Raven Paradox

I have had enough, so it is time for a rant.

I hate people - loathe them in fact, always wanting something from you like knowledge about how your day has been, how you are, what is happening in your world… when all that they really want is to steal some precious oxygen and prompt you to query them on things of vast importance to them but which have absolutely no merit to you (or anyone else for that matter).

The rhetorical questions that we ask one another in our daily lives, as if by rote, have been amplified through “social media phenomenons” like facebook and twitter.

Whilst I am a self confessed user of both - it makes sense in the industry that pays me to laze about drinking wine on the weekends; I loathe the new cretinous sub class of humanity that has been given birth by these tools.

The common variety facebook whore will have between 200-300 friends.

If they are using it for business purposes - well and good, however if, as was the case with one oxygen thief that I knew, one of these virtual parasites has, lets say 372 friends and then comes crying when “two people have deleted me from facebook”, expecting sympathy; then they may as well neck themselves and do us all a favour.

Fuck me… this, well, to put it bluntly, piece of human waste honestly expected me to care that she had lost two “friends” from her cast of hundreds - and, more to the point, was indignant when I asked her who they were.

“Well, um, I don’t know, but the point is that I am upset and my other friends cared but you don’t”

Indeed I don’t, and you had better wake the fuck up to yourself if you think that the measure of your worth is gauged by a number next to your name on an insidious marketing tool like facebook.

Who cares how many friends you have in the virtual world?

I have decided that enough is enough.

In the “real world” - the place that I choose to go about my daily life - you know, the one that requires effort, engagement on a real level, getting the fuck up out of bed in the morning even when you really can’t be arsed facing the world yet again, I probably have what I would consider 10-20 friends if one doesn’t count family and colleagues.

I got to the outrageous point whereby I had 120+ “friends” on facebook. Yes, I was guilty of allowing virtual friendless social parasites to befriend me, no doubt feeding their burgeoning friend lists with the arrogant fuel that their narcissistic desires fed merrily upon - but it was fun for me to imagine their horror and despair when they scanned their “friends” list only to discover that it had been reduced by one when I evilly deleted them.

Basically my new strategy with facebook is thus:

• if I like you, you are in
• if I work with you, to avoid complications and uneasy lunchroom conversation and you don’t have a direct line to HR or the exec com team, you are in
• if there is some kind of mutual benefit to us being linked virtually (say, you can get me backstage at Cradle of Filth) you are in
• if I would have a beer/wine or selected spirit with you without having to put my mind into neutral, you are in
• if we have shared a night of drunken debauchery that doesn’t bear repeating here, you are probably in
• if you were to tell me that your mother/father/brother/sister/cat/significant other had suffered a hideous disfigurement and I envisage that I couldn’t care less, you are out.
• if I really don’t give a fuck what you are having for dinner, what time you are going to work, what your kids are doing, what household chores you are performing, what illness you are currently suffering, what you are doing on the weekend, how miserable you are feeling or what the fuck is going on with you and the love of your fucking life - you are out.
• If you are a grade A oxygen thief - then that is my fault, you should never have been on the list in the first place.

Call me arrogant - I don’t give a fuck, but the time has come people - time to take a stand.

Who really cares if:

• “Jemima really wishes that she didn’t have to work today” - toughen up bitch, the rest of us are dragging our arses out of bed
• “Johnny is pissed off that he missed out on tix for Vibes” - get a fuckin Visa debit you moaning fuck
• “George is devastated that Chloe left him for the pool boy” - should have learned how to fuck George - and waxed your back
• “Matilda is drunk” - gee, thanks for that pearl of wisdom you sad fuck
• “Cleopatra is hunting for Antony” - there are dating sites for that.

What I want to read are things like:

• “Nathan is really pleased with the quality of his new midget butler”
• “Harold has mastered the Pakistani Drill Press”
• “Lethal was not amused by the Angry Pirate that she had received”
• “Clint was devastated that he only had a handful more weeks of Warhawk left”

Get creative people - noone really gives a fuck if you are downtrodden, oppressed or bitter - that is what the news is for.

Harden up and cull people, cull until you can cull no more - even if it means culling me.

Time to commit some more congregaticide (faux latin for social networking culling)

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That this matter involving Kevin Rudd’s three meetings with Brian Burke even rated a mention in parliament (let alone the protracted airing that it has been given) shows just how farcical and desperate the Howard government has become.

Over at the SMH, Aaron Timms paints the matter in this amusing light:

“It used to be that the Panama was a sign of style and sophistication. Now it is short for suburban Italian meals and illegal mobile phone conversations involving repeated use of the word mate. Even over the past week, as the hat has remained malevolently glued to Burke’s scalp, it has been hard to escape the feeling that somewhere underneath that straw crown there must be at least a couple more Labor ministers hiding from the fact that they once shared a cream bun with Burke in the late 1990s.”

But in all seriousness, the vitriol that has been slung at Rudd in parliament by Abbott, Costelloand their increasingly rattled master Howard has been extraordinary - not the least when one considers the age old adage “let him without sin…”.

The mudslinging almost backfired spectacularly when it was discovered that one of the Liberals senior ministers, Ian Campbell, had not only met with Burke, but invited him into his office.

In a truely bizarre set of circumstances, instead of this becomming a problem for the government, it actually had the effect of reintroducing the long forgotten “ministerial code of conduct“.

One could be forgiven for wondering if we are living in a parrallel universe.

This government has a long and well publicised history of lies, coverups, disgraceful behaviour, scandals and misinformation.

- The alleged WMDs and the invasion of Iraq
- The Vivian Salon debarcle
- The David Hicks disgrace
- Children overboard
- No GST, never ever
- The Peter Reith phone card affair
- The bribes paid to Saddam Hussein under the auspices of the AWB

… hold on… Bribes? Saddam Hussein?

Yes indeed. And the two ministers who oversaw these bribes, Alexander Downer and Mark Vaile (Downer allegedly even signed a document authorising the bribes) not only maintain their roles within Howard’s government, but they are the Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister respectively - two of the most senior positions in the government.

They may not have known that the $290 million, yes, $290,000,000 was going toward directly funding Saddam Hussein’s regime, but the incompetence that they displayed in allowing this terrible transgression should not only have cost them both their jobs but also their entitlements and superannuation.

What did poor old Ian Campbell do?

He met a fat, balding man in a Panama hat.

He has been forced to fall on his sword so that Howard and his minions may continue to pursue this pathetic line of attacks on Rudd.

This all reeks of a very deep sense of desperation and fear. The government has realised that there is a strong desire for change in the Australian populace and know that Rudd is a very credible alternative.

Their mudslinging is puerile and pathetic - what is worse is that they expect the Australian people to swallow the crap that they are dishing up.

Paul Keating put it wonderfully when interviewed on the ABC today:

“The little desiccated coconut [Howard] is under pressure and he is attacking anything he can get his hands on,”
“Brian Burke and Julian Grill, they are the Arthur Daley and Terry of the West Australian Labor Party. They are like the wallpaper over there. You can’t visit Perth without running into them”

The best quote was the one that he left for Costello though:

“He’s all tip and no iceberg”

I can’t wait to vote this year…

Technorati Tags: Kevin Rudd, Brian Burke, Ian Campbell, John Howard, Peter Costello, WA Inc, Tony Abbott, hypocrisy, Paul Keating, Alexander Downer, Mark Vaile, AWB, David Hicks, GST

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What the bloody hell is going on?

Is nothing sacred?

Why is everything becoming Americanised?

The latest disgrace in the Americanisation of Australia is the importation of that damned acronym “SUV”.

The only time that I tend to watch commercial television is during the cricket season and this year it seems that we have stopped referring to 4WDs as 4WDs.. possibly due to the bad connotations that the word conjures up in the mind of the environmentally aware/pedestrian and smaller vehicle safety conscious Australian.

This…

… is a 4WD. It is not an SUV.

Harold Scruby - sit the fuck up and take some notice of this deceitful attempt to get more of these annoying mechanical hulks onto our roads.

Technorati Tags: 4wd, suv, harold scruby, americanisation, australia, car

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Excellent news, Uncle Rupert - someone to whom this government seems to listen to - has spoken up about the shambles that is broadband internet access in this country.

Murdoch slams slow broadband

RUPERT Murdoch yesterday condemned the quality of Australia’s broadband services as a disgrace, warning the nation would be left behind unless the federal Government and Telstra spent billions to increase download speeds.

The News Corporation chairman and chief executive told shareholders of his Australian arm in Adelaide that high speed access to the internet needed to be increased to levels seen throughout Asia and the US.

“When you have broadband - real broadband, not the type they’re talking about here - where you get, say, 20Mbps of data into your home, it changes everything,” he said.

“People then spend a lot of time with their laptops and computers. In Australia we only have a couple of million (people on broadband) and they don’t even get 1Mb(ps).”

“I think it’s a disgrace.”

Between 50 and 70 per cent of homes in the US had access to broadband, Mr Murdoch said.

He said the Government and Telstra should be spending “$10 billion or $12 billion on it (to reach) every town in Australia; they do it in Japan, they do it in South Korea, we should be able to do it here. We are being left behind and we will pay for it.”

The Minister for Megabytes, Helen Coonan is quoted by the ABC as saying:

“About 80 per cent of households who can access fast broadband can access speeds up to eight megabytes from 19 different providers.

Fourteen providers are currently providing speeds up to 24 megabytes to about four million premises and Telstra of course is now rolling out its 3G network, which it claims could offer speeds of up to 40 megabytes.”

Even if the ABC was being naughty and misquoting her and she really didn’t mean speeds of 64Mbits, 192Mbits and 320Mbits, she is still way off the mark.

Has she ever heard of RIMs, pair gained lines or exchanges with no ports left in them?

Personally, I am one of the lucky ones - I do have access to a 24Mbit connection - which in reality, runs at about 4-8mbit due to a dodgy “last mile” of copper but is much better than many people have access to.

Good work Uncle Rupert - perhaps this government will sit up and take notice now… heh.

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John Howard has been consistent.

He has consistently been a master at playing upon the fear of the electorate.

Most of the time, the fears and prejudices he has evoked from within the dark recesses of the minds of the populace have been ill conceived - but they have worked - they have kept him in power.

The sad thing is that it hasn’t just been the ignorant or uneducated who have fallen for the seductive speeches of the master of wedge politics - at some point, almost everyone has fallen for it, I know that I have, sadly it seems that the educated and affluent have fallen for it regularly. Some examples of the fears that he has played upon regularly are:

• Interest rates
• Refugees
• National security
• Economic prosperity
• Industrial relations/Unions

Look at the above five items, they are all issues that might be used emotively, that might be used to cause fear because they are all related to our sense of personal security.

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The Internet has been responsible for a number of good things - and a number of things best not mentioned… Probably the greatest crime that it has committed though has been the utter bastardisation of the English language.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines “log” as:

log ¹ - n.

1. a part of the trunk or a large branch of a tree that has fallen or been cut off.
2. (also logbook) an official record of events during the voyage of a shop or an aircraft.
3. an apparatus for determining the speed of a ship, originally one consisting of a float attached to a knotted line.

v. (logged, logging)

1. enter in a log > achieve (a certain distance, speed or time).
2. (log in/on or off/out) go through the procedures to begin (or conclude) use of a computer system.
3. cut down (an area of forest) to exploit the wood commercially.

- DERIVATIVES logger n. logging n.

The word “blog” apparently has its origins in the words “web log” or “weblog”. Calling either “blog” or “weblog” a word grates on me a little, but let us assume for the purposes of this exercise that a word is defined as a jumbled up mash of letters that forms a somewhat pronounceable utterance.

As such, let us presume that:

• a “blog” is a log that has been placed on the web.
• a “blogger” is someone who places that log on the web.
• “blogging” is the act or placing these logs on the web.

As yet, despite my searching, I am yet to find any site that claims to be a “blog” that falls within the correct definitions of a log that is on the web.

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