the big issues

It has come to my attention that a grammatical error of fearsome proportions is being inflicted on the good people of Melbourne at present. I refer, of course, to those signs you see on the backs of rubbish trucks at work:
Constantly stopping
Spot the problem? The truck is constantly stopping: it never actually stops trying to [...]

hobble

Not to worry - it wasn’t me hobbling. Not at all, it was Wayne Carey who was “hobbled” by Miami police in a recent trip to the US.
Apparently he was:
“angry, drunk, and violent” and his speech was rapid.from the age.
This was surprising: he hadn’t been hanging out with Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty was [...]

young fogy

I’m not sure either Em or I are old enough to be legitimately called “old fogies”, but we both independently seem to be taking on a number of fogy-ish traits.
The most obvious is the perception that “kids these days” are out of control and have no respect. From there it’s barely even a half-step to [...]

honorable member

Here in Australia our politicians have a habit of bleating about their “years of loyal service” and how they need a pay raise to reward their “high performance”.
Next time your local honorable member starts off on that track, remind them of this:
Bhutto assassinated
The member for Deakin or Eden-Monaro should think themselves lucky they’re not running [...]

the wedding is over

You would be pleased, I hope, to hear I made it back more or less in one piece.
The wedding was in a town called Tathra, up in Southern New South Wales. It was nice, as weddings go. Lots of standing around uncomfortably in rented suits and, for the women, stiletto heals sinking slowly into the [...]

sick

I’ve spent much of this week ploughing through websites on various infectious diseases. This is for work, I might add.
When you spend any length of time looking at that sort of stuff you end up convinced you have rotaviral gastroenteritis, brucellosis, shigellosis or possibly the humble scabies.
True: I don’t have any symptoms, per se, but [...]

dreams can come true

I bloody hope not. At least not the dream I had last night.
Before I go on, let me preface my remarks be saying I know how irritating it is when people tell you about their dreams. What’s that Dylan line?
At dawn my lover comes to me and tells me of her dreamswith no attempts to [...]

hip-hop battling

Things are a bit tense these days in the world of hip-hop. To quote L. Cohen:
There is a war between the one’s who say there is a war and those who say that there isn’t
And Dylan:
Everybody’s shouting “which side are you on?”
I refer, as if you didn’t know, to the looming battle between 50 “fiddy” [...]