Roy & HG have romped back into my heart. Although ‘This Sporting Life’ has been a Sunday pleasure of mine for many years, this year’s Festival of The Boot has been less than spectacular, even with the Storm coming home with the NRL trophy and the Cats winning the AFL premiership for Victoria. Indecision 07, or at least the segments I listened to while driving around between engagements, was spectacular.

That said, I am flabbergasted and disgusted at the election in general. Not at the result, which was both predictable and – let’s face it – somewhat pleasing, but rather at the fact that people I consider to be intelligent, level-headed and reasonable have quite simply gone insane over the last week or two. The sheer number of election day BBQs being run by early twenty-somethings was mind boggling, and perhaps more surprising was that most of these friends of mine had very set, very strong views on the politics of the country, even though their age and position in society should surely suggest indecisiveness or even good old fashioned apathy towards the entire thing. The plain truth is that so little of the whole thing has any bearing whatsoever on our lives as young people that anything but apathy is a little odd. Let me elaborate:

Kevin Rudd is, let’s face it pretty much a John Howard with 18 years and a significant amount of eyebrowage less to his name. His policies are so similar that his political stance is basically on the fence. The fact is that although he may be charismatic, younger and nerdy looking, he is a politician through and through, which makes him the lowest common denominator as far as human beings are concerned. Why and how this ‘Kevin 07′ cult of personality has sprung up is quite beyond me.

Whether the new government addresses the stolen generation and climate change is neither here nor there. Climate change is here whether we like it or not, regardless as to how we 20 million Australians live our lives. Even so I quite honestly doubt any proactive (or even any whatsoever) climate change legislation will be passed in this next term. Further to this other Labor platforms such as refugees and IR reform will be treated identically – I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Workchoices is renamed to something that sounds like a Labor initiative but in truth left almost exactly as is.

There are also less important concerns of mine, like the attractiveness of Therese Rein (or lack thereof), Peter Garrett in general and the whole issue of Costello firstly being the elected member of my seat (sorry everyone – if it makes you feel better I didn’t vote for him, as futile as that action was) and secondly running a major political party and making it illegal not to smirk menacingly (EDIT: not an issue anymore on both counts!).

So as is probably evident from those last few paragraphs of random tirade, I have felt little else but complete apathy for the entire process. I voted for Stephen Mayne, an independent and founder of crikey.com.au who won my vote during a doorknock a couple of weeks ago, and I quite honestly didn’t care whether Howard or Rudd won nationally. As I stated earlier, what I am is shocked that people my age, who let’s face it are not affected by any of this can care so much about the outcome of an irrelevant change of government.

I think one of the comments in the letters page of today’s newspaper wraps the whole thing up quite well:

I woke up on Sunday to find no milk in the fridge, the bread was stale, only decaf coffee and the paper hadn’t been delivered. It’s just not good enough, Mr. Rudd. This Labor Government has a lit to answer for! – David, Moonee Ponds.

The simple fact is that things that actually do matter – the finances of the country, national security, employment and welfare systems as well as other critical areas of governance will not change one iota. Things that matter for your standard uni student such as the price of beer and employment in the hospitality sectors may change but not because of who is in power but rather the forces of a free market economy which is independent of the national political landscape. That said, if I am proven wrong and the Labor party provide us all with food replicators and free, comprehensive newspaper delivery services I (as well as David no doubt) will retract my entire post and pledge to vote Labor until I die. Hell, I’ll even join the National Union of Students, which is quite honestly so far out of touch with what it is to be students that it may as well rebrand itself to the ‘National Irrelevant Diatribe Association’. Bastards do more harm than good.

Pete

I’m sorry I haven’t posted in you for ages. Seventeen days actually. I could say I was extremely busy and couldn’t find time to sit down and think of interesting and exciting things to write about, but that wouldn’t be entirely true. Exams finished last Monday, which has left a week and a half of almost nothing during which I’m sure I could have scrounged together ten minutes to write some below par entry about god-knows-what. I bought a Wii last Thursday, which has admittedly impacted on my spare time somewhat, but not to the point where I don’t touch the computer, so that’s not really a valid excuse either. Basically, what I’m trying to say is that you’re a bit chubby, past your prime and I’m having serious second thoughts about this whole relationship. I think we should maybe see other people.

Alright so that was a total lie (apart from the chubby jibe, you are now approaching 200,000 words fatso) but the essence remains – I’ve been bad to you. I’m sorry. Maybe when I finish this fucking Zelda game I can spend those lazy summer days on the beach with you. Maybe.

Love,

Pete

I’ve never quite understood it, but breweries consistently put out exceptionally good ads. I realise that booze and its marketing is a huge HUGE industry, and there is shitloads of money being flung around, but why beer in particular manages to pull off all the truly magnificent ads (I’m thinking Carlton’s Big Ad from last year, most of the Bud ads that air around superbowl time, the Boony ads for VB, etc) is beyond me.

I’ve been trialling Outlook 2007, which came with my $75 Office Ultimate package earlier in the year for the last couple of weeks (conclusion – stick with thunderbird), and it has only come to my attention now, after swapping back that a whole host of emails including comment notification from here and a whole bunch of mailing list messages got trapped by the spam software or swallowed by some big outlooky hole somewhere. Anyway the most impressive email was from VB a couple of weeks ago showing off their fancy new ad. It really is something, and to top it of Tahli’s dad is in it (Wesley kids will remember old man Foley), which shows that CUB actually employed musicians rather than actors…. interesting. Check out the stubby symphony right here, although I have a feeling you might need to be Australian (and therefore know the VB theme song )to really appreciate it.

Pete

Just briefly: to Monsieur West, and to all those who would jump to his defence after my last post – I was feeling a bit nasty last night. I apologise – your album isn’t that shit.

Now, as I have an exam tomorrow, I’ve been spending a good portion of my evening on Facebook wasting time. I stumbled upon a group offering ten litres of beer for a solution to a problem, so naturally I investigated. To cut a long story short, a couple of girls spent a night watching those silly quizmania shows that are on late night television to spin a bit of easy money for the networks – the kind that pose word jumbles and little games as phone-in competitions for prizemoney. Anyway these girls sat through one puzzle, which lasted four hours, SEVEN HUNDRED AND FORTY THREE CALLERS, and yet the question went unanswered. The show eventually pulled the question, so the girls (along with countless others surely) emailed the show to complain and ask for the solution. Apparently the official email sent back gave the answer, but would not explain any further apart from to say that it was a formula and was not random or arbitrary.

Anyway I’ll give you the screencap that was posted on the facebook group. At the bottom of the uncropped image, the jackpot box stated the almost $70,000 was up for grabs for the successful caller. Wowsers.

Oh, the answer is apparently 187. Any bright sparks out there prepared to tell me why?

Pete