Even though I go on and on about how much I hate Brisbane and want to return to Melbourne, I do really dig my local area. It reminds me more of Melbourne than any other part of Brisbane in fact.
I think it’s a mixture of many things that make me admire my suburb. Annerley. Among the charming aspects (to me anyway) is the number of different languages I hear when I go to the greengrocer, the sight of old elderly men who hang outside the local shops drinking cheap wine in plastic cups and the old Aboriginal man who spins a new story every Saturday morning in exchange for $1.
The old Aboriginie is my favourite. One Saturday morning he cornered me while coming out of the bottleshop with a six-pack. He spun me a tale about how he hasn’t had a ‘feed’ in 24 hours and that a spare $1 wouldn’t go astray. I told him that I’d buy him a Subway ‘veggie delight’ for $3.95 and he told me in no uncertain terms to fuck off.
The next week he saw me walking and tried to hide behind a post. I asked him if he wanted a beer and he walked away. So I bought my Saturday morning six-pack and added an extra. As I walked out of the bottleshop I called out to him and gave him a Coopers stubbie. I told him to stop telling me bullshit stories and I might just help him out when he asks.
So, every Saturday morning I have a 10am car park drink with a 65 year-old native man who tells me all sorts of stories. Stories about family, stories about his childhood in western New South Wales, stories about good experiences and the not-so-good.
Feel free to come and join me one fine Saturday morning.
Yay!
John Howard’s gone. He’s been gone for almost two years now. But now we’ve got another career bureaucrat in charge of the world’s largest hick town, Australia.
Listen carefully to what our much beloved Prime Minister says when he speaks. He regularly manages to say nothing within the confines of three, no four sentences, especially in parliament! He has a true gift of the gab – he must’ve kissed the blarney stone in Ireland at some point. I mean, any wanker who can say “detailed programmatic specificity” obvoiusly has nothing to say and expects people to not know what he is talking about in any context.
Another well discussed example of Kevin Rudd’s inabilty to speak English is this sentence, “Let’s be blunt about the order of priorities here. One is a set of actions agreed to by the international community which minimise the impact of coastal inundation as we minimise the impact of climate change but taking the mitigation measures that are outlined in the possible contents of a new framework agreement and the various national actions to be undertaken here in Australia.” What the….
I used to be a Labor voter but am now a nothing voter. Not even a swinging voter. I just don’t care anymore. The bastards can’t even communicate let alone make sensible decisions that are meant to make our lives easier and more enjoyable.
We are told where to smoke cigarettes. Where and when to drink alcohol and whether it should be consumed out of plastic or glass. We are fined for leaving our car unlocked, our dog off a leash in a massive park or riding a bicycle without a piece of foam and plastic on our heads. We pay tax in order for politicians to get pay rises while we have our hours cut. We get told we are polluting the earth too much with our overuse of cars and lounge room lights, then a wise politician approves the development of a new coal mine and then drives off in a chaffeur driven V8 limo.
I’m sorry. I’ve turned into a terribly cynical ranting machine.
It has to be one of the best rants I have ever read.