It took Matt Taibbi, a thirty-something writer for Rolling Stone magazine, to succinctly articulate the role played by Goldman Sachs, one of the corporate arch-villains behind the Global Financial Crisis. He commenced his 10,000 word missive in 2009 by proclaiming that the investment bank was “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money”. The article reverberated around the world, triggering widespread debate about the manner in which Goldman Sachs abused its market power to engineer asset bubbles and bend laws. It may come as some surprise to discover that the Australian bogan has its very own vampire squid problem, in the form of a 71 year old former door-to-door salesman of vacuum cleaners.
The first store co-owned by Gerry Harvey opened in 1961, and, after various co-owners and buyouts, Harvey Norman emerged in 1982. Today, Harvey Norman operates over 160 franchised stores in six countries, and is one of Australia’s most powerful retailers. Gerry Harvey, Australia’s hungriest mouth and squeakiest wheel, can thank the bogan for his current 1.2 billion dollar station in life. So what has he done to transform this disorganised drove of self-interested donkeys into an obedient sleigh-pulling collective?
Firstly, he has told the impulsive and greedy bogan that it doesn’t have to be patient. One of the pioneers of interest-free consumer finance in Australia, Harvey Norman has partnered with Flexirent and GE Money so that Gerry can insert his blood funnel into bogan bucks that don’t even exist yet. This time travelling funnel extends up to 48 months into the future. Despite Gerry being on the record as saying that Flexirent is a bad idea for the average Australian, his company will promote this type of finance to all of its customers. As for GE Money, 1.5 million Australians have taken out $5 billion of interest-free GE finance via Harvey Norman since 2004 (an average of $3,300 per person), which currently reverts to interest rates of up to 29.49%, four times the mortgage rate about which bogans squeal so tremulously.
While the bogan’s attention span and values system limit it to only participating in one-off acts of charity that involve celebrities, Gerry Harvey has taken boganic benevolence to an entirely new, subterranean level. Asked in 2008 about the role that he and Harvey Norman played in the community, Gerry offered the following insight: “You could go out and give a million dollars to a charity tomorrow to help the homeless. You could argue that it is just wasted. They are not putting anything back into the community. It might be a callous way of putting it but what are they doing? You are helping a whole heap of no-hopers to survive for no good reason. They are just a drag on the whole community.” Indeed, it can be concluded that Gerry Harvey only values human life if it passes the credit checks to obtain 48 months interest-free finance.
But somehow, the bogan still loves Gerry Harvey. He has developed his pro-bogan image via regular appearances on bogan information-sources Today Tonight and A Current Affair, where he portrays himself as the heroic defender of the decent underdog. This is a triumph in public relations, with very few bogans realising that Gerry is shamelessly using television appearances to campaign for the maintenance and expansion of his own extortionate empire. One highly amusing example of this has been Gerry’s ongoing flame war with online electronics entrepreneur Ruslan Kogan, 43 years his junior. Gerry, who himself does not use a computer, spent years stubbornly refusing to participate in the Australian retailing landscape’s shift towards online, and routinely engages in angry scaremongering via the media to remind the bogan that P!nk will never tour again if bogans desert his highly profitable superstore retailing method.
More recently, he has been the most vocal opponent of the prevailing tax-free status of overseas online purchases of less than $1,000, which has seemingly progressed from indifference to “urgent” on Gerry’s lips in the space of a month. For decades, Harvey Norman enjoyed buying its stock on the cheap from Asia, but Gerry has concluded that it Costs Australian Jobs when anyone other than Gerry does it. The power of the interwebs threatened to enable bogans nationwide to bypass Gerry’s supply chain blood funnel, so he fired up his bogan-wrangling media machine in the hope of Gerrymandering Australia’s rules.
With the boss of Myer also currently sharing Gerry’s bluff about setting up an online retail function based in China as a protest to the tax laws, Gerry is hopeful that he can blackmail the ATO into legislating against the Australian consumer, and for Gerry Harvey. This is the Harvey modus operandi – whenever something is not to his personal liking, he bleats to the media and government until it changes, all the while reserving the right to change his once-vociferous position when it becomes convenient in the immediate term. In short, he’s the ultra-bogan.
More often than not, though, Gerry does not want change. As the kingpin of one of Australia’s most boganic businesses, he wants things to stay just as they are. This requires the bogan being forever ensnared in his franchised web of superstores, signing up for an interest free deal on a maxtreme 3D LCD LED HD HDMI WTF TV for a mere 30% more bogan bucks than it’s really worth. However, the bogan’s enwebment is not entirely to its displeasure, because the relationship between it and Gerry can be seen as symbiotic. In it, the bogan gets “free” consumer electronics and formal living area furniture, while Gerry the vampire squid gets the bogan’s soul. Forever.
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LOL. “You could go out and give a million dollars to a charity tomorrow to help the homeless. You could argue that it is just wasted. They are not putting anything back into the community. It might be a callous way of putting it but what are they doing? You are helping a whole heap of no-hopers to survive for no good reason. They are just a drag on the whole community.” Very true.
For a minute, when I read that I thought it was your brand of satire, Fi. Sadly, no, and now I feel I must shower because they’re words so filthy that they make me feel unclean.
Never have I read a better( or truer) piece of writing, in regards to Gerry, brillaint!
A bit like the rich creating assett bubbles. A drag on the community. Just ask Ireland, the US and the UK how useful the rich are. Possibly coming to Australia.
Harvey Norman is in Ireland too…
I read somewhere that the Irish arm of HN is going broke.
Gerry got in hot water not too long ago for making a joke about the 1840s Irish potato famine… that might have something to do with it
No doubt the Irish took to their “buy now, pay later” method of purchase, drunk on conspicuous consumption from the mid-90s until 2008.
The hangover in Ireland would be particularly nasty, for their (now found to be spurious) wealth was completely based upon finance and debt courtesy of deregulation in the early 1990s: there was some small degree of manufacturing, but it wasn’t as if it was a powerhouse there, nor were there any natural resources to exploit (and I use the last word with emphasis, as we here in sunny Australia lean far too heavily on exploiting said bounty, shipping it off by the sh¡tload and paying a hundred-fold markup on the finished product imported back).
Now that this house of cards has fallen down, Ireland has demonstrated the precarious nature of basing an entire economy upon borrowing.
I just heard on the radio that we’re going to sell roo meat to China. Maybe Ireland will end up living off roo too.
Spent an hour in the local HN store after work today having a salesperson go through the pros and cons of a number of cameras.
After that I thanked the lass and insisted she accept a tip in appreciation of all her help.
Came home and am putting the knowledge to work finding a great deal online for the model of camera that took my fancy.
Try it folks! very satisfying all round ;).
And Singapore. Christ. Can’t even go to another hemisphere without my retinas being insulted by yet another HN concrete box.
Fortunately, I did not see a hyper-loud, visually aggressive “NOTHING TO PAY FOR EIGHTEEN MONTHS! NOTHING! NOTHING AT ALL! COME IN TO OUR STORE TODAY!” ad on Singapore telly.
Also, Singaporean culture is very pro-saving. I don’t know how Gerry’s business model, which depends on customers being congenitally unable to delay gratification, works there.
The expat community will keep it afloat.
Singapore may be pro saving but it is equally – if not more – aspirational, especially about foreign brands.
Everything here seems way more monopolistic in some ways – don’t even get me started on airports and Macquarie Bank.
Mmmm…. delayed gratification…. mmmmm…
The rich get rich by keeping and making others poor. They keep everything for themselves.
it’s not even funny.
in character or not.
Simple, Chubbs: I just ignore that born-to-rule matron’s prating.
Utterly irrelevant, be it real or a cardboard caricature.
Pop Quiz…!
“You will always have the poor, but you will not always have Me.”
Thus spoke:
a) Richard Branson
b) Jesus Christ
c) Gerry Harvey
d) Every deluded wanker ever
e) All of the above
Jesus, not long before he was to die.
F*cking homeless, how do they work?
Ahh, I see what you did there Pendant…just like those pesky magnets…
The only thing worse than a bogan is a narrow minded person with a lack of respect for humanity. Maybe you should venture out of a leafy Toorak from time to time and live in the real world.
not quite on topic but do yourself a favour and read the article mentioned at the start of the blog, great read.
We’ll put a link up there. TBL
Something tastes bitter.
I’ve went to Harvey Norman once, to buy an iron. All I remember is the sales assistant showing us a massive range of irons and then telling me on the quiet that she had recently bought the iron I was looking at (original salesmanship there), and it “great to use when I don’t want to get out the big iron”. No doubt she has a formal ironing nook in her McMansion.
Probably on of those pro-looking, but never actually used in a pro setting, irons with a separate steam chamber that cost $500 and more.
I still have my Sunbeam from the mid-90s, one of the last models made locally, before they went and followed Aussie tradition by sending their manufacturing offshore, of which you pay just as much for similarly specified irons made in China, which somehow don’t seem to last as long (at work, we’re onto our third iron in as many years, yet the organisation still insist on using Sunbeams, as if the Australian design and engineering stamp on their products makes a scintilla of difference nowadays).
I had a strict no ironing policy until about 10 years ago. Now I am confronted with The Big Iron! You would think it would be cheaper to send clothes out for dry cleaning if they cost $500+? I say bypass the Big Iron and give the money to sex worker so she doesn’t have to give any interest free service to Gerry this xmas.
@ v’v
No joke, there was a McMansion featured in the new homes supplement in The Weekend Worst with a laundry that had a plasma screen, so they could watch the telly whilst pressing fluoro safety shirts.
the results could be interesting when the washing machine floods. i’m doubting that plasmas and water mix well.
Just like the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas has TV screens built into the bathroom mirrors. To think some poor soul in China is right now giving birth to a deformed child because they had to eat fish out of a river polluted by the concoction of chemicals used to make these tvs so white trash can iron and crap with the TV on to comfort them.
I’ll never be able to watch ABC1 without feeling guilt pangs ever again, Viv!
Imagine the guilt I feel because I saw a documentary on this very issue, on my TV… I should bin it and get a new, untainted TV, and then get on with my life like I have never seen it.
I now feel like my Harvey-bought food processor is tainted with the fallen souls of bogans.
Your food will taste like guilt for years to come!
not to mention deformed chinese babies.
Arrrrgh I can’t even get a refund on it!!! I bought it with a gift certificate!
I’d just peg it into the nearest river and go out and buy a new one that doesn’t make food taste like guilty, chewy, deformed Chinese babies.
formal ironing nook, hahahahahaha.
I own a sh*t iron, no ironing board, I loath ironing and refuse to do it, if it needs ironing I will dryclean it, or not buy it. HN will never make me buy a maXtreme iron; ever.
You keep on coming up with great hits TBL. Be careful you might end up like The Beatles and U2.
Watch your trolling there martin re the former, otherwise you’ll have Shirley and I to answer to ;)
Hey I love The Beatles and U2. I consider myself something of a Beatles connoisseur. Not anything on your level though. :)
Sorry, martin, I got the wrong of the stick there! I thought that you were referring to the fact with so many hits, that TBL might get co-opted by the bogan, as if this were some sort of validation for all the things the bogan indeed does like and could dig the irony ‘n’ sh¡t ‘cos it was down widdit, and that we commenters were such a bunch of knockers.
Kind of like the bogan buying Beatles or U2 best-ofs, baecause they can sing along to the hits, but not get beneath the skin in the way that the members of both bands set out to do—I have a deep appreciation of The Beatles and too am something of a student of their music and history; as for U2, as much as Bono is a bit of spanker who likes to save the world like Lennon did, but lacking the latter’s facility for sharing his own brutal self-assessments (would Bono Vox ever cut anything modelled on John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band? I sincerely doubt it), I can appreciate their talents without allowing their (especially Bono’s) image to tarnish it too much.
P.S. By the way, do you have both the stereo and mono box sets, martin? I really like the mono mixes and the balance of the soundstage on those; that set is guarantee to scare the bogan no end, as well as annoy the hell out of them in their automatic assumption that stereo, with two channels, is better than mono, and that they [sic] should’of had the albums (read: either the Red and Blue or 1) all remixed in 5.1, so they could blast it from their fückoff home theatre system, etc…
Mind you, a tastefully mixed SACD 5.1 version of either Pepper or Abbey Road would be a civine listening experience, as was finally hearing their eponymous double white variant with the distinctive monaural mixes in remastered audio.
Oops…”divine”, rather.
what would happen if you were gifted Danger Mouse The Gray Album for Christmas?
I am a Beatles fan to the point of obsession and I absolutely LOVE The Grey Album.
am a jay z fan that loved the gray album……… tis fun to trip up faux beetles fans by asking their opinion on the album to be met with a errrrrrrrr what
I’m also a Jay Z fan, so it couldn’t really go wrong for me. A lot of Beatles fans I know don’t like it though, and I can understand that.
yeah its like the any of Girltalk’s albums you either love it or hate it with passion
ohh and don’t forget jay z and linkin park mashup one.hehe… didn’t know he made one with korn *shudders
I think I actually meant Linkin Park. They’re pretty much the same thing to me.
I think it’s great! Wouldn’t be surprised if it spurred them (and their estates) to create Love, the Cirque Du Soleil soundtrack to the show of the same name, which utilises mashup, which was released in 2006, a little while after The Grey Album.
It did, in fact. So George Martin Jnr. (forget his name) says anyway. Unfortunately, it also spurred Jay Z to collaborate with Korn. Every silver cloud has a shit lining.
yeah was into the whole nu metal thing when i was 15 thought i was hardcore……
@Shirley
Giles Martin is his name.
Here’s a fantasy scenario: if you had either Julian or Sean Lennon (or both), Dhani Harrison, James McCartney and Zak Starkey form a band and have Giles Martin engineering and/or producing, you could call them “Here Come The Sons”.
Haha! Yes. Yes you could. Quite a fantasy scenario indeed.
Lol. Nah man. I only own about two CDs these days, sold about 200 cds on ebay. I’ve just got mp3s. I played The Beatles to death when I had them on cd and still listen to them occasionally on mp3.
They played “Baby you’re a rich man” at the end of “The Social Network” which I thought was a nice touch. I love that period for Paul’s bass, the Rickenbacker. I used to play bass but never had about a million dollars to buy one. Ok, probably about $3k.
Did you see the Magical Mystery Tour movie? I bet you did.
As for U2 I realise that there is hypocrisy going on, I just don’t care. I just love their music they were a big part of my teenage years.
Guess what? I play bass, and a Rickenbacker 4001 V63 no less, a vintage reissue in Mapleglo (natural finish) almost identical to what Macca plays. With Tomastik Infeld flatwounds too. Sounds very Paul-y. Probably one of the last material possessions (along with my Hasselblad medium format film camera) I’d ever part with. Looks horn and plays like a dream…I get completely carried away just playing it and get even more so when herbally inspired. I could become technically proficient in playing, but I doubt anyone could play bass with the rare combination of tastefulness and inventiveness as he does. Especially on the Rick, that was the instrument where his finest playing came from: listen to “Rain”, “And Your Bird Can Sing”, “A Day In The Life”, “Hey Bulldog” “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey” and “Something”. All on that one and same bass, just using variations on the pickup settings and the string mute pad. And as twee as the song is itself, “Silly Love Songs” has bass riffs one can be very proud of.
Now, as I’ve mentioned to our esteemed colleague Chubbs, I’m off to make like Macca, but try not get like he did in Japan, Sweden, Scotland or Barbados.
I used to love playing along with “Something”. Best bass line ever. Well, the most beautiful imo.
Led Zeppelin’s “The Lemon Song” is also a thoroughly awesome bass line, but over my head. Mostly improvised I suppose and I never had that level of theory. I only ever knew major and minor scales, and a blues one, pretty amatuer. I had a Fender Prodigy, which was ok, the action and playability was there but a bit bright and metallic in sound.
What would the f@cking bogan know about sound quality?!! Stupid dicks download crap, thin and lifeless 128kbps iTunes versions because marketing has told them it’s kool and the latest buzz. Probably the same tragic f*cks that fall for Yoko’s annual, exploitative grab for cash from Lennon!
Strange that Bono hasn’t stepped in to help out his own country in their time of need…
well he uses a tax haven anyway, so i don’t think he really cares at all.
beautiful.
As someone who stays away from ACA, TT, et al I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing this odious man.
Not that I purchase crap on HP but I’ll consciously stay away from this slimy toads emporium from now on!
I shopped at their factory seconds outlet recently. It was really quite ok. Good stuff cheap. The bogan does not shop there because it is like, old superseeded stuff and not much choice.
“CHOICE”. And the freedom of
One word I use with reservation and qualification, for it is bandied around irresponsibly all-too-often. Sure, we do have freedom to choose, most of the time, for various aspects in our lives. I find it however nefarious when those alleged proponents of said choice, particularly of those who live on the Right of the political spectrum, use it as a means to further their ulterior ends whilst purporting to be championing the cause of liberating the lumpenproletariat.
QED Gerry Bloody Harvey and his somnambulant monotone spruiking: he’ll champion Freedom Of Choice, as long as it facilitates the expansion of his big-box empire.
Fücking vampire squid. Hang on. Let me not tar the nevertheless voracious mollusc with the same brush as that appliance and furniture peddler. [clears throat] Let’s try that again.
Fücking scumbag.
is a fucking vampire squid actually a fucking mollusc?
or a fucking cephalaopod?
or fucking something?
it’s not a fucking cetatcean.
‘cos that’s a fucking whale.
Vampyroteuthis infernalis (the Vampire Squid) is fully referrable to as Kingdom Animalia, Phyllum Mollusca, Class Cephalapoda, Sub-Class Coleiodea, Super-order Octopodiformes, Order Vampyromorphida, Sub-order Vampyromorphina, Family Vampyroteuthidae, Genus Vampyroteuthis, Species infernalis.
Bravo. One of the best, TBL! You could also add that Gerry proclaims he is also Australia’s ‘Barometer’ on the Australian Economy… he’s even sucked Kochie in… which probably wasn’t all that hard.
So when China no longer needs our raw materials, after they can no longer fuel the United States’ indebtedness to fuel their consumption of China’s manufactured wares and when the European Union’s economies further break traction, slowing trade with China, again for their finished goods, as well as China’s own internal financial ossues coming to a head, not to mention the fact that they cannot rely on their own internal economy, of which has not achieved a broad-based sophistication, this Lucky Cüntry may still have some dirt left, but neither anyone left to sell it to, nor any savings to service an internal economy and even if we did have any of the latter, we’ve barely a shadow of our manufacturing industries left to fashion durable goods out of the aforementioned dirt.
When (and not if) this chain events comes to a full bloom of Paterson’s curse, then I’d love to see Gerry Harvey be the weatherman reading the barometer of the Australian economy.
Cue Donald Horne.
The Lucky Country was remarkably prescient in its scenario for Australia in the future from its viewpoint in 1964.
Still a compelling read, possibly more so with the benefit of hindsight. Now amongst the Penguin Classics range, all yours for $9.95.
Older bogans called him a communist at the time…nowadays, the younger bogans would call him financially illiterate and ill-informed.
Or whatever buzz word is used to shut up someone with a different opinion to the masses.
does penguin classics rock or what?
we’ve had Hunter S, Geoff Robertson, Donna Tartt, Bill Burroughs, Richard Fienemann, Ken Kesey, Patrick Susskind, Hemmingway? did I see Camus? and who did that thing… um, The Trial. was that there? gawd.
we were buying them like magazines when we were travelling.
so good.
sorry bit drunk.
Kafka.
LOVE the penguin classics.
I bought the edition of which you speak just last week from A&R! Indeed, compelling reading. Yes, it’s interesting seeing how much Australia has changed in 46 years. It’s even more interesting seeing how much Australia hasn’t changed.
Donald Horne described an Australia in 1964 that is suburban, conformist, narrow-minded, xenophobic, apathetic, obsessed with material possessions, completely uninterested in intellectual abstraction or even aesthetics.
Things Bogans Like, on the other hand, describes an Australia in 2010 that is suburban, conformist, narrow-minded, xenophobic, apathetic, obsessed with material possessions, completely uninterested in intellectual abstraction or even aesthetics.
By the way – a pendantic quibble. The edition is actually in the Popular Penguins range (the ones with the orange covers which cost only $9.95). The Penguin Classics are rather more expensive, usually have a scholarly introduction, and have nice artwork on the front that is sometimes suggestive of the book’s themes.
@ urbanreverie
Thanks for clarifying for me! Clumsy oversight on my part.
But, geez, aren’t they great, the Popular Penguins?
“completely uninterested in intellectual abstraction or even aesthetics”
Urban, it isn’t just the bogans.
It’s harder here to find people who value reading and the arts than anywhere else (haven’t been to the US so can’t comment). Particularly true of men here-if you do you have to establish that you are keenly interested in sport to escape the poofter tag.
My
The prized bogan idiot whom the article about was also whinging that the stimulus package paid by the Rudd Government (you know, the one that kept us out of deep recession, at least temporarily) was useless as ‘all the money had gone…’ – it had gone to his shops – people bought things cash, and not through finance.
What a tool.
I think his gripe was that a lot of it probably didn’t make it into his pockets, as his ability to sell over priced items relies on bogans having no money, but being allowed to borrow from him (a rare act of generousity that most other retailers haven’t found in their hearts to do). His prices seem like a worthy trade-off to the bogan as they can worry about payment in 2 years, a relative eternity to someone with their foresight.
Sure, they could have used the stimulus payment to chip away at the average $3300 debt they had to GH, but that’s no fun and far too responsible for the frivolous bogue. GH wouldn’t have been keen on this either as it would be a slice of the 30% interest he wouldn’t be getting on money already owed to him.
So as it were, there were suddenly a heap of bogans with $900 actually in their possession for a change, and this opened up the range of retailers they were elligible to shop at. Unfortunately for GH, anything his stores sold were cheaper at said other retailers, and the bogans much touted aussie values of loyalty took a break. For everything else a bogan with $900 is inclined to spend on, it is likely realm of racing, gamining and liquor would have had a fat payday. Mr Harvey had to watch the festivities from the stands.
I thought they were Norman Ross stores until they were snapped up by Alan Bond in 1981. Gerry got sacked and set up Harvey Norman in 1982. The faster they spread, the further down the gurgler Norman Ross went, eventually going under in 1992.
True about the Norman Ross bit. We had that in the initial draft, but found another source saying that the Harvey Norman name went back that far too. Will amend. TBL
My washing machine is refusing to comply this morning. Let’s hope I don’t have to sell my soul to Gerry again.
how did that work out Shirl?
I meant to offer you some advice:
Rule 1 of motorcycle mechanics.
“If at first you don’t succeed, try a bigger hammer.”
It works for computers, don’t know about washing machines but.
I went home to visit the family a few years ago, opened up the washing machine to do a load of washing (obviously), and saw that my father had somehow incorporated a plastic picnic plate into his repairs… I didn’t even ask. The machine continues to work though, and it must 20 years old by now.
yeah, but they don’t make plastic picnic plates like they used to…
quite true, i’m not even sure if you can still get them in burnt orange and chocolate brown?
I fiddled with it a bit, then got the dick of it, unplugged it, waited until this morning, plugged it in again, and it worked! Is rule 2 ‘if at first you don’t succeed, put if off until tomorrow’? If not, it should be.
it is now.
Head over to appliancesonline.com.au – they even take the old clunker away for recycling, and perhaps it’ll have some kind of voodoo-effect on GH.
great article. could have also added how all their employees are completely useless.
forgive me,
but
isn’t that true of the whole retail sector?
you’d think all the morons are labourers or cleaners or something,
but NO!
they’re all working in shops.
no, harvey norman seem to have particularly useless employees. so do dick smith. they often can’t even be bothered talking to customers to see what they’re looking for. so neither store gets any of my money.
I find it hilarious that Ruslan Kogan (a) uses TT to pimp his wares, and (b) has a surname that rhymes with ‘bogan’, but no right-minded bogan would be seen dead with any Kogan appliances in their house.
Maybe Ruslan needs to get into bed with GE?
Also ‘Kogan’ is Japanese for testicles (when appropriately pronounced), which would make a Kogan MaXScreen* TV the perfect compensation appliance.
*Not actually a TV model.
My TV’s been picking up WTF signal for years, am I ahead of the curve?
some sort of inarticulate apoplexy has overcome me.
I turned 13 in 1980. My Nan got sick that year. Anyway, one day some nice people from the local church came visiting and my Mum took them out the back to meet Nan, who was quietly dying in the “winter room”. They were very nice to her and gave her some bread and wine and told her Poppy was waiting in the clouds with Baby Jesus. This seemed to cheer Nan up and as her days grew shorter she began to speak regularly with Poppy and Baby Jesus until she went to meet them one night while I was at the 24hour skate at the Caloundra Rollerdrome.
My Mum was so impressed with what the nice people from the church had done for Nan and started going along. After a bit I started going too. Mostly because it seemed to really piss my dad off, but also because I thought this Jesus cat seemed a bit cool, saying we should all be nice to each other and stuff. Anyway around about the same time I also met a girl called Caroline. She didn’t know about Baby Jesus, but she did know about Billy Bragg and Marijuana. I became confused that the people at the church had no Idea who Billy Bragg was, despite the fact he seemed to be pushing a very similar line to Baby Jesus, but they were emphatic that they did know about Marijuana and that I should completely leave it alone, even though Baby Jesus (at some remove) had apparently made it. To cut a long story slightly shorter, Caroline, Billy and Mary Jane put up a far more convincing argument than Baby Jesus ever could have (to be honest it was all a bit vague in the first place) and although Caroline has passed into the mists of time (never got anywhere with her BTW) I never really got over the messages Billy and Mary Jane left me with.
Billy says “It’s ok, there’s enough for everyone. We should respect every link in the chain and make sure everyone can have a fulfilling and purposeful life” Mary Jane says “It’s cool. Relax and smell the flowers.”
And so it went. Sadly I grew up under the misguided notion that all men were created equal, there was enough for everyone and we would all be fine as long as no-one was greedy and everyone did their bit.
Then in 1984 I met John Langer. He was my economics teacher. He informed me I was wrong. He told me about “scarcity” and “utility”. Whilst there may well be plenty of the stuff we need there was not enough of the stuff we want apparently. And furthermore, some people weren’t aware of this. Some people didn’t even know there were things they wanted and so someone developed “marketing” to tell them about the things they didn’t know they wanted. Pretty soon I realised every one wanted everything. Or perhaps the words of They Might be Giants seminal 1986 release “Ana Eng”; I don’t want the world, I just want your half might be closer to the truth. By the 1990’s it was apparent that no-one had any idea who the hell Billy Bragg or John Langer were and had no time to find out as they were eagerly waiting to be told what to buy next because all the other crap they had already bought had broken or the neighbours had bought a better one and were now laughing at them for having broken crappy things (mr langer failed to explain one of the pivotal points of marketing and economics which is that the inherent utility of any given widget is directly and inversely proportionate to the period of time one has owned said widget).
where was I?
oh yes.
Naive and Romantic.
that’s right. apparently some people had a go at giving everybody everything, but some marketing people from “The Free World” mounted a massive campaign to tell the people about all the stuff they didn’t know they needed. unfortunately the people in the country where they were trying to give everybody everything didn’t hear because their leaders intercepted the message and were swayed by it and took everything for themselves. Then the people in the free world said the people who wanted to give everybody everything were just a bunch of greedy pricks and trying to give everybody everything was inherently flawed unless they had enough money to pay for it. As an aside, many years later One man, who happened to be leading the free world at the time, said “why don’t we give people free health care so they will be healthy enough to work to get all the things they don’t know they need?”
but the rest of the free world crucified him.
lost my train of thought again.
then Gerry Harvey said “You could go out and give a million dollars to a charity tomorrow to help the homeless. You could argue that it is just wasted. They are not putting anything back into the community. It might be a callous way of putting it but what are they doing? You are helping a whole heap of no-hopers to survive for no good reason. They are just a drag on the whole community.” and the rest of the free world said “yeah. Gerry’s right. let’s go and kill all the sick, aged, retarded, indolent and those below working age who are a drag on the whole community!” but nothing happened because no-one was willing to pay for it.
anyway where was I?
…that’s right.
everyone got so sad and jealous that they didn’t have everyone else’s half, mostly because a small group of people were given heaps of stuff they didn’t know they wanted and told to tell everyone else that they actually bought all that stuff because they were more beautiful than everyone else and then everyone else got really uptight and insecure about it because they didn’t know where they could buy all the beauty they didn’t need to look like the people who got all the free stuff. More marketing people came and tried to sell people stuff which they said would make them look like the people who got all the free stuff, but it didn’t really work and people started to get sick in the mind and having surgery and starving themselves and not knowing what to wear and in the end just not going out at all because they were afraid everyone would hate them for not being beautiful.
it’s all a bit sad really.
I just gave up and had another spliff.
*applause*
Bravo Chubster, Bravo…
*standing ovation!*
Well done Chubs. I have no ability to write more than 3 sensible sentences but a wise man wrote this in 1989 out of frustration with where the 80’s took the world and it is still wildly relevant.
There’s colors on the street
Red, white and blue
People shufflin’ their feet
People sleepin’ in their shoes
But there’s a warnin’ sign on the road ahead
There’s a lot of people sayin’ we’d be better off dead
Don’t feel like Satan, but I am to them
So I try to forget it, any way I can.
Keep on rockin’ in the free world,
Keep on rockin’ in the free world
Keep on rockin’ in the free world,
Keep on rockin’ in the free world.
I see a woman in the night
With a baby in her hand
Under an old street light
Near a garbage can
Now she puts the kid away, and she’s gone to get a hit
She hates her life, and what she’s done to it
There’s one more kid that will never go to school
Never get to fall in love, never get to be cool.
Keep on rockin’ in the free world,
Keep on rockin’ in the free world
Keep on rockin’ in the free world,
Keep on rockin’ in the free world.
We got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man
We got a kinder, gentler,
Machine gun hand
We got department stores and toilet paper
Got styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer
Got a man of the people, says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn, got roads to drive.
Keep on rockin’ in the free world,
Keep on rockin’ in the free world
Keep on rockin’ in the free world,
Keep on rockin’ in the free world.
I know that guy!
he said this too.
I’m an accident
I was driving way too fast
Couldn’t stop though
So I let the moment last
I’m for rollin’
I’m for tossin’ in my sleep
It’s not guilt though
It’s not the company I keep
People my age
They don’t do the things I do
They go somehwere
While I run away with you
I got my friends
And I got my children too
I got her love
She’s got my love too
I can’t hear you
But I feel the things you say
I can’t see you
But I see what’s in my way
Now I’m floatin’
Cause I’m not tied
to the ground
Words I’ve spoken
Seem to leave a hollow sound
On the long plain
See the rider in the night
See the chieftain
See the braves
in cool moonlight
Who will love them
When they take another life
Who will hold them
When they tremble
for the knife
Voicemail numbers
On an old computer screen
Rows of lovers
Parked forever in a dream
Screaming sirens
Echoing across the bay
To the old boats
From the city far away
Homeless heroes
Walk the streets
of their hometown
Rows of zeros
On a field
that’s turning brown
They play baseball
They play football
under lights
They play card games
And we watch them every night
Need distraction
Need romance and candlelight
Need random violence
Need entertainment tonight
Need the evidence
Want the testimony of
Expert witnesses
On the brutal crimes of love
I was too tired
To see the news
when I got home
Pulled the curtain
Fell into bed alone
Started dreaming
Saw the rider once again
I’m the Ocean.
Neil Young
(with Pearl Jam as backing band.
nice.)
Shirl will f*cking love this. She is not down with Neil.
shirl is wrong.
maybe it was her payed giga bucks for the dylan handwritten original.
“The Times They are A Changin'”
just not the way you thought Mr Zimmerman.
Thanks for the rambling rant, Chubbs: you’ve got your point across, regardless of how inchoate you think it was. I always take some insights from what you share with us here, for sometimes when we are not so silver-tongued is when we best express our turmoil and rage.
Don’t mind if I light up too: it is my day off anyway…I know when it is appropriate to and when it isn’t, unlike any stripe of bogan.
I think I’ll now run my fingers down the neck of the Rick after I take my inspiration…
Jesus Bag O. Hope Rick is ok with that
Rick, as in Rickenbacker bass guitar :P
Actually, I call my bass Alison, my axe-girlfriend!
after elvis costello’s mum?
No, after an ex I was quite fond of. A fück-up, like me, another tortured soul, but someone I actually really liked, but our union was star-crossed.
Maybe had we met a bit later, after more therapy to resolve each of our own then-unresolved issues and had the chance to develop a friendship first rather than rushing headlong ‘tween the sheets, maybe it would’ve lasted longer than it did.
I normally never go back for seconds with exes, however I would be prepared to give it another shot if in the rare circumstance that we both crossed paths and were willing and able…
As for Ricks, they are really hard to come by, especially here in Aus, as there’s no local distributor. And if there were, you’d be generally waiting 12 months for it to ship. So no instant gratification for bogans there. I bought mine—a 2000 model—used in excellent condition, from a guitar store in Perth for $3500…now that was good happenstance, for I had the money expressly for that purpose and I had just started shopping around for one. It was exactly what I was after, too. With this Alison, it has worked out very well!
rick rocks turnips.
rick is real style.
bogans like strats. cos that’s the only one they know.
I had a hohner 5 string in the eighties.
was pretty gay.
never learnt to play it.
and I’m accidentally drunk on a monday because we have all these “rough red”s that we really should just get out of the way now as space is a bit of a premium, but I opened this bottle with a hand made label on it says. “Coonawarra Cabernet 2009” like a label your nanna would put on a jam jar. this will be ok I thork (we’ve already had an 02 rhone blend and half a bottle of gin) and bugger me! it’s awesome! classic new world cabernet! fruity as, fine tannins well balanced blah blah blah. Terra Rossa Soil mate! people sell the connawarra short I reckon. so we drank a couple. and then I put the rest away.
where was I?
When I was in Sydney in October, I paid a visit to Jackson’s Rare Guitars in Annandale: tip, bring a paper cup to catch the drool! Whoa, the axes there are most delectable, with some fine vintage examples commanding eye-watering prices…some excellent 1950s wood nudging towards $80,000! Ouch! But would sure be far more satisfying than investing in stocks, not to mention far less risky and more ethical.
Whilst there, I got to have a play on a Rick 4003/5, which is a five-string version, the same colour as mine, thus would’ve made a great companion to Al.
Pity I didn’t have a lazy $5,500 spare though :( Something to save up for after I get my hands on a rockin’ Hiwatt, Ampeg or vintage 60s Fender Bassman rig. But my current setup, where I run my Rick through a medium-sized Hiwatt combo, gets me a classic British sound and does me OK for now.
Another TMBG quote that is relevant here is ‘everybody wants a rock to wind a piece of string around’.
make a little birdhouse in your soul Shirley.
“If I were a carpenter I’d hammer on my piglet.”
Euphemism? or Neil Young?
TMBG quote.
Where are they now? I know they did the Daily Show theme song, but are they still making albums? It must be about 10 year since i’ve listened to them.
Are they doing kids albums? or was that a one off?
They’ve made 3 kids albums which are all great, but especially ‘Here Come The ABCs’. They podcast a lot too.
Cool, will have to check it out
This is my favourite. D is for Drums
TMBG: the very definition of a cult band: wonderfully offbeat with a hardcore loyal fan base that remains true to them today. And even when their lyrics are serious, there’s no angry, bombastic rage.
Thus they are the one of the definitively antibogan bands.
True that, Turnips. I am one of those loyal fans of which you speak, and I love that now I am ‘grown up’ and a parent, they are making music that I can listen to with my son and enjoy every bit as much as he does.
I didn’t know that.
that’s cute.
Podcast is another thing I can’t figure out.
“let’s go and kill all the sick, aged, retarded, indolent and those below working age who are a drag on the whole community!”… That Gerry fella and Hitler would have been soul mates.
one of the best yet
wasn’t Malcolm Turnbull the head of Goldman Sachs.au
at some point?
just wonderin’
is all.
Breaking news – Our Warnie has been poling Liz Hurley.
The man is a f*cking legend. Bogans applaud Australia wide.
Shane Warne’s casualties have been bemused, befuddled and bewildered…he can add bedazzled to that list now…
He is bowling on a sticky wicket!
*nice movie reference Prince*
1. wouldn’t you love to roll over a leggy for Liz?
2. he’s still our best spin bowler, despite being retired long enough to visit the solarium more times than Clare Oliver, teeth whitener and lambo dealership.
TBL – what’s your beef with GH?
Fools and their money are easily parted. In the bogans’ case, it is parted in exchange for last year’s maxxtreme plasma with megabass surround sound system.
Capitalism at its best.
Gerry’s regular and predictable boganesque rantings differentiate him from others who get rich from understanding the bogan’s desires. Gerry is part of the problem, not part of the containment plan. TBL
I dunno, Mitch. It couldn’t possibly be that the bogan’s inability to plan its finances and its addiction to debt, an addiction which is so often enabled by Mr G. Harvey, is putting our entire economy in peril?
Very paternalistic view. I also don’t accept that interest free tvs are putting the economy in jeopardy.
I couldn’t care less that his clientele end up on the bankruptcy list of the FMC.
Choices. Just because you’re stupid, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to make them.
i agree with this. the genius of shifting debt load from institutions to individuals means less risk to the establishment. we are getting to the point where we will all be in perpetual debt in one form or another, it is the only way to achieve ‘growth’ in an economy that consumes more than it produces. of course it can’t last forever but don’t tell anyone!
Privatising debt was exactly how Captain Smirk (Peter Costello for those who’ve forgotten) managed to reduce the Australian Government’s debt. A stunning mirage, but a mirage nonetheless.
Instead of the Government assuming debt, they sourced it out to private companies (via privatisation of former assets, then floated on the stock exchange) and individuals (our personal indebtedness levels had grown exponentially between 1996 and 2007).
Yeah, I don’t care if one or two bogans haul themselves into the Federal Magistrates Court to file for bankruptcy. But what about when it’s a few hundred thousand? Just think. Hundreds of thousands of bogans defaulting on their debts on their McMansions, sports-pack Falcons and Commodores, pool tables, plasma screen TVs, jet skis, stainless steel appliances and four credit cards because they don’t know how to delay gratification, plan their finances, save up for a rainy day or even do mental arithmetic?
Bogan borrowers default on their debt to the banks. Banks in turn default on their obligations to savers and the money market. Sharemarket collapses. Investor and consumer confidence dries up. Another million are thrown out of work.
But hey, it’s all OK isn’t it Mitch, because people must have the freedom to make the wrong choices, no matter how socially harmful or economically unsustainable. Isn’t that right?
we’re all free to start another gfc.
gotta love choice.
Yeah. F#ck honest work. Ponzis for the win.
Urban, please be careful with what you write.
What you described there is the future I see coming. It genuinely frightens me.
That’s not entirely true. GH wants to stop bogues from doing online shopping thus not buying stuff at whatever ruinous price he sets. As TBL notes, it is anti-competitive and yet Gerry thinks he can get away with it.
This.
He only starts squawking once the tide of $$ moves direction from him (after ignoring the warning signs of the last decade)
It’s not anti-competitive seeking that imports < $1k are subject to the same GST provisions as the rest of the products on the market. If the contract is formed in Australia, regardless of value or where the goods originating, the same taxation rules ought to apply.
I admit that he has a de facto monopoly on a large segment of the bogan home wares/entertainment market, but that is simply because the bogan is too stupid or lazy to use a yellowpages or shop around.
If they are too stupid to shop online or use a direct wholesaler then so be it.
Mitch I am not an economist but it is clear that the Australian consumer pays a price due to whatever trade barriers are in place here. The other day I wanted to buy a US magazine which costs 9$ in the US and 40$ here. The bookseller said there was little they could do about it. Its unclear to me as to why I should bear this difference and why the industry here wants that I pay this high amount even if I order it online.
Plus there is the pot kettle black of Harvey Norman using China to make its products as its cheaper to do so.
“If they are too stupid to shop online or use a direct wholesaler then so be it” – I thought the whole point of the recent shenanigans with Gerry Harvey is that if you think you are outsmarting the system by doing so, they are going to lobby so you pay a price.
Exactly, the whole campaign of GH’s is not in the interest of generating more revenue for the Commonwealth (despite what he says), it’s to discourage people buying elsewhere. It is anti-competitive to put a penalty on consumers that utilise a free market and the choices it provides, just like GH has the choice of where to source his wares and the choice to charge what he does. Capitalism isn’t just for the merchants. You could argue it is detrimental to our economy, but this market model encourages adaptation, not protectionist regulation.
It would cost more to collect the revenue than what would be collected. What GH is asking for is a taxpayer subsidy. Stuff him.
From another blog I frequent I heard of two stories in a row on TT…the first story was about GH handing out xmas gifts to ‘struggling’ families. They all seemed to have nicer homes than me. Nice Gerry. The second story was about the dangers of identity theft whan shopping online. Bad online.
Can they be more blatent? Again, stuff him.
Mick, no doubt they are the selfsame families who are up to the gunwales in debt; when the interest rates went up (applies to everything, including consumer credit of the type that Hardly Normal push ardently), they find themselves with next to no disposable income, even for the basic day-to-day needs.
This whole mindset of purchasing everything—including such items as the weekly groceries and utility fees—on borrowed money needs to be seriously questioned. Perhaps that’ll only happen when a deep recession or depression sweeps a critical mass of the greater populace in its path.
Sometimes we do need some degree of regulation to prevent this sort of behaviour from being normalised, as it has been hitherto now…it’s getting beyond merely saving a few aberrant idiots from themselves. then you’d see Gerry Harvey jumping up and down furiously, stating that it will devoid people of choice. It’s gone beyond a question of mere choice, as this is now a broadly accepted means of operating one’s finances these days.
In short, I agree with your summary of this charlatan: bugger him. My protest is by only buying as I need and having a mortgage on my home as my sole debt.
I got my car earlier this year after a year of working in a crappy restaurant with a boss who thought he was Gordon Ramsay, most of my furniture and appliances are hand-me-downs from my parents and grandparents (I only bought a sofa bed) and my rent and expenses are just covered by my meager paycheck. (My only confession – I funded my holiday to Europe from some money my grandma on Mum’s side left me when she died last year, but only because I knew she had always wanted to go to Europe but never had the chance).
Yet I also proudly state that I have no credit cards or debts of any kind.
And, ladies and gentleman … it’s time for another installment of … The Bogue & Boguette Show!
(THE SCENE: Another brutalist, windowless concrete box on a six-lane dual-carriageway arterial somewhere in the outer suburbs of Sydney. This concrete box has a huge wordmark logo in an outdated typeface on its side, consisting of the words “Harvey” and “Norman” beside each other, both underlined. The box is surrounded by a car park roughly the size of the red spot on Jupiter.
BOGUE and BOGUETTE arrive in an electric-blue late-model Ford Falcon XR6. They park in the disabled spot three spaces from the front door and get out.
BOGUE is wearing a baseball cap with sunglasses perched on top, a black t-shirt with lots of angry white Gothic letterpress, three-quarter-length camouflage shorts and sandals.
BOGUETTE is wearing a tasteful ensemble from that fine purveyor of slapperwear, Supré – a garishly fluorescent tank top, denim shorts and a pair of pink thongs. ‘Thongs’ referring to both the footwear and the underwear, both of which are visible.)
BOGUETTE: (closes car door) Should we really have parked in this wheelchair spot? I mean, neither of us are disabled or anyfint.
BOGUE: (walks toward store entrance) Like it matters. It’s a private car park an’ that, the cops can’t farkin’ book us ’cause it ain’t a public road.
BOGUETTE: (enters store which is air conditioned colder than most meat storerooms) OK. Now what were we gonna get?
BOGUE: Nuffint. We was just gonna look around and stuff.
BOGUETTE: Oh wow, look at that! A king-sized bedroom ensemble marked down from $2,999 to $2,499! Let’s get that, honey. We can save ourselves five hundred bucks!
BOGUE: Yeah, our king-sized bed’s getting a bit too crowded, I reckon. But look at that over there! A 3D LCD telly, was $3,499, now it’s $2,899! I reckon we should get that! We’ll save ourselves six hundred big ones!
BOGUETTE: Waddaya mean? It’s still more expensive than the bed.
BOGUE: But it’s marked down even more, so we’ll save even more money! C’mon! Let’s get the 3D telly. Don’tcha reckon it’ll be great to see The X Factor when it comes out in 3D?
BOGUETTE: But Jason and Rebekkah next door reckon they’re getting a king-sized bed delivered next Wednesdee. They’re getting a king-size, why can’t we?
BOGUE: But .. but … Border Security … watching the little slimy foreign c#$%s getting nicked for trying to bring in dried mushrooms … in 3D …. (drools ever so slightly)
BOGUETTE:But how are we gonna afford the telly? The water board’s already threatenin’ to cut off our water ’cause we haven’t paid the bills the last two quarters. The bed’s cheaper, I reckon we should get the bed.
BOGUE: They ain’t gonna cut us off! Water’s a human right! Naah, we’re getting the 3D. We’ll save more money that way.
BOGUETTE: (bats eyelids) But you love me, don’t you? You always say you love me and stuff. If you really truly madly loved me like you say you do, you’d get the king-size bed for me!
BOGUE: Of course I loves ya! I pay for your Brazilians, don’t I? C’mon. Let’s get the telly. Just this once.
BOGUETTE: But the bank’s threatenin’ to repossess our house if we miss another mortgage payment, and we won’t be living in Glenmore Park any more. We’ll have to rent a two-bedroom flat in Granville or sumfint. Among a bunch of stinky reffos. C’mon. Let’s get the bed, it’s cheaper.
BOGUE: (snorts while his face goes red) Listen. Telly. Now. Understand?
BOGUETTE: You wanna live with a bunch of dirty-arsed boat people wailing at the top of their lungs five times a day and eating goats and crap, like we saw when we accidentally flicked through SBS on the remote control the other night?
BOGUE: (sighs) All right. Fark it. Fark it. You win. You don’t wanna see the latest Adam Sandler movie when it comes out in 3D on Blu-Ray. Fine. We’ll get this farkin’ bed then. Means I’m just a bit further from yer farkin’ whingin’ when we wake up in the morning. (calls to sales assistant) Hey! Salesman bloke! Come here! Reckon you can go lower on that king-sized suite over there?
(THE END)
A-. Marks deducted by virtue of the lack of screaming children. There are always screaming children.
Nice work Urban.
I thought the kids were with the out-laws, visiting Oprah at the Oprah house.
Thanks Bec. Woohoo, I’m still in the running for a High Distinction in Boganography 101. :) I’m glad you didn’t pick up on a little booboo either …
BOGUE: Yeah, our king-sized bed’s getting a bit too crowded, I reckon.
Should read:
BOGUE: Yeah, our queen-sized bed’s getting a bit too crowded, I reckon.
But hey, you’ve already marked me so you can’t retrospectively mark me down :)
I did wonder if their was a sausage sizzle stop on the way in, or out?
Isn’t the sausage sizzle a Bunnings thing? Or do they have them at Harvey Norman as well? I don’t know, I haven’t been to a HN in quite some time.
You may be right, I haven’t been to either for years because we don’t bother with a car anymore, and they are always out in the burbs.
And given that the sausage sizzles may raise money and elevate the pesky poor, i guess Gerry wouldn’t have it.
maybe they were checking out a King MaxXx bed…
Or one of them “Sleep Number” beds, adjustable for firmness on each side, or another king-size with Maxxtreme Pillowtop to replace the other one they already have (give it some context urbanreverie, and that possible bed size oversight would be a marvellous example of the need for the bogue to keep up with the Joneses).
B+
I was expecting them to compromise and buy both.
“Water is a human right”
Not the first time I’ve seen that comment today on the intertubes; been reading on the Fairfax website about every man and his dog complaining about the draconian security at the Jack Johnson concert on Saturday. A plethora of cliched statements to choose from. You could almost make a drinking game out of it…
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/jack-johnson-was-laidback-but-security-had-the-audience-feeling-antsy-20101212-18u1h.html
*nerd alert*
water actually is a human right, un recognised it in 2002.
*end nerd alert*
And here full marks to Brisbane for actually making water freely available in public places and restaurants unlike Sydney.
I’m surprised to find out so many bogans went to see Jack Johnson! Both him and his music are about as un-bogan as you can get
Hey. I object to you using ‘brutalist’ as a definition of H.N’s concrete sheds. Brutalist architecture has merit and beauty. Mcshed, Sh*t box… they’re more of an apt name/description…
that is true. mcmansions are no habitat 67.
Point taken, R. Jett. There are indeed many examples of striking and innovative brutalist architecture (including Habitat 67 as mentioned by P’Bee).
But still, with its vast expanses of bare concrete, lack of ornamentation, sharp boxy angles and emphasis on function over form – I’d say that you could classify a typical Harvey Norman store as brutalist. Just that a HN Sh!t Box is not as avant garde or aesthetically pleasing as, say, the High Court of Australia or 80 George Street Brisbane.
Did they have #124 on the bed that night?
Wait, replying to myself. Of course they did, it was her way of thanking him.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/12697/64819
Matt Tabbei also wrote a brilliant piece on the American health system.
Y’know I haven’t read rolling stone for donkey’s.
maybe I’m growing into their footprint.
It’s mostly crap but there is the occasional gem like these. Rolling Stone did put me on to the good Doctor so they have some use.
I remember reading a Red magazine (Resources, Heath and Education for Sex Workers) about 6/7 years and they had a great article n their trade talk section that was thanking Gerry Harvey for sending the boys into one of the brothels as part of their executive xmas bonus. Wish I’d kept it – I’ll see if I can find the issue online.
Good lord, I need to clean up around here, I found it! Why have i kept this since 2002??
‘Go Harvey Norman Go’
Michele Warner reported in the Herald Sun that Melbourne Businesses are rewarding staff and clients with Christmas bonus sex jaunts. Gerry Harvey , exec chairman of Harvey Norman, said the practice had been going on for as long as he could remember, “It’s always been like that. Generally speaking, no-one could give a continental,”Mr Harvey said yesterday.
But the practice has outraged the Aust. Family Assoc. “I can think of better things one could give an employer or business associate”, AFA spokesman Bill Muehlenberg said.
Well, let’s hope the furniture giant has a boomer of a year and staff members in 2002 are duly rewarded!!’
Harvey Norman – Giving the wife a break at Christmas since 1979!
Harvey Norman – Will you get a raise this x-mas?
Harvey Norman – 1 month Anal free.
The question is, did the HN execs pay the hookers 18 months later without interest? And if they failed to pay on time, were they charged 29% interest?
You can be sure the sex services were interest free, on the part of the workers. You’d have to lay back and think of England when faced with a huffing Gerry Harvey
Another top post from TBL……the old school bogan though finds that Harvey norman is a bit pricey………… so there inner voice (sounds alot like Mike Goldman) leads them Super A mart
That’s the place that sells Floral Reclining Jasons isn’t it? And leatherette ‘chesterfields’
yes thats the place. the femebogue that was tending to me was amazed when i said id pay cash for my goods then proceeded to take a phone call on her pink jewled iphone……….. but anyways this particular one was in middle of one of those bogan wonderlands with Harvey Norman off to one side and BBQ galore basically everything for the Mc mansion in one place and there was some form of fast joint
I think thats called a ‘Home Maker Centre’ in Melbourne! Home is where the formal living room furniture gets delivered. Can someone cross stitch that for me for xmas? Please :)
Nogans get their computer parts from MSY and build their own computers.
ummm stupid question what is a nogan is that cross bred bogan with a nerd? kinda new to this
you got it first guess.
That’s correct. They’re my current whipping boy. Even though I am a bit of a nogan and bought the parts for my last two computers at MSY and made them up myself.
So are Ngans Vietnamese bogans?
that’s a little off colour
but pretty funny.
yay MSY.
we need a list of things non-bogans endorse:
Popular Penguins (the orange and white ones)
MSY
Tanqueray Number Ten
Bush Weed
Converse
Morning Fresh Dish Liquid
Haiku
Rickenbacker
for starters…
Good list Chubby, especially Tanq Ten and Morning fresh. Interesting fact for the day – if you mix Morning Fresh and Listerine, you have the wonderfully refreshing lotion that tattooist use to wipe down your tatts as they are doing them. No other detergent will work apparently. There you are.
does No. 10 just make every other gin taste like vodka or am I trippin’ here?
I might mix it with morning fresh and try spraying myself with it.
couldn’t hurt.
It would be refreshing I’m sure. Though an expensive experiment.
Ok, time for a new list, books. Before you all start prattling about the Beatles again.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson – succinct brilliance
The Complete Short Stories by JG Ballard – otherworldly from a unique mind.
Papillion by Henri Charrire – Boys own adventure
The Gulag Archipeligo by Alexander Solyeznitsyn – not fun but very important human record.
Monsignor Quixote by Graeme Green – read this at school for religious Ed and it started me on a literary journey away from Wilbur Smith to a wide world of reading.
Come on all. I love reading.
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Marquez
Lolita – Nabakov
Crime and Punishment – Dostoevsky
The Trial – Kafka
On The Road – Kerouac
Not necessarily my top five, and not necessarily in that order, but 5 books that I love very dearly.
Crime and Punishment is brilliant as is One Hundred Years of Solitude. Enjoyed Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas much better than On the Road (then again I enjoyed The Hobbit much better than Lord of the Rings). Would add The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald – plus a couple of Dickens or perhaps PG Wodehouse for lighter reading.
Not got to 100 years or the Trial yet Shirl but I will, soon!
A bit late on the favourite books list, but here goes:
Catcher In The Rye, J.D. Salinger
Cloudstreet, Tim Winton (the location of the home seems to be, by my educated guess, somewhere around Railway Parade in West Leederville)
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
Fear And Loathing In Las Vgeas, Hunter S. Thompson (the latter two works are some of the better film adaptations from the novels in question)
And, although risking falling foul of Simon’s desire to stay away from the Fabs, I nominate Revolution In The Head by Ian McDonald, which is a most thorough analysis of each of The Beatles songs, both in their original meanings and where applicable, their contexts to the times they were contemporaneous to.
some excellence there Si
I’d probably just go by authors…
Ian Banks/Ian M. Banks (walking on glass/consider phlebas or excession)
Tom Robbins (Skinny Legs and All)
John Irving (The Cider House Rules)
Tim Winton (Cloudstreet)
umm…
maybe Clive Barker, (imagica) but I think I’m growing out of it.
jesus, my memory is shot!
I just read a whole bunch of burroughs and thompson (ibid Pop’lar Penguins) again.
ditto for “The Secret History” and “Perfume”
oh, of course…
McSween et al. (Things Bogans Like)
The Secret History is fantastic. Shame about her next novel.
I probably should have had Cloudstreet on my list too.
cloudstreet is beautiful. made me cry. again.
which reminds me, Peter Carey should get a nod. “Oscar and Lucinda” made me cry too.
ooh…
Paris Trout.
who wrote that?
great book.
I’m pretty out of date.
Perfume is great, so was the movie, to my complete surprise. And Ian Bank’s The Wasp Factory was my favourite book as a teenager. How could i forget it?
Banks is awesome.
I love “Walking on Glass”
Ian M. Banks is great too if you love High Space Opera Sci-Fi. “The Culture” novels.
If you like Banks you should dig on Tom Robbins.
I have picked up quite a shopping list from these brief exchanges…
If you don’t already Chubby, and everyone else, buy your books at bookdepository.co.uk. Excellent prices, free(!) and fast postage. Best website ever.
Thank you for tuning into Shirl’s shopping tip of the week.
I’ve read Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, Another Roadside Attraction and Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates and enjoyed them. But I found that his themes started to get a bit repetitive and on my nerves – I kind of had that bad taste in my mouth that you get from old school hippies – that overtly heterosexual, free love vibe that borders on misogynist. Also the anti-catholic sentiment was a bit preachy – and I am by no means a fan of the Catholic church. Maybe I’m being unfair, I did enjoy reading them. I think I over-read them too, I must have read Roadside Attraction and Fierce Invalids about 4 times each over the years.
wow.
I only read “cowgirls” and “skinny legs”
quirky. I dig that. but I see what you mean about being repetitive.
oh!
Clockwork Orange. even better than the fillum.
I’ve never read Clockwork Orange – on the to-do list . I have spent the best part of the last 15 years reading pulp fiction from the 1940’s – 80’s – a diet heavy on trash McLiterature was required after studying English /Aust Lit at Uni. I decided enough was enough- I needed to read the entire Family Ties paperback series (that Mallory!) I can’t get enough of the old 40’s and 50’s politically incorrect novels and I am a better person for it. Every now and then though, I pop out and buy a proper book. So I don’t end up ignant like.
v’v my sister has a full mint collection of Trixie Belden books if you’re interested…
That would send the gay off the radar! There would be an intervention, possibly military.
I like Ben Elton’s books. I think libtards also see him as a hypocrite and a sell out like U2.
What’s Monsignor Quixote? Is that Don Quixote? The story of the knight who tries to save the world? Where the word quixotic comes from when someone tries to do something unrealistically good?
ben elton. tick.
ditto for Irvine Welsh. (The Acid House and Trainspotting)
Maribou Stalk Nightmares was Welsh’s best work, but sadly didn’t get the recognition of the others.
Trainspotting is a rare example of the film and book both being great (as well as the soundtrack). Blade Runner and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Philip K Dick) is another example.
The Road also falls into the great film/book category I reckon.
I had and lost “androids”.
haven’t read it for years. it was great, so”douglas adams”. the movie was so serious and the book was quite (darkly) frivolous if I remember.
agreed both brilliant.
And after reading trainspotting I was translating everything in my mind to scottish brogue for about a week.
d’ye ken likesay?
Monsignor Quixote is is loosly based on Don. Concerns his distant relative, a monsignor, and his best mate, a communist mayor, and their travels through Spain debating the merits of their own belief systems with a narative thread mirroring the famous work (which by the way is a ripping read if you get the right translation).
Also to all here can’t recommend JG Ballards short stories enough. I know you all have the right kind of minds to appreciate his special genius for the short form. Find it online, rarely in bookshops.
i’ve only read atrocity exhibition and hello america by ballard, but both were brilliant. i really need to read the rest of his stuff.
If you loved those two you are in for a treat. I don’t think they are his strongest work.
which would you recommend most?
Go with the short stories (1200 pages there) or Cocaine nights, Empire of the sun, Crash, High rise is also great or Concrete Island. Hard to go wrong really.
I have not read The Fall yet, just waded through The Rebel and my brain is still recovering.
alrighty then!
the fall is very short, barely 100 pages, very easy to read in a day. i think the rebel took me three weeks.
Hey Simon, I’ve got a first edition of Crash – I bought it for the cover which features a naked lass with half a bonnet up her….. The rest of car totaled in the background.
I tried to read it, but got to page 33 before giving up! It’s like a teen boys bad, bad, baaaaad attempt at soft porn. He writes about “moist loins” for gawds sake. And I enjoy smut! Should I continue with it? Am I missing something? Am I a really a prude……????
Yeh, you should. It’s a different thing from him and not to everyone’s taste, not my favourite but worth the read.
He wrote it after a bad car accident himself when he got obsessed by the way modern technology is re-shaping the human body and how this might affect what we find attractive or whatever. The book is more about the ideas than the pornographic nature per say.
Alright, with that in mind i’ll try again – I’d not heard of him before, and just thought because it was a Panther paperback, that it was just a $2 wank book for truckers! Cronenberg did it as a film didn’t he?
Yup, my favourite author for his unique vision.
For the Sci Fi nerds
Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
Farenheight 451 and The Martian Cronicles – Ray Bradbury
A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Tool – one of the funniest books ever written.
Dance Dance Dance – Haruki Murakami – actually all of his books, but this is my favourite
The Sh!t of God – the writing, performance notes,songs and poetry of Diamanda Galas.
Sellevision – Augusten Burroughs – hilarious p!ss take on the world of an infomercials / shopping channel. Written in a week as part of his rehab.
Man Enough To Be A Woman – brilliant biography of transsexual punk rock performer Wayne/Jayne County – contemporary of Bowie, Stooges, Lou Reed, Patti Smith and Blondie.
Then there are the classics:
Wuthering Heights
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Frankenstein
Flowers in the Attic!
Jesus.
if you weren’t born gay flowers in the attic would have turned you.
I’m trying to think which came first; catching the gay or Flowers in the Attic?? It was confusing times.
A Confederacy of Dunces is my default gift book. If you don’t enjoy that, you’re a f*cking clown shoes.
Oh I forgot – Fabulous Nobodies by Lee Tulloch – it’s a fiction about a New York Club Door B!tch in the 1980’s – I have read it a million times and still get laugh from it.
Also
Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi – surely a modern british classic?
And
Dorian – Will Self – not a big fan of his other work, but he did a great job bringing Dorian Gray into the AIDS era
That is all.
Hanif Kureishi
nice.
The black album.
a great writer, I haven’t read anything else.
Another searing read is American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. Also read his follow-up of sorts, Glamorama…seedier, yet not quite as satisfying as the original it carried on from.
I can’t believe no-one said:
because it’s sh!t, that’s why.
seriously.
Modest Mouse must be the Greatest Band Ever.
Ever.
ok, a list of some of my favourite books:
the fall – albert camus. absolute favourite, camus is a genius. his other stuff is great, too (even the dense and draining the rebel), but the fall says everything so simply.
1984 – george orwell. love orwell’s style. he did almost completely rip off yevgeny zamyatin’s we for this (also a great book), but he wrote a better version of it.
matilda – roald dahl. i can include a kids’ book in my favourites, can’t i? read this cover to cover three times in a row when i got it. cried when dahl died (i was only about 9 at the time).
beowulf – unknown. nerdy choice, but the writing is just beautiful. i think this is the only book that made me cry on the second page.
faust – goethe. both parts. amazing poetic writing, wonderfully rich with imagery.
Roald Dahl is brilliant, I loved his books as child, and only recently re-read his ghost stories book again. The man is well worthy of a tear or two. I haven’t read 1984 since school – must get a copy and read it again – thanks for reminding me about it.
you people are so highbrow… :)
ok I will add
Animal Farm
A Day in the ife of Ivan Denisovitch
and
Catcher in the Rye.
so i look smarter.
Hey, I openly admitted to Family Ties (Alex Gets The Business) and Flowers in The Attic. Don’t feel intimidated Chubby.
To balance out the highbrow, I will confess to loving The Adrian Mole series. I’ve reread all of them several times. Oh, and The Dirt, by Motley Crue. Awesome read.
love animal farm and denisovitch. wasn’t so impressed by catcher in the rye, but i think it’s a bit of a teenage boy book, so i’m not the target audience.
Catcher in the Rye was my favourite book as a teenager. I should read it again to see what I think now.
Permission to shout BRAVO loudly and annoyingly. Sorry I have been tied up as I love discussing books, but great lists and some more to ad to my list.
I tend to haunt second hand book shops.
my beautiful Wife Edna, with her cute little sleepy morning eyes and mussy morning hair has reminded me of “Fight Club”
she can’t remember the author but says he did another one about a 12 step group for sex addicts which was brilliant.
Tell bed head Ed it’s Chuck Pahlanik, I think. And good morning!
Another great movie book combo.
aaaah yes.
check it out, she’s been up for 45minutes, had one coffee and she’s lying on the floor, stretching, ready to go for a jog.
telling me she likes the grimy noir new wave of Elmore Leonard et al.
“…and who doesn’t love a serial killer? We saw a doco on Elmore Leonard, as he was being interviewed he had his beautiful big old pure white Bull Terrier on his lap and he was talking a lot of
w!erd sh!t about his murdered Mum? Like sexual stuff? Seriously wierd, but somehow not in a creepy way…”
“She was a healthy dame. I took a swig on my coffee and mused that old pug Kowalski always said “Youth is wasted on The Young”. In the kitchen the toaster popped like a barking Colt .45. The snoring of the dog was steady like rain on the roof of an inconspiuous convertible. It was gonna be a long day.”
oh,
and
‘Morning! :D
yes thats what they are called in rAdelaide to. Funny that this one is located on the site of old cattle markets
Did they keep the corrals up? Makes the shopping experience more streamlined. That and a cattle prod.
Too funny, viv!, heheh!
no its byo cattle prod these days………. which makes the shopping experience that much more enjoyable knowing that your giving that middle aged couple that are whinging about the delivery time on on the leatherette something to whinge about
The place for bogan spotting at this time of year is Christmas Kingdom. It is basically a massive barn (I didn’t see any glassin’ but I wasn’t there for long) with bogans forking out $200 a second on giant blow up santas on motorbikes, megawatt sucking lighting systems, quaint nativity scenes with santa in the background and Simpsons, Disney etc branded Christmas decorations. I have never seen so many eyebrow rings or 3 year old girls with pierced ears. It was the land that taste forgot.
If you must put up Christmas lights, then use LEDs: I can run about seven or eight strings of them for the same amount of energy as one of incandescents. Not to mention they last a lot longer and put out more light.
I s’pose that’s one of my bogan tencencies: I love putting up lights! I live on a main drag and I have always enjoyed tinkering with lighting since I was wee tacker. I recall walking down to the local Coles, taking along my moneybox when I was seven in 1982, and purchasing a set of 20 Christmas lights for about $7.50 and whereas my contemporaries would go nuts for their comics, I’d be more than content with copies of catalogues from Philips lighting and Clipsal powerpoints!
Move over Clark Griswold!
At least with LEDs, I won’t take down the city’s grid.
I’ll just be content with melting down my local area stepdown transformer :P
that reminds me…
this year I see lots of folk tooling around wif li’l reindeer antlers and big shiny red noses on their cars…
and Who is that Boys and Girls?
Yes.
That’s Right!
it’s Rudolf!
hurrah.
gimme a break. maybe if you were the only person who had one.
you just know the type who buys them right?
“Oh I always do crazy things like that!”
yawn
tell me more about you.
why don’t they put characters like that in video games so you can vicariously blow their head off with a shotgun?
or melee them with an axe.
what?
do you all have them?
Despite my house being lit as to be near visible from space—OK, not nearly quite like that—no, I don’t stick antlers on my car. My car doesn’t even carry any stickers beyond the service interval reminder (WA recently done away with rego stickers). I am not a fücking mobile billboard, not even for my beloved Rickenbacker, one of the few music instrument companies still independently owned and making instruments only in America.
At least those reindeer antlers are marginally less worse than the other plastic implement wedged into the side windows of their cars that replace them in January: Australian flags. Mind you, probably attracts the same demographic, with their Aussie Swazis.
Harvey Norman is having a secret Christmas sale(?) on a Wednesday night
(secret as in advertised on national TV)
but I noticed that the interest free period is only until March 2011.
Come in spinner.
Economic totalitarianism is heading our way!! USA! USA!
I have read many of the suggestions – I cannot remember all of them, have hundreds of books at home, but remembered:Brave New World – Aldous Hiuxley
At the risk of being shot: Sci-Fi:
Lucifer’s Hammer and The Mote in God’s Eye – both by Larry Niven and Jerry Puornelle
The Stainless Steel Rat Series by Larry Niven
Any of Larry Niven’s stories in The Tales from Known Space series (Protector, Ringworld, Ringworld Engineers, to name a few)
Stranger in a Strange Land – Time Enough For Love – Robert Heinlein
Can’t remember the name of the book but the one that The Matrix was based on – it is nothing like the movie (maybe 2 or 3 pages)
Any ancient history.
Many more – will have to have a look at the bookshelves.
used to love heinlein.
Is lazarus long in Time Enough for Love?
And does he tell the story of “The Man Who was Too Lazy to Fail?”
yes. he does. a pivotal moment in the life of young chubby.
then he went a bit “pervy old uncle”
actually he was well and truly “pervy old uncle” by Time Enough for Love.
and Aldiss. “Helliconia” oh. god. “Dune”
awesome.
and “The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant”
sheckley, silverberg, dick.
Harlan Ellison.
douglas adams
you were no-one in my world if you hadn’t read that stuff.
Nicolo Machiavelli’s The Prince is still the manual by which almost any politician or spinner bases their methods on.
The Di Medici fiefdoms may have been replaced by so-called democracies in this day and age, but the means to attaining and maintaining power still apply nowadays.
Not to mention that it was source of the delicious ruse for a TISM album title, married to a similar sounding doo-wop band from the 1960s!
fuck democracy.
I’m more for a benevolent dictator sorta thing
One of the few authors whose name has become part of the language (Machiavellian) – one of the others being Dickens (Dickensian).
The Gulag Archipelago.
Yes, he did, and yes, by The Number of The Beast he was clearly in decline to “pervy uncle”.
I have hundreds of the old paperbacks – started in on the sci fi when is was 15 or so – quite a bit older than that now.
you have to read Ian M Banks.
excellent stuff.
and I still feel grown up when I read it!
Consider Phlebas
The Use of Weapons
Excession
I love it.
Let’s see:
Wollstonecraft & Woolf for A Vindication of the Rights of Women & Orlando.
Chekhov and Maupassant’s short stories
Eugene Onegin
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Waugh’s Decline and Fall
Remains of the Day
I am reading Wolf Hall now and its very good.
And the Indian novel I like is Tagore’s Broken Nest and the Australian novel I like is Bail’s Eucalyptus.
About time SD – have been waiting for your list!
Viv, ha ha I am working for a change :-)
I did think of kicking off with Harlequin romances. Not!
Oh I also love Michael Chabon’s Mysteries of Pittsburgh. I think he will appeal to most TBLers.
And Maupin’s Tales of the City.
Chubby, I don’t know about hi-brow- my tastes are shaped by the fact that in my childhood the Edwardians were still “modern” and all Russians good! I mean I still read Austen (love Emma) though I think hmm must not…..
Oh and I like he died with a felafel, loved the movie too. I am a huge Noah Taylor fan.
I have Wolf Hall in my bedside drawer. Might be next!
funny.
I spent my pre-teens in Tasmania.
It was a bit similar, all green fields and long socks and rupert the bear, billy bunter and enid blyton with lashings of ginger beer and home made scones.
I might have ended up prime minister if we didn’t move to Queensland.
I watched felafel the other night and liked seeing noah.
I watched animal kingdom too.
it was good.
jesus.
I spent the seventies in tasmania
the eighties in queensland
and the nineties in western australia.
I’m a bogan burn out.
that’s why I’m in adelaide.
(like all the people who bought H3 triples in the early seventies who didn’t die later bought lead wings)
ooh Aussie novels!
He died with a Felafel etc
and
Death in Brunswick
go on the list too.
you’re all highbrow too SD. I really am the village idiot.
If we’re doing Aussie novels, then besides Tim Winton, Andrew McGahan is excellent, particularly 1988 and The White Earth. And as far as indigenous literature goes, Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World is absolutely brilliant.
Falafel is grouse but Tasmanian Babes is better.
Shirley, agreed on McGahan and thanks for the Doctor Wooreddy reco.
Old fashioned but I like My Brilliant Career. And I hand out Alibrandi to young uns back home and they love it!
My Brilliant Career is great, so is Picnic At Hanging Rock. For more modern Aust, I enjoyed Candy by Luke Davies
Picnic at Hanging Rock-of course!
Also thanks everyone for the lists – now to hit the bookshops in the weekend!
Simon, Wolf Hall is promising so far.
Speaking Aussie I just read Johhno by David Malouf, set in Brissy. Very good.
I have praise by mcgahan, but I still haven’t read it.
I read a book called “A Private Man” last year.
that was good.
australian. can’t remember who.
SD, did you read the latest Tales of The City? Michael is middle aged and its actually a sweet read. It’s called Michael Tolliver Lives – and there’s a new one about Mary-Ane – it was due for release this year, so is probably out now – I haven’t read it yet.
I have seen it around, the reviews aren’t the best but like you say Maupin is never less than sweet so I plan to.
I cannot understand why GE and other companies involved in similar financing are not shut down for loan sharking.any one else trying to charge those interest rates would get hammered.the effects are seen in any magistrates court across the country the poor and the battlers , a constant string of them being sued and made bankrupt by the likes of GE and radio rentals gery baby and others of similar ilk. Even jesus had the sense to chuck the money changers out of the temple !
Still up cos of Assange hearing
Mr. Lette is making his case:-)
Ms Lette is someone I would never read.
Ms “wanna root” Lette….. Who buys her books? I’d take a harlequin romance any day. Though I’d like to see puberty blues the film again, just to see if it is as hideous as I remember. The nuffies in that film scared me so much I think I delayed puberty by two years.
And is Bryce Courtenay dead? Shouldn’t we be bombarded by ads for this years x-mas Mcliterature offeirng by now? Surely he has an historic tale spanning 3 generations of struggling peasants, finding love and overcoming poverty to become rich industrialists, finding compassion and struggling with a rare genetic disease to tell us this x-mas?
Bryce Courtenay gently threw me out of an ad agency in North Sydney once.
true story.
I read April Fools Day.
and matthew flinders’ cat. but only because I was homeless.
That summary: most useful in giving Bryce a wide berth.
So true Vivisection. I read a few of his books, Jessica, and the Potato Factory trigoloy or whatever it was called, started on a couple of others and what you say is exactly right. Someone from the gutter conquers the world, then dies about two seconds later.
I haven’t actually read one of his books, I’ve just seen the ads on tv every year flogging this tripe. I made the decision to never give that ignoramus a cent after he publicly blamed the gay community for his hemophiliac son’s death from AIDS back in the early 90’s.
I am a huge admirer of Mr Lette.
assuming I get the joke, what does he have to do with Assange?
He was counsel for Assange.
The court allowed a twitter feed and the best part was Mr Lette announcing that Assange was only allowed that chav newspaper Daily Express.
Bet Assange found out heaps about Warnie.
The whole kerfuffle is so over the top that you can’t help thinking that wikileaks and Assange do pose a threat to the establishment. so far it looks like a Ken Saro Wiwa or Aung San court proceeding.
wow.
nice work Jules.
that’s some top quality silk.
I read robertson’s history of human rights in popular penguin.
a surprisingly easy and entertaining read. I love it when you can hear an author’s voice as you read.
Which reminds me of clive james books. “unreliable memoirs” great stuff. and stephen fry’s “moab is my washpot” (as reccommended by Edna Focke-Witte)
can’t you guys just fucking delete these? ^
i look even stupider.
where are youse?
working?
or sumfink…
havin’ a sickie?
wot? all of youse…
did youse get on the p!ss?
youse need to reprioritise.
blog life/work life
get some leave…
I’d tap that, despite one being old and one being gay.
If you liked Unreliable Memoirs, Chub, make sure you read all four of the books in the autobiographical “trilogy”. Then hit up Even As We Speak for some brilliant retrospective columns, and Cultural Amnesia for thoughts on people and events of the 20th century.
Just found a full set of his books of television critiques for The Observer at a secondhand shop at Eumundi on the weekend – although he’s writing about British TV in the 70s and 80s, it’s sorted my Christmas holiday reading out. Unless, of course, Mr B. Courtenay – the literary poo-brown polyester to Mr James’ fine Egyptian cotton – unleashes another hefty tone’o’shite onto a richly deserving public.
Chub, check out some of CJ’s poetry if you get a chance.
For starters, this always runs a shiver up my spine:
FIRES BURNING
Over Hamburg in July 1943
The Lancaster crews could feel the heat
Through the sides of the aircraft.
The fire was six thousand feet high.
Further East, there were other fires.
When burning a lot of bodies, the SS found
The thing to do was to put down a layer
Of women first.
They had more fat in them.
In Tokyo, on the night of March 10th 1945,
Some people who survived in a canal
Saw a horse on fire running through the streets.
But few who saw it were left to remember anything:
Even the water burned.
In New York, on September 11th 2001,
Some couples, given the choice
Between the flames and a long fall,
Outflanked the heat and went down holding hands.
Come with me, you imagine the men saying,
I know a quicker way.
Sydney, two years later. Next to my mother’s coffin
I gave thanks that she would shortly meet
A different kind of fire,
Having died first, and in due time.
More at http://www.clivejames.com/
sorry, got sidetracked there.
it happens a lot.
have we had a wikileaks discussion in here?
not that I’m an intimate follower of current events, I do tend to cop a bit of the overspray. This Assange business looks like the greatest witch hunt since Arther Miller’s “The Crucible.” (another great story/read) My psychiatrist suggests One can be too cynical, but Assange as “International Serial Pervert” was about the worst global scale hatchet job since “Hussein: The Al-Qaeda Years”.
Assange as “International Serial Pervert” was about the worst global scale hatchet job since “Hussein: The Al-Qaeda Years”.
Exactly. Like WMD they may get away with it.
No discussion of wikileaks here though Viv did come up with the albino Ned Kelly moniker!
Tellingly one of the more quoted articles is from a blog.
http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/julian-assange-and-the-computer-conspiracy-%E2%80%9Cto-destroy-this-invisible-government%E2%80%9D/
Oh and wikileaks was being twittered like crazy and was not trending. Even if like there were 200 tweets per minute as opposed to 60 for the trending one.
who might have thought Orwell would have been right, but instead of thought crime, it would all be about shopping?
thanks for the link.
Impossible to follow all the threads on a working day but I think Greenwald at Salon is also going to run a piece on the actual source (Bradley Manning) and the 3rd degree that guy is enduring.
I read an article on why Wikileaks didn’t trend on Twitter. Apparently it’s due to something called ‘The Bieber Effect’. Previous to Bieber, trends were set simply by the amount of tweets mentioning a particular thing or hashtag. Because Bieber consistently had an enormous amount of tweets they changed the formula so that a considerable spike in volume of tweets was required to make a trend. Wikileaks apparently didn’t achieve the required spike, as it has been something talked about on Twitter fairly steadily for some time. I was doubtful of this explanation at first, but seeing as Assange and cablegate have both trended, perhaps it’s true after all.
yes I heard about the Bieber effect. But given the trending topics last night, the whole thing seems dubious. At the very least the term “trending” topic is misleading.
This is a good read from Naomi Wolf questioning Britain and Sweden’s hijacking of feminism and sexual assault for this issue while ignoring the plight of millions of other rape victims who have been systematically assaulted by known and often govt sanctified rape squads.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/jaccuse-sweden-britain-an_b_795899.html
Ta. Slightly strange though given her “my prof harrassed me” piece a while back.
I needed a couch a few years ago, so down to HN I went with flush with a bit of lotto payola. “No, I don’t want fucking credit, mate, so stop asking”. Put back in his place, credit pimp cum salesman did the required transaction, took my money then dropped the bombshell “That’ll be delivered in around 8 weeks”
10 weeks later, it shows up… I couldn’t help but think it was payback for laughing my arse off while his Dili store was reduced to smouldering embers by an angry mob .
Aussie tourist attacked by elephant trainer
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/12/14/3093289.htm
I wish I could spectate such exchanges, get some real field experience behind my BBo studies
Everything that I’ve regrettably bought from HN, I’ve been able to find for much, much cheaper elsewhere. They jack up prices and every now and then hold ‘sales’ where the price goes to normal. Their salesmen also seem to fear anyone that knows more about what they’re selling than they do – which is most people, and they respond with arrogance and aggression.
vampire squid have more of a moral backbone than that crybaby of capitalism.
Speaking of giant vampire squids….
I hope Gerry goes bankrupt and loses everything – arsehole.
HN enterprise is typical of a short sited view of the world. The organisation’s complaint is not valid. This is a Free Trade Australia and he should get used to it. This is not a monopoly dictatorship. The organisation should keep quiet and compete like everyone one else.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/harvey-hurt-by-buyer-backlash-20110106-19hjx.html
Still clueless and graceless.
Is nobody else confused by the HARVEY NORMAN ad weblink that Google stuck at the bottom of the article? He has even managed to jam his blood funnel into your page!
Hey, don’t be too hard on old Gezza, he’s just feeling a bit left out because he can’t use that interwebby thingo.
YOur a !anker norman. u champange drinking horse f@#@n old codger.
Boycott his crappy stores.
Sellout like dick smith
You’re all so dumb. Bogans commenting on something they actually know nothing about, there’s a blog headline.
Backlash come at me.