Black armbands for Badger, the Blogger

Nothing in my own life is worth blogging about today. I've tasted the horror of losing everything to cancer, and been lucky, so far.

Via Sills Bend, I learn of Badger the Blogger.

Badger is a US graduate student. Her husband was diagnosed with liver cancer.

There has been an online campaign to raise money for their medical bills, because they are under the unspeakably revolting US medical system, so having liver cancer entitles you to bankruptcy. Melbourne's Laura is helping out.

Read Badger's chronicle of the successive worst days of her life. She knows there's more to come.

Today is the worst day of Badger's life. And her son's.

Sometimes it feels trite to console people you don't know, but I think there's something in blogging that means we appreciate everyone who stops and thinks about our pain, and takes the time to leave a message. I know I do, and I've never been where Badger is.

If you are up to it, leave her some love.

Fuck life is a dirty bastard.

UPDATE: So are people who support two-tiered medical apartheid. I've been reading more of Badger's story, about how they'd taken medical insurance but it wouldn't cover a liver transplant, and the government told them to truck off and die, and how she couldn't even get his prescription filled because they were not rich enough to deserve treatment.

The same so-and-sos who support, implement, and defend this vile system go absolutely nuts when it comes to removing the feeding tube from someone who's been a vegetable for years.

So angry.

Happy armaniac returns tomorrow.

Burnt coffee grounds

It's a depressing time to be a lefty. I find myself reading the op-ed pages, the political news, scanning for nuggets of optimism. I drink too much coffee trying to bounce back up, but still I can't break the addiction. One day I know I'll see the headline, screaming up at me as I walk in the newsagent:

BRILLIANT BASTARD LOVECHILD OF HAWKE AND WHITLAM TAKES OVER ALP

HOWARD AND COSTELLO CAUGHT IN ROMP WITH GOAT-HOWARD DENIES BEING GAY

CONSERVATIVE HIGH COURT DECLARES DETENTION OF REFUGEES ILLEGAL

90% OF AUSTRALIANS WANT TOTAL SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE- NEWSPOLL

MURDOCH SELLS AUSTRALIAN MEDIA HOLDINGS TO THE UK GUARDIAN

and so on I fantasize.

Toasted my 33rd on Friday and Saturday nights at Bender, Bar 303, Terra Firma and Wesley Anne, bastions of the High Street boho scene. It felt good sitting with friends, talking, drinking, doing nothing-much slowly.

Good friends are better than a bottomless packet of tim tams.

Jammed with the band last night. They are very heavy. They reminded me how out-of-practice I am on guitar. In that they are tight, competent and high-energy this is good. Being mid-late 20s they reminded me of my age, though their sound had a good mix of influences. If it means anything to any of you I say Tool, Mars Volta, Alice in Chains...

It went pretty well. But joining would involve shelving my desire to vox, yet again.

I'll never have a rolls-royce voice, but I love singing, writing lyrics, even my own bastard form of dancing. Losing yourself completely to the sadness, anger, rage, love or optimism of the song in front of a crowd is amazing, it can't be described. Strengths. Dreams. Strengths. Dreams.

Hand me a long stiff drink, please.

They may not want me, that would make it easy. Easy, in my current state-of-mind, is good.

Friday Shorts

Beloved lost her engagement ring while we were jogging. We heard it bounce into a garden, spent an hour foraging with the help of the people who lived there. She cried, and it broke my heart.

Labor has decided to inch further to the right. My Labor membership card has been moved from its position near the loose change to a spot right next to where the scissors are kept. One word about tightening up on refugees and I may take executive action. Anyone for starting a political party, specifically aimed at giving some political representation to members of the hated latte-left (like myself)?

A friend who is a gun bass player, in a very good heavy rock band, asked me to try out as lead guitarist. Although I've been trying to learn to sing, this offer was very good for my battered ego, and I may just give it a look in. They gig, they've got potential, I wanna rock- there's a fit there somewhere.

I learned today that my ex-boss, who wasn't very pleasant, suffered a tear-inducing humiliation after telling everyone she'd picked up an acting executive role that in fact went to someone else.

Oh, and we found the ring. And befriended the nice old couple who lived in the house. Taking them a bottle of Tullamore Dew next time we have a quiet evening. Many tears and regrets averted...

Howard to meet rednecks, homophobes at summit

Why not? They hate us and the society we've built. And they inspire so much terrorism, lest we forget...

Racial intolerance and homophobia leads to terror:

His anger was channelled into virulent rightwing extremism and he finally vented his hatred on black, Asian and gay communities.

Ranting about leftism and political correctness leads to terror.

People with flags on their trucks who love guns become terrorists.

Blaming muslims in a knee-jerk manner can lead you up the wrong tree.

Ask a conservative near you: are you doing enough to discourage extremism in your community? They need to face up to the horror backward-looking views can inspire.

More birthday kisses...

To B xx and G xx, now I'm thinking you two must be twins.

Shedding dreams like dead skin

This morning I picked up the guitar, and pulled out the lyrics again. For several days I've been working at Just Looking (Stereophonics). It's not getting any easier. I've moved it down from G to D. My voice still shits itself, breaks into falsetto or comes out like Phil Anselmo.

A week ago I got dragged onstage by a mate at a jam night. It didn't feel right, it wasn't a jam night crowd. We played Karma Police, Yesterday and an original. We were messy, but in tune. I leaned into the mike and asked if anyone had a request. A woman who'd been talking the whole time next to the bar stopped and said

"Just don't play any Radiohead; I like them too much."

If there's an uglier mistress than music, I've never laid eyes on her.

When I was at private school, hating everything except music, I started to get serious about guitar. People told me I had no ability. I had nothing else. I worked and worked and one day the notes just started to flow. I was, for a little stretch where I practiced constantly, a very fine guitarist. I'd pick up a guitar at a party and people would stop and stare. In the good way.

I stayed in Darwin. My energy drained as I jammed with musician after musician who didn't like what I liked or share my dreams. I didn't get out of my bogan town.

I was accepted into law school, and classical guitar, and I went into law school.

Music poisoned my law degree, or law poisoned my music. It's so hard to tell sometimes where your dreams are really manifested, as opposed to where you stuff your neuroses- needing fame to prove everyone wrong, needing career to sate the insecurity of your parents.

These things can haunt for lifetimes.

Worse again to lose interest in an instrument and want to sing. I have this analogy I tell people:

singing is like having one guitar all your life. Some people have a Gibson. Some people have a $40 Kmart job with strings an inch off the fretboard and bits that will always buzz no matter how hard you work at it.

There are no doors in this room.

"Tantamount to corruption"

Via Nic White, another honest public servant speaks truth and gets shot down in a hail of lies.

Snow report with saucy diversion

You want the saucy diversion first, don't you? Here it is, the tale of a Dutch couple who, er, coupled on the bonnet of a police car. With the incredulous police sitting inside. It says something about the Dutch that they only got in trouble because they refused to leave!

The snow was beautiful, even if it's in the process of melting. It was a long uphill push to the nice bits, by the end of which our lesson had ended. We caught our breath, then took off along the path to a section called Panorama. Here's a shot, some more, and a trail map for the hardcore.

Compared with alpine the skis were hard to control in the downhill stretches, but that kept things exciting. And the other bits, as Zoe suggested, were just like bushwalking. Only faster and better.

The views were heartstoppingly beautiful, and there was about an hour out there in the backcountry where we didn't see another person.

I had one of those amazing days where you don't feel down or angry at all, from 1st coffee to last waking moments snuggled up watching rage, drifting off with a smile on your face.

It's my birthday today. I'm 33. In addition to the skiing, and a fantastic dinner that night in cute alpine Marysville, I'm gettin a wine appreciation course and copies of Dispatches

"...wrote about the Vietnam War for Esquire magazine, gathered his years of notes from his front-line reporting and turned them into what many people consider the best account of the war..."

and the Tyrannicide Brief

"..a life of John Cook, the bravest of barristers, whose bowels were publicly burned as punishment for sending the King to the scaffold."

Sweet. Nice when people get birthday book-buying bang on the mark!

UPDATE: Spoke a wee tad too soon. 'Dispatches' arrived, and had somehow morphed into a travel book called 'Unquiet Vietnam'. Hmmm, well, I guess I can't complain, they tried. And I'm sure it will be an entertaining read.

How can you get those things mixed up though?

Pleasures of the mind and flesh

Enjoy this post full of hilarious idiocy; Star Bores 3 translated into Chinese then back into English subtitles.

He big in nothing important in good elephant

could be my favourite.

Armaniac's 33rd birthday comes up in the next few days, and beloved has taken my hints and booked me in for an intro to nordic skiing. There will be cold extremities, sore muscles, but hearty country cooking and glasses of red, possibly followed up by namesake, to ease the pain.

I love these weekends with beloved. Long drives, listening to albums from start to finish. Time to connect.

Nordic skiing looks like harder work and less excitement than boarding and alpine (both of which I'm obsessed by, in strange periodic phases, like Nirvana's Nevermind) but makes sense in a country where the hills are flat and the resorts are crowded with Toorak Tarquins.

And it's the best exercise apparently. And I like wandering around in the bush. And I'm gonna build me some ripped quads like the Norwegian dudes who do this for a living.

Wish me luck. Ladies can leave birthday kisses but please form a queue and no funny business.

In Cold Blood

Res Ipsa Loquiter: *

(damned lies and their inconvenient counterparts in truth)

Police officers were monitoring the building closely...

...a police officer failed to videotape him leaving because he had been on a toilet break.

He was dressed suspiciously in a big puffer jacket...

....witness accounts and photographs leaked to ITV [show] the man in a light denim jacket walking calmly.

He jumped over the barriers, ran to the train...

...He walked calmly in. [He even picked up a free newspaper according to the TV news last night.] He passed normally through the barriers, went down on the escalators and boarded the train.

Where he was apprehended, held down, and shot 8 times.

Murder. In cold blood. With a dose of abject incompetence thrown in. Covered up by lies, lies and more damned lies.

Is this what they did to the Irish in Belfast? Is this why blacks in Brixton don't trust their friendly bobby?

I was depressed and so very angry after seeing this last night. I drank a Tuborg, too quickly. I patted the cat, breathing slowly. I went to bed early, sought warmth from beloved.


(* Let the facts speak for themselves.)

Sun shining, no-one making hay

So we've seen points scored by the ACTU campaign against Howard and Costello's class warfare blueprint. Barnaby breaking the coalition lockstep. Low community support for handing the rest of the Telstra family jewels to wealthy investors. A coalition of country and student interests who agree on keeping student control of student amenities.

So how, how, how is Beazley slipping so far under the radar and posting his worst figures ever?

To not elope

A couple of nights ago I heard my beloved saying to someone on the phone that we knew it could get bad, but not this bad.

I never underestimated the depths we could plumb preparing a wedding, never underestimated the capacity of close relatives to drive you up and right over the wall, into a bed of thorns on the other side of sanity.

Hence eloping was very attractive. Still is, though it's probably too late. I had 2 potential plans for a romantic elopement, which I'll share with anyone interested.

One involved a beautiful hotel on Jimbaran Bay in Bali. You get these private villas, Balinese architecture, with their own little plunge pools, on the edge of the cliff looking out across the ocean. We would go into the garden, I would turn and ask her, she would laugh and say yes (I always knew she'd laugh when I proposed, and she did) then I would lead her into the area where the plunge pool is, and it would be covered in flower petals, and there would be a celebrant there dressed in a simple white robe, and there would be a couple of people playing Gamelan instruments, and several kids in traditional outfits dancing along the side of the pool, and the music would stop, and we'd have a brief exchange of vows, then the music would start again and they'd all leave slowly, and when they were gone, we would undress and slide into the pool and be merry and conjugal. There would be Billecart-Salmon beside the pool for refreshment.

The other was simpler. In it we would go for a long weekend to Uluru- beloved has never been. We would go to Kata Juta (Olgas) and walk to the top of the valley of the winds, one of the most spiritual places I've ever been, and there i'd propose, and she'd laugh and say yes, and we'd have a simple ceremony back at the resort followed by champagne and lobsters under the stars.

Are you telling me formality, speeches, relatives ad nauseum is more romantic?

Something significant happened while you were changing the channel

These are dark days for the latte left. Being governed from the Victorian era is bad enough, but there has also been a several-year long overflowing of traditional aussie anti-intellectualism. Public enemy number one- well, perhaps on a par with radical islamic preachers- has been inner city uni educated know-it-all lefties.

Big Bogan Brother, meanwhile, has played a peripheral role confirming the low place intellect holds in the hearts of the masses, with stupid, simple or at best smiley and harmless being the qualities needed to get to the finals. Two years ago a small minded bogan cleaned up. Last year Merlin was hurled out by voters after being exposed as a non-citizen who has an opinion. The crowd also hated his gutsy if over-the-top protest for refugees, which just confirmed that he needed to go home.

This year something different has gone on. A quirky intellectual with a scrawny body has made it to the finals. Along the way he fell in love with one of the bogan girls, she spurned him, then went on a dumboid rant about being disgusted by men who kiss men. She was kicked out.

Even if Lefty Tim loses now, I've picked up a little ember that will warm me until the thaw. Waiting for the thaw is all lefties have at the moment. It's been very cold, very dark.

Could this leftward adjustment on Big Brother be the first sign of change from the heartlands?

Maritime Union of Australia think so:

It has been really heartening to see the Australian public fall in love with Tim, and all the values he stands for.

Aye comrade Tim, nice work.

Nodding while the Important people speak

It isn't surprising Henry Kissinger actually says nothing of any remote value in his opinion piece in the Australian. He's a realist, so intellectually he should be against the Iraq fiasco, but he's also instinctively in bed with the hawks.

What is surprising is the ease with which this alleged war criminal saunters from one high-paying gig as a speaker to another, being treated with deference. I'm sure Bin Laden would have lots of interesting stuff to say, but there must be a point where someone is too unpleasant to be given such respected gigs. No?

On TV, must be cool, must play...

Everything is driven by TV.

I've enjoyed poker since year 9. I must have watched a 007 movie, got all excited, and bought a gambling rule book. For a little while I convinced my nerd herd to switch from Dungeons and Monsters-with-faux-Welsh-names to poker. For cash. At school. Sometimes even in class under the desks.

Big sums changed hands. Once someone got ahead by 50c and there was almost a scrap.

But since then none of my friends have shown any interest. Pantera, Porn, Piss, Poker- eusgem generis* I would have thought! But no...

Until it comes to TV. Even poker comes to TV, and of course in bastardised form. World Championship Poker- absurd, though in fairness it can't be any more boring than Golf or Cricket.

So now 2 of my mates are hooked, and I'm about to spend the weekend in Rutherglen with them and our partners, drinking wine in the day and trying out my best poker face at night. Beloved is a sharp corporate lawyer so I'm hoping we can team up and extract a few cases of wine from the others.

I'm in her good books again. Last night we sat on the couch, sipping Green Tea, picking through the real estate pages of Melbourne Times, pointing out places we'll buy when the market crashes, and the world was in tune.

(* Spelling's probably off- maybe the usage as well!)