A piece of meaningless frippery after Wayne’s powerful but harrowing post below. Feel free to add your own nominations in the comment box.
- Personalised number plates
- Opera
- Line-dancing
- Fat chicks
- “I fish and I vote” bumper stickers
- Australia’s Funniest Home Videos
- Tripe and onions
- Kasey Chambers
- Senator Bill Heffernan
- Retiring Family Court Chief Justice Alistair Nicholson
Subaru WRXs
Hmm… your antipathy to opera is not something I go along with. I’m not a devotee of the form by any means, it has a few too many inherent absurdities for me to ever entirely embrace it, but there are enough good examples of the form for me to not dismiss it completely.
Conversely, you are dead right about Kasey Chambers, who can just fuck right off.
Ferals and Hippies.
TV weather *personalities* and their patter – and the lack of of a clause 303 (©Breaker Morant) in their contracts.
Ken,
tell us what you don’t like about Alistair Nicholson.
A lot of people don’t like him. Strangely, a disproportionate number of them seem to men whose marriages have failed. It’s almost as if they blame him for the (alleged failings of the ) Family Law Act, and blame the Family Law Act for their failed marriages.
Not you, of course, Ken.
Dave,
“Not you, of course, Ken” is right. Our separation is (so far) civilised, sensible and co-operative. We’ve had no involvement with the Famil Court and hopefully we never will. However, there’s plenty of evidence that the Court is highly dysfunctional, and from numerous credible sources (not just alienated single fathers). Nicholson’s consistently high-handed, arrogant and dismissive attitude towards anyone who suggests there might be problems has been a major factor IMO in the Family Court’s failure to achieve the enormous promise it seemed to have when introducted by Lionel Murphy, of implementing a fair, simple, non-punitive and dignified family law system. I’m not an expert in the area, however, and I have no interest in getting into a debate about it (any more than I’m interested in a debate about Kasey Chambers or Bill Hefffernan).
Ken, if you don’t want to debate “it”, then, don’t, but for those who do, your response highlights an important source of confusion. What is the “it” that is supposedly a problem: the Family Law Act, or the administration of the Act by the Family Court?
The Government has wavered between bashing Nicholson himself, usually by proxy using one of their acolytes in the media (“Nicholson was an ALP candidate in the early 1970s, therefore everthing he says about anything is suspect”); and proposing changes to the Act itself.
If it is law that is the problem, then I suggest that all those aggrieved single fathers are going to stay aggrieved, no matter who becomes the new chief justice of the FC. And if it’s not the law, but Nicholson’s leadership that has been the problem, why are there so many proposals on the table to change the law?
Nicholson’s major “crime”, IMO, has been to speak up for the institution that he has led, and to take on the crackpot single father groups (like the blackshirts, or whatever they are called) and their apologists.
um. Skinny chicks. Parking inspectors. People ahead of me in the pharmacists who take a looooong time to drink their methadone while their kids roll their eyes back into their heads. bastards who mistreat old Jaguars. security guards who mau-mau cyclists. troll bloggers of all persuasions. managers who think it is just soo coool to play Hildegard von Bingen in lingerie shops. all those weird people who know how to swim. that shitbag who designed the push button phone thereby enabling this: “to give us all your money in return for nothing presss four”.. whoever invented the television commercial.. that policeman who arrested Bill Gates in 1975 and let the bastard live… (one shot, one twitch on a lonely highway and he would just have been another fragment of a Chris Isaacs song). I could go on. Perhaps my categories are too specific.
managers who think it is just soo coool to play Hildegard von Bingen in lingerie shops
Well, David, you obviously know more about this than me… explain?
‘Bob Brown for PM’ stickers and shirts or anything Bob Brown related. Um, objects touched by or even thought of by Bob Brown. Um, Bob Browns’ relatives stretching back 1000 generations and all those who have met Bob Brown.
And all those within 100sq km of Bob Brown current location.
James – it’s the debasement of art. Sad to say I have no social skills whatsoever in a lingerie shop, but I do wander past them in the mall (my moccassins sush sushing on the cool mock granite) and they do seem to be archetypally soulless joints. They certainly specialise in the fine art of lying to men,
Then again, there is an argument that I treat bookshops like lingerie shops for the brain..
What about barristers who want to claim immunity from being sued for malpractice?
“Bastards who mistreat old Jaguars”
Yeah that’s a good one. My blood boils when I see Series 1 XJ’s with mag wheels, bogan paint jobs, plastic air spoilers, and 253 cu in Holden engines under the bonnet.
Why didn’t they just get an old Chevy?
People who got their lotto win by buying a house before the prices skyrocketed, made $2-300,000 that was entirely unlooked for and undeserved, and now think they are Warren freakin’ Buffett with Prado, a jet-ski and wide-screen telly.
What about Jaguars that mistreat their owners?
Maybe I should appoint you as my new blogtwin, given my spookily high level of agreement with you (except I have nothing against fat chicks).
John,
Actually the “fat chicks” item was put in at the urging of “B”. We’ve gotten in the habit of sitting at a Mitchell Street cafe most friday nights watching the world go by, and I sometimes (often) comment disparagingly as surprisingly large numbers of groups of seriously overweight young women stagger by on their journey between nightclubs. Invariably they’re dressed utterly inappropriately in short skirts and figure-hugging tops that display hectares of lard in a way that well and truly puts you off your dinner.
Hipsters on fat chicks.
…and lists by bloggers.
Wankers
Dickheads
Dave Ricardo
Losers
Tossers
I don’t hate you Murph.
I do think you are a bit creepy, but that’s OK.
Hating fat chicks is like hating mozzies Ken. You don’t get to put it in your list.
In defence of fat chicks in hipsters, Ken, you should keep in mind the fact that it’s currently almost impossible to find a) trousers & skirts that have a proper waist ; b) t-shirts/shirts that aren’t short & tight ….
What’s a curvy girl to do when kaftans are in short supply?
Not a fat chick, meself – maybe a little pneumatic, shall we say – but even so, do seem to spend a considerable amount of time tugging up drifting hipsters/pulling down riding up shirts that display, if not acres, the odd centimetre of flesh I’d really rather not to reveal — particularly now, as winter gets closer, and the goosebumps are flowering….
There’s always Maggie T, I suppose. I’m anything but a metrosexual fashion expert, but I know from observation that it’s possible for “curvy girls” to dress tastefully.
Yeah – but who wants to be ‘tasteful’ when they’re in their 20s?
My Granny does tasteful.
what about beer guts? its the male version of fat chicks. And I do find reelly reelly reelly skinny people a worry on a purely visceral (or visceral-less) level.
But then I am fascinated by dwarves and I like Dave Ricardo.
David,
Yes, beer guts are gross too, maybe even more gross. But, for whatever reason, I’m not in the habit of noticing and slagging them while having dinner at Cafe Uno. I suppose I’d have to concede it’s probably an inherently sexist reaction, but I can live with that.
‘Course, those of us with beer guts (or worse) tend to be in the habit of wearing a leeeetle more clothing than the “fat chicks” described above. That may help our image somewhat?