buggery.org

David Burgess and Will Saunders, the two protesters who painted the words NO WAR on the sails of the Sydney Opera House last year, have been sentenced to nine months periodic detention.

They have also been ordered to pay the Opera House Trust $151,000 to pay for the cleanup, and today they handed over the first $40,000 of that amount.

Burgess and Saunders have set up a fund to raise money to pay the compensation bill. Donations are accepted, or you can purchase greeting cards from the site.

Doug Cameron, the colourful national secretary of the AMWU, at the ALP national conference this morning (via Crikey):

The elite drool from every orifice at the thought of a free trade deal with the US. The Premiers are even worse. I reckon there’s some Pavlovian science going on here.

It’s one of the better lines from Labor’s annual talkfest/scragfight. Julia Gillard was very much in her element waving about a leaked memo sent by the government to the pointy heads at Medicare state offices, warning that if the national health system’s 20th birthday is to be celebrated with a cake, government MPs must not be photographed sticking the knife in:

What this email is telling us, as clearly as any other action by the Howard Government, is Australians know when a conservative politician, when John Howard or Tony Abbott get anywhere near Medicare and they’ve got a knife in their hand, they’ve only got one purpose and that is to destroy Medicare by chopping it up. (ABC News)

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You have just won one million dollars:

1. Who do you call first? If I’ve just won $1,000,000, I’ve probably already used all my lifelines, including phone-a-friend.

2. What is the first thing you buy for yourself? A cheese sandwich. Or possibly the Temple of Genitals.

3. What is the first thing you buy for someone else? A round of drinks.

4. Do you give any away? If yes, to whom? Nah, fuck that. I’d keep the lot for myself, probably cash the cheque for small notes and build a money room like Scrooge McDuck. Mwahahahahaha.

5. Do you invest any? If so, how? Drugs. I’d invest the lot in drugs.

fridayfive.org

Parts of buggery.org are now nicely reformated to comply with XHTML 1.0 Transitional. It’s taken a lot of tinkering under the hood to get there, but we’re on the way to becvoming standards compliant.

Don’t believe me? Validate this page.

I’ve been delaying writing this while my head stops spinning after Tuesday’s moment of truth.

The hearing seemed to go well. Of course its always hard to know with these things but that was the general consensus.

I made some notes as we moved though the process. They are pretty sketchy but they might give you a sense of where we’ve been.
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The hearing is behind us. I have a post on that but I’m still fiddling with it. Mardi Gras seems to be just around the corner, requiring the application of some thought to the question “shall we?”. The wedding plans are crystallising — we have a date, a budget (!) and, probably, a venue. The weekend approaches, this week without the usually-obligatory Friday journey to Sydney. Work beckons. There are bills to be paid.

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“watching” => array (”Master and Commander on the big screen, Stand by Me and The Sum of Us on the small.”,4),
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The Vatican has spoken out against pharmaceutical companies which make huge profits from anti-AIDS drugs, saying that moral reasons mean the companies should offer the drugs at lower prices.

On the other hand, the Vatican also claimed last October that people with HIV should not use condoms “because they have tiny holes in them through which HIV can pass.”

Nothing like a little papist hypocrisy to start the day.

…is dead.

Something from my recently-discovered-favourite-irreverant-yet-insightful-website-of-the-moment (just the domain name antipope.org was enough to get my juices flowing; so it’s refreshing to see the site is more than just a one-liner):

* Angel has joined #Judea<Angel> lo<Zacharias> WTF, argh, who the hell are you?<Angel> Fear not, for thy prayer is heard<Angel> Your wife's pregnant mate, a son!<Angel> You will call him John<Zacharias> Nice, unusual name :p<Angel> and you shall rejoice<Angel> and he shall never drink any boose<Angel> and he will make the children of Israel turn to god<Zacharias> Yeah right, i should believe this?<Zacharias> I'm an old man, fs, and so is my wife!<Angel> You will believe me because i am Gabriel and i say so!<Angel> You will be dumb until all this is over* Angel sets mode: +m

The IRC Bible (via HogBlog, via The Pagan Prattle).

I passed.

Sean, who appears to be the only person on the planet who has had anything like the amount of sex I’ve had (but he’s young, so he’ll undoubtedly out-shag me in time), has posted a set of conclusions based on his recent experiences:

An excerpt:

Refrain From Asking Them Why They Think You’re Hot. For whatever reason, they like you. Who are you to doubt them? Only their therapist knows the whole story. So go with it and don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. File under “Do you think I’m pretty?”-type questions which only serve to embarass everyone involved.

Apart from the cologne reference (we don’t need no steenkin’ cologne) he’s right on the money. (The relevant entry is dated 27 January).

I’m taking a test this morning to get a learner driver’s licence.

I’m somewhat embarassed to admit that I’ve never had a driving licence, despite my somewhat advanced years. It was never a priority issue while I was living in public-transport-friendly Sydney, but now that we live in Newcastle it’s a necessary step.

The screenshot is from the online demo driving test. Hopefully all the questions will be this easy and I’ll come home with a shiny new licence in a few hours’ time.

Newcastle residents may want to stay indoors for the next few weeks.

There won’t be any updates to buggery.org tonight or tomorrow, while we’re in Sydney pleading our case with the powers that be.

In the meantime, please join with our neice Hannah, who includes us in her prayers every night:

…and God bless Uncle Brent and Uncle Paul, so they can stay together and live happily ever after.

Get Your War On

The Horso Creek Massacre (1880s): Queenie McKenzie, 1998. Used without permission.

It’s January 26, Australia’s national day (and India’s! Hi India!) and, once again, I’ve been overlooked in the Australia Day Honours List. Hardly surprising, given I haven’t done anything much to deserve one (”for services to weblogging, especially as a raconteur, agitator and ratbag” … that’ll be the day).

Of course, if I could run fast, or catch a ball, my chances would be significantly better.

Howard’s record for the Australian of the year in the eight Survival Days since his 1996 election:

• Immunologists: 2 (25%)
• Other medical specialists: 1 (12.5%)
• Soldiers: 1 (12.5%)
• Sportspeople: 4 (50%)

No offence meant to Steve Waugh, the 2004 Australian of the Year. No doubt he’s a nice bloke. But surely we have deserving artists, community activists, philosophers, conservationists, inventors, diplomats … not just sportspeople.

Of course, Howard is a political animal and this process, like everything else, has been cheapened by that.

Maureen Dowd in Thursday’s New York Times:

Can you believe President Bush is still pushing the cockamamie claim that we went to war in Iraq with a real coalition rather than a gaggle of poodles and lackeys?

Apologies to the poodle fanciers out there. Poodles are intelligent creatures.

(Über-crappy photoshop by yours truly)

Less than 48 hours to go before my future happiness is determined by someone I’ve never met. Distractions are our friends at this difficult hour.

Brent is dusting furiously and preparing a meal that will take most of the day to cook (caramelised duckling with mango and lime). I’m reading, and blogging, and taking care of a few odd jobs around the house.

The button at right was a gift from Kirsty, who got it from Andy, who picked it up in a flea market in Canada and thought, “I bet Kirsty or Paul will get a kick out of this.” People know me too well.

I’m reading Jeffrey Zeldman’s Designing with Web Standards and I’m finding it an inspiring read. I like standards, and despite Mr Zeldman’s sometimes infuriatingly overwritten prose style, his enthusiasm for the subject is infectious.

At present, buggery.org doesn’t comply with web standards, although it comes fairly close. I don’t think there’s too much work involved in bringing it up to scratch, and I’ll be working on that over the next little while.

The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, says it is an “open question” as to whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) prior to last year’s war.

Responding to the resignation of the US’ lead WMD hunter, Dr David Kay, Powell said:

What is the open question is how many stocks they had if any, and if they had any where did they go? And if they didn’t have any, why wasn’t that known beforehand?

An “open question”, according to my New Oxford Dictionary of English, is:

a matter on which differences of opinion are possible; a matter not yet decided.

There is no “open question” about Iraq’s WMDs. Iraq had no such weapons. No differences of opinion on this matter are possible, becuse there is ample proof the weapons do not, did not exist.

After nine months of searching, no weapons, no evidence of the destruction of weapons, and no conclusive evidence of programs to develop weapons (don’t even mention “weapons of mass destruction-related program activities“), has been found.

(ABC)

From US Patent 6,485,773:

This invention, as a drink powder, is used in the following manner: 1. About an hour or so before bed, the male user should ejaculate at least once before taking the invention. 2. Shortly thereafter, the male user pours 21-22 grams of invention into a container of 6 ounces (175 ml) of water. 3. The male user then closes the container with a lid and shake contents vigorously. 4. The male user then drinks contents.

While the invention will enhance semen taste in as little as 12-24 hours, it is recommended that, so as to allow the male physiology time to produce more semen while benefiting from the invention’s attributes, the male user repeat Steps 2-4 for an additional one to two nights.

Apparently, it’s the 38-41% freeze-dried pinapple juice that does the trick.

(via Gayety)

7. Monopoly was devised a century ago by a Quaker, Lizzie Magie, as an instructive game against the inequalities of capitalism. For 30 years, it was a Quaker pastime. It was shown to a man named Charles Darrow, who in 1936 sold the rights to Parker Brothers Games.

This, plus the debunking of the widely-circulated “Churchill’s profanity-spouting parrot” story, is in BBC News’s 10 things we didn’t know this time last week.

At this moment, what is your favorite…

1. …song? Hello, by The Cat Empire

2. …food? I’m nuts for anything with nuts.

3. …tv show? It’s January. During December and January in Australia there are no TV ratings, so the networks fill their schedules with cricket, tennis and re-runs of Sienfeld. So, fuck the TV networks, I’ll just have to insult my own intelligence.

4. …scent? The way the air smells after a storm. Like it smells right now here in Newy.

5. …quote? From Out in the Valley, a volume of gay and lesbian histories of the Hunter region (where I live):

The Hunter is not characterised by disproportionately high levels of violence directed against gays and lesbians, or even by the kinds of anti-gay propaganda that are generated in other non-metropolitan Australian cities by their local media. In the Hunter, gays and lesbians are simply overlooked.

fridayfive.org/

This day has been long, too long. I have been to Sydney and back — the usual Friday “day in the office” which, today, was more like “five minutes in the office and the rest of the day running around”…

My journey home, late, dark, was better for the thunderstorm that is still raging around us. As the train crossed the Hawkesbury in the blackness, the storm fleetingly revealed the landscape around as the rain on the windows turned the whole world to liquid.

Good night.

The B-52s, apparently. Makes a change from Kylie.

Q. When it comes to gay issues, what makes you a better presidential candidate?

A. I’ve been in the armed forces. I’ve been at the very center of the firestorm. I know what it’s like out there. And I’ve had people who have come up to see me about it since I’ve been out [of the service] — gay and lesbian people who need help.

(The Advocate)

From today’s Crikey subscriber email (the item has been deleted from the 2GB website now):

5. THE PARROT’S COMMUNITY EVENTS

Go to www.2gb.com and click on Community Noticeboard and look up the event on January 30. Surely it must be some mistake for 2GB to suggest that its star broadcaster [Alan Jones] is hosting an event at his apartment for the “Lonely Gay Mens Society“.

It says, and this is a direct quote from The Parrot’s own website, “All lonely gay boys meet with Alan for adult fun and games. Bring a bucket.“

Goodness gracious! We hope this is some sort of joke and all we’re doing is faithfully reporting what is on the 2GB website.

ROFL

Free trade. It sounds like such an innocuous concept. You let my products into your country, and I’ll do the same for you. If only it were so simple.

Australia and the United States are in the final stage of negotiations to enter a free trade agreement. While you’d imagine (rightly) that any such agreement would surely favour the interests of the big, powerful economy at the expense of the small, here in Australia we’ve been told that free trade with the US will be good for our economy, will stimulate growth, expand employment, bring investment, remove the salt from the Murray and turn the rivers inwards to irrigate the parched deserts … and anyone who can’t see this is a dill.

Well, call me a dill, ’cause I can’t see it.
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According to the digital thermometer, it is 32.3°C at my desk right now. There are five days until Brent’s immigration hearing. My mother is in hospital with pneumonia. I have just written out a cheque for my entire life savings, payable to my lawyer. I am supposed to be working.

Where did I put that bottle of gin?

It’s been a long time since the last Consumption Junction, which is supposed to be a weekly feast. I will try to be better.

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Only five to 10 percent of lesbians and gays are actually gay; the rest are “sexual perverts”, according to the latest bright spark to join John Paul II’s college of Cardinals, 80-year-old Gustaaf Joos (right).

“I am willing to write in my own blood that of all those who call themselves lesbian or gay, a maximum of five to 10 percent are effectively lesbian or gay,” Cardinal Gustaaf Joos, 80, told the Belgian weekly P-Magazine in an interview.

“All the rest are just sexual perverts,” said Joos, who is also a parish priest in the small Belgian town of Landskouter.

[...]

“Real homosexuals don’t wander in the streets in colourful suits. Those are people who have a serious problem and have to live with that.

(Reuters)

Tommy Rico’s post of a photo of himself in a buggery.org “HIV Inside” shirt (this post refers) has got Harley thinking.

For all the slack, insufferable Australians who can’t get off their beach towels long enough to read Bush’s State of the Union address in full, Aaron Swartz has condensed it down to a nippy 308 words.