Winking a train wreck

Shane at train wreck

G’day Possums,

Too many years ago when this Wombat was more lithe, svelte, fitter, unwrinkled and agile he was a dancer. I only mention this because tonight I’ll be off to a re-union of a whole lot of people who were taught or directed by Betty “Sparkle Darlings” Pounder and searching through images to post online that I shot during those years has re-ignited many memories.

Memories which are the antitheses of today’s Wombat Droppings: “Winking a Train Wreck”.

BTA rehearsal

Tap with Olive Wallace, ballet with Ted Miller,  contemporary with Betty Pounder and then a couple of shows and tours around Australia performing in the chorus. It was a formative experience.

BTA rehearsal

There is something in the dance and theatrical experience that is whole.

It has a reality in its “play” which nothing else comes close to matching; and a sense and awareness of others that is truly social and rarely replicated in “real-life”.

BTA rehearsal

The spatial sense that is exquisitely dance and its total movement quality, is never challenged by kinetic sculpture, which is mundane by comparison.

Pas de Deux

pas de Deux

pas de Deux

Pas de Deux

To work, it must have an inherent honesty….. which is now why we now view a train wreck in......

.....Wombat Droppings.

Going round the bend recently to visit Geelong, the Prime Miniature (for and of the “Coots-With-Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe,” the IPA) “Rabbutt-the-Hun’s” train was derailed by Federal Police who, (it was asserted) alerted him to the possibility that they couldn't guarantee his safety from the ire of Geelong students who were now less than sanguine over the probability of having to paying $60,00 –$200,000.00 in fees, in perpetuity, for a degree in Barista-ology. 
So he re-routed himself to Melbourne for a couple of talk-back interviews.

This had three results.

1/ It forestalled Tardis State “Where-All-Goes-Backward,” pretend Premier, Dennis “Inutilus Rusticus” Naptime (attending in Geelong to open a new venture) from causing “Rabbutt-the-Hun” more physical damage than the students were capable of as retribution for wiping at least 5% off the sagging Liarbril vote in the forthcoming Tardis State election because of the horror Federal budget.

2/ It allowed many Tardis State natives to hear clearly and then to see (via you-tube) with utmost clarity the emotional and intellectual abyss “Rabbutt-the-Hun” inhabits.
“One-Term-Tony” as he is frequently now called, fully exhibited for John Faine’s audience on ABC’s “774” a winking sleaze factor wholly incompatible with the office he is said to hold.
Not that this should be news to anyone but it’s another and more salient episode in this boorish politician’s history of less than funny gaffes.

3/ Slipping the points at “774,” he shunted himself off to a rival station, the Liarbril, Reactionary-Aspirational-Bogan minded, 3AW. 
Thinking he had at last finally achieved the right platform at this cross-road was no salvation.  Unloading his baggage here turned out to be a confession too far and it was more like dumping the dirty washing of the wrong client, in the wrong order at the wrong laundry.

Getting your own budget facts confused in detail can sometimes be excused but making it obvious that you cannot explain why the poorest in this land are to be paying for the richest went quite a way in stoking the boilers of dissent. 
 In making obvious to all how un-christian, anti-social, mean-spirited and IPA-market-oriented the rails these Catholics would have us travel,  many in the audience were letting off steam.

Which is possibly why Matthius “Horse-Shite” Coormann thinks that we like frogs as the water warms to boiling, will “get used to it all and accept our fate..”  of being reduced to the status of serfs.

Then, as if it were not possible to get better came the news that Speaker of Parliament Bronwyn “Call-me-Madam, Pompador” Bishop was inviting us all for a knee’s-up in the Taxpayer funded Speakers Dining room. For only $1500.00 a head you can aid the Liarbril cause in banning all other political parties from the lower house.
Please bring your own brown paper bag or if you forget it, see “Arfa-da-Spiv” Sinodinas… just behind the Great Hall’s third pillar on the righ; Password: Sydney Water.

Which was followed by the exciting revelation that Rabbutt-the-Hun’s“ daughter, Frances will not have to pay $60,000.00 in tuition fees at the academy she attended when a director (and Liarbril fundraiser) discovered a long forgotten Scholarship, which like Cinderella’s slipper, was not available to anyone else.

Slipping on the rails were two others choice pieces of traffic:

!/  Yank, Bill Morrow, recently appointed to head up the copper-wired downgraded and  bastardized joke of a NBN  has been named in a legal action as “allegedly putting profits before safety and being subsequently responsible for one of the largest utility disasters in Californian history".

And 2/   Sir Michael Hintze appointed by Joe “Cereal-Toyota-Killer” Hockey to oversee the government’s Financial System Inquiry has had to repay the British Gov. $43,000,000.00 in back taxes.

He should get on well wif “Arfa-da-Spiv”!

And perhaps Frances can design the Finance System Logo… I’d start with a design idea of a  Hand-in-a-Pocket.

Cheers Petals,

Shane

PS: further good reading...
http://theaimn.com/2014/05/27/the-romance-of-the-retro-pm/

http://theaimn.com/2014/05/25/horse-trading/

...rallying

Shane Rallies, Melbourne 18-5-2014

G'day Possums, its Wombat Droppings.. 

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, .."

and a time to rally. 

And it is worth noting that the confected rallies perpetrated by Alan "Bondi-London Public-Toilet" Jones and "The Ugly American", Murdoch against Carbon Pricing attracted far less an audience...

Anti Budget Rally, Melbourne 18-5-1

Consistent with their standard behaviour the Liarbril rabble currently operating out of Canberra have foisted on the public a budget that breaks about 25 election promises. This budget is a "Coots-With -Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe"(IPA), document with as much humanity as a pawn-shop debt collectors accountant. 
  "a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn,"

Anti Budget Rally, Melbourne 18-5-14

It is a budget primarily designed to destroy Medibank, Tertiary Education, The Environment, the one reasonably balanced Public News Media and Broadcaster in the country the ABC, to emasculate the CSIRO our premier R&D organisation, and to wreck any advancement of Alternative energies in preference for polluting coal and Fracked Gas.
It is as I warned a couple of years ago straight from the IPA's "Coots-With-Queer-Ideas-from-a-Parallel-Universe" handbook.
This secretive, unelected mongrel group are the real ones running the country; the elected Liarbril's are just the office-boys doing their bidding.

Anti Budget Rally, Melbourne 18-5-14

The $80 Billions ripped away from Hospitals and Education will force the States to levy their own taxes or push for an increase in the GST: whichever way it goes it is the double dealing, the sub-text primary agenda from IPA thought bubbles that these Lyng Liarbrils are implementing. Egalitarian Australia has been a myth for years but this is the beginning of the full plutocracy
"a time to weep, and a time to mourn"

as seen and experienced

 "Rabbutt-the-Hun's" defense of the savagery being meted out in this unelected IPA Budget had a curious psycho-sexual tone: "Why would I be exposing myself, why would my colleagues be exposing themselves and ourselves to a world of political pain..." and: "We are not doing this because we are somehow political sadomasochists." 

This, with his contradictory, plainly wrong economic statements: "Money isn't everything, Fran……" that we can't be more efficient in schools? Can't be more efficient in hospitals?"  FRAN KELLY: No, but $80 billion is a lot of efficiency.
 Abbott is going around saying not only that there are no cuts, but that funding is actually increasing!  Well, if that's true, why is he saying that cuts are needed? The cuts are needed, but they never existed, and they were necessary, but aren't happening, even though they don't exist! 
 Why is he saying we have a budget emergency (which is patently untrue) on the one hand and then saying "If Labor doesn't pass our budget in the Senate we'll lose our "Triple A" credit rating", on the other?

"a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.... and a time to hate" 

B.U.M.S. with a Climact.

You get to meet many fun people on a rally, perhaps this is why the colourless, unimaginative, dreary, destructive Liarbril-far-right-tea-party-IPA-"Coots-With-Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe" types would prefer to use a water cannon on us all.



Here we have two creative types, Ms's Hazel Wood and Coral Bleach from the Billionaire United Mining Services or BUMS.

With their Heavy Lifters, Gina and Clive loaded with coal they glizted  their Climact with great panache.
They should be careful though; their outfits were so eye catching and in the taste of  a Peta Credlin that she may well copy them...well at least outwardly.

For more about these two talents and their work:
climateguardians.org.au

Then we came across the Ministry of Common Sense which is a "Think-Tank" (although unlike the IPA, has creative imagination) and "Flash-Mob" devoted to whimsical public commentary

find them here:

theministryofcommonsense

one of the other fun things is the Banners...  and their graphics... where the message outweighs the space allocated

"a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up"

or is a sensitive heartfelt request for common sense instead of the anti-social deadness of economic rationalism.

or a chance to make others aware of detainees in The Gulf......

"a time for war, and a time for peace".

... or to make crafty comment on the inadequacies of The Prime Miniature and someone  else expressing the contradictory notions of "faith"and Mammon this arch believer in nothing is confusingly presenting.

and then you see the MOST Svelte supporter of the CFMEU....ever!!!

And then on the return, a band that jollied the marchers along counting its remuneration for the day... oohhh, the irony ..... and the humour.

soundcloud.com/Greg-Sher




There we have it; why do 15,000 Melbournians, and some 100's, of thousands of others around Australia bother to get out on the streets to say that the "Rabbutt-The-Hun's", IPA designed budget is a recipe for a plutocracy not a Democracy. There was a palpable determination in the crowd with many expressing a willingness to not take more of this Liarbril rabble's nonsense.

Cheers Petals,
Shane

IPA...all over the Liarbrils

...Facing the Music

Much of life is happenstance but there are the odd synchronicity of moments which this Wombat finds quite delightful.

Shane with Image Archive

Recently working on a dance video and shooting some stills for it, my attention went to the faces of the dancers rather than the general class or movement shot. 

There seemed to be in the dancer's concentration the essence of the theatrical or performing experience. 

Facing the Music. 



Although the "Music" we face in “Wombat Droppings” is of an entirely different and more nation altering order.

Ballet Theatre Australia

The synchronicity was an acquaintance contacting to alert me that there was to be a “get-together” of those who were either taught by or worked with the legendary Betty Pounder in theatre productions she choreographed for JC Williamson's theatres over many years.

Betty Pounder

On going to the FB site where the details were, I saw there were many images from a variety of productions and thought, well, I could probably add a few, too.

Pounder Class

"Funny Girl"

"Fiddler-on-the-Roof"

My Fair Lady

Robin Bailey

My Fair Lady

Fiddler on the Roof

Hayes Gordon-"Tevye"

Jill Perryman- "Funny girl"

MFL

Pounder Class

Some 260 images later I was a little surprised by the extent of my early productivity and very gratified by the responses of those seeing the images and who commented and seemed to appreciate the effort of scanning all these now quite vintage negs, prints and transparency’s.

As I replied to one comment, It‘s only when there is a filter of time in the works that you finally see them in the context of their own experience and see value.

It was interesting looking back to my beginnings of "facing the music" photographically and appreciating its visual development, too.

Wombat Droppings or Foetid News from Oz Politics.

Joe “Cereal–Toyota-Holden-SPC-Killer” Hockey is clamping down on debate by suing Fairfax Media over a story about his fundraising efforts on behalf of the NSW Liberal party. Having nothing to hide except free speech, Hockey doesn't want any public distraction whilst  going about perpetrating possibly the biggest defrauding of Oz politics when he hands down in conjunction with the Business Council of Australia’s and “The-Coots-With-Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe” (IPA), his single budget.

Unprecedented in the selective leaking, spin, lying, dissimulation, obfuscations and kite-flying over the past month this “Ugly American” mandated rabble (Liarbril Party) is about to fundamentally alter and cement into the national ethos for once and for all their conceptually dessicated idea of this country. The shambles they dishonestly but successfully projected in persuading the electorate to believe that all was Labor's fault, is now to be tipped over all of us in its full and total vileness.

No longer just a projection their foetid values will be fully manifest as they are about to swamp this land with legislation so that every vile notion of free market capitalism can be given free rein without restraint.

The Reign of the Reactionary Aspirational Bogan is here.

Gone, will be any pretence of the notion of fair play and egalitarianism.

Gone, will be universal healthcare.

Gone, will be access to education for all.
Gone, will be the effectiveness of our only public broadcaster.

These unimaginative Liarbrils have for years have been chipping away at these pillars which have made Australia a noted leader and by drawing closer to the right–wing of American “Tea-Party” politics they now see their opportunity to smash any of the remaining social contracts in preference for the “Free-Market"  insanity that in the main caused the Global Financial Crisis.

They will relentlessly bullshit the public through the right-wing, main-stream media and swamp the ABC with mendacious IPA clones (similar to the unbalanced coverage of Mandy “Il Patrone” Vanstone’s 10 minute free kick t’other night on “7.30” with Sarah “Rapportfurerin” Ferguson) and those other paragons of truth and civility, “Blot-on-the-Landscape”, Alan ”Bondi” and “London Toilet Fame” Jones and other similar shock-jock low-lives.

“We all have to do the Heavy Lifting,” says the man who has doubled the deficit by himself in six months, whilst single-handedly obliterating much of the country’s manufacturing.

“The Age of Entitlement is Over,” says the man whose party it seems is the biggest, most dishonest, slush-fund, paper-bag-wielding bunch of spivs we have ever seen whilst preparing at the same time to rip payments away from young people with disabilities…a man who thinks wind-farms are unattractive and coal mines, cool.

We are entering the abyss of a new Dark Age.

John Donne wrote,

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

 If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were:

any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind,

and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls;

it tolls for thee."

The Liarbrils and their moronic IPA lickspittles have yet to get up to speed with this C17th social lesson.

It strikes me that when a Government rules for a plutocracy and not the people then its promulgations have validity only for the plutocracy and can be ignored by the people.

Cheers Possums,

Shane