Home brew
'E's back. Yup, I am back online at home after two weeks in the wilderness (an eternity for a net nerd)

I now have a system shorn of all the clutter that I had on my hard drive so, while it is unfortunate that I have lost some handy stuff, I'm going to use this opportunity to keep everything functional and 'within reach'

II

A word or two about my hyperlinks: I don't use them as a form of editorialising, reinforcing some point I want to make. I often rely on Google's 'I'm feeling lucky' to pick the link for a word or phrase and that can give my usage an ironic twist or run counterpoint to something I feel personally.

When a hyperlink depicts an unflattering image of smokers as 'trailer trash' with bad skin that is in no wise MY image of smokers. In fact I don't see smokers as one amorphous group. And the percentage of people in my acquaintance who are smokers makes any tilt at hostility untenable. I DO use controversial hyperlinks in a similar way to the imagery I employ in my poetry - it works against the reader's assumptions. It also makes misconception all but inevitable but I figure that I would rather shine the spotlight on stinkin' thinkin' - and risk being associated with it - than to employ the censorious tactics of my idealogical opposites.
The idea isn't to silence the enemy but to make their stance appear ridiculous.

And sometimes I just can't resist using a hyperlink I stumbled on while looking for something else.

III

There are times when I think I should just run a blog that caters to a particular group and is inoffensive.

Plain label
Hey all this enforced downtime is paying dividends. I've been doing quite a bit of work on my website.

I've got a song about the ubiquitious Australian cover bands on there that I'll unveil shortly.

I'm not fond of them as a rule (as the song displays) but they do get some brownie points if they call themselves Bjorn Again (ABBA cover band) or Oils Ain't Oils (Midnight Oil - the reference is to the old Castrol GTX ad)

So,to whet your appetite, some truth in advertising with deliberately bad cover band names:

Dung Beatles
The Tyrds
The Grateful Dud
Beige Floyd
Pale Mauve (Deep Purple)
Neil Zircon
BBAA
The Unforgiven (Metallica)
Megadearth or Meagredeath
the Six Pastels
The Darned
Bleak Rubble Motorcycle Club
Sandgarden
Public Enema

Sly grog
The head of Yahoo is named Tim Koogle? Then I suppose the head of Google is named Tom Yuhoo? Just wondering.

It's quiet in here. Too quiet.

Despite having more spysmashers and firewall and what-have-you than anyone could reasonably keep track of, something has gotten into my home computer. Symbolically it crashed on New Year's Day. A friend at work has me reassured that it is not kaput as it still brings up the Windows 98 screen before shutting down so I'll haul out the pc repairman to have a look. Serves me right for surfing into those outlaw sites (I can just see a stern Mother Superior wagging her finger at me now - and I'm not even Catholic!)

II

You know free-to-air television has reached a nadir when the silly season offerings are better than regular programming. This wouldn't even be a topic of conversation but my regular evenings of logging on are curtailed and I've run out of smoko, so bellybutton lint holds no fascination at present.

Billy tea
I'm not nationalistic or jingoistic but I am patriotic to a degree. I'm happy that we have sports stars and actors doing so well.

I think our expatriates are a pretty admirable bunch. Barry Humphries can be obnoxious in his different guises but that is the point of satire. And the joke really is on us.
If Robert Hughes is obnoxious for real then we can forgive that by the fact that he is an outstanding critic and author.
Paul Hogan has been a bit of a one-note act - reinforcing the ocker stereotype at that - but is set to redeem himself in a role where he pretends to be gay
Clive James is clever and a poet to boot.

The list goes on. One Aussie who does worry me, though, is Steve Irwin. Having a go at the Greens for attacking Bush in Parliament is one thing, dangling your baby near a feeding croc is quite another.

Aftertaste
Here are the answers to the quiz:

1. This is even more impressive than I thought: Katharine Hepburn was nominated for a staggering twelve films and won four times!!
The winning performances were for Morning Glory in 1933, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? in 1967, The Lion in Winter in 1968 (two years in a row!), and On Golden Pond in 1981, which, as I recall, also won Henry Fonda the Best Male Actor.

2. Bad Taste, Meet The Feebles, Brain Dead, Heavenly Creatures, Forgotten Silver, The Frighteners The first three are ALL bad taste and Forgotten Silver is especially brilliant but for reasons I can't tell you - you need to see the film.

3. Despite the sardonic comments from one reviewer about how Kevin Smith would have Daredevil foregoing the weightraining and swinging from the rooftops for eating donuts at the mall, Smith proved he could write about more than slackers and mallrats when he penned a very successful run on the Daredevil comic series (he also had an equally successful run on Green Arrow).

4. Canada

5. Surprisingly, for a couple of wordy and linguistically stellar blokes, it is the rather prosaic I Want You.

6. selling undies (lingerie for my overseas readers)

7. Walker and Winston

8. ah, you supply this one. War on Mad Dictator? We'll Make a Distraction? What a Mighty Decoy?

9. Mick and Keef are 60

10. I have no idea either. Bollywood doesn't get much of a look-in on Entertainment Tonight

Out with the old
Don't mind me, I always get insanely optimistic at the start of a New Year. It's not a bad impulse and the only trick is to capitalise on it while it lasts.

2003 wasn't all bad: I was legitimately working at a university, I started a blog and kept it happening, I had the best Valentine anyone has ever given me: a whole month of love verse snippets, I made it across for my sister's wedding and friend's fortieth (one day apart)
But I have a lot of work to do to make this year more fulfilling: places to be published, social connections to be rekindled, doubt and hesitation to be conquered

I'll keep working on the webpages and hope that the hyperlinks I hap upon here are of interest to the people who do drop in here.

I think Ella's right about comedy so I'll brighten the blog with more humorous flights of fancy.

I'm probably about done with religion but I will have links to the unnewsworthy in other lands and infuriate the blow-ins with links in other languages. Maybe I'll even find something written in Cornish
It's this sort of stuff that strikes me as characteristic of the world wide web.

As for my own indulgences, there will be comics stuff to tie you up. And any excuse for musical musing
Plus the revolving link that everyone's forgotten about will continue with this kind of thing

Hope to see you here and, for those who have their own online journals, I'll be sure to be popping my head up with commentary there as well.

Happy New Year 2004

The day after
Aaaargh! I just lost the inaugural Day After Boxing Day DIB Quiz. My computer has been going down on me quite a bit lately

Let's try again:

1. For which films did Katharine Hepburn win the Best Actress award?
   
2. Name a film directed by Peter Jackson before he embarked on Lord of the Rings
   
3. Why is Ben Affleck's insistence that he will only reprise the role of Daredevil if his buddy (Clerks creator)Kevin Smith scripts the sequel actually not unreasonable?
   
4. Where is quintessential small town American Smallville filmed?
   
5. What song title is shared by Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello?
   
6. Elle McPherson had a guest role in Friends. What is her latest venture?
   
7. What do the W in George W Bush and John W Howard stand for respectively?
   
8. What definition of WMD could retrospectively justify the war on Iraq? Extra point for creative answers.
   
9. How old are the mainmen in the 'greatest rock band in the world'?
   
10. Choose the Best Actor 2003
    

Swig
Check out all the gigs I've been to. Yes, folks, I've seen everyone from Joan Baez - described as the 'Madonna of her generation' (though I don't think she ever gave Melanie a "tonguey") - to the Butthole Surfers. And that's just the letter B.

Things got off to an inauspicious beginning with Buddy Williams who toured the very small country towns. I saw him with my parents at Beacon Town Hall. Seeing Jimmy Little recently was like coming full circle to the old style country road show where the singer mingles with his fans during the intermission.

I was not enamoured of country music; it was what my folks listened to. And it was more convenience that led me to see Slim Dusty in Northam. After that there was the first show in the 'Big Smoke';a solo by Cliff Richard (so solo that he banged on his acoustic guitar for percussion) We drove down in the Youth Group bus for that one (another highlight in the group's activities was seeing Colonel Sanders - a surreal experience when you consider his act was dressing as a southern colonel and frying chicken. He didn't even do any cooking on stage like Jamie Oliver)

The first show I went to of my own volition - rather than just tagging along - was a fitting choice , Elvis Costello at the Perth Entertainment Centre; once the largest centre of its kind in the southern hemisphere. He was my favourite artist for many years and still figures very highly despite all the MOR stylings. He's my role model as a lyricist; apart from being supremely clever in wit and wordplay, his range covers the political and the personal equally well. Of performers who began their career in the seventies, he is one of the songwriters eminently worthy of having his songs covered. They have a lasting quality separate from any raspy rendering Costello might give them.
I've seen him three times so far.

Two that got away were John Cale; I went to the autoteller and found I didn't have enough for a ticket, and Big Black; saw them advertised in Phantom Records but didn't know who they were. When I found out how powerful they were I was spitting chips.
Of course there have been many other gigs I would have loved to have gone to. But I figure, looking at this lot, that I've done okay.

A skin has formed
A week since I last posted. Well, he pouts, you've stopped commenting. I went on a wander of anonymous blogs and posted comments and you should have seen the reception - folk were just delighted that someone was reading their 'work' and took time out to offer some thoughts.

Of course with blogs you don't know what you're going to get: a blogger obsessed with the verities of facial hair, an opinionated git or offensive swine; perhaps the blogger goes on for too long or his or her entries are too sporadic to provide continuity (isn't it funny that the Macoholics in that last link call themselves sporadic, when they post regularly, while overly ambitious bloggers call themselves 'daily' and have to keep explaining why it's been nearly a fortnight - not that that link was a good example. I wasn't being pedantic, really)

Well no good whining, I'll take this blog into the festive season with a quiz; both potentially fun and requiring feedback and input.

Baptismal font
"Ho hum, another basher of Witnesses" Not at all. In fact I wonder that people categorise Kingdom Hall and Watchtower as manifestations of a cult. I would say quite firmly that the Jehovah's Witness movement is a sect but not a cult.

To my mind a cult departs steeply from the original tenets of the faith it purports to be a part of.
The second holy book and latter day prophets of 'the Mormons' is an example of this. Or the less than savoury example of Moses David, who - despite spending no more thought than necessary on a nom de plume - managed to make 'Christianity' about him and his selfseeking agenda to a selection of the seriously deluded.

Differences in degree but a far cry again from an organisation that attempts a serious (some would say too serious) examination and application of the Lord's Word as layed down in the scripture. All other considerations aside, this would seem to be the primary aim of being Christian: not to do good works, to love thy neighbour, to forego the 'sins of the flesh', but to understand and follow the dictates of the Divine Creator, whatever that might mean. Only a cult could spring from visions, dreams or other forms of message supposedly delivered from on high to some specially favoured individual(s)because, for Christian purposes, the True message is in the Holy Bible and the role of priests no more than to spread the word and do good deeds.

I don't see that anything the Witnesses attempt departs from this goal. That they may be mistaken on certain points does not divert from the earnestness and methodical nature of their enquiry. So I think it is a little lazy and insulting to write them off by latching onto their most 'bizarre' practices. "Oh they're weirdos, they don't take blood transfusions, they don't vote..." It is not - or should not be - the intention of religious enquiry to pick on some vulnerable feature and dismiss the belief system on those grounds, Piers Akerman style. A better measure by far would be to assess just to what extent they are consistent within their ideology and that of the broader context they locate themselves in.

II

If you want to turn your hose on religious callers then that is a matter of personal choice.

I thought it might have been fun to have a spirited satire on the convention where the assembled sixty thousand suddenly have giant sprinklers turned on them, or the guard dogs at Olympic Park stadium are unleashed half way through proceedings.