@rupertmurdoch I suspect they will find the courage when Fox News enthusiastically campaigns for it.
— Malcolm Turnbull (@TurnbullMalcolm) December 15, 2012
Well played, Mr Turnbull. Well played.
buggery.org
Better than a poke in the eye with a wet fish
Filed under linkage …
Shit Tony Abbott Says
I couldn’t believe nobody had already done this, so I did it. My contribution to the currently-fashionable “shit ____ say” meme.
Shit homophobic people say
Video from Lamda Legal in the US highlighting some of the egregious garbage being spewed by hyperconservatives in that country.
2068: Entire world population gay due to chemicals in the water
XKCD’s massive timeline of “The future – according to Google search results” is the most wonderfulest thing I have seen in ages. Click the image to see the whole thing.
HIV/AIDS: A new first impression
Myles Helfand, editor of TheBody.com, writing in the Huffington Post on HIV stigma:
Never mind that more than half of all people in the U.S. who get HIV/AIDS are heterosexual, and that most people who get it are not injection-drug users. Or that it whittles away the immune system in the same manner regardless of a person’s sex, gender, race, age, education level, wealth, geographic location or the manner in which they’re infected.
It’s the first impression that matters. And that first impression was that HIV/AIDS was something sinners got for doing things they shouldn’t: Having sex with men. Using drugs. Acts of which God does not approve, as has been made clear by luminaries such as Pope Benedict XVI and Delaware’s masturbation-averse Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell.
Bedknobs and Backrooms
My friend Craig has a new blog, ‘Bedknobs and Backrooms’, through which he promises to progressively reveal a memoir of his life. Craig spent 16 years in Sydney as a dance party promoter, leather identity, and lad-about-town, so I expect there’ll be some juicy revelations coming.
Craig and I were fellow travellers through the Sydney inner-city queer scene through the 1980s and 1990s, a time when a community that was being savaged by AIDS rebelled and celebrated life through dance parties, art events and community organising. That period represents a significant part of our shared history and it’s not one that has been well recorded. Craig’s role as a participant and player in the scene should give him a unique insight. I know he has a powerful personal story to tell too.
Just one post so far but it’s evocatively and written and bodes well. Check it out.
- Bedknobs and Backrooms (NSFW)
Sydney Dust Storm
Tom Coates has put together a brilliant Flickr gallery of images from today’s dust storm in Sydney. Awesome stuff.
CC-licensed image above: Dustday in Laundry 2 by Mezza.
AAP: Fielding criticises Rudd’s ‘physical’ policy
"I will make it quite clear…F..I..S..K..A..L."
→ AAP: Fielding criticises Rudd’s ‘physical’ policy
Automatically created from a Delicious.com bookmark.
You know you’re from Melbourne if …
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™
The Age: W-class trundling into history
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.