Various bits about various things

You will have probably heard that Andrew Bolt is going to host a television program, The Bolt Report. I'm not particularly interested in watching this program, I don't watch the television anyway, and the show hasn't yet gone to air so I can't not watch it even if I don't not want to, but I don't see why this shouldn't stop me complaining about it. It won't stop anyone else, after all.

So I thought I'd complain about it now, and say that that racist thing that Bolt said at some indeterminate point in the future was really racist, and that I was simply shocked and appalled by the appalling, shocking, horrible, nasty, mean, and possibly really quite accurate observation that he will have made at whatever soon-to-come time he will make that observation.

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Ever since whenever it was that Bolt started running his blog, of course, he's inspired a legion of critics, including Media Watch, and Blair/Bolt Watch. Then there are sites like Mediawatchwatch which is either a right-wing or left-wing or other site specialising in left-wing or right-wing or other criticisms of the right-wing or left-wing or other websites. Is it going to be long before we get absurdities such as The Bolt Report Watch Report Report Scrutineer, and the Media Watch Report Report Investigation Daily Niggle? Just because I enjoy partisan rants doesn't mean I take them very seriously anymore.

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They're a billion dollar business, they cause thousands of deaths every year in public hospitals right across the country, to some - fatally misled - young people, they have a false air of glamour about them, and they are extremely addictive. Not only that, but they're extremely bloody annoying too. But we don't hear anyone going on about plain packaging for government, now, do we? Most of that list above is also true about cigarettes and cigars and pipes, of course, but a cigarette never has the bad social grace to irritate us all during press conferences, or go about scolding people who open up the newspaper to the political page in enclosed spaces. And I suppose it hasn't technically been proven yet that politics causes cancer, but it's only a matter of time before it's statistically demonstrated that everything is carcinogenic - and I'm pretty sure politics is included in the 'everything' category.

Anyway, I'd really like to see a kind of plain packaging campaign for government too. It would really cheer things up. If the television turned to olive every time Abbott or Gillard came on air to announce one of their latest announcements, I couldn't be happier.

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Saw Ben Pobjie's, very funny, show on Wednesday (opening night). His basic theme seems to be life is horrible and death is even worse so let's be happy about it. Oh, and there was something in there about Bronwyn Bishop masks as well. Previously I'd heard him in interview on Aural Text, following the very atheist Catherine Deveny, speaking with the presumably atheist Jeff Sparrow and Alicia Sometimes. (They also played a tape of some other comedian talking about how he didn't believe in God, too). Bizarrely, in this company, he was worried about admitting to his own atheism. Seriously Ben! - in that company, probably the only way you could embarrass yourself (and possibly get a couple of outraged RRR callers) would be a simple and unabashed belief in God.

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Dazed the other day, drowsy yesterday, dizzy yesterday evening, but today, I'm quite chipper, actually. I imagine that in a few days, however, the beautiful cycle will repeat itself and I will be overcome by a sleepy fug at work and lay my head down on the keyboard as soon as the supervisors are looking in the opposite direction. It's part of the whole beautiful cycle of life and sleep and unemployment.