Archive for May, 2006

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Stupidity undermining marriage

28 May 2006

The growing trend for people to meet over the internet is having a profound effect on Australian marriages, with cyber romances playing a role in thousands of break-ups.

How many “the internet is destroying the moral fabric of society” stories along exactly the same lines have we seen in the last few years? But how is it the internet’s fault that people are self-centred losers?

The article quotes some interesting figures, at least. Psychology lecturers Elizabeth Hardie and Simone Buzwell at Swinburne University of Technology estimate about half of people in online dating sites are already in relationships and looking for some on-the-side action. This pretty much tallies with my experiences in the vast online dating conspiracy.

But is this research not stating the bleeding obvious?

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Posted in damned lies and statistics, sensitive stuff about chicks, techno-wankery | No Comments »

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Source of confusion

16 May 2006

The funny story that was emailed around the globe, but wasn't entirely true . . . Now there's a shock!

BBC journalist Karen Bowerman accidentally interviewed some bloke (video here), reportedly a taxi driver, instead of veteran IT commentator Guy Kewney (picture here). You can see how she might have got the two mixed up. At least the bloke answered the questions directly and didn't use impenetrable acronyms, jargon or buzzwords. In what passes for IT journalism these days, he actually did a decent job. I've had interviews with company executives who said less.

But then it turns out he wasn't a cab driver at all. Guy Kewney, referring to an article in the Daily Mail, reckons the 'other guy' was actually an IT guy from the Congo called Guy Goma who was at the Beeb applying for a job. You can see how that makes it better . . . or worse . . . right?

Posted in media, nerds, techno-wankery | No Comments »

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Stupid sexy Media Watch

15 May 2006

I’ll admit to being a scarily obsessive fan of Media Watch, which I concede is not most people’s idea of light entertainment. So I was a tad surprised when tonight’s episode carried a warning beforehand that it was for mature audiences because it contained a sex scene.

For a few terrified seconds, I was picturing Monica Attard getting down and dirty on the desk with some unknown person in a desperate grab for ratings . . . rather unappealing. (Liz Jackson is somewhat more my cuppa, but that’s not saying much.) The reality was somewhat more prosaic, but piss funny nonetheless.

Posted in media | No Comments »

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On hold

12 May 2006

So whose bright idea was it that while I'm on hold getting increasingly frustrated because the company I'm calling is too cheap to hire enough call centre staff, to compound their contempt by playing their advertisements at me?!

Posted in marketroids | 1 Comment »

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Selectively sexist

11 May 2006

Model and worldwide desire-object Lara Bingle, infamous for uttering the words “Where the bloody hell are you?” in the ‘controversial’ Tourism Australia ad, is suing lad wank mag Zoo Weekly for defamation, misleading conduct and breach of copyright after it published pics of her posing in a revealing swimsuit.

Breach of copyright makes sense since Zoo Weekly didn’t own the photos, but defamed how? According to the Herald, Bingle’s lawsuit claims the magazine implied she:

  • Consented to pose in a G-string bikini for a smutty men’s magazine;
  • Was the sort of model who would invite readers to achieve sexual pleasure from her photographs; and
  • Was prepared to demean herself for money by being photographed scantily clad for a smutty men’s magazine.

This would all be terribly unjust if the mag had, say, followed her down to the beach and taken photos without her permission. But these pics were from a professional photo shoot done in August and were “taken only for two uses: promoting the photographer’s company, Roger Management [snigger] and her modelling career“.

So Bingle’s beef is not so much that she was being objectified for the pleasure of men but who gets to treat her as if she were a piece of meat. It’s a bit rich to say you’re not prepared to demean yourself for money in a men’s mag if you’re quite clearly prepared to demean yourself for money for a photographer or modelling agency.

Posted in media, money, sensitive stuff about chicks | 9 Comments »

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Proper satire

10 May 2006

What with budget and mining distractions, we haven't heard a peep about this story in Australia, but there's an ongoing fuss in the US media and blogsphere about Stephen Colbert's speech last week to the White House Correspondents' Association (transcript here, video here, lots of interesting responses here and here).

Colbert's speech quite emphatically took the piss out of the powerful and complacent: the President, US government and media. And the point was, he did it in front of the President and the media. That's what satirists are supposed to do! It takes guts to stand next to the US President and say stuff like . . .

I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound — with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.

But you could hardly expect his remarks to be reported by most of the US media when he says . . .

As excited as I am to be here with the president, I am appalled to be surrounded by the liberal media that is destroying America, with the exception of Fox News. Fox News gives you both sides of every story: the president's side, and the vice president's side.

OK, Fox News is an obvious target and this may not be as ha-ha funny as Adam Sandler movies, but I wish more of our local satirists (I'm talking to YOU, Chaser's War on Everything) had the guts to take on their subjects as fearlessly and comprehensively.

Posted in media, politics | No Comments »

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We should be outraged, but . . .

7 May 2006

. . . it’s hard even to be surprised. An economist has finally done the sums on how much money the government has pork-barelled away to keep itself in power. ANZ Bank chief economist Saul Eslake reckons over the past four years the government has revised its tax intake estimates upwards by $97.5 billion. But over the same period, the government has put in place policy initiatives costing $98.8 billion. Eslake puts it rather bluntly for an economist:

The resources boom has dropped $100 billion into the Government’s lap that they hadn’t expected in 2002 and they’ve spent all of it and a bit more. And I honestly and genuinely struggle to find anything that has been done with it bar win elections.

Instead of tax cuts and handouts, he reckons, it could have been saved up or spent on useful stuff like infrastructure — you know, the stuff that actually increases productivity, unlike, say, industrial relations laws that most economists agree make no difference to productivity.

I’ve got nothing against the Government as such but the resource boom has handed them a great opportunity on a plate. They’ve spent the money and as far as I can see they’ve not created anything of lasting value.

It’s just criminal what we’ve let these bastards get away with.

Posted in damned lies and statistics, money, politics | 1 Comment »

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Sickos

6 May 2006

The Private Jake Kovco story just keeps getting more farcical. The government overdoes things just a tad by putting on the highest military honours for his funeral. And because the media abhors the vacuum left by the gaping holes in Defence’s explanation of how he died, there’s no end of speculation.

This prurient interest in the minute details of the private lives of the late private and his wife sickens me. It’s the spectator instinct; the same one that makes people slow down when they’re driving past a car crash. Is it just schadenfreude — something bad happened, but not to me, so that’s OK?

It wouldn’t have occurred to me to say anything, except the most popular search term by which people have found my blog recently is the phrase “shelley kovco boyfriend”. Which, in case you were wondering, wasn’t in any way discussed on here until today.

And the media feeds on this base instinct. Some bright spark at Today Tonight or whichever tabloid crapfest it was says “I know! She was having an affair and he killed himself!” And it’s a brilliant suggestion because once you make it, it’s a story whatever happens. Even if you have no evidence whatsoever, put the question to Shelley Kovco, her family or the defence department. If it’s true and they admit it, paydirt! If they don’t, the story is “Widow denies affair”.

It’s win-win for the media scumbags. The only losers are the family, whose lives are further traumatised, and the public, for lapping up this filth as if it matters and as if they have any right to know.

Posted in media, politics, violence | No Comments »

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Fuck families

4 May 2006

I’m absolutely fed up with being a member of a marginalised and oppressed minority. It’s just ridiculous. With the Federal budget due next week, what’s all the discussion about? The Oz says:

Families facing the double threat of a looming interest rate rise and higher petrol prices are expected to secure tax relief in the budget.While downplaying expectations of major tax cuts, Mr Costello yesterday predicted women and families would be the winners in a budget expected to boost spending on defence and increase childcare places.
While refusing to be drawn on whether the Reserve Bank would increase official interest rates this week, Mr Costello said family tax benefits would also help soften the blow of rising petrol costs.
“With the family tax benefit, a family with two children pays no tax at about $40,000 to $45,000,” he told the Ten Network. [My emphasis.]

Families face that threat of higher petrol prices and higher mortgage payments, which will be softened by more family tax benefits. Single people don’t drive cars or buy houses, so they should be fine, is that it?

The so-called opposition is no better. All they do is bicker with the government about which families should get more free stuff. And then there’s the Family First Party insisting the government has to consider the impact of any new laws on families, as if they don’t already?! (Of course they do; it’s just that the Conservative Christian Anti-Gay Anti-Abortion Anti-Freedom Party didn’t have the same ring to it as “Families First”.)

You know what? FUCK FAMILIES!

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Posted in money, politics, sensitive stuff about chicks | 3 Comments »

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Opportunity lost

3 May 2006

With all the media attention in the last week or so on a mysteriously dead solider going strangley AWOL and two astoundingly not dead gold miners not going anywhere, I'm amazed the PM didn't take the opportunity to declare himself Supreme Overlord for All Eternity. He's already got plenty of form announcing things when nobody's paying any attention. With any luck he might have got away with maybe just a paragraph in one of those news-in-brief columns in the Toowoomba Chronicle. Or maybe he did and no one's noticed yet.

Posted in media, politics | No Comments »

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