to work or become an appendage to a middle-aged man. Just because it sounds bad doesn't mean it's not a perfectly appropriate description of the wives of most of these sexist, suit-wearing fucks.

The implication in the attacks by Howard government members on Rudd for his wife's business is that somehow he controls the business through her. They're so used to an unequal partnership where the man wields the power in their own marriages that they just assume Kevin Rudd's marriage fits the same mould.

Fei time

John Howard and the chamber of $3000 chairs

Next thing you know we'll be hearing Johnny has spent $3000 of taxpayers' money on one of these... perhaps using $110000 worth of champagne and fine wines to flush!

The most galling thing about this flagrant misuse of public money is the fact that John Howard needed to spend almost $20 000 of taxpayers' money for a 'design expert' to 'advise' on the style of chairs being selected.

John Howard and his ministers are the proud new occupants of a $200,000 set of executive chairs for the cabinet room. Ordered long before the Coalition took a dive in the polls, that amounts to almost $3000 a chair.

But last night the Prime Minister pulled the pin on a $500,000-plus renovation of the private dining room in his Parliament House offices, revealing the Government's sensitivity to election-year accusations of extravagance.

The about-face came despite Senate estimates being told yesterday that design work costing $65,000 was well advanced on the plan to knock down a wall so Mr Howard's dining room could be enlarged for more guests.

[...]

Senate estimates was told the Government had already bought the 36 executive leather chairs for the cabinet room at $2885 apiece. It had bought another 28 slightly cheaper chairs - $2707 each - for the adjoining cabinet committee room. They had a lower back.

The $179,656 purchase cost comes on top of just over $18,000 spent on engaging design experts to advise on the type of chairs.

Heck, you'd think for $20 000 you could get someone to make you the chairs too. Can't blame the 'design expert' though- I'd happily accept $20000 to tell someone what would look good in their dining room without my having to lift a finger and do any work. Sounds like a great job!

Yet it seems we're always hearing about people rorting Centrelink benefits. Why doesn't the government 'employ' dole recipients to tell it their thoughts on the 'style' of chairs they think would look best in the PM's dining room? I'm sure they'd do it for, oh hell, let's say the bargain price of $10000. That's more than a person's annual income on the dole anyway!
===========================================

As an aside, I recently heard the phrase 'executive size' used as a euphemism for small penis. It was in relation to rich wankers and their flamboyant 'mid life crisis' cars, but I think 'executive size' might also apply just as well to rich megalomaniacs who waste public money on flamboyant $3000 chairs...

Work Choices' name of the week

Alan Moir sums up very well the government's new excuse to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on advertising public relations information campaign.

Forced march for school kids

Fun for some...

From the ABC:

School children in Western Australia are being made to participate in traditional Australian sports such as cricket as part of a campaign to tackle obesity.

The Education Minister, Mark McGowan, says statistics show 30 per cent of girls and 23 per cent of boys in the state are overweight.

The government has made it compulsory for all students in years one to ten to do a minimum of two hours physical activity a week.

[...]

"So that kids can now at school for two hours a week play sports like cricket, athletics, tag-footy, netball, basketball, all those traditionally fun sports that are very important for growing up, very important for being healthy," he said.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who was forced to play "traditionally fun sports" including the above and grew to detest most of them.

Netball was something that I had to play a couple of times on primary school sports days because it was the 'girl's sport'. The boys got to play soccer. Hated netball.

Cricket. Don't even get me started on cricket. In fact, I hate any sport played with a bat and ball- cricket, baseball and softball are some of the most boring sports ever invented. I'm sure a spot of backyard and beach cricket is fun, but being marched off to stand around in a field with the sun in your eyes only to be jeered if you miss a catch 20 minutes later because you've fallen asleep on your feet is not fun. I detested cricket in school, and I still do now.

Athletics was something I only ever participated in a couple of times. Shot puts were heavy, javelins awkward, running was a chore- we usually had someone yelling at us and threatening us with more laps if we didn't hurry up. Besides, I wasn't very good at any of it. At least I don't hate athletics now. In fact, I actually enjoy running, when I don't have to push myself. Mustn't have been forced to do all that much of it in school after all. Also, it's something you can do by yourself when the mood takes you, it doesn't require a team or any equipment apart from a comfortable pair of shoes. Not bad.

Basketball- I think I played basketball at school at some point. I vaguely remember falling over on one of the outdoor asphalt/gravel courts and taking a whole heap of skin off my palm. Still, I played it socially on friday nights with some of my friends and enjoyed it, although I've never played it since and I'm not interested in watching it either (it's no fun when the game is full of uber tall people who just pock the ball in from enormous distances).

Tag-footy: presumably Mr McGowan is referring to the game I know as 'touch footy'. This involves my all time favourite school PE story of all:

One week we played touch footy for our weekly PE class. I caught the ball incorrectly and it somehow hit my ring finger end-on. It swelled up to twice its normal size and hurt like hell and over the next couple of weeks went variously blue, purple yellow and green. I couldn't bend it. A week later it was still discoloured and disfigured, not to mention painful, and I had a piano exam in 3 weeks' time, so I got a note from my mother asking for me to be excused from playing touch football the next week for that reason. The PE teacher absolutely went off his head at me, saying he could understand if I had an upcoming footy match or something and needed to recuperate for that(!), but being excused for a piano exam was "pathetic".

For well over a year I could not bend my left ring finger down to touch my palm. I can now, but to this day, it sometimes gets 'locked' in place when I do so, and I have to use my right hand to make it straight again.

Fuck PE. Forcing kids to participate in those sports will probably drive more of them away from those games than it will create lifelong good habits for physical activity.

Bush the worst president in history

From the SMH:

In an interview with the BBC, Mr Carter talked about Tony Blair, the outgoing British Prime Minister, and his relationship with Mr Bush, calling it "loyal, blind, apparently subservient".

"I think that the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world," Mr Carter said.

In a telephone interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Mr Carter said: "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this Administration has been the worst in history."

And in today's other news, the sky is blue.

Say 'No' to Telstra Tower?!

Gam and I walked through this protest in Guyatt Park on the way to Toowong for grocery shopping on the weekend. We'd received several mailouts, including one from the local federal Liberal MP, Michael Johnson, urging people to come and protest against Telstra's plans to build a mobile phone tower.

Given the lack of consistent evidence for harm to peoples' health caused by mobile phone towers, and the fact that there are far more important issues affecting health and safety in the suburb (pedestrian safety along Carmody road, for instance), we simply threw the mailouts into the recycle bin.

When we walked through the park there were two large banners tied to the gazebo: one said something along the lines of "Stop the Cancer Cluster now!". We thought it was very funny, as the protest was just winding up, and we got stuck behind a group of 3 young men, one of whom lit up a cigarette as he left the park, and whose smoke we had to breathe until we could get upwind. He dropped the cigarette on the ground when he'd finished.

Also hilarious was the sheer number of cars parked along the streets- people had actually driven to Guyatt Park to protest. Given that Guyatt Park is no more than a 15-20 minute walk from any location in St Lucia, the car-lined streets emphasised what lazy bastards these protesters were. 5 minutes' walk from the park, we saw a BMW that had been parked in the close near the park drive slowly into the driveway of a posh block of riverside units!

What's annoying about these morons driving to the park to whinge about the Mobile Phone Tower of Doom is that they'd be whinging like little bitches if their coverage was patchy. Of course, it's not like they've all decided to stop using their phones in protest, or even in paranoia about the risk to their health. They still want to keep using their phones, they just want the tower to be located in a less wealth-eh suburb so it will be little Darren and Sharon at risk of a brain tumour rather than little Gertrude and Sebastien. And, as Gam said, most of them work in the City or Toowong, where there is a much greater density of mobile phone towers, yet they're not exactly up in arms about that.

While I can see why these people aren't protesting about things like hoons and pedestrian safety in St Lucia (because they all drive everywhere), if they're worried about 'cancer clusters' then why don't they get out and organise protests demanding that public smoking be banned? We've all got to breathe the same air. I suppose it's out of the question to demand measures to force drivers to reduce the number of unnecessary trips they make in order to cut greenhouse emissions and improve air quality in the city...? After all, these are things for which there is sound evidence pointing towards adverse public health effects. Why the total lack of interest in things that actually matter?

Pact with the Publishers

Reading this item in the SMH this morning made me recall the Norma Khouri scandal. Its made-for-Hollywood bad guys and handsome, blue-eyed love interest along with the heroine whose only fault is an excess of pluckiness and defiance in the face of relentless oppression are so contrived that they read like a Dan Brown novel.

Of course, the fact that she's attractive and a Christian does wonders for her chances of her story being turned into a Hollywood movie. I don't know if the hackneyed telemovie-style narrative is the fault of the journalist or Marina Nemat herself, but it really grated on me. That sort of crap is better suited to the Daily Telegraph.

FA Cup Final

Chelski vs. Man-ure. We'll be barracking for Chelsea simply because Gam hates Manchester United with a passion (Passion! You've never seen the likes of it!). One of our footy team mates has brought along a Man-U shirt that someone gave him just to stir Gam.

Game is sometime around midnight... will update shortly after. Go Chelsea!

Update: What an anticlimax. I was so tired from getting so little sleep of late (assignments, assignments, assignments) that I keeled over at 11pm, just after coverage started. And Chelsea won, too! At least they put paid to Jason Culina's 'play-it-safe' prediction of a 1-0 victory for Man-U with a goal by Wayne 'the yobbo' Rooney. Looks like Mourinho might get to keep his job after all.

American terror

Overheard on SBS 6:30pm news one night this week:

... amid claims that the American-led insurgency in Baghdad is struggling...

Freudian slip by Stan Grant, or a bit of fun by the guy who writes the script for the teleprompter?

Meet Ron Paul

The only antiwar candidate for President of the United States. He's also the only non interventionist candidate running, which means anything he does will be limited to the American people. He's a Republican. Compared to the wall to wall support for continuing if not expanding the Iraq war and lockstep support for Israel in the Democratic party and the Republican party he's a breath of fresh air.

Er, I mean Hillary Clinton, wow, a woman in the White house. Won't that be cool!

Mcleod's Unionists

This is on commercial TV no less. The govt. is so boned on this issue. I'm wondering if Workchoices / Workplace / CuddlyTeddies / HappyKittens / Whatever they're calling it this week might be the longest political suicide note in history. I love how Taylor refuses to scab for Phil.

Playboy jokes of the month

Missed last month because the jokes weren't so good.

Q: Why did Britney Spears shave her head?
A: She wanted the drapes to match the carpet.


Our Unabashed Dictionary defines a nocturnal emission as a 'snoregasm'.

Good news: Your wife meets you at the front door wearing a sexy negligee.
Bad news: She's just coming home.

Howard Fails Again

30 years ago John Howard opposed sanctions against the Apartheid regime, stating: "Sanctions will inevitably hurt the poor blacks in South Africa more than any other section of the South African population."

Just yesterday the same man who supported the Springbok tours of Australia and New Zealand, banned the Australian cricket team from touring Zimbabwe. Ordinary Zimbabweans who work in hotels, at sporting grounds and various other parts of Zim's struggling tourist industry will miss out. Instead Australia will pay a fine, to the Zimbabwean government, so Robert Mugabe can build a new palace or whatever the hell he wants. This is the same Australian cricket team that has toured:

Pakistan
Apartheid South Africa in 1970 (under a Liberal Party government)
Bangladesh
Sri Lanka

Streetwalking Johnnie

"$16 a week, but you don't get paid overtime or penalty rates on public holidays"

In the papers today: Maxine McKew would win the seat of Bennelong from John Howard if an election was held today.

From yesterday's news, it seems that John Howard already had wind of those polls, given that he was streetwalking in Bennelong, trawling for votes:

Mr Howard reported that nobody had anything bad to say about the budget during an electioneering walkabout this morning at a shopping centre in his north-west Sydney electorate of Bennelong.

"It certainly seems on the basis of my wandering around this morning for about three-quarters of an hour that the people of this part of Australia like the budget," he said.

"I've had a number of very favourable responses and no particular criticisms."

[...]


"This is not the first election when this far out I've wandered around Eastwood Plaza.

Politics for Voters Installment 2!

John Howard: Hey voter, how's it going?

Voter: Ok, I'm a bit bummed about a few things you've done... We've been having that new guy, Kevin, over for dinner and he's got a heap of fresh new ideas. Also, I spoke to this bum on the street and he said you were a dessicated coconut.

JH: I see... Look mate, do you like ice cream?

Voter: Oh yeah I love ice cream!

JH: Well here, I've got some for you...




Voter: OMG!!!! IT'S ON YOUR COCK!!!!

JH: Come on! just a second ago you told me you loved icecream.

Voter: Yes but not when it's covering your hairy balls!!!

JH: It's really creamy and it gets creamier the longer you eat it...

Voter: Well, alright... Maybe just a little. And no tricks!

JH: No way dude, I just want you to have some ice cream...

Olympics coverage sucks

Kids aren't watching the Olympics, eh? Why might that be?

I'm in the 15-30 age group, and I love watching the Olympics.

What I don't love watching is the piss-poor coverage of the Olympics by Australian television stations. It's crap. They don't care about covering as many different sports as possible, they care about whether an Australian is about to win gold. If that means there's a gymnastics or athletics final going on while there's an Australian waiting in a line for half an hour to have their chance at equestrian or shooting gold, Channel 7 (or whoever's broadcasting the damn thing) always goes with the Australian, no matter how boring the so-called 'sport' they are competing in.

Who has ever seen an Olympic handball match on Australian TV? I got a bunch of cheap tickets to the Sydney 2000 olympics through my highschool, and the absolute highlight of my day was the two handball matches- a sport I had never even heard of. Both the uneven pairing of the Angolan and Hungarian women's teams and the match between two giants of the sport, Norway and Denmark (attended by the respective royal families), were incredibly exciting sporting events. The lowlight of the day was a baseball match between Australia and the Netherlands (yawn).

I've never seen another handball match since, thanks to Channel 7's shitty coverage of the Athens Olympics.
I expected to be on my arse in front of the TV all day, but in the end I probably only watched a few hours thanks to their jingoistic and extremely limited coverage. I was under the apparently mistaken impression that it was supposed to be a world sporting event.

The only people to blame for the disinterest of young people in the Olympics are the media outlets who are responsible for screening it. They practically hound their viewers away from the screen with their jingoism and narrow-mindedness.

Of Fiscal Conservatives and Cricket Tragics

'“You can say you're a fiscal conservative but you've got to act like one to be believed to be one,” Mr Howard told Southern Cross Broadcasting.

“When you've opposed all the fiscally conservative measures that this government's put up over the last few years, it's a bit rich to turn around and say 'despite all of that, forget my behaviour, just read my lips - I am a fiscal conservative'. Give us a break.”'

John Howard, 2007

"And that of course is said by a Prime Minister who’s never been shy or reluctant about parading his credentials as either a cricket tragic or somebody who has a great love of many of the other sports that Australians play."

John Howard, 2001



Somehow I don't think Johnny's much better at telling us about Rudd than he is about describing himself.

-This post made in Windows... (What!? It has file system tools I need...)

John Howard could be right...

From the latest 'Your Rights At Work' email:

Sometimes you have to wonder if John Howard thinks Australians are too stupid to see the writing on the wall.

You know, sometimes I wonder if Australians are too stupid to see the writing on the wall.

A day at Southbank

One of the first 'artworks' we viewed. It said 'I AM HE', but it looked so close to 'LAME' when viewed from this angle that we should have realised it was a portent of the remainder of our Queensland Art Gallery experience.

On ANZAC day Gam and I went to Southbank with Mike and Bek. For a while we walked around and got smoked on by schoolkids wearing clothes that must be fashionable, along with all their makeup at once. One girl was wearing a dress no longer than a long-ish t-shirt that had a strategically placed mesh panel right at arse/crotch height. She had nice legs, sure, but even a miniskirt would have looked prudish by comparison. Another classic trend is Le Sack- attractive girls wearing something that looks like they've stolen the shower curtain from their parents' house to wear as a dress:

I'm not sure what made these pictures so small. I was disappointed to have captured only the 'bag dress' this chick was wearing, and lost the fantastic detail of her bizarre haircut.

Some drunk Aussie guys walked past and posed with some delighted tourists. The real Aussie experience!
Once again, it would have been nice to capture the looks on their faces...

Then we went to the Queensland Art Gallery. I don't know what was worse. At least with the bogan kids we could sit around and have a laugh. It's been a while since I've gone to an art gallery, but apparently fun is strictly forbidden. As is carrying a bottle of water. Some timid little guy came up to us and announced that as we didn't have a bag to put our water bottle in we'd have to dispose of it. Bek came to our rescue and said we could fit it in her bag, but still... WTF?

We got approached so many times by people who wanted to tell us not to do stuff that when Gam seated himself on a bench in the middle of one room I quickly asked him to make sure there wasn't a sign saying "please do not touch" on the damn thing.

The Naughty Chair.

I made up for it by hopping down a set of stairs that made a lovely loud echo-y sound in the gallery, and got shot a dirty look by one of the employees. I'm actually quite a well-behaved, reserved kind of person, but being in such a stifling environment made me want to do all sorts of things to upset them. I managed to restrain myself, but I haven't ruled out going back and streaking through the gallery one day. Seriously, if you're not a stereotypical art-wanker type who can mime sipping a chardonnay and talk only through your nostrils, don't bother with the Queensland Art Gallery- you'll only feel uncomfortable.

I'm pretty sure my pointing out that this elephant is in fact painted with millions of tiny sperms and not 'bindis', as claimed on the blurb, was not appreciated by gallery staff. But seriously, each little 'bindi' the elephant was painted with looked like this:

Does that not look exactly like sperm? We christened the artwork 'Bukkake Elephant'.

The only other thing we learned from our visit is that the amount of wanky blurb for the artwork is inversely proportional to the talent of the artist. The Queensland Art Gallery has some nice stuff, but it's not a place for real people.

Oh, and never go to Southbank on a public holiday. It's awful. As locals we should have known better. It's a bogan-pit at the best of times, but this time there were crowds, there were brawls...

Scratch 'n' sniff

An emerging movement among swingers: sniff before you strip.

Another small victory in the eternal struggle to get Gam to stop wearing deodorant: the benefits of BO for your sex life!

A group in Switzerland studied this by asking women to sniff men's dirty T-shirts. The women found some of these sexy, and preferred those worn by men with MHC genes most different from their own.

[...]

As a footnote, the Swiss discovered that the birth control pill seemed to reverse women's preferences: Pill-takers liked the dirty T-shirts from men most similar to themselves. That prompted a few researchers to wonder what happens if you choose your mate on the pill and later go off it. Would you suddenly discover that your husband stank?

[...]

But until recently no one had linked MHC genes to any effect on actual romantic couples, said Garver-Apgar. So in 2006 she and her colleagues rounded up 49 couples who'd been together for periods of between a month and 12 years and tested those three MHC genes that vary the most from person to person.

Since we have two copies of each gene, there were really six places where these couples might or might not have matched. On average, the couples had one matching gene out of six, though some shared two matches and one couple had four.

She and her colleagues then asked the couples about their sexual activities and sexual satisfaction. Only a few of the women admitted to cheating, but these tended to be from the genetically similar couples. The more similar couples also reported less sexual satisfaction.

Garver says she'd like to expand the study and look further into the possibility that birth control pills change a woman's nose for sexually compatible men.

Not so sure about the birth control pill thing though- Implanon hasn't changed my nose for Gam.

It's posts like these that make me glad my family don't read my blog...

Custard Apples

I can think of two good things about Autumn (three if you count the lovely weather Brisbane has been having over the last month or so): persimmons and custard apple, both going cheap at the chinese convenience store on Sir Fred Schonell drive. At Fruity Capers in Toowong, persimmons are priced at 2 for $3, or $1.99 each, while custard apples are priced at $1.99 each (or $10/kg). The chinese store has both persimmons and custard apple at $4.99 per kg. Not hard to guess what I've been stocking up on every time I go there!