...ranting into the Abyss of the new Dark Age

G’day Possums,

This is me with Jeff (“Boof-Head”, “Foot-in-Mouth”, “Bully-Boy”) Kennett: The Dorian Gray of Tardis State (“Where-All-Goes-Backward”) politics. It was made some years ago as a fund-raiser item when this eminence grise’ was leading the Liarbril pack and selling off the most profitable, publicly owned bits of the Tardis State (“Where-All-Goes-Backward”) to overseas private interests so he could destroy Unionism. 

Ya wanna complain ‘bout your electricity, transport, water, councils, building approval times, hospital waiting lists, emergency ward crisis… see “Boof-Head!”

He has Hob-nail Boots …all the better for kicking you when you’re down. He’s sitting on a coffin with a “V” on it… an explanation shouldn’t be necessary.

He’s also either opening a bottle of Liarbril fund-raiser wine, allegedly, sold illegally from his parliamentary office (shades of “Fiddles” Shaw)…or he’s ..  well let’s just not go there, eh?

And he’s got a bunch of Crown Casino chits in his back pocket;  although now is not the time to depress you with the social costs of 
gambling or back-scratching, is it?

Again…see “Boof-head”… he’s got a sinecure; the Farthest Azure.

I’ve been thinking it might be time to re-constitute the clay and model a Federal series a’la “Rubbery Figures” meets “I am not an Animal” for filmic purposes….. …contributions as to characters, content, chorus, costume, cynicism and scenarios most welcome.

I viewed the Ballarat Photographic National Show t’other day at BFAG. Whilst I can be positive about this show to the extent that all the work exhibited was very worthy, very well made, very solid technically and very well presented, I could only hear conversations about HDR technique and lenses and cameras. Nothing in this exhibition struck me as having a feeling for an idea or concept that was pursued with that brio of aesthetic vigour which allows chance, happenstance, influence and that tenuous personal search for the sublime which informs and creates something that exists independently outside of you.

It was all too formally correct, too overworked and ultimately, repellingly dull.

I’ve no samples to show here, as BFAG in its wisdom, A/; wouldn’t allow photo’s, although B/; I didn’t have a camera with me but would have used it if I had; C/; wasn’t willing to part with $12.50 for an illustrated program and D/; I’m not intending to return. 

It’s a good photo show but it ain’t what art is made from!

Them following are some of my favourites from work this year...an eclectic selection

The sleep of reason..outdoor gallery Ballarat exhibition

 Personal highlights re this blog from 2013: Fairfax journo writing about the bitchy, vituperative election campaign and the 3 years preceeding it …bemoans “Sophie Mirabella  being called “Pit-Bull”…. I think I was the first with that phrase.  And some weeks ago on Late-Night-Live with Phillip Adams, (may he be well),  “…and now let’s go to the Tardis State of Victoria…” Eureka!

Someone is reading.... and the image below featured on ABC's website as an illo for their French 100 Classical music...

Tuilleries

Wombat Droppings or Low-Down Australian Politics

Australia quickly need to take stock of what sort of country they want because the one we are fast getting is not how I think we would generally define ourselves.

We are allowing one of the worlds best health systems be “Americanized”, our environment blasted for multi-national profit, our education system being ripped to privatised shreds,  a welfare system that succours the middle-class, not the needy and a incompetent pretend government too willing to sell off our sovereignty.

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire

Jack And Alexandra

Some think that “choice” in Education, Health, Services and Transport is essential for the well-being of society when the opposite is true. 

Lake Mungo Dunes

Choice is about selectivity, exclusivity, class and ultimately, selfishness. It is a definition of division within society and a tacit acknowledgement that some are “better”, more worthy and of more value to the society than others primarily because of their wealth.
 

Olivia and Gus

It is much easier to think this way when wealth is spread disproportionately. Your belonging to, being in and only having to consider a small group is much easier to deal with than having to reasonably consider society as an equitable whole. The exclusiveness of your group defines its simpler parameters, its notions of  “well-being”, like its wealth cannot to be shared, as that would deny it the charm of its exclusivity.

It is therefore a self-referential, selfish system.

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire

St Kilda

A divided society is neither a happy one nor a safe one. Historically, inequality fosters resentment and ultimately, retribution. All that is not new but what is it’s sad to say is that the arguments for maintaining contemporary inequality that have been raised to near philosophic levels are: “Individual Aspiration” and the “Economy”. It’s now almost a holy virtue for an individual to “Aspire” but unfortunately as the “Economy” can only afford so much Individual Aspiration there is not enough of it to go around. Ergo: most will have to miss out.

There is a sense of mindlessness in this place and when the inevitable backlash occurs our ugliness will be fully revealed.

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire

Frogmore, Trentham

Scott “The Drone” Morrison goes to water over high court challenge to his visa changes for refugees and hides from journalists by not having weekly (or should that be weakly?) press briefings. Were the journo’s not laughing at his “stand-up “ any more?

Advance Australia Fair

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire

The Dalai Lama’s answer to the question of what surprised him most about humanity was: “Man, because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”    There's a person who has made a real choice.

Mildura, Grand

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire

Myrniong

“John Howard and Julia Gillard both had their share of haters.  Alas, I fear many otherwise decent Australians have become angry little haters. It is easy to think that who and what we dislike says something about us. In a small way it does. The narcissistic think it important that the world knows their view. They are in fact talking about themselves.” Amanda “Il Patrone” Vanstone (she of Cornelia Rau and Vivian Solon infamy, amongst other indiscretions as a minister) obfuscating hypocritically and inaccurately again.  Perhaps Mandy was really thinking of Scott Morrison, or Cory Bernardi or even Steve Ciobo. Maybe even Alan “Bondi’ Jones or the Queensland restaurateur and his sexist, misogynist menu? Or perhaps this is a pathetic attempt to tell us subtly that Andrew Bolt is a decent writer and requires more freedom to express himself?
And for Mandy to equate the vileness meted out to Gillard by the Murdoch press and minions with the treatment “Little Johnny” received only indicates her sheer political (liarbril) blindness to actuality.  Which parts of the vile torrents pouring from her conservative side of politics could she  compare and contrast with Labor's actions?
 
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire

Heather “Leer” Ridout, Peter “Children Overboard-Rottweiler” Reith,  Michael “Thug” Kroger and Peter “I-Had-a-Baton-Once” Costello came to mind t’other day when Coca-Cola-Amatil, owners of the Ardmona  canneries in Shepparton sacked 70 of its full time maintenance staff to replace them with contract workers. CCA did this it seems to curry favour with “Rabbott” in order to get $25,000,000.00 as a bailout package.

It has an eerie resemblance to an interstate plastics manufacturer who, back in 2005 bought a second business in “The Tardis State” (Where-All-Goes-Backward) and was promptly conned by the afore-mentioned to “experiment” with Industrial Relations by “offering” his workers the “choice” to be self-employed. 
This was gleefully abetted by “The-Coots-with-Queer-Ideas-from-a-Parallel-Universe,” the IPA.

Rehearsal

Needless to say the “experiment” failed. The business folded and 80 workers lost their jobs. Sadder to note, the original interstate business, a family one, of 60 years productive service folded the next year, with its 80 workers losing their jobs, too.

I’m sure the ideological mongrels from the IPA were well satisfied with their “experiment” as were Ridout, Kroger, Costello and Reith!  Pity they've never had to run a business or feel responsible for 160 losing their livelihoods.

Let’s keep an eye on Shepparton and the tenor of the town.

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire

Cheers Petals,
Shane.



Sitedfgures