Oh no, gay guys

Another one of those crazy American lawsuit stories.

A 12 year old girl and her grandparents are seeking $500,000 damages for psychological distress after being shown the movie “Brokeback Mountain” at school.

Now, granted, the teacher showing a class of 12 year olds an R-rated movie (MA in Australia I think?) deserves a good kick up the arse, like being fired, but the lawsuit is laying it on pretty thick.

Seeing a story about gay cowboys causes $500k worth of distress … yeah right! The reasonable and sensible outcome in this would be teacher fired, and school apologises to parents of students who were shown age-inappropriate film without permission. Easy! But, too many lawyers who need to create work to feed themselves, and we get a stupid lawsuit instead.

OK, so whats he doing hanging around schools so much lately?

My son’s school got a visit from John Howard today. I asked him what he spoke about … answer, “I don’t know, I wasn’t listening, it was boring”. Not to mention “he sounds funny”.

One of the smart arses at school asked the PM about how he keeps his eyebrows under control. It wasn’t my son, by the way.

Howard seems to be hanging around schools a bit lately. My niece’s school (not in Canberra) got a visit about a week ago.

Strange coincidence this sudden interest in education by the PM?

Now I’ve upgraded from the information highway to something closer to a superhighway

Got my connection upgraded to ADSL 2+ today. Woo hoo!!!!

Taking it for a spin.

Dirty business, politics, isn’t it?

The knives sure are out for Kelly Hoare, the Labor MP for Charlton in NSW. She was dumped from party preselection for the safe ALP seat, which she had held since 1998, in favour of ACTU secretary and ALP golden boy Greg Combet.

Clearly timed to shut her up, and stop her protesting over being dumped in favour of Combet, details of some embarassing incidents of misconduct by Ms Hoare have appeared in the media over the weekend. No doubt straight from ALP sources, no doubt with tacit approval of the party hierarchy …ie “shut your mouth, take your medicine, or there’ll be more dirt to follow!”. The campaign against her has been vicious enough to have fellow MPs concerned for her welfare and state of mind.

In Saturday’s press, we learned she had propositioned a Commonwealth car driver for sex in April and had been receiving counselling for this. According to informed sources, Ms Hoare, 43, allegedly asked the driver: “Why don’t you come inside and fuck me.” He declined. This morning, more juicy gossip about an incident where another MP walked in on her and a security guard in her Parliament House office.

My understanding is that Kelly Hoare has not really distinguished herself by her performance as an MP. She inherited the seat from her father who had held it previously for many years. Prior to being an MP, she’d worked in dad’s electoral office (ie yet another Labor MP who’s done nothing but politics and not worked out in the real world). Greg Combet is undoubtedly going to prove more valuable to the ALP than Kelly Hoare ever would be. Apart from being a career politician, and even worse, having her seat gifted to her through family connections, Kelly Hoare really showed her unsuitability to hold such office when she cried poor over her likely dumping by the party, claiming the loss of her $120k MP salary would place her family in financial hardship …notwithstanding that she probably scores a $60k lifetime pension. She also made noise at one time about suing for unfair dismissal. Out of touch with reality?

While I think the ALP’s appointment of stunt candidates like Greg Combet, Bill Shorten, Maxine McKew, and previously, Peter Garrett, is good in terms of improving the parliamentary party’s talent pool, the fact that good candidates are not coming through the party’s branch system seems to me to point to a problem there that needs fixing (ie people are being preselected based on deals done and favours exchanged not who would serve the ALP’s best interests). Of concern also is how the stunt candidates almost invariably fight over the safe seats, rather than putting themselves out in the frontline of the marginal seats which need to be won off the Liberals … politics is a nice career, especially when you don’t have to expose yourself to the risk of losing.

Tribute

Thoroughly enjoyed the Go-Betweens tribute concert that was on ABC TV on the weekend. The concert actually happened in Brisbane late last year, but the TV screening of it coincided with the first anniversary of singer-songwriter Grant McLennan’s death last year.

The Go-Betweens were a fabulous band, with a wonderful catalog of songs. The tribute featured Go-Betweens members Glenn Thompson and Adele Pickvance (the rhythm section of the post-reformed GBs) plus Dave McCormack (Custard), Ian Haug (Powderfinger) and a number of guests who performed different songs. Guests included Sarah Blasko, Toby Martin (Youth Group), Darren Hanlon, Kevin Mitchell (ie Bob Evans), Glen Richards (Augie March), Dan Kelly, and all did justice to the wonderful songs. I liked Darren Hanlon in particular - he sang “Right Here”, and Glen Richards (”The House that Jack Kerouac built”). Sarah Blasko did well with my favourite Go-Betweens song “Bye Bye Pride”.

Finally, as a treat, I thought I’d throw in some old Go-Betweens’ goodness from the 80’s.

Busy couple of days

Its been a busy weekend in my household.

Yesterday, took the kids to see Spiderman 3. Not something I especially wanted to see, but I went along with what the children wanted. It was a decent enough movie I suppose, but we all agreed that it could have done with a good half hour cut out of it - ie there was a bit of padding in the story.

Then it was off to my son’s soccer. First game of the year. They lost 3-2. Not too bad considering they’d only had one training session, and had a number of new players to the team. More fitness work (in particular) and skills training needed to do better. Actually they were more than competitive, and probably had more chances to score than the other team, but didn’t take them.

Then we all went to one of the local Thai restaurants for dinner. Yummo!!

Today, went to the Hall markets, bought a few things, had a good look at what was for sale, ran into a few people we knew (as you do at the markets), had a bite to eat.

Then off to my daughter’s horseriding lesson which started up again today after the school holidays.

Tonight, tired. Tomorrow, work.

PS: Energy saver light bulbs … got more in my travels yesterday. I now think I will never have to buy another one in my life, there are so many being given away by all sorts of companies.

Go Jack!

This sad story touched me when I read it today. George, the Jack Russell terrier, leapt to the defence of 5 children in New Zealand when they were threatened by 2 pit bulls.

Richard Rosewarne, 11, the oldest of the children, said the pit bulls came up behind them and were going for his brother Darryl Wilson, 4.

“George tried to protect us by barking and rushing at them, but they started to bite him - one on the head and the other on the back.

“We ran off crying and some people saw what was happening and rescued George.”

But George’s injuries were so bad, he had to be put down.

George’s owner Alan Gay, 69, says his dog died a hero.

“These two pit bulls rushed up and were going for the little boy. George went for them, it’s what he would do. He didn’t stand a chance, but I reckon he saved that boy from being chewed up.

“These pit bulls should be banned. They’re killers and it comes from them being bred for fighting.”

Absolutely! Why do people need to own these big aggressive dogs? Overcompensating for other deficiencies?

Of course, having a Jack Russell in our family makes George’s story all that much sadder. Knowing our JR, he obviously thinks he’s much bigger than he is … not that he’d get into a dangerous situation like that. Bit hard when he spends most of his time sleeping, lying in the sun and eating, interrupted only by his need to patrol our back yard and tell all the other dogs in the neighbourhood off.

Here he is, in his favourite position, sitting on the back of the lounge taking in the morning sun.

Just what everyone needs

A sculpture of a naked and dead Paris Hilton will be used in an anti drink-driving campaign.

Paris Hilton Autopsy shows the heiress - who was arrested last September for drink driving - lying naked with her legs splayed wearing a tiara and cluthching a mobile phone. The sculpture has an open abdominal cavity with removable life-size internal organs.

I still have this big question about Paris Hilton. What the fuck is it she’s done to be famous for? Please, somebody, list her achievements. To the best of my knowledge she’s famous for being famous, and for a few instances of skanky behaviour. I just can’t see what it is about her that grabs all the attention.

Update (6/05/2007): Poor Paris. 45 days jail for her parole violations. Seems like she thought that normal laws didn’t apply to her … even turned up late for court. Sounds like Mum doesn’t think the law applies to her family, so hardly surprising that Paris doesn’t either. I still wonder if Paris will make it to jail though … got a feeling that lawyers will appeal and some sort of deal will be done to keep her out.

Anyway, for now, Paris is not looking real happy about things.