Out and About in the Real World

Howdy folks ... notice how quiet I've been lately in all the usual places ? Hasn't it been wunderbar ? Heh.

Here is why. I'm currently typing this from an Internet Cafe in cold but most interesting city of Edinburgh while LSCP is out shopping for tartan ... or tartin out and about at the shops or something like that.

We've been doing the Planes, Trains and Automobiles thing for the last week, plus a bit of shipping. Started in London, then up to Newcastle on the train a few days later, then over to Cologne Germany for a couple of nights via the Channel and Holland, all just so we could slosh down litres of Glühwein and let me make an eisel of myself with my poor Deutsches language skills. Then it was back to Newcastle and a train up to where we are now.

Anyway, enough waffle, so here are some pix instead.

Business class. Only way to travel.

Cheeky fellas at Buckingham Palace. :)

LSCP "eyeing" out London ... Gettit ?

First London Pub Lunch ... which wouldn't be complete without Pints !

Spam, lovely spam ...

Here we are , from "Station to Station"

To the Tower with her !

"The whole world is a stage" ... especially at Shakespear's Globe

Glühwein mit Ameretto. That's "mulled wine with extra illcohol" ... compulsory street trinken !

My xmas present !

Something to do on the Channel Crossing ? :)

okay, I dunno when I'll get the chance to drop another line so deem Mery Bah Humbugs still included.

regarDS

Songs of the Labyrinth

"Last night" LSCP and I went to the Perth Concert hall to watch Feyd-Rautha looking like Duke Leto Atreides singing "Massage in a Brothel" whilst playing the Lute with an extremely talented Bosnian mate named Edin Karamazov.

Okay okay, it was really "Songs from the Labyrinth" of which you can read all about here: http://classicalmusic.suite101.com/a..._the_labyrinth and here for Edin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edin_Karamazov

We were in the stalls literally the back row for the support act and unfortunately for everyone around (and the poor soul it happened to) the colostomy bag for someone in a wheelchair near us broke/leaked about the same time the lights went down.

Real eye-stinging stuff. Sympathies to the poor person it happened to; sh!t happens ... but please pardon us for not being able to handle it.

Think of being trapped inside a tipped-over porta-potty towards the end of a "Big Day Out" festival, and not being able to scream out for help.

So, come interval we went down to the front desk and explained the predicament (at that stage we didn't realize it was the issue just described - we thought it was something wrong with the Concert Hall loos wafting in through the exit) and asked with eyes streaming from acid burns, to be moved anywhere else, please, for the love of Loki & Thor, anywhere !

Apologies were issued along with two new tickets to anywhere else.

The anywhere else turned out to be middle seats 5 rows back from the stage, barely 8m away from Gordon Matthew Sumner out of his comfort zone. Twas great to see his humbleness, serious efforts, and sweat upon the brow as opposed to the distant blurr we witnessed early this year at Members Equity Stadium when he was touring with "The Police".

On ya to the team on stage, but big boos to the purile young things sitting to our left and in front of us to our left who insisted on heaping giggles upon noisy giggles (much to the embarrasement of all around and probably even Sting onstage) while watching Erin doing some amazing/incredible/frantic lute playing in a quieter balladic piece (they thought he looked amusing whilst playing the instrument the way it traditionally is supposed to be played, apparently.)

The burst colostomy bag was far less offensive than that Stye of Giggle-Gutses. Such effing Ozzie audiences don't deserve to be exposed to quality ... talk about casting pearls before swine !

Anyway, cheers once again to the Perth Concert Hall Staff who looked after us and who explained the full situation when we went back to thank them after the concert.

Cheers to Sting and his crew. Great show and thanks for coming back to Western Australia again. Glad you didn't get blown up when you took a wrong turn East off the beach just North of Swanbourne* earlier that day.

Okay, rant out ... back to Lurk/Away mode. If you really miss me, I may be updating my blogs via email from time to time over the next month. See: http://derspatz.blogspot.com and http://derblatz.blogspot.com , oh, and even http://www.flickr.com/photos/derspatz/

Oh, and in case I don't pop back in before, deem "Bah Humbug" and "Happy Saturnalia" included for later this month.

regarDS
* Nudist Beach ... Sting had accidentally walked through the middle of it when on a stroll up from Cottesloe Beach, so he apparently went left to avoid coming back down through it again.

Left of the beach is the Military Firing range, with potentially unexploded ordinance a-lurking here and there.

Giant Steps is what you take, walking on a bomb !

Get Up Stand Up, GetUp! for your Lefts ...

Just when I thought I could put the circle-jerking Fanatical Religious Zealots over at Whirlpool's "ILCF" (ISP Level Content Filtering) forum thread in a blog thread all but itself (see the "derblatz" link) and leave it out of this one, they go and bring a whole new level of scary and disturbed comedy to the stage ... stuff so internutty that I can deem it worthy of a rant in here.

Hang on to your noses coz this is gonna get a little more offensive than usual. :)

As you may have realised, I've found the "waa, waa, waa"ing going on among the aforementioned quite fascinating. I mean, who couldn't help but be amused by a whole bunch of folk going "Teh Governet is out to enslave the nation and take away free speech, it is Hitler and Stalin and Mao all over again" (always funny to hear Gen-XYZers say that !) when at best the unlikely reality is that all of a sudden they may have to start paying instead of saying "Thank you for the music, the songs I'm stealing" or the movies they are "pirating", as well as face the prospect of having to get through a few more layers of conscience in order to click one handed through the kind of online material that their Grandmas, Mothers, Wives, Girlfriends, Sisters and Daughters would probably most wish did not even exist in the first place, let alone that their grandkids, dads, husbands, boyfriends and brothers were encouraging its continued development and proliferation along with all the heartache, degradation, disrespect and even slavery it brings !

Ok, I exaggerated. I realise the Gen-XYZers aren't necessarily big on "thank you"s ...

Anyway, these forever plugged in lifeless worshippers of "The Internut" who deem it to be the sacred cow of our age as well as unimaginatively consider it "the last bastion of free speech" want the likes of you and I to think that they have our best interests at heart by trying to PREVENT suitable and justifiable national rating and control of internut/online content as it is done in The Real World where all the Real Living is done.

Yeah right ... get your sticky hands off it - we all know who you really are thinking of; you're not fooling anyone other than yourselves if you really believe that.

So what are these fanatical virtual anarchists up to now ? Well it seems that there is no loathsome low to go to when it comes to the situation of maintaining the link between The Addict and The Supply/Poison. They've now reached the stage where they are haplessly handing over cash to an Oz organization that is so Radically-Extreme-Yet-Carefully-Camouflaged-Left that they make the Evil Lefty Greens look like die Hitler-Jugend !

But Of Course I am referring to "GetUp!". If you've not heard of them before, the "GetUp!" stands for "Greenie Environmentalist Terrorists Undermining Peace!" though they would never tell you it stands for that ... but Der Apfel fällt nicht weit vom Baum, ja?

This gaily painted sinister lobbying group casts the combined shadow of every Lefty political party you could imagine, including those yet to be spawned from whatever Bog of Eternal Stench it is that continually manages to foist such wrongness upon common humanity.

Think of every issue and controversy that divides Oz and you will find the GetUp! crowd busy lobbying in favour of those on the WRONG side of the division and working towards making things even WORSE for Oz than it already is.

This unsavoury mob not only worked hard spending conned, uh, donated coin to put Kevin747 into Government at the last Federal Election, but also had the favour gratefully returned by being allocated no less than an alleged ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN SEATS in KRudds own little circle-jerk involving the ridiculous and highly unrepresentative "Summit of 1000 Best And Brightest Brains".

HA and BAH !

With so much "Left" on the collection of 1000 chattering useless clueless noses in the publicly funded trough, nongs, it is no wonder our nation is rapidly being reduced to going around in circles ... having one leg shorter than the other tends to do that, but I digress.

So what are the ingredients of this cake half baked ?

On one hand we have a bunch of internut worshipping freeloaders worried about having to pay for supply and Do The Right Thing for a change, and on the other we have a shady organization with the typical Loony Lefty Left agendas always pragmatically happy to relieve the naive of their coin and raise their lobbying profile at the same time by associating themselves with popular faddish causes likely to get media attention.

Real "Cake and Eat it too" stuff ... and history tells us what usually happens to THOSE types.

Oh, I should mention that because they are a political lobbying group, thankfully the coin fleeced from the seduced desperate special interest groups that sustain and sponsor their true evil causes, is not tax deductible - so it isn't ALL bad.

So what is going to be the likely outcome of all this ILCF hoohaa ?

What is going to be the likely result of the GetUp! marriage to the ugly useless bride once the dowry runs out ? A dowry that could be much better spent in so many other ways and places ?

(ah, but this ain't about charity or taking care of the needy - this is about maintaining a mainline connection to The Drug !)

Oh, who cares ... fools and their money are always soon parted and there are a million and one more interesting things to be involved in out there.

Some even via the Internut here and there ...

Anyway, to paraphrase one Captain Oates, a truly noble and brave soul (as opposed to moi), "I am just going offline and may be some time".

All this online madness is prompting me for some overdue DownTime along with a Reality Check, so I'm out to explore life offline for a while.

Oh yeah, just in case I don't pop back in here before next year, deem a Merry Bah Humbug and Happy Saturnalia to you too. :)

Keep it Real and if not, don't be too internutty ...

regarDS