Monday 24 June 2013

...seeing five minutes to midnight


G’day Possums,

Shane at the "G"
Shane at the G


Mrs Wombat and I went to the “footy”at the “G”.
It was the Melbourne vs. St.Kilda game and we attended because A/ these are our respective childhood teams and B/ we hadn’t been to a game in a long while .... and not because we’re closet aficionados of sado-masochism.  

Melbourne ran around in circles a lot, picking out St.Kilda defense players in the Melbourne forward line to kick to with monotonous regularity. St.Kilda on the other hand, made three or four elegantly flowing forays forward to win by six goals which really seemed more like four points given their inability to “finish off’ in their own forward line.
Die-hard Melbourne supporters around us seemed pleased that their team had not “given up” and St.Kilda fans were philosophic: “Oh, well …it’s a win”. Which actually makes me wonder a little about the sado-masochistic bit!

Last century, when a child, going to the footy was a weekly family event always appearing as if we were about to embark on an extensive expedition with blankets for all, coats, beanies, scarves, gloves and baskets of food, fruit, cake and thermos’ of soup, coffee and tea all allocated for sustenance during the quarter, half and ¾ time breaks.
We always sat in the “stand” in generally the same place at “home” matches (there was no seat allocation) so there would be a coterie of acquaintances to cheer or commiserate with, mostly in my memory, to commiserate about the teams’ fortunes; and you always brought a footy so you could dash down to the oval and have a “kick-to-kick” with six to ten of never-met-before-but-like-minded boys of the two or three hundred littering the oval, who registered assent to your upraised footy at ½ time and after the match.
The footy, by-the-way was never, ever, stolen.
You sat in your seat, conversed with your neighbours, looked at the match and depending on how early you attended, saw the frost-bitten “thirds’ then “seconds” games preceding the main event at 1:30pm, ate, screamed, moaned, laughed and cried, stood up to stretch your legs and only went “walkies” to go the lavatory or the kick-to-kick and went home at dusky, misty 5:00pm for dinner or tea.
Oi! How things have changed!
For a start, there’s a $7,000 fine for going onto the oval.
This game started at 4:30pm and although a Saturday match it could have been Friday or Sunday, sometimes Monday and occasionally Thursday and at 7:50pm, 1:45pm, 2:10pm, or 1:10pm.
Misty winter dusk and night didn’t appear because the artificial lighting was so seamless as to make you think it was still the daylight of 2:00pm in autumn.
There was noise.
Not all of it that particular footy-crowd noise but a multiplicity of noises from television sets touting some sort of competition, another showing past matches and the “Big-Screen Scoreboard” flashing ads and the advertising on the fence rotating through its promiscuous promotions repertoire…. and there’s something happening on the ground but it’s not the match and there are people moving, not to seats, but back and forward with drinks (mostly alcoholic) and chips and ‘burgers and things and then the game starts.
And the people keep moving back and forward with their drinks and things and stop momentarily in the walkway to observe the play but obstruct your vision of it and the big screen lights up with a replay and as many football staff as players run onto the ground  like spokes to the hub with drinks for the players who mostly refuse their ministrations. At ½ time the ground is a spectacle of 150 (?) little boys playing twenty homogenised and pasteurised little games of football in cheek-by-jowl miniature fields whilst the advertising rotates and the televisions spruik and the people are still moving with back and forward with drinks (mostly alcoholic) and chips and ‘burgers and things and the game resumes.
Then it is over and the “The Saints Had Gone Marching In” and we leave in the dark, somewhat shell-shocked by the sensory overload and at the synthetic distractions deliberately offered and decide that the next match might just be sitting in the car parked at the fence watching the Buninyong “Snails” slide around the mud against the Daylesford “Dodos” on the Anzac Oval at 2:30pm with a thermos of soup and “bipping” the car-horn for every goal.
We later had dinner at a local pub and observed an extended family, possibly celebrating a grandparents’ anniversary, whose 4 children spent the night after the meal, disengaged, playing on their individual phones.

And some more rehearsal shots 
Ballet Theatre Australia where engagement is the order of the day.






Everyone's a photographer....!


Wombat Droppings


  
Leigh Sales (ABC 7:30 report interview w/ Craig Emerson) seems to think that uncouth interruption of an interviewee is forceful investigative journalism.
Nah.  Leigh, it’s just bad manners!
If your only continuing technique in interviewing is interruption, cutting off, ignoring the answer and being “Hissy-Fit” bullying because you’re not having them play your game I reckon you should pack it in or go and join Alan (Bondi) Jones at 2GB or become a “researcher” for the IPA!
If Sales is the best journo ABC has to offer at 7:30 then it’s in a very serious talent drought.
Sales then had the temerity, no, stupidity to ask Emerson why Labor couldn’t get its message out?
But then, it has been a week like that… “the Age” calling on Prime Minister Gillard to resign because we need a serious debate about policy…. ???  
I don’t know what’s stopping them except themselves!
Paul Kelly from Murdoch’s OZ pretending that they had nothing to do with trivial bullshit they report and that they would love to do some serious journalism on policy
Perhaps they could try phone-hacking the pollies mobiles for leads?
At least that’s a practice for which the Murdoch press is renowned.

Then there were these utter gems from Nicolle (where’s–my–brain) Flint, “If Rudd and Prime Minister Julia Gillard wish to continue to fight this election playing the man not the ball, by tackling the person not the policy, then let's assess Abbott on this basis. Let's ask ourselves what sort of person we want to govern our nation”?
 and the doughty Amanda (deport-em-all) Vanstone, “Mums and dads have seen this government pour public money into programs and then grossly mismanage them. Think pink batts and covered learning areas at schools - a program that went under the risible title of an ''education revolution''.
In Flint’s case black becomes white and “Rabbott’s" history of legislative and written misogyny are to be praised as virtues and recent policy is so thin on the ground there is nought to talk about.....
In Vanstone’s case she is as accurate in her information here as she was in her migration assessment of a Mr. Madafferi some years ago “…. it is alleged that relatives and associates of Madafferi donated up to $100,000 to the Liberal Party, and that four Liberal party politicians had discussed the visa case with Madafferi's supporters or Vanstone's office. In August 2008, Madafferi was arrested and charged, along with several of Australia's other suspected crime bosses (including Australian 'Ndrangheta boss Pasquale "Pat" Barbero) after Australian Federal Police made the world's biggest ecstasy haul, seizing drugs with a street value of $440 million.
During 2005 Vanstone became involved in some major controversies, one of them involving a defecting Chinese diplomat, Chen Yonglin, whilst others involved the deportation of Australian citizens and permanent residents who her department considered undesirable – the Cornelia Rau, Vivian Alvarez Solon, Stefan Nystrom and Robert Jovicic cases. An inquiry by the former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Palmer was severely critical of the Immigration Department's treatment of Cornelia Rau… poor Amanda… can’t take a trick and p.s…. is in my humble opinion an interviewer only slightly less talented than Leigh Sales.
 
abbott as voldemort
Rabbott

And last but not least, from the prime suspect…."But as I said our focus is not on parliamentary games, our focus isn't on Canberra insider gossip. Our focus is on providing a strong alternative government."
Did “Rabbott” run that one past Peter Slipper or Craig Thompson or by running out of "the House" or the bullying tactics employed or only having "motherhood statements" not policy?

It’s five minutes to mid-night.






Cheers Petals,
Shane







Friday 14 June 2013

seeing the Prospect before us


G’day Possums,

Shane on September
Shane on September

Some rehearsal shots …performance stuff will be up soon.
















Ballet rehearsal
Emma, jump

We’ve produced another video and seeing it on the “Big-Screen” for the first time was quite an experience.

projection on screen
Da BIG screen
The lens quality of it was very good and segments which deliberately had no sound, generally, worked. What took me by surprise was a quality, something akin to scale in sculpture that became apparent in one or two sections.

Ballet rehearsal
Ally and Jack

Making a sculpture you are always aware of the pieces’ intended destination; the light, reflections and any other factors that affect the way a work is visually altered by its environment and therefore altered aesthetically.

Ballet rehearsal
Laura, jete

In film it would seem to be rhythm that best equates with sculptural “scale”.

Ballet rehearsal
Olivia and Gus

When the rhythm is “out” it’s almost as if the mind drifts away from the narrative by presenting another thought (or no thought at all) until the original rhythm is picked up and you are returned to the journey.  Like scale, rhythm is inherent in the structure from initial concept through to final title and any deviation or hic-cough in the flow disturbs the viewing experience, which is quite literally magnified on the big screen.
Timing, composition and relationship to previous and following scenes all seem to be part of this rhythm mix and a somewhat instinctive faculty in balancing these elements, important.
A complex business but enjoyable to tackle…. Video may be seen at…..     

Wombat Droppings

Pyne the Whyne
Prefect Pyne the Whyne

Christopher “The Whyne” Pyne got caught out lying to camera again…ABC had a lovely time, I think, refuting his bullshit.
Shades of, “I-didn’t-meet–for-an assignation with Ashby.”



“Rabbott” has promised that the Liarbrils will definitely “STOP-THE-BOATS” in their fist term….yeah, right… and bangs on about not being a divisive government…which although untrue, sounded fine until you started reading a Mal Brough (oops, there’s that Ashby coot again) fundraising menu on FB and realised that the new definition of BOGAN is “Member of Liberal Party”!

Rabbott

Joe “What-a-Feeling” Hockey feigns a four-year-olds’ pout and whinges, “BUT SHE CALLED ME FAT, mummy!”  Or in other words.. Oohhh, look over there …a rabbit!
Steve (Smack-em-down) Ciobo, Liarbril, Q’land opines that people are lining up to “slit Gillard’s throat”…. Hmmmmm such delicate language skills that as Tim (Queer-Coot from IPA) Wilson says “…..is just the hurley-burley of politics”. Really Tim?… Not offensive ? Not inciting others to similar comment?
Alan “Bondi” Jones is still doing his malevolent and execrably putrid best on radio, this time over “Menu-Gate”, blaming the victim for playing the gender card …sort of like blaming the Titanic passengers for drowning themselves.
One of his shock-jock ilk  (Sattler, Perth) was suspended ( late news ...his radio station sacked him) for his offensive comments to the PM’s face on radio but you have to wonder when the Liarbrils and their conservative media will reap the whirlwind of this legitimisation of hate they have been so adept at cultivating and sowing.
‘Tis a pity that their policy development doesn’t receive the same attention but then, any distraction will serve their purpose in hiding the truth of their plans.

Here in the State of Tardis (where-All-Goes-Backward), Failed ex-Premier Jeff “Bully-Boy” Kennett (The Dorian Gray of Tardis State politics) uninvited, put his hand up to be the saviour of the under-performing Melbourne F.C.
One M.F.C. supporter said succinctly, “I’d rather we kept losing”.
A sentiment more widely appreciated than “Bully-Boys’” exploration into cognitive dissonance. But then, this syndrome seems endemic in the conservative side of politics.
$70,000,000 is being spent on incarceration modules on railway stations and more prisons; this being announced at the same time as pretend premier Dodo (Inutilus Rusticus) Napthine doesn’t announce cutting $2,500,000 and effectively closing down successful programs for marginalised youth.
Well, at least there’s accommodation for them and a bonus for the privatised prisons if they don’t re-offend within a certain time. A scheme, by-the-way, poo--pooed by the sentencing and parole authorities as open to rorting.
Perhaps a scheme thought up by ex-Liarbril Member for Frankston, Geoff (“Fiddles”) Shaw?  Who is still under police investigation…. allegedly.

The new $3,000,000,000 freeway to nowhere that solves nothing is going to be a win-win for the developers. The taxpayer is to pick up the tab if road usage isn’t as predicted!
Dontcha just love the economic competence and forward thinking of the Tardis State Liarbrils?

Build a 30 km rail link to the airport? Nah, too hard.

Matty (“What’s-a-Backhander”) Guy, State of Tardis (where-All-Goes-Backward) mis-planning minister t’other day praised “Bully-Boy” Kennett as being the saviour of the Art Deco, Regent Theatre.
My research indicated that it was the late Rupert Hamer, Premier at the time and not btw a friend of Kennett. And let’s not forget the bans by the Builder’s Labourers Federation for three years, stopping Lord Mayor Ron “Casino” Walker (friend of “Bully-Boy”) from demolishing the place.
Matty was at the time a staffer for “Bully-Boy” so, in best IPA fashion, is probably re-inventing history to praise his mentor.
State of Tardis (Where-All-Goes-Backward) Liarbrils have just celebrated 100 days since deposing Big Bird Baillieu ( Silveretail Incompetens). There has been a lot more noise but the policy has remained unimaginatively retrograde.

Cheers Petals,
Shane


rehearsal
stage rehearsal

Saturday 1 June 2013

Around the traps the madness continues




Hello, you two…this week it's all 
Wombat Droppings
shane with mandolin
Shane with Mandolin
 
P.M. “Big-Red” Gillard’s lousy timing was on show again trying to increase public funding to pollies election funds. Mr “Rabbott” agreed (in writing) with the deal until his party, miffed at not being consulted, revolted and forced an about-face.
Lesson’s ?  1/ political nouse, 2/ what’s a signed agreement worth? 3/ the Liarbril’s are revolting.
Senator George (Hissy-Fit) Brandis (Deep North Liarbril) had a lovely time saying over and over and over again, “look, look over there…a rabbit!”


Indonesions tell The “Rabbott” that they will not accept any refugee boats he turns back… Rabbott ignores that and blames Labor!
Kelly (Shuddupa-ya-Face) O’Dwyer ( Liarbril Motor-Mouth for Higgins) manages again, on TV to turn a discussion into a ranting monologue.
Sophie (Pit-Bull) Mirabella was seen in Ballarat with a carcass of meat. 
Make that two carcasses. 
She was possibly demonstrating what Australian manufacturing might finally look like if the Liabrils win government.
Photo: Moorabool News, Ph: H. Tatchell

Sophie "Pit-Bull "
 Joe (Oh-What-a-Feeling) Hockey says ''we must return to stable, predictable and honest government to Australia''. But will not release the Liarbril’s budget costings, policy or plans…..“look, look over there…another rabbit!”   

trees
Blackwoods, Wombat State Forest


National Parks in the Tardis State (Where-all-goes-Backwards) are now up for 99- year private leases. Pretend Environment minister Ryan (Dodo) Smith said that this “….will give investors more certainty and a stronger incentive to develop high-quality proposals in our national parks.”
Hmmm … like Coal Seam Gas mining? The chance of being shot by a gun wielding 12year old? Being trampled by some bovine masticating native Heath and other endangered wildflowers? Or being run down by a raging 4WD?
Conservation? Nah….. it’s just not profitable.

Liarbril imagination!
Threats to the survival of the Leadbeater's possum are being compounded by recent Tardis State (Where-all-goes-Backwards) government changes to survey methods and reservation strategies that will result in the habitat of the species being logged and setting back the development of much-needed new habitat by at least 120 years. The new changes are seen as so retrograde that the international journal Science reported that the Leadbeater's possum will be one of the world's first deliberate, government-sanctioned extinctions of an endangered species.
Liarbril imagination!
Louise (Dozy) Asher, Minister for Innovation (Liarbril) has cut funding to a youth service which helps employ troubled young people in hospitality in Melbourne.  The Heat program has been told it would lose $220,000 in funding and its restaurant will be closed. The program has an 80 per cent employment rate for participants. Emma Crichton, from the St Kilda Youth Service, says it has been a successful program and the Napthine Government should reconsider the funding decision. "We run this program on the smell of an oily rag. We are probably the most inexpensive youth service in the state of Victoria," she said. "It is just so efficient how we work this program and it's so important. It's vital that it remains. "Ms Crichton says the participants learn about more than just hospitality. "We also teach them about life and self-esteem and discipline and working in teams," she said. (Source: ABC radio 774)
Which probably balances the cost of Ex-Premier, Big-Bird (Silvertail Incompetens) Baillieu’s  perk of a new car and driver!
Ms “Dozy” seems unavailable for comment… zzzzz….zzzzzz….zzzzz!
Liarbril imagination!

king Kong
A Napthine Rant

Pretend Premier Napthine,(Inutilus Rusticus) has decided that he didn’t swear at Opposition leader Daniel Andrews in the corridor of Parliament house in front of Andrews’ six year old child.  He has also not admitted that they were arguing over the price of a taxi fare as we all will soon have to do or that the “robust discussion” was about sharing of said taxi.
Police were not called as they were busy with two others apparently getting a bit willing in a political domestic in the same building.

Liarbril imagination!

Matty (What’s-a-Greenwedge / Backhander) Guy has said because the developers paid memberships to a Liberal Party fundraising club - a figure of $10,000 a year - they did not pay on the night, so it was not a paid fundraiser. "Team 200 like the 500 Club for Liberal, is a group where you pay your membership fee and you have certain speakers, there is nothing different in this," he said. He said it did not break the ban because "it wasn't a fundraiser where people paid money to attend". "Go back and tell me where I have made a decision that is an advantage to anyone," he said. 
ROFL moment
Mr Guy's attendance at a fundraising dinner attended by property developers will not be investigated by the Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission as they have already poo-poo-ed that idea, “What our Matty, corrupt? Balderdash!
ROFL moment, 2
Sniff, Sniff… the stink of the Tardis State(Where-all-goes-Backwards)

Ex Liarbril, Geoff(Fiddles)Shaw thinks (whilst still waiting to see if police charge him for allegedly rorting his Govt car allowance) that back-bench pollies need more than $150,000 a year….. more like $400,000…. and this just after the pollies have voted themselves a pay rise!  
ROFL moment, 3
Liarbril imagination!             
Sniff, Sniff… the stink of the Tardis State(Where-all-goes-Backwards)

Cardinal George Pell uncomfortably fronted the enquiry into child abuse and seemed to have a modicum, a glimmer of understanding that the matter was actually serious for the victims and not just the finances of the church.
It really is a great pity that Henry 2 didn’t sort it out properly in the C12th.
And, anyone reading about the “Rat-lines” run by the Vatican for the benefit of the fascist mass murderers of WW2 should really have a look at Bishop Hart’s and Cardinal Pell’s demeanour in these hearings to have perhaps an inkling of how vile “good men” can be. Men who would tell you what morality, justice and ethics are.

The Collingwood F.C. board probably thought Eddie McGuire’s fine sense of history during the indigenous football week and replication of the manners of a 13 year old female supporter was no reason to sack him. 
Ahhh, Collingwood. What taste, what timing!
What’s next for a Collingwood fund-raiser …. the team in a B/W Minstrel Show?

wind farm
Wind Farm, Waubra

Sarah Laurie who likes to be described as a medical expert investigating health problems at wind farms but has never been called as an expert witness in any official inquiry into wind noise is stirring up opposition to wind farms on King Island.       Academics Simon Chapman and Fiona Chrichton have discovered in their separate research that the power of suggestion has been an extremely potent weapon in the wind energy debate. Their conclusions were that wind turbine syndrome was most likely caused by scare campaigns.

Cheers Possums

Shane

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