etching ‘couple’
Go and ‘frack’ yourself is an expression waiting to raise its head in parlance of the progressive world of slinky board riders and depressed gloomy hoodie wearers. I bet you it will take over from the ‘awesome’ and ‘oh, my god’. I think ‘stuff like that’ has now sunk into the furnace of lost expressions, the same as ‘bodgie and widgie’ did some many decades ago. It was used during the period when as a teenager I used to linger around Parramatta Delinquent Girls home. Friday night was ‘curler-night’. I remember seeing girls in trains wearing curlers! Men used to perve on Pix magazine girly photos showing knees and total naked feet.
I have just brushed up my very limited knowledge on Islam and ISis with all that goes with it; I can’t say I am much wiser. Previous knowledge did not go much further than Ali Baba and forty thieves. On the way over from Holland our boat stopped at Port Said where we all went off the ship. I was fifteen then and bought a fez and a small whip used for camel driving. I kept those mementoes for years. Now they are lost the same as those past popular expressions. Forever gone!
I do know that bombing always ends up killing. With the latest be-heading no doubt the reaction will be more bombing more killing and more incomprehension by many, not least myself. Isis seems to have unlimited funding and an expert PR machinery going for it. Perfectly English translations of their web-sites and IT magazines beamed and downloaded all-over. It is there within seconds as did the latest beheading video, done by the same man speaking in a thick London accent.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-24/analysis-campaign-against-is-could-take-years-or-decades/5764828
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-16/what-is-islamic-state/5748646
I don’t know what goes on. The last major conflicts in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan were all undertaken at the behest of the US. All three conflicts seemed to have achieved nothing but hordes of refugees and endlessly ongoing murderous campaigns. We were lied to by our governments as never before. Vietnam did not result in hordes of yellow peril. Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. Afghanistan with the Taliban were Americas friends during that period they were fighting the Russians.
And now…again, Australia goes to another war. And talking about expressions, our Government calls this…not going to a war but… ‘a humanitarian MISSION’! Can you believe it?
Governments need fracking I reckon. Get fracked Mr Abbott.
Tags: Abbott, Ali Baba, America, Australia, fracking, Isis, Islam, Parramatta, Port Said
Oosterman Treats Blog 
October 4, 2014 at 7:37 am |
Armed conflict, collateral damage, humanitarian missions? All boils down to killing people.
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October 4, 2014 at 9:13 am |
Yes, this is not going to end well. War never does.
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October 4, 2014 at 9:26 am
Your post provoked me to read around too. The pictures of the IS fighters were frightening.
Their self-declared caliphate seems nothing like the caliphate so I read about in the past, where for example, the caliphate of Cordoba was the centre of the western world and excelled in learning and culture.
These people seem to be a world apart. Barbarians.
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October 4, 2014 at 9:44 am
The total attention here now is on a final football match tomorrow between two groups of fanatics who call themselves ‘Rabbitoh and Swans’? Thousands are swarming around the streets with painted faces, shouting slogans and waving flags.
I agree with you, the world has gone mad.
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October 4, 2014 at 10:16 pm
Sorry; the footballers are the Rabbitoh and Bulldogs, not Swans.
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October 4, 2014 at 9:29 am |
Fracking. This is held out here in the YUK as the solution to our energy problems which, of course, includes less reliance on Russian gas imports. (Even though we here in the YUK don’t use Russian gas, several member states of the EU do.)
My reading tells me that with fracking, even a productive well will start to run out quite quickly and a new one will have to be sunk.
On a lighter note, the writers of the sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica,
used the verb ‘to frack’ as an alternative to another verb beginning with ‘f’. And they used it a lot.
In your list of foreign disasters we should add Libya. Having been ‘liberated’ by the YUK and France it is now in a state of chaos.
There is no light at the end of the tunnel.
There is no tunnel.
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October 4, 2014 at 9:40 am |
Oh, fracking is all the go here. Farms are locking gates and become bitter enemies with neighbouring farms who don’t mind getting extra income from allowing fracking on their land.
Some are just opposed to everything, no matter what. Even windfarms are opposed. Some claim it gives off ‘strange vibrations’ and cause headaches.
As someone born almost under a windmill, I must say it did no harm, but…some might disagree.
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October 4, 2014 at 4:36 pm
I’m sure they wouldn’t.
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October 4, 2014 at 12:03 pm |
Thoughtful as ever, Gerard. The world feels an alien place today.
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October 4, 2014 at 10:14 pm |
Yes, it is Andrew. Thank goodness for those things of beauty that make life still bearable.
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October 4, 2014 at 7:46 pm |
Elegantly putting everything in its place Gerard. As Andrew says we do live in “alien” times, I do wish the space ship would alight in a gentler place again.
Is the clever picture yours Gerard?
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October 4, 2014 at 10:13 pm |
Yes, it is. Come in, let me show you my etchings. 😉
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October 5, 2014 at 12:16 am |
We have long reached the stage where we can believe absolutely ANYTHING of this guvmint, Gerard. Anything at all. I mean, they’re going to send refugees to Cambodia and Hun Sen, where no-one wants them and the people there are already fighting for enough to eat. TROWC tells nothing but lies from morning to night.
Yes, we can believe this, too …
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October 5, 2014 at 4:39 am |
A few months agao there was talk by the minister fro Arts Mr Brandis, of broadening the law on ‘freedom of speech’ whereby everybody would be given the freedom to abuse and vilify each other a la Bolt and A.Jones.
Now, a sharp reverse, better be careful what you look at or talk about, Security is onto you….the dreaded midnight knock on the door, the muffled scream in the dark. Be careful.
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October 5, 2014 at 5:30 am
The tiny shit ! – he is, I think, second only to Rabbit. Although he does have to battle with Hockey for that.
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October 5, 2014 at 4:55 am |
Sorry Gerard, I can’t disagree with you. The world is indeed “fracking”. When war is called a “humanitarian” mission, then we know it is Orwellian speak. I don’t believe anything Abbott is saying. He is a self-confessed liar. Even if he says, “The sun is rising in the East” I would doubt him, as strictly speaking is is only on two days of the year and he would have to add a date.
He is a Rhode Scholar and has studied rhetoric. But when he speaks he can’t contain himself making a statement and then adding something else, making the statement nonsense.
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October 5, 2014 at 10:45 pm |
Yes, Rhodes Scholar has to be taken with a grain of salt. Especially when not all that long ago women were barred from receiving it.
Abbott speaks as if he has trouble with messages from the brain getting conveyed into words. Perhaps his boxing did damage.
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October 5, 2014 at 10:12 pm |
I find it really hard to joke about fracking, given it’s role in destroying the health and well being of so many residents here in New Plymouth. There seems to be unabashed corruption in the willingness of our district and regional council in approving new fracking sites for overseas oil and gas companies without any safety monitoring or regulation. There are even digging new well sites (which are occasionally known to explode).
Fortunately more and more residents are up in arms about this. This is the first issue in a long time with the power to galvanize nearly everyone in the community (excepting those who work in the oil and gas industry) – regardless of where they sit on the political spectrum.
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October 5, 2014 at 10:35 pm |
Fair enough comment. Sorry if my comments were a bit flippant. I know that the fracking here in NSW also causes a lot of controversy. It seems that energy, no matter from where it is gleaned causes damage. Many oppose windfarms on the grounds they are ugly. I like them, but coming from a windmill country, is not surprising.
A huge gas bubble discovered below a part of The Netherlands was exported to many European countries and gave Holland its economic growth for many years. It now causes earth quakes in Holland never experienced before as a result of emptying this gas bubble.
So, as always, problems from using non renewables. Sun and wind are much better options.
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October 6, 2014 at 5:03 am |
In contemporary terminology something that is “sick” is something that is great, really good, like a flash sports car. I thought bombing innocents was ‘sick’ but maybe, given the changes in expression, it’s just fracked.
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October 6, 2014 at 9:35 am |
Yes, I too was at times intrigued by how ‘sick’ was used sometimes as something quite good. We will see how ‘fracked’ will travel and I’ll keep my ears to the ground.
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October 10, 2014 at 1:04 am
Gerard, slightly off topic but I appreciated Helvi’s kind words in my direction on the Ellis blog today, where I have been banned from commenting for one week for daring to suggest that Shorten sold Labor down the creek by backing the bombing in Iraq, a practice that I have some experience of (Vietnam) and understand the collateral effects, never as reported by the antagonists at the time.
Add this to Labor’s willingness to increase national security to the point where we are all under some form of surveillance, a necessary inconvenience Abbott calls it, and well, fait accompli. Bob of course is some sort of old acquaintance of Shorten’s and considers him the greatest opposition leader in world history.
I find many of the bloggers on TT weak gutted, snivelling sycophants, lonely hearts who will say anything, do anything to remain in Bob’s favour. And as Bob himself would say, it’s a pity. Cheers to both.
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October 10, 2014 at 2:43 am
I have written to Shorten in similar vain. I warned him of giving Abbott too much slack as it could be considered similar to giving Hitler the right to close the parliament and act on emergency legislation.
Labor politicians could be the first to become victims of the new security laws and surveillance system. Parliamentarian’s phone could be monitored and any political tactics could be construed as bringing down the elected government.
Shorten does not know what he is doing.
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October 10, 2014 at 2:55 am
Yes Chris, I had a most unfortunate experience as well. I see one permanent troll using different pseudos on TT. The person pretends to be labor but the heart is with the hard core liberals.
I have joined the Greens now. Shorten seems to not be willing to come out strongly on anything much and his passion for anything is somewhat strained.
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October 10, 2014 at 3:45 am
Yes, Gerard, you were hung out to dry by the mob. They tried to paint you as an elitist and when I challenged them to read ‘Frank’s story’ to gain perspective, they became disdainful, preferring not to. I am a member of the Labor Party here in SA, we are a different mob to the Federal branch, under the power of the NSW right. In fact Jay Weatherill, Premier, threatened to walk out of politics, just weeks before he recently won office over Don Farrell (right) being parachuted into local politics.
In SA we are firmly Labor left. I also have strong Green affiliations, being a personal friend of the former State President, Dennis Matthews. The Greens will inherit a lot of Federal votes via Shorten’s refusal to define Labor as a Party, rather than as a “me too” mechanism, already a tactic tried and failed a la Kim Beazley.
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October 10, 2014 at 3:33 am
Berlioz, the thought has also occurred to me that if Abbott finds himself ‘back to the wall’ running into the next election he may well defer it election indefinitely. He is one weird cooky to say the least, brazen, overarching in his quest for control. There has been no Australian PM like him, even remotely, ever.
Shorten is not up to it, hopelessly out of his depth, and carries a certain amount of ‘baggage’. The caucus, on realising his membership/branch vote was very weak against Albanese in the leadership ballot, should have gone with the status quo, but they didn’t. That was a major error and history is bearing this out. Where will all this paranoia end?
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October 10, 2014 at 5:48 am
Shorten should be more like “Milo” and bark when there is reason to be displeasured. Shorten must think he has been cornered by Abbott and opposition to him could backfire.
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October 10, 2014 at 6:02 am
Oh yeah, if only…
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October 10, 2014 at 5:36 am
I agree, It took two meetings here at Moss-Vale/Bowral and I was out. The Balmain branch at earlier times was a different kettle of fish but I am talking the seventies now.
A bad mistake not to have given the leadership to Albanese. I’ll try and post that Albanese speech on J.Howard if I can find it.
Here is a section of it:
““John Howard has always been proud to call himself a conservative. The problem I think is that he has confused this with preservative. He probably wishes good old Ming had dosed the country with formaldehyde when he had the chance. Because it all started going wrong in the late 1960s. Here is a man who lived at home until he was 32. You can imagine what he was like. Here were young Australians demonstrating against the Vietnam War, listening to the Doors, driving their tie-died Kombi vans, and what was John Howard doing? He was at home with mum, wearing his shorts and long white socks, listening to Pat Boone albums and waiting for the Saturday night church dance.”
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October 10, 2014 at 6:18 am
Great post. By contrast Tony Abbott was huddling in the church dreaming of greatness. He was argumentative and eventually bailed out. One of his Seminary lecturers said he was only an average pupil, no stand out. Did he use his token (church) service at an aboriginal community to gain entry to Oxford? There is a clause that allows for this, I’ve looked up the entry guide lines. Academic ability is not a prerequisite. He’s a slippery devil, this Abbott, got his Australian passport in just two weeks apparently, to gain foreign entry status.
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October 10, 2014 at 7:25 am
Perhaps gaining access to Oxford has more to do with rowing skills or ruggers. I don’t know but often people talk about their sport achievements in the same breath as academic achievements which, coming from a more Continental background, astonishes me each time.
Perhaps Abbott with hsi boxing skills got somehow passed as good enough for Oxford. I don’t know.
If academic ability is NOt a prerequisite in gaining access to Oxford I am again bewildered.
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October 10, 2014 at 8:40 am
With the English there is usually some tolerance; thus exists an eccentric sort of ‘colonial’ entry to its learned institutions.
If for example a budgie smuggler attired ape carrying a wooden club, turned up at their hallowed doors, also carrying a schoolbag with a lunch box, it is probable that they would find that being/apparition some sort of dwelling for the night. Hot water bottle, tea and toast provided.
After much liquid discussion some entirely evolved, bearded alumni, would take him on and in the process, probably redefine the ‘humanities’.
Just imagine, sock it to those Yankee Universities, the first fully-clothed-ape graduated with a Masters degree from Oxford, the Special Order of the Receding Jungle – the capped and caped hairy chested ape ape to be known forthwith simply as Sir Tony.
Yes, he is one of them, arbitrarily, possibly his only redeeming feature. I wonder how his fellow Oxford grads saw/see him, the English have a certain, forensic way with understanding people.
News Flash!
Last seen wandering into old growth forest, somewhere in North Western Tasmania, muttering darkly, obsessively to himself and at the local, startled ferrels; human, flora and fauna; a chainsaw carrying ape with a stick of dynamite.
Blame the English. He was their terribly misjudged experiment, a howler, “they should be doing the right old boy thing – take him back into the fold, rehabilitate him somewhat”.
Make him a Lord perhaps, give him a scroll? But will it distract him, get him off your case? I doubt it. Nudge nudge, wink, wink, say no more.
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October 10, 2014 at 9:04 am
Brilliant Chris;
Yes, I do like the English eccentricities but less so the Lord business. An inherited level of Government? I still laugh my head off at the fish slapping contest. Surely, an effort good enough for an Oxford entry for both.
Abbott is now letting in his cabinet through a back door at Parliament House for security reasons. Soon they will have to be wearing black moustaches and pull-ups.
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October 10, 2014 at 9:39 am
Thanks gerard, I sure knew I couldn’t fool you!
Parliament House is like a big cubby house to Tony, now sadly minus his little red helmet. No doubt he’s run around every lunch room, corridor, flushing toilets, peering into powder rooms, testing all the doors, windows, switches, screwing knobs.
This is a cosy place, this big new cubby, you know it backwards, like your old sandpit, you pull it gratefully down over yourself, the whole loving, enveloping roof, lock the doors, turn of the lights, and then with your unfortunate, beguiled fellow inmates, stare out with running noses against the tinted windows – at ‘them’.
Thanks for having me Gerard, nice to be appreciated.
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October 10, 2014 at 11:01 am
Same here Chris. Feel free to meander, do what you like. We are free from trolls or hard-core gangsters.
It has been going for a number of years and giving enjoyment to people in the cubby and sandpit is the reward.
You can blow your noses freely. The tissues are next to the ink-well and writing pad.
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October 10, 2014 at 11:13 pm
Yes, we are what we write. And what we eat is only part of it. Some of us choose to blog under our own names and stare down the barrel, to tell it like it is, given our persuasions. Certainly, unbridled passion has its place, but in the end you have to make it work. Be who you really are, no shortcuts.
Gerard, you certainly do have a free space here, a place I have visited over recent times.
A confession; I attract trolls, the freedom with which I speak attracts them, I think, in swarming droves, dark moths flittering around the light, ghouls sucking on another’s substance, taking the shortcut. Lost souls. Spiritual tight-arses.
Like yourself Gerard, I have a troll radar, and yes, you do have to eat carrots to maintain it, a good broad diet is essential, part of these troll’s problem stems from malnutrition, to stingy to eat well, and in the process a shortage of minerals occurs, turning their minds malignant.
In the end it boils down to hunch. You feel a troll when you meet one, like a dog that unexpectedly barks, your senses are alerted.
Yes, I have just flown in from the Ellis blog, to visit an old friend who was, like many original thinkers, much trolled there, I have one week off from the turkey shoot, now where was I….
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October 12, 2014 at 11:47 pm
On his death bed Aldous Huxley was in an interesting place. Despite the unavoidable physical pain of death he had time to take stock of his life, mentally sum up his achievements, that many would argue were considerable, probably no argument at all.
In these last, final weeks he loved to listen to the local talk-back radio, a generic ‘California’ station, but he loved it, the opinions of young and old, the diverse subject matter, it was hilarious to him, even the more serious differences of opinion, but he saw, as a philosopher would, a deeper meaning – he described this ‘talk-back’ process of being indicative of a “rich mixed feeding”, a health in unfathomable diversity, the complex, unravelling nature of human experience, its defiance to being conquered, totally worked out, thereby run over by the overtly ambitious, the control freaks who occasionally but historically, chronically fail in their attempt to rationalise the irrational, the great mystery of mankind, with its secret, its meaning we never quite unravel, and especially for the despots – ultimately control. Twas Hitler’s betwixing. Twill be Abbott’s. Try as he might he cannot control the subconscious.
And with all his in mind Aldous Huxley, writer, at the exact hour of John F Kennedy’s assassination, took his final, lucid acid trip and floated freely, contentedly away from this life.
This OK life, as he felt it to be.
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October 13, 2014 at 12:40 am
Good summing up Chris. I loved all his work.
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October 13, 2014 at 2:10 am
Human nature is saved by its stunning complexity?
It makes a compelling argument. It also makes a compelling argument against genetically engineered crops, something we seem to have more control over than our own ‘nature’ – that is that crop survival, quality, is in its complexity of strains, and attempts to thwart this process are fraught with danger – like too many eggs in the same basket. Plague etc. The whole crop failed – world wide.
The English mustard crop was saved by the Second World War Seed Banks – a prescient move at the time – luckily the Poms got the taste back into mustard – the genetic crops were found to be tasteless – only any good for crop circles – I wonder how the Worcester Sauce is going?
Bring in the Martians? Do they eat ham and mustard rolls?
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October 13, 2014 at 3:08 am
Here is an interesting development. ANU doing a Rockefeller.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-13/pyne-says-anu-decision-to-ditch-mining-companies-bizarre/5808674
The tide is turning.
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October 12, 2014 at 11:09 pm |
…. yes, “fracking”, of course, a terrible process that really states that we, as a planet, a geology, well, we’ve, um ,well, um, we’ve run out of the first grade stuff, it’s getting rather low so fuck it, it’s gonna be hard, so yeah, why not, out with the crowbar for some fracking.
A crowbar you ask? Oh yes, is the reply, a crowbar is an essential ‘tool’ for fracking, as is a truck or two of dynamite, a solutions holding facility, a drill rig or two, a special licence from ‘the boys’ that this nature-mugging process is OK, and, oh yes, you need someone to drive (in a Roller) to the fracking ground on a regular basis, once a week at least, a pinstripe, suited monkey, a fractious dummy doing his fracking, and the locals will mostly cow down, they ‘understand’ symbols and their natural subservience, well,you know guys, sorry about the hidden agenda, yeah, yeah, the crowbar, well, of course, you gotta have it you know, I mean, some of them feral’s are bloody creepy, they want to cause trouble, talk shit mate, you know, so well, I mean, if one of them just jumps the fence see, well, he could accidentally run into a crowbar, eh buddy, you know what I mean eh buddy, I mean if your gonna be smart about it to me as well buddy you’ll get one too mate, you know what I mean…
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October 12, 2014 at 11:36 pm |
Well Chris, we haven’t really run out of first grade stuff. I mean, the sun shines more now than ever before. Did you see the interview with Naomi Klein who wrote and published a book on climate change and how the denieres are actually believers. However, they would have to concede that the capitalistic way of doing things are the main culprits. In other words a complete change around in the fundamentals of right wing beliefs would be required.
So, they have to stick to denying climate change but, according to M/s Klein therefore acceding to climate change. That is if you get my drift. She was very lucid in explaining this.
Fossil fuel mining has to be banned and not doing so will be far more costly than sticking to it.
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October 13, 2014 at 12:17 am |
No Gerard. No Naomi Klein, the sun shines out of her arse you say? – that is good – it will power the grid, her denial will be our asset, the arse of enlightenment.
Our international miners, all shapes and sizes, sexes (at least three), have one thing in common. The odour of the ferret. They should pressure bottle it and send it via the wind to ISIL, who will, upon smelling it, surrender in droves.
Silly old miners, going about it the hard way, wars and all that, just one good armpit belch from one of those fatties would bring the middle east to its knees, begging their own forgiveness, as we, the West, don’t do forgiveness.
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October 13, 2014 at 12:32 am
No Chris. Naomi Klein is a ferocious defender of climate change. Really gave Australia and Abbott a good serve in the interview on ABC TV last week.
http://www.naomiklein.org/main
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October 22, 2014 at 12:35 pm |
Gez, both fracking (plenty of it in the Hunter valley) and this long drawn out war that TA has joined, like a game of tag in the playground, have me terrified, but I laughed and laughed at the string of comments. Thanks folks!
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