the F rant

God rest ye merry gentlemen.

2005 has been a whopping year and quite frankly, I’m knackered.

2006 will be bigger and BETTER!

Scratch.

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I remember once having a conversation with my lecturer at Uni about racism in Australia. “Aussies are racist” was the general premise of my argument. I felt that while not explicitly racist, Aussies were just as racist as any other place.

“Look at the Aborigines, look at the White Australia Policy, look at the treatment of refugees in the ALP created refugee camps in the desert” I argued. “Let’s not pretend we’re not”.

My lecturer replied that, yes all cultures have divisions, small clashes of culture and ethnicity. EVERYONE at one point or another has expressed what makes them different to others of sex, race or even the suburb they live in. But to actively discriminate by race to the extent that uprisings occur, that massive riots on the scale of the Watts riots or the Brixton riots of the US or UK occur, is not viable in Australia.

“It’s all relative!”

Seeing the question posed in the papers – “Are Australians racist?”, and having a poll resoundingly say yes, I ask myself, and the people of Australia – COMPARED TO WHOM?

So when John Howard sez: Australians are not racist… Well yeah, he’s right, but again it’s all relative. “Are Cronulla residents racist compared to Footscray residents?” might be a better question.

FREEDOM: Economics, Politics and Business

What has been disturbing me no end since the riots are all of these sick old lefties CELEBRATING the riots, rejoicing in some twisted belief that it is as a result of Howard’s Australia. What a load of bollocks.

One would only have to examine what happened in Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Darwin, Perth and Canberra on the same day that the SYDNEY riots occurred. Nothing. Just a whole couple of million people having a nice day.

One would have thought that this VERY SYDNEY problem could be blamed on inadequate policing or community relations in New South Wales, which has been under 10 years of ALP rule.  A culture of underinvestment in infrastructure, schooling and policing that has led to a rising culture of dispute and aggravation in that state.

A sad state of affairs under any scenario.

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As opposed to Friday night, where the Airbourne tunes kept people barely awake, Saturday night I went to see Green Day at the Crypt aka The Phone Dome aka Colonic aka Telstra Dome.

What an interesting comparison:

After seeing the two bands back to back, Airbourne can DREAM about being huge. Green Day ARE! To be honest I’m not a fan of Green Day, I don’t particularly like them, I wouldn’t have a clue what their names are, and their songs – yeah I hear them ad neaseum on the radio but I wouldn’t think of buying them in a pink fit.

But what a great show they put on. Slick, professional and thoroughly entertaining, it was a stage show par excellence, littered with the obligatory piss-weak political commentary which got the kids into an ignorant froth: “I’m here to make George Bush’s life a living hell”, and lit by pyrotechnics, flames and fireworks, it was like New Years Eve should be: loud, dumb and funny.

American Idiot, Minority, Brain Stew, Time of Your Life… All songs which have you singing the lyrics OF OTHER SONGS WHICH THEY HAVE BASED THEIR SONGS ON, however to mesh it all together, to play the ultimate cover band gig, to have 20,000 screaming 12 year olds thinking you’re the hottest thing since The Saddle Club…

Well isn’t that what rock n roll is all about?

FUN: Music, Culture and Entertainment

WORD UP! The Fursts always put on an amazing party in the car park of their publishing company; barbeque, booze, tunes, you name it. Always one of the best parties of the year. In 2002, they invited Jet along to play, just as the band were about to embark upon global famous-ness. This year they invited the so called “heirs” to the throne of next huge global monstrosity to come out of Melbourne (well Warrnambool at the very least), AIRBOURNE.

I’ve gotta say, the ridiculously fecking huge crowd at the Beat Christmas Party: Brought to you by Wrangler was wall to wall to hear the band that has reportedly been signed to Capitol Records for over $US2m. And let me tell you, from beside the mixing desk they sounded CRAP.

I’d heard their stage antics were crazy, that their very ACDC vibe was what Australia needed: a four to the floor, rock out with your cock out, head banging, piss drinking, fists sinking Aussie rock band FARKEN! What they are is a piss poor ACDC cover band. Derivative isn’t even the word. Derivative would imply that their songs are “ACCADACCA-like”. Hey that song sounds like “Thunderstruck”. That song is a bit like “Highway to Hell”. The thing is their songs aren’t even good enough to sound like any ACCADACCA songs. They’re simply not good enough.

But again, a great show by the Fursts, great party, great fun. BEAT ROCKS!

FUN: Music, Culture and Entertainment

One of the most ridiculous “solutions” to the Sydney race riots is the very boring, very American thing where a couple of actors go for a walk in the area wearing clever t-shirts bought from REMO.

In this case, Cate Blanchett and Claudia Karvan, two Coogee residents, went for a stroll down their local beach. No, not Cronulla. Not Maroubra. Their local, lovely Coogee Beach, where the chance of anything happening is bugger all! It’s like me and a couple of mates walking down Toorak Road to protest the failure of the latest WTO trade round in Doha. It’s like Sean Penn complaining about the response to the New Orleans hurricane by holding a dinner party in New York (not that he did, he actually got on a boat and went to New Orleans to have himself photographed by the three paparazzi he took along). RESPECT.

The funniest thing though is the quote from The Age today, where Blanchett, without the safety of scriptwriters, editors and consultants, comes out with her own pearls of wisdom, her own absolute MAGIC. Who would have thought that someone who makes a living out of reading other people’s writing could themselves have such nous to conjure up such a stream of consciousness and communication to rival the world’s greatest leaders. Ladies and Gentlemen, in an almost Martin Luther King Jnr. fashion, Blanchett springs on us a monologue of magic, a speech to echo through the ages.

Says Blanchett: “Violence and racism are bad“.

GENIUS.

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Sydney: Such superficial beauty of the harbour facade hides such a dark and ugly reality.

Sydney’s shame gives the whole of Australia a bad name.

THIS WOULD NEVER HAPPEN IN MELBOURNE

FREEDOM: Economics, Politics and Business