Rants

According to Spiked Online, those CCTVs that have become so ubiqitous in the UK have now been rigged up with loudspeakers, allowing remote faceless government agents to tell you not to loiter, or litter, or whetever.

But who will be doing the voices? Children, that’s who. The government has issued a press release stating the following:

‘Children from across the country will be very publicly calling upon the small minority of people who think it is acceptable to act anti-socially on our streets and in our towns to change their ways and take responsibility for their actions….’

Is the British Government trying to emulate 1984? Let’s take a look:

• Loads of cameras following your every move? Check.
• Cameras that can talk and give orders? Check.
• The transformation of children into government spies? Check.
• Government surveillance inside private homes? Not yet, in the UK anyway.
• Use of torture to break “thought criminals”? No, thank God.
• Anti-Sex League? Erm, no.

In short, the British Government is emulating 1984 as much as it is possible for a democratic government to do - so let’s hope it goes no further. If we ever hear Tony Blair say “We’re at war on terror. We’ve always been at war on terror.” than you will know they have crossed the line.

(If you haven’t read 1984, read it online - and shudder.)

Pussycat Dolls: Search For The Next Doll is the most awful show I have ever seen. I hardly know what else to say. What else can you say?

For those who have remained mercifully oblivious, the show features 18-year-old girls competing to be the newest member of the Pussycat Dolls. How do they compete? By slutting themselves up as much as possible (the outfits are beyond belief) and gyrating for the cameras. It’s basically a quest to find the world’s biggest tart.

This is wrong, so very wrong. I am struggling to find words for how appalling it is. That I find it impossible to watch the show for more than five minutes, when the show is filled with hordes of scantily clad women, might just say it all.

Australians, be proud of your achievements! First we hoodwink Oprah Winfrey with The Secret, now we’ve done it again with Dunstan Baby Language!

We’re swindling the world, and if that isn’t enough to make you patriotic, nothing will.

ADVICE UPDATE: If you are struggling with your studies, hypnotize your teacher.

MAN, CHIMP-MAN OR JUST PLAIN CHIMP?: It’s not obvious. Nor is it obvious why a turtle needs a MySpace page.

People who try to make money online by blogging about blogging or making money online.

There are too many of them. And they are all constantly linking to each other to boost their Technorati ranking. Not to mention the constant comment spam on more successful blogs. What a bunch of squawkers.

To this end, I have started a blog about blogging about blogging. Those who blog about blogging, my blog about blogging about blogging should give you a clue! Maybe. Perhaps.

I have no idea about how to blog about blogging in order to make money online. But since knowing nothing is not stopping anyone else, I don’t see why it should stop me either.

I already have several posts lined up, all of them unhinged rants.

I know that this will probably not last long before I run out of ideas, much like the Blogging Dog blog. Never mind. I’ll have some fun in the meantime.

“Culpable driving causing death” is the offence of killing someone unintentionally through an accident while speeding, or driving under the influence, or fatigue, or whatever. It was introduced because juries are reluctant to convict someone has caused a road accident of manslaughter.

After the recent Burnley tunnel accident, a police spokesman was quoted as saying that the truck driver involved could be charge with culpable driving, even if he hadn’t been speeding.

This got me thinking. What if he had merely caused the accident by not paying attention to the road for a couple of seconds? Can you be charged with culpable driving and thus be sent to jail for being briefly inattentive on the roads? Better lock us all up, then.

Here’s what bothers me: someone who kills a pedestrian while speeding has done nothing different to someone who merely speeds. Whether or not you kill someone on the roads in those circumstances is a roll of the dice. Yet, the penalties applied are vastly different.

The offence of culpable driving has nothing to do with justice; it is solely about revenge. For the law to be consistent, either increase the penalties for speeding or drink driving to match those of culpable driving, or drop the offense of culpable driving.

Where else but a supermarket would it take 20 minutes to buy one item? First you have to search for it in a bewildering array of aisles and products. Then once you have found it, prepare to wait in line behind someone doing a month’s shopping for a family of eight. (Or, if it’s the express lane, a family of eight buying five items each.)

I was at home one weekday morning when I realised I was out of deodorant, so off to the supermarket I went. (It helped that I didn’t have to work that day.) One thing about supermarkets on a weekday morning is that all of the shoppers are either young mothers or very old women. No men of any age, apart from me. It makes sense really. I would go to the supermarket at a time when everyone there is like me if I could. Which would mean, in my case, young men who hate supermarkets. We would be like a community; a community based on hate, united by our hatred of supermarkets; which is somewhat freaky if you think about it, so don’t.

I found the deodorant and bought a few other items as well, so as not to have to do a return trip. (Hate makes you buy more, apparently.) I then lined up at an “8 Items Or Less” counter behind two 90-year-old women who had one or two items each.

Or so I thought. The first one was carrying two items, but when she got to the counter, she reached into her bag and pulled out seven or eight other items. The woman behind her helped her handle the items. Isn’t that nice, I thought.

Then it was the second woman’s turn. She had been carrying one item; chocolate biscuits. She put the biscuits on the counter, and than she started pulling items out of her bag! She had a dozen extra items in there.

So there I was, trying to choose the quickest checkout queue, lured into the line I chose under false pretences by two ancient item-smuggling women.

Have you been duped by item smugglers? Let’s make a law that all supermarket items must be visible until after you have bought them. Join with me on a campaign to rid the world of this time-wasting menace today!

You can learn a lot from the Internet. For example, I learned recently that the Metric system is evil. I don’t know why I hadn’t realised this earlier.

First of all, the metric system is sexist:

The metric system has been almost wholly created and standardized by male scientists and bureaucrats. At the time, during which women were considerably less liberated than today, woman had virtually no say in the creation and, in many countries, the imposition of these units.

But it gets worse – the metric system is also undemocratic. As freedom2measure.org states, “Who ever asked you if you wanted the metric system?”

Despite the metric system being the work of imperialist tyrants, only three freedom-loving countries have so far resisted it: the United States, Myanmar and Liberia.

They have good reason to do so. Since the introduction of the metric system in Australia in 1966, the divorce rate has more than doubled. Violent crime has also increased.

When will we wake up and realise what the metric system is doing to our country? Abolish the imperialist misogynist capitalist Metric system now!

Sydney has its Harbour Bridge. Paris has its Eiffel Tower. New York has its Empire State Building. Melbourne’s chief landmark is the disused power station on Lonsdale St. But not for much longer. In an outrageous decision, the Melbourne City Council is allowing a Russian consortium to bulldoze this iconic structure in favour of a bland commercial development.

Must the old always give way to the new? Do architectural triumphs have a use-by date?

The historic Lonsdale St power station is part of our cultural heritage that must be kept for our children and grandchildren.

What can you do about it? Start by writing a letter to your local MP, the Melbourne City Council and the Victorian State Government. It could read as follows:

Dear <name here>,

I was appalled recently to learn of the further debasement of the history of our wonderful city. I refer, of course, to the proposed demolition of the power station on Lonsdale St.

When will our city ever learn? The stately mansions of St. Kilda Rd have made way for bland offices, and many of the historic 19th century commercial buildings along Collins St. are gone. Many lament these losses to this day, yet here we are, presiding over the loss of yet another landmark.

On behalf of our children and generations to come, I plead with you to save the Lonsdale St. power station by any means necessary.

Yours sincerely,

<Your name here>

Now that the Mexican wave furore is dying down, perhaps Matthew Newton can devote himself to this cause. Save the Lonsdale St power station!

(I originally posted this rather acerbic rant on my Myspace blog. Hypocritical, no? View my Myspace profile if you like, but be warned, it’s truly appalling. I started it a little while ago, even though I can almost never access Myspace, and I have already forgotten the password (they wouldn’t give me the one that I wanted so I had to pick one I wouldn’t remember, and promptly forgot it) so I no longer can update the profile or submit comments or add friends or do any of those exciting things that bring them flocking to Myspace like bees to honey, or politicians to pork. The photo isn’t me, if you’re wondering.)

Myspace is wrist-slittingly bad. There is nothing on earth that convinces me more that Western civilization is going down the toilet.

Lame things about myspace (this could be a long list):
- Playing music whenever you load someone’s page. This is stupid. If I want music I can press the “Play” button myself. If you press “Pause”, go to another page, then press back, it starts playing all over again! Grrrr. If you load two pages at once, it tries to play them both. This is ridiculous. It also interferes with whatever you’re playing in Winamp or similar.
- Displaying my star sign. I hate astrology and so should you. Also, if your sign is “Cancer” (which mine is), do you really want THAT on your page? It’s a bad omen.
- Acts as a magnet for every talentless tryhard in the universe. (Sorry, but it’s true. You know it is.)
- Searched for tymon smith, then tymonsmith. Myspace was too stupid to suggest myspace.com/tymonsmith in its results.
- The average myspace user page looks like pigs vomit mixed with kittens in a blender, and is impossible to read.
- Why did myspace set Eastern European Time as the default for the Australian myspace? Melbourne ain’t Kiev, people.

Okay, maybe I need to wind down a little …

13 CIA agents who are suspected of kidnapping a German citizen have been indicted by German prosecutors. This is pretty big news, no? So why has this episode, with all it’s implications for US-Europe relations and the war on terror, been completely ignored by the Australian media?

It’s all very well for topless publicity seekers to get saturation media coverage, but, you know, there are other things going on in the world!

Australian media coverage of world affairs is quite good when they actually choose to cover a story, but all too often they focus with laser-like intensity on the trivial at the expense of the important.

I mean, CIA agents getting arrested? That is an interesting, newsworthy story! What more do they want?