A unique verb in Melbourne’s vernacular is “Connexed”. Just say the Queen was in town and you’d been invited to formal tea at her hotel but you’re running terribly late due to an inevitable combination of cancelled and late trains, you’d be able to apologise to a frustrated monarch with the line, “I’m sorry, your Maj, but I was Connexed.” You see, everyone understands how the train system (dis)functions in this city and they’re very understanding when you have been fucked over by the system’s private operator, Connex.
Now the Brumby Government, itself largely responsible for the dog’s breakfast that is the train system, has gone and ruined the entire city’s ability to efficiently and succinctly sum up its frustration with the trains by awarding the contract to a new operator.
The Government, reeling from a public backlash over the rail network’s failings, yesterday dumped the French-owned operator Connex and replaced it with a consortium backed by Hong Kong’s metro operator … But Premier John Brumby insisted commuters would get a better deal from new rail operator Metro Trains Melbourne …
What will it be now? Metro’d? Metro Trainsoed? How will we possible cope? Brumby says we will be compensated appropriately.
More staff on stations, fewer cancelled trains and improved punctuality have been promised by the Brumby Government and the new consortium appointed to operate Melbourne’s train network for the next eight years.
Just after they finish spending millions and millions on new station and train signage, new uniforms, new stationary, new audio recordings, and an advertising blitz to promote the brand to the pissed off and cynical Melbourne population who have see it all before each of the several other times the operator has changed.
Baby Rogenous is now almost 19 months old, so this week I figured it was high time I started indoctrinating him. You can’t afford to waste any time with this sort of thing.
Now, I know what you’re all thinking … but no, I don’t mean politically. I might be a pernicious Leftist, but I’m not that pernicious — he’ll need to be at least two years old before I read him The Communist Manifesto, and I’ll wait until he’s mastered Twinkle Twinkle Little Star before bothering with The Internationale.
Instead, I’ve started him on an area second only in importance to politics — sport. Lesson no.1 was football codes, and I’m delighted to say he passed with flying colours:
(Transcript here if you can’t understand babytalk)
Next week, I think I’ll introduce him to Club Wah’s superb Ashes for the Ignorant series.
The heart-breaking story of Darcey Freeman is still echoing around Melbourne, particularly amongst those of us who are parents. While it’s unusual for parents to flip and murder their children, nevertheless it does occasionally happen – but the manner in which this child’s life was taken is horrific to the extreme. I cannot bear to think what went through that little girl’s mind as her father – the same father she loved and she thought loved her back – tore her from the car seat and hurled her into the void. I know that soon enough the media will find a picture of Darcey and that will make it worse, because I’ll put those terrified emotions to a face, and I’ll for days I’ll imagine that face in its last seconds. Doubtless I’ll cry but I know I won’t be alone.
More sober thoughts must turn to why this happened and what we can learn from it. Idiot blogers (sic) with their own embittered perspectives have already decided, with not a skerrick of evidence, that the Family Court might be to blame. Some in the media are suggesting that this is the wake-up call for those in government to put safety barriers along the course of the West Gate Bridge. Sadly, it is not – the wake-up call was some time ago and nobody was listening:
The bodies of a woman and her baby son have been found together under the West Gate Bridge. The tragedy prompted senior police to again call on the government and to install anti-suicide barriers on the bridge.
The bodies of the 18-month-old boy and the woman, understood to be in her late 20s, were found on the river bank early yesterday. (From June 2008.)
This was a tragedy of similar proportions but it received little attention. Why wasn’t something done then? For God’s sake, put the barriers up – not to stop the disturbed and the suicidal who might take their lives in a dozen other ways, but to stop them from killing their children. Deny them the power to kill and let not one more child die on that damn bridge.
When you think of the word “soldier”, what springs to your mind?
Fearless? Brave? Heroic? Fighting for what’s good and true?
When white supremacist group The Southern Cross Soldiers decided to hold a rally on Australia Day, they thought the beach would be their oyster, and the media their bitch. What patriotic, beach loving Aussie could ignore their call for immigrants to fuck off?
You could tell it would be an exercise in idiocy from the moment the first little troopers arrived under The Clocks and began casting anxious eyes over the Australia Day parade rolling down Swanston St.
Chinese marchers with their dragons, Turkish dancers, new arrivals from Africa – the sort of people your typical Southern Cross Soldier wants to send back where they came from.
But outnumbered as they were, there wasn’t a peep out of these heroes, whose ranks swelled gradually to about 30.
Thirty? Sounds like a right proper army to me.
And at Mordialloc’s multicultural melting pot, well you just had to laugh. They congregated for a while at the foot of the pier like virgins at an orgy, glancing anxiously down the beach and at all those non-Anglo faces, who paid them no heed whatsoever.
When a couple of brawny Pacific Islanders ambled past, their silence was deafening.
[...]
When a Herald Sun photographer tried to snap their pictures, that was the moment to demonstrate courage. Fifteen on one, those are the sort of odds cowards like best.
There was a bit of pushing and shoving and lens-blocking, and one big kid struck a boxing pose and offered to punch some heads.
He didn’t and they drifted away on a cloud of obscenity to have another go at remembering the words to Advance Australia Fair.
It’s good to know John Ray has these guys on his side, because when the New Soviets come they will not be spared.
Today (Tuesday) will be the start of five days of unrelenting scorchers [in Victoria] with temperatures soaring to the 40s. The heatwave will arrive today with an expected maximum of 38 degrees, 41 on Wednesday and 40 on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
The last time Melbourne had a heatwave of this intensity was a century ago when it suffered through five days of stultifying heat with temperatures in the 40s in January 1908.
Of course this proves that globule warmening really exists!!!1! And that Melbourne is teh Leftist capital of Australia and is being punished by Satan. And that Aurora’s blog was, in its last throes, spot on. And that all the smart people live in Queensland or Tasmania. And that we shoulda built more dams.
I hate the heat like a leftist hates meat cars, Holden pies and all other Australian icons. So I won’t be going down to Williamstown beach to compete with 10,000 zinced-up lunatics for a square yard of sand on which to lay my Australian flag beach towel. Nor will I wander aimlessly at the tennis, hoping to get a look at a big name player but instead having to settle for court 18, where some unknown Belorussian is playing in the singles for girls under-18 with one arm. I could seek refuge by wandering the refrigerated maelstrom of Highpoint or Melbourne Central – but so will a million bogans without artificial cooling.
No, looks like I’ll be spending my last three days of holidays inside our shuttered house, while my air-conditioner spews tonnes of non-offset carbons into the atmosphere - and I sip homemade lemonade and read good books, interspersed with the occasional blog comment. I don’t intend casting eyes upon the sun until Sunday.
Tonight at Melbourne Park, Daryl Braithwaite — former frontman of 1970s rock band Sherbet — is performing in the Heineken Beer Garden as part of the Australian Open’s line-up of free entertainment.
If you are planning to attend this event, please note: do not, under any circumstances, carry this image in the back of your mind while Mr Braithwaite is on stage:
Clearly the graffiti artists and taggers of Brunswick are as sick as I am of the lifeless prefab concrete apartment buildings being erected in the inner city of Melbourne.
Attn: weirdo in the ticket booth at Flinders Street Station who treated me to an outrageous display of spinning and sliding between a storage cupboard and the service counter today.
You know the mad-as-cut-snakes plant nursery freaks, “Hello, hello!” Chris and Marie, who are (in)famous for their oh-so-shithouse Melbourne TV ads that feature Chris naked or Chris wearing a tutu? Well, it seems that they may be Scientologists or Scientology sympathisers!!1! Why else would they have an entire section of their crime-against-web design website devoted to Narconon — Scientology’s kiddie brainwashing drug addiction arm?
And could I pack any more not-quite-necessary hyphens into one tiny piece of writing?
UPDATE:Comment from “A source”, who answers ‘yes’:
They are Scientologists: BIG TIME!
And I wonder who they get to work at their farms for next to nothing after they just sacked a lot of hard working staff? Could it be the kids?
Yes.
UPDATE II: Defamer amazingly picked up GrodsCorp’s lead a full nine months before I wrote this post.
The Editor coming out of the nerd closet has traumatised me. Though we have never met, I always envisaged him as being so uber-cool that he makes Connery’s James Bond seem like a bogan. Sure, he wears glasses, runs a blog, uses words liked ‘pwned’, plays Guitar Hero, goes to indi film festivals and owns a cat. But it just never occurred to me that he was anything else but a suave, strutting sex-god who oozes charisma.
Anyway, I have news to warm the cockles of Ed’s nerdy heart:
Thousands of science fiction aficionados will make their way to Melbourne in 2010 to attend the 68th World Sci-fi Convention, it was announced today. Aussiecon 4 – the annual convention of the World Science Fiction Society, which has affiliations in more than 30 countries – will run for seven days in September 2010 at the Melbourne Convention Centre.
Major Projects Minister Theo Theophanous says the event has universal appeal and he’s expecting more than 3,000 fans to converge on Melbourne, generating about $18 million in economic benefit for Victoria.
Greeeat. For a week in spring 2010 Melbourne will be filled with thousands of social misfits who look like Ron Weasley from the Harry Potter movies. They’ll swarm the streets dressed as Stormtroopers, Cybermen or Yul Brynner in Westworld. Internet cafes, video arcades and fast food outlets will do a roaring trade. They’ll hover along Southbank with their Tom Baker scarves and their light sabres; they’ll duck into shadowy corners and make nerd babies. But even scarier… it will give The Editor opportunity to don his David Bowie codpiece for a week.
Last night we had a big staff social dinner at a restaurant in the city, and afterwards a half dozen or so of us moved on from the restaurant to have some more drinks. The laydeez (which is everyone but me — that’s primary school teaching for you) wanted to go to a very proper club on Collins St, and when we approached the door Nazis they took one long look at me like I was a piece of shit on their shoes. You see, all the girls were looking very nice indeed in their going out clothes, while I was resplendent in jeans, t-shirt, grungy jacket and very, very blue sneakers. One of the door Nazis took a deep breath and looked at me in a resigned fashion.
“You’re the luckiest man alive, mate,” he said, shaking his head.
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“You’re not wearing a collared shirt, you’re not dressed very smartly, and your shoes are very, very blue,” Nazi replied.
“They are very blue,” I agreed with him.
“But you’re with six ladies so today’s your lucky day,” he told me as if he was God.
“I feel honoured to be allowed entry into your club,” I told him solemnly, while laughing on the inside at how pathetic he and his club were.
“Just stand in a dark corner,” Nazi instructed me while lifting the rope.
Comedy gold from he of the ever-expanding head, Collingwood Football Club president Eddie “Boney M” McGuire, addressing his troops in the wake of the recent drink-driving scandal involving key players Heath Shaw and Alan Didak:
On Monday (Eddie) McGuire lectured Collingwood players about their responsibilities and highlighted how much sacrifice club officials, including himself, had made.
It is believed Mr McGuire indicated being president had cost him “four or five” Gold logies.
* Costello’s cocktease
* Ramos-Horta loves Vanstone for evah
* Come on, Sam Newman
* Myki: fuck you
* Beheading is the new black
* TardWatch (formerly known as Funniest Things On The Intertubes)
** Because Jeremy is desperately downloading this episode from Heathrow Airport Seaport, use only the “Play in popup” link or the “Download” link. **
