Too much coffee man
Before I go on to my scheduled entry I just want to impart some hot news

They're sticking to the Godfather of Punk line but I tell ya he could pass for the Messiah of Punk with that pose!

[Pre zine]

My love for comics developed over time and with new discoveries but I also read everything else that came in the mail: Australian Women's Weekly, Elders Weekly, Farmer's Weekly, and Newsweek.

And in Grandad's room in the old house there were boxes of old Reader's Digests. I consumed a few decades worth of this consistently Right Wing commentary (they adored Nixon)leavened by humour in uniform and in a shirt and tie, and still turned out critical of accepted practices. The jokes on reactionary propoganda I guess.

There's been a spill
Appropros of nothing

Rum and coke
Now just because I've gone to pains to point out how deficient the USA is - and I think that's only responsible when they are adventuring abroad and clamping down at home in ways unacceptable and hazardous - doesn't mean that I dislike all things American. Far from it. I could easily stay up all night extolling the virtues of this film, that novel, the innovations, inventions, ideas... But having a penchant for Batman comics or Clint Eastwood movies doesn't mean that one should accept what a country is doing at an official level.

Perhaps they need to develop more of a sense of history but judging nations like this is always shorthand. I certainly wouldn't want to reflect the image my government puts across overseas.

To the alternate Emperor
The man who coined the term Information Superhighway or the guy swerving all over the fucking thing. Hmm, now let me see..

I did think Al Gore ran a lacklustre campaign - mind you I base this somewhat illogically on the one campaign speech I saw in which he managed to be as charmless as possible and basically shout at people. Anyhow he has well and truly made up for it with this incisive and worldbeating speech.

Espresso
It makes sense that a network service provider could be anywhere in the world (wide web).

Vending machine
As you may have noticed I tend to break up the frivolity with fierceness and the ferocity with flippancy so you can please yourself where you go here.

Or you could bookmark the 15th of June and just see where the 'favourite' link goes each week. I enjoy that. I don't want to give anything out about the methodology but I will say that it has wider application - and more potential enjoyment - than some of my other entries because the links are to objects not ideas.

I do always try to give good link.

As freedom fries
Here you've got to put the two together as a phrase: 'Drink it black as freedom fries'

You know it's been a long time since mainland Europe copped a serve from their friend Uncle Sam yet the outcome of the Iraqi incursion was that Germany, and more particularly France, were on the receiving end of some cutting remarks.

It seems boorish to dismiss France's concerns. True, they don't have a stirling history internationally if the nuclear atoll tests and the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior are anything to go by. But what they do have is intrinsic links with the United States. The Statue of Liberty was a gift from France and an especially thoughtful one. It should serve as a boost for American citizens in knowing where they stand but also serve as a reminder of the vigilance required to see that it is not a hollow symbol for something lost.

They share Thomas Paine, the great overlooked figure of two Revolutions - the American and the French. An American founding father, Paine nearly lost his life in France. Paine had a great mind and a strong sense of what could best ensure democracy and freedom of thought. He was a deist who believed the only proof of God could be in His creation; in nature. His texts are well worth the read, being more soundly reasoned and more clearly expressed than more famous thinkers.

France and America both have lively intellectuals who can contribute much to the debate from their specialist fields. I don't mind politicians doing more than their fair share of gloating when things go right but I do object to them stifling discussion on important issues.
I think the fact that the Coalition of the Willing were prepared to defy the judgement of some of their closest allies on the basis of wonky intelligence speaks volumes as to who out of France and the US emerges best from this lamentable episode.

Taste
So if the good ol' US of A is full of iggerant buffoons who only naturally want a leader who thinks like they do (I'm being devil's advocate here as there are clearly a huge percentage of Americans who are appalled with the system but are outnumbered or outmanouevred), then where is a good spot to migrate?

Poland, anyone?!

Burn your fingers
I have seen this list of discrepancies in the action and reaction of the Bush administration on September 11 but thought I would post the essence of it again as a reminder. I don't doubt that there's a cottage industry in alternative takes of the Bush goat story. It's just disturbing that it has not been roundly refuted, or in the case of the conservative media, rated so much as a mention.

Nor is Bush's behavour now any better. It's customary among detractors to nominate the incumbent as 'worst of his kind' but Dubya does have the dishonour of being "elected" through somewhat dubious means and it would be instructive to grasp how other Presidents would have handled the simultaneous hijacking of passenger jets to fly into key US sites and monuments.

Watching the latest enactment of the events surrounding Hitler's rise to power was particularly chilling as the Nazis stage an attack on the Parliament House and the next speech Der Fuehrer delivers is one severely curtailing citizens rights and freedom of speech. Essentially, to take away our rights, the government needs something "bigger than all of us". God or country for example.
I propose that every American at regular intervals insists on telling a complete stranger that they won't let Rumsfeld take away 'freedom x. If everyone does this then it will become harder to take away freedoms guaranteed under their Consitution and it will serve to remind one another that this is the potential goal of this administration - under the guise of protection from terrorism or weeding out of "dangerous elements" (i.e. anyone who doesn't think or act like they do).

You don't need to be a liberal, a Democrat, a Green, a freethinker, socialist or [insert label here] to feel the need to safeguard your own individuality and freedom.

There is something to be said for a 'leader of the free world' whose mocking of death row prisoners recalls Stalin, whose intolerance for dissent (among allies) recalls Mao, whose simple bloodymindedness recalls tinpot despots, whose election campaign has all the sophisticated transparency and fairness of third world 'democracies' everywhere. He's up to shit and his people aren't savvy in sufficient numbers to realise the fact.

And while I'm sticking the boot into this awful man - who even has the old Pope wishing he was a younger man so he could take him on!!! - here's a final thought:

There's something to be said for our ancestors: any warmongering leader would naturally have the courage to lead the battle (as General Eisenhower did), not hide in a bunker and only surface for photo ops like the showboat

Grounds
I dipped into most of the newspapers that came out: the Daily News when Perth still had two daily papers; Western Mail, bastion of halfbaked journalism; Sunday Times, which I only bought for the classifieds; the West Australian

Before I left WA I was buying the two Saturday papers - the West and the Weekend Australian and I kept up this pace by replacing the West with the Sydney Morning Herald after moving across.
It meant that, even if you didn't buy the daily paper, you'd end up reading sections of newspaper on the bus for most of the week.

In this little survey of local papers, I suppose I should mention Brisbane's Courier Mail (I lived in New Farm for a year) and the late National Times