Advance Australia, Where?

G'day Petals,

 It's all Wombat Droppings

 or the chronicle of Oz's inexorable descent into fascism. 

The most exquisite demonstration of this Liarbril ruling rabble’s corruption of values was not the extended queue of ministers standing down after appearing at the NSW ICAC hearings: nor was it Rabid the Hun’s move to bunk in with at the AFP HQ or his Mercedes Benz deal or his daughter’s spurious scholarship or his rorting of his parliamentary entitlements to launch his book or even his cycling deals with Big Pharma. All of these acts only indicated his utter unsuitability to be a national leader when demonstrating that he was just a witless, selfish, grasping supplicant.

Neither was it Kero-Bath Bishop’s $5,000.00 chopper ride to a party function at the taxpayers expense nor Asbestos Bishop’s $30,000.00 bill to the public to travel from a party with her current beau from Perth to Canberra.

Perhaps the $600,000.00 fit-out of Hayseed Joyce’s electoral office as part of his $1,300,000.00 entitlement binge rates a place?

But no, the prize has to go to Eleventy Cereal/Toyota-Killer Hockey. The ex real estate agent and most innumerate excuse for a treasurer the country has ever been victim to.  Whilst accepting $1000.00 per week rental assistance for staying in his wife’s Canberra property, this mongrel was telling us we were “leaners” and needed to work harder.

Instead of chasing up the nearly 40% of big businesses who pay no tax, Eleventy cuts the taxation office by 4,400 personnel making it all the more difficult to rectify this rort.

Dumped as treasurer, he gets the sulks, spits the dummy and resigns his seat; quipping (and for once being alarmingly frank) that it was better to resign, than sit on the back-bench plotting revenge.

This pathetic creature has been thrown a bone: Ambassador to Washington. So on top of his very generous superannuation package he will top this up to around $400,000.00 p.a. and probably be as embarrassing over there as he was here. 

St Saveur, Dinan, France

A Close contender was Chicken-Thighs Brough; who has been forced to stand down over his possible criminality in Ashby-gate or the Slippery Pete Affaire.

Admitting in a TV interview that he asked Ashby (Slipper’s staffer) to copy The Speaker, Slipper’s notebook Chicken Thighs, when asked the same question in parliament, gave the opposite answer.

Well, he’s pretty comprehensively established himself publicly as a liar and the Federal Police are now investigating the notebook matter.

It’s worth noting that the word is, even his own side don’t like him much and this shining example of the morality of the ruling rabble will not be able to fulfil his function as arbiter of parliamentary ethics.

I’ll bet you three who read this are thinking I’m making all this up….. Wrong, I’m not that imaginative.

The head cadaver of the Trade Union Royal Commission, the Lickspittle Dyson Heydon sent two union heavies to the police to be charged with something. Police investigate and very, very, very quietly the charges are dropped.

So Big Red Gillard did nothing wrong and Willy Shortstuff also did nothing wrong.

Hmmmm…and some other MAY have done something wrong and they're very naughty 'cause I say so...

Now that was worth $60,000,000.00 wasn’t it?

Pew Carvings St Levan Church, Cornwall.

Medicare is dying the death of 1000 cuts….. one only hopes that the service mechanic of Un-Health minister Flappy-Mouth Ley’s aircraft hasn’t got chronically ill members in his family.

And let’s rub some salt into the wounds of Jamie Bogan Briggs who was also forced to step down as Minister for Cities when it transpired that last November the married father of three was too, too familiar with a junior female staffer at a club in Hong Kong. He said he was “unprofessional”, hmmm…that’s an interesting term to use for bogan, misogynistic, paternalistic, sexist and boorish behaviour isn’t it? But Horse-Shite Cormann and couple of others like the propagandist Chris Kenny have come to his defence saying what a good decent top bloke he is....yeah, right....

But then that doesn’t seem to matter much to the pre-selection panels of this Liarbril Party in putting forward types that are destroying everything that has made Australia a civil society.

Well, there ya go Possums…. What a state the nation’s in but what else can you expect from the rubbish ruling it?

Advance Australia Where?

Bogans all let us lament

That we are full of fear

We’ve privatised all in making wealth

For investors not from here

Our abundant natures gifts are raped

For compensation poor

Oft wrapped in flags of Chinese make

And ranting mindless slogans of hate

In words fully three and sometimes more

Advance Australia Where?

Below our smoggy Southern Cross

All things made wrecked by Rabid whim

And 457’s on the rise

Our future does look grim

We say to those fleeing shock and awe

“We’re bloody full, so fuck right off

Illegal Queue jumpers welcomed here

Only if your Burqa’s doffed”

Still Oz Flagged wrapped in sentiment fake

Advance Australia Where?

Hoo-roo,

Shane

seeing a tangled web and brewing storm

G’day, you three Petals,

it’s been an odd year of comings and goings …a lot of goings and changes of direction which will really become manifest further into 2016.

I’m not sure whether this society is becoming less independent as western culture becomes more controlled by consumerism and mass media than ever and  is why the “Selfie” has become such a popular an expression of identity or if it’s just another fad or the ultimate expression of selfishness and alienation from a sense of collective. So I decided to illustrate this “year-in-review” rant with a selection of people taking “selfies” from our mid year trip to France and England.

Shortly before we left for Europe Mrs Wombat was obliged to step into a senior role in her workplace for some months. At the end of it the staff showed their appreciation by putting together a gift package of an excellent bottle of wine and a lunch for two at one of Victoria’s best restaurants, The Lake-house in Daylesford. We duly went for a superb lunch the day before we flew out for Paris.

About the same time I received a postal note that there was a parcel to be picked up. It turned out to be a presentation pack of cheap bubbly with two glasses. Intended as a thank-you for the ten years work I had done for this particular ballet group I really didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the tawdry crassness in the Yin-Yang comparison of the two offerings.

Needless to say my feeling that this was a “Dear John” type message was realised after returning from the trip to find that without explanation or reasons I was to be elbowed aside as superfluous to this ensemble’s needs.

Having long observed this group and cognisant of their extraordinary ability to shoot themselves in the foot, this latest episode will no doubt end badly, too.

It’s fair to say that I was slowing down photographically and becoming less and less motivated by the dancers. It seems the capacity for collective effort is fast disappearing and as the “self” rules. To me that’s not interesting at all.

The revelation too, of seeing a lot of Aime’s Jules Dalou’s sculptures in both the Musee d’Orsay and in London’s Victoria and Albert has re-kindled a desire to return to sculpture.

Having long been impressed by his work as this early piece of mine indicates,  (inspired by one of his works in the NGV) I am slowly getting back into production.

There is also the influence of memories from both Wells and Exeter Cathedrals and the sculptures there, too.

And yes, my part in the bathroom renovation is complete just waiting for the splash-backs to be installed …so no pics till it’s fully finished.

Wombat Droppings

or Australia’s inexorable slide into fascism.

 Opposition leader Willy Shortstuff was recently nailed by a member of the public talking on his mobile phone whilst driving. Whack! A fine was issued for $425.
Two weeks later Ex ABC presenter but Liarbril, Sarah Henderson of the Canberra ruling rabble was filmed doing the same. Silence!

One staff member was sacked and three others suspended from Customs when they did a “random” search of  “Asbestos” Bishop arriving back from one of her overseas trips. This happened a week after this Foreign Minister (whom the Chinese think a fool) spent $30,000.00 of our taxes to fly herself and her current B/F via the RAAF from partying in Perth to return to Canberra. Again, silence. Although one of the more sane ex-pollies around, Tony Windsor got her measure when he opined that she was “…as loyal as the direction of the breeze.”

“Vichy” Abetz (Tasmanian Devil) and Greg “Addled” Sheridan, (History re-writer for “The-Ugly-American’s failing rag, The Oz) caused much hilarity when both exposed their collective wet dream of “Rabid-the-Hun” being returned to the front bench 

Presumably to eat raw onions

It turns out that pretend prime miniature, Malcon Turdball-Fop’s National Broadband Network is the dud that its critics indicated it would be. Seems that the copper wire between the two tin cans is “…not fit for purpose” and like I said at the time it will cost double and be a poorer system. Silence reigns about this agile innovation,too.

The ABC is to have a new boss….. c/o “The Ugly American”, Murdoch who apparently is happy to implement the IPA’s vision of privatising it. I think there’s a storm about to brew. Silence

“The-Coots-With-Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe” poster boy, Timmy “The-Twat- Freedom-Man” Wilson was recently impressing Palestinians with his intellect whilst on a junket with Chwissie "The-Whne and Perfect-Prat-of-a-Prefect,” Pyne and “Chopper/Kero Bath” Bishop. Palestinians thought them “..ill educated and rude;”  another inglorious chapter in Australia’s demise as a civilized nation under this rabble.

Cardinal, The Graceless, George "Pell-Pot"is too sick to travel from Rome to attend the Royal Commission into child abuse. Hmmm... nervous of his own crucifixion?

At a time when it has been announced that fully 1/3 of big companies pay no tax whatsoever, Fiscal Fool “The Drone” Morisson thinks that ripping Medicare up, raising the GST by 50%, slugging pensioners and cutting school funding is a good thing for the nation. The only bright part of this is that he is losing his hair faster than the economy is failing.
As actor and comedian Barry Humphries said on one of his early returns from Britain, "I want Australia to be the laughing stock of the world." Unfortunately his satire pales into insignificance compared to the reality of this Kafka-esquely incompetent ruling rabble.
There has never been in Australia's history  such a hate-filled, unimaginative, venal, mendacious, corrupt and Quisling, mongrel mob than the present parliament. 

The mongrels are going for broke; they want a fully privatised capitalist market economy in place before they ban elections, call a state of emergency and have the “Ugly American’s” sycophantic toady “Le Jongleur” Roskam installed as general manager… there are dark times ahead.

2016 will likely be the final chapter in Australia’s democracy unless the nation wakes up to what is happening.

Hoo-roo Possums,

Shane

Going from bad to worse...

G’day Possums,,, here’s a shot of where I live… taken early this morning…

Greendale Landscape

Random Wombat Droppings …or how we are going from bad to worse and to hell in a handbasket

It has always struck me how angry the "right" are. I think it's born of the frustration that aspirationals must feel in that that which they aspire to is unattainable because of the political and social structure. Greed, selfishness and short-sightedness combine with their aspiration to engender fear of any "social" contract which might limit their individual advancement and at the same time they are constantly reminded  that the system of their aspiration is stacked against them.

But then, by the same token the hate I feel toward the likes of the clowns from the IPA, Blot-on-the-Landscape, Rabid-the-Hun, Loopy Leyonhjelm et al, is born a similar frustration that these mongrels get their way at the expense of society as a whole, most of the time.

The “Coots-With-Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe”…the IPA is running the show. Malcon Turdball-Fop will be kept as the Ruler of this Ruling Rabble because electorally he’s safe… but otherwise he’ll have to tow the Murdoch, Rinehart, Miners and Bankers line. What sovereignty Australia had will be finally eliminated and every single public service will be privatised.

 Le Jongleur Roskam will the Chair of the Board and Malcon will become permanent faux PM.

“Far from deserving praise, the half-reversal of CSIRO and NICTA funding cuts simply highlights the need for the Turnbull Liberals to review all of their cuts to science, research and innovation which include:
$107m from the Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) program
$75m from the ARC
$27.5m from ANSTO
$7.8m from AIMS
$16.1m from Geoscience Australia
$20m from the Bureau of Meteorology
$120m from DSTO
$174m from the Research Training Scheme"

Triggs is “Woman of the Year” A beacon of sanity in a nation fast losing its way in an IPA thought bubble.

Ahhh... Liarbril sagacity, management and innovation... myths that make the Dreamtime look like scientific fact!

Buggered the NBN, blown the budget and rorted the parliamentary entitlements  like there was no tomorrow. With the biggest leaner, Joe “Eleventy, Cereal/Toyota Killer “ Hockey getting a job in Washington…. I didn’t realise we hated the Yanks that much…but at least it will limit his potential for ongoing damage to Australia.

The Paris Climate talks have shown that Oz is now third last in the world in our emission targets…. From leading the world to third last of 128 Nations in just 2 ½ short years is quite a Liarbril achievement….everything they touch they destroy…

We need Rabid-the-Hun to continually remind us just how dysfunctional the thinking in the Liarbril party is in selecting these anti-social mongrels.

He is still talking delusional nonsense about being leader again… and making stupefyingly silly remarks about the need for a Muslim “reformation” and that we good xtians are the culture to emulate…. Hmmm… right!

Cardinal “The Graceless” Pell-Pot is allegedly too ill to front the Royal Commission into child abuse….fearful perhaps, of his own crucifixion?

Mal “Chicken Thighs” Brough and fellow mongrel conspirators, Pyne

”the Whyne” and now Wyatt “The Boy” Roy are smelling like the shits they are over “Slippery” Pete’s political assassination….criminal charges, anyone?

Bronnie “Kero-Bath-Chopper” Bishop has decided that she is going at 73, to stick around in parliament to help fight terrorism … which terrorists, she didn’t say but it could be her own party…. Or it may be to match her colleague of same name, Jules “Asbestos” Bishop’s rather extravagant $30,0000.00 flight from a party with her B/F for a meeting in Canberra….Jules hasn’t heard of video-conferencing.

There ya go… how Oz is going to hell in a hand-basket care of the IPA.

Hoo-roo Petals

Shane.

seeing a New World Order

Shane the Builder

G’day Possums,

Well, this burrows bathroom restyle would have been quicker to build afresh than renovate… but we are in the home stretch with just tiling and splash-backs to install so next post should show the finished piece of work.

Having single-handedly built the burrow in the first place, I have been spending much time tweaking walls and ceilings to plumb and true and discovering how much shrinkage there has been to the original timbers.

Ahh… Next year in Jerusalem!

Wombat Droppings…

The Chronicle of Australia’s Inexorable Slide into Fascism.

Parisian’s have had a moment of real horror and the like the rest of the world, Oz lit up like the French Tricolour. We barely mentioned a similar brutality in Beirut and certainly didn’t light up the Cedars of Lebanon!

The French events have emboldened a moronic little cabal calling themselves the “United Penis-Head Front of Orstraya,” or something like that, to produce little stickers with the words “Ban Islam” combined with an illustration of “Skull and Crossbones”. Whether this is to advertise a new Caribbean Pirate film by placing them on shopping trolleys or attract the attention of race-hate purveyor Alan “Bondi” Jones by putting them in toilets is, as yet, unclear. But this handful of embarrassment’s political thinking, knowledge, philosophy and level of intelligence is so confused that they could be advertising a new “Pop” group who can’t spell either.

Malcon Turnbullfop, fresh from assassinating the previous leader of the Ruling Rabble, Rabid-the-Hun, and on his way from counting his Shekels in the Cayman Islands was asked his thoughts on the French atrocity. Interestingly, this loquacious, communicator was surprisingly wooden, clichéd and conventionally prosaic in his response and seemingly lacking a sense of empathy about the situation. Caught “on-the-hop,” did our new and popular with many, ruling rabble leader show in this vignette, the first crack in his smooth persona and the cold reality that lurks just beneath?  He seemed to be listening to himself, not speaking out and from the heart. Unable to perform from script Turnbull-Fop, faltered.

Not so “Dodo” Dutton, Non-Immigration Minister.

Asylum seeker refugees get raped and pregnant…Meh!

Self immolate…Meh! 

Are murdered…Meh!

Full of faux empathy for Syrian asylum seekers this monstrous incompetent conveniently ignores the people incarcerated in Concentration Camps on Manus and Christmas Islands who are now being joined by what he says are “hardened criminals” who haven’t paid their traffic fines.

“Dodo” has not indicated if he will follow the Indonesian suggestion that all the “Baddies” be dumped on an island surrounded by Salt-Water Crocodiles and left to fend for themselves via Food drops. Although it seems to me that swimming with “Saltys” would be safer than trusting a Liarbril.

There has been a riot…what do we know …not much, as it is all off limits to all but the select few of propagandists from The “Ugly American” Murdoch’s tabloids.

We do know however, that it is now a crime to report rapes, maltreatment or anything detrimental to ruling rabble commands.

Germany, 1935?

While the electorate’s Ostrich-like capacities become more and more apparent… the slide continues.
This week was the 40th anniversary of the coup which removed an elected government.
It was a time when an unelected representative of a foreign monarch, with advice from two liarbril senior legals plotted against Whitlam's  government and got what they wanted, so creating lasting social and political division.
When you look back on the history of this country, is there anything in the right-wing agenda that has ever benefitted the whole rather than a select few?
And on a last note: Foreign Minister for fashion, Julie "Asbestos" Bishop has been vetoed by Russia's Premier, Vladimir Putin from attending talks to solve the turmoil  induced by Western powers in Syria. Putin, like many here, finds her too abrasive and of little content. In another demonstration of the fascist control of the media, you would have better luck finding a needle in a haystack than reports of this snub.  Which, if it were a Labor government minister, would almost be a cause for a Royal Commission into ministerial incompetence.  

Hoo-roo, Petals,

Shane.

looking and being watched ...

Shane Wombat with his brushes

G'day Petals,

Mrs Wombat and I waddled along to the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery to have a gander at some of the finalists for the Archibald prize t’other day.

Probably the most important portrait prize in Australia for its prestige and with its $100,000.00 winner’s prize the Archibald attracts hundreds of entries from most of the country’s best painters.

Ballarat Backspace

Following are some of the works that attracted me.

 Adam Alcorn’s portrait of Alice Fraser is beautifully handled. It’s fine delineation of the eyes and face gradually soften backward in an almost conical fashion leaving the whole suspended in space. It has a quiet authority that commends you study it.

Alice Fraser- Adam Alcorn

Both Wei Bin Chen and Matthew Kentmann show deft paint handling in their works.  M K’s making me think of Goya and Bacon and Wei’s, Fragonard, and as he notes, Lucien Freud, as both artists with authority, explain the subject.

Self-Portrait No 6- Wei Bin Chen

Nigel Milsom, Sunday 3 may 2015- Matthew Kentmann

Prudence Flint’s “Baby”, I nearly ignored because of its seemingly simplistic Brack-like graphic qualities but was rewarded with further looking. The intensity of the gaze of “the mother” to the “baby” and back has a really odd effect in tending to isolate each in its own sphere. Flint was influenced by C14th paintings of the Madonna and Child where you do see this separateness in the subjects due to the attention to detail offered in these works. In its coolness and structured space this is a very potent work with “baby” looking at its “mother” in an unnervingly omnipotent manner. Ghirlandaio meets Fra Angelico

Baby- Prudence Flint

“El cabeceo” too, has Marcus Wills paraphrasing earlier art forms of the likes of Jan van Eyck and Hans Memling and folding religious triptychs. As a commission to celebrate the subject’s marriage the minutely drawn detail and wit make this work a delight to look at and the reverse wings with both subjects nude, one frontal the other from the rear makes you wonder which feast day is the “Icon” opened or is it for guests to venerate? 

El cabeceo- Marcus Wills

More good fun is being had both metaphorically and in actuality in Leslie Price’s “Hill End bacchanal.”   Painted tonally deep on black velvet as a homage to kitsch and as a passing look at Poussin and Caravaggio via Donald Friend and celebrating his subject, painter Luke Sciberras’ penchant for copious wine laden revelry, this is a hoot of a classical folly in the Australian bush .... Peacocks, pulchritudinous attendants and all.

Hill End bacchanal,(portrait of Luke Sciberras- Leslie Price

A bravura Kandinsky-like portrait in a single session is “Laurie” by Tanja Karl. The intensity of the moment is well shown as is the movement wanted by Tony Curran’s depiction of Luke.

Laurie- Tanja Karl

Luke - Tony Curran

And The Winner of “The Archibald”, Nigel Milsom’s  “Judo House pt6 (the white bird)” an intense, forensically faceted realisation of  barrister friend Charles who is there but not, is analysing but looking somewhere else…a riveting painterly work which hits the right note of presenting the subject not the painter.

Judo House pt 6 (the white bird) - Nigel Milsom

A good show …of much Australian talent….

BFAG

The Crow, Ballarat

We then crossed the road for lunch at The George Laneway to be watched by a big Crow who was intent on taking our food if we left it unattended.

Wombat Droppings

the chronicle of a once egalitarian nation’s inexorable slide into fascism.

Willy Shortstuff, Laboring to be leader of a relevant alternative political party is now attempting to alienate the 14% who support him by lowering the voting age so kindergarten children will be eligible to vote.

He squawked this information to a deathly silence, as people contemplated Rabid-the-Hun’s latest epistle from London. Rabid was addressing a gathering of social misfits of the “Iron Lady” cabal where he said that although Jesus’ notion  “love one another” was fine in principle it just wasn’t practical and was really not relevant in contemporary Capitalist society. Although warmly applauded by those who understood this re-writing of now defunct Xtian philosophy, he was also castigated for his use of the word “society” as the “Iron lady” had proved long ago that this didn’t exist.

Closer to home, Shylock Frydenberg has been arguing the case that selling coal to India is our greatest moral responsibility. Unfortunately his arguments are not only just as attractive, but as thin as the hair on his head. He denied that having taxpayers subsidize an Indian company to pollute the Great Barrier Reef and destroy farmland was not in our national interest.

His Great Leader, Malcon Turnbullfop then popped up in this conversation to say we had a very bright future with Nuclear energy. His newly minted Chief Scientist, Rontgen Funk declared it a very clean energy not at all like the type seen at Three Mile Island, Fukushima and Chernobyl.

“Shylock” with “Horse-Shite” Coorman have also been spruiking the benefits of turning Industry Superannuation Funds over to the banking sector. That these outperform all other “super” funds with none of the scandals and associated investor losses that the banks do so well at, is the very reason the playing field needs levelling. As “Horse-Shite” intoned, wreathed in cigar smoke, “We are the Liarbril Party, the lowest common denominator is our philosophic benchmark.”  They both denied that this exercise was another way of stopping Union funds from being distributed democratically.

Torn Posters, Police Lane Ballarat.

Senator, Simon “No-It’s-Your-Shout” Birmingham understands level playing fields too, and is trying to level public education... totally!  “By adopting the American style of education, we will forge greater cultural ties, allow everyone to fail and it will be cheaper for business executives; although parents will also have to foot the bill for the armed guards that come with this system.” he is alleged to have said.

There really need to be an enquiry into what’s in the water in South Aussie, as “No-It’s-Your-Shout” seems as infected with similar incipient educational ideas like his predecessor Chwissie “The-Whyne-and-Perfect-Prat-of-a-Prefect”, Pyne.

Concentration Camp “Leaners” on Nauru and Manus Islands are being offered the chance to re-locate to the Central Asian Republic of Kyrgyzstan.

Anti-Immigration Minister (also incompetent and sacked Health Minister) “Dodo” Dutton declined to comment as it was a  “Look-Over-There” matter but did wink when it was suggested that, A/ they weren’t likely to drown in Kyrgyzstan, B/ It could be cheaper than the $40,000,000.00 for four Concentration Camp Leaner to go to Cambodia and, C/ he got the idea from his hero, Adolph Schikelgruber’s 1940 one of relocating Germany’s Jewish population of “Leaners” to Madagascar.

Senator “Vichy” Abetz was apparently very excited by the concept saying that Great Uncle Otto did something similar in France in the 40’s too.

Dodo has also announced that charities looking after the welfare of child “Concentration Camp Leaners” will have to pay a fee of $2,000,000.00 which will be non-refundable if they have been found guilty of telling the truth about Ruling Rabble policy. “Truth is relative, “ he is thought to have muttered as he was led away by his black-shirted personal bodyguard, Obersturmbannfuhrer Roaming Quisling of the Border Farce.

The basics of all the above are true… only the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

Hoo-roo Possums,

Shane

Chopper searching... second this week....

A day with Catherine and Mozart.

Well, G’day Possums,

I’ve been a bit tardy with this blog lately …been working on the renovation which, as all building projects, is taking longer than anticipated.

 Wall panelling goes up next then there are in the final stages of tiling and the glass splash backs. Two more weeks should see it all complete.

Mrs Wombat and I took a jaunt to the “Big-Smoke” to have a look at the samples from The Hermitage in St Petersburg at the NGV that was all sort of decked out as a facsimile of the Catherine the Great’s Russian palace.

Catherine the Great, NGV

Drawings, paintings, sculpture, jewellery, topographic views, architectural drawings, Chinese object d’ art, furniture and ceramics made this sampling of masterpieces an exhibition to help whet your appetite for the real venue and the magnificent collection started by Empress Catherine in 1765.

 

NGV

Favourite of mine, Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin was there represented with the beautifully subtle “The Laundress.”  The harmonious tones enveloping all from the misted background woman hanging the laundry to the little boy pulling our eye forward with his ephemeral bubble and the central white of the freshly washed cloth all is studied and so very quiet. The composition too, is placed with care as an adjunct to the colour and tones.  As his contemporary critic Cochin said, Chardin could be “…. a dangerous neighbour.”

 

The Laundress, JBS Chardin

This painting has a version in the Stockholm Nationalmuseum. The cats eyes are open and looking at the viewer and the tonalities seem darker with more contrast…..  it would be interesting to visit it.

Then Perroneau’’s “ Boy with Book” Another delightful rococo piece of “sensibilitie.”  The muted tones in this seem to reflect Perroneau’s interest in pastel painting and his superb drawing skills.

Perroneau, Boy with Book

The immediacy present in Anthony Van Dyck’s “Family Portrait” subjects is stunning. The family could still be at the sitting their presence is so affective. Each personality, and its individual character is rendered so beautifully and drawn so articulately that the diamond lozenge composition seems less rigid in its control.

A. Van Dyck Family Portrait

Then, mentor to Van Dyck is Peter Paul Rubens’ “St Paul” looking as intense as Rasputin.

And look at that hand literally popping off the canvas, the subtle counter-swing of the head and the shoulders to enliven the subject in the composition where the light is as much a compositional element as is the palpable space behind the subject.

PP Rubens St Paul

All of these works had glorious paint handling, as did the Jacob Jordaens seen in this detail of “Saints Paul and Barbara” where textures are real; silk is silk, hair is hair and flesh is flesh.

Detail: J. Jordaens

Then there was the C18th Chinese silver-ware of Filigree Silver, gold and enamel and utterly exquisite workmanship.

But let’s not forget the millions of poor serfs who made all this possible for Catherine to collect.

A fine show that was followed by a very ordinary dinner (Italian…sort of…) at Southbank and then off  to the concert hall for the Melbourne Symphony and Choir to perform Mozart’s, Requiem….. that was brilliant!

Wombat Droppings

 The chronicle of Australia’s inexorable slide into fascism.

"AUSTRALIA will not yield to blackmail by pregnant asylum seekers," says Non-Immigration facsimile, Peter “Dodo” Dutton.

Journalist may have to pay $8,000.00 to visit our refugee concentration camps on Manus or Nauru and Gillian Triggs, Human Rights Commissioner is banned from visiting but “The Ugly American,” Murdoch’s scribe Chris Kenny (with many long standing contacts with the Liarbrils) can get in with a Border-Farce escort and photographer to harass the said woman.

 Let’s not forget the Hazara refugee Khodayar Amini who self immolated out of fear that Border Farce were looking for him and might deport him back to Afghanistan.

Sieg Heil, Dodo and Border Farce!

Joe “Eleventy-Cereal-Toyota Killer” Hockey, failed Treasurer has left the house.  His final speech was as useless and as pointless and as forgetable as his 19 years in parliament.

Good riddance!

Rabid-the-Hun, failed Prime Miniature, Health, Workplace Relations ministers, failed concrete plant manager, failed journalist and failed seminarian is putting himself forward as a public speaker. This is very odd, as Australia’s experience of his public speaking would indicate that  he had no talent for this either and as he usually only uttered three word slogans his proposed fee indicates he wants $13,333.33 per word.

Tongue Flicking will be free.

New pretend Treasurer “The Drone” Morrison, provides misleading figure to bolster his Xtian (well if you call Hillsong Xtian) act of slashing social services.

Why should today be different?

The Ruling Rabble has suggested that children 14 years of age be subject to control orders.

“The effect of a control order may range from house arrest without access to electronic communications, to a restriction on the people you can associate with. The order can remain in effect for up to 12 months. 

It can be obtained in a secret hearing about which the subject knows nothing at all, until they are arrested and served with the order. And even then they are not to be told what the evidence was that was used against them. 

So if someone made a mistake, the subject of the order won't know and they can't find out because they are not allowed to see the evidence that was used against them.” 

(From Julian Burnside’s spray on this)

So you think I’m being silly about our slide into fascism?

Three eminent Climate scientist are invited to have talk with Pollies about their subject… talks a gazumped into a slanging match “debate” when three non-entities from “The Coots-With-Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe” asylum (the IPA) earn their 30 pieces of silver from The Ugly American, Murdoch, The Biggest Miner, Rinehart, The Cancer Company, Phillip Morris and probably the Koch Bros.

New Prime Miniature, Malcon Turnbullfop is hereby ordered to note that this country is staying “far right.” 

Liarbril “woman,” Concetta Terrazzo-Pomidora or something or other, opined similarly echoing Vichy Abetz’s chagrin at Malcon looking dangerously centrist.

Rabid-the-Hun has offered to pay for the marble table broken at his sacking party. He still expects the taxpayer to foot the bill of $7,000.00 for the booze though.

Hoo-roo Petals,

Shane

PS: this is now being stored as Meta Data by our fascist ruling rabble.

Changing narratives..or Not.

G’day Possums,

   

Shane the renovator

We've been busy playing renovator this week.

I'm remodelling the second bathroom and changing its configuration … a cavity sliding door has been fitted saving much space and providing an agreeably larger and less cluttered feel to the room…

So this week it’s really all about the chronicle of our country’s inexorable slide into fascism with Wombat Droppings

Rabid-the-Hun going overboard

Freshly assassinated prime miniature, Rabid-the-Hun has been as good with his word to current pm Malcon Turnbullfop as he was with the electorate. Coming out of hiding and the sulks, Rabid being a good IPA office boy, has been attempting to re-write history to suit his own peculiar view of the world by claiming with his three shock jock friends he has left, that it wasn’t that he was really “on-the-nose,” just misunderstood, and that because Turnbullfop hasn’t changed any of his policy disasters his culling was all because of a press beat-up, the Runes, the Masons and/or Communist plotting from Nth Korea.

Malcon Turnbullfop

Many in the country have had bouts of vomiting on hearing the really loopy “far right” extol Rabid’s copious serves of humanity, decency, morality and sheer brilliance as a national leader but quickly recover on also hearing that there have been mass defections from the liarbril party at his political knifing with some suggesting the orange life-boats be pressed into service again to take them to asylum in Indonesia.

The national euphoria on this malignant person’s demise has been palpable but the real sting in the tail is that Turnbullfop will not be allowed by the “right” to change much, so all it really is, is a case of new conductor, musicians changing chairs but the ensemble is scratching out the same dirge only smiling about it and saying how romantic it is.

Australians seem to have been fooled into thinking “things-are-better-now”…. when it’s really two minutes to midnight….. the following is a section of a piece by Victoria Rollinson from her blog and re-used in the “Australian Independent Media” pages.  

 “The right wing narrative is a scary story about a community I would never choose to live in. I was not brought up to blame the disadvantaged for their predicament. And nor will I bring up my child to think our societies’ problems are the fault of the vulnerable, the disabled, the sick, the mentally ill, the poor and the abused. The rejection of the Abbott government has, I hope, proved that the majority of Australians, like me, reject this story and don’t believe that life is a race. I hope so. But either way, next time someone says the Liberal government is missing a narrative, just remember the narrative is there. It’s just not a very nice story and they know this so they do their best to keep it hidden. Don’t let them get away with it. You know the story. Call it out whenever you see it.”  Victoria Rollinson

Hoo-roo, Petals,

Shane