The President we just didn't have to have

From The Age, January 6, 2009
Frank Rich

How could someone so slight inflict so much damage?

WE LIKE our failed presidents to be Shakespearean, or at least large enough to inspire Oscar-worthy performances from magnificent tragedians like Frank Langella. So here, too, George W. Bush has let us down. He is not a memorable villain so much as a sometimes affable second banana whom Josh Brolin and Will Ferrell can nail without breaking a sweat. He's the reckless Yalie Tom Buchanan, not Gatsby. He is smaller than life.

The last poll on Bush's presidency found that 79 per cent of Americans will not miss him after he leaves the White House. He is being forgotten already, even if he's not yet gone. You start to pity him until you remember how vast the wreckage is. It stretches from the Middle East to Wall Street to Main Street and even into the heavens, which have been a haven for toxins under his passive stewardship.

The discrepancy between the grandeur of the failure and the stature of the man is a puzzlement.

The one indisputable talent of his White House was its ability to create and sell propaganda both to the public and the press. Now that bag of tricks is empty as well. Bush's first and last photo-ops in Iraq could serve as bookends to his entire tenure.

On Thanksgiving weekend 2003, even as the Iraqi insurgency was spiralling, his secret trip to the war zone was a PR slam-dunk. The photo of the beaming commander-in-chief bearing a super-sized decorative turkey for the troops was designed to make every front page and newscast in the country, and it did.

Five years later, in what was intended as a farewell victory lap to show off Iraq's improved post-surge security, Bush was reduced to ducking shoes. He tried to spin the ruckus as another victory for his Administration's program of democracy promotion. "That's what people do in a free society," he said.

Bush remained oblivious to each and every pratfall on his watch. Iraq burned, New Orleans flooded — and Americans essentially stopped listening to him after hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, but he still doesn't grasp the finality of their defection.

Lately he's promised not to steal the spotlight from Barack Obama once he's in retirement — as if he could do so by any act short of running naked through downtown Dallas. The latest CNN poll finds that only one-third of his fellow citizens want him to play a post-presidency role in public life.

Bush is equally blind to the collapse of his propaganda machinery. Though no one is listening, he has given more exit interviews than either Clinton or Reagan did.

Another, far more elaborate example of legacy spin can be downloaded from the White House website: a booklet recounting "highlights" of the Administration's "accomplishments and results". With big type, much white space, children's-book-like trivia boxes titled "Did You Know?" and lots of colour photos of the Bushes posing with blacks and troops, this document is the literary correlative to "Mission Accomplished": Bush kept America safe (provided his presidency began on September 12, 2001); he gave America record economic growth (provided his presidency ended in December 2007); he vanquished all the leading al-Qaeda terrorists (if you don't count the leaders bin Laden and al-Zawahri); he gave Afghanistan a thriving "market economy" (if you count its opium trade) and a "democratically elected president" (presiding over a corrupt government); he supported elections in Pakistan (after propping up Pervez Musharraf past the point of no return).

If this is the best case that even Bush and his handlers can make for his achievements, you wonder why they bothered. The audacity of its hype helps clear up the mystery of how someone so slight could inflict so much damage. So do his many print and television exit interviews. The man who emerges is a narcissist with no self-awareness whatsoever.

The president who famously couldn't name a single mistake of his presidency at a press conference in 2004 still can't.

He can, however, blame everyone else. Asked if he feels any responsibility for the economic meltdown, Bush says: "People will realise a lot of the decisions that were made on Wall Street took place over a decade or so, before I arrived." Asked if the 2008 election was a repudiation of his Administration, he says "it was a repudiation of Republicans".

"The attacks of September the 11th came out of nowhere," he said in another interview, as if he hadn't ignored frantic intelligence warnings that summer of an al-Qaeda attack. But it was an "intelligence failure", not his relentless invocation of patently fictitious "mushroom clouds", that sped us into Iraq.

The crowning personality tic revealed by Bush's final propaganda push is his bottomless capacity for self-pity. "I was a wartime president, and war is very exhausting," he told C-Span.

With this level of self-regard, it's no wonder that Bush could remain undeterred as he drove the country off a cliff. The smugness is reinforced not just by his history as the entitled scion of one of America's aristocratic dynasties but also by his conviction that his every action is blessed from on high. Asked last month by an interviewer what he has learned from his time in office, he replied: "I've learned that God is good. All the time." Once again he is shifting the blame. This presidency was not about Him. Bush failed because in the end it was all about him.

Cake Wrecks

I have a new blog to add to my list of breakfast reading material. Cake wrecks. We've all seen badly decorated cakes, but have you seen anything this bad before? If yes, you should consider submitting a photo - but I won't be pleased if I see my wedding cake on there, y'hear?.

The cake wrecks come in various forms. From the beautifully made but kinda strange:

The downright disturbing (I ask myself what kind of parties these cakes were made for):

Those, where the professional decorator isn't very clever:

And cakes that are just plain ugly:

Good to see that Canadian news is covering this.

Frankly, it was ridiculous of Australian police not to have been expecting the Chaser boys to pull a stunt like this - I mean, even I was expecting it! Also good to see that Alexander Downer has kept a sense of humour about it, despite the fact that it has made Australian security measures look about as effective as chicken wire. I can't wait to see the show next week!



----

Aussie comedy troupe rides 'Canadian' motorcade through APEC summit security

Published: Thursday, September 6, 2007 | 10:29 AM ET

Canadian Press

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - Members of an Australian TV comedy show, one dressed as Osama bin Laden, drove a Canadian-flagged motorcade through two security checkpoints Thursday before being stopped near the hotel where President George W. Bush is staying.

The stunt embarrassed Sydney police who have imposed the tightest security measures in city history for a summit of leaders from Pacific Rim countries, including Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who arrived Thursday.

Police arrested 11 cast and crew from the TV program, "The Chaser's War on Everything," and impounded three vehicles, the Australian Broadcasting Corp., which airs the show, said on its website.

Cast members put together a sham motorcade, hiring two motorcycles and three large cars on which they put Canadian flags.

Police waved the motorcade through two checkpoints before pulling it over near the Intercontinental Hotel where Bush is staying.

Cast member Chas Licciardello got out of the car dressed in a white tunic and cap and wearing a long fake Osama bin Laden-style beard.

"No particular reason we chose Canada," cast member Chris Taylor was quoted as saying on the Sydney Morning Herald's Web site.

"We just thought they'd be a country who the cops wouldn't scrutinize too closely, and who feasibly would only have three cars in their motorcade - as opposed to the 20 or so gas guzzlers that Bush has brought with him."

All 11 were charged under new laws passed a month ago with entering a restricted APEC area, a police statement said.

They were released on bail and are to appear in court next month. Each faces a potential six-month jail sentence.

Bush is a frequent target of "the Chaser," as are Australian politicians. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the stunt proved security was working.

"Whatever you think of the humour of 'the Chaser,' the honest truth is they were clearly not going to harm anybody in a physical way," Downer said.

"They presumably were, as is the nature of their show, aiming to humiliate a lot of well-known people."

Its the small victories

Last year when I still worked at UBC and was doing a lot of data entry and number crunching work, I found myself a regular visitor to the diet coke vending machine in my building. I visited that machine at least daily. Then it started taking my money and not giving me the drink, which obviously is breaking its side of the deal. I think what happened is that it was out of diet coke, but not registering that it was out of stock. So it would think it was giving me the diet coke, but in fact, wasn't.
This happened a couple of times before I chucked a tanty and called the vending machine company, Aramark Refreshments, to demand they fix the problem and refund my money.
Its not like it was a lot of money, but its the principle of the matter. No vending machine company should have machines out there that aren't holding up their side of the bargain. That's just stealing, and it leaves the caffeine dependent even more cranky than they were before (and nobody wants that!)
In total the vending machine took $3.75 of my money without issuing the caffeine. I called the company and told them. A couple of weeks later they sent me $1.25 in coins, which is clearly not good enough. I rang them again and told them had jipped me on the compensation, and they still owed me $2.50. I never got the rest of the money....
...Until today, that is!!! They had sent the money to my UBC work address, but it arrived about 3 weeks after I had finished working there and returned to Australia. Another girl I know from the same department recently moved to Melbourne also (and happens to work about 100 metres away from me here). She was sent a care package from our department at UBC, and my ex-boss included an envelope addressed to me. The care package arrived today and Melissa passed on the envelope to me. I nearly died laughing when I realised what it was, and the stupidity of receiving Canadian coins in the mail. But I laughed even more when I realised that the envelope contained $3.75, $1.25 more than I was owed. I call it the 'Careless Tax', and it serves Aramark right for depriving me of diet coke when I needed it most.
I make it a habit to let all vending machine companies know when their machines are faulty. I used to have the Coca Cola vending machine faults hotline programmed into my phone because it happened so often. They used to send me a money order and a Coca Cola pen whenever I called them to report a fault. I got my mum into it too. We have quite the Coca Cola pen collection, I can tell you.

We got our stuff!!!

On July 28th of this year Bryan and I packed up our belongings in Vancouver and sent them off to Melbourne. We used a shipping company called Bekins Worldwide, who were quite good from their end of things. It wasn't nearly as expensive as I thought it could be, and the service we got in having the stuff picked up from our house was excellent. Really, I have no quarrels with Bekins.

Bekins told us that the shipment would take 10-12 weeks, so we predicted we would have our stuff in Melbourne by mid-October. With that in mind we carefully planned what we would pack in the shipment based upon we could and couldn't live without for that length of time. October came, and there was no sign of our stuff.

When you move to somewhere new and leave behind everything and everyone that you know, there is a grieving process of sorts. Despite the shipment containing only material goods, these were items that we were familiar with and associated with home. Without them we haven't felt like we had a home, and it has felt very difficult at times to settle in to life in Melbourne. Anyone can put up with this kind of thing for a few weeks, but after a while it gets very tiring. This was especially the case for Bryan, who had lost most of the stuff he had brought to Australia with him, when his 30 kg suitcase was lost in transit. Being burgled was also not helpful.

Anyway, we called Bekins, who put us in touch with the Melbourne based-company* who would be receiving our shipment, getting it through Customs and Quarantine and delivering it to our door. A guy called Mark# was our contact for that company. In general we found Mark was rarely able to answer questions without having to consult someone else, and rarely returned our phone calls. What Mark did tell us, was that our shipment had been delayed, and rather than chugging towards Australia, as it was scheduled to be by October, it was in fact, sitting in Hong Kong and had been for some time. Mark did not know when the shipment would be departing Hong Kong for Australia. But he estimated that we might be able to have our stuff by early November.

November came, and our shipment had in fact arrived in Sydney. Hurrah! Bryan followed up with Mark on a daily basis on the progress of our stuff through Customs and Quarantine (mainly because it took about 3 consecutive days of phone calls to Mark, to get any response) . After a few days we heard that our stuff had cleared customs and quarantine with no problems, and all that remained was for it to be delivered to our house. Things were surely looking up! That was around mid-November. We felt sure that we would have our things by the end of November and would be all unpacked and organised by the time our friends Rhonda and Carly arrived to spend a few weeks with us in December.

After a week, we had heard nothing about the delivery of our stuff. Bryan made some calls. Eventually we found out that the stuff was stuck in Sydney because the Melbourne-based company dealing with it did not have a truck going to Sydney until December 8th. We were at wits end but agreed that we could wait until then, given that we had waited all this time.

Mark told us that we would have our stuff delievered on December 12th. He confirmed this with us on two separate occasions. December 12th was the day that Rhonda and Carly were arriving, and I really didn't want to have boxes all over the house when they arrived. But I thought that maybe we could unpack some of the stuff and organise the boxes in to some kind of orderly arrangement in the time before they arrived. We were excited and organised to take some time off work to be at home for the delivery and to start unpacking. On the morning of December 12th I called Mark to find out what time our stuff would be delivered. Mark wasn't at work, but a bloke named Barry# (who is unlikely ever to be given an award for his customer service skills) told us, after considerable coaxing, that the truck with our stuff was still only halfway to Melbourne, and we would not be receiving our shipment that day. Its lucky we called to enquire, because I really don't think Mark was planning to let us know. Despite organising time off work for that day, Bryan and I went to work where we could at least be useful. Later that day, Mark called to tell us that we would be getting our stuff the following day, around 3-4 pm. So we arranged our schedules so we could be at home around 3-4 pm the following day.

At 5pm the following day, having received no deliveries, we called Mark. A receptionist answered the phone, told us that Mark had gone home for the day and that apparently there had been another delay with the delivery. We told her that the delay had not escaped our notice, and it would have been nice if someone had let us know about it before we took more time off work. Bryan and I started to consider the possibility of invoicing this half-arsed company for our wasted time.

The next morning, we caled Bekins in Vancouver to file a complaint about the service we were getting from the company that they had subcontracted to handle our shipment in Australia. They were very understanding and promised to take action. Half an hour later, I was sitting on a tram heading to work (as was Bryan), when Mark called me, possibly in response to action taken by Bekins. Mark told me our stuff was on its way to our house at that very moment, which was not actually a good thing, considering we were both heading in the opposite direction to home. I called Bryan to let him know he should turn around and go home to receive the stuff. About 4 hours later, Bryan called me at work to tell me the stuff had just been delivered to our house, and amazingly it was all there. So lets recap that last bit: Mark tells me our stuff is already making its way to our house - a 45 -60 minute journey, depending on traffic- and 4 hours later it arrives. Bryan has again wasted a several hours. But, at least we had our stuff. And it only took 20 weeks, about twice as long as we had been told to expect.

And now, we can start to feel like we have a home.


Footnotes
* I will not mention the name of the company at this stage, because they do not deserve to have their name mentioned in any context. If you want to know which company should NOT to handle your moving in Australia, ask me and I'll tell you.

# Names may or may not be changed.

Language barriers

Moving back to Australia has (on the whole) been a good decision so far, despite various problems that just never seem to end.
But let me tell you about the problems I’m facing with my accent. My accent is getting very confused, and so are the people that have to interpret the words coming out of my mouth. It started off as a northern England accent many years ago and along the way has picked up bits of Australian , and most recently bits of Canadian (although no Brit, Australian or Canadian would be able to identify with my accent). In different places that I’ve lived I have had to adjust my pronunciation of certain words in order to make myself understood (and I’m not talking about tom-ay-toes and tom-ar-toes here, because I refuse to get into that).
There are several examples, but let’s discuss coffee for a moment, in particular mocha, which I am prone to ordering on a fairly regular basis. In Australia they pronounce ‘mocha’ with a short vowel sound, which would rhyme with ‘locker’. In North America it is pronounced with a long vowel sound, rhyming with ‘poker’. It didn’t take me long to adjust the pronunciation of that word when I arrived in Vancouver – it was a necessity because they didn’t understand what I was asking for otherwise. But back in Australia I am having immense struggles remembering to order it with the short vowel sound – it just sounds too weird to me now and I can’t believe I ever pronounced it that way before. The other day I asked for a mocha but accidentally pronounced it with a long vowel sound. The girl taking my order looked confused for a second but then set to work making it. However, a mocha she did not make. In fact I ended up being served a latte! How can she think that I asked for latte? It doesn't sound anything like mocha no matter how you say it. This morning I again asked for a mocha with a long vowel, and I got a very blank look from the barista. He just stared at me and after about 5 seconds said, "I don’t think we serve that". So, realising my mistake, I tried asking for a mocha with a short vowel, and he told me that they did make those.

A bit more whingeing

In the interests of keeping everyone up to speed, here's a few more obstacles we're having to get past.
When we signed the lease on our house we opted into a scheme called Direct Connect (hereafter to be referred to as DC), where one phone call from them to us was supposedly all that was required to set up our phone, internet, electricity, water, and natural gas connections. In theory its a great concept as we didn’t really have to lift a finger and it cost us nothing. However, we assumed that the person at DC would actually set up the connections correctly, and that was a poor assumption to make.
First off, internet connection. DC signed us up for ADSL broadband with one of the larger IPs in Australia. We were asked if we needed a modem and we said no, because we’d brought one over from Canada with us. Then, a couple of days a go I received a phone call from the IP to let us know that out modem would be delivered to us by the end of the week. I told her that we hadn’t ordered a modem. She seemed surprised and we argued about this for several minutes – she couldn’t comprehend that we might already have a modem, probably because broadband is still a relatively new concept in Australian residential internet. In the end she said she would cancel the order. A few minutes later I got a call from DC to say that the IP had informed them that we had refused connection of our internet service. I told DC that in fact we had not refused connection, just the modem. DC went back to the IP and explained the situation, and then called me back and said everything was sorted out. I went home and checked my credit card account online to discover a $227 payment to the IP. I called the IP and asked what the payment was for, and they said it included the cost of modem they had sent us. Exasperated, I explained the situation and was told that they would refund the cost of the modem to my credit card, which has not yet happened. And the final straw...this morning a courier arrived with a package from the IP, in which was a modem. We didn't accept it of course.

The other thing DC got wrong was that they didn’t set up our natural gas connection, despite telling us that it had been done. I discovered this when we received an overdue notice for the previous tenants’ natural gas. It appears that DC saw that our house already had a gas connection and left it at that. So we have unwittingly been using someone else’s natural gas for the last few weeks. I’m not sure we’ve actually got to the heart of the problems that could arise from this yet. I do know that I’m not paying a cent towards someone else’s bill though.

...And we're back

Wow! Hi everyone. It’s nice to be back on the internets again, and nice to see you all. It’s been a long hiatus - sarahkidd.com headquarters recently relocated from Vancouver to Melbourne, Australia, and it was quite a hectic move. I’m only now able to catch my breath. Some of you may have heard dribs and drabs of my whining in emails. But for those of you haven’t let me give you a quick rundown.

July 31: Bryan successfully defends his thesis, in an awesome display of cleverness. We celebrated briefly before saying “bye for now” to some of our dearest friends and heading off home to finish packing.
August 1: I fly out of Vancouver at some truly ridiculous hour of the morning, bound for Sydney (to spend a few days with my puppy…oh, and my parents). Bryan flies out of Vancouver at a slightly more civilized hour of the day, bound for Melbourne.
August 2: I arrive in Sydney. One of my two bags does not arrive in Sydney. I file a missing bag report, and remark upon the fact that this is twice in a row that my bags have gone missing on this flight. I walk out of the airport where my puppy awaits me (…oh, and my parents)
August 3: Bryan flies into Melbourne. One of his two bags does not fly into Melbourne with him. The missing bag contains all of his clothes, except those he was wearing. He files a missing bag report, and walks out of the airport wondering what the heck he’s arriving to. No sign of my missing bag yet.
I apply for a mobile phone contract and am turned down because I am between jobs and don’t have a permanent address in Australia – frankly, I am treated like a convict. We put the mobile phone in Dad’s name, as if I were 10 years old again.
August 4: morning. No sign of anyone’s bags yet. We spend several hours on hold attempting to find bags. Bryan is doing frequent loads of laundry.
Lunchtime. I am informed that my bag has arrived in Sydney and will be delivered to me between 2 and 4 pm.
4 pm. No bag yet.
7pm. I am reunited with my bag. No sign of Bryan’s bag.
August 5th: I wake up at 4 am, and drive with Dad down to Melbourne in ‘Little Red’ (a car). We arrive at about 3:30 pm. No sign of Bryan’s bag yet. We go to an internet café to check the Qantas lost baggage website. The guy in the internet café looks at us blankly when we ask if we can use our laptop on their wireless network – in fact I don’t think he knows what wireless is. Our campus accommodation smells funny.
August 6th: We try to convince ourselves that we’ve done the right thing, and take in some sights of Melbourne, including Chapel Street and St. Kilda Beach, which we enjoy.
August 7th: Bryan’s work visa has not been approved yet. Someone has lost his chest X-ray. He can’t start work (or be paid) until the visa is approved. We go house hunting. The houses all smell funny.
August 8th: No visa, no nice houses. We determine that we have one week to find a house before becoming homeless. Bryan is awarded a $100 ‘inconvenience fund’ from Qantas. We have to go all the way into the city to get it (that’s what I call inconvenient).
August 9th: Visa is finally approved. We drive 40 km to immigration office, and sit around for an hour or so before being given the visa. No sign of Bryan’s luggage.
August 10th: We find a nice house. A newly renovated, art deco style house with fabulous ceiling molding, timber floors, front and back gardens. The house is not cheap, ($1900/month). We are told there will be a dishwasher installed next week. Convinced on the promise of a dishwasher, we take the house and even negotiate a regular gardening service.
August 11th: We have to get two months rent together to pay in advance, but neither of us has actually earned any money yet! We try to wire money from Canadian accounts to Australian account. Australian bank says they can’t do it. Canadian bank says they can’t do it. Someone must know how to do it!
August 12th: We finally convince the Canadian bank to let us have some of our money. They give us a two hour window to get to an ATM to withdraw the money before changing their minds. We sign a lease for the house. The real estate agent is a young whippersnapper, (I’d say about 21) and drives a fancy car. He thinks he’s special. He doesn’t provide us with a condition report for the house, which we later discover he is legally obliged to do upon receipt of our bond. No sign of Bryan’s luggage.
August 14th: We get the keys to the house. Then we realize we have no furniture to move into the house, and go shopping. We attempt to buy a bedroom suite. Apparently the suite is so popular that the earliest that it can be delivered to us is late October. We consider a similar bedroom suite in another store. Same story. We order a bedroom suite and buy a mattress. Thankfully the mattress is available immediately. We also buy a fridge after recalling that (unlike in Canada) Australian rental properties usually don’t come with fridges and laundry machines.
August 15th: I go and meet my new bosses and am happy to confirm that I do have a job. Hurray. Am informed that I will not be paid for at least 3 weeks, such was the backlog in paperwork.
August 16th: We discover that the newly renovated house features a broken water heater, a leaky pipe, power outlets in three rooms don’t work, the kitchen door doesn’t have a door handle. There is also only one phone connection, and not conveniently located in a central area of the house – in fact it is placed so stupidly in the corner of the bedroom that it takes us nigh on 20 minutes to actually plug in the phone. The real estate agent says he doesn’t understand why we didn’t get a condition report, and says he’ll drop it over to our house.
August 17th: Water heater is finally repaired mid afternoon and I can wash my hair. Plumber repairs leaky pipe. Pipe is still leaking after plumber has left. No sign of Bryan’s luggage. Bryan getting bored of his clothes. No sign of condition report.
August 18th: Plumber comes back to look at leaky pipe. He repairs it again and leaves. Pipe continues to leak. No sign of dishwasher. Whippersnapper is not returning my calls.
August 21st: I start work. I am not provided with a desk or labspace, since there seems to be far too many people working there. I am told there may be a desk and labspace opening up in about a month. The security guard is not a charming man. He programs my access card wrong. I get locked out of my building. I go back to tell him the card isn’t working for me. He is not charming at all and refuses to change the programming on my card. I go back later and find a different security guard on duty. He is nice(r). I get back into my building. I decide to reserve judgment on whether I’m going to enjoy the job or not. We write a strongly worded letter to the whippersnapper.
August 24th: Its 3 weeks since Bryan reported his luggage missing. He can now file a claim for compensation. He may request up to $1600 compensation, which barely covers the cost of the brand new suit. Whippersnapper’s boss calls us out of the blue and asks if there is anything he can do to make our move easier. I tell him everything, not sure what has happened to the whippersnapper.

And there we have it. Who wants to place a bet on how long it will take us to get a dishwasher? And for that matter, for Bryan to receive compensation for lost luggage.

Great moments in Presidential Speeches

(Blog title borrowed from David Letterman)

Deliver me now

Rumblings of another Bush running for presidency. It pains me, it really does. On the bright side, he really couldn't be any worse than the current Bush.

Pause for thought

When the big disaster hits, its going to be up to K-Fed to repopulate the earth.

Ick!

Not again!!!

Only 2 weeks since a similar incident, a couple of days ago I again came within a foot of being hit by a car. This time it was a big black SUV, the kind driven by a Kitsilano Soccer Mom, talking on her cell phone and in a rush to pick up her venti Starbucks coffee, drop the poodle off at the canine massage and acupuncture therapist, and get to her yoga class.
I was riding my bike slowly up the hill to UBC on 15th Ave, I came to an intersection with a 2-way stop. I had right of way so I plodded on through the intersection. I saw the SUV approaching the stop sign. It stopped at the stop sign. At this point I was in the intersection, going slowly because I was tired from the hill. The SUV started to move off from the stop sign towards me, while I was directly in front of it!! I was going way too slow and in the wrong gear to make a quick dash to safety. If I put my brakes on I would have just stopped in front of it. I had nowhere to go. She hit the brakes just in time, and again I escaped the clutches of possible broken bones, road rash and a twisted bike, or worse.
By the way I was very visible - there was plenty of daylight and I was wearing a bright green cycling jacket and other reflective stuff. I just don't get what the driver was thinking. Was she thinking? The point of stopping at a stop sign is to take note of cars, bikes, or pedestrians in or near the intersection that may be on a collision course with you, and AVOID hitting them!!! Maybe she thought she gave me plenty of time to get out of the way, but that would make her a very bad judge of distance and velocity, because there was no way cycling up a hill that I could clear the intersection in the time she allowed me. But I'm pretty sure this was a case of SUV mentality combined with lack of concentration on the road. People on the road simply weren't as important to her as her yoga class and venti coffee, and she had the never off-road SUV to prove it.
I've known for a long time that distracted drivers are just as bad as drunk drivers. Yet another study came out last week that confirmed my belief. Holding or dialling a cell phone, applying makeup, reading a map while you're in the driving seat...you may as well be drinking beer! But will anyone do anything about it? Change their habits? Pass a law? I strongly doubt it.

When VHS turns bad

Last night Bryan and I decided to go out for dinner at Baru - previously one of my favourite brunching spots, but now limited to serving dinner only. Well it turns out they serve fabulous dinner as well as fabulous brunch, so I feel better about the loss of brunch.

After dinner, we popped next door to Limelight to pick up a movie. After deciding that a 156 minute movie abou the downfall of the fuhrer would be too much for an Easter Saturday, Bryan selected Stranger than Paradise. He described this to me as an independent, avante-garde, black comedy by one of his favourite directors, Jim Jarmusch, back in the 80's. This movie was rated overall 7.5/10 on IMDB, and 90 % fresh on rotten tomatoes. We were quite looking forward to it. So we walked up to the man behind the desk and asked him for "Stranger than Paradise". He looked it up on the computer and told us it was only available on VHS, and would that be ok? We said yes it would be ok. So he went into the back room to get the movie. We payed for it and we left.


We got home, we put the VHS into my antiquated TV-with-built-in VCR unit, snuggled up under blankets and started to watch. Some awful music started playing, stupid images appeared on the screen, and this title appeared "Strangers in Paradise". After calling Limelight to tell us they had given us the wrong movie, we checked on IMDB to find out if the movie we had come home with was worth watching. It wasn't.


Here's a user comment from IMDB "Worst anti-fascist musical ever made. This is mostly a political statement with some of the worst directed and staged song and dance numbers ever. Since the film is 50% song and dance, would it be too much to ask for the dancing to match the beat or the singers to lip-sync properly? The director, writer, and producer of STRANGERS IN PARADISE, Ulli Lommel, also stars as a mesmerist from WWII Germany named Sage, who is cryogenically frozen in the 1940s to escape Hitler (also played by Ulli Lommel). A group of crazy California fascists thaw out Sage in the 1980s and try to get him to hypnotize gays and punks into being upstanding citizens....".

Need I say more? It was horrible. Rated on IMDB at 5.6/10 (quite generous I think). Rotten Tomatoes apparently didn't find it worthy of a rating, but one user reviewed it and gave it 3/10.

Anyway that was my Saturday night.

Still here

I came within less than a foot of being hit by a car this morning, while riding my bike across a pedestrian crossing. All of the other cars had stopped - why did one car feel it wasn't necessary to stop for me until it became clear we were on a collision course? Actually, he already had stopped at the crossing, but then decided to hit the gas, apparently anticipating that he could zip on through before those pesky pedestrians crossed in front of his car. Not only was he wrong about that, but he merely gave me a wave when I glared at him. Grrrrr.

Duh!

Well now I'm embarrassed! I try not make a twit of myself too often on my blog, but today I must eat humble pie. Some may recommend that I be stripped of my doctorate too, but I hope it doesn't go that far.
Further to my whinging post a couple of days ago about the clock radio sleep button that could not be turned off, I have been consulting with my good friend, the electronically knowledgeable Kristina, who suggested pushing to snooze button to turn off the sleep function. At first, I was thinking that was a dumb idea and also that I had tried it 6 times anyway. But then I realised that I don't ever use the snooze button, and because it doesn't look like the other buttons on my clock radio, sometimes I forget its there - I thought that maybe I hadn't actually tried it. So last night I went to try it out, and I was shocked to discover that written on the snooze button in print so large that only I could have missed it all these years, was SNOOZE / SLEEP OFF. Yes, it worked. I wonder if I will remember this the next time I accidentally push the sleep button...

Weapons of mass destruction

Dick Cheney can count himself bloody lucky that Harry Whittington did not die (although he's been on shaky ground at times) as a result of Dick shooting him in a "hunting accident". If Mr. Whittington had died either directly from the shooting, or from the heart attack he suffered 3 days later, what would have happened to Cheney? I'm guessing nothing. Mr. Bush is apparently "satisfied" with Dick's explanation of events, but I'm very concerned at the Administrations' blasé attitude.
Yes, Dick has become even more of a joke throughout the world than he was previously; example (as heard by me, mere seconds ago, on Nova 969 Sydney following a Tupac song) "Yeah, poor Tupac, he's not with us anymore. He went hunting with Dick Cheney and never came back".
But not one person or reporter that I know of (correct me if I'm wrong) has suggested that hunting and/or gun laws need to change to minimise the number of people being shot by their hunting mates, or anyone for that matter.
How about some *real* gun licensing laws for starters. Maybe if Walmart weren't selling guns and ammunition to convicted criminals...I don't know, seems like a good place to start. Walmart have altered their gun-sale policies slightly now, which caused locals to rush out and grab up all the guns they could find in case of a shortage. Really, there's something wrong with the logic circuits there.
Australia really tightened up their gun laws very soon after the 1996 Port Arthur Massacre in Tasmania, where 35 people were killed and 18 were injured by a single person. There was big grumbling about the reforms at the time as I recall, mostly from gun-owners who were going to have to store their guns in secure gun-cabinets rather than on the coffee table or under their pillows. But the legislation went through, and Australia is now a mucher safer place to live.

Update Feb 18 2006: Oh good, Harry Whittington has *finally* apologised to Dick Cheney for allowing himself to be shot: "My family and I are deeply sorry for everything Vice-President Cheney and his family have had to deal with," he said. "We hope that he will continue to come and seek the relaxation that he deserves." The apology was long overdue, but I guess he had trouble speaking with all those pellets lodged in his face. No really, do you think someone paid Harry to be nice about this?

Politics and Science in the Bush Administration

Politics and Science in the Bush Administration (or lack thereof)

Dated now (August 2003), but a fascinating read nonetheless. Thanks to Carly.

Vacation is Over... an open letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush

Friday, September 2nd, 2005

Vacation is Over... an open letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush

Friday, September 2nd, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush:

Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.

Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?

Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outside while the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over my head. It was only a Category 1 then but it was pretty nasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there were still homes without power. That night the weatherman said this storm was on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don't like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisers to go to and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her!

I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don't let people criticize you for this -- after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?

And don't listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for New Orleans this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them that even if you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees, there weren't going to be any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you had a much more important construction job for them -- BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!

On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, I have to say I was moved by how you had your Air Force One pilot descend from the clouds as you flew over New Orleans so you could catch a quick look of the disaster. Hey, I know you couldn't stop and grab a bullhorn and stand on some rubble and act like a commander in chief. Been there done that.

There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out. Respond to nothing. Even those pesky scientists who predicted this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all their global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that stretched from New York to Cleveland.

No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this!

You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.

Yours,

Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
www.MichaelMoore.com

P.S. That annoying mother, Cindy Sheehan, is no longer at your ranch. She and dozens of other relatives of the Iraqi War dead are now driving across the country, stopping in many cities along the way. Maybe you can catch up with them before they get to DC on September 21st.