The Boomtown Rap

You know, don’t you, you mostly taciturn hordes of Boomtown Rap faithfuls, that my default position is to support the little guy in any stoush with management? Oh believe it. My experience of managers is almost entirely negative. They seem to me a loathsome breed in general: small on EQ, big on arrogance and self-regard, prone to blame-shifting, defensiveness and rationalisation while projecting these same flaws on to subordinate adversaries (and, by contrast, licking the arses of their superiors regardless of the shit that comes out of them)… I could go on, but you get the idea. Read the rest…

Here they are again. Random, disorganised, informed by personal prejudice…just how you like it. Yes you do. YES, you DO!

Right, now that that’s established, are you all sitting comftybold two square on your botties? Then I’ll begin…

2009 Boomtown Rap Free-to-air TV Awards: The BR Bogeys

Pet Semetary Award: Hey Hey It’s Saturday. Whose idea was it to dig this rotting cadaver up, give it mouth-to-mouth and send it lurching back to TV land? I never could understand the popularity of Hey Hey even back in its halcyon days, but what do I know – exhuming it was a ratings winner. Daryl Somers proved there is plenty to eat in the afterlife. Other than that, what to say except thank God for the blackface ‘Red Faces’ skit – anything that riles Harry Connick Jnr gets my tick of approval.

Family Show of the Year: John Safran’s Race Relations. This is confessional comedy taken to its limits (until the next Safran outing). Read the rest…

Background
(Limited concentration span? Skip the background and go straight to the review under picture – see below)

Any cinematic recreation of 1969’s Woodstock music festival is destined to divide its audience – especially the baby boomers who might be expected to make up the main target demographic.

For those boomers who hold the event dear – and often possessively close – as the spectacular generation-defining culmination of all that was good and groovy about the 60s (and their youth), anything less than a reverent portrayal will be pelted with charges of blaspheme. Read the rest…

As expected, ABC’s Four Corners piece on the gang bang culture of NRL lit the mainstream blogs up with comments from a ranting public. Predictably, they’ve ranged from boofhead defences of Matthew Johns and his mates to indignant condemnations of all males as rapists and calls for mass-castration. (Why do I keep reading this shit? Out of some perverse anthropological investigative urge, or an enduring trash aesthetic, or…nah, it’s something baser, but let’s not waste time on damaging self-reflection here.)

The unfortunate New Zealand “bun’s” description of what went on that night set me pondering. She painted a picture of debauchery that could have inspired Fellini to surpass the decadent reaches of Satyricon: NRL buddies queued up for their turn at her, while others sat around the room naked, watching on and masturbating. A retired ex-coach explained this sordid scene away as a form of “team bonding”.

Amongst all the online banter I have not seen a single post expressing my reaction, though I can’t imagine I am alone in formulating the following question. Slap me down with a sweat-soaked jockstrap if I’m astray here, but for all the blokey posturing, isn’t the notion of a group of buff young male athletes sitting around bicep to bicep, disrobed and wanking over their peers stirring each others porridge, a trifle…erm…gay?

Melbourne’s Pasquale “Nic” Ciampa may have ruled himself out as a contender for MasterChef Australia (see his post-wimpout interview here), but he sure as hell qualifies for a less prestigious award – MasterSook Australia.

This pathetic twat quit the show in a blubbering mess, insisting that he and wifey were “one and the same unit” – or some such shit – and just couldn’t bear to be parted any longer. 2 weeks with the other contestants in a lux Sydney apartment overlooking the harbour was too long for mummy’s boy Nic, and too long for wifey, it seems. Sobbed Nic as he announced his departure from the series: “It just shows how much we love each other.”

Bullshit, mate – it shows nothing of the sort. It shows that you and your wife have major dependency issues. This ain’t love that’s calling you home – it’s need. Read the rest…

Retreating from the heat of the house a couple of evenings ago, we headed for the beach. The sand was firm and even, good for strolling along cooling our feet in the wash at the ocean edge.

Half an hour from sunset, we stopped to watch the fishermen lined up past Floreat drain. No action, until the tailor came on like a switch at 7.40. It wasn’t like the old days, when rods would be bucking all along the shore and gleaming fish big enough to overlap the edges of a frypan winched in every cast. But it was good for these depleted days. Read the rest…

Many years ago, I heard it said that Aboriginal people tread lightly when they walk because they perceive the earth as their mother, and to stomp around on her would be disrespectful, insensitive. That awareness of the earth as mother has been with me ever since. I’m not claiming that I pick my way along like a water bird stalking the shallows, but I do recoil from the attitude that the planet and the creatures on it are ours to take for granted, to exploit and tread all over as we like. And like many others, I have grown ever more conscious of our desecration of the natural environment, and my personal responsibility to “do the right thing”.

I do my best, within reason, to minimise my carbon footprint. No aircon, no bar fridge or freezer, small shared 4-cylinder car, lawn replaced with waterwise natives and organic vege beds laid with sub-mulch drip irrigation, all vegetable waste composted or dispatched to the worm farm.

OK, “within reason” for me might seem extreme to some. It so happens that I find the sustainable living concept attractive, regardless of any climate change factor. I don’t like waste and excess. I do like picking herbs and veges from the back garden and cooking – and eating! – my own organic produce.

I do not seek to present myself as some sort of noble environmentalist making sacrifices for future generations. I enjoy living the way I do. It is no sacrifice. And my topic here is not myself or my lifestyle choices, but hard economics – specifically, in the context of installing solar photovoltaic (PV) panels. Yes, even for people like me, practising sustainable living as far as is practicable in an urban environment, choices come down to the bottom line at some point.

Last year, I decided to investigate the viability of installing solar PV panels on the roof. Since we qualified (sadly, very easily) for the Federal Government’s $8,000 rebate for households with incomes under $100K per annum, I assumed the PV panels would pay for themselves within a few years. It seemed a win-win, environmentally and personally – if we could afford the initial capital outlay, we could look forward to smaller energy bills not far down the track, perhaps even no bills at all! Perhaps Synergy would be paying us (such are the claims that are bandied about by some who have taken the plunge and installed solar panels).

Oh yeah? Do the homework and you’re in for a jolting reality check. Read the rest…

Wouldnya know it? Hot on the heels of my recent management kickin’ (see previous post), along comes BHP with an announcement that they are buying back the homes of the Ravensthorpe nickel mine workers they laid off a couple of weeks back. The value of the homes had plummeted after BHP’s decision to abandon mining in the region, which they had previously flagged was guaranteed to prosper for at least 25 years.

Not only that – BHP are intending to provide financial support to businesses in Hopetoun and Ravensthorpe likely to suffer from the inevitable exodus of mine workers and their families. This doesn’t make them heroes. Shit, they are merely acknowledging their moral responsibility to the folk they misled with their 25 year mine guarantee assurances. But it’s something, at least, that they’ve taken some honourable action without the stimulus of legal action to help them on their way.

THEN, we have good ol’ Richard Branson’s response to the now-famous letter of complaint from a passenger about in-flight food during a Virgin flight from Mumbai to Heathrow. Evidently, Branson phoned his disgruntled client personally, apologised with a double topping of charm, and offered the bloke employment as a food and wine selector for future Virgin flights!

Mind you, looking at the passenger’s pic of the offending vittles, Branson’s shoe-shuffling charm offensive was very much required!

ERK!

…and ERK again!!

Anyway, that’s how it’s done, all you management bozos out there. There is always a win-win solution. And working to find it is always worth the effort.

Related posts:

Until very recently, there has been a sense of unreality about this global financial crisis. The media has been flinging doom and gloom at us like a baby in a high chair with a big plate of bad news, but I can’t say I’ve noticed much belt-tightening out in the real world. Restaurants are still packed, shoppers were as fevered as ever in their attacks on the post-Christmas bargains at the department stores, and the coffee-sippers and lunchers at the local cafe strips are undiminished.

A majority of folk have suffered excruciating drawdowns on their super funds, sure, and those with direct exposure to the sharemarket have been hammered, but in many cases the losses are on paper only. Markets crash and markets boom, and in between – which is most of the time – they fluctuate to and fro rather tediously. That hasn’t changed. The cycles repeat, and in time the paper losses of today will be made up with the resumption of the upward bias that is historically a given. The same applies to the real estate market. In the meantime, though, this current crisis will leave its mark just as the boom has. Read the rest…

Thieves target Christmas shoppers!

Thus trumpeted news.com in today’s morning lead story on the Perthnow site (the online presence of Perth’s trashy Sunday Times newspaper). Here’s the pic that accompanied the story:

Sooo, the thief is
a) black and
b) wearing an Italia baseball cap.

Well, whaddayaexpect? Wouldn’t be One Of Us perpetrating this low act during the season of goodwill…but hang on.

Read the text that links to the pic of the lightfingered dark foreign kid ripping off One Of Us, and you find it’s nothing about Christmas-specific thievery. The report cites “police records” of “more than 3000 incidents reported in WA from July 1 last year to June 30 this year.” Oh. So this news is 6 months old, then. BUT, a police spokesman is reported as warning Us “to be extra vigilant during post-Christmas sales.” Uh huh. Especially of black foreign kids, yes?

Well, no. Acting Inspector of Police Neville Beard is quoted as attributing “a significant number of these thefts” to “organised individuals or groups”. Of course, there is the possibility that he’s referring to black foreign kids hunting in well-organised packs…

More likely, though, that Perthnow had zilch in sensational reports to jag early morning browsers with and resorted to fabricating a bullshit story out of old “news”. But how to really grab ‘em…that is the question.

And the answer is to engage the WASP majority by depicting One Of Us – a burdened WASP Dad-type doing his last-minute Xmas shopping – as the hapless victim of The Other. Can’t make the little shit blatantly aboriginal (bah humbug to fucking PC restraints), but dark’ll do. And a fez woulda been better than that cap, but “Italia” does the job – signifies foreign, the alien within. Good enough. And we get to retain that sense of journalistic responsibility. Bit crass, resorting to Muslim-kickin’ comin’ inta Christmas. Plenty of opportunity fer more of that in the New Year!

Bewdy. Ed’s gone for it. Time for a coffee.