Seven thousand classrooms.

“Uncle, why did our school collapse? Why???"




“Seven thousand classrooms”, that’s what I heard on the radio. And I couldn’t stop thinking about it and they all collapsed at the same time, on thousands of children and teachers. All that noise, screaming, terror, blood, dust and a head jarring awfulness that is beyond belief. All those lovely ordinary people gone, thousands injured and millions left to grieve. There is no social welfare in China and without a family; many of these people will be on their own.

Looking through the many stark, terrible photos and endless throat catching stories is disturbing and reflective, to put it mildly. There is the Mother who covered her child from the collapse with her body and left a simple text message on her phone saying “My little darling, I will always love you”.

Or the twenty-six year old female teacher’s assistant who kept on returning to drag and carry children out until she was eventually crushed. The people wailing over insulted bodies in the street. There are millions of these greatly moving and profound stories.

Yes, all those families and parent’s torn apart and crushed, all those people and why? Well, it was an enormous earthquake and I wonder how our Australian building standards would cope. We generally don’t build for earthquake.

Earthquake. What a terrible word if you think about it, but how far more dreadful it must be as you experience it and if you are lucky enough to survive.

The very harsh and empirical fact is that many schools fell because the government controls everything, is responsible for all education in China and thus the standard of buildings and the infrastructure. China is a Communist dictatorship, and not an open society, at least not as we know it. Thus building codes are often entirely elastic, negotiable, unenforced, bought, sold, bribed, and ignored and violations go unreported, or more to the point, cannot be reported.

Serious criticism in China is seen as a serious offence and is generally treated rather er, harshly. But then mild criticism, ridicule, saying something true instead of the official lie, or even engaging in what merely passes for normal discourse in the free world, is enough to get you arrested by the host of the 2008 Olympics.

The true reason so many schools collapsed, is because they were often rubbish constructions and unbelievably some were without foundations! No people deserve the monstrous results of what is outrageous, widespread, institutional and endemic corruption. Yep, they're doing a lot to fight it, but the corruption grows from a largely closed society and culture, both historical and current. And er, it often comes from the same people 'fighting' it!

In many ways, Chinese are very warm and social people, innocent, plain and complex and as I found when living in Taiwan, often easy to connect very deeply with. They were sometimes the sweetest people even with the as per usual human flaws. And they liked a young dope like me! Amazing, really. And like everyone else, they’re doing what they can to er, get by. The incredible success of the Chinese is due to their own massive efforts and after thousand’s of years of poverty and oppression, so good for them. It's easy to criticise China, but they have found the novelty of grinding poverty wears a little thin after 5,000 years.

Yep, in Asia, I also met some of the most amazingly Philistine conformist bores you could ever imagine. They don't call Taiwan the island of greed for nothin'. Not just Chinese but Asian culture in general is often seriously and profoundly flawed, in that outside of one’s family and group, life can sometimes be a kind of permanent social warfare. And no matter how rich the country, even in Japan, there are no welfare nets. Think about that.

In Taiwan, I remember stopping at motorscooter or motorcycle accidents and doing what we could. But there would usually be me and one or two others, as most didn't even seem to notice or care to stop. It was very weird, that endless flow of indifferent humanity, regardless. And then there was the human worm crawling on the ground of the night market, or the homeless pets slowly eaten by disease and...

As Bo Yang, the serial arrested Taiwanese writer and critic, talking from his rather er, difficult and unpleasant Taiwanese experience, said in his book ‘The Ugly Chinaman', “every Chinatown is like a snake pit, preying on other Chinese”.

It took a lot of people to build those rotten buildings and schools. My God, what a giant and rather unique crime. And look whose paying for it? Ordinary Chinese people and their sad, sad children.

Seven thousand classrooms...I can't get that insane figure out of my head.

Just even count to seven thousand, and then multiply by the numbers of children, then the parents, then the relatives, then the neighbourhood and then the region and then the country. I taught every age group of people in Taipei, Taiwan. Ah, those people were mostly lovely. The children were so affectionate, sweet, happy, and lively and kind that it was sometime’s kind of embarrassing. The adults too, were often without guile. Even if they had nowhere as many faults as me, I still liked a lot of ‘em, a lot.

They used to say to me "...you are like a Chinese man! Very good family man!" Yes, perhaps, but slightly taller!

When I rode a Sanyang motorcycle around Taipei in those long ago salad days, the Taiwanese used to see the mainland Chinese as more like country rubes and innocents, cos' they were and many still are. This was in the 1990’s, and things have changed somewhat, though not for a lot of regional mainland folks. It’s oddly like this in Japan too. It’s that innocent and sheltered inward looking Asian thing. No, really. Hey, I don’t want to be patronising, as there are plenty of serious folks in Asia that can run rings around little old tiny me obviously, and they er, did! Obviously!

But I digress. There is a stark contrast with the utterly bankrupt Burmese authorities, and the all stops out action of the Chinese people with the enormous assistance of their Government. And a major reason they can mount a serious response, is because the Chinese have a serious economy.

It’s a profoundly moving sight to see the mass of people, the medical teams, rescue workers, the army and even the curious Premier, doing what has to be done and on such a fantastic scale. The relentless effort beyond exhaustion and endurance. Every aid should be given and is being given to the Chinese people. I look at my own family, and note that I live in an apartment building of several stories. The almost painful compassion one feels for the very real human beings who are going through this is as nothing, to what they are enduring and right now.

Of course this is so in Burma too, though without any real aid, and with no serious help from their rotten to the core junta, which is the way junta's generally are. Give the Burmese people the support and their own firepower, and I have a feeling they can perhaps do the rest, as they did in WWII. It is as they say, there but for the grace of God.

But for China, whether those who are courageous enough to speak will be heeded or more likely arrested as per usual, is another thing. Maybe it will happen? Er, maybe not. But the ah, the cat is definitely out of the bag, so to speak. Even though the Communist government, like all totalitarian freaks, have quite an ability at putting said cat back into said bag.

Nature is indifferent to us whether we live or die, and this is never more clear than to people who live in the er, less kind regions on earth. The Chinese are entirely right to tame their environment to their own benefit. With all the problems, flaws and darkness in China, there is also a great and much realised potential, achievement and at some point, however naively premature a view, inevitable change.

At this enormously painful time I wish them well and all assistance.

This is the best Groundhog Day I’ve ever had.

"There's nothing you can do, kid. Its the inner-city. It's just like Tokyo town".


“When ya stuck for the rent and you feel ya gonna break, the last thing ya need is another phony on the take”. Iggy Pop.

“I’ve never been so broke that I couldn’t leave town. I’m a Changeling. See me change”. Jim Morrison.


In the alleged Dark Ages they invented the mechanical crank, essential to the transfer of circular motion into a greater and therefore viable energy, the tackable sail, as well as soap, trousers, stirrups and the bridle etc, to name a few of thousands. And yet, many a Pavlovian trained PC chum imagines they have reached a kind of advanced enlightenment vastly superior to our lice ridden, sans plumbing and dental free ancestors. Not with regurgitated and repackaged as mainstream guff circa 1970's Left paradigms you ain’t.

At my son’s school they sent home a newsletter that announces they now have a Chaplain. Great, says I. But in the little paragraph there’s no mention of Christianity or Jesus, beyond he’s a “Chaplain”. Nope, it’s “general spiritual well being”, a phrase so fashionably amorphous, superficial, weak and essentially meaningless, that it could denote dancing around a Maypole, licking crystals or just you know, thinkin’ about er, stuff, like um, spiritual stuff, about er, whatever...

The good Chaplain has a “background in social and youth work and an interest in the indigenous community”. Great. I'm sure he's a fine person. Though the indigenous community in the inner-city neighbourhood I live in, numbers perhaps two mixed blood to zero full blood people. So literally an almost singular interest really. You may as well say I have an interest in the people who run the corner store. Maybe they mean the vast two taxi filling tribes of St. Kilda? So the background is maybe middle ground and wan enough regards actual overt Christian stuff, that the background seems more of a foreground, like on a movie set.

“No need to open that door. We’ve removed all the um, difficult, serious and religious kind of stuff. It’s just held up with sticks! Be careful, it could collapse if you lean on it”.

“Any idea offends somebody. Steyn's speech informs. Yours is useless”. Anonymous.

Hey, but at the local library there is going to be an author’s talk by David G. According to the newsletter, Dave is “an accredited Wizard...” No, really. What is an accredited Wizard? Maybe he studied hard for three years at the back of Larry’s Magic and Novelty Shop, went on the road "payin' his dues", and Dave's Union membership is current?

Ok, so nothing problematic about taking Wizard qualifications as a given and real. Check. But just don’t mention the message of Christ and the meaning of Christianity, cos it’s potentially a little er, difficult and well, embarrassing. It’s a fairly common genuflect to say in hushed tones like Basil Fawlty, "don't mention the war!", er, Judeo Christianity, and go for local dominant culture abasement 101. Check.

"I might have said something about Christian values, but I think I may have got away with it!"

"Free speech means speaking the unspeakable, or it means nothing at all". G.K Chesterton.

You know Jesus performed some tricks and things, though he didn’t have a funny hat. Crazy, innit? Still there’s Aboriginal Dreamtime stories at the Library, which are often given a default and patronising faux interest. No, really. Ironically, much of our current public discourse deals exclusively in dreamtime stories, and they make up a new one every week as the previous parade of shibboleths inevitably grind to a halt of internal contradictions.

“I’ll take feared over well liked any day in the week. What’s with these [Left] Libs, anyway? Why are they so hell bent on being well liked by the world? Friendship and .99 cents will get you a whopper at Burger King. The fear of your enemies? Priceless, my friends”. DrW on Hotair. May 23, 2008.

“What this country needs is more free speech worth listening to”. Hansell B. Duckett.

“All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value”. Carl Sagan.

And that’s the great thing about the inner-city. It changes so rapidly and is so hip, that it’s nearly always the same, just re-upholstered and with fresh espresso. But I can’t live anywhere else, if you call it living, except maybe Montana or a beach dune house. And New York.

Thank God for 1689 in Britain, with the advent of private property, protected rights etc, and the massive progress in the market which fed technology and thus science, that has all allowed me to be able to now sit at a café table with a laptop, or a yo-yo. Pretty neat, eh?

“The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them”.
Sir William Bragg.

“Knowledge is power, if you know it about the right person”.
Ethel Mumford.

I find that many people in the inner-city are naturally in agreement with me as long as I don’t discuss any actual subjects. That’s where things can almost invariably become strained and puzzled. It’s amazing how automatically folks can mouth and repeat back at the ring of the old Pavlov bell, the appropriate canard for every occasion. All Left Liberal fantasy is really for projecting a superior and vain image on the part of the parroter. Mostly at the level of a hysterical hobbyist posture, they’re not intended for any er, action.

"Believe me! Give me kudos! Love me!"

“Men live in a fantasy world. I know this because I am one, and I actually receive my mail there”. Scott Adams.

Don't get me wrong. I'm so inner-city, it hurts! I love the inner-city. The people are so cute. And everyone still lives virtually the same around here and always will, with plumbing, dentistry, electricity and refrigeration etc. But many don’t want to admit to being spineless consumer’s and perform all sorts of gymnastics and cant to distract and deny it. I’m happy to admit I’m a spineless consumer, especially when I live in the fortunate part of the world that has things to consume. In the inner-city, it can seem that maybe 99% of opinion’s are utter crap. No, really. But luckily most don’t live by them except in passing. In the cold light of day here in Tombstone, Sheriff, you realise we all have basically the same requirements.

“We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are”.
Anais Nin.

“[Left] Liberals view talk as an end in itself. They never think through how these talks will proceed, which is why Chamberlain ended up giving away Czechoslovakia. He didn't leave for Munich planning to do that. It is simply the inevitable result of talking with madmen without a clear and obtainable goal. Without a stick, there's only a carrot”. Anne Coulter.

Green Left Weekly Prints Rhetoric Free Edition On Postage Stamp.

In case of media scrum, point in the air and pull back side bolt.

[Scroll down for my many a fun-filled maybe not so fake news headlines.] Sometime during 2007, the The Age er, 'newspaper' advertised that they were looking for new cartooning talent! Riiight, sure they were. What a coincidence! I'm not looking for new cartooning talent either. So, I sends in me vastly superior scrawls, ahoy! The matron handling this phony pantomime was actually very nice. She said my stuff was interesting, original, funny, exciting and entertaining. In short, none of the things they were looking for. So no dice.

Quite a surprise, eh? About as surprizing as the ABC's 7:30 Report.

She asked me what I thought about their long term cartoonist, Michael Leunig. As I was only in the early stages of grovelling for the potential to non-existent um, position, I was very Diplomatic. I avoided saying things like what a neurotic, spittle flecked, repetitive, twisted and boring leftist nitwit freak the eager Israel and Jew-hating Leunig is. But I would never say that. I guess these are the current specs for, and I kid you not, a "National Treasure". I would've been bitter if I could've gotten over the boredom of bothering at all. Aah, but I was like a foolish young schoolgirl.

"Love me! Publish me! And pay me!"

Hey, around the same time as this non-career move, Instapudit from pajamasmedia "Instalanched" me! It was Saturday 30 September 2007. I remember it well. I'd just come back from safari and my head man Kawili, informed me that there had been some lion trouble at a local village. Lifting my rifle and reaching for my propeller hat, I...

Er, no. That young Glenn Reynolds lad is incredible, is he not? I dedicate this post to Glenn and Doc Roper at gmroper. The Doc graciously quoted a line of mine on his banner head from an old post, titled "I am the Ghost of the Endless Sadness of the Ordinary People". The quote is "Peace and freedom come only through superior firepower, not absurd and suicidal ideas of 'inclusiveness' regards your mortal enemy".

I also direct ya'll to John Ray at his brilliant blog called 'dissectleft'. And hey, he does just that. He nicely linked to me and of course, everyone is all in the swingin' and groovy links. Dissectleft ties in perfectly with Dr Sanity. Yep, there is also er, sometimes, the Australian newspaper. It's 40% readable!

Speaking of conservative folks and er "right wing bastards" like me, check out one of Australia's station wagon full of conservative and semi-conservative pundits and columnist's, Andrew Bolt. Old Andy is often called a "Fascist!" by the ironically mob-mentality left axis of mediocrity. Curiously, such default ad hominem's are usually made in absentia of having actually read him.

My personal favorite Australian columnist is Iowahawk pal Tim Blair, regularly praised by Mark Steyn.

Andy a fascist you say? Who knew? Of course he is, dear. Worse than 10,000 Hitler's. Only last night Bolty and I arrested 15,000,000 people, shipped 'em of to the Siberian Gulags, expanded the government to enormous totally controlling proportions, and nationalized all industries like er, socialists.

Without fail, spoiled, affluent twerps screeching "racist! fascist! kiosk attendant" is your virtual scientific proof that in reality, said twits have neither proof nor reality on their side. And relentlessly familiar turf for the enormous talents at the peoples cube.

Andrew is a surprisingly shy, decent, intelligent individual - a hard working often courageous family guy and is more often right than wrong, which is not bad for someone who is a bit of a dilettante and actually a semi-conservative. Nonetheless, like a lot of mature adults he admits the facts of life are relentlessly conservative. He's online with a cool blog and forum, is great value and can be found twice a week at the odd little tabloid newspaper, the Herald Sun in Melbourne. One can often read the Sun's entire news section before you get your change.

One of the hardest working journalist's in Australia, [there's about eight] - good old Bolt beat me to it and posted some of the following fake news headlines under the cool header of "Just the fact's, Ma'am". Thanks Andy. How does he do it all? I have enough trouble doing my laundry.

"Colonel Robert Neville discovers headlines to amaze". Andrew Bolt.

But there's the rub, boyo. The Herald Sun often has some nice supplement's. And as tabloid's often seem to do in the midst of their relentless churning of the grist for the mill, still manage in their cheap way to reflect a little more of the ordinary people's desires and fear's than say, the regularly unreadable The Age. Because for The Aged, that would be so, gauche.

Editor in Chief of a dying medium: "Cartoon's, eh? You say you write as well? Yes, they're all very nice uh, Colonel Nibble is it? But I'm afraid it's not really what we're looking for here at blank pages of The Age newspaper. Or as we like to call it, The People's Glorious Broadsheet!' 

Here at Bunkumville, we're very firmly committed to the cutting edge of the excitingly average, the incompetent yet shallow, the delightfully biased and the entirely predictable. Add a charming sheen of professional slowly bankrupting dullness, and wow - it's something! Of course, many of our contributors and employees are indeed highly professional bores. Many with over three years of tedious and whacko 'journalism qualifications' under their cheap vinyl belts. 

Quite frankly, we believe in tradition, like the tradition of pretty much always favoring the same old Left dullards. And why not? That's the demandingly high standards of the art of journalism in Oz, I'm afraid. And you just don't measure down, er, up you see? Oh yes, she's a harsh Mistress is the old hackery. 

Now, if only you could be as stupid, bigoted, bereft, deluded, backdated, clueless and plain crazy as say our cartoonist, Michael Leunig for example, or as comfortably smug, nihilist and gleefully spiteful as our wonderfully pudding-faced  Catherine Deveny, then we could talk. Yep, yapping ad nauseum, see? Yap, yap, yap, yap".

Colonel Neville: "I'll give it my best shot!" 

Remember folks, your mind can be saved even after university.

A Load Of Old Fake News Headlines. [Ain't they nearly all?]

Kitchen sink drama actually about kitchen sink.

Child prodigy violin ensemble filled with kiddie fiddlers.

Serious art film director makes 'real life' drama about diarrhoea.

Activist admits to having no real interest in 'the people' just hates parents.

Alcoholic street beggar spends money on pie not liquor.

Bangladeshi man receives telemarketing call from Australia during a convenient time at own request.

Fifty percent of child bride marriages end in divorce due to immaturity and senility.

Unattractive man finds bathroom mirror reflection unattractive.

Woman accuses deaf, blind and mute husband of being argumentative.

Worlds most boring man enjoys own company.

Successful expatriate expresses humility and gratitude to home country.

Achievement of Che the child killer Guevara discovered.

Girlfriend’s drawer contains no ugly menstrual underwear.

The Age newspaper not dull and entirely predictable. “The Age newspaper is not dull and entirely predictable” says Editor.

Obnoxious bar drunk draws line at making loud song requests of pianist.

Bogans ask cover band to stop playing AC/DC and Cold Chisel songs.

[Cold Chisel were a very successful working class R&B rock band, that were extremely musically competent and talented. Hence, they were mostly always profoundly unpopular with inner-city hipsters et al. Being a fan may become an ironic pose at any time and conversely, "Chisel!" may become extremely popular for several weeks with said groovers. A bogan is a working class guy whose only crimes are being unfashionable and clueless regards the contemporary.]

Couple in long-term relationship never break wind in front of each other.

Conceptual artist concedes the concept of audience conceiving enjoyment and understanding worth considering.

Rare tawny owl legitimate reason for bulldozing woodland.

Good looks of otherwise conceited and vacuous girl still satisfying after two months.

Entire high school staff well dressed in contemporary fashions.

Magician makes instant coffee.

Four year-old not amused by loud flatulence.

Dreadlocks at private school worn by actual Jamaican.

Entire Latin American road system now chicken truck free.

Hyperbole mostly exaggerated.

Monkey at zoo maintains dignity.

Goat at Satanic ritual replaced with parrot.

Fugitive outlaws find Mexican village, mission and church all in good repair but no plaintive guitars.

Radical aware of empirical difference between Prime Minister and Hitler.

Protester has nothing to complain about personally.

Irish priest neither jovial nor taciturn.

No zoot suits worn on Skid Row.

Leftist admits to living in comfortable democracy not fascist dictatorship.

Violent ‘Eat the rich’ protests in city do not leave private schools deserted.

Teenage Goth prefers Hawaii.

Cavalry’s arrival worsens situation.

Vandal buys private property complains about graffiti.

David Irving fabricated past decency.

People in kitchen at parties most light-hearted.

Former President just older not a statesman.

Former Prime Minister silent.

Left comedian finds performing to a predominantly left audience ‘challenging’.

Chaser World Tour ridiculing Islam cancelled due to death of entire cast. [The Chaser is a satirical leftist [redundant] ABC TV show.]

Chasers World Tour ridiculing Christianity cancelled due to indifference and Dave Allen Tour.

World improving since brick thrown through fast food chain window by student protester.

Over 99% of statistics are meaningless.

48% of people have some point of difference to the other 52%.

Most cases of neglect are negligible.

The average life expectancy of aborted babies has remained stable.

One in three people feel the odd one out.

Most younger siblings find constant wedgies confidence building.

Cat entering front door without hesitation shows no signs of aloofness.

Talking parakeet in comedy film not dubbed.

Light-hearted passage found in Russian novel.

French film not about French.

Italian film uses coherent dialogue sparingly and when relevant.

Hong Kong movie stays in single genre.

Indian film needs to be seen in sequence.

English film confident and positive about being English.

Swedish film light-hearted and entertaining.

Israeli film from 1960’s found not starring Topol.

Australian film watched.

Japanese film not crazy.

Welsh film.

No Maoris in violent New Zealand film.

Documentary hopes to not change or effect anything.

Recipient of government grant loves government.

Advertisement clearly explains limits of product.

Teenage diary filled with insight, inspiration and compassion for parents.

No irrational contributors to newspaper letters page.

Communist writes competent business plan.

Pop musician says that economic policy and geopolitics are beyond his abilities.

Yes man fails to impress Boss.

Middle-management challenges status quo.

Lower level employee advances due to constructive criticism and new ideas.

Middle-aged dad fails to comment on kid feeling like an ice cream.

Middle-aged dad’s life devoid of corrosive criticism and filled with incredible sex.

TV network hires talented innovator indefinitely.

Artist inspired by the mundane compromises of life.

Clones reaching consensus on cloning want more clones, more clones, more clones.

Group of female friends finds focus on gossip and complaining tedious and limiting.

Weekly women’s magazine talks science, geopolitics and poses profound philosophical questions.

Bob Brown talks in depth. [Ecofascist Australian Green's Party nitwit yet fraudulent ex-leader.]

Bob Ellis rational, coherent and sober. [Old, addled, verbose, fucked-up Australian Labor Party drunk.]

Peter Garret silent after dumping dated rhetoric, hyperbole and party line.

[Ex-wooden front man of Oz rock band, now a more entertaining Labor Party man in charge of Department of Burning Down Houses and Electrocuting People to Death.].

Movie star researches facts on pet hobby horse.

Friday night Chapel Street Commodore contains female. [Popular Melbourne inner-city street and lout magnet. A Commodore is the oft favored four-door sedan of said louts.]

Friday night cruise cars mostly driven by the mature and intelligent.

Working-class suburbs mullet free.

Inner-city no longer smug and condescending.

Inner-city opinions entirely connected to real world.

Sean Penn shows patriotism and gratitude to USA not Latin American despot.

Sean Penn stops beating girlfriend takes on passing teamsters.

Hollywood stars held accountable for past statements and actions.

Jane Fonda no longer neurotically inclined to treason: “I want to be remembered as Washington Jane” says Fonda.

Susan Sarandon not an addled old leftist tart, says Sarandon: “I’m going to stop this illegal war and so logically I’ll support putting the Baathists back in power by showing my breasts at the March for Peace through Comfortably Affluent Delusion, Treason and Stupidity” said Susan.

Michael Leunig does cartoon condemning Islamic terrorism and communist dictatorships.

Michael Leunig dumps street wino look corduroy and jumper set. “Let’s face it. I look like a crazy, deluded, indulged and indulgent old bi-polar fool. I’m gonna get some great adult style guidance from Carson Kressley” said Mike.

Michael Leunig not looking like an elderly Jewish woman woken at 3:AM.

Bono not the focus of pointless political leader meetings.

Bono and U2 finances not entirely in Bahamas tax haven. “Because that would make me a celebrity hypocrite and a phony” said Bono.

Bob Geldof caring and tactful to people he has actually met:”I realized that acting the sour and world weary pop star doesn’t hide the fact that I’m a very successful sour and world weary businessman” said Bob.

Parkinson finds celebrity guests anti-Bush rhetoric not funny. “Two out of three guests say the same predictable stuff so I have to fake it to laugh at all” said Michael.

Critics of capitalism not supported entirely by capitalism.

Socialized medicine great for patients.

Brain drain stops due to drain clogged with brains says plumber.

Japanese sense of humor trials to begin.

Bananas are the naughty fruit.

There is many a slip twixt thought and tongue, or somewhere. "I lill get da lubber glubs, Colonel San!"



You know we used to have a couple of Japanese café’s and the wifey, being a Japanese kind of girl, in fact entirely Japanese, thought it would be great to call the first one er, “Paranoid”. No, that’s a bad idea, hence the lack of eating establishments named after mental and personality disorders or skin diseases. But you know, it seemed perfectly hip and swingin' to Miss Kabuki Saturday night in Ginza, meets Jerry Lewis.

“Good evening sir. Would you care to see the menu?“

“Why are you asking me? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

For a while I saw that a fruit and vegetable supermarket would be useful, if only for the chance to fondle so many firm yet pliant shapes.

“The fruit? You can’t handle the fruit!”

And that’s what I like about wifey, the innate Japanese thang, and with her preference for the Western, especially a place like New York. Ah, the Big Apple. New York is my favourite citrus named metropolis and we will get there, eventually. We already have the suitcases and with air holes they're big enough for all of us!

The wifey tends to have a perspective that one could never imagine, and this can stop things getting rather er, dull, and without the slightly creepy all in the mind Western prone obsession for all things Asian. The great mystery of the East is that there really is none. Things are much as they appear, even the hidden.

After two and a half years, which is the usual cultural exhaustion point for most Western expats, just as the ennui starts flooding in, Asia can seem in the end, just various combinations of electronics, fascinating package foods, crowded child like mono-culture madhouses on motor scooters, with endemic corruption and plastic sandals. No, really. Don’t get me wrong, I dig Asia and especially Japan, but you know Jake, "...it’s Tokyo town”.

And once you dig it, one always has that sense of displacement as if you’re maybe going to the airport tomorrow with a one way ticket after all. I once read of an American guy who had spent decades in Japan, was profoundly fluent in the language, culture, history and customs etc, but never felt that he had been able to see beyond and into that invisible er, something of being Japanese, except for perhaps one time.

Once he observed a typical middle-aged, conservative Japanese man endlessly working at and rearranging a small plant and flower combination all with that singular and relentless patience, in a neighbourhood street as people walked by. Just as it appeared that he would never be fully satisfied with its dynamic and the apparent search for the mathematical harmony, as they say, he suddenly brightened. Stepping back he sat for a long time, just looking at it.

The American couldn’t see what the Japanese guy seemed able to. And then he did see something, or so it seemed. It was not so much the object as the relationship between the man, his focus and the surroundings, being in er, Japan an' all. And just then as he thought that “Ah, I see!”, in another moment it was gone.

Who knows? Maybe it was just a nice shrub. And often it’s just pointless and plain crazy. And yet...

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is: Infinite”. William Blake.

Curiously, a lot of life is infinitely mundane, repetitive and boring, even with the fruit and flower arranging. No, really. The challenge is not so much to find the exceptional and exciting, but how to deal with the pedestrian and see the extraordinary in the everyday, which it is. And for some, their default is seeing the mediocre and horrible in the outstanding.

Then there's the problematic outrage at Bill Henson, the talented yet er, problematic and perhaps disturbing Australian artist. Apparently Bill should consider how assorted folks may percieve or use art. One would have ya work cut out for you then, eh.

Yep, art has unexpected influence in my life.

Since I bought as a teenager the Velvet Underground with Warhol’s famous cover, I’ve used big bananas in ways not intended by Andy. Or consider, every time I buy a pole, it has to be a blue pole. Whenever I'm thinking, I always curl my fist under my chin, while sitting on a plinth. Boy, do I regret how many girls I’ve dated with both their eyes on one side of their head. And man, I won’t leave the house without removing both my arms.

In the lobby of the Waldorph Hysteria this Saturday night.

The Waldorph Hysteria Lobby can get a little hectic sometimes, and it's only Monday night.



Dear sports, here's 18 daft cartoons, [a few are missing which I'll add soon], that started their two dimensional life on a whiteboard in Taipei, Taiwan about twenty years ago, in order to teach English in a more fun kinda way. If that's er, possible. I used such typical phrases as "You know, elephants generally prefer to use the bus", "That guy's head is made of ten cubic metres of pastry!" and the old stand by "You're standing on my duck feet!"

Just click to expand. Er, the illustrations, not you.

Each one was usually drawn over one day, so, a total of about seventeen days work. Work? Yeah, right. I used refillable plastic pencils, an eraser and the edge of the lead container for any straight lines. In the end, I did them mostly for my own amusement. Of course I drew them mostly on Earth and I was usually breathing oxygen throughout. This is what happens when you can mostly only get local Taiwanese TV, featuring Brian Dennehy dubbed in high pitched Mandarin.

I hope ya dig them. You're free to use, though regards the unlikely chance of making any monkey out of them, the usual copyright and vast briefcases full of cash apply. Other than that, post them, print them off or whatever, as they're "just the right size for wrapping fish!" Next time I'll draw a single idea and hopefully they'll make some kind of sense. Colonel Neville.


He was a tough cop in a tough city, or was he?

















We Kings and Queens of Maine, leaving too late from the fields.

















Mother?

















Pontiac Rain.

















Hey, tattoo's are back!

















Celebrity party.

















Wah's new?.

















A bunch a bananas.














Hey! Kid's today. What can ya do? Nuttin'!

















Another bleedin' Colonel.

















I am not a cartoon!
















See monster!

















Rusty's most challenging role.




















The Big Three. String, Cardboard and Cheese.



















Is there Table Service on Mars?























Anyone for tennis?

Is This Room Going To The Airport?

"Many people and not just the super demented are just plain crazy about their pet obsessions".



Mrs Freakmeister: "Excuse me. Is this room going to the airport?"

Colonel Neville: “No, it’s going to Zimbabwe. You want the 5:PM steam shovel on Platform 9, Platform 9, Platform 9”.

A demented, delusional and paranoid old lady asked me this fantastically Goon Show style question, meaning what time exactly was her flight to the Outer-Rings of Venus leaving? The disturbing thing is that many allegedly regular people, even outside of institutions, are nonetheless just as deluded, misinformed and plain mad as Mrs Freakmeister. That’s of the Venus Freakmeisters.

Mrs Freakmeister: “Oh, is this my room?”

Colonel Neville: “Er, yes. See all the photographs of YOU on the side table?”

Mrs Freakmeister: “Oh, no stranger would ever have my photographs in their room!”

Colonel Neville: “Mrs Freakmeister, if I don’t get away from you, your insanity will suck the life from me, much like a bleached coral sponge”.

And many people do. For a lot of folks, the existence or absence of empirical evidence are the least likely things to ever alter their opinion's in the slightest. For many, either way to the contrary can merely prove they're right!

“When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity”. Dale Carnegie.

I once had a Chinese girlfriend who was a sad but true, dimwitted and manipulative morbid narcissist and apparently rather mad. She was also the only genuine nymphomaniac I have experienced personally, and er, repeatedly. Though it ain't anywhere near as good as it sounds, sports. I mean the nympho part, not the er, morbid narcissist thing, which is exactly as bad as it sounds. She constantly burnt food because she’d just walk out the door, mid stir fry. So naturally the fire alarm would go off every second day and then she’d complain about the noise...

Chinese Monster: ”What dat for? Orrwayz peep, peep, peep!"

Colonel Neville: “Er, that’s to warn us of any fire in the apartment say at 3:AM, dig? [Under breath] You crazy bastard".

Chinese Freak: “But I never cook at 3:AM!”

And why not indeed. In the same senility corral as the room service to the insane woman, if not the same universe, was another bereft and raving old dust bag. Her endless screaming's concerned crazy, amazingly paranoid, convoluted and absurdly impossible future events.

Mrs MacGillicuddy: "The government are boiling the very pies we eat! And the steam is rising! Mark my words. In the future, we'll all be permanently damp and waterlogged, and that's when they'll jump! We won't be able to run, you see. We're being watched now. Oh yes. My phone is monitored. Pick it up. Go on. I can hear them whispering. Everything is in place. Oh yes".

Much like the manic obsessions of 911 conspiracy creepy bores and ecofascist environmentalism, eh? Which reminds me of Oz Greens Leader Bob Brown, a man whose mind is spread so thin when attempting to grasp any subject, that it can be folded many more times than the theoretical seven.

“I know what you’re up to! You’re with that woman up the street and you all stink! Don’t you think I don’t know?! I have proof! I have photos! Of you with the King, the King of Norway. You’ll never take me alive! You’ll never rule the world with your dirty tricks; ya death rays don’t scare me! Get away from me! Don’t you dare leave me! I’ll stab you, I will!"

Er, that's Mrs MacGillicuddy, not Bob Brown discussing Green's Policy. And yet, compared to the opinions of the MSM, all seemingly formed by mere chance, Mrs Mac could almost be as a breath of fresh air. Her scrambled mind stands out as clearly mad because well, everyone else is not like that. And there’s the rub, matey’s. It’s hard to find contrast in the MSM between good and bad when apart from small fast evaporating pools of intellectual light, the majority of the virtually useless MSM is so reflective of each other. And on so many critical subjects, merely reinforce rather blithely, captive delusions and ignorance.

"Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had". Michael Crichton.

When so many agree with what is nothing but fashionable guff, hyperbole, predictive bunkum, passively received indoctrination and junk that we've just grown up with, you find that ever fewer can speak out and say um, that’s simply not true. To know what the real motives for pushing something are and say here is the empirical evidence that will utterly Fisk this point by crushing point, is er, time consuming and difficult.

And there you have it. The dominant MSM and educational angle is mostly of the left. It’s emotional, passionate and always urgent and actually all about control and vanity. Moral vanity. It means that all children must learn thee only correct response to everything. Living in the inner-city as I do, the chances of meeting folks not sodden with left cant is sometimes kinda pretty slim. Of course not everyone in the inner-city is affluent and nuts. Some folks are loaded and entirely irrational. For instance, I went to an open day for my son’s primary school last year. On a class room wall there were pictures of Coalition troops, with a list of descriptive questions, followed by the alleged answers of the er, children.

I say alleged, because if you can swallow a child of about seven emoting in "SmashTheCapitalistWarMachineImperialistMurderersEtc" GreenLeft Weekly speak, all placard and chant ready, let me know how. The military are, according to our junior Sean Penn's and Noam Chomsky’s, mostly very bad "angry" people. Yep, the highly trained professional adults, of diverse backgrounds whose awesome courage and patriotism has given us everything we have, have been presented as creeps and borderline criminals, and not in reality straight from the mouths of babes, but via the ideological delusions of people a little taller than a seven year-old.

George Bush was surprise, seen as an idiot, a liar and every seven year-olds common concept, a fascist. Er, no. The fully qualified and experienced jet pilot, who graduated with a common C average from Harvard and Yale idiot, who is a rape and adultery and largely scandal free cum non-perjuring type President. Er, do seven year-old kids usually think in terms of fascism, meaning military states with all industry nationalized, total control of all speech via the state, and with some bizarre kind of agrarian fantasy overlay? Doubt it? Sounds like the collectivist left. Come on, kids have to be shovel fed this junk with little chance of dissent. They don't usually turn into sour and self-loathing paranoids without assistance. It ain't natural.

Aah, teaching kids not how to think, but what to think, ends in ideologically driven mediocrity so pervasive and accepted, that no one, especially a seven year-old, can conceive of anything outside of it. And this is done by otherwise good people. Go figure. It’s the Invasion of the Body Politic Snatchers as per usual. Don't let ya pod folks try this on ya at home, kids! Stay awake. Now where's that rebellion gone?

"Only a fool would let their enemy educate their children". Malcolm X. 

It seems now that if you agree with enough of someone, you by default must agree with it all [or you are instantly put on their enemies list]  and thus there’s no need to have any objective ability to discriminate with any proportion or perspective. Developing the thinking skills required for discriminating analysis is the basis of rational thought. The elimination of rational thought is the essential goal of leftism. The extreme and the amorphous. Some choice. Odd, innit?

To encourage children to not tell the difference between Hitler, Stalin and Mao on the one mass murdering hand, and Bush, Howard and Blair on the other, is bizarre. Or to see the incredibly successful West of capitalist democracy, free-markets, freedom and the human rights that they do objectively embody, as the true and only source of evil in the world, is not only insane and wrong, but deeply corrupting, manipulative and corrosive to young minds. This is cognitive dissonance, actually pure evil and it doesn't bode well.

It certainly doesn’t bode well for the assistance I look for with my own flaws, faults and limitations. I like to meet the many people who are far better than I am, but who has that much time? It’s disturbing to me to imagine being left to my own feeble resources. I thank God everyday for the Internet and independent publishing.

"It crushes a man's ego. I feel...lonely". Chuck in Planet of the Apes. 

"To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence". Friedrich Nietzsche.

If only I’d grasped any of this or anything at fifteen, or thirty five. Well, um, Nietzsche was a proto Nazi, a people-hating and self-loathing nutcase at the best of times, but nobody's perfect. And he was if anything, consistent. So of course, all the George Bush photos each had a little Adolf moustache and matching quiff sets. No one seemed to find this er, culturally insensitive to say any Jews, who gee, do know the difference. Now don’t get me wrong, the teachers are good people otherwise, and er, competent. It’s just that er, something is wrong. Maybe it’s the space-time continuum?!

In the staff room was a sensitive Teachers Union take on Ramadan. You know, the traditional Muslim cleansing ritual prior to the traditional Muslim violent Jihad. If you can spin that positively, you can spin anything.

“OK. This is how I see the new advertising campaign, Osama baby. Can I call you Osama? Smile and lose the beard and moustache! The kids will love ya! Ya so anti-American! Trust me! I did wonders for Che the child killer!”

"On everything from Indian policy to education, ideological purity now trumps even the most obvious failures in practice. The single greatest weakness of Western culture is the ability to draw a moral equivalence between anything and everything. It’s really an inability to see anything in due proportion".
Mark Steyn.

One can't think rationally when polarized. The mind tends to swing from one extreme to another like a pair of toy magnet poodles. So where do I end up? Avoiding being bogged down in the automatic treacle of the misinformed. At many a workplace folks spend their lunch break staring into space, gossiping, watching the very loud TV no matter what’s on, never reading and consuming often B grade food. So much for management, you should see the staff! Yet almost invariably many have strong views on geopolitics, economics, security and clog dancing, of which they deliberately know nothing.

"Howard’s a racist! I like Rudd’s smile. We need a change! Bush has caused terrorism!, America is so bad. I don't like cheese snacks. Is the cricket on?"

“I don’t know anything about art, but I know what I like!" Er, no. The first admission means that the following conclusion is impossible.

Sadly, it’s not an inherent skill for any of us to be able to escape from the circle of logical fallacy. It takes some effort. Such nopinions are second hand impressions from second rate minds, and one ends up thrown upon the rough seas of emotions and of worthless viewpoints. But hey, Bon Voyage!

"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions". Albert Einstein.

Every Philistine critic gets to be an instant artist for a day!

Guileless, intelligent and nosey kid: "Papa, why are there so many Philistine control freaks in the world?"

Old Pops: "I don't know, but it was the winning idea from the recent 'non-ideas' summit!"




[Update on December 28 2009. Now here's the thang. What if I was wrong even a little bit about Henson and art schmart? What, me wrong? I've thought about this often and I don't think so per se. As far as I've seen and being a fan for around ten years, Bill Henson is great and does not connect with the criminal filth of Polanski. And yet, some of Bill's photos are um, a little er, creepy and not right. I'm sorry, but that model was fourteen. Dig?

For Polanski, the man who made Repulsion the name of one of his movies and his defining character trait, my view is that he should be in jail or hung. The fact is that the criminal always over-rides any vaunted ideas of er, alleged or authentic art. In the end I don't give a fuck about art over people. No really.

Hey, the wacky, madcap and zany mind-set that dominates much of the arty world such as it is, is well, often venal, decadent and void of any intellectual and moral compass. No really. I have met and known many er, artists and they are not always, but far too uniform and by the numbers two-faced, opportunist fake rebel leftards who largely despise conservative governments but not the massive capitalist tax-payer generated grants etc.

Yep, the art world is an often bankrupt, rotten, phony and worthless but wonderfully money-spinning dirty minded con. While many regular folks are utterly clueless and crude regards the merits of human artistic values and meaning. Sadly, "sophisticated" can mean the witless and repellent moral and mental inversions of Polanski's performing pervert pals.

What do you think? This is the best I can do with my limitations and for free.]

The great Tim Blair on the creepy and er, curious selectiveness of Bill Henson's largely laughable art is truth meme. Bill Henson.."school inspector.." Bwahahaha! Ugh..

"ART IS TRUTH. Tim Blair – Monday, August 02, 10 (02:49 am)

School inspector Bill Henson speaks, following a period of delicate silence:

‘’We should be wary of governments and interest groups who try to impose restrictions on the free exercise of the artistic imagination. Our zeal to protect innocence should not come at the cost of violating artistic experience.”

Wrong, Bill. Protecting innocence – your euphemism for “children” – is more important than any intrusion on “artistic experience”. Especially when that “artistic experience” involves photographing naked kids you’ve sought out in primary schools.

‘’If we believe that art is a high form of education, that its basis is moral and its goal truth, then we should resist the impulse that would deny the artist the right to deal with what may sometimes be ambiguous, complex and disturbing.’’
So Henson’s sexualised shots of unclothed pre-teens are “truth”. Sad for all the kids who never got to experience this. They’re living a “lie”.





“They’re disgusting. It’s the first time I’ve seen them and I find them absolutely revolting!”. Quite. No, that’s not Fluffy, our own medium size Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, speaking about his balls, but pasty Kev pronouncing from on high, but low brow, on the incredible work of internationally uber-respected and very successful Australian artist Bill Henson. A man whose work he seems to know precisely zero about. And regards the world of artistic expression, he appears to understand even less.

[Colonel Neville update: But hey, I could be entirely wrong. Is Billy boy a talented pervert? No really.]

Yes, it's the bleeding first time he's seen 'em, and quick as a flash, our Kev can form a stupid opinion even more clueless and weak minded than my Aunt Doris. And she's dead. So young people, and especially girls are revolting, eh? Annoying and a bore, but nauseating? The PM must have had a rather difficult pubescence then, hence the palour. Even my five year old son doesn't say girls are yukky anymore. Oh, I get it. It's the perceived angle. I'd bet it's his and not Bill's then.

[Colonel Neville update: Hmmm. I seem to notice my own run of logical fallacy here. My, my, how my views have changed. Now I don't care much about artistic pretentions however well produced. Maybe Bill Henson's photos of UNDERAGE girls are gee, really rather creepy and a bad, bad thing. No really. Sadly Kev turned out to be a treachorous phony creep though, but not a pervert.]

"Whatever the artistic view of the merits of that sort of stuff, frankly, I don't think there are any, just allow kids to be kids". Out own King Kevin.

Innit great that such a bunko PM can weigh in on what kind of art is er, art? How er, Socialist.

"A picture of Glorious Celebrity Comrade Cate Blanchett for your approval, Prime Minister!"

Channel 7 News: ”...pornography posing as art”.

[Colonel Neville: maybe art posing as art!, or pornography that's pornography though hardly. Again, I like the crowd and night shots very much but when I saw the under eighteen shots, er, no. No really.]

Yeah, whatever MSM boobs. The Police are charging Bill Henson, with er, alleged child pornography offences, due to his latest exhibition! I kid you not. Henson is one of my favourite photographer/artists, noted for outstanding, distilled, under-lit and virtual old Master honed, [new, old, timeless Master, whatever] and meticulously set-up shots of the night, city, street scape, the rural and the industrial etc. Often using the young, middle and old as models, his work is striking for possessing more nuance, ambiguity, depth and the elegiac than one can bear.

From artgallery nsw gov au: “Hensons works are held in all the major Australian galleries, including the art galleries of NSW, WA, SA, the National Gallery of Victoria and the National Gallery of Australia.

In international collections, Bill Henson’s work is held in the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum, the Houston Museum of Fine Art, 21c Museum, Louisville, the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, the DG Frank Collection in Frankfurt, and the Sammlung Volpinum and the Museum Moderne Kunst in Vienna”.

Phew! No wonder our pig ignorant PM and media haven’t heard of him. It wasn’t on a diplomatic memo or a cue card! And in a bizarro and hilarious twist, Van Thanh Rudd, the son of fluffy Kev's brother, [no, really], had his as per usual rudimentary Leftard student agitprop cum tedious and random graphic design, uncerimoniously removed from a 'government artspace!', cos' it's apparently offensive to among other's, the er, Chinese government?

Oh, the delicious irony. Consider for a moment even the phrase 'government artspace'...

Here's Van's straight from Socialist Parody Central take on Chavez, the dumb as a plank totalitarian, Che the child killer Guevara fan and murderous pal of Iranian gay murdering Prez, Ahmachimphead. To Van, nothing is ever glaringly phony enough, that he ever drops his out of date by several decades, rhetorical delusions, and is repulsed. Nope for Van the ham, it's all good, as long as you cloak everything in "right on!" and revolutionary juvenile loon drivel. This is his idea of intellectual and moral Quality Control. Er, no.

He is in short, ya bog standard, entirely unoriginal, radical and hysterical idiot. Van Thanh Rudd, as Mark Steyn has said, "lives in a fantasy life completely supported by the system he despises".

Ever heard of Logical Fallacy and empiricism, Van? Nope, guess not. But still, I don't want to stop him doing his thang, but with his own money. Because I would not want to compromise Van's er, integrity. Hey, kid's today, eh? But back to Bill.

“Bill Henson is an artist of ferocious integrity, a photographer of the human condition and an experimenter of remarkable skill and conviction”. Photobox.

Andrew Bolt is apparently on the side of those that see Bill Henson as an expensive pornographer and damns him rather completely, as do his commenters online. Now I usually agree and dig Bolt's stuff, dig? But while I may see his er, point, such point's actually have nothing to do with Henson. So I er, beg to disagree a little, mate. Especially with absurd strawman comparison/extrapolation's of rape and murder. Sheesh! Which kinda shows the extreme illogic of first accusing Bill of being a porno King and thus so it seems, anything can then be said about 'im.

"To the tumbril!" Er, Bill has not raped or murdered anyone has he?

If one decides to have no use for the rational and the clear differences it perhaps illuminates, ok. Check. I'll tell the wife to stop taking those pornographic shots of our five year old at the beach and in the bath. Because he's naked right? And all you need to be pornographic apparently is ergo, to be naked and photographed. Really? Would I use such a model as Bill did? Nope, I'm not Bill Henson. And that doesn't make Bill's art, porn.

Hey, there's a lot of Indian temples smothered in carvings of wildly copulating couples, groups and every combination thereof. The photgraphs are available at the library and through most any large bookstore. In Japan, tourist photo's show a traditional phallus and fertility festival where the kids sit on a wooden pecker, for happy snaps, hoping for plenty of Grandchildren! And in a lot of the Islamic world, Bill Henson's photo's could be just unusually well done shots of the wife. It is, a big, crazy and er, "diverse" world out there.

Christ, if there is insanely no difference between some art and any porn for some, egad! Life imitating art as part of the human soul and condition, well, that's some endless bleeding edge, innit? I can tell the difference because there are many differences, so why can't you? Many people use actual porn but most I imagine, don't wack off at art galleries. Maybe try to act as speedily against the horrible Himalaya of the real child abusing thing. There's an idea.

Now apart from Bill being a real talent and therefore, someone you can take completely seriously, Henson is also that rare thing in Australia or anywhere, a great and international artist who sees, understands and appreciates something more profound, resonant and timeless than the merely fashionable and ideological . Bill makes a lot of alleged artists look like the crude, rudimentary and obvious pamphleteers that they truly are. His pictures are filled with a strange longing, displaced melancholy and the ruin of the old human condition. Henson especially describes the narrow and fleeting moments twixt evening and night.

“Australian artist Bill Henson is a passionate and visionary explorer of twilight zones, of the ambiguous spaces that exist between day and night, nature and civilization, youth and adulthood, male and female.

His photographs of landscapes at dusk, of the industrial 'no-man's land' that lies on the outskirts of our cities, and of androgynous girls and boys adrift in the nocturnal turmoil of adolescence are painterly tableaux that continue the tradition of romantic literature and painting in our post-industrial age.

Were it not for Henson's primary, almost devotional need to elicit empathy for his troubled human subjects, there's a feeling that nothing would prevent the black in his photographs from completely absorbing his attention and extinguishing his work”. Dennis Cooper at Pavement Magazine.

So, the pin head people are gonna arrest Bill! And we have so many pinheads! They’ve already confiscated his paintings. Bill hangs in major galleries in Australia and around the world. Bill’s great, mate. Henson uses young models in his work and because he’s used a naked thirteen year old in a series, this is automatically defined as child pornography. Dig? Well, if you're a pervert and a dumbass, everything is so.

Dudley Moore and Peter Cook as Derek and Clive. Derek: "Everything gives me the horn! Even a photograph of a piece of toilet paper gives me the horn!"

Clive: "You know what gave me the horn? The Pope when he was laying in state. He looked so vulnerable, with his untrimmed nose hair".

Derek: "The word 'and' gives me the horn".

Clive: "Yes, AND there's so much of it about".

The simple equational link for the simple minded and cultural missing link of mind, is that any photo of naked girls can only ever be porn. Actually, I imagine this is much the same kind of thought process as a paedophile. So those shots of my son in the bath wearing a soap bubble hat are porn then, aren’t they? Gotta be!

“Facts are nothing without nuance”. Norman Mailer.

The facts and nuance that pass the average asshat wearer by, is that Bill Henson is not a pornographer and doesn’t produce pornography. And correct me if I'm wrong, but no adult is supposed to find children sexually attractive, nor look for it. Children are what make life worth living, and are the way to see the meaning in life as they are the meaning. Thus the work of Bill Henson.

Children are also often an irritating bore, are weirdo's and they smell, but who want's to see that in a gallery?! I can get that at home.

Almost every MSM outlet has dealt in their usual rather tabloid way, but with their pretensions at something higher largely in tact. This shows rather starkly, that such subjects, like most areas, are beyond and above them. They are after all, a hack factory. A hacktory!

Hey, Kevin is everyday, revealing himself as the average and mediocre witted technocrat he actually and clearly always was. The automatic and knee jerk is for our tiny PM, his level and idea of a considered analysis. Thus he was the perfect King of Non-Ideas for a Day at the recent, absurd and ridiculously void of 'Ideas Summit'. 2020 twas called. Ironic the number choice really, considering the smug, conceited myopia of the elitist celebrity activist, academic and government beneficiary types that held the stage.

What a fiasco and neo-Berkley style boobfest it was. Not one “idea” worth a damn came out of it. It all boiled down to "...the government should spend much more of your money, though not mine", and on everything PC and Leftard approved. Especially the kind of utterly insane, juvenile, useless and moral vanity framed money pit pet project's of old and new Left Liberalism, that will never be held to account for anything like an actual achievement.

So a dearth of any er, 'idea's', but a surfeit of hubris. In fact, I think they hit the Motherload. But I digress.

It’s funny, innit? More and more, the real idea's of truth, meaning, reason and context are all brushed aside in a flash, by the same poop minds who wank on endlessly and earnestly about the imaginary “Fascists!” who limit their diversity.

Hey, Bill Henson could be considered a genius by much of the world forever and and a day and sadly, most of Australia, the MSM and every badly styled average politician still wouldn’t know him at all. These folks have the inquiring, curious and original minds of a slice of Swiss cheese.

Unless Henson was on say a lifestyle show, the ABC's mega tedious and fraudulent 7:30 Report, or the fatuous jelly of 60 Minutes, and continuously for at least a month. Even though I take it as a given that many of our betters in places of authority, power and influence know 'eff all about much at all, I’m still taken by surprise by what real peasants they are.

Our pathetic twerp and ten steps down to the mezzanine Leader of the Opposition, Brendan 'head butt me now' Nelson, apparently also agrees with the PM. Big as they say, 'effing surprise.

Here’s a recent sideline from earlier this week, but eerily connected to this idiocy I believe. And the guy concerned is I believe a Lefty kinda guy, of the pro-and often unviable public transport kind, but if he’s correct about the mentality and methods of the Punyversity concerned? But that’s not the point.

It’s the er, mentality of the good folks who don’t like his “intemperate” comments. They’re “derogatory and insulting”. Sounds like my kind of guy. If ever anywhere needed a barrage of insults, it’s the claustrophobic and phony cloisters of bloated academia. In fact much of our public discourse needs a damn good Sex Pistol whipping.

"Riiiighta!!" John Lydon.

Melbourne Uni has demoted Paul Mees, a senior lecturer, because he said in a “strongly worded attack” on the authors of a 2007 report on transport privatisation, that they were “liars and frauds and should be in jail”.

It’s all maybe because the Uni department doing the report, are all er, rather cosy with and funded by the er, government. As Dr. Nick Low, da man in charge of the transport research department supposedly doing independent work said of Mees views, they are "...directly contrary to our wish to conduct our relations with the State Government in the spirit of partnership and co-operation”. Sweet and chummy, eh? But this is the best part.

In the inquiry into the naughty Paul Mees affair, a Dr King, ‘found it did not matter whether Dr. Mees statements were true or not!' Quite. Now dig this. “His defence of truth should be dismissed!”, says Dr. King’s report. Riiight. From the 22 May edition of 'The Age' newspaper. Yeah, sure it is. I always fact-check even the date!

And thus in a separate but equally stirring case, and without apparently any public tender, what’s gonna be an in-tandem Leftard think tank, or I’ll eat my guitar, has been given 15 million dollars by the government. Just like that, Guv.

Er, how many more tax payer funded neo-Socialist wank chambers, just like the celebrities with no bloody idea summit do we need exactly? Isn’t just about every Uni and government department one of these bullshit spin domes by default? And now they want to get into art criticism too! There is so little alternative voice in almost any area in poor old Oz, sports. By definition for the Left of mind, any tiny glimmer of light is always way too much illumination.

"The light! It burns!"

I thank God for the free market/Conservative Institute of Public Affairs, one of the few serious and bright spots on the ever shrinking intellectual Oz map.

And as for Bill Henson, neither the presence or absence of light will ever register, penetrate or reflect in the dimness of his idiot detractors. What do context, meaning, history and intent mean to Henson’s critics? In such mind bogglingly stupid and crassly instant reactions, and in the end, precisely nothing but an irrational fear of the wrong things out there, and in the dark.