">My Big World Of Crap

Isaac Hayes, the voice of Chef on TV series “South Park” has supposedly quit the program claiming it has gone beyond satire and into religious intolerance and bigotry

He says:

“Religious beliefs are sacred to people, and at all times should be
respected and honoured. As a civil rights activist of the past 40
years, I cannot support a show that disrespects those beliefs and
practices.”

He must be a bit slow if its taken him this long to form his objections to the show.

“South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker claim that it was disingenuous of Hayes to cash in on the show lampooning religion when it has done so since inception. They also claim that Hayes’ Scientology religion (if you call it a “religion” - highly questionable in my opinion) is behind his decision:

“This is 100 per cent having to do with his faith of Scientology … We
(he and co-creator Trey Parker) never heard a peep out of Isaac in any
way until we did Scientology. He wants a different standard for
religions other than his own, and to me, that is where intolerance and
bigotry begin.”

Wouldn’t surprise me if the truth is that it is really a pay dispute!

Update: There is a story now that Tom Cruise applied pressure to his studio to have a repeat of the Scientology mocking episode withdrawn from an associated cable TV station (18 Mar). Thin-skinned these Hubbard fooled idiots, aren’t they?

Technorati Tags: South Park, religion, scientology, Isaac Hayes, Chef

Technorati Tags: Queen Elizabeth II, monarchy, republic, Australia, anachronism, Commonwealth Games

…. extracts foot from own mouth, wipes egg off face, spits out remaining bits of hat after having to eat it.

Turns out my gloating last night about Australia’s great effort in the cricket was written a bit early, as South Africa won an incredible match, scoring 9 for 438 in reply to Australia’s 4 for 434. I should have saved it as a draft until this morning (and had thought of this, but then went, arrgh, stuff it, there’s no way they’ll get near Australia). Just goes to prove that it ain’t over till the fat lady sings, the final siren goes, the last ball is bowled, etc, etc.

Well done, South Africa, particularly Herschelle Gibbs. Fantastic effort!

I still think though that comments about chokers are more generally applicable to the South Africans. They pulled off a great win this morning, but this is against their track record of many years against Australia. Hey, even Port Power won a premiership after all their choking, and Greg Norman won the British Open a couple of times.


Technorati Tags: cricket, egg on face, foot in mouth, Australia, South Africa, Herschelle Gibbs

This must just about be the biggest case of putting your own foot in your mouth in the history of sport.

South African cricket captain Graeme Smith claimed that Australia appeared to have choked towards the end of their narrow win, by one wicket, in Durban. He said:

“I thought they were the team that were choking, if that’s the word, under pressure a little bit at the back end,”

This is an odd statement from Smith, captain of a team which lead the 5 game one day international series 2-0, only to see Australia come back to 2-2, with tonight’s game the decider. South Africa also has a longish history of folding under pressure against Australia. I suppose it takes a choker to know another.

Australian captain, Ricky Ponting’s response on hearing Smith’s comments:

“He said that, did he?” “We’ve won the game. If they want to start talking like that, they’ll want to have a look at their own performances and see if they can back that up.

“There’d be a lot of fans out there tonight saying exactly the same thing about the South African side.”

Ponting and the Australians backed this up with their actions tonight, scoring a record 434 for 4 wickets off their 50 overs, beating the previous one day international high score of 399 by 35 runs. Ponting scored 164 off 105 balls, Mike Hussey 81 off 50, and Adam Gilchrist, Simon Katich and Andrew Symonds all making worthwhile contributions. As I write, South Africa have started poorly 1 for 3 in the second over.

Choke, choke, choke, choke - South African cricket, Port Power, Parramatta Eels, Greg Norman, chokers all!

While on the subject of South African sporting teams, how shit are they? In Super 14 this weekend, ACT Brumbies 35 beat Sharks 30 (Sharks led 21-6 just before half time), NSW Waratahs 50 beat Cats 3 (having seen both the Sharks and Cats games this weekend and last its clear they suffer the somewhat significant problem of having no idea what to do with the ball when they have it - most South African teams seem to have the same problem), Hurricanes 23 beat Stormers 19 (the Stormers had led all game until the Hurricanes scored the winning try in the final minute of the game). Only the Bulls beating the Highlanders 23-16 in Pretoria saved the South African teams from a whitewash.

Technorati Tags: cricket, Australia, South Africa, Graeme Smith, Ricky Ponting, choker

Saw this movie yesterday and thought it was really good. Interesting story, with strong performances by Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello (who I thought is pretty damn hot!). What I found interesting was the sudden shifts from normal family life in the small country town it is set to moments of fairly graphic violence.

My daughter, I think, is nearly over her Viggo crush. She was enthralled by Aragorn (she even got the lifesize cutout of him from the video shop and had it in her room for a while), but Viggo without the long hair and beard is not as good - I think also the fact that he’s older than me doesn’t help his cause with her. Even the sight of Viggo’s bum wasn’t anything special for her.

This research on the occupational backgrounds of members of Parliament says a lot about why Labor is so out of touch with the real world.

All that experience working away at internal politics equips them well for fighting amongst themselves. Pity about focusing on the Government and providing effective opposition to them.

(If the labels on the graph aren’t clear, the big ones for the ALP are party and union administrators and officials, political consultants and advisers and research assistants).

Technorati Tags: ALP, occupation, parliament, MPs, politics

Simon Crean and Julia Gillard have shown more leadership in the last week than Kim Beazley will ever be capable of. His defence of the ALP’s factional system a day or so back was just pissweak and pathetic.

He says he does not want the power to choose his own frontbench - that stripping caucus members of power to select the frontbench is a recipe for leadership authoritarianism. What a crock of shit! Strikes me just as an excuse for inaction …. which is precisely what it is. Labor is never going to win at the federal level with Beazley as leader (and lets face it, everyone knows he’s only the leader because of the lack of any alternatives acceptable to enough caucus members) - the only remote chance they have anyway is if the Howard government does get deeply embroiled in scandal or the economy collapses (even then its not a given …. i can imagine the “we know times are tough but how much worse would it be under Labor”).

Interesting observations in the Sydney Morning Herald today by Peter Hartcher. He noted that:

After 10 years in the wilderness, federal Labor is in a narcissistic funk. In the past two days I spoke to eight federal frontbenchers for 20 to 30 minutes each. They talked only of the party. Not one mentioned the Howard Government. So why are they there? For many, it is to satisfy old grudges, to advance factional interests, and stoke egos.

Someone less polite, like me, might say they’re all indulging in a wankfest. More interested in playing games among the factions and settling scores and toadying favour than doing what we taxpayers are paying them for …. to represent their constituents (it would be fascinating to see who many MP’s actually think their constituents are …. is it the voters in their electorate, or the relative handful of branch members and union officials and party apparatchiks they need to keep onside?), and present as a viable alternative government. As I’ve said previously, Labor suffers from too many people who lack any real world experience …having worked in political or quasi-political roles their entire careers. It shows in their current performance, too many of them are just self-serving wankers (to be fair, the coalition has its fair share of these too).

Technorati Tags: Kim Beazley, Julia Gillard, Simon Crean, ALP, reform, leadership

A company in Portugal is launching a range of red toilet paper, supposedly for those who want to get passionate in the bathroom. This follows the successful launch of black toilet paper last year.

According to the company, red “is the colour of our hearts, of passion, lust, fury, laughter, anger, love, fire”.

Whats the next colour? My money’s on brown, for those that like colour co-ordinated toilet accessories.


Technorati Tags: toilet paper, red, black, brown

Had to go to Sydney for a couple of days at short notice.

I hate airports - if I needed reminding that I prefer to drive to Sydney, I don’t anymore.

First of all, the security scanners in Canberra went off - it was my shoes (which had never done this before). So take them off I did, and said “fuck” under my breath which I think the security guard heard. Then when I got through I put the laptop tray down a tad hard, which got a dirty look from the same guard - she said something to one of the others, and suddenly I had a male guard standing right behind me, while I put my shoes back on and repacked my laptop in its bag. Then I got the explosives residue test. Clearly I was deemed a threat - all because I got a bit shitty about being stuffed around by the security.

Then in Sydney, had to wait over 20 minutes for my bag to turn up on the carousel - fucking hopeless. Then had to wait 15 minutes for a cab, then its door was broken and wouldn’t shut properly - I chose to keep going and hold it shut rather than go back to the queue.

Then on the way home today, the scanners went off over my shoes again - never happened before, now twice in 2 days. Canberra I half expect, the scanners always seem extra sensitive.

Driving next time.

While in Sydney, Bondi Junction is a shithole, the Marriott Hotel is pretty good, and I had some nice drinks with some colleagues and a damn good laksa in a noodle bar in Oxford Street.


Technorati Tags: airports, Canberra, Sydney, security, laksa

…. is to admit you have a problem.

Well, Shane Warne, seems to be slowly coming to that realisation. He believes he may need help to deal with his serial sexual and other indiscretions - the ones that led to wife Simone finally saying enough’s enough last year. He seems to have some inkling of his behaviour being wrong, and some regrets:

“And when you’re lonely and you’re away for six months, things sometimes just happen and then you regret it afterwards and you think “you idiot”.

Perhaps the time to have that thought is before you get your dick out of your pants, Shane?

For the ladies, here is that magnet, Warnie, who has armies of women lusting after him.

Technorati Tags: Shane Warne, sex, chick magnet