If I'd realised he was a psychotic gun-toting pyromaniac, I would never have called him a nerd

Whatever you do, watch who you call a nerd on the internet.



The Age reports:


"A US Navy technician who got mad when someone mocked him as a "nerd" over the internet climbed into his car and drove 2100 km from Virginia to Texas to teach the other guy a lesson.


"The feud started when Anderson, who runs a haunted house near Waco, joined a picture-sharing website and posted his artwork and political views. After he blocked some people from his page because of insults and foul language, they retaliated by making obscene digitally altered pictures of him, he said."


After driving across the country with the alleged aim of shooting his chat-room rival, instead


...Tavares burned the man's trailer down. This week, Tavares, 27, was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading no contest to arson and admitting he set the blaze.



The Age goes on:

"He lost everything - all over an internet squabble," the investigator said.

I've seen some pretty heated discussions on the old internet, but I'm glad to say that my experience is yet to involve

1. The use of the phrase "nerd", in anything more than a self-derogatory fashion

2. Long-distance highway driving to exact revenge

3. The lighting on fire of personal property

4. Seven year jail sentences


So I guess I'm not trying hard enough really.

Which superhero are you?

Well, apparently.....

Your results:
Gigglewick is Supergirl

Supergirl 67% Superman 65% Robin 57% Wonder Woman 47% Spider-Man 40% The Flash 40% Hulk 35% Green Lantern 25% Iron Man 25% Batman 20% Catwoman 20%

Lean, muscular and feminine. Honest and a defender of the innocent.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz



There you have it. Clearly I hate Superman because we have so much in common.

But all the streets are cleaned of streaks/And tarnished not by memories

Last Saturday I went to a "girls night", at the invitation of one of my new friends. I almost didn't go, because I am a bit of a social chicken at times plus was exhausted by the week's hijinks.

I needn't have been concerned about being a social chicken, as my new friend phoned me on Saturday afternoon to offer to pick me up, "so I wouldn't have to arrive alone". Who does that? Is this the so-called country hospitality about which I have heard tell (mostly in ballads also containing the phrase "hey nonny nonny"?)

I'm glad I did go. Not only were "the girls" absolutely lovely, but it was a very pleasant way to spend a Saturday evening. One of the nice things about meeting new people (I was the most local person there, and even my family have only been in the area 28 years) is that your default conversations aren't about what happened to you in Grade 2.

This has been a bit of a bugbear for me - while one of my dearest friends I have known for this long (Hi L!), most of the people I don't see any more I don't see for a reason, one that's mutual and understood. I don't mind moving on - I'd actually prefer it to having endless conversations that start with

"Hey, remember when we were in Grade Six and you were desperately in love with (insert name of crush here)? How funny was that???"

Aside from the fact that it wasn't funny at all, it highlights the horrendous realisation that in fact you don't know anything about your friend beyond those shared experiences, most of which are over a decade (or in some cases, two decades) old.

Anyway, not only could I start my conversations with this group of women as a grown-up, even better, there was a spread which was enormous and (my heart sinks) I fear standard at these events. Three types of potato chip! Four different home made dips!! Three different kinds of dessert!!! And no one wearing anything dressier than jeans, and I was the only person there wearing make-up. It's a far cry from Polly, but certainly more relaxed.

Also, as a direct result of the girls night, I also now know everything there is to know about:

1. The beauty industry labour market in my town

2. Police rosters and scheduling, particularly as they pertain to having three kids and a partner who also works

3. Who gets Brazilian waxing done (emerging markets include girls under 14 and women over 60...WHY for the love of all that is decent, WHY????)

4. Which relationships of people I have met only once are on the brink of dissolution (not who I expected, I must admit)

5. How irritating roll-top tracksuit pants are (made a contribution of my own to that conversation)

Okay, so it wasn't high-intellect. But it was warm and friendly and low-stress. And just what I needed.


Well done, those girls!

Pardon me boys, is that the Chattanooga choo choo?

No. No, it isn't.

When I was in Melbourne on Friday I spent 45 minutes stuffing around at Southern Cross train station, waiting for my train and idly browsing, cursing the fact that I had spent $6 on a sandwich when there was Nandos hidden behind some kind of magic Labyrinth style door.

So there I was flicking disconsolately through the racks of $10 CDs (now aimed at Gen X-ers!!! Nirvana for $9.95!!! etc) when I spied my 12 year old cousin skulking about with two other boys. He spotted me a moment after I saw him, and promptly fled.

The consensus among the people I have told this story so far seems to be “DOB! DOB! DOB!” (boy-scout style). I’m not sure.

Normally, I would suggest that the bond of cousins would mean you don’t dob.

But this kid is TWELVE! What the hell was he doing five suburbs away from his school on a Friday at one o’clock?

Consider the evidence:

1. He wasn't with any adults - obvs. guilty
2. He ran away - obvs. guilty

Consider the other options:

1. Curriculum Day on which both his divorced parents gave him permission to bang around city with other young boys
2. Curriculum Day on which ONE parent (the permissive one) gave him permisison to bang around city with other young boys prompting screaming match and allegations of mega-bad parenthood
3. School assignment: wander aimlessly around Southern Cross station in order to test the loitering laws and efficacy of the local gendarmes.

Hmmm. Perhaps I'll have to save this little tid-bit of information for the next family gathering. I'm thinking Christmas.....

Born to choose

So those who read this blog regularly will be unsurprised to learn that I think Victorian MP Candy Broad is doing an very sensible thing by introducing legislation to decriminalise abortion in Victoria.

I know there are a lot of people out there who don’t think that much about reproductive rights, that is to say, they don’t think about the issue at all. The main reason for this is that most people assume that, if they need services in an emergency, they will be able to get them.

For most metropolitan women and families, this is true. If you can’t get a doctor to prescribe the morning-after pill, for example, you can go to another doctor, and keep going until you find one who will give it to you.

Imagine finding yourself with an unexpected and unwanted pregnancy. What if the only doctor in town refused to provide access to emergency contraception or abortion, and the next town with a doctor was 75kms away? Now imagine that you are 16 and your parents don’t even know you’re having sex, let alone that you are pregnant. For women who find themselves in this dilemma, abortion, particularly equitable access to services, is a big issue.


The other reason that people tend to forget about this issue, is because they assume that because it seems possible to access abortion, that it is legal. It's not.

Study after study has found that the majority of Australians accept that women have a right to determine their own reproductive lives. And yet, abortion is still illegal in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. Even the Northern Territory, not always regarded as a progressive place, has decriminalised abortion.


One in three women will have an abortion at some stage in their lives. The women who have abortions are, therefore, also the women who are mothers to our children.

The state of play in Victoria is, plainly, unacceptable. The law is an anachronism in desperate need of updating. And here is why:

1. Legalising abortion has not been linked to an increase in the number of abortions. In WA, the abortion rate actually dropped slightly following decriminalisation of abortion in 1998. Certainly there is no "epidemic" and inasmuch as figures are able to be relied upon, the abortion rate has remained steady in Australia for a decade.

2. Systematic and integrated sex education is the key to decreasing the abortion rate. Countries, such as Belgium and Sweden, which have enshrined a woman’s right to choose in law and which are able to educate people fully about the consequences of their sexual activity experience some of the lowest abortion rates in the world.

3. Countries where abortion is legal have a significantly lower maternal morbidity. Fewer women die of pregnancy-related complications in countries where abortion is legal and freely accessible. Maternal morbidity has been drastically impacted by the availability of accessible, if not legal, abortion. If you're interested in the judicial path which made some abortions legal through precedent, it's worth watching SBS documentary "Abortion, Corruption and the cops: The Bertram Wainer Story"

4. More than eighty per cent of Australians support a woman’s right to choose, and yet we allow the harassment of both women and doctors to continue unabated.


5. Decriminalising abortion does not lead to a queue out the door, down the street and around the corner for abortions. Some seem to be suggesting that taking an approach which seeks to enshrine the rights of doctors to perform a medically safe procedure is going to lead to some kind of "abortions for everyone! Even women who aren't pregnant!!! Men, think you'd like to have an abortion? Come on down!" style approach by women and their partners. Those people trivialise the nature of this decision and the difficulty with which it is made. If women and their doctors cannot be trusted to make the right decision regarding highly complex individual situations and supported whatever decision they make**, then I don't know what kind of a place we live in.



Oh, and if you don't approve of abortion, you are of course free to choose not to have one. Decriminalising abortion will not alter that freedom, not one little bit.

* aka "conscience vote"

** including continuing a pregnancy AND considering adoption - dudes, that's what being pro-choice actually means.

Vibrations in the air

Friday ramblings:



Can't think of anything funny to say. So get ready for a self-indulgent piece of pap which you are more than welcome to disregard to serve your own sanity.



More pissed off with work than I realised. I had a meeting the other day where I had put a lot of time into building partnerships at a local level to achieve something that one of our clients wanted. And then the client used an open meeting of my superiors to undermine me, because things had not gone the way he wanted them to (although all the other stakeholders' needs had been met). It was outside the scope of my influence to take HIM to task on it in the meeting, because I am a worker and not a Committee Member. And now I am cross.



I'm having a crisis of relevance. I have been doing some volunteer work this week and have struggled to find things to do that actually make a contribution. I have an ongoing that any contribution I might make is unwanted and irrelevant or, at worst, interfering, and find myself biting back suggestions because I'm worried they're stupid.



If I was ever a "cold-hearted career bitch", I've now officially lost it. I had a horrible feeling when I was leaving my new home-town yesterday that I was homesick before I had even left. And it felt shit. And I felt hollow and awful for leaving Grizzlewick and Mr Fix, even though I was only going to be away for 36 hours. That's never been a problem before. I don't know what's changed.



Hands up who is exhausted. I am so, so tired. Going to Melbourne now requires a "get up at ridiculous-o'clock" time-line that I can apparently no longer handle. I have watched other people hit the wall before, indeed I have done it myself. But I hit the wall today in a way that beggars belief because it was completely unexpected. I could technically have burst into tears when the bread-bag clip flicked behind a shelf at my friend's house, never to be seen again. But it was the stupid coffee house that did me in - I went to open the door pushing it with my usual strength and it slammed so hard I thought the glass would shatter. This frightened me so badly I ended up sobbing in the toilets, the whole bit. What a gimp.



All of these things could be PMT. Just saying.

Something with numbers

750: ants, apparently in my pants, today

297: emails currently in my email in-box at work, because I am paralysed by fear that the ones I delete will be the ones later deemed to be important

156: curse words uttered under breath at wheel-chocks who cannot get it together to finalise a piece of work that should have been done on Monday

104: thanks due to Actonb for recommending the glory of Betty Crocker's (practically) instant puddings.

53: minutes I sat watching the rain and sipping berocca before I finally acknowledged that a walk today was simply not going to happen

12: days I expected to be given the silent treatment for comparing Mr Fix to Alan Catlin*

7: mouthfuls of "cottage pie" I consumed before realising I had made a huge mistake, Gob-style

4: times I had to listen to Australian Crawl's version of 'Louie Louie' today because my son thinks it is awesome.

3: crying tantrums by Grizzlewick because I packed away his trains an hour after he was supposed to be in bed

2: ants, actually in my pants, later today

1: times I turned my computer off during the middle of a major project, in the mistaken belief that I had unplugged my mobile phone charger


Who says I am crap at maths?



* surprisingly enough, didn't happen. He claims to have "mellowed" (Mr Fix, not Allan Catlin).

Must must must make a mental note

aka the obligatory post about Split Enz




Anyone who knows me IRL will tell you that I have more a slight "thing" for Split Enz and their future musical projects - among them Tim Finn's solog work, Crowded House (obvs), The Swingers (who would be vastly improved had their most-played single not become one of the most irritating ads on television) and Schnell Fenster.






If you're a collector of lyrics, as I am, it's hard to put Split Enz to one side. Notwithstanding the enormity of their success in later years (commencing, really, with 'I Got You') their lyrics have made an enormous impact on me.




Recently, some one in the blogosphere referred to Tim Finn as "the Danni Minogue of NZ music". I think this is a bit unfair to both of them. On Tim Finn's side, it's clear he has never written anything as crap as 'This is it'. And on Danni Minogue's side, even she would never have worn that much make up. And she no doubt looks better in a tank top.




Tim Finn gets a bad rap in many quarters as being the less accessible Finn brother*. What Tim Finn was able to do very early in his songwriting career was to talk to the darker side of our nature - the insecure side. When I was a teenager, Neil was the Finn who appealed, because even the least sure-footed lyrics were teamed with a relentlessly upbeat pop-jangle that stayed with you for days.




By contrast, Tim Finn's songs and lyrics tend to burrow down, and reappear when you're not expecting them. I was struck recently by the lyrics to 'Semi-Detached':



"And as for people
They're semi-detached, aren't they?
So I can't be sure
I think I heard a neighbour say
He'll amount to nothing - he's pathetic"



Similarly, I used to regard Phil Judd as the less accessible of the Finn/Judd partnership of Split Enz, but have also come to revisit that assessment. Sure, elaborate horn solos aren't for everyone, but for each quirky spoon-fill in the early Split Enz albums there are things like this:





"You act as though
You were a blind man, who is crying
Cryin’ about
All the virgins that are dying
In your habitual dreams, y’know
It seems you need more sleep
But like a parrot in a flaming tree
I know it’s pretty hard to see
And I’m beginning to wonder
If it’s time for a change

Still you try, like a fat boy
Dancing Gershwin’s blues
But you’d rather sit at home
And watch the news
And I’m beginning to wonder
If it’s time for a change”




And as I get older it's those tracks that stay with me. They were written in the days when, homesick and broke, members of the band were slowly leaving London to return to New Zealand, like emaciated evictees from the Survivor island. Fans of Crowded House should be thankful for this - it was Phil Judd's departure from the band that gave Neil Finn his break.

As an aside, the world seems convinced that the end of Split Enz meant one thing, the rise of Neil Finn. Here are some other interesting tid-bits about the future paths of the band:

1. Phil Judd (who left in 1977) went on to form The Swingers. The Swingers also featured "Bones" Hillman, who went on to become a long-time member of Midnight Oil.

2. Schnell Fenster, also a brainchild of Judd and other ex-Enzers Noel Crombie and Nigel Griggs, also featured Michael Den Elzen, who was later one of the members of Rebecca's Empire.

3. Noel Crombie, who designed costumes for the band, designed the set of ABC TV's 'Spicks and Specks'.

4. Eddie Rayner, who also played with Crowded House occasionally, produced material for the Models and the Exponents, and was also the musical director of New Zealand Idol.

Anyway, I feel like I've been working my way towards a list, so here are my top ten Split Enz songs, for this week at least.







1. 'Without a Doubt' - Dizrhythmia (1977)



2. 'Lost for Words' - Time and Tide (1983)



3. 'Titus' - Second Thoughts (1976)



4. 'Kia Kaha' - See Ya 'Round (1985)



5. 'Iris' - Corroboree (1981)



6. 'Poor Boy' - True Colours (1980)



7. 'Sweet Dreams' - Second Thoughts (1976)



8. 'Charlie' (live) - The Living Enz (1985)



9. 'What's the matter with you?'- True Colours (1980)



10. 'Time for a change' - Dizrythmia (1977)

Of all of these, 'Iris' is an enduring favourite, even though it pairs the word 'Iris' with the word "desirous". In fact, Iris has made it to my "if I ever have another child, which seems unlikely, and it happens to be a girl-child, even though it's unlikely, this could be one of the names we maybe might consider" list**.

Does anyone else out there have a favourite? And, also curious, would you name your child after a song?

* 'Fraction too much Friction', anyone?



** This is a long list. And in case you're wondering, that's about as definitive as I can be about future procreation.

Badge(r)

Some people worry that there is no universal tie-that-binds, and that the things that divide us are incapable of resolution. The people of the world have, if you will, irreconcilable differences which will keep ever warring, hating and killing.

But I have found the one thing that unites us*....

deep and unabashed love of the unverified enormous animal sighting

Apparently the British Army was yesterday forced to deny that it had deployed giant, man-eating badgers in the area surrounding Basra.

Some Basra locals, however are of the belief that the British have released the animals to the area to spread panic. Some have reported the giant badgers tearing apart cows and stalking humans.

Scientists are quick to point out that the Ratel (or honey badger), is reasonably indigenous to the area (sightings have been common since 1986) and the honey badger isn't exactly small.

Wikipedia has the damn thing ripping the scrotums off humans - so don't fear the genetically engineered MI5 Badger, dudes - the real life Ratel is freakin' scary enough...if you're a bloke, that is. Women, clearly, have nothing to worry about.

Don't say I never give you guys anything to talk about.


PS people have started coming here looking for "dox" and "dog fox breed". Sad.


* It's not Dr Marten's boots, either.

You're not good/And you certainly aren't very much fun

Here, in no particular order, is the list of things I don't get this week.


1. Allegedly coolsie blokes who are, essentially, a-holes.
Why is it that there is a group of blokes who are all groovy and social justice-y and then screw it all up by having the worst gender politics in the world? How hard is it guys*? You feel deep empathy for the people of Darfur? Think global, act local - stop treating your girlfriend like shit. Seriously.


2. “New muffins”.
Best I can tell, the “new muffin” is an attempt to trick people into buying un-iced cupcakes and pretend they’re being healthy. I tried to fight the power today by asking for a cupcake and this is what happened:

Me: Can I have one of those choc chip cupcakes please?
Waiter: Cupcakes? (looks confused)
Me: Right there (points)
Waiter: Oh. You mean a muffin…
Me: Is it a healthy one?
Waiter: Ummmm. (looks fearful for personal safety)
Me: There’s so much sugar in them these days, they seem more like cupcakes to me.
Waiter: Right….(backs away slowly)


3. Morrissey and Robert Smith feuding.
Is there any point to this at all?


4. Why there isn’t more comedy in religion.
What’s not to love about this comment by the Robert Forsyth, an Anglican Bishop in Sydney regarding the announcement of the Pope that non-Catholic churches are “seriously deficient” – “Of course, they would think that — we think they're a bit dodgy, too, but we've come a long way from saying the Pope is the antichrist”


5. The exact moment when my Dad had me pegged.
The other day, he and I were discussing ‘Seven Types of Ambiguity’ by Elliot Perlman. I said I didn’t like it. He looked me straight in the eye, sighed and said: “You think it’s too misogynist,” in a tone that suggested a vast world-weariness with my feminist views. He’s right. I do.


6. Why people in my workplace are always laughing at what I say.
Either I’m being patronised as some kind of village idiot figure, or I am my workplace’s answer to Dave Allen (without the body-shirt or chain-smoking).



* rhetorical question which refers to difficulty, not whatever you thought it meant.

Why I hate Superman

Superman is supposed to serve all humanity.

So why is it that only Lois Lane and a handful of other (predominantly American) dudes ever get saved from impending doom?

Are there no other tragedies in the world?

Sure, it's a flimsy premise for hatred. But that's never stopped me before.

Oh, internet!

Please explain to me Superman's justification for his (adoptive) ethnocentrism?

I've seen so much I'm going blind/And I'm brain-dead, virtually...

I just hit a major turning point in my consumption of television. I uttered the phrase:

“Reality television can just get f-cked”

I used to love Survivor. I used to love the challenges – particularly as they got more and more difficult. I loved the fact that Jeff Probst seemed to be able to recite the challenge information the same way EVERY SINGLE TIME. I loved Rob and Amber and their vicious determination to win at all costs. I converted to The Amazing Race on the strength of them…and the hippies. I used to fantasise about being in the kind of shape required to undertake those challenges well.

I also admire the way that, in face of falling ratings, Survivor has done very little to alter their format. “Bugger you, we’ve made squillions,” they seemed to be saying to the networks. “Put us on at 11pm, see if we care”.

I’ve even been known to watch more than one episode of Big Brother, and certainly have watched enough of it this season to know who is who and whether I “like” them. I must agree with Ben Elton however, that there is now very little consideration of what it means to put 40 cameras in a house and record peoples’ every move – and what it says about our privacy in the future is more than a little worrying. However, I think that the Big Brother/Survivor/Amazing Race contestants have some degree of agency in pursuing their course to whatever kind of fame it is they seek to achieve.

What I really hate about reality television is ambulance chasing “real life stories”, whether it’s police or surf clubs or hospitals or, deliver us all, saving babies.

The advertisement that tipped me over the edge was for the new series of Medical Emergency on Channel 7 which will “document” real life emergencies. The tag-line noted that “they are real, you can tell by the look on their faces” (cue shot of tear-streaked face of eight year old girl with blonde pigtails).

I don’t get the public obsession with these shows. So we’re not willing to put up with three minutes of conversation with our mothers/grandparents/neighbours about the terrible things happening in their lives but we’ll watch an hour’s worth of some anonymous person’s suffering because it has a tinkly piano soundtrack and a B-list celebrity host? Have we really become so very disconnected that we’re not interested in the plight of those around us but glued to the story of “baby Andrea” or whoever it is this week?

Saving Babies in particular irks me. I am a mother, so one might argue I’m inclined to feel all gooey about babies*. What I hate, and I mean HATE, is the premise of this show – that “every story is a good news story”. Not only is this a gross distortion of the potential outcomes for parents of very ill children and their experience, it is also an unfair distortion. If your child dies, what is to say that your story is any less worth telling and recording? I have to wonder how many of these stories are recorded and discarded because the child is unable to recover from their massive health issues?

Unlike people who choose to participate in game shows in order to win money, those shown on Border Security or Police Files: Unlocked or the like are much less likely to have enough time and space to choose how they participate – a point not quite deconstructed by the death of a Big Brother contestant’s father recently.

I know, this has all been said before, and it’s not that I hate reality television per se. But I miss fictionalised drama. I miss networks taking a chance on developing local content that extends beyond the endless predictability of the mangled flesh of car accidents and people getting pissy when arrested for drink-driving. I miss networks buying quality drama and quirky comedy from other networks. Dammit, I miss The West Wing.

/end rant


* and sometimes I do.

The Ipodfather

Just when you think that Federal politics couldn't get any more obscure, Mick Keelty appears before a parliamentary inquiry.


His dire warning that part-human/part-robot criminals are the major crime threat to our future is a VERY SERIOUS THING and must be dealt with in a hasty manner. Ads for Liberal Party blaming Kevin Rudd for this are due out next week.

My friend Dave used to say that in the future the government would put bar codes on the back of all our heads, and poor people would starve to death because the automatic doors in supermarkets would be programmed so they couldn't get in*. Which is going to make it hard to get my trolley through.

I think Howard and Abbott are missing an opportunity here to use as-yet banned cloning technology to our best advantage. WorkChoices could be a cinch if we could develop the following:

1. Public service office-cleaners with dustbuster instead of left hand

2. Waiting staff with palm-pilot grafted to wrist and antenna placed in cranium to beam orders back to kitchen

3. Nurses who can wrap one of their arms around you to take your blood pressure

4. Maritime workers with inbuilt air-bags for over-board emergencies

5. Bartenders with bamix attachments instead of fingers

6. Firefighters with telescopic legs for rescuing cats from trees


See, this is why cloning is crucial to our country. It's only with these capabilities we can hope to keep our productivity pumping.


* Please don't write in with the flaws in this theory. It was a very amusing drunken anecdote, and for that reason the fact that you can drive a truck through the logic is best ignored.

stay with me....

I'm doing some renovations.

You feel lucky when you know where you are

Things I have been thinking about this week


Is “Thanks, my pants are falling down” an appropriate response to the compliment “You look very glamorous today”?

Why don’t I like any of the blogger templates?

Why don't tic tacs taste as nice as they used to?

Is “You look very glamorous today” even a compliment?

Ooooh. Neil Finn’s hit that age, hasn’t he? That age where, having had (allegedly) “cool hair” all his life, middle-aged man hair is starting to win the battle. Goodness, whatever will he do?

Is it offensive to turn down the offer of a hamburger with bacon and cheese, if the offer comes from some one you only met an hour ago?

Was reading John Pilger always this depressing, or is the passage of time during which basically nothing has changed the real depression-inducing factor?

Is it excessively anal/1950s housewife to have created a menu for the next week for my family and posted it on the fridge? It is, isn’t it? I am so so so sad.

Why oh why did I take pre-emptive responsibility for a major OH&S issue which could have burned down the entire office, only to find out it WASN’T EVEN ME?

Will those brownie points I built up with Corporate Services staff by throwing my body over some one else’s car-bomb last more than a couple of days?

Why does my work computer think that Rosanna’s site is pornography?

Now that my office is big enough to have a dancing competition, should I suggest a workplace dancing competition?

Why are members of the Executive Management team grizzling to me that I have a piece of office equipment they don’t have? Isn’t that the point of being an executive manager – ready access to all the office supplies in the world?

Sinner/I have never learned

Barack Obama is a man I find interesting. I’ll stop short of saying I’m on Team Obama, because I’m not following the US primaries closely enough to choose between he and Hillary, of whom I am also a big fan*. Although I will venture the opinion that if an Obama/Clinton team** were smart they could sew up enough votes to see off any opposition from the Republicans.

Anyway, at the risk of over-blogging about religion and/or politics, Obama has recently used the occasion of a church meeting to accuse religious-right fundamentalists of hijacking faith to achieve a political end which seeks to divide, rather than unite.

The Age web site reports:

"But somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together," Senator Obama said. "Faith started being used to drive us apart. Faith got hijacked."

He is right about at least one thing here. Historically, the churches have had a huge role to play in bringing about the “mainstreaming” of progressive social values. The Quaker Movement, for example, was fundamental to creating social conditions in which the abolition of slavery in America seemed possible. And there are plenty of churches with doctrines of inclusion which seek to unite the world, rather than divide it. Obama’s own church is a case in point, but in the conservative political climate of the US, this may be seen a hindrance, rather than a help.

Secondly, there can be no doubt that the religious right has dominated the poltiical agenda under the Presidency of George W. Bush. Never before has there been such an open relationship between the radical right religious doctrines and the implementation of Government policy and spending.

One of the problems with the religious-right domination of the agenda, is inconsistency, particularly around reproductive issues. Why, for example, would an administration with the stated aim of decreasing abortions worldwide, want to seek to limit funding of contraceptive aid to other countries who are desperately requesting it? Surely this sort of aid achieves this aim (prevention being better than cure) - but instead the Bush White House suggests it will veto the Bill, recently passed by the US House of Reps.

What's more, Obama's point can extend to all religious persuasions who seek to create divisions where there should be none. And it is worth thinking about the coalitions that form around your candidate of choice. But all of that leads me back to being a boring civics nerd, so I'll save the "you should care about your vote" post for another day.

What I find fascinating about the Hillary/Barack dynamic in this race, is that there is absolutely no question that these two candidates represent something different to the American voting public (all twenty-five of them***). Assuming that one of them is able to win the nomination of the Democratic Party, the Presidential race will be a very different race to those which have happened before, not least because they represent their Party’s divergence from Republican thinking – with Nancy Pelosi’s leadership paving the way for a departure from the “me too” politics of the past, and invigorating political debate in that country around divergent responses to issues, rather than divergent responses on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s hair.


* Also, however much I might watch The West Wing, I don't get a vote in the US elections.

** Assuming they can form such a “team”.

*** Pending three individuals being stricken off the voting role for having names like the names of once-convicted burglars in other states in another century. So what’s that – 22 left.

Hungry like the dox

A local farmer has recently claimed that he saw what he called a “dox”, a dog-fox cross-breed, on his farm.

I love stories like this. They are so lame, and yet, so very, very good for entertaining dinner party guests* (I’m guessing alcohol has something to do with it).

I was pretty sceptical about this, as it seemed a bit like that “Grampians big cat”, which the internet tells me is true….see http://www.animalx.net/bigcats.html for more details.

But it seemed to me that the dox was just a little bit too weird – surely dogs and foxes would not be inclined to breed with one another despite their seeming similarities. As my MiL pointed out, “We share sixty per cent of our DNA with chickens, but you don’t see chickens and humans cross-breeding”. Well, no.

And in a second breathtaking lack of understanding about what the internet is for, Mr Fix suggested I could always have it concluded one way or another by trawling google for more information. Ah, Mr Fix. Dear heart, I wanted to disprove a wild theory. Does the internet really seem the best place to start for that?

Anyway, my exhaustive trawling of the internet came to this:


1. there hasn’t been one confirmed wild sighting

2. biology (including gestation times and basal temperatures) are against it as a lab experiment (please don’t try this at home kids, it’s really friggin’ evil)

3. most likely what has been spotted is a really fluffy fox all kitted out for winter


So I guess if/when I’m ever camping, I’m the first to be “for it” when an unexpected hybrid attacks – I’m that cynical-yet-doomed character who sits outside paying scant regard to their safety as the mythical local big cat/yeti/hzzzz/dox comes to attack them. Possibly I’ll be chewing on one end of my eye-glasses arm*.

As long as I get my fill of charred marshmallows before I go do down in a spray of dox-inflicted violence, I'll be happy. And at least I won't have to sleep in a tent.


* something I proved to myself on Friday night.

** note to self: buy eye-glasses