Month: January 2008

Posted on

Petitions might finally make a difference

Maybe those annoying socialists on King Street will finally achieve something with their endless petition-signing. Chairman Rudd will require parliament to formally consider and report on all petitions.

More than a million Australians signed 900+ petitions during Howard’s final three-year term. A grand total of 2 were responded to in some way. The other 99.8% were tabled and ignored.

My local MP Anthony Albanese, the “manager of government business” in parliament, says petitions won’t need to be sponsored by an MP any more. He reckons citizens have a basic right to petition parliament. And they’ll look into electronic petitions too.

That, and Julia Gillard’s announcement that NGOs receiving government funds would no longer be prevented from making political statements, are clear sings that maybe Kevin Rudd actually means what he says about strengthening the parliamentary system.

Posted on

Retreating into the walled garden, for safety

Why do people pour their lives into proprietary environments like Facebook when everything they need to communicate with their friends is already on their desktops? Or their phones. The inimitable Stephen Fry has once again written complete sense, theorising that it’s deep human nature.

What an irony! For what is this much-trumpeted social networking but an escape back into that world of the closed online service of 15 or 20 years ago? Is it part of some deep human instinct that we take an organism as open and wild and free as the internet, and wish then to divide it into citadels, into closed-border republics and independent city states? The systole and diastole of history has us opening and closing like a flower: escaping our fortresses and enclosures into the open fields, and then building hedges, villages and cities in which to imprison ourselves again before repeating the process once more. The internet seems to be following this pattern.

How does this help us predict the Next Big Thing? That’s what everyone wants to know, if only because they want to make heaps of money from it. In 1999 Douglas Adams said: “Computer people are the last to guess what’s coming next. I mean, come on, they’re so astonished by the fact that the year 1999 is going to be followed by the year 2000 that it’s costing us billions to prepare for it.”

But let the rise of social networking alert you to the possibility that, even in the futuristic world of the net, the next big thing might just be a return to a made-over old thing.

Another possibility, I guess, is that most people are overwhelmed by the choices available. Facebook and the rest just give them a few obvious options and they can get on with it. Or are both Mr Fry and I completely missing it?

Posted on

We have the used knickers!

Despite having written a lengthy serious essay today, I know that regular readers will be thrilled to hear that both pairs of used knickers are now in my possession!

Photograph of both pairs of used underwear

If you’ve only just joined us, I wondered aloud why we’re afraid of wearing someone else’s underwear. And the conversation has continued as a pair of used knickers made its way down the laneway and into a corner.

Well, I have the abandoned women’s knickers, and Quatrefoil has sent me the freshly-washed men’s underpants which she found in her possession. I guess I’ll have to figure out which to wear first now, eh?

Posted on

Post 801: Kill the Hallucinating Goldfish

This is blog post number 801. It’s time for something special. Time for an extended essay encapsulating several trains of thought which I’ve been following for some time.

We are the 801,
We are the central shaft
And thus throughout two years
We’ve crossed the ocean in our little craft (Row! Row! Row!)
Now we’re on the telephone,
Making final arrangements (Ding! Ding!)
We are the 801, we are the central shaft

Cover from Brian Eno album Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)

So sang Brian Eno in the song The True Wheel from his 1974 album Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy).

Eno says he wrote the lyrics while visiting New York:

I went to stay with this girl called Randi and fell asleep after taking some mescaline and had this dream where this group of girls were singing to this group of sailors who had just come into port. And they were singing ‘We are The 801 / We are the Central Shaft’ — and I woke up absolutely jubilant because this was the first bit of lyric I’d written in this new style.

Yes, apparently in the 1970s a musician wrote a song while under the influence of hallucinogens. Who’d have thought.

Society generally frowns upon people who make important decisions while under the influence. (By an odd coincidence, Hugh MacLeod posted some vaguely-related thoughts only yesterday, in dying young is overrated, revisited.) However the more I look, the more I worry that we’re governed as if our societies were hallucinating. And even worse, it’s as if they’ve forgotten how to remember the lessons of the past.

I’m worried that we’re governed by Hallucinating Goldfish.

Continue reading “Post 801: Kill the Hallucinating Goldfish”

Posted on

New Bush coins: gallons to replace dollars

Screenshot from New Bush Coins video

Now that President Bush has declared martial law, it will be illegal to own precious metals after January 2008. Here’s a sneak peek at the new money.

“The 1-gallon coin, or the ‘Condy’, honours Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, whose solution to Middle East conflict is summarised on the reverse: Piping Persia for Peace.”

Yes, this is American political satire at its very, very best.

Also worth watching is the promo for the CD set Lapdogs of the Corporate Press and news that Britney Spears has been cast as the Virgin Mary.