buggery.org

Image from faggotz.org, via Kellan on Facebook.

Catherine Deveny’s column in the Age today is lovely. This is an abridged version:

YOU know you’re from Melbourne if …

• When diarising anything in September you first consult the footy fixture.
• You know Sunshine, Rosebud and the Caribbean Gardens are not as good as they sound.
• You consider yourself a socialist yet you drive a European car and have a cleaner.
• You’d rather sit next to Guy Rundle on a plane than Guy Pearce.
• You think the slogan on our licence plates should be “Melbourne. The Coffee Is Shit Anywhere Else”, “Melbourne. Go To Sydney. We Hate Tourists” or ” Melbourne. What School Did You Go To?”
• You know the word ”Moomba” means Up Your Bum, White Man.
• You’re not happy Melbourne has been voted the World’s Most Liveable City. You’d prefer it was voted “Most Enigmatic, Tortured And Slightly Dangerous City”.
• Any music by Paul Kelly makes you suddenly think of the Nylex sign and something about making gravy.
• Jon Faine shits you but you can’t switch him off.
• Pot, cantaloupe, potato cake and hook turn. Build a bridge and get over it.

The John Faine line is a classic. And totally true in my case.

CC-licensed Flickr image above: Lady Luck™

…or something like that.

There are 52 towns in Victoria which are at high risk for the 2009-10 fire season, according to a list issued by the state government today. Here is a map (click to enlarge) showing the towns listed:

• Download this map as a Google Earth Placemark File

The Victorian Government says the nominated centres will be its priorities for developing township protection plans.

“The work that we’ve been doing over recent months has identified a number of areas … 52 towns, which for a variety of reasons are more at risk or more vulnerable to fire, should it occur in the next fire season,” Mr Brumby said.

“These could be towns that are built in the middle of bushland, they could be towns that are on the coast that have a huge holiday population and only one road in, and one road out.”

“We’ve got a fire season coming up, that on all the evidence we’ve got… is going to be worse than the one we’ve just experienced.” — ABC

Lynne Kosky kills the W-Class tram:

MELBOURNE'S remaining vintage W-class trams will be phased out on all routes except the City Circle line, despite a new campaign to get hundreds of the dilapidated trams restored and back on the tracks.

The National Trust has begun lobbying to save the trams, introduced in 1923.

Just 12 W-class trams run on the City Circle route. Another 25 run along Chapel Street in South Yarra, Richmond's Church Street and on La Trobe Street in the city.

Nine weeks ago, Yarra Trams stopped running the W-class trams in South Yarra and Richmond on weekends, replacing them with newer models.

And 178 of the vintage trams are slowly deteriorating in the Government's Newport and Preston workshops.

→ The Age: W-class trundling into history

This is sad news. The old W-class trams are part of the fabric of Melbourne and without them the city becomes one step closer to generic. It says a lot about the absence of imagination that is characteristic of most politicians that Kosky can’t see this.

She should take a trip to San Francisco and see the way that city has transformed the F-line by using historic, beautifully restored streetcars from cities around America and the world (including a W-class Melbourne tram!). People come to San Francisco to experience San Francisco, and part of that is the light rail systems.

Likewise Melbourne, but it seems we have to be humourless and unimaginative about it.

IT WAS the heart of gay Sydney - but now Oxford St is going straight.

The one-time bastion of Sydney's gay community is giving way to more straight venues and is even home to the most heterosexual institution of them all - a wet T-shirt competition.

There are now just three openly gay venues along the strip - the Stonewall Hotel, The Palms and the Oxford Hotel. These are outnumbered more than three to one by straight venues such as Oxford Art Factory, Havana and Spectrum.

The change raises fears the colourful atmosphere that attracted people to what was Sydney's premier entertainment strip is being driven away.

And with the switch has come concerns of an increase in violence.

Rainbow Labor convenor Michael Vaughan said while Oxford St had always welcomed straight and gay alike, there needed to be a balance.

→ Daily Tele: Sydney’s gay heart Oxford St plays it too straight for some

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The collapse of unfettered capitalism should have been a golden opportunity for the left. So where did it all go wrong?

→ The Guardian: Has the left blown its big chance of success?

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