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Trapped in a bus

Photo: self-portrait of ’Pong through a bus window

12 days to the election, 17 days to Thailand. That’s going to be one amazing transition: election day, hangover day, travel day, then right into the Loy Krathong festival.

’Pong, scouting ahead, is trapped in a broken bus (pictured).

So far he’s only posted images of his arrival in Bangkok (including that aforementioned 3-litre chilled beer dispenser) and now these of a bus journey gone wrong. Not enough bandwidth to upload more, at least not at a decent price.

This impending trip is starting to take on reality for me.

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Gloves off!

Two weeks to election day, and the polls are still a disaster for John Howard. Does this mean previously-unacceptable tactics now become legitimate? Howard has never been one to give up easily. In the fight to the finish, just how grubby could it get?

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John Howard sees scary poll, reveals super powers

Photo of John Howard destroying a voter with strange forcesWith his electoral hopes still looking decidedly problematic, Prime Minister John Howard has revealed his last-ditch plan to destroy all uncooperative voters using previously-unseen super-powers.

The latest face-to-face Morgan poll show Labor well ahead at 62% to 38% on a two-party-preferred (TPP) split. We can see what sort of parliament that would give us using Antony Green’s super-dooper calculator scooper: Labor with a vast majority of 134 seats in parliament versus a Coalition rump of just 14.

That’s the worst polling for the Coalition so far this year.

During a particularly chaotic shopping centre visit in western Sydney yesterday, voters called Howard a “scumbag” and a “disgrace”, while police were left to check this woman’s health as the aspirational nationalist Dear Leader strode manfully into the middle distance, smile fixed.

Is this, as Ambit Gambit suggests, the defining image of the campaign?

Hat tip: Possum’s Pollytics via the Snarky Platypus (sort of).

[Update 20 August 2010: I probably should have linked to Dave from Albury’s original blog post, rather than where I found this image. There. Fixed now.]

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Baby’s On Fire

OK, I mentioned Laurie Anderson. That got the brain cells working and Brian Eno spat out the other end. That means I get to mention that Eno’s Baby’s On Fire (shown in that link with unrelated Eno graphics) is one of the greatest rock songs in the history of the universe.

The versions by Venus in Furs and Velvet Goldmine and Creepers and Granada (electro-pop!) and Bomb Everything are also more than acceptable.

I just thought you should know this.

Alternatively, you could watch the Tractor Square Dancing from the Pennsylvania Farm Show.

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Laurie Anderson repeats herself again and again

Video of Laurie Anderson singing Only an Expert / Maybe if I Fall

Thanks to typing is not activism… I’m now OK with the fact that ’Pong and I missed Laurie Anderson when she was in Sydney last month.

They posted this video of her singing Only an Expert / Maybe if I Fall and I reckon it’s crap. The minimalist backing tune is just the same sort of thing she’s been doing forever, and she mumbles through the words without that accurate staccato that used to mark her work. Is age causing her mouth to be less accurate? Or does she just not care any more?

What I do find interesting is that she walks out onto the stage as an Artist (with a capital “A”). Because she’s an Artist, she gets polite applause and respect for something which is really just a smarty-pants poem — but delivered in such a pretentious way that she’d be howled off stage at a real poetry open mic night.

Video of Laurie Anderson singing O Superman

So, I’m happy that I missed her.

I reckon you can learn everything you need to know about Laurie Anderson by listening to her seminal work O Superman and her one hit song, Language is a Virus.

The latter has one of the best opening lyrics of any song: “Paradise is exactly like where you are right now, only much, much better.”