"Today I ..." would just like to publicly convey my thanks to one and all, both seen and unseen, near and afar, living and passed on, who has ever had anything to do with my life and times and the long and winding path that has amazingly seen me reach the utterly unexpected age of 48.
You all know who you are and regardless of individual levels of input/care/love and all that, I couldn't have done it without yas, so Cheers !
As for Mr Fawkes, well here is hoping that something explosively big (though not the kind of explosive that Mr Fawkes endorsed) happens soon and Oz is at last rid of the sad joke that is our current PM and her wedded-to-the-Nazi-Greens utterly inept and wastrel minority political party, along with her abominable and ridiculous tax on life bringing CO2 that she is trying to inflict upon us all as part of her Fabian Socialist agenda.
Today would be a good day for such a hope to come true.
"Today I ...", in the "offline world", got to share a social occasion at "Little Creatures" in Freo with somebody who (if I understood the job title correctly) earns their bread and butter by not only supporting and promoting the Grand Lie of AGW/MMCC (Anthropogenic Global Warming / Man Made Climate Change), but also via the Great Fraud/Scam of our era, "Carbon Trading".
We had only known each other for prolly less than 5 minutes when The Discussion got underway, and all because LSCP ("LifeStyle Choices Partner" for those who have come in late) asked him what he did for a living and he foolishly answered "Carbon Management".
Can you image my glee and the tingle induced to my erogenous zones upon hearing such a thing ?
At one stage we had to turn things back down to about 11 (refer to The Amp on "This is Spinal Tap" ) coz he didn't like me talking about public funded professional scare-mongerers Karoly and Flim-Flannery in disparaging terms.
By the time I got to drop the name "Andrew Bolt" at our drinking table (the great names of James Delingpole and the award winning science blog "wattsupwiththat.com" already having been mentioned), my warmista drinking companion was calling me "satan" and I was calling him "gullible". :-)
LSCP's take on the evening is that this poor fellow just simply could not believe that I was serious in my rejection of the mythical "consensus" he Truly Believed in, along with the utterly failed hypothesis of global climate change being caused by levels of atmospheric CO2, let alone mankind's pitiful contributions to the near to starvation (for flora) levels of atmospheric CO2.
To be fair and on the flip side, I just simply could not believe he was serious when he suggested that the quality of life I was enjoying thanks to relatively cheap energy generated by plant-food creating coal, could not possible be making me happy and that I would actually prefer to live without all those wonderful things cheap energy brings me.
My LSCP's view was that he thought I musta been just taking the p!ss, even though I said I had been part of a grass-roots letter writing movement that produced over 400,000 items of corro to pollies about the nation and that in turn helped see Malcolm Turncoat ousted as Liberal Party leader which in turn saw KRudd, Killard (so renamed because of her "roll out the red carpet to queue jumping economic opportunists" border control policies that has seen who knows how many wannabe illegal immigrants drown at sea), Turncoat, and Penny Wrong's ETS/CPRS stopped in its tracks.
Anyhoo, twas all fun (well, from my POV), nobody lost an eye, and I just had to LOL at his end of the evening compliment to me of "they say satan always takes an appealing guise".
I told him to put "derspatz" into google or "Hitler" + "AGW" into youtube. ;)
Actually, it has been a while, so here again is my take on Hitler's reaction to Briffa's Yamal tree ring data and all it implied.
I'll only include the youtube link because for some strange reason embedding mucks up the captions.
... and for good measure, here is a favorite youtube of mine from the "JollyGreenWatchman": http://www.youtube.com/embed/-esLrrqGKkE (linked coz of caption issues when embedding)
Anyhoo, cheers, ummm, "Gullible" (name changed to protect the identity of a modern day peddler of what is akin to the useless Roman Catholic "Indulgences" ala "permissions to sin" system of old :-)), it was all fun, and I'm sure that lump of cow you ate for dinner was raised a vegetarian. :-) :-) :-)
Oh, and on the subject of carbon trading, here is an idea that might even tempt this little so called "satan":
OTOH, going to bed for money is called prostitution isn't it ?
Oh, and here is yet another youtube I found interesting. All about the Bias of the BBC (much like Oz's "ABC") and "The Guardian" (much like Oz's "The Age"), particularly in relation to the Big Lie of our era, "Man Made Climate Change".
My parting comment today is something I informed a iPad carrying drone for Bono's "One" activist/fake charity group at a 360 degrees concert late last year.
"Left wing politics is the problem, not the solution"
Something which painfully apparent here in Oz at the moment.
And here is an excellent youtube series that should give a good hint as to why the above are favoured by me ... and further clue you in as to what my politics are:
Intro: Collectivism vs Individualism
Part1: The nature and origin of human rights
Part2: Group Supremacy
Part3: Coercion vs Freedom
Part4: Equality and Inequality under law
Part5: Proper role of Government
No prizes for guessing what I am in favour of and give my support to ... and what I am against, oppose, and denounce.
"Today I ..." was astounded at the resilience of a local humble Oz magpie.
There I was, happily internutting, when all of a sudden there was an Almighty bang from outside down the street and my internut connection dropped out.
"That sounded like overhead powerlines shorting or a step-down transformer blowing its knives and/or its guts" thinks I.
Strangely enough though, my notebook power supply stayed on, but a test of the lights revealed exceeding dimness ... a sign of a brownout/reduction in mains voltage.
Considering it was a clear blue sky without a puff of wind to blow lines together or trees into them, my next thought was "oh sh!t, the work-dudes building a house a couple of doors down, have accidentally hit the step-down transformer next to the building site" so I rush outside in my PJs to make sure everything is ok and if I could be of assistance.
Sure enough, the work-dudes ARE shouting at each other and pointing to near the transformer enclosure, but they all appear to be ok and no errant gear is near it.
Well, except for a limp black and white form and another more active one stalking around looking concerned at it.
Yeah, a pair of magpies, and prolly the two that were unhomed and used to play around the tree featured in the youtube in my last blog post which includes a clip of them chasing each other around between the branches.
Okay, here is the clip again:
Anyhoo, the work-dudes fuss around the downed magpie that had managed to arc/short-out the overhead 25kv AC supply to the step-down mains supply transformer with an Almighty Bang.
One of the work-dudes flips the unfortunate creature over and you know what ?
It gets back up to its feet.
I kid you not. I'm standing there in my PJs in the street watching from about 40metres away, and this creature that should be, for all intents and purposes, the pre-cooked filler for a magpie pie, gets back on its feet and just stands there looking like it is thinking the magpie equivelent of "WTF" ... which was clearly what we were all thinking.
So one of the work-dudes gets it a container of water and puts it near the stoned crow wannabe and before you know it, it stepped over to investigate the container contents.
Then its friend hops over to say "WTF mate, you ok ?" in magpie (yeah, it does the "do do do doodle doodle do" thing similar to what I captured in the youtube in my last blog post), and the recently mega-zapped tells it to bugger off for the moment coz it still has its buzz on ... IE, it zots its beak at it as if to say "don't stand so close to me".
Within about 5 minutes, it is wandering about the verge on which it crash landed from about 6 or 7 metres up to, so I go back inside to unplug things like TVs and fridges which don't like brownouts that much (underpower is WAY worse for electrical stuff than blackouts), and when I come back out, the magpie had wandered off completely and its mate was gone too.
I wonder if it, or its chicks, are now going to develop super powers ?
I'm also just simply amazed that it was able to survive being a living short-circuit to such a high voltage AND the concussive bang that happened when it pretended to be a switch. A short-circuit that took Western Power around two and a half hours to fix !
"Today I ..." am also LOLing at the irony of "der spatz" (the sparrow) being "booted" offline by a magpie getting a 25kv AC boot.
I mean, when it comes to little birds vs bigger birds, its usually the former that chase the latter off, yes ?
Oh, and one more.
"Today I ..." was also pleased to learn that a bull in a bullring in Spain decided it didn't want to play the game of being tortured to death for the amusement of a sick in the soul audience but instead decided to join them where they sat and teach some of them and their children a deserved lesson they are not likely to forget in a hurry.
Here are some youtubes of derspatz proving that you're never too old to learn new things ... and for me and LSCP, that meant trying out Snowboarding at Coronet Peak, Queenstown in New Zealand in the July school holidays just gone.
For a slobbish "likes to hang loose" cool and froody bighead like me, I discovered it came kinda a natural ... and I don't think I'll ever go back to skiing now. :)
But don't take me at my word, not while there are long and boring youtubes to be endured ! Most of the following were taken using a tiny webcam thingy I had clipped to my beanie, so where I look, you see !
First up ?
Me and LSCP riding the fast lift DOWN the mountain:
Next up, a long and boring (coz, let's face it, I was going pretty slow) run down "Meadows Express"
Here is a similar run to that except I take a detour and include some footage of LSCP doing pirouettes on a snowboard. ;) :)
And now for a spill so daring and dramatic that it took me clean off the mountain !
Excellent fun which I well recommend ... and the fact that I appeared to be some mad old man talking to himself while zipping(ish) down the piste (hey, I was giving camera commentary !) tended to keep living obstacles away. Heh.
Snowboarding. Try it some time ... but if your butt bruises easily then I would recommend that you get some padded pants first.