In Defence of America

quiet american

Lets face it: sometimes they just get it right. Moon landings. Mars Rovers (well, sometimes). Pretty airplanes.

This little page has some rather soothing MP3s that won't get you arrested for infringing some huge global corporation's 'intellectual property'*.

In this time of geophysical/poltical/social upheaval, a bit of peace can be rather nice.



* (oh, they pay musicians do they? For every one corporate beauraucrat/manager/exective (nested aside: executives EXECUTE. SS and Gestapo officers were also called 'executives'. I leave you to figure the rest out for yourself: end nested aside) I can show you at least six starving musicians/artists/actors/architects/etc.)

Attack of Self-Consciousness

So while I bleat about the failings of the neo-capitalist world, as usual I ignore the fact that I am pretty darn lucky to be living in an afluent country with some decent freedoms, and little-to-no plate tectonics.

Last week a very small and remote part of Australia got whacked by a Richter 8.1 quake. The penguins on Macquarie Island might have felt it, but no-one else did. Some dead sperm whales washed up in Tassie again; might be coincidence, might be those fucking Yanks and their God-given-condescending right to pound the crap out of the Southern Ocean with 210dB sonar blasts. Anyway, hopefully some seismologist somewhere is busily investigating the little 8.1 on our side of the Asian/Indian Plate interface and it's relationship to the killer that struck SE Asia yesterday.

Hopefully the said seismologist will be able to sucessfully lobby some of the local governments, and perhaps some of the more affluent ones to fund an Indian Ocean Seismic alert system.

In the meantime, do what you can:

Oxfam.

Care Australia.

Red Cross.

Unicef.

Eatin' Season

Merry 'Now it is midwinter, if you still have enough food to tide you over till Spring, you can go a bit wild and eat more than the usual handful of nuts, dried berries and preserved meat. If not, say hello to your ancestors when you starve to death. We will look for your stars in Spring when the blizzards clear.'

For those of us living south of the Equator, all this makes no sense. It's rather hot and humid, and there are a lot of fresh prawns to get through. I hope you survive, without too much expsoure to Dark Ages Christian appropriation of decent pagan holidays.

I had written a nice little rant about that annoying Book-that-is-true-because-it-says-it-was-true, and some of it's authors perhaps having a bit too much of some sort of spirit in them, because they seem to have got their seasons mixed up by about 6 MONTHS. Simple mistake, anyone could make it, especially with all those voices in their head telling them what to write.

Anyway, I ditched the rant as it could be taken as too inflamatory, and the MPAA, the CIA, the FBI, ASIO and the Retail Traders Association would probably be wanting to have a word with me for seditious behaviour.

Merry whatever.

Ok, now you can comment....

For those teeming masses, well, dozens, no, a few, ok, the truth: ONE person who was unable to comment, you will be able to now.

You will be as anonymous as I was until you become a RealPerson(tm) like me and blog yourself. Or just stay anonymous, and sign with whatever name seems appropriate on the day.

More Sonar replies

I take it Karen from Vancouver has lost her hotmail address to this person. They keep talking to me, but I get the feeling we are talking through Google, so this is what is coming out:

SOÑAR ES VOLVER A VIVIR says:
OF WHERE YOU ARE? THAT BEAMS?
Adrian says:
Sydney, Australia.
Adrian says:
It is about 3pm here, hot, sunny.
SOÑAR ES VOLVER A VIVIR says:
in which you work and whichever years you have
SOÑAR ES VOLVER A VIVIR says:
byuuuuuuuuu


I still have a theory that this is actually a cat.

I love instant messaging

Lets get this straight: It is lunchtime. I don't reply to IM during work time, unless it is about work. As a rule.

I can therefore only assume that this is somebody's cat:

SOÑAR ES VOLVER A VIVIR says:
HOLA COMO TE LLAMAS
Adrian says:
Hola! Peru? Andes? Is this Karen from Vancouver?
SOÑAR ES VOLVER A VIVIR says:
WATH,S

My guess at the first line is "Hello from the Llamas" (obviously 'there' is not The End, because at 'The End' no llamas are permitted.) Syn, ask Bear what the hell that means.

The second line - conclusive proof that a cat was typing.

Where to start?

Well, here I am in the land of emergent-media-zeitgeist.

Oddly enough, it seems just like the real civilised Western World - lacking in content, not going anywhere excpet around in circles, and yet another way of wasting resources.

Still, it must be important though.

Like this is important.

Techno-utopian Fascism 1, Me 0

Darn.

I have been blogged.

Mainly because I prefer to be 'anonymous' when I want, not when a website wants.

To exist, you must blog. Therefore, this carnival of technology. Woopee. I am now part of the emergent-media, techno-zeitgeist, pan-utopian something or other.

Welcome to hell.