Urban Kvetching

I recently received an e-mail from a close friend who is a tertiary level Professor of English, asking me for suggestions of good Australian literature. The first thing that popped into my head was Joan Lindsay’s ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’,  but after pondering a little further I don’t think one can go past Patrick White’s ‘The Tree of Man’, Hal Porter’s The Watcher on the Cast-Iron Balcony’ and David Malouf’s pièce de résistance ‘Fly Away Peter’, one of my all-time favourites.

So Aussies and other lovers of Australian literature please place your suggestions in the comment section to show that we have and continue to have decent stuff coming out of Australia… and please, I mean suggestions of literature, not just any old book.

This interview with Sarah Palin literally made my jaw drop. Palin is clearly way out of her depth and if Katie Couric can make you short-circuit then how on earth do you propose handling the job of Vice-President of the most powerful country on earth?

She reminds me of the kid in class who bumbles through a book report presentation without having read the book.

You know y’all been waiting for it.

Two oranges walk into a bar
One asks “your round?”
His buddy replies, “you too, you fat bastard.”

It’s a day late, but suck it up.

Knock, knock
Who’s there?
The doorbell repair man

One of my silent readers recently asked me to proffer my opinion on this particularly tragic case involving the desire of young Australian writer Angelique Flowers, who suffered from Crohn’s disease, to end her life before bowel cancer did - that is to say as peacefully as possible on her terms instead of painfully and degradingly on a sterile hospital bed. Should the government have fulfilled her wish? The answer appears clearcut, no? Sadly, like pretty much everything else  on this completely unjust planet, it isn’t.

RIP Angelique Flowers

I really don’t know where to start because I know once I scratch the surface my thoughts and feelings will explode onto the page and be anything but consistent. But achieving absolute truth or objectivity is almost an impossible task because humans are by their very nature subjective, the only examples of absolute truth and objectivity that spring to mind are that the Holocaust did happen and it was bad and that greasy hamburgers are unhealthy but fantastic for hangovers.

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I am stealing the idea of a crap joke day from Andy and now present you with the first of what will hopefully be a long-standing series of crap jokes:

What’s this?

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Click the link below for the answer

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Hello friends, please be patient for while I am still sleeping off the effects of the evil food court curry I am also working on a translation that needs finishing quick smart, alas fear not as I have not forgotten you and hence I am procrastinating on the side with the intermittent writing of a post for this blog. It is not yet finished but I nevertheless just had to pop in to tell y’all a funny little tale.

Once upon a time, well only about 15 minutes ago actually, I decided to go and check the stats for my blog and was terribly amused to find someone from DHS had stumbled upon Urban Kvetching at precisely 13:59:53, that is if googling my name and following the link counts as stumbling.

Word to the wise: the program I use to provide me with statistics for my blog includes such information as how one gets to my blog, how long they stay, exactly what posts they look at and more importantly, as in the case of an individual server such as DHS, a unique IP which shows me from what department within DHS - and sometimes even workstation - an individual is viewing my blog from.  I guess what I’m saying is *waves with a smile* I can see you from here.

Now that we’ve cleared that up I will provide my regular readers with some YouTube goodness of US Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden addressing Democratic Senator Chuck Graham.

Make sure to watch the clip first, then if you don’t know who Chuck Graham is click here, and if you don’t know how much of a complete asshole he is click here for the long version or here for the short version.

You can all expect a nice little rant about the upcoming elections in the States within the next day or two, just give me a little bit more time to sleep off this post-food poisoning tummy ache.  Why is it that people with food poisoning crave potatoes? Anyway, in the meantime, please amuse yourselves with this rather apt quote from none other than Kid Rock.

“I truly believe that people like myself, who are in a position of entertainers in the limelight, should keep their mouth shut on politics… because at the end of the day, let me tell you what I ‘m good at: I’m good at writing songs and singing. What I’m not educated in is the field of political science. And so for me to be sharing my views and influencing people of who I think they should be voting for … I think would be very irresponsible on my part. So I’ll just keep my mouth shut on that.”

“I think celebrity endorsements hurt politicians…Because as soon as somebody comes out for a politician, especially in Hollywood, when they all go, ‘I’m voting for this guy!’ — I go, ‘That’s not who I’m voting for!’ … As soon as Oprah Winfrey pops up and goes ‘Ha-la-la-la-la,’ I’m like, ‘I love Barrack Obama. I hate Oprah Winfrey… I don’t hate her. I just don’t believe in her, so I don’t want any part of any of that. I think celebrities hurt politicians.”

Source: CMT News

I have been reading and noting down so much stuff about the US election that I have unfortunately forgotten where the following quote came from, but it’s pretty damned good nonetheless.

Obama supporters chant ‘Change’. McCain’s chant ‘America’ as if the answers to myriad global crises lay in these lazy mantras.

Truth be told, I’m not really keen on any of the candidates. Obviously as an Australian I can’t vote in the US elections, however the US is undoubtedly the most powerful country in the world so it’s fair to admit a vested interest in the process.