tegan and sara, originally uploaded by babblingdweeb.

Enjoying watching some live music via Moshcam;

These girls are from Canada but for some reason their heads don’t bounce up and down like Canadians do on South Park…

Watch Tegan and Sara and other great gigs on Moshcam.

Cigarette Butts — IMG_7502, originally uploaded by stevendepolo.

Last week a guy spat in front of my bike and said “Where my sposed to spit mate?” when I gave him a dirty look.

This morning a guy dropped a box on the ground and drove off.

Every day people drop cigarette butts on the ground and leave them.

Lots of things piss me off and I get very disappointed in people.

I wonder though, am I more disappointed in them or in my lack of courage to do anything about it.

rebel yell, originally uploaded by plasticrevolver.

I want to start blogging more this year.

So here goes………..

Pop and the McKenzie sign, originally uploaded by bigmick.

Pop came to visit this weekend. He even got up the stairs to see our deck. (click pic to see more)

Most of the houses in my area had names. Mine didn’t, so I thought I’d name it after my nan and pop. McKenzie.

Mick’s broken toenail, originally uploaded by bigmick.

I’m getting back into basketball, the hard way.

Last week a guy trod on my foot and broke half my toe nail off.

This week, I had to make this six foot three guy and he posts me up and treds on my toe about three times. I didn’t feel it during the game, but afterwards.

Ouch.

It’s now bandaged up.

This Sign has Sharp Edges, originally uploaded by guspim.

Everywhere on twitter now you see “10 reasons you to travel” “14 things a team must have” “7382 Ideas to Get you Growing”

*sigh*

Enough already!

1. They are so over used now it’s painful.
2. All the goodness is lost in the boiling down.
3. You always end up with a weak one that is just in there to fill out the list.
4. They normally have more points just to be annoying.

/rant

I (heart) balancing rocks, originally uploaded by James Jordan.

On Q&A on ABC last night there were economists, politicians and the president of the Young Liberals.

Boy, I hate partisan politics. The current government says the last government left them in a bad position. The old government just attacks the government and doesn’t say anything constructive. It’s constantly disappointing to me. *sigh*

It’s like question time in Parliament when the parties go at each other like school boys. It’s not good debate. It embarrasses me that these are our leaders behaving like this. Kevin Rudd, I think you’re doing a great job in a tough time, but if you got your team to act more professionally in question time, I’d respect you a lot more.

On side notes, the young liberals president looked lost and like a gen Y girl they picked up off MySpace. The two economists were interesting and constructive (mostly), though I guess they have the easier job.

Another note was the great questions from the audience on priorities, I’ll paraphrase here;

1. Is it OK to do trade with China when they abuse human rights just because it keeps people in jobs?

Great question. There is a line here. No country is perfect, certain not us. USA may well be as bad if not worse than China. Plus, working with countries is the best way to influence them, as opposed to staying away from them.

We didn’t work with South Africa and the influence was bad. We don’t work with South Korea. Interesting…

What if we were offered a million jobs to go work in labour camps or in prostitution in China if we’re paid well? OK, there is a line and it’s grey and somewhere, but tough to get right or articulate clearly.

2. Are jobs more important than dealing with climate change?

No jobs, no life.
No planet, no jobs.

Jobs are needed short term. They are important for feeding people and morale.

But we can’t go on the way we’ve been going and the inertia (i.e. the resistance to changing pace/direction) is massive, and potentially against the basic principles of life - survival of the fittest, which is a short term principle that affects the long term. (wow, that’s whole other blog post…)

Tough challenges, and the priorities are not simple choices, but that is what leadership is about. I haven’t taken the time here to even go close to exploring them enough, but I really wanted to get some things off my chest.

Thanks for listening.

TV-Turnoff Week, originally uploaded by maltman23.

Not that I was going to watch, but now I’m vocally boycotting this year’s Logies, Australia’s awards night for TV shows.

I saw this report on a previous episode of Media Watch, the fantastic program that explores the bad 60% of “journalists” who ruin it for the rest of them.

Basically, The Bazura Project, a comedy show on community TV station channel 31 was rejected from being considered by the Logies because they are on community TV, not one of bigger commercial stations.

What a croc of shit!

So I’m telling everyone to spread the story and boycott the Logies as loudly as you can if you believe that this is unfair - as I do. Any show should be eligible for consideration and indeed the rules state that they should be.

Also, since Hey Dad went off the air, comedy has been going down hill.

Brutus Flying, originally uploaded by ivanoats.

Love flying dogs. They can do their own air biting.

Fiesty Tree, originally uploaded by bigmick.

These trees of December

Over board,
Why can’t they be like normal trees,
Just be, and eat the co2,
Why do they need much make up,
And inside living.

They are kamikaze though,
Chopped off for the splay,
Evergreen just for twelve days,
Sold by boy scouts and service stations.

And the heritage?
No fir in Bethlehem,
Saint Nick from the North perhaps,
Or Russian,
Yet, we flourish them each year,
And they make us feel all the better for it.