We're all stuck in a hierarchy where the strongest rules, right? Might is right, ignorance is strength and if you disagree I'll punch your lights out. For millennia people have lives in a subservient way bowing down to some superior or other. People need to be ruled, they cannot imagine a life without it, force is good. Violence protects, people respect violence - that's why we should all carry guns, the ultimate leveller. Now every noodle armed choirboy can be as violent as ...
In the post 'Vietnam and Iraq - a comparison, Daginol stated the following: 'Uh, do you even know why we're in Iraq ? Why we invaded? To remove Saddam Hussein. He's gone. Victory has long been achieved. The mission as accomplished a year ago . The US can't "lose " because we have Saddam in costody' I would like to quote the US president back to Daginol: When asked about his apparently premature 'Mission accomplished' speech of May 1st 2003, Bush replied...
'General Fuckup with the latest sitrep from Eye-rack Mr President Sir!' ‘Hey, Fuckup! Don’t stand on ceremony call me Chimp, everybody else does! Can’t think why. Eeeek! ‘Er, begging your pardon sir?’ ‘What’s that General? ‘Um, I thought you just thought you went, sorta, kinda, well Eeeeek! Sir begging your pardon sir!’ ‘What me? No sir! Have you got any bananas by the way General? ‘No, sir Mr.President, I have no bananas.’ ‘Right then, that’s okay, what ha...
Bluetooth is a way of getting computer devices to talk with each other over small distances using a short range radio frequency. Sounds complicated, but it really is simple to use. Basically, you simply turn on the blutooth 'radio' on say your hand held device, be it a palm pilot, mobile phone or perhaps if you're particularly sad, your portable printer. When another device in the area comes into range, a little icon pops up and with a simple click or tap of a stylus, the two ...
It is 1978. The cargo ship Munchen set sail to cross the Atlantic. Munchen was a state-of-the-art cargo ship. The December storms predicted when she set out to cross the Atlantic did not concern her German crew. The voyage was perfectly routine until at 3am on 12 December she sent out a garbled mayday message from the mid-Atlantic. Rescue attempts began immediately with over a hundred ships combing the ocean. The ship was never found. She went down with all 27 hands. An exhaustive...
April fools day used to be known as All Fool's day, but where did it come from and why is it celebrated? There are many theories, the preponderant one claiming that the day has its origins in the late sixteenth century, when the Gregorian calendar was reformed. The start of the New Year used to be April 1st, but this was shifted back to January 1st. The reforms were slow to catch on however, and some people still continued to celebrate the New Year on April 1st. The mo...
It sounds like a good excuse for a piss up, 19,000 people downing 16,000 litres of ale. Its the fifteenth annual wild-food festival at Hokitika, a small community perched on the West coast of the South Island of Aotearea. But apart from the copious amounts of ale being consumed, there is something more sinister to the menu than traditional wild fare of boar, rabbit, hare or deer. Wandering around the food stalls, I was unfortunate to have m...
Marjorie Woodrow was removed from her family when she was just a child of two years. She would not see her mother again for over 68 years. Marjorie was one of 11,500 Indegenous people stretching from Perth to the Torres Straits Islands, many of them part of the stolen generations, forcibly removed from their parents 'for their own good'. On leaving school, people like Marjorie were often given into domestic service. &nbs...
Tales from Coober Pedy. Coober Pedy is the nearest to a gold rush frontier town that I have ever encountered. Scowling, swarthy, leather faced men eye the stranger with suspicion, the last thing they want is another potential prospector staking a claim. They mutter and glare darkly at attempts at conversation, and the fly strewn air means anything than a dash from shop to pub is as uncomfortable as trying to talk to one of the local prospec...
Seen at the entrance to the train station at Auckland, New Zealand. 'The entrance to this magnificently tiled hallway leading to the station is unfortunately closed for maintenance work. We regret that the visitor is unable to view the majestic spleandour of this world famous and unique feature. Well thanks a bunch. yechydda,
The Welsh Taxi Driver. In Coober Pedy I met a Welsman who told me a little story. Many years ago he had been prospecting in Northwest Canada in a one horse town called Broken Stick for anything the earth would yield; ore, gold, oil anything that could be sold further south. There was one road in town a kilometer in length and dotted with higgledy-piggledy hotels, busy bars and bordellos. Men slept ten to a room where it was dangerous to light a cigarette because of the fartin...
Dear all, In the outback, other than keeping whip snakes out of your swag bag, there is little to do other than gather around the camp fire with scrubby old diggers and swap tales of BLOOD CHILLING TERROR! On one particularly chill night, with a host of stars crowding the sky, an old aboriginal opal miner from Coober Pedy bade us gather around the flickering flames and crackling gum-bark to hear tell of the min-min lights. The min-min lights were named by the abor...
A small Chinese man pushes porter from the vast red-bricked megalith of Market City towards the rat infested destinations of of Chinatowns restaurants. His cargo is wide punnets of purple broccoli, and he sings to himself in a strange, alien sort of nasaly wail as he coughs and spits his way eyes shut throught the familiar songlines between gawping tourists and touting waiters. A beautiful young woman in impossibly tight white jeans that draw the male eye to consider, is she or isn...
From the Australian Newspaper: 'There was another story doing the rounds in Sydney some years ago which, one could only assume, was a furphy but which, delightfully for those who live off the grist in the gossip mill, turned out to be true. It was divorce time for a well-heeled couple and things were unusually acrimonious. He was in London on business, she here in the family mansion from which he had not moved. The telephone ran hot with screaming, tantrums, threats and accusations. Sh...
This week the Libyan Prime Minister said that his country was not responsible for the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. He said that his country only argreed to take responsibility so that sanctions and travel restrictions would be lifted and ordinary Libyans could then 'get at the white women who were easy' Following outrage in the US, the Prime MInister later withdrew his remark, saying 'Okay then we did do it'. The US has accepted the retraction saying 'They have done what they needed...