Just got a spam message with the header "Ever wonder why you never read these emails?" As a matter of fact, no, I haven't been wondering that, because I know why I don't read those emails, AND THAT'S BECAUSE THEY'RE ALL FUCKING FULL OF SHIT FROM SPAMMING CUNTS LIKE YOU!!!!! God I wish people would send me real email for a change...
8:56 PM | link
On the odd chance that you particularly care about why I've been quiet the past couple of days, things like this are at least part of the reason why.
The Rev. Jerry Falwell says "I think Muhammad was a terrorist" in an interview to be broadcast Sunday on the CBS program "60 Minutes."
The conservative Baptist minister tells correspondent Bob Simon he has concluded from reading Muslim and non-Muslim writers that Islam's prophet "was a — a violent man, a man of war."
"Jesus set the example for love, as did Moses," Falwell says. "I think Muhammad set an opposite example."
Onya, Jerry. Way to promote peace, love and tolerance between different people and cultures. No doubt Muhammad's fond of you as well. And I'll bet the Egyptians thought Moses was just dandy for bringing all those plagues on them, too. Getting God to killing all the firstborn sons like that was a particularly endearing trick. The article then says:
Falwell stood by his opinion in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. He said Simon asked directly whether Falwell considered Muhammad a terrorist and he tried to reply honestly. The minister said he would never state his opinion in a sermon or book.
But saying something like that on TV where more people can hear you say it is OK, apparently. Oy.
Anyway, cheering thoughts like the ones expressed above by the good Reverend are at least part of what's discouraging me lately. There's unspeakable fear and loathing abroad in the world at the moment, and it seems the Internet is where a lot of it's being channelled. Everyone else seems to have made their minds up, and closed them off, about where they draw the line between good and evil. The US hates Europe and the Middle East. The Middle East hates anyone who isn't Muslim. The conservatives hate the liberals. And I'm not immune from doing some hating myself (you may have noticed). I'm frankly getting to the point where I hate everyone. The whole thing depresses me so much I can barely even write about how much it does my head in (you wouldn't believe how long it's taken me to actually write this). That's why I haven't been saying much lately. I've got another week off TAFE and I don't intend to do much in the way of blogging then either. I don't expect that the fear and loating all over the Internet will have lessened any by then, but I might have detoxed a bit. There might be odd posts over the next few days if something really noteworthy happens, but don't bet on it.
8:21 PM | link
Hello to Ros Lynne and John Daley in appreciation for the linkage (which I've just discovered... nice when the vanity searches do turn up links I haven't seen before).
7:04 PM | link
The Two Towers trailer is up. Sadly my connection is so diabolical I heard a lot more than I saw. But, shit, I was hanging out for this one anyway, wasn't I? I don't need the damn trailer to convince me to go see it. I'm downloading the Quicktime clip anyway (all 7Mb of it) to see if I can actually get moving graphics to go with my sound this time... back in about 25 minutes.
6:30 PM | link
The strange tale of Charlotte Bach. Excerpt from a forthcoming book on her. Or him, as the case may be.
6:20 PM | link
Alexandria before Alexander. Fascinating stuff.
6:09 PM | link
Shoe size and penis size not related after all. No comment from me...
5:24 PM | link
And I thought it was just Chinese newspapers who made basic humour-bypass errors like this.
5:22 PM | link
Some people have nothing better to do than clip 153 clothes pegs to their face. Photo included.
5:16 PM | link
Satanism scare spreads to Russian idiots. Yes, paranoia about the rising influence of the Prince of Darkness is no longer confined to American idiots, if these blokes are any indication.
5:01 PM | link
Scottish newspaper seems indignant at Scottish judges being told not to be racially insensitive to people.
The guide, which will be given to all sheriffs and High Court judges, aims to stop them making embarrassing gaffes when addressing witnesses and defendants.
The judiciary, who earn six-figure salaries and include some of the nation’s sharpest intellects, will be given advice on how not to insult ethnic minorities, women and homosexuals.
The revelation follows a Scottish Executive poll revealing that a quarter of Scots consider themselves racist, with nearly half believing ‘Chinky’ or ‘Paki’ were not racist terms when talking about food or shops.
Is it just me, or does anyone else find the tone of that more than a little huffy? I couldn't work out whether the author of this article seemed huffy because they thought judges should already know how not to insult people or judges should have some special dispensation to insult people. ("Me, a High Court judge bein' telt no' tae insult sumwan? The cheek o' it!") What has salary got to do with sharpness of intellect, anyway?
4:55 PM | link
Canadian anthropologist says alien abduction not necessarily a bad thing.
Although she is "highly sceptical" that aliens have ever abducted anyone, she says it's important to study the phenomenon.
It's easy to dismiss fringe groups like those who believe they've been abducted, she says, but studying them gives us a better understanding of who we are.
Which it possibly does, don't get me wrong. Sadly I think it's more likely that people read these things to reassure themselves they're not as weird-seeming as them that claim they've been abducted. There but for the grace of God don't go I, etc...
4:29 PM | link
The pulling power of contact lenses. Sadly, since I refuse to wear contact lenses myself (having a sort of phobia as I do of my eyes being touched), I am probably doomed to die a frustrated and bitter old bachelor...
4:25 PM | link
The Kastle, one of Sydney's best-known bondage and discipline houses, has been ordered to close its doors by South Sydney Council, which says the business is operating without its consent.
But there is a twist: the brothel's owner says the tip-off came from Sydney's only other famous house of pain, Salon Kitty's in Surry Hills, and that the council is effectively doing the competition's bidding.
"The Kastle has been here for 17 years, until recently without complaint," said owner and manager Debra Starr, aka Mistress Scarlett. "They're using the council to get me closed down because they don't like the competition."
4:18 PM | link
Simon Crean knows why the government REALLY wants a war tax. Or at least he thinks he does.
Not yet we don't, Tony. Just give W. and Blair a few days. That said, though I find it hard to believe W. won't go to war, that we won't go with him, and that we won't have a war tax to pay for it, I don't know if I believe it'd be imposed just to compensate for the budget deficit...As Labor leader Simon Crean today accused the Government of considering a war tax to shore up its $1.3 billion budget deficit, workplace relations minister Tony Abbott said the nation should not be focussing on what would happen if the "worst came to the worst".
Mr Abbott, who refused to rule out a war tax, said: "I know this is exciting people at the moment but it really is a hypothetical question at the moment because we don't have a war."
4:15 PM | link
Chris Middendorp on Orson Welles. I'm not sure I'm convinced by his advocacy of The Trial, which I saw once a number of years ago and never sat all the way through. Still, it was some time ago, maybe if I gave it another go... also if I found an actually decent copy of it instead of having to watch the video from Curzon Classics (shudder)... and I actually do agree with his main point; Kane is a great film but the automatism with which it tops Great Film polls is ridiculous. Leave Kane out of the running for these things. Oh, and, watch F For Fake, Welles' last film. More people need to know about that one.
3:32 PM | link
Drought declared in Victoria. What, they saw us in NSW having such fun with our drought that they had to have one of their own? Red Symons offers his own views here.
3:16 PM | link
From the referrers again: why would someone from this financial investment company be looking for this?
12:16 PM | link
I think I'm going to leave it at that for the day. I'm not in the right frame of mind for blogging at the moment, for various reasons.
7:14 PM | link
Jason Meeks - who as a 10-year-old wrote Governor William F. Weld pleading for an end to violence in his Roxbury neighborhood - was charged with murder yesterday.
A Suffolk county grand jury returned indictments charging Meeks with the first-degree murder of 25-year-old Alvaro Sanders, who was gunned down outside a Roxbury auto shop last year, said David Procopio, a spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley.
Mother arrested for not stopping daughter killing brother. Happy fucking families, eh...
6:38 PM | link
Viking kittens. Fairly primitive, lightly amusing Flash animation. I've seen this linked at a few places and to be honest I think it's only funny for the first few seconds, the joke only goes so far, but it's still worth noting. The author has other, equally basic Flash animations on offer.
6:27 PM | link
Abbas Kiarostami, the Iranian filmmaker who is widely considered one of the world's greatest living directors, has been denied a visa to enter the United States. Kiarostami had been invited to attend the New York Film Festival, where his new movie "Ten" will premiere on Sunday, and then to lecture at Harvard and at Ohio State University.
Kiarostami, 62, has written and directed some 30 movies since the early 1970s, and has been compared by critics to such titans of international cinema as Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa. He won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival -- perhaps the movie world's most cherished prize -- for his 1997 film "A Taste of Cherry." He has also visited the U.S. at least seven times in the last decade. Still, the State Department was reportedly unwilling to bend the harsh new rules recently put into place by the Bush administration restricting the issuance of visas to Iranian citizens.
Paranoia, paranoia, la la la la la...
6:12 PM | link
Via the SMH, oddly enough: Java games! Hours of maddening old-school fun.
4:54 PM | link
Just how much power do talkback announcers have?
The state Ombudsman has been asked to investigate the influence popular 2GB broadcaster Ray Hadley had on Hornsby City Council in considering a controversial development application.
The developers, Simon Maxwell and Pat Pedulla, have called for a formal investigation of the council's actions in considering a large medium-density project proposed for Galston Road, Dural.
The council changed its attitude to the development, a retirement village of 120 units and a 50-bed nursing home, at the same time "significant media pressure" was applied by Mr Hadley on his morning radio program, the complaint said.
4:48 PM | link
"Literalspeak", or how some Hollywood movies translate to foreign audiences.
The results are from a survey in the latest issue of Empire magazine, which also features Two Stupid Stupid People (Dumb and Dumber) and I'm Rich But I Like Prostitutes (Pretty Woman). The latter, says the magazine's compiler, Olly Richards, comes from the most brutally literal of the film's overseas markets, cheap pirate videos in China.
Others of the type include: Wretch! Let Me Chop Off Your Finger. (The Piano).
I wish someone had said something like that to Jane Campion before she made that bloody film...
4:24 PM | link
Princess Anne in trouble for dog attack.
It is believed that one of the royal couple's dogs had been let off its leash and attacked a couple walking nearby. After one of the walkers was allegedly bitten on the leg, police were called.
The princess and her husband face prosecution under Britain's Dangerous Dogs Act and could be fined up to £5000 ($A14,000) or sentenced to six months in prison.
Of course anyone who seriously thinks that will actually happen is just deluding themselves...
4:18 PM | link
And whoever came looking for this and this... eh, get help too.
The site passed 15,000 visitors the other day. Astonishing.
12:51 PM | link
To whoever visited the blog looking for this: get help, you fucking clown. This isn't a Bigots R Us franchise, you know.
8:08 PM | link
Al-Jazeera: one of our reporters is missing.
Arab satellite television Al-Jazeera says one of its employees was arrested in Afghanistan and is now being held with al-Qaida suspects at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo.
Sudanese assistant cameraman Sami al-Haj was detained in December and is in custody at Guantanamo's Camp Delta, the Qatar-based television said in a statement faxed late on Monday to The Associated Press.
Al-Jazeera said it knew in April that al-Haj was detained in a camp operated by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. "Later, we learned through correspondence with Mr. al-Haj's wife that he is now in Guantanamo," said the statement, which the station said was also sent to human rights groups. [...]
Al-Jazeera said it was notified by the Sudanese Foreign Ministry that al-Haj had reported his passport missing in 2000 "thus making it reasonably possible that it (the passport) was subject to misuse by other people." However, the station said it is certain al-Haj is in U.S. custody at Guantanamo.
Well if he is, I'm sure he'll be able to give them a nice scoop if and when he gets out. TV stations like their ratings, after all, and he should be able to provide them...
7:56 PM | link
Joseph Epstein is fed up with people who insist on writing books.
Why should so many people think they can write a book, especially at a time when so many people who actually do write books turn out not really to have a book in them — or at least not one that many other people can be made to care about? Something on the order of 80,000 books get published in America every year, most of them not needed, not wanted, not in any way remotely necessary.
I wonder if the reason so many people think they can write a book is that so many third-rate books are published nowadays that, at least viewed from the middle distance, it makes writing a book look fairly easy. After all, how many times has one thought, after finishing a bad novel, "I can do at least as well as that"? And the sad truth is that it may well be that one can. But why add to the schlock pile?
Well in some respects, why shouldn't they? Untold millions of books have been written in the past. Untold millions of them have also been forgotten in short order, and only a few tend to last. So it was fifty, one hundred, two hundred years ago... the situation is no different now.
Misjudging one's ability to knock out a book can only be a serious and time-consuming mistake. Save the typing, save the trees, save the high tax on your own vanity. Don't write that book, my advice is, don't even think about it. Keep it inside you, where it belongs.
Joesph Epstein's fifteenth book is due to be published soon.
7:47 PM | link
The long-standing tension between the Bush and Reagan families goes to new level. Nancy is not amused by W.'s opposition to stem cell research. Interesting article.
7:38 PM | link
China demands people of Beijing act civilised.
"This year, our theme is to build a new Beijing to host the Olympic Games and try to be a civilised people," said Zhang Huiguang, director of Beijing's Capital Ethic Development Office. Now and next month, he added, officials intend to step up a "war against every uncivilised behaviour to lend a hand in making the capital a civilised city".
Public spitting is at the top of a long list of perceived wrongs, but this summer, the primary targets of semi-official scorn were shirtless men and men wearing shirts rolled halfway up to let their bellies flop out. It was routine summertime comportment for a historically agricultural society, but officials in Beijing saw it as another potential international embarrassment.
Rumours that China would be trying to clean up its equally embarrassing human rights record for the Olympics have not been confirmed.
7:27 PM | link
Bill Clinton gives Chris Tucker advice on "acting presidentially". Next: Chris Tucker seduces White House intern, declares war on Iraq.
7:23 PM | link
A "major" affair. After having his reign as British PM dogged by sex scandals, John Major's been exposed as having had one of his own...
Former Prime Minister John Major has admitted he had a four-year affair with the former Conservative minister Edwina Currie.
The affair began in 1984 when Mrs Currie was a backbencher and Mr Major a whip in Margaret Thatcher's government.
Mrs Currie - who later became a health minister - said the affair ended in early 1988 after his swift promotion to the Cabinet as chief secretary to the Treasury.
Mrs Currie admitted she was hurt not to be mentioned in the index of Mr Major's autobiography.
Hell hath no fury, etc. But this is by far the best part of the story:
Lady Archer, the wife of disgraced Tory peer Lord Archer, said that she was surprised to learn of the affair.
"I am a little surprised, not at Mrs Currie's indiscretion but at a temporary lapse in John Major's taste," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
HA!
7:14 PM | link
NZ policewoman fights drug dealers with school uniform. If I have any NZ readers, could they please explain to me how places where drugs are sold have come to be called "tinny houses"? For some reason I find that an extraordinary phrase...
6:47 PM | link
Mother busted for letting two year old son smoke pot. I know they say you should start kids early, but not usually with things like that...
6:45 PM | link
Phil Collins to quit touring. Oh the disappointment. My grief knows no bounds.
6:34 PM | link
Book about censorship falls victim to censorship itself.
However, as Meyer assembled his text and cleared permissions for the 200 photographs he planned to include, OUP grew concerned about a couple of things. [...] In the interests at least of, ahem, good taste, would Dr. Meyer perhaps like to remove these pictures, he was asked. Dr. Meyer would not. "I mean, the whole book is about censorship, about images that are troublesome, about intellectual and artistic freedom," he said this week on the telephone from his home in California. "I just didn't think the book should end up colluding in the very thing it was exploring."
As a result the book can now only be bought in the US, as OUP has refused to risk publishing it in the UK or Canada—this, apparently, despite the fact that one of the contentious images (a Robert Mapplethorpe picture of a small naked boy) has been exhibited without causing commotions like this. All very strange...
6:28 PM | link
Think Of The Children is back up. How very odd...
6:17 PM | link
Ken Parish wonders why this site exists. I was wondering that myself. Indeed, I wonder about all these watch blogs that have sprung up like Warbloggerwatch... what's up, got nothing better to do with your time than obsess over people and things you manifestly hate all the live long day? [Note: thanks to Tim Dunlop for reminding me to actually insert the URL in the link to ABC Watch. Without the URL all it was doing was pointing back at this site, and while Ken Parish possibly wonders why I exist too, it wasn't me this time.]
6:00 PM | link
Fabian Bielinsky talks about Nine Queens.
Surprisingly, Fabian Bielinsky does not seem at all put out that the main American interest in Nine Queens, his creeper hit set in the back streets of Buenos Aires, is the possibility of remaking it in English. "I don't mind. I did my film," he says. "Whatever they want to do is OK for me and if it's good, it's great. And if it isn't good, everyone says, 'Hey, the first one is better."'
For some reason I've never thought about it in those terms. I like that attitude, though.
5:41 PM | link
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